"Michele's Must Read List"

Ryan Lizza has a tremendous profile of Michele Bachmann in this week's New Yorker, detailing her religious influences through the years, as well as some of the contradictions in her biography. (A lot of this feels strangely like Hillary Clinton to me - I'm recalling the Saul Alinsky stuff as well as the dodging-bullets-in-Bosnia tall tale.)

Included on the aforementioned "must read" list from her Web site was a 1997 biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins, a historian who is part of a movement to frame the Civil War as a theological war between the secular North and Christian South, a place where slave owners kept their slaves out of - get this - benevolence, because the savages were not ready to be released into the world until they were converted.

To wit:

Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith. ... The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.

Story also notes that Bachmann's campaign team is very uncomfortable whenever she starts spouting off about how the Founding Fathers battled hard to abolish slavery, even the ones who owned slaves. According to the theory underpinning her belief is that those Founding Fathers kept their slaves out of - wait for it - belevolence.

From a book by her law school mentor, which she assisted with: "Many Christians opposed slavery even though they owned slaves. ... It might be very difficult for a freed slave to make a living in that economy; under such circumstances setting slaves free was both inhumane and irresponsible."

I'm wondering if Bachmann will eventually have a serious Jeremiah Wright problem on her hands.

 

Hey, at least she apparently reads.

 

Thought about putting it on the Journalism Board because I thought Lizza did a great job uncovering some of this. (As he did in a Darrell Issa story a few months ago.)

He definitely seems to be the Jon Stewart of the print media right now, in some ways. Not afraid to look underneath the candidate's official narrative for contradictions and half-truths.

 

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that the leading Republican candidate thinks Jesus condoned slavery.

 

You're still here?

 

President Obama likely sat back watching the Iowa straw poll reportage and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
This woman, as I said a few months ago, doesn't stand a chance of being elected.

 

In defense of this idea, some owners did treat slaves very well.

And some were conflicted about it. Robert E. Lee among them.

But some people take real nice care of their cars, too.

 

One can certainly make an argument that it's not all, er, black and white (seriously, I'm looking for another phrase here...ah, sod it. No pun intended, OBVIOUSLY).

But one can't make that argument AND run for president at the same time.

 

... maybe you could find the eye of the needle and still pull it off, but don't forget that she also signed that pledge that included the specious bit about how Af-Am families were "better off" during slavery. Can't massage the electoral math in any way that overcomes that combo.

It's all moot, anyway. It'll be Perry.

 

Andrew Jackson was one of the classic cases . . . and when he was riding high, he wasn't too damn conflicted about it.

 

Sure. You can count on a capitalistic owner to feed, house and clothe you moreso than Big Government.