21 car century insurance: The tame and domesticated Conservatism, Inc.

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Pradeep Shanker is a contributor to National Review, and as a contributor to National Review it is his job to come down on the left-wing side of all the big issues.

I'm sure Shanker knows and will defend obvious things like price controls lead to shortages. He'll defend tame enough ideas like that.

But if the subject turns to something truly momentous, which touches on topics we have been told are settled forever, he will dutifully comply. Thus on something like the American Civil War, his views will of course be indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton's.

Thus Shanker recently wrote, "There is no question the South was a bunch of traitors. It's by the very definition of the word 'traitor.'"

That is of course the conventional view you learned in seventh grade, and Conservatism, Inc., has very little objection to the narrative that was fed to you back then -- not just on that war, but on so much else, too.

Our friend Brion McClanahan, who teaches U.S. history with me at Liberty Classroom, responded to Shanker:

1. Lincoln never used the word 'traitor" in his correspondence -- public or private -- even when pressed to do so.

2. Grant did use that term during the War but rebuffed Andrew Johnson after the War when Johnson forcefully wanted Southerners treated and labeled as such. He even threatened to resign his commission if Johnson pressed the issue.

3. The fact that there were no convictions had nothing to do with either Lincoln or Grant. Many Northerners, even committed abolitionists, waffled on the issue after the War and thought it was still an unsettled legal issue.

4. But, Southerners did not commit treason by definition. We know this because two Southerners were literally tried in court for treason. Henry Kyd Douglas was found not guilty, and Robert Ould was acquitted by a military commission. That means that according to U.S. common law, secession was not treason. Ould later was part of Jefferson Davis's legal team when Davis was potentially facing trial for treason.

We might add that Robert E. Lee learned at West Point, in William Rawle's textbook, that secession was a constitutional option for the states, and certainly not "treason."

Secession cannot be "treason" if the compact theory of the Union is true, and it obviously is.

The compact theory was spelled out in the earliest years of the republic by figures like Thomas Jefferson, St. George Tucker, and John Taylor of Caroline. (We do not see the systematic exposition of any other way of thinking about the nature of the federal Union for at least several decades.)

According to this way of thinking, the Union was created not by "the American people" as an indivisible blob, but by the distinct ratifying conventions in the various states. Thus the peoples of the pre-existing states delegated powers to the federal government. We did not get a federal government and then the states, any more than we first have a marriage and then get a bride and groom.

According to the influential international lawyer Emmerich de Vettel, in his 1758 book The Law of Nations, a sovereign body delegating its powers to a confederation does not lose its sovereignty in so doing. It can thus reclaim it (via secession) if and when it so chooses.

That ain't "treason," Pradeep.

This is all explained in detail in chapter 4 of Nullification, possibly the best chapter I've written over the course of my 14 books.

But take a look again at that McClanahan passage.

Shanker asserted something. Brion produced Henry Kyd Douglas and Robert Ould by name, a threatened resignation, and the state of public opinion in the North. Brion had facts, and Pradeep had a generality that "everyone knows."

Brion has those four items because he collected them over the course of years of reading, knowing that someday he'd need exactly that -- a collection of details nobody expects you to have.

Most people who know a great deal never build that. They carry their knowledge around as a general impression, and when the crucial moment comes, they say something that's basically correct but completely unmemorable. Then they lose the room to someone with a slogan.

There's a better way to do this, and I'm going to teach it to you.

Being right has never been sufficient. It isn't now and it wasn't in 1861. Every idea that ever displaced a comfortable consensus had somebody behind it who could make the case.

This is true for political ideas, and it's true for that stuff you've devoted your life to, but on which you cannot get that roomful of people to see things the way you do. So you make your case, and that needle does not move. The opportunities you should be getting do not arise.

Now trust me: your final words to your loved ones on your deathbed will not be, "I regret learning from Woods how to dominate a room, make the people in it see things the way I do, and get what I want."

This is what I'll be teaching my own son, and he is going to be glad he had ol' Woods as his father.

So in your easiest decision of the week, click here to reserve your spot for my free Saturday webinar -- my final one on this topic:

https://www.tomwoods.com/speakingandpersuasion

Tom Woods