The Federal Government Did Not Create the States
One of the statues that was taken down in the 2020 purge of the Southern statues was that of the great American statesman from South Carolina, John. C. Calhoun. The then mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, John Tecklenburg, said that “while we acknowledge Calhoun’s efforts as a statesman, we can’t ignore his positions on slavery and discrimination.” The reason why, in his opinion, “slavery and discrimination” could not be ignored, was that Black Lives Matter were at the height of their political power, mounting protests in the streets of Charleston in the wake of the George Floyd riots.
In his commitment to “not ignoring slavery and discrimination” he was prepared to overlook everything else said or done by a man whom he admitted to be an influential statesman. Such destruction of historic statues illustrates how political expediency causes politicians to pursue a destructive course of action that will have deleterious longer-term implications. The mayor of Charleston allowed the temporary political furor surrounding BLM, which has now faded away from public discourse almost as quickly as it began, to override the importance of Calhoun’s legacy.
In his book, Calhoun: A Statesman for the 21st Century, the great historian Clyde Wilson emphasizes that Calhoun was “South Carolina’s greatest son” and also “an internationally recognized statesman and philosopher.” He was not merely a politician representing the partisan perspectives of the South, but also a statesman, meaning “something of a prophet—one who has an historical perspective and says what he believes to be true and in the best long-range interest of the people, whether it is popular or not.” By contrast, a mere politician is someone who “says and does whatever he thinks will get or keep him in power.” In highlighting the value of Calhoun’s legacy for contemporary political discourse, Wilson observes that, “Statesmen were rare in Calhoun’s time. Today they have disappeared entirely. We know that Calhoun was a statesman because his words about government are as true and relevant today as they were in his time.”
One of the most important areas of contemporary debate where it is important to distinguish the statesmen from the politicians is the questi
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