Special Report
Jack Levin’s Gettysburg
Fathers, sons, and Lincoln’s stand for liberty.
(Page 2 of 2)
Yet the image of that Civil War soldier so stayed with Jack that eventually he designed, illustrated and produced the book he had in his head — an illustration of the text of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It was first published as the centennial of the Civil War came to an end.
“It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced,” said Lincoln, words Jack has paired with a photo of Union soldiers, standing at attention in the sun, blinking into the camera as they presumably wait for an order to move out, the living among the dead.
Unfinished work it was for the living of 1863 — and remains for the living of today and all the tomorrows yet to come.
The simple obviousness of new generations of Americans drives home the necessity of passing down to each the necessity to educate themselves in the basic founding doctrines and documents that have provided their ancestors with so much abundant opportunity. Like the young man Jack Levin there will always be young men and young women — the sons and daughters of America — who want the opportunity to follow their dreams as Jack followed his.
But without their equivalent of seeing that old soldier sitting on the back of a car in a Philadelphia Fourth of July parade, they — we — are terribly vulnerable to the arrogant assumption that liberty and freedom are a given. American ideals — the very heart of what allows so many millions of dreams to flower and flourish — come with a high price.
Sometimes, as in the case of the battles surely seen by that old Civil War soldier, the price is blood and treasure. Thankfully it is more often the hard work of a good education and hard work itself. Having an understanding of American history and exactly how and why a country committed to the ideals of liberty, equality and freedom was and remains unique — and being unique — prosperous.
Abraham Lincoln — he who never went to college yet had the basic grammar of America in his bones — understood this. Standing on that Gettysburg Battlefield in 1863, knowing the horrific sacrifices that had had been made on the ground before him— he used the opportunity to pledge ” that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Those words, eloquent, elegant, filled with meaning — are always in danger of losing their meaning if not understood, as Lincoln understood them, in the context of American history. The actual photograph Jack Levin includes of Lincoln presumably delivering his speech amid the chaos of a jostling, packed crowd in a day before electricity and microphones is a reminder of just how difficult it might have been in the day for those actually in attendance to understand the import of Lincoln’s words.
“We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution,” said Jack Kennedy, with the same thought in mind that Jack Levin would express in book form five years following JFK’s inauguration.
As Father’s Day approaches, along with yet another anniversary of those terrible three days between July 1 and July 3, 1863, Jack Levin reminds yet again of all the sons — and now too the daughters — who have sacrificed so much for all of us to live every single day in the peace of liberty and freedom that is America.
Reading Jack Levin’s book, and of his own story, I am reminded yet again of my own father, missing now his fourth Father’s Day but who, in his almost ninety years, imparted the same exact lesson to this son which Jack Levin did to his.
Liberty — freedom — is the charge of every American generation. Sometimes to secure it, always to protect it.
About the Author
Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.
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Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 7:22AM
"Abroad, so-called 'peace activists' armed with metal pipes and weapons are portrayed as the heirs of Martin Luther King and the non-violent protesters of Selma and Birmingham."
Confederates, as the "peace activists" of today, were fighting for a bad cause.
And they lost.
AMENBRO| 6.8.10 @ 10:23AM
YUP, nearly as nauseating as sexual preference co-opting a seat on the DIAS of Civil Rights.
Civil Rights post Martin Luther King's legacy's subversion into Jessie & Big Al's profitability business plan is kept alive only for that reason.
Lest we forget the power same brings.
I remember fully well, LIKE IT WAS LAST WEEK, exactly how easily schools like my 7th grade class integrated down south. Remember so poignantly ow my vote in the state of Birth VIRGINIA elected the first and most successful to date African American Governor. Care to give us update on the recent additions to that austere list???
Unlike the NORTH. Lot more George Wallaces in sheep clothing up North than Alabama demagogues were or ever will be.
Anybody out there want to dispute just how racist you Yankees were and still are??????
Any Californians care to rationalize why every
level of society in CA is stratified across racial boundaries
After all you brought us ORGANIZED CRIME mainstreamed as UNIONS among a cavalcade of other interminable abhorrence's. Your Urban areas save CA are why we are infested at the Executive Level with Affirmative Action babies without a clue. Schools have been dumbed down socially stymieing 4 generations of folks that have the most to loose.
Abraham Lincoln did not fight the civil war over SLAVERY, ALBERT. Can your memory muster to save the UNION. States rights, guaranteed by the constitution is what brought the South to bear arms & succeed from the UNION
If the south had an industrial base your contrite personae would probable be saying YAWL AL.
I'll leave the AC on .
Ryan| 6.8.10 @ 10:37AM
If slavery wasn't an issue, would there have been a war?
AMENBRO| 6.8.10 @ 11:04AM
Lincoln's historical statement concerning the civil war , Lincoln's words not mine sir.
Quote
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
END QUOTE Abraham Lincoln
Strange you didn't address any other of the assertions in my response.
Old Soldier | 6.8.10 @ 3:07PM
The short answer is no.
If slavery wasn't an issue, most other issues between North and South would have been fairly minor.
If the southern states had freed their slaves then decided to leave the Union, there would have been no war. Lincoln could bluster all he wanted to, but nobody would have followed. Without the abolitionist movement, Lincoln would not have been elected and Congress never would have declared war. Just wouldn't have happened.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 3:30PM
"If the southern states had freed their slaves then decided to leave the Union, there would have been no war"
On what are you basing that assertion?
AMENBRO| 6.8.10 @ 4:06PM
Can you not comprehend President Lincoln illocutions, Toddie my boy?
There would have been a war . Just as slavery would have ended without one sir.
Splittin hypothetical hairs with you is synonomous to RAPIER WITS with an unarmed opponet. I cherish my Marine Sword & my Military School sword. Sorry your perlocution does not rise to that level.
Your assertion along specious intellectual flagilatory HAIR SPLITTIN lines, fer instance ROE v. WADE, is what got our fannies in the FRYING PAN we are are in now.
Smellin the coffee yet ? Toddie, you will come November. Catch Pelosi gettin heckled off the stage as her AIDE informs her the crowd is throwing things.
Intellectualism's hypotheticals, as a way of herding cats/people is thoroughly discredited Toddie. You know what they say,,NO PAIN NO GAIN." Youse Guys"final OBASM delivered the pain which awoke a sleeping giant. FOLKS TOO DAMN BUSY LIVVIN to NOT TRUST THEIR ELECTED OFFICIALs.
With that crowd finally filling the bus your boys are toast. Liberal inspired pain will realize its fruation by THE OTHER AMERICA's regaining of our country from fools such as you.
QUOTE
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. END QUOTE Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Smell the Coffe yet.
FREEDOM IS WHAT's ON THE BREAKFAST MENU COME NOVEMBER, Toddie.
S.L. Toddard| 6.9.10 @ 8:16AM
"Intellectualism's hypotheticals, as a way of herding cats/people is thoroughly discredited Toddie."
Oh, "is" they?
Hahaha
Bram| 6.9.10 @ 9:52AM
My degree in American History.
S.L. Toddard| 6.9.10 @ 10:52AM
"My degree in American History."
Great. That saves me from having to refute it, as argumentum ad verecundiam, being a fallacy, is objectively illegitimate.
Occam's Tool| 6.8.10 @ 6:23PM
The answer in a word: no. There were other issues, but that one was irreconciliable.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 11:41AM
AMENBRO,
Thank you for every single word you posted above.
God bless
Purpleguy| 6.8.10 @ 5:39PM
If you didn't have A/C, you still wouldn't have much. You can thank the North for your existence.
victor| 6.8.10 @ 10:02PM
Purplegoy:
"You can thank the North for your existence."
And you can thank the South for your A/C,
specifically San Antone.
Thank a Texan tonight for the cool air.
You can start with Ken and Paul from SA.
Tim*| 6.8.10 @ 10:17PM
If it weren't for Southern Revolutionary Leaders Washington , Jefferson , etc. and Southern Revolutionary Warriors Marion , Sumpter , Pickens ,Morgan , Lee etc. You'd be a Freakin' Limey ,You Buffoon.
Purpleguy| 6.9.10 @ 11:46AM
And, if it weren't for the North, the industry of the South that was beholden to England for the Cotton trade (which is why England sided with the South in the Civil War) would have put you under English domination, if not rule. The Slaves would have been eliminated anyway, since England abolished slavery 50 years before we did.
