Thomas Massie... vs. Abraham Lincoln

Defiance is not always virtuous, nor is it necessarily productive. However, Americans, individualistic, strong-willed, and recalcitrant, have adopted an endlessly obstinate mindset regarding politics.

Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, once wrote, “All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants.”

Burke’s way of thinking has, no doubt, fallen out of fashion. “Subtle disputants” thrive on X. Bellicose contrarians propser in a market rife with hot takes and meaningless trolls. In order to understand the statesman’s sentiments respecting political concession and accommodation, we must discern between the two kinds of compromise — good compromise and bad compromise.

Americans are (understandably) sick of “sell-outs” — dishonest or weak-kneed politicians who betray our interests to the D.C. Swamp, big corporations, and foreign entities. That’s the bad kind of compromise.

But what about the good kind?

In our all-consuming drive to root out “soft,” inadequately provocative politicians (“RINOs,” “neocons,” etc.), we have forgotten that “sticking to one’s guns” is not always conducive to team success. Like it or not, politics is a team sport. In order to get anything done, we must collaborate with imperfect men. There’s no way around it. Anyone who, in the name of purism, refuses to set aside their preferences or “way of doing things” for the good of the team is, ultimately, an asset to the opposition.

I am thinking, very specifically, of men like Rep. Thomas Massie, the sole Republican holdout against Mike Johnson in his recent speakership vote.

“You can pull all my fingernails out, you can shove bamboo up in them, you can start cutting off my finger, I am not voting for Mike Johnson,” a defiant Massie told his fellow obstructionist, Matt Gaetz.

We may be tempted to applaud Massie for his so-called “spine.” However, we ought to reconsider his relentless insubordination from another perspective. In almost any other context, we would understand that rabble-rousers like Massie and Gaetz cause more problems for their team than they help. It does not matter how many good ideas the star player or brightest employee brings to the table, if they hold the entire team or company hostage to their will and refuse to listen to their coach or boss, their usefulness will be limited. The same is true in politics.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.” Throughout history, radicals, absolutists, and impatient reformers have frequently complained about the pace of the proverbial turtle. But, in the end, neither the critic nor the rabbit can finish the job: the man in the arena, the man who is willing to sacrifice his opinions and make compromises for the good of the nation, is the true hero of the story.

Even Abraham Lincoln was criticized by contemporary abolitionists for moving “too slowly” on the slavery issue. Journalist William Lloyd Garrison called the 16th president “manifestly without moral vision,” “incompetent to lead,” “destitute of hearty abhorrence of slavery,” “a dwarf in my mind,” and the “President of African Colonization.” Suffrage leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton “worked and prayed in 1864 for the defeat of Lincoln’s re-election.” But then again, no one calls Garrison or Stanton the Great Emancipator. That title belongs to the slow and steady Lincoln.

“I see now the wisdom of his course, leading public opinion slowly but surely up to the final blow for freedom,” Stanton eventually realized. “There is no mistake about it in regard to Mr. Lincoln’s desire to do all that he can… to uproot slavery, and give fair play to the emancipated,” Garrison humbly confessed. “To those who have struggled so long for the total abolition of slavery, and whose desires for the speedy realization of all their aims and aspirations have naturally been of the most ardent character, Mr. Lincoln has seemed exceedingly slow in all his emancipatory measures. For this he has been severely chided…. Yet what long strides he has taken in the right direction, and never a backward step!”

Honest Abe may have “seemed exceedingly slow,” but history remembers him — not his abolitionist detractors — as the one who ended slavery in America. As it turns out, making noise is easy. Faultfinding and nitpicking are painless professions. Actually moving the ball forward is what matters. Only those willing to concede their opinions and work together with a team will ever accomplish that task.

Will we heed these lessons from history? Will we follow in the footsteps of those who changed the world through diligent, humble, cooperative compromise and barter? Or will we join the party of firebrands who burn in endless defiant nothingness?

Don’t fall for those who talk a big game and accomplish nothing. It’s time to take one… step… forward… at… a… time. Our work — the work of a statesman — may not be as speedy as the purists would like — it may not go viral on social media — but, at least, at the end of the day, we can say that we’ve accomplished more than the disputants have.