The Judge Sets the Record Straight

By Robert Ringer

I recently interviewed Judge Andrew Napolitano about his new book, Dred Scott’s Revenge, for the Liberty Education Interview Series. No human being is perfect, but the Judge gives it a good try. He is a delightful individual, congenial and gracious, a hard-core libertarian, a constitutional scholar, and blessed with that rarest of combinations — a giant intellect coupled with the ability to communicate his knowledge in a way that anyone other than a far-left progressive can understand.

In Dred Scott’s Revenge, Judge Napolitano confronts myriad ugly truths about the history of racism in this country, especially as it relates to natural law and the Constitution. And, along the way, he makes a shambles of the version of American history that is taught in our schools.

Judge Napolitano spares no one — including the Great Emancipator who sits on his marble throne at the west end of the National Mall in Washington. This no doubt ruffles the feathers of a lot of Abraham Lincoln idolaters, but, to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, the Judge didn’t create history, he merely reports it.

It takes courage to speak the truth in the face of the status quo. In this regard, I am reminded of something Alain de Botton wrote in The Consolations of Philosophy:

… it is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs and at the same time that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts and follow the flock because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown, difficult truths.

In Dred Scott’s Revenge, Judge Napolitano is not shy about bringing up uncomfortable truths — from the hypocrisy of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the Jim Crow era, from the inhumane Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments to the shameful treatment of the Tuskegee Airmen.

He unapologetically refers to Abraham Lincoln as a man who rode into the White House on “the two horses of Liberty and Slavery,” and quotes Lincoln, in one of his well publicized debates with Stephen Douglas, as saying:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

With friends like Abraham Lincoln, slaves didn’t need enemies. Interestingly, clear back in 1977 I included this same quote in Looking Out for #1. That’s when I came face to face with the reality that most people, rather than loving truth, try to make true that which they love. Much like John F. Kennedy, there is a wide disparity between Abraham Lincoln myths and Abraham Lincoln realities.

The unarguable fact is that Lincoln’s sole focus was on “saving the union.” But by refusing to allow the Southern states to secede, he actually violated the natural rights of every citizen in those states. And by ignoring the fact that it was the states themselves that had created the federal government, he made it clear that the federal government was superior to its creators.

In underscoring Lincoln’s hypocrisy, Judge Napolitano quotes him in a speech he gave to Congress in 1848 (when he was a young Illinois congressman):

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have a right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. … Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.

This sounds more like nineteenth century anarcho-libertarian Lysander Spooner than the man who used federal force to prevent the Southern states from seceding from the Union.

Yet, there is almost always something good that comes out of a bad situation, and the abolishment of slavery (at least in the legal sense) was the most positive result of the Civil War. But it came at a cost of 625,000 lives, or more than ten times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War and 50 percent more than were killed in World War II.

Worse, it cemented the notion that the federal government no longer derived its powers “from the consent of the governed.” From Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus to today’s unconstitutional bailouts, the federal government now does whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whomever it wants.

When I read Judge Napolitano’s description of Lincoln as “politically manipulative and truly Machiavellian,” I immediately thought about Barack Obama’s seeming obsession with the sixteenth President of the United States. The newer, slicker version of the Great Emancipator is, if nothing else, a master manipulator — probably Machiavellian — who makes the Clintons, by comparison, look like a couple of circus clowns.

But I’ll let you make your own judgments on all that. To do so intelligently, however, I highly recommend that you buy, read, and reflect on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s impeccably researched book, Dred Scott’s Revenge, post-haste. Your view of American history will never be the same, and your understanding of how we became a nation that does not respect individual, God-given rights will be considerably enhanced.

To purchase Dred Scott’s Revenge, click here.

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Liberty Education Interview Series

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