So you see, the North needed the South and the South needed the North. And, every State needs the others, whether they like it or not. So why not try to get along.
But A/C did make working in the South more tolerable, don't you agree?
AMENBRO| 6.9.10 @ 2:28PM
Sure Enough Purple HAID
.
Quartermaster| 6.8.10 @ 9:30PM
Brooks, if you weren't serious I would tell you to go into stand up comedy. Your ignorance of history is surpassed only by your arrogance of rectitude. But, your love of Obama is at least consistent with your love of his spiritual father, Lincoln.
Slavery would have ended without violence. It was on its last leg the world over. It was uneconomic as well as being morally unsupportable. But, Lincoln couldn't have cared less. All that mattered to him was "what about my tariff." That, my good man, was all it was about for that corporate lawyer.
The Confederate soldier was on the side of Angels. Almost none of them owned slaves, or cared to. What mattered to them was Yankees had some south and they wanted them back north, and simply not having slavery wasn't going to matter to Lincoln. he wanted the South paying for more than 75% of the federal budget which was going to Lincoln's cronies in the rail and steel industries. If you want to see where Chicago politics got its start, must look to Lincoln and his crony capitalism. That's what the North fighting for, and the South fought against. They may have lost, but they tried to pass freedom onto their descendants. The Yankee soldier passed on a new form of slavery which is slowly strangling us.
Incidentally, the wage slavery of the north was, in many ways, worse than chattel slavery. Both, however, are reprehensible and Lincoln's boys supported it to the hilt.
You really need to get out of your moonbat hothouse and learn the facts instead of the mindless raving you substitute for reality.
Stephanie| 6.9.10 @ 8:40AM
"But, your love of Obama is at least consistent with your love of his spiritual father, Lincoln."
Spiritual father? some think obama is the reincarnation of Lincoln!!!
Great discussion here this morning! I'm learning lots. Thank you.
AMENBRO| 6.9.10 @ 2:32PM
AMEN BROTHER
EVERY DAMN BODY IN MY FAMILY
HAS THE MIDDLE NAME of LEE FOR A REASON
ROBERT E. LEE
Lee did not go into this fight lifghtly. Never a truer patriot than He.
F54K sure OBAMA couldn't hold that man's bed chamber pan.
Richard D. Henkus| 6.9.10 @ 2:32PM
There are errors of fact and reason in this claim. The South was seeking to be left alone. The racial thugs are seeking to stay and conduct a putsch. Second, the tragedy of the Civil War was not right versus wrong, but right against greater right. Per impossible,, had the South rejoined the Union before 1863, it would have kept it slaves - and the majority of those states who had remained in the Union would have approved. The second version of the 13thAmendment was passed only in 1865, and even then Lincoln had difficulty obtaining 2'3rs of the states still in the Union to support it. For perspective, the first version of the 13thAmmendment, left unsigned by Buchanan but waiting for Lincoln's approval, prohibited the Federal government from interfering with slavery in any state where it actually existed. Nor was Secession a Southern innovation - the behavior of Ne England during the war of 1812, where they traded actively with the British, and the Hartford convention, are proof enough. Garrssion and others like him favored 'expelling' the Southern states long before the war started;; "No Union with Slaveholders". In contrast, Lincoln himself was on record that he would not interfere with slavery in those states where it already existed. Those states who supported the Federal government did so to preserve the Union. The abolition of slavery was a tactic, not a goal, and certainly not the strategic driver for saving the Union. After the war, a number of prominent former Confederates, E.P. Alexander most famously, stated that true as the cause for which they fought , he was glad it had not acheived its objective, and that the Union was preserved. Strictly speaking. Abolition was a classic illustration of unintended effects. With the 150th anniversary of the tragic and necessary conflict, I hope we will ponder the challenge of maintining the Union, Union and Liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable.
J.T.Foster| 6.10.10 @ 8:30AM
Quite the contrary the same ideals of limited government,local control that the Confederate Soldier fought for are the headlines of today as we face the totalitarian take over of america.Indeed we may be on the verge of another revolution as freedom lovers refuse to be subjugated.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 7:25AM
... the Confederacy tried to grab the Western territories for their bad cause.
BOTTOM LINE: People overreach themselves and thus destroy themselves. Jefferson Davis is in Hell where he belongs.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 7:55AM
Lincoln's stand for liberty? Hahaha! Without Lincoln there could have been no TR, and Wilson, and FDR, and now Obama and their mad consolidation of power at the federal level. Lincoln effectively destroyed THESE united States of America and now we're THIS United States.
Now tea partiers and "conservatives" are trying to reassert the 10A? Yet at the same time they idolize the one man who did more to destroy it than any other in American history? Wow.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 9:02AM
"Lincoln effectively destroyed THESE united States of America and now we're THIS United States."
What is it you neoConfederates think? that God wanted the Confederacy to win, but it didn't work out that way??
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 9:23AM
Alan, typical response that you get--from lib or "conservative" or anyone in between--when they can't argue the point. I expected the name-calling but you went that extra mile and threw the straw man in for free. Congrats.
Now, if you want to debate if Lincoln usurped power, attacked a sovereign nation, jailed those who disagreed with him, was OK with "secession" when it came to carving a Lincoln-friendly WVa out of VA, cared not for the slaves, and effectively pooped on the Constitution, we can.
If you want to call names, by all means do. It doesn't change history though.
As for God wanting the Confederacy to "win?" I dunno. I think God is happy wherever His Natural Law is respected and the freedom that flows from it is not abused.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 9:27AM
"As for God wanting the Confederacy to "win?" I dunno. I think God is happy wherever His Natural Law is respected and the freedom that flows from it is not abused."
Then he has a strange way of showing it.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 9:39AM
God also gives us humans free will Alan. We are free to live by His Natural Law or not. I believe He will show us all the error of our ways one day.
To be honest Lincoln debates bore me anymore. The Truth about him stands alone, plus, like you, most pro-Lincoln folks don't even address salient points, they simply name call. IMHO "conservatives" can not attack BHO for his consolidation of power while at the same time excusing Lincoln. As far as I know BHO hasn't arrested anyone yet, so he's got a ways to go to be as bad as Lincoln was.
This is one of the areas I don't get about Beck. He spends SO MUCH time correcting history about the founding, admirably, but completely ignores the REAL history of Lincoln. I view that as disingenuous at best. For me it really taints his message.
Purpleguy| 6.8.10 @ 5:49PM
""conservatives" can not attack BHO for his consolidation of power while at the same time excusing Lincoln. " --- If you want to be taken seriously, where's your condemnation of the Bush/Cheney duo? You didn't have to reach far back in history to talk about power grabs. The Patriot Act, TARP, GM Bailout, AIG, warrantless wiretaps, habeas corpus suspension, the Unitary Executive, rendition, and on and on and on ... and you want to talk about Lincoln? Or Obama? Your party affiliation is showing. It simply makes your arguments disingenuous at best.
If States' Righters had their way, we'd all be living in a bunch of little squabbling countries just like they have in Europe. Separated by petty differences until they become big differences. However he did it, Lincoln saved this country. The rest you just have to put up with the blessings the liberties you have bestow upon you.
You are after all living in a country that is Founded more on the principles of Hamilton then either Madison or Jefferson. Embrace it. Love it. Alexander Hamilton would be quite pleased by the Federal Reserve and the strong Central Government along with a powerful Judiciary as well.
victor| 6.8.10 @ 10:03PM
Alan Brooks:
"Then He has a strange way of showing it."
Then you may have a strange way of finding out, eh?
Gr0w1er| 6.8.10 @ 11:10AM
Reminds me of the motto inscribed on every WWII German Wehrmacht belt buckle: "Gott mit Uns". Good thing for us (and the rest of the world) He didn't go with "Groß Deutschland,,.
Kevin K| 6.8.10 @ 6:10PM
I see once again the libs are rewriting history. To say Lincoln distorted the country is distorting the truth. They talk about the good things Lincoln did when its convenient. But wasnt Lincoln a Republican??
Louis Jenkins| 6.8.10 @ 8:11AM
Lincoln is an enigma. While we understand his political speeches and thoughts, we cannot but comprehend his efforts to make the US one nation altogether rather than one nation composed of many. We have a love-hate relationship with that man. We love his thoughts but hate his politics.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 8:55AM
"We love his thoughts but hate his politics."
