The culture war is fought and lost or won in a million little nooks and crannies in our society.
The collective perception of historical ephemera that tumble-dries together to form “the public consciousness” is one of those collections of crannies.
And somewhere in that perception floats the collective dog’s breakfast of ideas and ideals that form the cultural idea of what is and was good, and what isn’t and wasn’t.
You ask most Americans “who was the worst president in American history”, you will get many answers. Conservatives and progressives may differ – Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush likely trend toward the top for both, respectively. There are some consensus picks; Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan and a few others.
But among the eternal parade of cultural skirmishes that could stand some winning, the left’s rewriting of history re Woodrow Wilson needs to be turned around and pointed back toward history’s lower colon, where it belongs.
A national consensus on hating Wilson is long overdue. It is the patriotic duty of every decent American. While conservatives have particular reasons to detest Wilson, and all his works, and all his empty promises, there is more than enough in his record for moderates, liberals, progressives, libertarians, and socialists to join us in this great and unifying cause.
The roll call of the worst presidents in American history includes some consensus top choices. James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce both contributed mightily to the nation’s slide into the Civil War, and Andrew Johnson did enduring harm to Reconstruction in the war’s aftermath. But all three of those men were repudiated by the end of their single term in office. They left no heirs who would acknowledge their influence, no fleet of academic hagiographers who could see themselves reflected in those presidencies.
Wilson, by contrast, served two full and consequential terms. He was the only Democrat re-elected to the job during the century between 1832 and 1936. He was lionized by liberals and progressives in academia and the media for most of the century after he left office in 1921. In my youth, and perhaps yours, Wilson was presented in history books as a tragic hero whom the unthinking American people didn’t deserve. He was often placed highly on academics’ rankings of the presidents. Princeton University named its school of international relations for him. Even in rescinding that honor in June 2020, the university’s press release declared: “Though scholars disagree about how to assess Wilson’s tenure as president of the United States, many rank him among the nation’s greatest leaders and credit him with visionary ideas that shaped the world for the better.”
Nah. Wilson was a human pile of flaming trash. He was a bad man who made the country and the world worse. His name should be an obscenity, his image an effigy. Hating him is a wholesome obligation of citizenship.
Let us count the ways:
- He institutionalized racism, segregation and eugenics just as America was slowly evolving out of each.
- He was the father of the modern administrative state – he brought academic contempt for The People to that bureaucracy, where it’s metastasized for a century now.
- With the income tax administered by that administrative state, he started the roll down the slippery slope from liberty to corporatist servitude.
- He started the notion of “the living Constiitution”.
- His “contirbutions” to foreigtj policy did more than most to facilitate the rise of Naziism, Fascism and Communism; his wartime regime was a catastrophe for civil liberties.
- He was the father of the “imperial presidency” – taking a slim win (41% of the vote, after Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote) and acting like it was a mandate.
- And he may have botched the Feds response to the Spanish Flu even worse than Biden and Trump’s Covid campaigns.
Read the whole thing if you can.
Whatever other missions I have in life,extinguishing any lingering ignorance about the loathsomeness of Woodrow Wilson is going on the list.
As a dutiful listener to the Remnant Podcast, I can no longer hear or merely read Wilson’s name without hearing the Uruk-hai theme in my head.
Wilson was very much a man of his time.
At the time, around the turn of the 20th century, was very collectivist. The general idea was that individual human beings were flawed, but the state could rise above the individual man. Your personality, as an individual human being, is made up of neuroses and false beliefs. You are limited. The state, however, is potentially not limited. It had no upbringing. It has no lifespan.
So the state was able to surpass the individual and could direct the lives of individuals to pursue rational goals. This is the collective state as developed in Stalinist Russia and Hitler’s Germany. It is the state Orwell described in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
One way to look at the counter culture of the sixties is that it was a necessary correction to this collectivist mindset. But of course we are now reverting back to a Wilsonian idea of the perfectibility of man through the device of the state and state directives.
Bullshit.
No President, before or after, did more damage to the United States America than Abraham Lincoln. The plain fact is, that at the time of his well deserved death, the United States had ceased to exist.
The War of Northern Aggression was his decision, and his alone. And when he was done, the Constitution, the union of sovereign states and a free man’s right to self determination were in ashes.
