Conservative Forbes columnist Josh Barro is happy that John Derbyshire was fired for writing a racist column:
I’m pleased to see that National Review has fired John Derbyshire as a result of his racist screed in Taki’s Magazine last week. Derbyshire’s remarks were beyond the pale, and this severing of ties is important for the credibility of one of the pillar institutions in conservative publishing.
Barro, a contributor to National Review (NR) and National Review Online (NRO), was one of the first conservatives to call for Derbyshire’s ouster, arguing that keeping company with a racist like Derbyshire presented a “problem for [editor Rich] Lowry and other conservatives who want to be taken seriously by broad audiences when they write about racial issues.” Apparently Barro believes purging Derbyshire will remove a racist taint from the “pillar” of conservative publishing.
That’s funny, because NR‘s 57-year history has been defined in good part by racism. And while Derbyshire may have been the magazine’s latest house bigot (Elspeth Reeve has a nice summary of Derbyshire’s recent racism at AtlanticWire, 4/6/12), he is just one in a continuous line of racists writing in the pages of NR.
From its founding, NR held up the flag of racial segregation and white supremacy, championing racist regimes in the American South (8/24/57) and South Africa (4/23/60; 6/30/64).
In a 1957 editorial, “Why the South Must Prevail” (8/24/57), NR founder William F. Buckley cited the “cultural superiority of white over Negro” in explaining why whites were “entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where [they do] not predominate numerically.” Appearing on NPR‘s Fresh Air in 1989 (rebroadcast 2/28/08), he stood by the passage. “Well, I think that’s absolutely correct,” Buckley told host Terry Gross when she read it back to him.
And why would he retract? His magazine had become and would continue to be a leading popular repository of “academic” racism and its claims that black people are less intelligent and more prone to violence and criminality than others.
In 1993, NR published a gushing review (1/18) of Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America by Jared Taylor, which argued that black Americans are more violent and criminal than others. Taylor has since become a leading voice of white nationalism as the publisher of American Renaissance magazine. (In the 1990s, Taylor described himself to me as a “white separatist.”) The NR review was written by fellow white nationalist Peter Brimelow, who launched the openly racist and nativist VDare website in 1999. Brimelow called Taylor’s book “the most important book to be published on the subject in many years,” concluding that its message would likely be missed: “It is hardly surprising that both Left and (alleged) Right prefer to cling to the myth of a culpable—but therefore at least in theory correctable—white racist America.”
In a positive review (NR, 9/12/94) of Race, Evolution and Behavior, a 1994 book by Philippe Rushton, reviewer Mark Snyderman eagerly recounted the book’s ”ambitious” and ”fearless” thesis: ‘
Orientals are more intelligent, have larger brains for their body size, have smaller genitalia, have less sex drive, are less fecund, work harder and are more readily socialized than Caucasians; and Caucasians on average bear the same relationship to blacks.’
Since white supremacist and academic racist writings have been a fairly continuous staple at NR, current staff can’t feign ignorance. Current NR editor Rich Lowry, who fired Derbyshire, was hired as a writer in 1992.
In 1997, the year Lowry became editor of the magazine, NR tapped Rushton, already notorious for his racial theories, to write a review of a new edition of The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould’s critique of eugenics and academic racism. Predictably, Rushton (9/15/97) panned the book . In 2002, when Gould died, Lowry turned to Steve Sailer (NR, 5/22/02), a leading promoter of racial IQ theories and regular contributor to VDARE, to do some grave-spitting.
To be sure, Derbyshire was flaunting his racism. Samples from the Taki’s Magazine piece he was fired over include advice to white children not to “attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks” and to “avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.” Derbyshire also counsels young whites to seek out the rare friendly, civilized black to fend off charges of prejudice.
It is blatant racism, but it’s hard to see a great deal of difference between what he was fired over—assertions that black people are less civilized, less intelligent and more prone to violence and criminality than others—and the racist views NR has promoted since its birth 57 years ago. And it’s hard to see why anyone would take NR seriously “when they write about racial issues.”
Let’s not forget FIRING LINE’s third of a century run on PBS, which gave Buckley and buds a legitimacy that only enhanced his and the Review’s ability to spread this racist bile.
It’s a tired trope, but true:
Your tax dollars at dirty work.
