Lott and the Dixiecrats by Gene Callahan

Trent Lott's recent remarks at the party for Strom Thurmond's 100^th birthday have raised quite a stir. For those of you who missed the story, it seems that Lott expressed some nostalgia for the 1948 Dixiecrat presidential ticket, on which Thurmond was the presidential candidate.

Lott hadn't said why he wishes the segregationist Dixiecrats had won, but the "blogshere" and various web sites erupted with calls for Lott's head. Whether or not Lott meant to express support for segregation, the line has gone, he certainly should have known better. And he didn't apologize properly! Howard Kurtz, in his piece "Why So Late on Lott?" notes, "the consensus of online pundits" is that "Trent Lott must go."

Now, I unfortunately must start with a few caveats: boring, yes, but if I do not, it is certain that various views I do not hold will be ascribed to me. First of all, I am not a Trent Lott "fan" or "defender." I hate to make an accusation like this lightly, but, as far as I can tell, Lott is a… no, I had thought of using a euphemism, but I'll just say it… a politician!

I know, I know, perhaps there's some other explanation that Lott could offer for his ostensibly political behavior. But he hasn't – he hasn't even apologized! – and I'm at a loss as to what else to make of his actions.

Furthermore, if what Lott meant in his speech was that he secretly longed for a return of state-imposed segregation, let me be clear that I think that is a bad thing. Even much private segregation I find to be very poor manners – you're not going to let a well-behaved, well-dressed man eat in your restaurant simply because he's black? What's up with that? I was raised in a socially conservative family, and what I was taught was to be polite to all people unless they gave you a reason not to be.

Lastly, I will note that I am unmoved by any sense of nostalgia for the Old South, since I was never there. Nor am I particularly attached to things Southern. I've been down South a few times, and it was perfectly pleasant. Oh, it was kind of flat and sandy, and there were all those vines growing over everything. But the people were nice and I love grits. However, when it comes to regionalism, my anthem was written by Jonathan Richman:

So, with all those caveats out of the way, let me ask: Just what the hockey puck is going on here? Yeah, at the least Lott's remarks were stupid, and quite possibly they were morally objectionable as well. However, there's no sign that Lott is hopped up about actually re-forming the Dixiecrat Party. Nor, to my knowledge, did he recently propose "The 2002 Southern Resegregation Act."

But look at who is attacking him: Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, Andrew Sullivan, David "Axis of Evil" Frum, Glenn Reynolds. (For some of those previous links that go to blogs, I'm just linking to the main page. Several of these folks have been writing about Lott obsessively, and it's beyond what I can take to sort through all of their posts and link to particular ones.) To a man, these are voices from the most feverish wing of the war party. They are all enthusiastically backing policies that could easily result in the deaths of millions of people. They are not expressing a vague wistfulness about the Korean War not having been pursued aggressively enough. They are not saying that James Polk should have stuck to his slogan of "54-40 or fight." Right now, they are advocating that the US attack any country that they deem might one day threaten us. When Rich Lowry casually contemplated whether nuking Mecca was the right response to another 9/11, not one of these moral paragons called for banning Lowry from polite society. When Glenn Reynolds joked that it might be best if the CIA assassinated the chief UN weapons inspector, those outraged at Lott's remarks did not stop linking to Reynolds's blog.

And right now, in the very Senate in which mooning over defunct political parties is beyond the pale, the vast majority of senators are happily going along with the rapid replacement of the Bill of Rights by the whim of the Bush administration. American citizens are being imprisoned indefinitely without access to a lawyer or the right to a trial. A man has been sentenced to three years in prison for making a dumb joke about Bush. A convicted felon has been hired by the Bush administration and placed in charge of collecting "total information awareness" about every American citizen.

Are any of these voices of approbation calling for the heads of the many senators acquiescent to these grossly immoral activities going on right now, in our own time? No, they are not. You see, incinerating a million civilians is just a reasonable policy option. On that, we can have polite differences of opinion. Establishing an American police state? Well, you might object, but there's no reason we can't talk about it, is there? But don't mention that you thought the poll tax wasn't so bad. It will make it all too clear that you are a somewhat yucky person, and you shouldn't expect any more invitations to Georgetown cocktail parties.

December 12, 2002

Gene Callahan [send him mail], the author of Economics for Real People, is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a contributing columnist to LewRockwell.com.