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Iconoclasm Spasms

Jefferson Davis

As America stands upon a precipice of insolvency, as southern European nations undergo the spasms of sovereign debt catastrophe, as many of our citizens call the Chinese devaluations of their money “currency wars,” obsessing about political symbolism seems … a tad … trivial.

First it was the Confederate Flag. Now it’s Jefferson Davis.

He’s dead. And as a result of his 126 years in the “post-​living” state, he quite literally doesn’t matter for the future of the United States.

And yet the Confederacy’s president (1861 – 1865) is in the news again. As Charles Paul Freund relates at Reason, the dead rebel prez has been having a figurative “bad summer.” How? The University of Texas has decided to move his statue into a museum, away from public eyes; some Georgians want to obliterate the Stone Mountain tableau that features Davis along with Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee; there’s talk of renaming Virginia’s “Jefferson Davis Highway”; etc.

Davis died unrepentant, refusing to ask Congress for a pardon for his part in the Confederacy after the secessions of 1860 and ’61. And yet he was pardoned in 1978, posthumously, by the Democratic Congress and President Jimmy Carter, who yammered on in a Fordian “long national nightmare is over” fashion, saying the pardon would, at long last, “clear away the guilts and enmities and recriminations of the past.”

I’m not convinced it did a thing.

And about the current proposals? I don’t think any highway should be named after any politician. Of the other ideas, I don’t really care. Much.

Nevertheless, fights over political symbols have long been important. Why? My guess: to deflect our attention — away from the future, and to the past.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Jefferson Davis

 

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ideological culture

Munch on This

Self-​righteousness is not new. But it hasn’t gone out of style, either — at least regarding moralistic dieters.

There’s even a study on it. In an article by Diane Mapes in Today’s Health, we learn “that organic food may just make people act a bit like jerks.”

Mapes focuses on the work of psychologist Kendall Eskine, who “noticed a lot of organic foods are marketed with moral terminology, like Honest Tea, and wondered if you exposed people to organic food, if it would make them pat themselves on the back for their moral and environmental choices. I wondered if they would be more altruistic or not.”

To find out, Eskine and his team divided 60 people into three groups. One group was shown pictures of clearly labeled organic food, like apples and spinach. Another group was shown comfort foods such as brownies and cookies. And a third group — the controls — were shown non-​organic, non-​comfort foods like rice, mustard and oatmeal. After viewing the pictures, each person was then asked to read a series of vignettes describing moral transgressions.

The results? Those merely exposed to organic foods judged moral transgressors more harshly, and, when it came to helping strangers, “the organic people also proved to be more selfish, volunteering” much less time than the control and comfort food groups offered.

According to the oft-​cited “happiness paradox,” the more you fixate on happiness the less happy you become. With moral smugness, the more you fixate on the rightness of your choices, the less moral you become.

A general principle? A one-​shot study that will gain no reproducible results?

In either case, it may be worth keeping an eye on … ourselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.