Correcting DeMint's Historical Confusion

Well, lefties are having a field day with this, "Jim DeMint Asserts The Federal Government Played No Role In Freeing the Slaves." (More at Google.)

But I think Peter Wehner makes some very useful comments, at Commentary:

So why call attention to these matters? In part, I think, because it’s important for conservatives to undo some of the confusion that DeMint created. But there’s another, somewhat deeper point to be made about the danger of approaching history and politics through an overly ideological lens. In this case Senator DeMint, a fierce critic of the federal government, has reinterpreted history in order to make it fit into his particular narrative. He seems so eager to refuse to give credit to the federal government for anything that he insists it didn’t play a role in the abolition of slavery. And that’s where he made perhaps his biggest error.

I worry, too, that some on the right invoke the Constitution without really understanding it and its history. For example, many conservatives who profess reverence for the Constitution are vocal and reflexive critics of compromise per se – despite the fact that the Constitution was itself a product of an enormous set of compromises.

But RTWT.

The federal government wasn't particularly large back in the 19th century in any case. Much of conservative reaction to the expansion of government is particularly critical of the post-1930s period in particular, for example, Barry Goldwater, in "Conscience of a Conservative." But I'm neoconservative, and while I can't stand the big government state socialism of the Obama administration and the regressive left, I'm not such a "small g" conservative to reject the many useful roles government plays in our lives. It's a complicated matter, but I think Wehner makes some interesting points. And shame on DeMint for botching basic facts about our founding and black liberation from slavery.