Make up your mind-- poop or get off the pot.
Louis Jenkins| 6.8.10 @ 11:15AM
Dear Mr. Brooks:
It is well past time to debate Lincoln. What he did he did. Far better to look to the future or at least the present when stirring up the dog pile.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 3:05PM
No, it is not past time; Jeff Lord is correct to post this piece.
Now, you might make the case that the North was worse, as wage-slavery is as harsh as slavery, and even uglier. And as AMENBRO pointed out above, Yankees are wolves in sheep's clothing.
But the Confederacy was a bad cause and became a lost cause, not without justice. To try to snare the Western territories (larger than the South) with limited manpower and resources was entirely grandiose; another case of showing off with swords-- not much better than Napoleon and his lost cause.
Bram| 6.8.10 @ 3:15PM
Agreed. It was a terrible choice - Slavery or the overly powerful federal government our Founders had purposely avoided (and we may yet have to fight again to destroy).
A damn shame we had to make that choice.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 5:25PM
"(and we may yet have to fight again to destroy)."
With our aging population? instead of taxicabs taking young soldiers to the Marne, we'll have aging soldiers being pushed in wheelchairs.
Purpleguy| 6.8.10 @ 5:51PM
Not all the Founders were against a powerful Federal Government ...
victor| 6.8.10 @ 10:08PM
PurpleGoo:
"Not all the Founders were against a powerful Federal Government"
I'm trying to imagine Barack trying to tell Jefferson, Madison and Washington that their vision of government was not only wrong, but grossly understated.
After all, what is the good of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" if you're not going to make sure that everyone gets what they want, eh?
Purpleguy| 6.9.10 @ 11:42AM
Guess you don't know your history as well as you think... go read the Federalist papers and learn something.
Being against a tyrannical King with absolute power over you (what the Founders were faced with) is not the same as being against a government that you have the power to change (which I guess is your present state of mind)
aware| 6.9.10 @ 6:14PM
How's this for history..... once the elite ruling class told us they were gods or at least a son of gods, then when that stopped working they told us they were appointed by God. Then when that stopped working they now tell us that "we the people" are the kings! But they are still the rulers.
Seems it takes REALLY ridiculous lies to keep the Rabble in the shearing line. Just keep them hoping, voting, and docile while the fleecing ensues.
coal carrier| 6.8.10 @ 8:26AM
"this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
This prophecy will only hold true if, “we the people” rid ourselves of this president and all of the other progressives in 2010 and 2012. They are direct affront to the stated decree.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 8:58AM
"This prophecy will only hold true if, “we the people” rid ourselves of this president and all of the other progressives in 2010 and 2012. They are direct affront to the stated decree."
You are a man with a plan, aren't you?...
coal carrier| 6.8.10 @ 11:00AM
Yes Mr. Brooks. It starts and ends at the voting booth come November.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 3:12PM
Agreed. Next year, 2011, will be to Obama as 1995 was for Clinton: a second chance.
IMO, Gingrich's Congress boosting the economy did more to get Clinton re-elected than Dole did. Politics is a brawling, convoluted business.
Now, I didn't vote for Clinton (there were too many plausible rumors to ignore), but Obama is no Juannita Broadderick raper.
And I am going to vote for Obama.
victor| 6.8.10 @ 10:10PM
Alan "Babbling" Brooks:
"Now, I didn't vote for Clinton"
Of course not, you voted for Perot.
That's how we got Clinton.
stephanie| 6.9.10 @ 8:45AM
Why would you vote for this inexperienced fool who clearly doesn't know what they hell to do but make a laughing stock of our country. And you don't even know who will run against him! Ahh, Hillary may come out of the woodwork yet !
Purpleguy| 6.8.10 @ 5:56PM
Right, that's why there are more Progressives than Conservatives. That's why Republicans only work to improve the business climate. That's why the Republicans don't like entitlements - who do you think the entitlements benefit - the people, remember them? What about education for the PEOPLE? How about consumer protections for the People - is that conservative? How about regulation of industry - another conservative principle? I think not. Most conservatives would go home and shut up if no one taxed their precious paychecks. That's all they really care about. Leave my money alone. Then they don't care what a Reagan/Bush or Cheney do.
victor| 6.8.10 @ 10:17PM
PurplePurple:
"Right, that's why there are more Progressives than Conservatives."
http://www.gallup.com/poll/120.....group.aspx
Care to cite your own poll stating your conclusion?
Purpleguy| 6.9.10 @ 11:39AM
Oh, my dear ... look at your own poll url ... 40% conservative ... 60% not ... period, end of story.
LiveFreeOrDie| 6.9.10 @ 3:19PM
Are you drunk? The title to the story in the link is “Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group
That 40% is 2 to 1 conservative to liberal. If you can't concede this point give me a break.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 8:57AM
so another Bush-type can win in '16?
Thanks ever so much.
The Narrator| 6.8.10 @ 9:01AM
When we last visited The Dumberrific Duo they were mincing along in the Bwooks Miata, homing in on the mob scene outside of the High-Finance Banker’s home…
The Narrator| 6.8.10 @ 9:01AM
Let’s listen. And remember, always buy and use genuine Brasso, for all your brass-polishing needs!
PurplePeopleBeaterMob| 6.8.10 @ 9:02AM
What Do We Want? Your Head On A Stick! When Do We Want It? When Our Next Payoff Arrives! What Do We Want? Your Head….
Miss FauxAlabama| 6.8.10 @ 9:03AM
Listen up, my Purple-Shirted Army of Frequent-Flyer Baboons! The fair-haired son of the Evil Banker Who Caused Your Ruin is cowering in the upstairs crapper! Half of you go this way, and the other half go that way!
Purpleboy| 6.8.10 @ 9:04AM
Great Gallons of Grapeyness, Bwooksman! It’s like my fantasy of a sea of wine-soaked sailor-boys cruising Key West!
Awan Bwooks| 6.8.10 @ 9:04AM
THAT, my young, gullible, candy-craving friend, is the SEIU!
Purpleboy| 6.8.10 @ 9:05AM
The SEIU? What’s that, Bwooksman?
Awan Bwooks| 6.8.10 @ 9:06AM
The Seriously Evil Ignoramuses Union, my perky, nubilicious, little friend! They are our own ‘Roamin’ Legion’ against the Barbarian Hordes of Conservatism!
Purpleboy| 6.8.10 @ 9:06AM
Holy Hankerin’ For A Handout, Bwooksman!
Awan Bwooks| 6.8.10 @ 9:07AM
Indeed, my seriously naïve inamorata! Hark! I hear the Puff Ho Harpy we now seek!
Miss FauxAlabama| 6.8.10 @ 9:08AM
Fly, Baboons! Fly! Bring the spawn of the Evil Capitalist to me! Bring him...
Awan Bwooks| 6.8.10 @ 9:08AM
Ahem. I say, AHEM! Oh, Fair Maiden… well, er, um, not so fair, really… I SAY, MISS FAILABAMA!
Miss FauxAlabama| 6.8.10 @ 9:09AM
WHAT DID YOU CALL ME, you Miata-driving Duo of Dumba**es!?
The Narrator| 6.8.10 @ 9:10AM
We now leave the Dumberiffic Duo as they are engaged in a post-social faux pas, high-heeled mano-a-Manolo Blahnik with Miss FauxAlabama. Join us for the next episode, when we find the Duo joining forces with a new character, The SUNCRIST DITHERER. Same Bwooks Time, same Bwooks Channel!
NavyBrat | 6.8.10 @ 1:59PM
Dear Mr. Narrator,
Thank you SO much for the levity of your little skits. Today has been a pretty tough day for me so far & this is one of the biggest smiles I've had yet! Thank you & G*d bless!
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 3:19PM
"Thank you SO much for the levity of your little skits."
They are getting funnier. But what Narrator has no idea of is how flattering is that an old guy like me could be remotely considered attractive to a gay or anyone else. As for you? if some of you are even plainer-looking than me; well, whose problem is that? That is to say, there are gay guys who are better looking than us, and if they are Bi they might have as good a time as you guys do.
You think you are the only people who score well?
Purpleguy| 6.8.10 @ 5:58PM
If they all got laid more often, they wouldn't be so hostile ...
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 9:04AM
You must be drinking some of that oily water down there, Narrator.
SHO NUFF!