One of the funniest passages in Jon Ronson’s book,”Them” was about the PR-savvy Ku Klux Klansmen who try to distance themselves from their racist essence.
Even the KKK recoils from overt racism! What is astounding is the faith conservatives, of both R an D persuasions, put in the ability of PR and marketing techniques to erase a history of despicable behavior.
The New York Times rather warmly reviewed Peter Brimelow’s book. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/19/books/books-of-the-times-the-immigration-wave-a-plea-to-hold-it-back.html?
One is very glad that someone else remembers–so few seem to have done so. Consider too the NR and Firing Line and the book The Bell Curve. JSL
It never ceases to amaze me where you’ll find the “Two wrongs make a right” crowd rearing their ugly heads. What does the NYT book review have to do with institutional racism at National Review? Why nothing, of course!
Thanks for the red herring! Goes with your crackers, parrot.
I think you’ll find, Rafael, that Steve was merely pointing out that the NYT is also flush with racist hacks as a fact in itself, not an excuse for NR. Or if not, he could have been.
If there’s any difference, the Gray Lady’s just more adept with code.
In his autobiography, the late Malcolm X once quipped that the difference between conservatives and liberals in contemporary America was that the former openly said “let’s keep the n—rs in their place” whereas the liberals said”, no, no let’s keep the knee-grows in their place”. The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published back in 1965(after its author”s assassination) but this judgement has stood the test of time(pace not just Buckley but Rush Limbaugh)
i now live happily in france and it is such a relief to be in a social system where racist bile is not considered acceptable even by the right wing. of course there exists racism here but the difference is that most whites strongly condemn it in word and in deed which shows that it’s possible to overcome those tendencies. unfortunately for africans in america, white americans may never be able to surmount their historical racism, certainly not in our lifetime.
Love how they fire him, but first they publish his racist rants. What is their excuse for that – sorry we didn’t notice it was racist?
I have relatives in France and have lived there. When it comes to racism, the French “don’t talk about it’ – which is equally pointless and heartless. They care more about keeping up appearances than reality. Racism is omnipresent there, just not discussed in public, out in the open. When racism is out in the open you get what we have in the US, a noisy, sometimes ugly open confrontation. But in France, authorities still feel free to dispossess poor minorities of their homes. No one talks about it. People pretend both racism and the people affected by it do not exist. Personally, I’d rather live here and at least have the option of trying to have an open discussion. In the past thirty years, the US has made a lot of progress in facing problems of racism and giving voice to people who felt they had little or no voice before. Is it perfect? No. Certainly it has brought the ugly side of racism into the open. But if all you care about is how you look, you will in fact accomplish nothing.
Hmmmm Buckley was a racist was he?His stand was that until the SOCIAL structure of blacks changes(he felt it disempowering)that they could expect their inclusion into the top strata of success within this society to be slowed.That has proven to be a true observation .It had nothing to do with race or genetics.The same could be said on many levels about any other faction or breakdown of peoples …….. and often was by him.He called it as he saw it- with little care for the political correctness.He was a great mind.Don’t know if he was a great person and I really don’t care.I simply liked the way he elevated the constitution into its rightful place.At the top of the heap.As Reagan did.
As far as France goes I saw racism there just as here.Anti semitism for sure.And a boorish elitism and haughtiness that bordered on the hysterically funny.Many things I love about it though.No need to hold one over the other.Different flavors is the spice of life.
People like Mr. Buckley have a hard time with the concept that oppression is oppression. There is no “good” or “better” or “higher form” of oppression. They seem to believe that, for example, communism is bad because it holds people down by denying them their freedom, but that oppressive laws which do exactly the same things to Black people in the West are not equally wrong and equally destructive. This is because, in their warped view, the White West is uniquely good, while there is something uniquely wrong with the Black people that it exploits and demonizes. Like many White conservatives, William Buckley was both a racist, and an apologist for the structural racism of the larger White society. People like him, who never had to live with things like restrictive covenants in property deeds, or fighting to desegregate police and fire departments or schools, or neighborhoods, didn’t think that changing unjust laws and practices was important as a means to bettering the lives of Blacks in places like America and South Africa. Such people love to hide their bigotry and hostility to the well-being of others behind the greater good of some idealized vision of the Constitution, or of “the rule of law.” It is so easy for such people to pretend that centuries of racist exclusion from access to everything from land, to schooling, to jobs, to political power etc. have nothing to do with the plight of Blacks in White dominated societies such as America. To them it’s all about the pathologies of undeserving and unworthy (Black) people. Actions matter. History has consequences. Policies which targeted Blacks as less than human prevented the normal accumulation of economic and political capital that should have taken place over many centuries. It also prevented the process of accumulating and compounding wealth and of passing it on to future generations. Grudgingly and reluctantly taking some “White” and “Colored” signs down, and declaring that America is now “post racial” and that “everyone” is now “equal” is a typical White American non solution to a real problem. One wonders why there isn’t a lot more discussion among Whites about the destructive pathologies of White Westerners who built and maintained racially rigged societies all over the world, while preaching about the “justice” and “rights of man.”