Sure, several Presidents added to his crimes, FDR in particular, but none would have had the power to do their vile acts if Lincoln had not cleared the road for them.
If John Wilkes Booth has succeeded, even just a *few months* earlier, we all would be a much happier people, living in several sovereign states, created to suit the people who live in them; united for means of national defense and to facilitate interstate commerce, and nothing else.
Goes to show — American has had it worse and the similarities to our own time are obvious enough.
Emery
what is similar from epoch to epoch is that the most destructive elements of a culture are embodied in craven cowards who prefer to deal in falsehoods and cultural relativism. You are such a person…
Among so many other things you present yourself as an expert on the ethics of abortion so it should not be difficult for you to answer this question…
At what point in your mother’s pregnancy with you would it have become unacceptable for her to abort you?
As a bonus question where can I find the text in the Constitution that supports this claim you made:
“The Constitution before amendment said Clarence Thomas should be counted as 3/5ths of a person.”
Vox Day has been running columns on anacyclosis. Interesting to see that some political observers have calculated the life cycle of a state at 80-100 years, which corresponds with my own view.
1787 – Constitution adopted
1861 – Confederate States left, United States as constituted ceases to exist
1865 – North conquers neighboring state, United States 2.0 formed
1965 – United States 2.0 ceases to exist (welfare, immigration), 3.0 limps on
We are 60 years into the next cycle. Can we make it another 20-40 years before the nation collapses in economic ruin or tears itself apart in domestic violence? Doubtful.
Wilson did grievous harm to ideal of a constitutional republic, FDR was even worse, Lesko Brandon has never even heard of it. Can’t imagine how President Kamala will pull our chesnuts out of the fire.
I had this discussion a few years ago with a liberal and a libertarian. Both said without hesitation that Reagan was easily the worst president. It has to be a form of mental illness, also evidenced by the resident troll here on SITD.
Grand theories of history are a bit like grand theories of stock prices.
It is a good thing to remember that the past and future exist only in the imagination.
If you think that the Union is a good thing, Abraham Lincoln is a hero. If you think that the Union is a bad thing, Abraham Lincoln is a villain. Lincoln was probably the only man who could have kept it together.
Triumph for the Dutch Farmers Party, pushing the world further along the future I imagine. People do not want to be poor and starve. This is why the green dream is unattainable. In the modern world people have to be educated and have access to communications. This means that people will learn of the plans of the elites to make you poorer and hungrier, and they will organize to stop them.
Kremlin Tom is telling us he’s got another use for his sheets, I see. Make sure you wash your hands well after those cross burnings, Tom. How’s your Jesse Owens impersonation, Tom?
Seriously, things would not have gotten better if Booth had shot Lincoln earlier–there might have been a temporary truce, but the slaves already freed would not have given peace to the slave states at all. The end result could likely have been even nastier than the peninsular campaign.
My take on worst President ever? Obama right now, pen and a phone, kinda cool. Biden closing quickly, and I’ve got some vitriol towards Wilson as well.
So say we all. Wilson was uniquely bad.
“Lincoln was probably the only man who could have kept it together.”
At the time, perhaps. But there was a young future leader in the wings who could have pulled it off. Joseph Stalin.
Slavery would have died of it’s own weight without the massive destruction and bloodshed. Industrialization was right around the corner, and would have made slavery obsolete within a few years.
The North’s abolitionist fervor had *nothing* to do with morality, or altruistic defense of the fellow man. The people of the South treated black people like valuable farm animals, but people in the North hated blacks, and treated them much worse than people of the South.
The goal was to destroy the South’s economic and political power. It’s just that simple.
They succeeded in that, but dragged the rest of the country down into the slowly revolving toilet in the bargain.
I cannot understand people who believe The Late Unpleasantness was about abolishing slavery.
If abolishing slavery was the issue, why did slave states Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia fight on the side of the North? Why did the Emancipation Proclamation only free slaves in rebel territories, not in Northern slave states?
Plainly, abolishing slavery was not the principal reason for the war because it if had been, slavery in the North would have been abolished. The war must have been fought over something else and slavery used as a socially acceptable cover story to hide the real but socially embarassing reason.
