One of the statues that was taken down in the 2020 purge of the Southern statues was that of the great American statesman from South Carolina, John. C. Calhoun. The then mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, John Tecklenburg, said that “while we acknowledge Calhoun’s efforts as a statesman, we can’t ignore his positions on slavery and discrimination.” The reason why, in his opinion, “slavery and discrimination” could not be ignored, was that Black Lives Matter were at the height of their political power, mounting protests in the streets of Charleston in the wake of the George Floyd riots.

In his commitment to “not ignoring slavery and discrimination” he was prepared to overlook everything else said or done by a man whom he admitted to be an influential statesman. Such destruction of historic statues illustrates how political expediency causes politicians to pursue a destructive course of action that will have deleterious longer-term implications. The mayor of Charleston allowed the temporary political furor surrounding BLM, which has now faded away from public discourse almost as quickly as it began, to override the importance of Calhoun’s legacy. …

These insights have great relevance to disputes over the correct interpretation of the constitution, as many commentators swing wildly from one argument to the very opposite when the party in power changes. For example, the principle of states’ rights, and the related principle that there should be as wide a scope for state sovereignty as possible, are defended by political analysts when their goals are backed by their state. Yet the same analysts often swing to a robust defense of federal power to crush the states when they happen to approve of federal policies. While some of this may be explained by the hypocrisy that is endemic in political life, there is another factor at play—and that is plain short-sightedness or a tendency to think only of the immediate implications of the specific policy in question. Wilson’s observation on this point is apt, that in Calhoun’s time “most people most of the time, preferred to live in the short-run, ignore distant threats, and hope for the best.” Calhoun’s importance as a statesman is recognized in large part because he was able to take a principled view even when it lost him popular support. Wilson observes that while some historians considered Calhoun to be too theoretical or philosophical to be of much help in resolving political disputes, it is this very ability to rise above the political fray that marks Calhoun as a principled statesman:

And the most common criticism of his writings, by pragmatic-minded politicians and journalists, was that they were too philosophical for the commonsense American world. It is just these two qualities of simplicity and higher generalization that make his words all the more durable – still alive in another age when those of his critics are dead on the page.