The “Civil Discourse” two-step

Conducted by professors in politics at The King's College, Dr. David Corbin and Dr. Matthew Parks, The Federalist Today is a discussion of modern politics through the lens of the Federalist Papers. Each week, Corbin and Parks examine one of these historic papers, and contrast Federalist beliefs with those of modern Progressives in order to spark discussion on American politics and its current trajectory.

This article was originally published on an external website.

In a story that would put even Neil Tyson’s recent setbacks to shame, Time magazine reported in 1950 that George Smathers, challenger for the Florida Democratic nomination for US Senate, had said of his opponent in the midst of a bitter campaign:

Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, practiced celibacy.

Smathers had, in fact, said nothing of the kind. The lines were likely invented by newspaper reporters covering the race–and a little noted, nor long remembered source in the same piece suggested as much. But no matter: the lines stuck, revealing, in the end, more about the mores of its Progressive peddlers and purchasers than those of the supposed rubes it caricatured: the stupid, to-be-silenced majority. A prejudiced critique of prejudice, a slanderous denunciation of slander, eagerly soaked up by cosmopolitans for whom the quote confirmed their every bias about their opponents–a textbook case of the pot calling the kettle black.

The message of the Time story, at least within the Progressive echo chamber, was two-fold. First, it suggested that enlightenment was measured by one’s liberation from moral absolutes. Those everyday Americans who were incapable of proper re-education would need to learn their place. Second, it helped to explain to the Progressive flock, in a way that neo-Marxists have never quite been able to duplicate with their dwindling herd, why the end of History was a work in progress: your neighbors are simply still too dumb to get it.

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