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 9:09AM
oh, and and by the way!
Did you know that God is sending you that oil in the Gulf so you people wont have to go to gas stations anymore?:
the oil comes right to your beachfront houses- you can just scoop it up and pour it into your gas tanks.
William R| 6.8.10 @ 9:22AM
It started with the tyrant Lincoln
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/it.....37874.html
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 9:43AM
Suprynowicz's stuff is always good.
Here's another contradiction most conservative Lincoln supporters engage in. They complain about the teachers' unions, and how the public schools distort and lie about history. That is, I guess, EXCEPT American history from 1860 - 1880. Lincoln's presidency, the "Civil" War, Reconstruction, all that is true, just all the other stuff before and after is wrong. *eyeroll*
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 3:23PM
Sure, Lincoln was a bad person (though FDR was much worse), but the South's cause was worse as a cause than Lincoln was as a person.
Gr0w1er| 6.8.10 @ 5:35PM
"...Sic semper tyrannis?..."
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 9:29AM
But Jefferson Davis, he was a saint sent from Heaven?
William R| 6.8.10 @ 10:01AM
No one is saying Jefferson Davis was a saint. But he was right. The Constitution would have never been ratified unless the states could seceded if the Federal Government got out of control. Now the FEDS can do anything they want to the states. And the rest is history.
Levin is a Neocon not a conservative.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 10:32AM
The South belonged to Southerners, but the South took upon itself an impossible task of projecting Southern life into the huge Western territories.
The South bit off more than it could chew.
William R| 6.8.10 @ 10:43AM
Just to show how bad Lincoln really was google the Corwin Amendment. He fully supported it.
"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State"
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 3:36PM
AS a person, Lincoln was bad, disingenuous, he couldn't say, "I fight not for the negro, but for posterity"
Saying "I fight not for the negro, but for posterity" looks very bad in the newspapers.
But the South was ludicrously over-ambitious in trying to gain so many slave states in the West, it was comparable to Napoleon attempting to absorb all of Europe from Spain to Russia in his Continental system. The South's ambition would ave led to Bleeding Kansas Multiplied.
On the grounds of devolution, the Confederacy was correct; on slavery, Yankees were hypocrites, and Lincoln wasn't interested in the Emancipation Proclamation until years after the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
But the Western territories attraction to slave-staters derailed their... gross ambitions. Okay, I wont use the word 'hubris' anymore.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 4:12PM
Alan the South had no real desire for "slave" states in the West. The climate and land were not conducive to the use of slaves. It was a political consideration, as the south saw the north intent on overwhelming them in the congress.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 5:33PM
"It was a political consideration, as the south saw the north intent on overwhelming them in the congress."
Then the South was as disingenuous concerning the West as Lincoln was towards the South. To be slave states the Western territories would have had to be settled by slave owners and Confederate sympathizers and the territories would had to have become slave states.
Mimi| 6.8.10 @ 9:35AM
Mr. Lord: What a beautiful, sensitive portrayal of Jack Levin's book. Mark and his father were oh so RIGHT to have it re-published as a gift to us at this TIME in our History. I want to thank you Jeffrey, for all your writing......but this one was PROFOUND and soul strengthening.
Dick Simmons| 6.8.10 @ 10:46AM
Leave it to Alan to throw a cat into the dog pound. For myself, I took time this past Memorial Day to hike up an over-grown hill to a half forgotten plot to plant a flag on my great-great uncle's grave. Pvt. Nathaniel Simmons, WV13th Inf. US who left his farm and his family to fight the Slave Power. Regardless what you think of Lincoln, this nation would never have grown to greatness and indeed later saved the world, if we had been divided. Slavery was a moral atrocity, a stench in God's nostrils and no amount of post-war equiviquating, then or 150 years later can change that.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 12:48PM
What tripe! The US saved the world? Shortly after the war's end we then went on to slaughter the Indians on behalf of the railroads, we then fought an unnecessary war with Spain and in order to promote democracy in the Philipines we killed 200,000 Filipinos. Wilson then involved us in WW1 so we could have " a seat at the table", and in his foolishness supported measures against Germany that left them economically destitute and opened the door for Hitler to come in and get the people's support. Not to mention his ignorance of Europe's history and the unnatural countries he helped create only bringing more rancor into a volatile situation.
Let's see we unconstitutionally funded the Afghan freedom fighters who became the Taliban, we gave arms, weapons and chemicals to one Saddam Hussein and then later invaded Iraq in defiance of the US constitution which says nothing of preemptive attacks. Remember during the time of the framing of the US constitution there was the constant threat of sudden invasions by the Indians yet the framers never even debated such a concept as the President being able to initiate a war which neither congress nor the state legislatures had asked to be enacted.
We constantly bully the world, interfere with the government of sovereign nations and you have the temerity to say we have saved the world?
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 3:46PM
"and in his foolishness supported measures against Germany that left them economically destitute and opened the door for Hitler to come in and get the people's support."
Yes, but by 1939, Versailles was not what was motivating National Socialists. They, like Napoleon, wanted to grab Russia-- with predictable results.
Even if the South had won the war, they still would have had to deal with the West;
so what would the South do?, was the South going to set a huge slave-empire from Florida to Washington state??
Len| 6.8.10 @ 4:08PM
Wouldn't have happened, IMO. The southern states have a particular climate that enabled slavery for one. For another, eventually the economic realities of slavery and the inability to control a rising slave population would've done away with it. Please let's not act as it was Lincoln's intent to free the slaves and particularly free them in America, when he continually made efforts to relocate them in other countries and did not believe that blacks were the equal of whites and did not want them participating in civil society. His personal distaste for slavery was not the same as a love for the black people or a desire to see them benefiting from the American "experiment".
Tell me, in Lincoln's America, where blacks would not be able to participate in the government how could they ever truly be free? Also, if it wasn't for the Reconstruction and the use of newly freed slaves by the north to impose it's will on the south would we have this vile artificial racial animosity that exists today? Would the KKK ever have come into existence? Would there have been the blowback of Jim Crow laws if we had experienced a more gradual departure from slavery?
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 5:43PM
"Would the KKK ever have come into existence?"
Don't know about the rest of what you wrote, but the KKK would have come into existence because of the racial-sexual factor: whites generally didn't like miscegenation at all. That is no longer the case, or not nearly as much, for instance there aren't lynchings today for that reason;
but it WAS a big factor in the past.
Purpleguy| 6.8.10 @ 6:24PM
Ever hear of the Whiskey Rebellion? And you Love America? Why are you still here?
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 11:03AM
I reflect often on the War between the States. I have read several "alternate histories" of the way things "might" have been. (fictional to be sure).
One thing is almost certain in my mind. Without the "man" Abraham Lincoln, there would be no "United States of America".
Question; what would we be instead?
I do know what we are, and I know what we still can be, with courage, and forgiveness of one another.
Courage, because our body politic has been invaded by the most virulent virus known to mankind. (Pardon the looooooong-hand...). It seems to me to be a combination of communism, slavery to an evil religion that names itself "slavery", and a Godless crony-capitalism allowing it.
Second, "forgiveness of one another".
For a couple of hundred million adults, agreeing on everything is simply a stupid daydream. There has to be a mutual willingness to give and take...and live and let live.....on a level playing field perhaps?
As a final note, please remember that Ronald Reagan put a couple of hundred million American lives on the line when he dared the Soviet Union to "take your best shot".
How would Ronald Reagan be remembered if the Soviet Union had punched the red button while we were still unprepared as a result of Carter gutting our military?
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 11:20AM
Ken, there is no united States of America. Lincoln left us with the United States. BIG big difference.
George S| 6.8.10 @ 11:58AM
What would we be if it weren't for Lincoln and the confederacy established? Who knows, but the stage would have been set for further splintering of the countr(ies) and, maybe, by now we'd be a diverse, multi-lingual group of people without a sense of our history, with selfish, narrow interests that we demand everyone else pay for, separated along lines of race, creed, gender, and language. So... maybe Lincoln postponed the inevitable?
But if we stop and look at the US from Lincoln's point of view, we could see why he was determined to save the Union. Lincoln was the first generation of Americans born into the newly created United States. You don't think that put a guilt trip on his head as he and other teenagers looked at old, maimed veterans of the Revolution? Don't you think they wanted to make the same sacrifice to further the gift that the Founders -- most of whom died before Lincoln was born -- handed to them? So I can't see Lincoln, once President, saying "sure... go ahead and split up the country our forefathers died for and handed to me on a silver platter... sure, throw it away, that great experiment in government of the people of a United States..."
