History: Hard Core of Interpretation, a Cloud of 'Facts'

Jefferson was a classical liberal who believed in political equality and limited government but not in social equality and the nanny state. Henry Nau Writes:
Oct. 15, 2013
Alonzo Hamby comments on the historical parts of my book "Conservative Internationalism" (Bookshelf, Sept. 30) but dismisses the conceptual parts, which are essential to interpret history. As a result, he wonders how I can call Thomas Jefferson, who treasured busts of Locke and Voltaire, a conservative when I explain carefully that Jefferson, like all Americans, was a classical liberal who believed in political equality and limited government but not in social equality and the nanny state favored by modern-day social liberals. And he accepts Henry Adams's history of the period, clouded as it is by his grandfather's feuds with Jefferson, that Jefferson was a pacifist, when I detail carefully how Jefferson used force to acquire the Louisiana Territory and to wage war against England, never considering (or conflating) the embargo as a substitute for military power. Mr. Hamby employs the hoary historical charge that James Polk was a racist, when I carefully explain that Polk favored the expansion of freedom where that battle was then being fought, namely to widen the franchise for white male citizens. Ownership of land was a prerequisite to vote, and territorial expansion meant more land and therefore more white voters. And if Polk was all about expanding slavery, not freedom, why did he care about the Oregon territory where slavery was never an issue and why didn't he annex all of Mexico, which he could have, where slavery might have flourished more widely? Harry Truman, as I explain, is the one president of the four who was not a limited-government conservative. But he was conservative in his religious views about human fallibility, and he eventually parted company with the views of George Kennan the realist and Franklin Roosevelt the liberal internationalist precisely because Truman saw that communist ideology and its appeal to

perfect human society were the source of conflict with Moscow, not geopolitics or diplomatic misunderstandings. Mr. Hamby's aversion to concepts becomes crystal clear in his claim that Ronald Reagan cannot be compared to Jefferson or Polk because they governed in different times. "The most important element in Reagan's diplomacy," he concludes, "was Reagan." All of history is reduced to "temperament" and becomes unique. This is what happens to history left in the hands of historians who disparage the role of concepts. Prof. Henry R. Nau George Washington University Washington