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National Review on J. R. R. Tolkien on National Review Online : EDITOR'S NOTE: National Review is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. Throughout the week, NRO will run some pieces from the archives to help take a trip down memory lane. This piece appeared in the September 28, 1973, issue of National Review.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who died a fortnight ago in his 81st year...

Here's a rather different piece!

National Review editorial, 8/24/1957, 4:7, pp. 148-9: The most important event of the past three weeks was the remarkable and unexpected vote by the Senate to guarantee to defendants in a criminal contempt action the privilege of a jury trial. That vote does not necessarily affirm a citizen's intrinsic rights: trial by jury in contempt actions, civil or criminal, is not an American birthright, and it cannot, therefore, be maintained that the Senate's vote upheld, pure and simple, the Common Law.

What the Senate did was to leave undisturbed the mechanism that spans the abstractions by which a society is guided and the actual, sublunary requirements of the individual community. In that sense, the vote was a conservative victory. For the effect of it is--and let us speak about it bluntly--to permit a jury to modify or waive the law in such circumstances as, in the judgment of the jury, require so grave an interposition between the law and its violator.

What kind of circumstances do we speak about? Again, let us speak frankly. The South does not want to deprive the Negro of a vote for the sake of depriving him of the vote. Political scientists assert that minorities do not vote as a unit. Women do not vote as a bloc, they contend; nor do Jews, or Catholics, or laborers, or nudists--nor do Negroes; nor will the enfranchised Negroes of the South.

If that is true, the South will not hinder the Negro from voting--why should it, if the Negro vote, like the women's, merely swells the volume, but does not affect the ratio, of the vote? In some parts of the South, the White community merely intends to prevail on any issue on which there is corporate disagreement between Negro and White. The White community will take whatever measures are necessary to make certain that it has its way.

What are the issues? Is school integration one? The NAACP and others insist that the Negroes as a unit want integrated schools. Others disagree, contending that most Negroes approve the social sepaation of the races. What if the NAACP is correct, and the matter comes to a vote in a community in which Negroes predominate? The Negroes would, according to democratic processes, win the election; but that is the kind of situation the White community will not permit. The White community will not count the marginal Negro vote. The man who didn't count it will be hauled up before a jury, he will plead not guilty, and the jury, upon deliberation, will find him not guilty. A federal judge, in a similar situation, might find the defendant guilty, a judgment which would affirm the law and conform with the relevant political abstractions, but whose consequences might be violent and anarchistic.

The central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by meerely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal--is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced ace. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between civilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is byno means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes', and intends to assert its own.

National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numberical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.

The axiom on which many of the arguments supporting the original version of the Civil Rights bill were based was Universal Suffrage. Everyone in America is entitled to the vote, period. No right is prior to that, no obligation subordinate to it; from this premise all else proceeds.

That, of course, is demagogy. Twenty-year-olds do not generally have the vote, and it is not seriously argued that the difference between 20 and 21-year-olds is the difference between slavery and freedom. The residents of the District of Columbia do not vote: and the population of D.C. increases by geometric proportion. Millions who have the vote do not care to exercise it; millions who have it do not know how to exercise it and do not care to learn. The great majorit of the Negroes of the South who do not vote do not care to vote, and would not know for what to vote if they could. Overwhelming numbers of White people in the South do not vote. Universal suffrage is not the beginning of wisdom or the beginning of freedom. Reasonable limitations upon the vote are not exclusively the recommendations of tyrants or oligarchists (was Jefferson either?). The problem in the South is not how to get the vote for the Negro, but how to equip the Negro--and a great many Whites--to cast an enlightened and responsible vote.

The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve teh Negro as a servile class. It is tempting and convenient to block the progress of a minority whose services, as menials, are economically useful. Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.

Comments

[satchmo]

Sad to see that the Tolkein review was written by Guy Davenport. Right wing modernism still has its defenders, no doubt.

[ogmb]

"The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve teh Negro as a servile class"

Did they really write "teh Negro"?

[Pithlord]

It is interesting the similarity between National Review's arguments for disenfranchising black Americans then, and the call for "benevolent hegemony" now. Both rest on the premise that the "culturally superior" have a right to rule over those they have defined as below them on the cultural scale. One almost anticipates a citation of Niall Ferguson.