Lincoln did not want to be the President that fractured the United States. Lincoln did not cause the conditions that led to the war but I am sure that he saw a united country as the solution that had to stand above all else. To call that tenacity being tyrannical is, I think, a gross mischaracterization of the man.
Margie| 6.8.10 @ 12:06PM
George S.,
Well said, sir.
Margie| 6.8.10 @ 12:03PM
Ken (Old Tex),
Only you could say it the way you say it.
You're awesome. You know I have to agree with every single word.
I thank God for you, sir.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 3:03PM
"One thing is almost certain in my mind. Without the "man" Abraham Lincoln, there would be no "United States of America"."
Really. If the south seceded, what would have happened to the United States of America? They would have... what? How would they have ceased to exist?
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 3:51PM
Why don't you blame it on Buckley, Toddard; WFB was the totalitarian apologist of all totalitarian apologists to you.
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 6:32PM
"How would they have ceased to exist?"
Because, Toddard, where would the seceding have stopped. Every time a state, county, or city didn't like a law that effected them, they would have seceded.
Try reading President Lincoln's first inaugural address. He made a very good argument against secession: "If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority."
http://libertyonline.hypermall.....oln-1.html
JimP| 6.8.10 @ 11:30AM
Numerous columnists here and on other conservative blog sites have written pieces holding Lincoln up as a champion of limited government and individual liberty/self determination. Were that true he would not have conducted the war against the seceding states to force them at bayonet point to remain a part of the Union and he would not have violated the Constitutional rights of tens of thousands of Northern citizens while conducting the war. The historical record SHOWS CLEARLY that Lincoln was the champion neither of limited government or individual liberty/self determination. He WAS against slavery, but not for equality of the races. He did talk the talk exceedingly well, when it behooved him to do so for political reasons, but he did not walk the walk. Therefore, he is a poor example to use when arguing for limited government and individual liberty.
Many people, mainly Northerners, are emotionally invested in the idea that the North was on the side of the angels and fought a righteous crusade to free the black slaves against the forces of evil, tyrannous bigots in the South who mercilessly and endlessly beat and abused the slaves. In their minds they are better people for being born outside the South or siding with the Union. This may make people feel good about themselves, but it is NOT historically accurate. It is so inaccurate, as a matter of fact, that it turns the "Civil" War into a fairy tale. In truth the North, even after ending slavery in its states, was still deeply, and very willingly, involved in the continuation of slavery in the U.S. and the Western Hemisphere. The New England slave trade continued right up to the beginning of the war. Northern leaders- political, opinion making and economic- had agendas, motives and incentives, other than freeing slaves or saving the Union for patriotic or Constitutional reasons, to conduct the war. The North willingly reaped enormous financial benefits from the slave produced agricultural products of the South: and willingly tolerated the continuation of the New England slave trade, after it was outlawed by Congress in 1809, and reaped enormous financial benefits from it as well; and over 70% of Federal taxes were paid by the South. These taxes were used to fund internal improvements overwhelmingly in the North. The South fought the ‘Civil’ War over slavery, among other issues. The North fought the war over taxes, and economic hegemony over the South, that would be lost if the South were allowed to secede. Slavery was later used as a propaganda tool to justify the war and it became a myth after the war was over. Neither side can lay claim to moral superiority regarding slavery.
Go to slavenorth.com and read about the hypocrisy of the North regarding slavery. It’s all documented and you can fact check for yourselves. This is but one of many places to start in learning the complete history about slavery in America and the “Civil” War.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:01PM
"The New England slave trade continued right up to the beginning of the war. Northern leaders- political, opinion making and economic- had agendas, motives and incentives, other than freeing slaves or saving the Union for patriotic or Constitutional reasons, to conduct the war. The North willingly reaped enormous financial benefits from the slave produced agricultural products of the South: and willingly tolerated the continuation of the New England slave trade, after it was outlawed by Congress in 1809, and reaped enormous financial benefits from it as well; and over 70% of Federal taxes were paid by the South. These taxes were used to fund internal improvements overwhelmingly in the North. The South fought the ‘Civil’ War over slavery, among other issues. The North fought the war over taxes, and economic hegemony over the South, that would be lost if the South were allowed to secede. Slavery was later used as a propaganda tool to justify the war and it became a myth after the war was over. Neither side can lay claim to moral superiority regarding slavery."
This is the first good riposte to Mr. Lord's piece; but it confuses the issue: if neither side could lay
claim to moral superiority regarding slavery, then the south's was a bad cause, it's coveting of the Western part of the Continent was grandiose, and both sides got their just desserts. Remember I wrote Jefferson Davis is in Hell? well, perhaps Lincoln is there too. He turns to Davis and says:
"Jeff, it's very hot here, but at least my side won the Civil War!"
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 7:09PM
JimP,
Yes, President Lincoln was a superb politian. But, I disagree with your premise that "[s]lavery was later used as a propaganda tool to justify the war [...]."
From President Lincoln's first inaugural address:
"I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that 'I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.'"
Slavery was thee main issue involved in the secessionist cause. This is why he dealt with it first, then secession, in his inargural. That was on March 4th, 1861, over a month before Ft. Sumter was shelled.
I'm no expert on the War Between the States. I agree President Lincoln acted un-constitutionally during the war. It is a very complex part of our history, that does not get taught well.
Years ago, I read, in an old history text book, an explanation of the cause of the war, which I still accept. It basically stated that it was firebrands, from the North and the South, that whipped up the emotions of people, that lead to war.
JimP| 6.8.10 @ 9:57PM
Nick,
Respectfully, Lincoln was talking the talk in his inaugural. In fact he even offered to take no action on slavery if the Southern states would not secede. A complete study reveals what I said as accurate, but you will not read it in the standard texts on the war or in the books written by Lincoln "hagiographers" as they are known. Thomas DiLorenzo's 'The Real Lincoln' gives an excellent summary with footnotes one can check on his/her own. Even though he has been slammed for this book, it is accurate and gives a complete picture. His is not the only source by any means, but his book is excellent and a good starting point to do more research if someone wants to verify that Lincoln was not out to end slavery until it was politically expedient to aid his war effort. Keep in mind, Lincoln did not free any slaves in the Northern states (yes, there were still some up North), or in the border states (KY, MO, MD & WV), or the slaves in Union occupied Confederate territory. In fact on at least one occassion he roundly admonished a Union General for freeing slaves in a Confederate area that the General's forces had taken. I can't recall his name at the moment, but this is a fact. Only very, very late in the war did the Union Army begin officially emancipating slaves and it was long after the Emancipation Proclamation. As far as I have been able to determine, Lincoln never officially freed the slaves except in those areas occupied by the Confederacy, as his proclamation reads, which was beyond the control of Lincoln and the Union Army.
We were all sold a bill of goods/fairy tale about Lincoln and the reasons the North went to war. I came to the truth about it all by accident. I never particularly cared one way or another. Now that I know the truth I want to share it in hopes that we the people will not get sold another bill of goods. Lies of this magnitude need to be exposed.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 1:16AM
JimP,
I saw Mr. DiLorenzo interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN years ago, and always wanted to get his book. I agree, as I stated, that this national tragedy is not taught well.
My only quibble was with your assertion that the issue of "slavery was later used as a propaganda tool to justify the war."
President Lincoln's first inaugural address shows that it was part of the election campaign and the reason for secession.
JimP| 6.9.10 @ 8:27AM
Nick,
I didn't say that it was not part of Lincoln's campaign and I did not say that it was not one of the reasons the South seceded. Please re-read my comments. The facts are that Lincoln went to war over taxes and the North remaining economically dominant over the South. He did not do so over slavery. It is accurate that he used slavery as a proganda tool for political purposes to aid his war effort. Di Lorenzo's book cover's this aspect and you can verify it by using the footnotes.
Respectfully,
JimP
JimP| 6.9.10 @ 9:15AM
Nick,
Respectfuly, here is some of the supporting info re my points on Lincoln.