Well pleasehead you call him a racist as if just saying it makes it so.I could say Martin luther King was a racist just as easily.It does not make it so.And only those two men know what was in their hearts.They are both gone,so it becomes easy to say anything.Lets stick to examining mens work and seeing how it effected racial distinctions.I for instance thought Michelle Obamas senior thesis was blatantly racist.(When have you heard that before?)Luckily it effected few because it is hard as hell to find being well hidden.
Now Communism is bad.Even Russia admits that.And what are these laws that keep blacks down?Today Im talking.History does matter.Was Welfare created as payment for past transgressions?Some believe that.Was the affirmative action law that was once necessary -but now is blatantly racist also a social adjustment?Either way to say we should still pay for historical wrongs done hundreds of years ago, is absolute nonsense.What do we give to the Irish?The jews?The Italians?The Chinese?I suppose we all pack up and leave for the native Americans right?Such a specious argument.
Buckley was a self righteous hard ass no doubt.He could see a line of bullshit in the sand a mile away.And make short work of it with that sharp mind ,and tongue that could clip a hedge.He inherently understood the conservativeness of this country.He lived and breathed it.He new inside out ,and backwards the constitution and the intent of the founding fathers through many years of study.I believe he was wrong at times(who isn’t).His published works are not hidden.It is there for all to see and debate.Should the left hate him?Absolutely positively yes.He tears off your cloak of lies with every word he ever spoke or wrote.So bring it on.He never feared you.WE dont either.He knew you could never compete in the arena of ideas.Personal attack is always your last resort.So lead on McDuff
Buckley was an imperialist (like many Americans but most pronounced) and imperialists are by the very definition racists. If you are an American an you are OK with US foreign policy then you are an imperialist therefore a racist. As MLK pointed out the internal racism and the external racism (i.e. imperialism) are related. If you are an American and you have been OK with the war on Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. and now on upcoming war on Iran then you are an imperialist and therefore a racist. A major paradigm spiritual shift needs to take place here before racism is eradicated. A good place would be (sincere) apology and reparation to Native Americans and African Americans…
Well freespirit I will one” better” you.If you are human you are a racist.I suppose most animals are racists too.If you are white you are the worst racist.Black the best racist.Orientals are kinda racist too.Somewhere in the middle.Maybe though imperialists are the worst of all racist.And Buckley the worst of them all.But since Buckley is dead ,lets call him another thing he cant deny.How about a vampire?Talk about racists huh?Hope I helped you along with your constituents……….Oh Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama….heee-ee- huge racists!And I suppose imperialists too according to your scorecard.Hate America much there ol freesprit?
In the late 1950’s Buckley asserted that blacks didn’t need the vote because they didn’t want it anyway, and that they wouldn’t know enough to vote sensibly anyway. National Review at that time featured Patrick J. Buchanan and Frank Meyer as their main writers on civil rights, both of whom were committed to the idea of blacks as biologically inferior to whites. It is a record that is very tough to spin.
