A friend of mine responds to my recent article Richard Cohen versus Abraham Lincoln. In the third paragraph he agrees with my assertion about Cohen's mistaken views on the role of religion throughout American history:
Cohen displays a willful ignorance of American history as well as antipathy toward religious belief. Does he not think that slave-owning Democrats invoked God on their side before and during the Civil War? The era was much more religious than now; if he does not know that, he has no business writing about U.S. history.
"Michael, I just finished reading the Richard Cohen article in The Washington Post and then your article. You gave him too much credit.
Cohen's article is one of the worst pieces of junk I have ever read. Here are just a few of its atrocious assertions:
It's completely emotional and illogical. He has several instances of "A happened and B happened, therefore A caused B." That's just stupid. If I were a Washington Post editor I'd insist that he rewrite it before I'd allow it to be published. If I were teaching introductory logic I'd give him a zero, not merely an F.
Cohen displays a willful ignorance of American history as well as antipathy toward religious belief. Does he not think that slave-owning Democrats invoked God on their side before and during the Civil War? The era was much more religious than now; if he does not know that, he has no business writing about U.S. history.
His cheap shots against what conservatives believe -- as if they are of no value because Newt Gingrich travels on chartered flights -- are simply laughable. It is not that conservatives think man-made actions have no effect on global climate; rather, it is that they strongly suspect that environmental true believers give humans too much blame and that natural processes -- including volcanic eruptions and sunspot activity -- probably are much bigger engines of climate change. After all, it's not as if climate hadn't changed before 19th and 20th and 21st-century America existed. How high were greenhouse gas levels when Europe endured the Little Ice Age?
He also blames a product of decades of liberal Democrat national policy -- a crappy educational system -- on conservatives, which is comparable to insisting that night is day. Conservatives have been trying to get their children out of the public school system for decades, because the system has rejected so many conservative values. How likely is it that Cohen deplores the conservative emphasis on private schools, vouchers, and home schooling, because it deprives the rotten public school system of ever more taxes he thinks will solve its problems?
That high murder rate he notes -- how much of it consists of black-on-black violence by the products of the public school system that cheated them out of a real education and fed them self-esteem and what George W. Bush termed "the soft bigotry of low expectations," so that they emerged with no skills and less hope of ever building the kind and quality of life they would want? How many murders are committed by those who already have been identified by America's criminal justice system -- itself debilitated by liberal Democrat policies since the 1960s -- as violent criminals, but released and allowed to continue to roam free until they strike again?
Cohen also seems deliberately to mischaracterize what I was taught in grade school about the meaning of American exceptionalism. It is NOT that "God is on our side, so we can do no wrong." No person who believes that God has given humanity free will can truthfully claim that he or she is always right, either personally or collectively. The Old Testament is rife with passages about God's chosen people throwing away God's gifts and turning its back on Him, and suffering the consequences. It is, in fact, people who read and devote themselves to understanding Scriptures who understand best how people can make the same mistakes, because human nature doesn't change. Of course, that's contrary to the liberal-progressive belief that humanity is infinitely perfectible -- as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot strenuously tried to prove.
Contrarily, Cohen seems naively to believe that America's government can grow ever larger, consume more & more of its citizens' property and labor, go deeper and ever deeper in debt, and chip away -- piece by piece -- a carefully constructed governmental system designed to limit the possibility of tyranny without facing severe consequences.
Rather, American exceptionalism meant that never before in the history of humanity had a people and a country been so richly -- even overwhelmingly -- blessed by God.
Its ports were sheltered and deep. Its mountains in the areas first settled were low and easily traversed. Its coastal forests were abundant and well-suited to building ships and houses. Its coastal waters were teeming with fish and shellfish.
Its soils were rich and productive. Its climate was conducive to agriculture --- not frozen or impenetrable jungle. It was relatively huge -- especially compared to West Europe -- so that westward expansion could take place for 150 years, mitigating the overpopulation Europe suffered from, as well as the problem of farmland inheritance that created so many landless peasants and unskilled city dwellers. In America, everyone who wanted his own piece of land could have it, provided he were willing to go west and spend his life and labor carving it out and making it productive.
Also, America was blessed by being settled largely by those with the English heritage of common law and a centuries-old practice and experience with local-level self-government. These people also had a religious outlook that melded with the economic workings of Capitalism. The result is that America is the wealthiest country in the history of the world, with the largest and wealthiest middle class.
It is the strongest military power in history, because of its industrial and technological prowess.
It has the best technology. Who invented and produced computers and the software that operates them, the Internet, the affordable automobile, the tractor, the combine, the steel-tipped plow, and a host of labor-saving machines that have freed women from lives of near-endless toil and drudgery?
Who invented refrigeration, so food could be stored without spoiling? Who invented air conditioning -- care to live without it in homes, offices, or automobiles? Who figured out how to make the most of scarce land by constructing office buildings hundreds of feet high, and elevators to make them functional? Who created the aviation industry, so that the whole world is accessible within a couple of days?
And how about food? Which country grows so much nutritious food that it can feed large numbers of the world's people -- and much of it at no cost to them, courtesy of American taxpayers? Then there's the bounty produced and given away by America's private citizens and church organizations, and by its non-profit organizations.
Then there's medicine: How much of the world has been spared the ravages of disease because of American scientific discoveries, medicines, and physicians trained in techniques and processes invented by Americans?
That's what I was taught American exceptionalism meant.
None of the above is wishful thinking or ideological dogma; it is factual -- no matter how much liberal/progressive ideologues are unwilling to admit or even discuss it."
See http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2011/05/richard-cohen-abraham-lincoln.html for more information.Michael Zak is a popular speaker to Republican organizations around the nation, showing office-holders and candidates and activists how they would benefit tremendously from appreciating the heritage of our Grand Old Party. Back to Basics for the Republican Party is his acclaimed history of the GOP, cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision. He is also the author of the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar. His Grand Old Partisan website celebrates more than fifteen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. See www.grandoldpartisan.com for more information.
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