[Julian Elson]

I can imagine a short "voter qualification test," much like the qualification test needed to get a driver's license, which would involve quick, fairly obvious questions that would disenfranchise people allegedly unqualified to vote. Say, questions like 1) Recently, top marginal tax rates were cut from 39.6% to 35%. This cut was supported by the ___________ Party and opposed by the _________ Party. 2) Recently, a constitutional amendment was proposed which would define marriage as being exclusively between one man and one woman. This was generally supported by the ____________ Party and opposed by the ___________ Party. 3) Mary had a salary of $2000 per month in 2004. Suppose inflation is 5%. To maintain the same standard of living, what must Mary's salary be in 2005? 4) In 1863, the president of the U.S. was a) George Washington b) Abraham Lincoln, c) George Bush.

Etc, etc. This might disenfranchise a significant fraction of the U.S. population. Why wasn't the National Review proposing that, so that "atavistic" whites and blacks might be excluded, and the minority of "advanced" blacks and whites would "prevail."

[Charles Kinbote]

Perhaps a history lesson is in order: what did jury trials for contempt charges have to do with disenfranchising African American voters in the South?

Or perhaps I should just take an aspirin, lie down, and try to remember never to rad the National Review.

[Charles Kinbote]

Perhaps a history lesson is in order: what did jury trials for contempt charges have to do with disenfranchising African American voters in the South?

Or perhaps I should just take an aspirin, lie down, and try to remember never to rad the National Review.

[County registrar refuses to register African-American. African-American sues. Court orders African-American be registered. Registrar refuses. Local jury acquits registrar when tried on civil contempt charge...]

[dearieme]

"tyrants or oligarchists (was Jefferson either?)": in that he was a slaveowner, the answer must be that he was a tyrant, mustn't it?

[Perturbed Tolkien Fan]

On a tangent note, the Lord of the Rings is NOT a Christian parable, as the first article claims. Tolkien hated allegory and symbolism. He did say that LotR is like an imaginary English mythology, to replace that lost in the course of English history. He also said that the religion of LotR might be like a pre-christian's eye view of a world created by the Judeo-Christian God (or something like that).

The Chronicles of Narnia, by contrast, are Christian parables.

[Bruce Moomaw]

As an example of history's little ironies: Buckley wrote that 1957 editorial, and L. Brent Bozell attacked him for crippling blacks' civil rights. By 1970 they'd flipped positions, and Buckley was sneering at Bozell's allegiance to "the fever swamps of the far Right".

[Bruce Moomaw]

Additional note: as of early 1964 Buckley was still defending the poll tax and opposing the 24th Amendment. (Rumor has it that his son Christopher was largely responsible for turning him somewhat away from his early Torquemada days. Of course, it's also possible that by then he had finally had his nose rubbed in the fact that the South fully intended to "exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class" -- starting with depriving them of equal educational and job opportunities. It's a teensy bit hard to understand why he didn't see this before; but then, it was Buckley.)

[Kathleen]

Thanks for posting this Prof. DeLong. NR needs to be hammered for stuff like this, especially with their lame walk back through time via Tolkien for pete's sake.

and, it goes without saying, I hope, how abhorrent the 1957 article is. Thanks for reminding us of what was going on back then, and what conservatives stood for.

[rea]

"their lame walk back through time via Tolkien for pete's sake."

All of a piece throughout--their article about Tolkien was utter nonsense, too (the Shire modeled on Kentucky, for crying out loud!)

[Bruce Moomaw]

You'll find MUCH more interesting things than this in the NR of the past. Take a look at some of the remarkable pieces and book reviews written for them by U. of Colorado anthropologist John Greenway from 1969 through 1979 (he of "the truth of nihilism", "the only morality: that which conduces to the preservation of one's own group", "slavery and the etiolated puritans who opposed it" [NR, 1970], and "mongrel dams of mongrel spawn" [NR, 1976]). Take a look, also at their long-time gushings over Pinochet ("Chile Redeemed") and their tearful epitaph for the late Ferdinand Marcos ("an old-time sentimental pol").