On March 2, 1861, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (which passed the House of Representatives on February 28) that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery in the Southern states. (See U.S. House of Representatives, 106th Congress, 2nd Session,
The Constitution of the United States of America: Unratified Amendments, Document No. 106-214, presented by Congressman Henry Hyde (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, January 31, 2000)
In his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln promised to support the amendment just passed by Congress proposing that no law could be passed abolishing slavery, even though he believed that the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with Southern slavery. As he stated:
“I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
In an August 22, 1862, letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln explained to the what the war was about:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 4:17PM
JimP,
Thanks for the clarification.
I thought you were trying to claim, as others have, that slavery had nothing to do with secession and that President Lincoln used slavery later in the war to justify trying to save the Union. That slavery was an after thought or that it didn't lead to the war.
I'm aware of the facts you have posted, so I know President Lincoln was not the saint that he is portrayed in the history books. I will have to get Mr. DiLorenzo's book.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 11:39AM
This continual hagiographic effort on behalf of Lincoln is ridiculous. Although one poster has already pointed this out Lincoln was not fighting for freedom, but for the state , or in his words, the "union". Communism anyone? This is always the crime in communist countries that people are thrown in jail for, crimes against the state. Not crimes against person or property for which the government is supposed to exist for, but to preserve itself at the expense of the people.
In Lincoln' case he shut down NORTHERN newspapers, and threw editors in jail, he arrested duly elected officials in Maryland for opposing his war, threw thousands of protesters in jail, violating habeas corpus which power was clearly lodged with the congress, sent troops to New York to fire on those protesting the unconstitutional conscription being enacted, sent his goosesteppers to intimidate NORTHERN voters at the polls, OH!! and then there' the matter of the hundreds of thousands of lives spent to force the south to remain in a VOLUNTARY union.
It is also ridiculous to say that Lincoln was fighting for those principles contained in the Declaration of Independence, when the D of I states the following..."When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.......governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.....So we have Lincoln using the mechanism of a government that created to benefit the states to subjugate the states who only wished to depart in peace and had their hand forced at a location 500 miles from the closest northern state, where not one life (except an accident) was lost and no northern state marched upon.
So the Declaration of Independence evinces the principle of secession, or in other words the sovereign people exercising that sovereignty within their determined polity to establish another form of governance as they see as best for them. What about the US constitution? Well the US constitution was created as an act of secession. Article 13 of the Articles of Confederation forbid any alteration other than in a given manner as follows........And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State. Yet the people chose to bypass this as is their sovereign right and form state conventions for the purpose of establishing another form of government.
Lincoln was a tyrant who celebrated the murder of civilians by Sherman and who cared nothing for the liberties of the people, but rather the 55 million a year that was coming from tariffs imposed on the southern states. This is what he SAID OUTRIGHT in his first inaugural address....The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.
A final word from Thomas Jefferson...."If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it."
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 12:01PM
Len,
your entire tirade began with "lie by conjugation".
Why should anyone pay any attention to the rest of your skewed half...or even three quarters ...truth:
""the "union", communism anyone?""
HIS BS aside, folks, I do wonder what would have happened if each of the agricultural States had "independently" quietly seceded.....instead of forming a "Confederacy" and starting beating the war-drums.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 12:21PM
Another easily refutable lie by a tired old man. It was Lincoln who refused to negotiate with the South in their overtures to buy back Ft. Sumter which was in the sovereign waters of South Carolina. It was Lincoln who congratulated Gustavus Fox for bringing about the incident which would rally political support to his cause which he did not have before. It was Lincoln who sent troops marching on the South and not the other way around.
Yet Tired Old Fool says it was the beating the war drums.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:06PM
Len,
both sides deserved each other, and both sides lost in some way; the South lost the war, and the North held large debts, and was morally suspect. But the slaves were freed.
So at least someone was a winner.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 5:47PM
...the casualties- mus'n't forget that.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 12:15PM
Ken you are a tired old fool who will never actually debate on facts, but ad hominem attacks or self proclaimed authority minus any substanstiation. That you refuse to acknowledge the similarity of what Lincoln did and communism merely illustrates your feeble mindedness. Lincoln employed force to compel people to remain within a system of governance they did not want, and placed the "union" above people's lives. Communism does the same by imposing a collectivism form of government that places the state above the people. The only difference is in degree.
The facts that I listed are historical facts that cannot be disputed. They are a matter of record, so for you to say that they are BS shows your foolishness in attempting to dispute what all can easily discover for themselves. It is no wonder that in your voluminous huffing and puffing here (you sure like give your opinion) you never make a constitutional argument or found an argument on the basis of life, liberty and property. I doubt you would recognize liberty or the US constitution if either jumped up and bit you in the arse.
NeilBJ| 6.8.10 @ 3:47PM
Len:
I became educated about the "real" Lincoln by reading Thomas J. DiLorenzo's book, "The Real Lincoln." It was a real eye-opener. I had naively assumed along with many others that there must be a reason why we venerate Lincoln with holidays, monuments, and images on money. After all, he "saved the Union and freed the slaves."
More people need to know who the real Lincoln is and judge him by his deeds and not his words, as eloquent as they may be.
Now that I know who the real Lincoln is, I cringe at the thought that the nation has honored this despicable, Constitution ignoring tyrant with memorials in Washington and on Mount Rushmore.
Maybe I have read too much into what he has "accomplished", but I believe that Lincoln is one of the few people who truly changed the course of history and changed it in a really fundamental way.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 12:52PM
Whew!
Pedants, scream when you puncture "their" take on the facts, don't they?
Would anyone here like to help me find the words: "To each according to his needs" in the speech below??
""Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ""
Amenbro wrote a splendid post somewhere around here. I hope each of you will read it...or re-read it.
Out of a sense of responsibility, I have studied the War Between The States for forty years. I have even read diary excerpts and letters home from many of the soldiers on both sides who fought the war to see their perspectives.
Bottom line, the war was fought due to pedants... on both sides, and all in all, a heartbreak for America.
Sadly, folks, we might be "right there" again today.
I hope each of you will print-out and hang the preamble to our constitution on your wall.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 1:11PM
Heh,
At the risk of doing an "Alan Brooks" double posting, I DO have the Preamble on my wall. In my mind, the rest of the constitution is a nuts and bolts effort to embody and execute our declaraton of independence...and the preamble statement of purpose...for the constitution.
Thoughts?
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:12PM
The Constitution is a sheet of paper if we have no ethics.
And here is a deal: I wont double-post if you wont mention "shorthand for Communism" a dozen-- or so-- times a day. Everybody here knows you are an anti-communist, you don't have to prove it.
Mimi| 6.8.10 @ 5:35PM
Thanks Ken: " THAT THIS NATION, UNDER GOD,......SHALL HAVE A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM. What we are going thru now , in our own TIME this day ,June 8 2010, in the preceding months and until NOVEMBER, 2010...... IS... the pains 0f a long labour.... in " The New Birth of freedom" . In every generation.....The struggle continues. God be with us in our hopes , and our sense of duty to do what we can for FREEDOM'S sake!!!
RCV| 6.8.10 @ 1:01PM
Jeffrey - Thanks for a lovely column about a wonderful book. It doesn't surprise me, though, to see the kind of comments from people who profess to be "patriots" disparage both our country and our great President who preserved the Union. Very sad, but it shows their true colors.
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 7:11PM
RCV,
Are you surprised that the War Between the States is still being debated?
Where do you live, in a cave?
RCV| 6.8.10 @ 10:46PM
Nick - I said I wasn't surprised. I've known for a long time that many folks who pretend to be "patriotic Americans" are in fact neither. They despise this country, its genuine heroes like Lincoln, and long for a society they have romanticized - one in which other human beings were mere chattel. To even use the word "freedom-loving" for such people is revolting.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 1:04AM
RCV,
Yes, you did.
Somehow I missed that. I take back my sarcasm.
But, people who believe President Lincoln acted like a tyrant do not want to bring back slavery. That is a gross slander and calumny.
The issues are many and very complex. It is not as simple as you are trying to falsely assert.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 12:43PM
Yeah RCV, that's it. Its not that I and others have legitimate disagreements on Lincoln and his war, its that I need someone to mow my grass for free.
RCV do you even KNOW the % of Southerners who owned slaves in 1861?
RCV| 6.9.10 @ 11:03PM
Does the percentage remotely matter to the 3,950,000 human beings held in bondage in 1860 by the laws of those liberty-loving southern states. Do you have any conception of the breadth and depth of human suffering inflicted on those people? Do morals have no place in your analysis of the so-called "rights" of these tyrannical entities?