There are monuments to Martin Luther King all over the world. How many monuments does the great Mr. Buckley have? Hundreds of years from now, there is a good chance that people will still learn about and still be inspired by Martin Luther King. Who will remember who Mr. Buckley was, let alone what he believed, did, or said? Not surprisingly, Michael e trots out and parrots the tired conservative lies/myths that welfare and affirmative action were designed for exclusively for Blacks and that Black people are the both the primary users and beneficiaries of such programs. If that was true, neither program would ever have come into existence, and if they had, Whites would have eliminated them long ago, instead of merely tweaking them. Handicapped people, members of other non-White ethnic groups, and White women are are all covered by these programs. In fact, Whites and White women are the primary users and beneficiaries of both programs. In spite of what michael e says, Jews have done quite well in the reparations business while at the same time, being notorious as harsh critics of the idea of genuine reparations for Black people especially, and for non-Whites in general. Blacks asked for an immediate end to White people rigging the system against them and for reparations for things like stolen labor and property. Instead, Whites came up with symbolic gestures like affirmative action which wouldn’t cost most of them anything, and which would leave their dominance intact. I’m not going to waste much time responding to the tired conservative canard that affirmative action is as bad or worse for White people than Jim Crow (or other forms of race-base apartheid that the West has practiced for hundreds of years) was for Black people. Prove it! Show me how thanks to welfare and affirmative action, Whites in America, South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere have switched places on the racial pecking order with Blacks, and are now penniless, powerless, and at their mercy just like Blacks used to be in the West and in Western colonies. History matters. History has living consequences which manifest themselves in current problems. Pretending otherwise in order to keep one’s ill-gotten gains, or in order to maintain the status quo is not a solution.
Suitword…Wasn’t it Obama who said “my grandmother acted like a typical white woman”?Would you brand him a racist because you take umbrage with a statement said 4 years ago …let alone 52?Pleasehead there ARE monuments to King and his cries for peace.The monuments to Buckley and conservatism are all around you.The constitution.The building of this country that without any doubt was built on conservative constitutional ideas.Judging a man by his character NOT his skin color.You want people paid and repaid for their skin color.Didnt Martin luther kings grandson just say if he were alive today- he would be a conservative?Man the left avoided that like the all get out.
King fought for the right to equal opportunity.Nothing more.You fight for the right to equal result.Communism or socialism..call it what you would.On the right we don’t need saviors like Obama.We don’t need statues to worship that forget the simple men who lived that life.Buckley plainly was a man who spoke clearly about constitutional values and the brilliance of our founding fathers in creating this great experiment of ours.That document that has done more to spread freedom here, and across this world than anything else.Both men spoke of individual responsibility.Of individual freedoms.Of the promise of this country. Niether had any relation to the current mindset on the left.King like JFK died too young.They became instantly frozen in time.Thier faults(and their were many)forgotten in the rush to deify them.Buckley lived his wrinkles and took the blows.I would say in looking at his 50 plus years in the public eye, and the attempts of his mortal enemies to write an angry epitaph of his life……..So THIS IS ALL YA GOT?
Michael e: I’m responding to your first comment above, not the others, specifically to this: “His stand was that until the SOCIAL structure of blacks changes(he felt it disempowering)that they could expect their inclusion into the top strata of success within this society to be slowed.” The problem with Buckley’s statement and with so many who make the same statement is that they are members of an elite, in this case a white elite, who have no intentions of changing the power structure. From this perspective, black Americans, simply would never be ready. So if you put Buckley’s comment back in context, it is a defense of the status quo. Their are two dominant trends in Black American history. One follows that of Frederick Douglass; the other George Washington Carver. History bears out if you want to sit at the table, you need to force your way in, sometimes with guns ablaze. People like Buckley put an intellectual veneer on their racism. But a sharing of power? Well, I guess only when he felt black people were ready. And you can guess when that would be.
more on buckley’s history of racism
https://fair.org/index.php?page=3406
A bit of clarification. When I wrote above that there are two dominant trends in black American history, I cited Douglass as representing one, and Carver the other. the douglass group would include WeB duBois, Malcom X, the Black Panthers, and King. In the past I have not included King is this group, but after reading his Beyond Viet Nam speech and developing a better understanding of the Poor People’s Campaign, I put him in this same group. The other group includes Carver and Booker T. Washington who wanted to demonstrate over time that they were worthy of sitting at the table. So of course the question is, worthy in whose eyes? That is where the power lies. Buckley would have agreed with Carver and Washington. And if asked by them, “Are we ready yet?” His response would have been: “Not yet. We need just a little bit more.”
