It has been a hard time for those of us who enjoy popularized histories and historical biographies. Doris Kearns Goodwin, perhaps best known for Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream and No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Stephen Ambrose author of, among many other volumes, Undaunted Courage and Citizen Soldiers were both caught in plagiarizing material. Most likely these errors were the consequence of haste and sloppiness, rather than malice. Much worst was the apparently deliberate historical fraud perpetrated by Michael Bellesiles who ended up resigning from Emory University for his misdeeds. Bellesiles wrote Arming America which won Columbia University’s Bancroft’s Prize for History. Columbia University’s Trustees later voted to rescind the prize after Bellesiles’s scholarly crime became clear. On the basis of irreproducible evidence, Bellesiles argued that in colonial America ownership was far less ubiquitous as previously supposed. It was not lost on the cultural elites that such a result could effect our perceptions of the original understanding of the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” The original credulity of the Bancroft Committee and academia as a whole towards Bellesiles’s book is a testament to its rhetorical convenience to those for whom the Second Amendment is an inconvenient nuisance.
In between the careless errors of Kearns and Ambrose and the malicious ones of Bellesiles falls the deceitfulness of Joseph Ellis. Ellis was caught by the Boston Globe in a series of self-aggrandizing lies told to his friends, colleagues, and students. Ellis really spent his military career lecturing at West Point, but he told others not only that he was in Vietnam, but that he was a platoon leader in the storied 101st Airborne Division. Ellis also claimed that he served on the staff of General William Westmoreland, the American Commander in Vietnam, giving him extraordinary credibility when teaching a course on that era at Mount Holyoke College. Again, people were credulous about Ellis’s Vietnam claims because Ellis was anti-war in outlook. The anti-war sentiments of a Vietnam War hero had greater claim to moral authority. For his sins, Ellis was suspended without pay for one year from his endowed chair at Mount Holyoke
And yet, Ellis is a wonderfully gifted writer, who won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his book the Founding Brothers: The American Revolutionary Generation. There is a legitimate argument that Ellis is one of the most knowledgeable historians of the Revolutionary War Era. Despite these credentials and gifts, it is difficult to read Ellis’s new book, His Excellency, about George Washington, without nagging doubts caused by Ellis’s personal mendacity. Fortunately, Ellis used the opportunity of this new book to return to historical scholarship.
His Excellency, is short (less than 300 pages) and does not pretend to be a comprehensive documentation of the events of Washington’s life and career. Rather, Ellis tries to see beyond the marble bust vision we all have of and attempts to understand the motivations and outlook of George Washington the person. Ellis does his readers a favor and resists the modern temptation to devote much time to Washington’s early infatuation with Sally Fairfax. Instead, Ellis endeavors to understand the apparent contradiction in Washington’s personality. How does one resolve the dilemma of a Washington having sufficient ambition to acquire a sizable estate at Mount Vernon, to successfully lead a rag-tag army against the most powerful empire of the time, and to become president of a fledging nation; while at the same time resisting the inevitable temptation to become an American Napoleon?
Ellis makes the case that Washington’s ambitions were indeed an important and even a transcendent motivation. However, Washington’s unique quality was his realization that the approbation of history, rather than the more fleeting admiration of contemporaries, was the higher ambition. There were at least four important instances when Washington eschewed acquisition of personal power and responded to the greater ambition of the respect of posterity.
- The successful effort by Washington at Newburgh to thwart a cabal of senior officers from leading the Continental Army to Philadelphia to compel the Continental Congress to pay the troops established the principle of civilian control over the military.
- Washington retired to Mount Vernon after his military victory over the British in the War of Independence and avoided the rise of an American Napoleon at the cost of democratic rule.
- The fact that Washington set a precedent by only serving two terms re-enforced popular sovereignty. This precedent lasted until this century, broken by the four terms of Franklin Roosevelt. This precedent is now formalized in the Twenty-Second Amendement to the Constitution.
- In Washington’s will, he distributed his wealth evenly among his heirs. This guaranteed the dissipation of accumulated wealth and prevented the rise of a Washington family dynasty. Washington’s legacy was political and institutional not familial.
Washington did not so much resist the temptations of power, but embraced the greater ambition of fathering a nation, a republic.