Believe me, NR is MUCH less barbaric now than it was when -- according to Garry Wills, who worked for it at the time -- Buckley was its editor in name only, and it was actually being edited as well as published by George Wallace admirer William Rusher.

[auto]

whenever the right hammers us for the liberal "excesses" of the 1960s, we need to remind them that the right has never admitted that their stand on civil rights and voting rights for blacks was shameful.

[dearieme]

"the right has never admitted that their stand on civil rights and voting rights for blacks was shameful": quite so; as long as you remember that the right, for these purposes, was for a long time the Democratic Party.

[marc]

Let's have equal time for ex-Klansmen and Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV)!!

Here are some more questions for the voter registration test:

1. After John Roberts was confirmed as Chief Justice, _____ nominated another Associate Justice to the Supreme Court.

a) Tom DeLay
b) James Dobson
c) George Bush
d) Karl Rove

2. The most recent Supreme Court nominee is:

a) Michael "Brownie" Brown
b) Tom DeLay
c) Harriet Miers
d) Caligula's Horse

[Bruce Moomaw]

Except, dearieme, that while Southern Democrats were supporting racism the GOP was not strongly interested in opposing it -- whereas, when the Democratic Party finally DID decide to challenge it strongly, a large majority of the GOP decided to support it.

[liberal]

Julian Elson wrote, "I can imagine a short 'voter qualification test',..."

I'd add these questions:
* How many of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi?
* T/F: Al Qaeda and Iraq had a substantial relationship in the years preceding 9/11.

[SteveH]

Omy gosh! That John Greenway is a guy I would have liked to talk to because he was probably the only American who traveled to Australia and met the guy I wrote my Masters about. I had no idea he lived until 1991 but heard he's had some mysterious conversion at some point in his life. Thanks for the lead.

[Doctor Biobrain]

The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class.

Even if the other premises of the article were correct (which they weren't), this one line is the total gamebuster. If you work under the assumption that only "civilized" people should vote, then there would only be incentive by the "civilized" to keep the "uncivilized" uncivilized. Even in non-racism situations, most people would always prefer to prevent their opponents from voting. How is that not obvious? Yet if we are to believe that he was as well-meaning as he seems, it is this one assumption that keeps everything together. Because I don't think this was necessarily written by an evil racist. Just a terribly naive one.

And to be honest, if you can look past the various disgusting aspects of that editoral, it is kind of refreshing to see such wide-eyed naivite coming from a hardline conservative. Not that our current batch of conservatives and neo-conservatives aren't also terribly naive, especially in regards to their Iraq catastrophe. But they're such jerks about the whole thing that the initial reaction is more a punch-to-the-face kind of thing, rather than admiration.

Honestly, if in old age, Buckley changed his mind and wanted to be a liberal; could he? Or would there be no face-saving way to go about that? I'm sure that would make things pretty awkward in his social circles. Sometimes "oops" isn't enough.

[Doctor Biobrain]

What the hell! Is html coding no good here? What a crock. I should have put my first paragraph in quotes, but I thought my italics code would be good enough. Now it looks like *I* was saying that crap.

Mr. DeLong, you'll be hearing from my attorneys!!

[theorajones]

Unbelievable. And I wonder how today's pieces defending Bill Bennett and screeds claiming that Katrina's response was not affected by our society's prejudiced conception of blacks as violent criminals will look 15 years from now?

Similarly naive, deluded, and racist, I'd expect.

[John Stein]

"Twenty-year-olds do not generally have the vote, and it is not seriously argued that the difference between 20 and 21-year-olds is the difference between slavery and freedom."

This stood out as particularly intellectually dishonest-- after all, a 20-year-old may reasonably expect to become a 21-year-old within a short time.

[ArC]

Man, I came here to say "countdown till the wingnuts mention Byrd" and already I'm too late.

[bellatrys]

Don't forget their simultaneous support for South African apartheid as the side of civilization, and asserting that Botha et al only wanted "the best" and were well-meaning towards black citizens there. Which, afaik, they have never renounced either.

And Buckley has already been reviled as a race traitor and the National Review as gone soft on white rights, by American Renaissance and VDARE and friends.
http://indianacofcc.org/NationalReviewDecline.htm

To say that they were naive then, is - naive. They were, and remain, political operatives of the Corpo establishment, with CIA connections.