Lincoln Star Thaddeus Stevens

Lincoln 2012As I reported before, last weekend, I went to see Lincoln. It was a surprisingly good film. My only real problem with it is that the ending doesn’t particularly work. Or perhaps more accurately, the film goes on too long. It is, after all, about the passage of the 13th Amendment. (In fact, I thought that the title 13th would have been better than Lincoln.) The truth is that although Lincoln is very important in the film, the story is not specifically about him.

The character who most stands out is then Speaker of the House, Thaddeus Stevens. He is one of these men who pepper American history by being so far ahead of their times that they would be considered radical today. My favorite example is Thomas Paine—the atheistic socialist who is probably more important to the founding of this country than any other single man. Stevens was equally radical. Many of their beliefs would today be dismissed as non-starters—just as they were in his own time.

I’m inclined not to tell you too much about the man, because I think everyone should go out and see the movie. I don’t want to ruin any of the film’s twists and turns. But to give you some idea of the main, here is a bit from Wikipedia:

Stevens dreamed of a socially just world, where unearned privilege did not exist. He believed from his personal experience that being different or having a different perspective can enrich society. He believed that differences among people should not be feared or oppressed but celebrated.

All that stuff about equality and justice would certainly put him well to the left of President Obama, just as it did so 150 years ago under President Lincoln.

Since his death, most portrayals of Stevens have not been kind. This is not just in things like D. W. Griffith’s racist visual screed The Birth of a Nation. Historians have generally portrayed him as kind of an arrogant asshole who wanted to stick it to the south. To a large extent, I can’t blame the man. When you are on the right side of one the greatest wrongs of your nation, I think a bit of arrogance is forgivable. And if I had been around at the time, I’m not sure I would ever have been able to forgive the south.

But I don’t know that much about him. I just got Hans L. Trefousse’s Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. I’m very much looking forward to the book. Lincoln has always been kind of a disappointment as a hero. Although enlightened by the mores of his time, he was still a racist. His proposal to create a South American colony for former slaves still strikes me as vile. Just the same, I expect to find Stevens more of a mixed bag than Paine. While Paine never had the curse of power to soil his character, I’m afraid that Stevens did. But I’ve never expected perfection from my heroes.

Again: go see Lincoln; it will be good for your soul. The film has four intertwined stories that would all be worthy of their own books. The story of Thaddeus Stevens is but one.

Afterword

Here is Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens:

Progressive Ideas Get Media Coverage

Keith EllisonThe House Progressive Caucus has long had a lot of good ideas. But in general, they get little coverage. For example, while all the media were going gaga over Paul Ryan’s budget, the Progressive Caucus released the People’s Budget, which was ignored except when it was used to ridicule its name. Whereas the Ryan budget was just a Trojan horse meant to justify huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the People’s Budget actually balanced the budget.

The line from the mainstream press was always the same: the People’s Budget was a non-starter. No one would ever take it seriously. On the other hand, Paul Ryan’s budget was very serious because people took it seriously. Of course, the people who took it seriously were primarily the usual suspects (wealthy people who want to reduce their taxes) and the mainstream press itself. It is interesting that reporters claim they should only report what the two sides say and never comment that one side is wrong. And yet, when it comes to something like this—budget proposals on the right and left—they choose to not even report on the left side.

In this context, I am pleased to see some actual liberal budget proposals seeing a little media light. As I’ve been screaming for years, a good way to fix entitlements is to actually fix them and not destroy them. On the right (and sadly, in the White House), we mostly see proposals to cut benefits—directly, through cost of living declines, and through increased eligibility requirements. What exactly is getting fixed here? I think it is the problem that Social Security and Medicare even exist. Those on the right and in the middle see that as the problem: government was just too generous in the past and now we need to do something about it. This is why their arguments are generally so weak or flat out wrong, like the argument that Social Security was only meant to support a population that had a life expectancy below 65. (This argument is literally wrong and weak: it is not true and even if it were it would be a terrible argument.)

Last week, Senator Mark Begich has introduced a bill that would eliminate the payroll tax cap that makes Social Security the ridiculously regressive tax that it is. Similarly, the Progressive Caucus, led in part by Keith Ellison, is pushing the same idea in the House.

I don’t expect these proposals to get much traction. But the fact is that at least the radio silence on them is starting to lift. More reporters are covering this stuff. I suspect that most people think that ideas to “fix” entitlement programs only come from the right. The fact is that only ideas to destroy entitlements come from the right. Ideas to truly fix entitlements come exclusively from the left. And the only way anyone will know this is if we talk about it in the public square and don’t relegate it to rooms so quiet no one can hear.