Instapundit Watch

I've been ignoring Glenn Reynolds for a while now (mostly because I've had enough "Did you see Zell Miller; what a Jacksonian! Tom Maguire has more. Ouch. Nanotech."), but via Matt Yglesias, I decided to take a look at the latest Insta-thinkpiece, and I wasn't disappointed. How could I be? Unlike his website, which isn't much more than a collection of approving links to outrageously mendacious conservative bloggers (or just conservative bloggers at their most outrageously mendacious), this new article, in the Guardian of all places, participates more or less fully in the Platonic ideal of hackery. How? As Matt's e-mailer reports, by "explaining [for a British audience] Southern US elective politics without mentioning the following words: race, racism, black, African American, civil rights, George Wallace, Barry Goldwater, Southern Strategy, &c. &c."

If a professional historian had attempted to write a history of southern politics that didn't have anything to say about race, he'd be laughed out of the profession (though I can predict the instapundit.com plug-that-isn't-a-plug: So-and-so has written an audacious book taking a new look at the political formation of the American south. It's likely to get poor reviews from liberal academics, but Hugh Hewitt is already holding a symposium here. UPDATE: Heh. ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader XYZ asks if I think that southern political history can be explained without reference to race. Obviously not---I have black in-laws.)

But Reynolds' Guardian piece is more than just an academic exercise in whitewashing the South's disgraceful history on race; it's whitewashing with a purpose, whitewashing in order to advance a particular GOP trope, namely that Democrats aren't serious about security, or at least aren't perceived that way.

This is how Reynolds explains the collapse of the Solid South:

So what is it about the south? I think it's defence. Some time between the election of John F Kennedy, and the ignominious defeat of 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern, the Democrats lost credibility on national defence. From Kennedy's stirring "bear any burden, pay any price" language, to the "peace at any price" slogans of the anti-war left in 1972, the Democrats lost their traditional stature as the internationalist and interventionist war party. Instead, they became identified with the welfare-state liberalism of the north-east and west coast, and with the anti-military sentiments of the anti-Vietnam war movement.

Somehow, in other words, between 1960 and 1972, the Democrats lost their ancestral advantage in Southern electoral politics. But how? It seems we've got a real mystery on our hands. Probably, the Republican takeover of the South has something to do with the Democrats nominating that pinko McGovern, but can that be the whole story?

Nah. The whole story, Glenn explains, is that the Democrats lost their facility with Jacksonian rhetoric. (I'm not kidding. Read the article carefully. That's it.)

"What is it about the South? I think it's defence." Thus, the truth sets us free. White southerners were basically okay with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, desegregation, etc. The Dems' real problem is that Hubert Humphrey didn't sound enough like Andrew Jackson.

The closest Reynolds ever comes to bringing up, um, you know, that unpleasantness, is some very abstruse talk about "traditional values" that persistently avoids trying to comprehend the electoral consequences of southern racism. He also thinks that the perception among us blue-staters of widespread evangelical fundamentalism in the South is belied by one town (repeat: one town) holding a "gay day" festival. (In other words, Reynolds flunks sociology as well as history; we've already talked about the one-anecdote-proves-a-trend school here.)

Does Glenn Reynolds read his own writing? Does he believe it? Is this some kind of mercyfuck on the part of the Guardian's editors? Does the University of Tennessee have any hiring standards? All legitimate questions.