In Vindicating the Founders

In Vindicating the Founders, West further notes that at the Constitutional Convention it was

Southerners, not Northerners, who argued that slaves should count equally with white citizens in

computing the state’s representatives; Northerners argued that it was wrong “to give such

encouragement to the slave trade as would be given by allowing [the Southern states] a representation

for their Negroes.” In short, for the purpose of congressional representation, the slave interests

wanted to count slaves in full; the opponents of slavery did not want to count slaves at all. The

three-fifths clause was a compromise that reflected the disagreement, reducing the representation of

slave interests over what they otherwise would have been. This is not too difficult a point to expect

sophisticated representatives of the United States to get right.

Indeed. But I have to ask my new pal at Powerline why he expects the Bushies to be more fluent in

American history than they are in NIKE SHOXi history. Why bother with history at all? As one Bush aide

explained so memorably,

That’s not the way the world really works anymore. … We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create

our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act

again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We

’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.