Michael e, first of all the name of this country is USA not America. America is a continent and those who refer to their country by the continent its in are imperialists! Secondly, I don’t hate the USA. I have lived in it for 36 years. I hate its foreign policy and increasingly (since Reagan) its domestic policy (of the 1%). Thirdly, anyone who thinks its OK for their country to have over 800 military bases in over 100 countries and overthrow democratically elected governments and/or install puppet regimes and/or keep dictators in power so the corporations can have it easy over there is an imperialist. Finally, Michael e, you should not use sarcasm; it doesn’t become you and it doesn’t belong here!
Woodward….”What amounts to racism”does not mean it is racist or that he was.Just that the author of the piece took that liberty.All this has been gone over before- ad nauseum.It has been thrown down many times in many publications.He certainly was a pistol.More so in the 60s.But a racist?That is so unproven.He said thousands of things on race over 50 years.Again…This is all ya got?
Freespirit …. Saying America makes me an imperialist?Better tell Kate Bushes publisher that.Ok Im not buying that but I get the connection.
You shoot down this countries actions Foreign and domestic , especially militarily.Ok fair enough.You can’t comprehend this countries unique place in the world.As a super power.The van guard of freedom.Defender of human rights.We have far flung military responsibilities true enough.But to say that is all at the behest of corporations is madness.You might as well say for Winnie the POO.Hilary Clinton and Obama are not stockpiling troops ,weapons,and Patriot missile systems in South Korea for Bill Gates, and Martha Stewart.Be specific.Where is our foreign policy off track as you have insinuated?Who are the corporations giving orders to Obama.I mean- when and where do they meet?Im no expert on military bases.Why do we have so many?Above my pay scale to answer that.My guess is the joint chiefs and the president feel they need it.You actually believe the 1% (who ever the hell they are)run this country?I have gone through schools of the highest learning and lived life very very well.Yet I never met the so called 1% who supposedly rule me.Strange!
Oh shit I just lied.Actually i did meet Bill Gates at a function raising money for sick kids.We ate a cupcake next to each other and exchanged a few words.See my mind does not see him as an evil lord sitting on a throne dictating orders.Just another guy eating a cupcake,who happened to succeed in business,and has more hot dogs in his fridge than I do.Don’t think he puts on his pants any differently that you and I.So name this shadow army..
“I for instance thought Michelle Obamas senior thesis was blatantly racist.(When have you heard that before?)Luckily it effected few because it is hard as hell to find being well hidden.”
Quit peddling bullshit…it wasn’t racist and it’s very easy to find…it was posted in full on the internet in early 2008
The entire piece is available here among many other places
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8642.html
Michael, you need to shed the mask and evolve beyond nationalism. Only then you will be free to see the truth. You will see a pattern shared among all empires and this one is no exception. This false belief of fighting for freedom and enlightening the brown man (while raping his woman and stealing his riches and labor). The notion of American Exceptionalism wreaks of psychosis. If I went around and claimed to be the greatest in my circle of friends I would be considered sick. This country is only 200 years old. It has many domestic problems. It has committed many attrocities in its short history. To have the audacity to think that it has something to teach the world wreaks of narcissism. Given, the US Constitution is one of the greatest documents ever conceived. There have been many great US thinkers, writers, philosophers, artists, and activists too numerous to name here. I respect that. I can’t say I love this country because I don’t love any country. I evovled beyond the silly (and devisive) notion of nationalism. But I love the heritage the US has left the world (and Ronald Reagan, Bill Gates, an Ayn Rand are not part of it). But exceptional, the US is not. Might does not make right. The US has been a bully on the world scene and now the chickens are coming home to roost as it happens with any empire. The citizens are the final victims… Welcome to history Michael e!
MLK earned his status as an international icon for those who believe in justice. and unlike the ideas of White American exceptionalism expressed by men such as Mr. Buckley, his ideas didn’t require military force or threat to spread all over the globe. Yes, he was a man, and as such, imperfect like the rest of us. His work has stood the the test of time because it was based upon righteous, not on priviledge and domination. I am not foolish enough to mindlessly worship the so-called founding fathers or the documents or the institutions which they produced. The original Constitution defined Black people, and Black people alone, as 4/5ths of a person. Decades later in the Dredd Scott decision, the Supreme court rubber stamped the existing and ongoing racial discrimination against Black people. These blatant expressions of support for White supremacy are hardly ringing statements of colorblindness and equality that anyone in modern America should take pride in. Nor should their impact be ignored or trivialized. Just as they worked to suppress Blacks and Indians during their time, had they lived during the Civil Rights movement, most of the so-called founders would have sided with the White citizen councils and the Klan. In other words, with those who shared their “values.”
