"Don't you take that tone with me, you German-Irish fascist windbag. I don't have to justify my presence to riffraff like you. Tell it to Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh—and meanwhile, don't stab our boys in Iraq in the back."That's what he wished he'd said to Pat Buchanan, who irked him by asking "by what right [he], a foreign atheist, could presume to come over here and lecture Americans about their Christian heritage." He explains by what right.
The other is a review, titled "The Man Who Ended Slavery," of a book about John Brown. The conclusion:
John Brown shared his life with slaves, and re-wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution so as to try to repair the hideous wrong that had been done to them. (In issuing these documents, by the way, he exculpated himself from any ahistorical charge of "terrorism," which by definition offers nothing programmatic.) The record shows that admiration for Brown was intense, widespread, and continuous, from Douglass to DuBois and beyond. Our world might be a good deal worse than it is had not numberless African-Americans, from that day to this, taken John Brown as proof that fraternity and equality, as well as liberty, were feasible things and could be exemplified by real people.
Being "programmatic" avoids the charge of "terrorism"? Or is it just that being on the right side makes us want to forgive terrorism, after enough years have passed?
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