RedState's Bizarre Civil War History, Ctd.

January 25, 2011

10:30 PM

Erick Erickson is laughing at silly liberals who interpreted RedState's post on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade as a tacit endorsement of violence, which is why he's written a second post explaining that it wasn't:

The Supreme Court decided in Dred Scott, as it did in Roe, to take the matter from the democratic processes by invoking the nonsensical legal doctrine of “substantive due process” and let our enlightened black robed masters answer the question. The result was an escalation of brutal and bloody violence in the Kansas territories, largely by abolitionists to drive out the pro-slave crowd. It also kindled in the minds of abolitionists that they were prepared for bloodshed to free the slaves.
Ultimately, the pro-slave forces decided to rebel to preserve their “property” rights. The Court’s effort to short-circuit democracy had failed. Violence begat violence. The slaveholders rebelled and turned against their country rather than accept a Republican president supported by those icky abolitionists. America was torn asunder.

This is still incoherent. As Erickson notes, slaveholders rebelled because they refused to accept a president who might abolish slavery. The violence in Kansas between pro-slavery and abolitionist forces predates the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, because it was based on Congress passing a law allowing the territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery through the Kansas-Nebraska Act. How does the SCOTUS deciding Dred Scott in favor of pro-slave forces make secession more likely?

Let's say Dred Scott is decided in a manner that bans slavery from the territories. Let's say the Supreme Court outright declares slavery unconstitutional. How does either that prevent, rather than potentially hasten, the advent of the Civil War? The South seceded because under no circumstances would they allow slavery to be abolished and remain part of the Union, period. The irony is that RedState's post implies that, should outlawing abortion through democratic means fail, then violence might be unavoidable. They want to be the secessionists and the abolitionists at the same time.

Here again is the original paragraph, with the conditional portion highlighted:

The reason for this is simple: once before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise, and send a clear and unmistakable signal to their elected officials of what must be necessary to earn our support.

Erickson wants to weasel out of the implications of that statement by pretending they were merely being "descriptive," and insist that all they were saying is that violence might just happen because people tend to react violently to injustice:

That sound like a caveat, but it is not a caveat to any of us here. It is, however, a recognition of an unpleasant reality — a historic one the left chooses to ignore in making its case against us, and a present one we prefer not to dwell on, but must at least touch on.

Erickson basically wants to have it both ways. He wants to nod to people who believe a violent response to abortion would be legitimate by tacitly accepting the possibility of some future scenario in which "those committed to justice" actually do waiver or compromise, or elected officials do not do "what must be necessary," and "repudiation" of the Supreme Court through "mass bloodshed" is "necessary." He also wants to make it clear he doesn't think violence would ever be justified. But you can't really do both.

Erickson isn't so much endorsing violence as imagining a circumstance in which it might be justifiable. It's more macho bluster than genuinely dangerous, but all the more pathetic for that reason.