Dick thanks for posting that.I would bet few have read it(even though it is so easy to get for everyone :)I contend it is racist.Her view of the compartmentalization and obvious difference in blacks and whites.i would love your opinion on it.Before you…I am the only person I know who has read it.
Freespirit
Our exceptionalism has nothing- nothing to do with nationalism .That is what is so amazing about itIt does not have to do with our brains or our brawn.It is simply what can be accomplished when freedom is given to the simplest, and the greatest of men.Our fore fathers gave us that.And this country changed the world.You seem to think for the worse.I disagree
Pleasehead
Understand that our forefathers saw the coming storm against racism.Of what the words meant “all men are created equal.They new in their time they could not effect the change to give those words meaning.So they infused into their master work the ability to change when change could happen.They foresaw the coming battle of north and south.They in effect put it off till this country was secure.But its time came.And good people fought the good fight.Civil rights was as much a white victory as black.Like the civil war it was led by whites (who were firmly in charge).Theses things were not due to a black uprisings and civil war of white against blk.What a great country and people.What a great work that prepared the way for change.What an exceptional land this is.
Michael: This statement needs to be seriously qualified: “They new in their time they could not effect the change to give those words meaning.So they infused into their master work the ability to change when change could happen.They foresaw the coming battle of north and south.They in effect put it off till this country was secure.But its time came.And good people fought the good fight.” Perhaps that makes you feel better, but that has little to do with Jefferson and others where quite comfortable writing that “all men are created equal” yet saw no contradiction with that statement and the institution of slavery. As a group, they certainly did not forsee the coming battle of the north and the south. These founding fathers were quite familiar and comfortable with the democratic and republican models of classical antiquity despite those societies being grounded in slavery. Democracy existed only for the members of the ruling group. Our founding fathers knew these models quite well and used them to construct our Constitution.. Furthermore, there have been all sorts of justifications for slavery, for example, that it exists in the Bible, the word of God, and therefore legitimized by God. The so-called founding fathers were quite aware of these justifications. Anyway, money was to be made. As for the Civil War, you should read the Texas Declaration of Secession of February 2, 1861. It justifies slavery on the basis that it is beneficial to both the master and the slave and that the white man is the black man’s natural superior. This could have been taken right out of Aristotle. You read that document, and the other states’s declarations of secession, and you will forever put aside the idea that the Civil War was fought over states rights. (I’m not saying that you actually hold that idea.) The correct name for that war is the War of Southern Planter Class Agression because that group was not trying to just retain slavery in those states where it existed by wanted to make slavery a fundamental right anywhere in the land protected by the Constitution. So the Civil War was a struggle between two powerful groups, Northern capital and the Southern slave-owning aristocracy, that could no longer co-exist. It was not first and foremost about “fighting the good fight,” although for some I’m sure that was a motivation. The laws that we have on the books–whether they are enforced or not–are the results of the struggles of various groups trying either to gain or not lose political power. Our constitution does not lead to a continually self-improving society because some are wiling to fight the good fight. Our fortunes rise or fall depending on which group has dominance. We live in a reactionary period now and conservative Republicans face little opposition from Democrats. Why should they? They both represent the same group and it ain’t you and me.
No I do not agree at all/Our founding fathers had deep deep feelings about the scar of slavery.And even though they were born into a world were that was the norm,they did move to eradicate it.They correctly surmised it would lead to a war between North and South.They were correct in sensing the time was not right for any such war.They were correct in giving the constitution the ability to make those moves later down the road.Washington freed his slaves on his death.Jefferson was in love with his slave and fathered children.All kinds of wrongs by our standards and hypocrisy everywhere.But the thaw that all men were equal began there.Religion led this move.It did not finnish there.To believe it could of is nonsense.Slavery was vanishing everywhere moving into the mid 1800s.The agrarian societies of the south last -as that was part of their infrastructure.You are correct it was political war also.The South did not want the North taxing them to pay for Northern interests.And they did not want the Federal gov dictating to the states.Points taken in a cause that was an moral abomination.That aside they had no right to succeed.
“our constitution does not lead to a self improving society”?I could not disagree more.It is still the gold standard