UW-Madison students call for removal of Lincoln statue

[The Magistrate]

89. Of Course You Are Wrong, Sir

You seem determined to be so, and are succeeding in the aim.

The secessionist confederacy was an exercise in treason, people who defend its symbols identify themselves as traitors, not patriots, and can meet no wide support.

Those who wish to denounce founding figures and leading lights of the country as evil wretches are going to be viewed by the overwhelming preponderance of the populace as enemies of the country, and by extension, since most people identify personally with their country, as their own personal enemies. People will not listen to anything an enemy says, and will tend to the view that whatever an enemy desires is wrong and ought to be opposed. This is an extremely poor position from which to attempt to convince people to agree with you about questions of economic and social policy, and to identify with you as the proper holders of political power. It is a wholly self-inflicted wound, and taken on voluntarily. It is one thing to strap weights on your ankles when training for a race, and quite another to strap them on for the contest itself. The additional handicap guarantees failure.

The question you need to answer is whether success in implementing social and political policies desired by left and progressive and liberal people is your aim, or whether display of your own zeal for the highest ideals of righteousness is your aim. A dispassionate observer of our exchanges would, I suspect, be most likely to conclude you consider the latter to be your aim. It would certainly be clear to that observer the former is mine. Pressed to a certain pitch, unfortunately, that must make us enemies. It does not trouble me to have enemies on the left, for the grounds on which someone to my left becomes an enemy is that the course they pursue provides material aid to the right, by embodying its propagandists' worst caricatures of the left, and so assisting them in demonizing left and progressive and liberal aims and political figures.