Now let’s all think real hard – what is it that Liberals aspire to, everywhere and always? Five letters. Starts with a P. Come on, you know this one. Austin _, international man of mystery. Samantha _, political hack. Seriously, you can’t figure it out? I’ll give you a vowel: O.
MBerg wrote: “The culture war is fought and lost or won in a million little nooks and crannies in our society.“
Culture wars are the preferred battleground of modern politicians because they’re essentially free.
essentially free? Money, maybe, but that’s not the only cost.
Democrats swept Minnesota because of a culture war over abortion
no politician dares speak the truth about social security insolvency
Bigman, as I pointed out, slavery was the excuse. And now it’s a scourge that is wielded against people who had nothing to do with it, for power and profit…much like the Holocaust.
These are uncomfortable truths that those who have taken the time to investigate have no compunction speaking out about. Truth is truth.
If we taught *real* American history in school, we’d all know that.
In a few years we will be discussing whether Lesco presidency was worth than Wilson’s. That is if we survive to talk about it.
Bigman, look up the secession papers of the Confederate states. They all mention slavery as a reason. It wasn’t the only reason–northern use of tax revenues for northern projects like railroads factors in there as well–but trying to separate the Civil War from slavery is a fool’s errand.
Mr. Bubble, slavery was the lynchpin for Succession. The North proposed to end it like the end of maskies in schools, which would ruin the South, which was the goal.
You’re a brainwashed Northern boomer though, so your ignorance isn’t your fault.
Bigman, brake open a history book. Missouri wanted to secede, but the feds sent in troops to arrest the legislature. The MO legislature dispersed, met at a secure location, and voted to secede. Lincoln ignored the vote to secede because, he said, they lacked a quoram. Missouri controlled both banks of the Missourri river and one bank of the Mississippi river, Lincoln could not allow Missourri to secede.
Itis very difficult to get into the mind of people more than a century and a half ago.. We think of northerners morally repulsed by race-based slavery and southerners stubbornly clinging to race-based slavery but the truth is more complicated.
No one, other than a fe religious maniacs, believed that African blacks and their descendants were the equals of white men. You had biblical explanation for the racial inferiority of blacks (they were the children of Ham, doomed by God to be servants of the other children of Noh), or you had a modern, scientific explanation — Darwinism..
There was no theory that said blacks and whites were equal.
There were a lot of ideas abut why, even though blacks were inferior, they should not be slaves.
When Lincoln cited the lack of a quorum to secede, he tacitly acknowledged a state’s right to secede with a proper quorum… which all the Confederate states had.
In 1860, the United States were a confederation of sovereign states that banded together for mutual protection. In 1862, it became a group of disparate factions, held together at gunpoint.
It still is.
When Lincoln sent ships to resupply a military base in a foreign country (Ft. Sumter), they committed an act of war.
In a show of graciousness, South Carolina offered to overlook the incident and let the citizens of the USA return to their country, with their arms.
Lincoln invaded.
South Carolina was Ukraine, without the degeneracy child trafficking and money laundering.
Sorry about the mangled spelling, but spectrum is out in NW Wisconsin so I am internetting with a cell phone with a tiny screen and a cheap bluetooth keyboard I found in a drawer.
To proceed . . .. The slavery/anti-slavery argument in the 1850s was not so much about blacks and their civil rights as it was about small, independent white farmers, farming the land that they owned. Commentaries, written at the time, show that conflict. Where slavery as legal, family farmers were crushed. A family farm could not compete with a large plantation worked by slaves. Lincoln grew up the son of a poor white farmer, literally across the river from Missourri plantations worked by slaves. Lincoln’s concerns for the stolen labor of blacks can always be seen from the perspective of a poor white farmer: how can he compete with slave labor?
There was an intense political struggle between North & South well before the Civil War. Until Alaska was admitted to the Union in 1959, Texas had bragging rights as, by far, the biggest state.
But back in the 1840s, TX wanted to be admitted as four smaller states, because that would increase the number of pro-slavery states & senators. It was the North that insisted on TX being admitted as the largest state, not the Texans.
