Quote of the Day

by Liberty and Power

"When a 'society' will sell an infant out of its mother's arms it has gone about as far as it can go (short perhaps of downright cannibalism) in the perversion of 'commercial transactions.'"

Isabel Paterson, New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review 7, October 5, 1947, 18.

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David T. Beito - 7/23/2006

Sorry for the delay but I was at a conference which kept me busy.

She was discussing slavery. The book under review was Allen Tate, ed., A Southern Vanguard, a collection of essays.

I'm glad you called this to my attention because I hadn't noticed that one of the essays was by none other than Marshall McLuhan. The essays praised the pre-Civil War South as humanistic and traditional and criticized the North as commercial.

Basically, Paterson was arguing, contra the essays, that the slavery was "commercial," albeit in a perverse way.

Mark Brady - 7/21/2006

What was Isabel Paterson talking about? And what book(s) was she reviewing?