Ellis described Washington as the “rarest of men: a supremely realistic visionary, a prudent prophet… His genius was his judgment.” It was most certainly not Ellis’s intention, given his personal Left-ward political leanings, but Ellis evokes a direct, but implicit comparison with the most recent George W. George W. Bush. Of course, the analogy like all analogies is imperfect, yet Ellis nonetheless finds the source of Washington’s abilities in his single-minded clarity. Ellis was describing Washington, but he could just as well have been writing of Bush, when he observed that his unfailing judgment “did not emanate from books or from formal education.” Rather, “Washington’s powers of judgment derived in part from the fact that his mind was uncluttered with sophisticated preconceptions.” It is not so much that Washington, in Ellis estimation, or Bush now, is an anti-intellectual know-nothing; but rather they both recognize that clarity and firmness is many times more important than nuance. For the wise, details are important in developing and implementing decisions, but they can be debilitating when they contribute to confusion rather than clarity or provide excuse for desultory inaction. Read His Excellency, and understand both George W’s.
ACLU War on the Boy Scouts
Sunday, November 21st, 2004It is the sort of community project that is so common around the United States that it does not merit the attention of the news, but it remains extraordinary nonetheless. Like many Boy Scout troops around the country, one in Ellicott City Maryland finds itself concerned about former scouts who are now serving overseas in life-threatening situations. The threats in Iraq are certainly more immediate for those who helped raise the young adults who are now serving there.
This particular Maryland troop organized to send a 30-pound box of food, toiletries and other items to one of its Eagle Scouts now in Iraq. One thing that an Eagle Scout learns is service to others, so this overseas Eagle Scout wrote about his concern for his fellow soldiers. So not only did this troop manage to send their own Eagle Scout a box from home, but a total of ten boxes, 320 pounds all told, to Iraq. The entire project was conceived and executed in four days.
However, the real gift of these boxes it not tangible. It is not the cans of tuna or packages of crackers or cookies or coffee or CDs or DVDs or magazines that are important, it is the love and support expressed by taking the time and effort to assemble and send the boxes that is the greatest gift. Each box also contained holiday cards created by scouts addressed to the individual soldiers. It is these thoughtful messages that will nourish and sustain the soldiers long after the last cookie in the last box is consumed.
During the same week, it appears that the Department of Defense is capitulating to the demands of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and is no longer permitting military installations to sponsor Boy Scout troops. The egregious offense for which the Boy Scouts of America is being banished is the scout promise:
“…to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”
The ACLU sees an implicit and rigidly enforced theocracy when parents bring their children to scout troops sponsored by military bases. When others look at the Boy Scouts, they see adults helping to guide honorable young men. While the ACLU fears the mention of God in public spaces, others see an authoritarian effort to strip voluntary spirituality from the public square. While the ACLU sees forced religiosity, others see the ACLU trying to deny their right of voluntary association and an attempt to impose their own imperial secularity.
The crux of the ACLU’s argument is that the sponsorship of Boy Scouts is an implicit and unconstitutional endorsement of the idea of a higher being by a government entity. The logical extension of his argument would make the government posting of the Declaration of Independence you remember the document that speaks of “self-evident” rights endowed by a “Creator” an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
The scouts have always been open to all religions. There is no question of endorsement of a particular sect or belief. However, if the government does not allow the sponsorship by volunteers at military bases, it is implicitly endorsing a world view that denies the existence of a God. If allowing sponsorship by military bases of a nonsectarian organization that encourages members to seek God in their own way is an endorsement of spirituality, then specifically denying the sponsorship endorses the alternative view, that there is no higher being to which we have an obligation.
In truth, the sponsorship of groups by military organizations, whether they are the Boy Scouts or the Boys and Girls Club (who make no specific reference to a higher being), does not constitute a religious “establishment” as prohibited by the First Amendement to the Constitution. This sponsorship represents only an attempt, by volunteers, to help the community and children. If the Pentagon excluded the sponsorship of youth groups unless they mentioned God in their oath, then the ACLU might have a case.
There is irony in the decision to deny sponsorship by the military of Boy Scouts troops for not being sufficiently inclusive, when the scouts where racially integrated long before the military. There is also a deeper irony is the fact that former Boy Scouts are fighting in Iraq against real theocratically-motivated oppression, while some at home are fighting against an organization that helped instill in these soldiers a deep respect for religious tolerance.
In the last election, there was a significant portion of the voters who expressed a concern about “moral values.” For some on the Left, “moral values” is code language for particular issues like abortion rights or same-sex “marriage.” This is far too narrow a view. “Moral issues” is also an umbrella term that includes the assault on community values and community organizations by intolerant legal bullies like the ACLU. If the Democratic leadership desires have a meaningful dialogue with those for whom moral issues are important, they need to refrain from allying themselves with bullying legal organizations like the ACLU and refrain from supporting an infinitely malleable legal jurisprudence that empowers such bullies. This is particularly true for litigious bullies who scare the Defense Department into a decision that hurts boys and young men.
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