A reader forwarded me this very interesting critique of conservative anti-Wilsonism — and of my book’s treatment of same over at Hot Air’s Green Room. I must say it’s more persuasive than Galupo’s effort (my response here) and it’s a refreshingly tough-without-being-trollish critique of what I think is my book’s best chapter (that is, the one on Wilson).

That said, I don’t find C.K. MacLeod’s complaints all that powerful. A big chunk of his critique boils down to an argument I’ve heard many times: Wilson (or this or that progressive) merely reflected the prevailing ideas at the time. Well, that’s sort of my argument, you know? That these were the prevailing ideas at the time: Collectivism, eugenics, militarism (both as a mobilizing metaphor as well as the real thing), nationalism, statolatry, technocracy and – in America – a desire to “Europeanize,” often on Bismarckian lines, political institutions and arrangements. And while these ideas were popular in all sorts of places, their champions were the Progressives. I focused on Wilson because I wanted to make that case through his story (just as I wanted to tell similar stories in the other biographical chapters).

Getting back to Wilson, MacLeod defends the 28th president on the grounds that Wilson was pulled along in a direction not entirely of his own choosing. He didn’t lead the parade so much as straggle behind. I will concede that I could have pointed a bit more clearly to a few instances where Wilson was pulled by events rather than pushing them. But even with that concession in mind I’m not sure how much it exonerates Wilson. Woody’s objections to the excesses of his own administration were often pro forma. I believe he offered one brief objection to the dangers of using the American Protective League as a goon squad, but then not only did nothing, but pressed policies and issued statements that encouraged the League.

I am not a huge fan of arguments that boil down to exonerating the president from the policies of his own administration, particularly since such arguments are almost always used to defend liberal presidents (imagine if a Republican had held political prisoners like Wilson did, or interned Japanese Americans the way FDR did). Wilson signed off on the American Protective League, the Committee For Public Information (our first propaganda agency), the re-segregation of the federal government, the whipped-up nationalistic hysteria, the arrest of political prisoners, mass arrests, censorship and the prosecution of thought crimes. It is no great defense to concede that Wilson unleashed banshees upon the nation but because he didn’t direct these banshees in every circumstance he is not responsible for them. (MacLeod makes a fair defense of Wilson when it comes to Palmer raids in that Wilson was bed-ridden with a stroke at the time. But, let’s not forget that Palmer was a progressive Wilson appointment).

As a routine historical matter we assign responsibility to presidents for the actions of the government and their appointees on their watch. MacLeod notes that Congress passed the Alien and Sedition and Espionage Acts by large majorities and that Wilson allegedly agreed to the Acts in order to forestall even harsher methods. Even if this were true, Wilson still fueled anti-German sentiments in ways you would not expect from someone who opposed such legislation. As with Wilson’s blind-eye to anti-lynching laws – both as governor and president — Wilson’s thirst for political expediency is hardly glowing testimony to either his leadership or his decency. If we are to defend Wilson on the grounds that he was a kite on the winds of progressivism, tactically I can live with that, however much I might disagree with it substantively.

In an effort to downgrade Wilson’s racism, MacLeod offers this nice turn of phrase to make a good point: “Conservatives in particular should bear in mind that the search for a greatly different early 20th Century American racial sensibility won’t often lead them to Wilson’s right.” Well, yes and no, though this is a subject for a longer conversation. Herbert Spencer – despised by progressives for his laissez faire “social Darwinism” – was a classical liberal and his ideas were at least better feed stock for a colorblind conception of government, and is an ideological forefather of at least the libertarian wing of conservatism.

But MacLeod’s modified and tentative defense of Wilson’s racism is lacking in its own right. He makes it sound as if Wilson’s racism was a vestigial holdover from America’s past. And to be sure, Wilson bore a serious grudge about the Civil War and the end of slavery. He believed that giving black men the vote was “the foundation of every evil in this country.” Even so, Wilson’s views on race weren’t “traditional” they were modern. His academic work was cutting edge for its time, and it was suffused with “scientific” racism. His view of Lincoln is instructive. He hated Lincoln’s cause (freeing the slaves) but he loved Lincoln’s methods, expanding and centralizing the power of the federal government. For most conservatives, Lincoln’s methods were lamentable but necessary or justifiable, but his cause was nigh upon sacred. Meanwhile, I think the better candidate for such allowances is T.R. Yes, was a progressive racist, too, but not nearly in the virulent way Wilson was. Indeed, T.R. racism was of the more traditional and human variety. He stereotyped groups, but he took men as he found them, rich, poor, black and white.

One last point. The reason why it is both important and necessary for conservatives to tackle the progressive era is that that’s where the assumptions of 20th century liberalism begin. Starting with the New Deal leaves the roots healthy and intact. If Wilson isn’t the best poster boy for Progressivism, tactically or substantively, I’m open to alternative nominations. But the notion that conservatives are wasting energy in assaulting the progressive era strikes me as exactly wrong. We’ve wasted time in not attacking until all too recently.

[One side note: MacLeod fairly questions my source in this sentence from my book: “Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but it has been estimated that some 175,000 Americans were arrested for failing to demonstrate their patriotism in one way or another.” For reasons I don’t understand, but which surely have to do with author error, I failed to footnote that figure. I got it from Robert Nisbet’s The Twilight of Authority, page 183 in my copy (snippet view here ). Several people have told me that number might be too high given that the more accepted numbers for imprisonment and incarceration under the Sedition and Espionage acts was roughly 2,000 arrested 1,000 convicted. I probably could have been more clear about what I meant. But I wasn’t referring solely to such cases. If you read Opponents of War: 1917-1918 by H.C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, you’ll see that tens, even hundreds of thousands, of war opponents were arrested, often in undiscerning mass arrests, often using the APL as goons. Some of these “slackers” obviously deserved arrest and even conviction. But that is hardly an exoneration for either the climate created by the Wilson Administration or for the tactics used. I think the passage in which the 175,000 figure appears makes that clear.