George F. Will Continues to Take a Woodrow Wilson Quote Out of Context
While on my ritual skimming of the Washington Post this morning, I came across George F. Will’s latest column, based entirely on Peter Beinart’s latest book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris. Will draws on Beinart’s work to identify three types of hubris that have guided American foreign policy in the past century. The first hubris, stemming from the progressive era, is what Beinart calls Woodrow Wilson’s “hubris of reason,” his overweening faith in science and progress to deliver solutions to the problems of state.
Will’s latest is, in many respects, a foreign policy-focused version of a piece he published back in March. In that earlier column, Will also used Beinart’s book to make some critical points about the Wilson administration (and Obama’s professorial streak):
Wilson, a professor of political science, said that the Princeton he led as its president was dedicated to unbiased expertise, and he thought government could be "reduced to science." Progressives are forever longing to replace the governance of people by the administration of things. Because they are entirely public-spirited, progressives volunteer to be the administrators, and to be as disinterested as the dickens.
How gripped was Wilson by the hubris of reason? Beinart writes:
"He even recommended to his wife that they draft a constitution for their marriage. Let's write down the basic rules, he suggested; 'then we can make bylaws at our leisure as they become necessary.' It was an early warning sign, a hint that perhaps the earnest young rationalizer did not understand that there were spheres where abstract principles didn't get you very far, where reason could never be king."
Will was so enamored with how Wilson’s love letter illustrates his excessively rationalistic side he brought it up again in his latest column:
…[Wilson] exemplified the hubris of reason, which supposedly could bring permanent, because "scientific," peace to Europe. The political science professor told his wife they should draft a constitution for their marriage, then "make bylaws at our leisure."…
The problem is that this straight-faced interpretation of this quote has been taken out of context by both Beinart and Will. Kristie Miller and Robert H. McGinnis pointed this out in an HNN article back in March. Here is the full text of Wilson’s love letter, taken from Miller and McGinnis. Let the reader judge the cold rationality of Wilson’s ardor:
You assured my success last year beforehand by confessing your love for me, and now you are about to assure my success next year by proving your love for me. You are a truly delightful little person – my good genius! When you come we can plan the best way for making New York and Baltimore very close together. We’ll organize an inter-State Love League (of two members only, in order that it may be of manageable size) which will be as much better than the Art League as – as love is better than art. I’ll draw up a Constitution in true legal form, and then we can make by-laws at our leisure as they become necessary.
. . . I love you and long for you more and more every day. You are my own matchless darling, and I am
Your own Woodrow
Granted, it’s not a love letter that plays to modern sensibilities, and Wilson’s passionate embrace of constitutional law as appropriate fodder for a love letter is a little strange, but it’s no more bizarre than a love letter a friend of mine wrote to his paramour about his exercise regimen.
Beinart may have misinterpreted the document for his book (which I haven’t yet read and will therefore abstain from further comment on the matter), but the real problem is that of all the evidence that one could amass about Wilson’s rationalistic mind—and there’s plenty—George Will continues to trot out a private, clearly playful love letter between Wilson and his wife as key evidence of his “hubris of reason” nearly four months after a rebuttal was published.
Perhaps the next time Will waves the corny love letter, he should consult a historian. After all, historians may not do breaking news (the Post’s Michael Leahy made this point rather bluntly in a July 6 article) but they do offer valuable context. Like whether or not something is an appropriate piece of evidence in an argument.