Len| 6.8.10 @ 1:20PM
I'll help you Old Fool,
We the People of the United States...So who is sovereign, DC or the people? The people, yet Lincoln violated this. Also, as the US constitution makes clear it is the people in their particular polities agreeing with other polities, not a national referendum.
Article 7, US constitution....The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.
Not the people as one nation, but the people in their particular governments compacting with the people of other governments for a mutually beneficial government to act on their behalf in regard to other countries and as a mediator between the states for commerce.
, in Order to form a more perfect Union, ..A more prefect union. A Union which had previously existed under the Articles of Confederation, and not one nation. As Article 2 declared of the union then Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.
As Madison said in the Federalist Papers........That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by the objectors; the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a MAJORITY of the people of the Union, nor from that of a MAJORITY of the States. It must result from the UNANIMOUS assent of the several States that are parties to it,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
Domestic tranquility is killing hundreds of thousand of people? Domestic tranquility and Justice are the northern states sending their military governors in to financially rape the southern states and refusing to take the military off the streets until certain amendments are ratified? Refusing to allow the southern states to lawfully elect their own officials?How does that jive with the Article 4 guarantee of a republican form of government?
provide for the common defence,
So invading the southern states to force the Union on them is actually defending them?
promote the general Welfare
So the obscenely high 40% tariffs that damaged the South's economy is actually an even application of welfare for the states?
and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
Do I really need to point out that governance at the end of a gun is not liberty?
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Margie| 6.8.10 @ 1:36PM
Len exhibits the Leftist Libertarian mindset. They scream "Freedom!" When in truth they want freedom form law, claiming everything under the sun is "Statist" and against ma's "rights." To them, everything ought to be legal~ abortion, illegal drugs, prostitution, etc. "As long as it don't hurt anybooody."
To understand how the Libertarian mind works, and how it is actually Liberalism and Leftist, go read David Horowitz. At Frontpagemag.com. He explains it beautifully.
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/0.....ur-of-the-“ron-paul-revolutionary”-mind-2/
Margie| 6.8.10 @ 1:38PM
Correction~ "man's rights". (above) .
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 1:50PM
Wow, talk about straw men! We oppose the tyrant Lincoln so we want~~~abortion and prostitution????? Wow. What a simple, SIMPLE mind.
What the simpleminded republican fails to grasp is that in Jefferson's united States of America, each sovereign State would make up its own mind on those things. Simple example is maybe Mass allows abortion and Texas doesn't, so if you don't like abortion you move to TX. In Lincoln's United States, the leviathan National Gubmint decides everything, so instead of an individual State restricting freedom so freedom-loving peoples can move to states where freedom is cherished, the national Gubmint restricts EVERYONE's freedoms, so where is there to go if you love freedom?
Margie| 6.8.10 @ 2:05PM
I'd rather be "simple" than twisted and convoluted, anyday, thanks.
Margie| 6.8.10 @ 2:46PM
I have terrible gas. I just ripped a loud one in my chair and I'm stewing in the pungent odor.
Mmmm.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 2:51PM
So just to clarify the freedom bestowed upon the States and to the people in the 10A is "twisted and convoluted?" The freedom for States to determine their own fate without interference of an intrusive, leviathan national government is "twisted and convoluted?" Did you really just write that?????
OK then.
Man I am glad folks like you were in the minority circa 1776.
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 7:44PM
Crusader,
Thomas Jefferson had some good points, at certain times in his life. But, he was wrong about a lot of things. He bought into the so-called "Enlightenment" claptrap.
Also, he had nothing to do with the Constitution, he was in France at the time, partying. Jefferson didn't even fight in the War for Independence. Unless you count his retreat from the British, as commander of Virginia's militia, when he was governor.
He also started what would become the democrat party.
Jefferson is the least of the Founders, in my opinion.
Len| 6.9.10 @ 9:01AM
Nick, while Jefferson had nothing to do with the actual framing of the US constitution he did have a role in the Bill of Rights. He urged Madison to put before the congress the amendments that the states had called for in ratifying the US constitution, and it is the Bill of Rights that as a further safeguard have helped delay our mad rush to tyranny.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 4:19PM
Len,
Thanks for the info.
It doesn't change my opinion of Mr. Jefferson.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 1:37PM
This thread proves my point. Linoln apologists name call and make stuff up, but never, NEVER argue in favor of what Lincoln did. Arrest the MD legislature and mayor of Baltimore, wage total war on women, children and--wait for it--black slaves in the South, send troops to kill 1000 anti-draft protestors in NYC, suspend habeus corpus, etc etc. They also never bring up the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation only "freed" slaves in "rebel" territory. Lincoln was content to leave those in bondage as long as they were in bondage to the Union army. Yeah, that Lincoln sure loved him some slaves!
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:19PM
the Revolutionary War was v. violent too. Unless it is a legend, as a child Andrew Jackson was hit with a sword merely for refusing to polish a Redcoat officer's boots.
Can you imagine how violent the rest of the war was?
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 5:22PM
And the Revolutionary War was a war of--wait for it--SECESSION!
Again, if you admire Lincoln then realistically you can't complain about BHO. Just like if you thought the "Civil" War was a good thing and the Union was the good guys and the CSA was the bad guys, then you MUST believe the creation of our country was a criminal act perputrated by Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, et al. I would suggest you immediately denounce your citizenship and move to "Jolly Old."
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 6:00PM
Don't know if the Revolutionary War was morally correct, but it was expedient.
"Again, if you admire Lincoln then realistically you can't complain about BHO."
When do I complain about BHO?
Len| 6.8.10 @ 1:57PM
Margie, Margie, Margie the child who thinks she is a grownup. I'm discussing Lincoln and you feel the need to diverge into other subjects. Margie you little fool I have never condoned abortion as it is murder and you have slandered me. As a person owns themselves no one else has the right to violate that person. This is what makes murder, murder, as opposed to killing as an act of justice. Of course you are a good christian who believes in the fruit of the spirit such as gentleness, meekness oh and the command against bearing false witness.
No, you believe that you have the right to force others to comply with what you see as the appropriate private behavior. Jesus said to preach the gospel, but you would rather have outward compliance whether or not the heart is changed. HMM, inquisition anyone?
Margie, why don't you give me a biblical exposition on the purpose of government, and just what the Christians involvement is supposed to be? Here's what's amazing to me for so called Christians, God established a covenant with the nation of Israel and yet never told them to go and intervene in the affairs of the world, but rather to be a light on a hill, or an example to the rest of the world of what happens when a people establish covenant with God, yet so called Christians place a country which has never covenanted with God at a higher level and believe that the US is supposed to monitor the affairs of the world.
BTW Margie, remember Solomon who experimented with drink and such and had sex with thousands of women, yet was still the wisest man around? You claim that I don't know the mind of God due to my not being a christian yet you consistently misrepresent his will and contradict his express word due to pharisaical desire for outward conformity. You think that government exists to direct peoples moral actions, rather than enact justice and protect the people. Does morality matter or true submission to God that manifests itself in a life that is not dependent on earthly pleasures? Hypocrite, remove your own beam!
Margie| 6.8.10 @ 2:09PM
Oh, the lovely Toddards of the world. All they have the ability to do is attack the truth and those who speak it.
The Leftist Libertarian mindset is what I spoke of, and what I said was exactly the truth. Now grow up, and face it, liar.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 2:20PM
Margie what truth? I cited the historical record and you're calling me a liar. Are you that far gone? BTW again you prove you are a hypocrite as you've claimed to be a Christian yet call me a liar, and refuse to even attempt to refute me. You are ridiculous. If I'm lying then prove it. Are you saying Lincoln didn't support violate habeas corpus, didn't send his troops to kill those protesting conscription, didn't arrest legitimately elected state legislators, didn't shut down newspapers, etc. His apologists acknowledge these facts, they merely pass them off as necessary for Lincoln to be a benevolent dictator(??).
Are you actually going to attempt to say that Lincoln waged his war to free the slaves, despite his 1st inaugural address where he stated he had no desire to and would back a constitutional amendment (the Corwin amendment) to ensure the practice of slavery. The war was not about freeing slaves, but consolidating power.
ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 2:26PM
Len, Len, len...who plays pretend he is an American...