South Carolina didn’t have degeneracy? Um, Kremlin Tom, ever heard the song “Brown Sugar” and wonder why your African-American acquaintances are often so much lighter skinned than their African counterparts? Pro tip; that wasn’t from marriages contracted with a Baptist pastor officiating, or even a voluntary relationship, generally speaking.
Honestly…
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Ahhh. I see you are holding a bit of a grudge against your wife’s black son, after all!
You’re referring to mulattos, Bikebubble…
Yes, its true, Bikebubble; many Irish lasses had black Africans forced upon them during their “indenture”, and many an Irish lad was forced to lay with African women, as well.
Slavery is corrupt, Bikebubble, and it indeed corrodes society. But forced miscegenation between male and female isn’t degenerate; its dehumanizing. And while degeneracy is dehumanizing, they are not the same thing.
However, Bikebubble, I aver that black children were bought and sold as slaves. So I guess South Carolina was more exactly like Ukraine than I thought. I stand corrected.
Slava South Carolina! Say it with me, Bikebubble.
North:
Slavery in other countries is bad (not bad here, but there).
We must invade and conquer them, to end slavery there.
Ukraine:
People in those provinces want to leave our country.
We must kill them, to prevent them from leaving.
Lesko Brandon:
Russia rescued people who were being killed by their own government.
We must destroy Russia.
The slave trade is still alive and well…in Africa.
That might make reparations to Africa tricky, but not impossible. Africans are still enslaving themselves because White Supremacy™️, Systemic Racism©️, or something.
They’ll figure it out.
The important thing is, the only slaves being brought into Weimerica today, with the tacit approval of the federal government, are young South American girls. So we’re good to go.
Yesterday:
“Bakhmut will fall,” a Ukrainian tank operator told AFP in the town of Chasov Yar, about 10 km (six miles) west of Artyomovsk. “We are almost encircled. The units are progressively retreating in small groups.”
“According to Wall Street Journal, some of the best-prepared Ukrainian units have been routed during fighting in the vicinity of Bakhmut in recent months. There is a concern in the military that the losses would undermine the effort to mount a counteroffensive in the spring and summer.”
It’s over.
When Ukraine falls, what will happen to the African slave trade?
No worries. The Taliban in Libya have it under control. Thanks to the infusion of Weimarican arms, they are the best equipped army in the region.
Yes, Kremlin “Sheets” Tom, I’m sure that those relationships were consensual, and none of them were slaveowners and overseers using the power differential that existed between slaves and owners/overseers to get sexual favors. And by no means were southern churches and social networks guilty for looking the other way as the owners were obviously sleeping with their “bed wenches”.
I guess this is the kind of horse manure you’re getting from your KKK buddies? The kind of thing you think is so intelligent on their part?
bike, as entertaining as your banter with Vlad might be, I’m not clear what you are arguing. Maybe you can help me understand your point.
Slavery was immoral. Granted. The slave states in the south broke away from the union to form their own country. Undisputed. The Union invaded and conquered the neighboring country. Historical fact.
The people who object to the invasion say it was illegal, immoral and unconstitutional for the Union to invade a peaceful country which posed no threat to the Union. You seem to be arguing the Union had an obligation to go to war because of the neighboring country’s immoral practices. But the US has not invaded countries which throw homosexuals off buildings, mutilate girls’ genitals, traffic in slaves and arms. I’m having trouble understanding the scope of the duty to invade, and the conditions for it.
Could you clarify the principles that underlie your argument, call it the Bike Doctrine, so we’d know when we must invade and when not?
I think Lincoln clarified the issue about 160 years ago, John. Just because Kremlin Tom obscures it doesn’t change that fact. Lincoln was of the view that the South could not secede (secession had been prohibited in the Articles of Confederation; the issue was hotly debated), and that federal facilities in the South remained the property of the federal government. Hence when Fort Sumter was fired upon as Lincoln resupplied it, there was casus belli.
Pro tip, John; don’t take history lessons from a guy who’s close enough to Klansmen that they admit they belong to the KKK.
Now it sounds as if you are arguing that slavery had nothing to do with it, the issue was an illegal attempt to leave the union.
Bikebubble blurted: “Lincoln was of the view that the South could not secede (secession had been prohibited in the Articles of Confederation…”
Oh! So the USA was operating under the Articles of Confederation in 1860, Mr. Bubble?
