Condi Needs a History Lesson

by Liberty and Power

On occasion, I have praised Condi Rice at Liberty and Power and defended her against unfair attacks. I especially appreciate her forthright willingness to champion the second amendment. She would have have received a low grade, however, had she repeated these recent wrong-headed comments in an essay exam for my U.S. history survey class:

And when you think they [Iraqis] aren't going to make it -- when you want to criticize what they're doing and it's taking a long time and this and that -- just remember, not to this date, have they made a compromise as bad as the one in 1789 that made my ancestors three-fifths of a man. So let's be humble about what they're going through.

Hat tip Matt Barganier who also provides some context.

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William Marina - 6/8/2005

Yes, Ken, I do like his books on the Revolution.

David Timothy Beito - 6/7/2005

Hard perhaps but I know of a lot a few fifty-year old women who would like to look half as good as she does.

Kevin Carson - 6/7/2005

She's finally changed the Hairdo of Great Hardness (what were those things on the back of her head, love-handles?).

Kenneth R Gregg - 6/7/2005

Great comment, Bill!

Do you like Knollenberg's books?

Just a thought.
Just Ken
kgregglv@cox.net

William Marina - 6/6/2005

The important battle(s) involved the pursuit of the British to Yorktown from deep in NC, what the Brit soldiers called the "hornet's nest" west of Charlotte/King's Mtn. Several times they crossed rivers barely ahead of the pursing American kids, leaving equipment all along the way.
Embarassed by this defeat, the Brits arranged a surrender to the regular American forces of GW which had finally arrived.
The Brit band had it right, however, when it played "The World Turned Upside Down," at the event.
The French fleet did play a role in preventing a Brit evacuation, but had they been able to do so, what then? Back to NYC, or dear old England?
The fact is, for the years of the War, 1768-83 as defined by Mercy Otis Warren, the Brits controlled less of the colonies than the US did in Vietnam.
Brits did not go out at night in less than battalion strength. As a Brit said, we face "a people numerous and armed."

David Lion Salmanson - 6/6/2005

No, nor is there one for the two years the war went on after Yorktown.

David Timothy Beito - 6/6/2005

Is there a good book you would recommend on Yorktown?

William Marina - 6/6/2005

Why pick on Condi?
This past week David McCullough held forth on C-Span about the minority of Americans who were for the Revolution in 1776, and Butler Shafer at LRC that we owe our Freedom to the French Army.
The British after evacuating Boston held only NYC for the rest of the War where the farmers of the Bergen Co. militia traded food for gold throughoutthe conflict. Supplying Philadelphia in the face of American guerrillas and partisans was so difficult that the Brits evacuated it. As Tom Paine noted, they sent two armies into the interior and lost them both.
If historians have such a poor grasp of our own Revolution, why expect
politicians to have a sounder one?

David T. Beito - 6/6/2005

Well said.

Matt Barganier - 6/5/2005

Before this thread gets bombarded with the sorts of e-mails I've been getting let me clarify something. I am not arguing that the 3/5 compromise didn't enshrine slavery in the Constitution. It did, but that's not the point of the canard. The canard's point is that the 3/5 compromise was some sort of metaphysical statement about the value of slaves' (or more generally, all African-Americans') lives, which depends on a total misreading of who was arguing for what at the Constitutional Convention. The pro-slavery faction was arguing for full enumeration of slaves in order to bolster their congressional representation.