Roberts Non-News

The Lavender Lobby is against him, despite his pro bono work on their behalf in Romer v. Evans. At least that might get Ann Coulter to cut him a break.

Annnnnd the Washington Post launched the latest smear job against JR by taking his inclination for avoiding repetition in his prose and twisting it into a cameo appearance on Dukes of Hazzard:

A fastidious editor of other people's copy as well as his own, Roberts began with the words "Until about the time of the Civil War." Then, the Indiana native scratched out the words "Civil War" and replaced them with "War Between the States."

The handwritten document is one of tens of thousands of pages of Roberts files released over the past several weeks from his 1982-1986 tenure as an associate counsel to the President.

While it is true that the Civil War is also known as the War Between the States, the Encyclopedia Americana notes that the term is used mainly by southerners. Sam McSeveney, a history professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University who specialized in the Civil War, said that Roberts's choice of words was significant.

"Many people who are sympathetic to the Confederate position are more comfortable with the idea of a 'War Between the States,' " McSeveney explained. "People opposed to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s would undoubtedly be more comfortable with the words he chose."

Guess that document wasn't in my box.

This is so wishfully speculative as to be embarrassing. Certainly more than sufficiently so to put it on the second page of the WaPo above the frakking fold. "Civil War," "War Between The States," what's the difference? If the word parsing and psychoanalysis therein is considered so bloody important, why doesn't this "War Between The States expert" (not the first lib academic hack of that description I've known) know that, as Cap'n Ed Morrissey asserts today and I concur, the preferred Southern reference to the Civil War was "the War of Northern Aggression"?

Let's take a more comprehensive look at this matter, shall we?

War Between the States: This term was never used during the war but was coined immediately afterwards by Alexander Stephens, the former Confederate Vice President. Northerners disliked the term because they rejected the idea that states were fighting states. Confederates at the time thought their new nation was fighting another nation; they certainly never thought it was a war between states while it was going on. Union Loyalists thought the United States—the nation as a whole—was putting down a rebellion. After 1890 the term seemed the least provocative one possible, and so it was common from 1900 to 1940. The USMC War Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery uses this term.

Sounds pretty innocuous to me. Certainly not the preference of a man "opposed to the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s." Which really should read "the 1950s and 1960s," actually, if historical accuracy still means anything. But what can you expect from an ax-grinding "historian"?

By contrast, this is what "Professor" McSeveney should have cited as the semantical choices of a true second coming of Archie Bunker:

War of Southern Independence: While popular on the Confederate side during the war itself, this term's popularity fell in the immediate aftermath of the South's failure to gain independence. It made a comeback in the late 20th century among Confederate heritage groups such as the League of the South and the Sons of
Confederate Veterans.

War of Northern Aggression: This term emphasizes claims by Confederate partisans that the North invaded the South.

Except, well, Judge Roberts didn't use those terms. Nor is there any record of him belonging to the League of the South or the Sons of Confederate Veterans, chapters of which are unlikely to have reached as far north as Indiana. Nor is there any record of his supposed "opposition to civil rights," which is not to be confused with reverse-Jim Crow (aka affirmative action).

I don't know why "historians" like "Professor" McSeveney and "journalists" like Jo Becker and "newspapers" like the WaPo, don't just drop the coy "pussyfooting" and just come right out and declare, in true and full-throated NARAL spirit, that Judge Roberts is an honorary Klansman in complete sympathy with the black church-bombers of the 1960s. After all, people who oppose the appointment of constitutionalist judges to the U.S. Supreme Court would undoubtedly be more comfortable with those words.

Right?