Huh…I was under the impression the Constitution had been ratified several years prior. I was also my understanding it was the job of the SCOTUS to interpret the Constitution, not the President. But you have new and exciting data, I guess.
Did you know that despite his being labeled a traitor, President Jefferson Davis was never tried for treason, Mr. Bubble? Isn’t that funny? Do you know why? It is because the suddenly all powerful US Federal Government feared his case would raise troubling questions about the constitutionality of secession, and that an acquittal would signal that the North’s declaration of war had been an unjustified invasion of a foreign country.
But hey, let’s not quibble the details. Please tell us more of your fascinating insights into US history, Mr. Bubble.
Has anyone else noticed that Bikebubble’s arguments have grown more feeble lately? He’s just pulling it out of his ass. Honestly, I expect him to start cutting and pasting stuff from Vox, or Forbes any minute now.
I think this is what happens when you take sides with mentally ill, leftist degenerates…you start seeing their side as a serious. It’s ignorance absorbed by osmosis.
Remember, it’s Swift’s version of the south — where some still think the Lost Cause isn’t lost yet.
Like I said, “Sheets”, the matter was hotly debated. However, I have stated Lincoln’s position correctly. And it is a fact that Lincoln viewed Fort Sumter as federal property, and that firing on it did constitute casus belli.
It’s called “facts”, Kremlin Tom. You might give it a try sometime.
Like I said, “Sheets”, the matter was hotly debated.
Right. Like the existence of more than 2 genders is hotly debated today…by idiots.
Luckily for you, cooler heads prevailed, or you might still be paying reparations to the former Confederate States of America.
Who gives a *fuck* how Lincoln viewed it? He was a rogue executive that had already shown his distain and disregard for the Constitution he swore to uphold when he unilaterally revoked Habeas Corpus, invaded and occupied Maryland with an armed force, then sent the army to Missouri to disrupt a lawful session of the state legislature and then, illegally nullified an act approved by that lawfully elected body.
He should have been hung by his heels from a lamp post, like his co-dictator in Italy was, a little later.
You’re supporting a lowlife scumbag that gave Stalin, and Mao a few pointers. Although they murdered a few more of their own citizens, it wasn’t for lack of trying on Lincoln’s part. Congratulations!
Lincoln believed the union was a Hotel California (like the former Soviet Union) – once you are in, you can never get out.
Therefore, it was his duty to preserve the union even if it meant allowing slave states to continue in the North.
Therefore, abolishing slavery was not the reason for the war. The reason for the war was to preserve federal power over the states.
Glad we could clear that up.
My 1:38 is vindicated.
One of the lynchpins to sucking Southern states to join the miserable union was the Electoral College.
21st Century Lincolns want to nullify that crucial piece.
Go ahead. FAFO.
The antebellum South is gone; it will never rise again, and that’s a good thing. It depended on slave labor to build an economy base solely on commodities. Both parts, slavery and reliance on agriculture were weak links that spelled doom, whatever Lincoln did.
Today’s South is the manufacturing center of the US. Leftist, shithole states are dependent on vaporware; products that are commercially attractive, but result in no tangible product. States likely to align with the New Confederation include the breadbasket of Weimerica.
The next chapter will look nothing like 1862.
Of course, it is reasonable to describe the Civil War as a war of aggression by a capitalist, expansionist nation against a rural agrarian nation.
If there had been no westward expansion, there would have been no civil war. Lincoln (before he was president) argued that the federal government had the right to forbid slavery in the territories. This is not much discussed today, but it was a critical element in the run up to the Civil War. The slave states saw that they had no future in the Union. Eventually they would be in a Union dominated by free states inimical to their interests.
It is not reasonable to believe that confederate political actors spent all day thinking about how wonderful it was to humiliate & denigrate slaves. They thought in terms of numbers, like the price of cotton. The American South supplied the textile mills of Britain with cotton in the 19th century. It was economics to them, not a “white supremacist” mind set. The truth is that the things that our political class is obsessed with in 2023 are not the same things that obsessed the political class of 1859. Everyone wants to believe that if they had been around in those days they would have championed the political ideas and causes popular today.
Worst President ever? Easy. He’s running for reelection next year.