From The Tom Woods Letter:
This is too good.
I’ve had a fun relationship with Max Boot over the years.
Max makes John McCain look like George McGovern.
Max wanted to offer citizenship to people who would come to America and enlist in the military. (How else is he going to get the manpower for all his wars?)
But as far back as 2005, when our feud began, he had a basically establishment view of American history — which is why he despised and panned my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.
The Politically Incorr...
Best Price: $1.51
Buy New $8.71
(as of 06:15 UTC - Details)
My insufficient disdain for the bogeymen of neoconservatism — Germans and southerners — doomed my book from the start. Boot was shocked that I thought Woodrow Wilson had a double standard in his treatment of the British and the Germans prior to American entry into World War I, yet my point is so eminently defensible as to be scarcely debatable.
He said I was “particularly upset about the 14th Amendment (he claims it was never lawfully ratified) because it barred former Confederates from holding political office.” As you can see from reading the book for yourself, this is false. He made that up.
I did side with historian Forrest McDonald, who showed pretty convincingly that the Fourteenth Amendment was not constitutionally ratified — a position that even U.S. News and World Report admitted was probably correct (but then said we should just try harder not to do that next time).
McDonald was the Jefferson Lecturer of the National Endowment of the Humanities — the highest honor in the humanities that the U.S. government bestows. Too extreme for Max Boot, though.
The rest was what you’d expect. I devoted half a page to John C. Calhoun, so that’s enough for Boot to pretend I relied “mainly” on Calhoun for my discussion of state nullification of unconstitutional federal laws, when (again as you can easily see for yourself) I relied on Thomas Jefferson.
Funny thing about Boot and leftists in general: they can never bring themselves to mention Jefferson in connection with nullification. Jefferson is far too mainstream and admired even today, so they know they’d better shut up about his central role in developing the idea.
Pat Buchanan, in response, said Boot “takes the establishment line on American history—one the old National Review rejected—and swallows it in one gulp.”
My point: it was obvious from the beginning that Boot was seven percent to the right of the Democrats.
And now he’s made it official: he is urging Republicans to vote straight-ticket Democrat this fall.
Real Dissent: A Libert...
Buy New $3.99
(as of 07:30 UTC - Details)
His new book The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, was just released. If it’s anything like his Twitter feed and his recent articles, it’s going to be painful.
He’s recently unbosomed his belated discovery of his “white privilege,” which he apologizes for being slow to recognize.
These days he’s basking in Establishment approval of his recent turn.
It’s been going like this:
Media: Why, Max Boot has grown!
Boot: Indeed I have, thanks to your wonderful journalism. But I still have so much to learn!
If you thought the media would hold his warmongering against him, you do not understand the dynamics of American political culture.
On Twitter, someone wrote: “Better late than never. That said, some of your fellow citizens come with three centuries of experience in American racism, and how it is used. It’s a good time to listen to them.”
Max’s reply: “Absolutely. I’m in learning mode. Very conscious of the fact that what is new to me has been obvious to others for a long time.”
Sad to see a grown man debase himself like this. Many such cases!
