THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

In the battle to prevent John Ashcroft from becoming Attorney General, leftist McCarthyites were in full cry.

One thing they come up with was that Ashcroft had given an interview to the Southern Partisan. In that interview he had said some nice things about Confederate soldiers.

So an all-out leftist McCarthyite attack was launched on the Partisan. Newsweek magazine, the New Republic, and other members of the usual PC Chorus read through every issue of the Partisan over the last two decades for Political Incorrectness.

Of course they quoted me. I am not Politically Correct, I have never been PC, and I'm proud of it. But they also quoted other Partisan writers who, I can testify, were among the most desperately Politically Correct respectable conservatives I have ever met.

This is important, because it shows that if you go along with the leftist McCarthyites, no amount of care will save you from them in the end.

The statement I made that shamed the Partisan was that I was proud to be white and I hoped my descendants would be. This statement was in a 1985 issue of the Partisan. (That article was reproduced in its entirely on September 19, 1998 as "WHY I WILL NOT DENOUNCE SOUTHERN RACISM OR AMERICAN IMPERIALISM").

Because I was so open about it, the Partisan's defense for publishing me CONSISTED ENTIRELY OF FULL QUOTES FROM MY 1985 ARTICLE.

This gives you another demonstration of why the left demands that people like me, who attack them frontally, must be silenced completely. Unlike respectables, we make sense because we are consistent.

I knew how Politically Correct the other Partisan writers were, so I had been watching the Partisan like a hawk for the time when one of those desperately Politically Correct respeactables would attack Southerners for being Evil Racists. That finally happened in 1985.

In 1985, a Partisan article did indeed make make a gratuitous attack on the South as racist. The Partisan now handsomely admits they should never have published that article.

I answered the author of that article. In fact, came down on his statement -- not him personally -- like a ton of bricks.

The Partisan didn't want to print my article.

So why did they print my article anyway?

They're Southerners. It was a matter of honor. They owed me for years of free help when they were starting up, including an article in every issue since its beginning, when they needed it.

Both in 1985 and in their recent fight to defend their respectability, the Partisan was very fair to me.

I had been a Senior Editor at the Partisan since the beginning, and they had been able to use my name on the masthead when they really needed it. It is traditional for a senior editor to be allowed to take exception to an editorial opinion he strongly disagrees with.