"Julie Julie Julie" ... a line from a movie. Anyone here remember who said that line?
Len, who is a communist "plant", is slamming a Christian woman here. Fortunately for him he will never face me over open sights.
As old and "tired" as I am, we Texicans know how to deal with his ilk.
Folks,
Margie forced him to expose himself for what he is.
Heh!
Good job, Margie!
He "doesn't know God from a goat"....in my father's words.
Nevermind!
He thinks he dies...and becomes nothing more than "wasted dog-food" when they either bury him or cremate him. Tee Hee!
Little does he understand that our Creator will remind him of his "mistake"...for eternity.
Please, Len, repent and take the scales from your eyes. Please.....be willing to be "born again".
Quit "kicking the pricks"....please!
If you "win"...........you lose.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 2:46PM
Ken, both you and Margie are the ones who initiated within this forum calling me names and you both claim to be Christians. How ridiculous. Oh and you openly mock me with your dog food comment and bear false witness against me by calling me a communist plant with no evidence other than your opinion. You fool yourself old man concerning your righteousness. You show no humility in your interaction with others, no desire to actually demonstrate love, only condescension and I am supposed to repent?
This is not to mention you will never engage in a discussion of facts or on the basis of what the US constitution actually says.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 2:01PM
Crusader,
Are you welcoming us to 1861?
Is that what you truly crave?
Do you really want to re-fight that war?
Let me give you a clue, dumbunny. If the Confederacy had ENDED black slavery...on their own... as part of their constitution, would the war have been fought?
Who knows.
One thing I DO know! The Confederacy never figured out the value of logistics and "productive capability".
They also never figured out the power of "united command".
In history since...we have learned...and prospered thereby.
So,
Where might we be in light of subsequent history?
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 2:46PM
Ken, you must be getting senile in your old age. Either that or all those 40 years of studying the war has been for naught. I'll type slowly.
Yes, the war would still have been fought, as Lincoln's objective, stated IN HIS OWN WORDS documented a few posts up, was to "preserve the union." It was not and never ever was to free the slaves. That and ensure his railroad buddies were generously compensated on the backs of Southern tariffs.
Again, the best the Lincoln crowd has got is to call names. Dumbunny huh? Oh well, I've been called worse I guess.
As far as the comment about welcoming us to 1861, well I don't know what that means exactly. I haven't called for the secession of States, or the reinstitution of slavery, or the deportaton of blacks to Liberia and Central America as proposed by, umm, oh yeah that slave-loving fella Lincoln. Just merely pointed out the truth about Lincoln.
Tell me Ken, since you studied for 40 years and all, can you tell me why if Lincoln so loved the slaves and wanted to free them and such why as a state politician he NEVER introduced legislation in the Illinois House to repeal Illinois' immigration policy that forbade freed blacks from immigrating to Illinois? Can ya tell me that Ken? Just curious.
Name calling in 5, 4, 3, 2, ~~~
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 2:36PM
"Descendent sons literal and figurative, native-born and immigrant-born, of those devoted to the principles written into the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Right"
You mean like the principle that "whenever any form of government becomes destructive to (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it", i.e. the principle that secession is an inalienable right?
Or, Mr. Lord, do you yourself reject the principles in the Declaration?
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:21PM
What good is the spirit without the letter?
Jeffrey Lord| 6.8.10 @ 4:33PM
SL....
Not to get picky here, but you seem to have left something out of your highly selective quote. Let me capitalize the key points.
In full the correct quote is:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, that THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, that among these are LIFE, LIBERTY and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. That to SECURE THESE RIGHTS, Governments are instituted among Men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
SL...a government based on slavery, where the government did not have the consent of the governed (that would be slaves) is specifically mentioned as a key principle of the Declaration. There was no "principle of secession" from a duly elected government ever mentioned.
Nice try, though.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 5:23PM
Then do you believe the government of the united States of America from 1776-1860 was illegitemate?
Jeffrey Lord| 6.8.10 @ 6:38PM
The government of the United States began in 1789, based on the Constitution written in 1787.
No states left the union between 1789 and 1860. While slavery was immoral, it was not illegal. It was being dealt with within the confines of the Constitution, and would have eventually lost out because opponents were well on their way to outnumbering supporters. There was nothing illegitimate about America's quite Constitutional government. There was everything un-Constitutional about 11 states leaving.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 7:32PM
And? The government of the United States was "a government based on slavery, where the government did not have the consent of the governed" until after the Civil War. Slavery was not made illegal in the United States until the passage of the 13th Amendment, after the Confederacy ceased to exist. You argue that because the CSA had "a government based on slavery, where the government did not have the consent of the governed" they were not entitled to independence. The US was also "a government based on slavery, where the government did not have the consent of the governed". So the united States were not entitled to independence?
I know this isn't rocket science, Mr. Lord - this should be easy for you to rebut.
Jeffrey Lord| 6.9.10 @ 12:23AM
It is.
Had the 13 colonies been given the same chance as the Confederate states they would not have rebelled. England denied Americans their rights - and Americans, demanding those rights (representation etc) - rebelled. Confederates were never denied their rights - they preemptively walked out - of, among other places, the US Senate, where they had the same equal rights as other states.
Seriously, a defense of slavery - a major pillar of the Democratic Party - is not a great strategy.
Absent the Civil War slavery would eventually have been outlawed by passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments - which, by the way - were opposed by Democrats AFTER the Civil War, along with a series of Civil Rights bills.
S.L. Toddard| 6.9.10 @ 7:58AM
"Had the 13 colonies been given the same chance as the Confederate states they would not have rebelled."
That does not address, much less rebut, my argument. You did not argue that they were not entitled to independence because their rights weren't violated - you argued that the CSA were not entitled to independence because they established "a government based on slavery, where the government did not have the consent of the governed". If having "a government based on slavery, where the government did not have the consent of the governed" is a disqualifier for independence, then the US was not entitled to independence either.
So you are conceding that this argument has been refuted, and moving on to another (that the southern states didn't have their rights violated etc)?
Len| 6.9.10 @ 9:05AM
Mr. Lord you are a very confused individual. "slavery would eventually have been outlawed by passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments" Only the 13th actually outlaws slavery and even after being conquered by the north, the south still only ratified these amendments at gunpoint. More likely that slavery would fail due to it's economic inefficiencies and constant social pressures.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 11:25AM
If I remember my self-taught history correctly, need to look it up I know, but didn't 2 Northern States (Ohio & NJ I think) rescind their ratification of the 14th based on the way the Fed Govt extorted the Southern States during Reconstruction?
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 8:04PM
Please enlighten me how secession is unconstitutional. Is there a Constitutional Amendment outlawing it? If not, wouldn't secession, being something only a State could do, be one of those apparently inconvenient rights delegated to the States and the people in the 10th Amendment?????
Again, why would secessionists make secession unconstitutional, and if it were, why did folks in the North threaten to seceed when Jefferson was president?
Again, the States weren't seceeding from government. They were seceeding from a voluntary union.
Not to mention you didn't answer my straightforward question. You seem to have a beef with the whole consent of the governed thing and slavery. OK. I will ask a second time:
Do you believe the united States of America had an illegitimate government from 1776 - 1860? It is a simple enough question.
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 8:44PM
Crusader,
The Articles of Confederation begin: "Articles of Confederation and [PERPETUAL] Union between the states of [...]." (emphasis mine)
The ratification of the U.S. Constitution did not repeal this provision.
President Lincoln made this point in his first inaugural address:
"Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787 one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was 'TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION.'
"But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is LESS perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity."
Len| 6.8.10 @ 9:16PM
The Articles of Confederation begin: "Articles of Confederation and [PERPETUAL] Union between the states of [...]." (emphasis mine)
The ratification of the U.S. Constitution did not repeal this provision.
The above was a joke right?? You're trying to say that the Articles of Confederation hold and have the same power as the present US constitution. The articles of Confederation were seceded from by enacting the present US constitution.
Let me help you, Article 13 of the A of C......And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.
The Articles of Confederation expressly forbade any alteration of the form of government other than unanimously through the congress. The people of the states opted out of that constitution through state conventions ratifying another structure of governance. THEY SECEDED!!!! They left that union to form another and the 1st congress was in session without all the former states having joined the new union.
This further establishes the principle in the Declaration of Independence that the sovereign people are always free to determine that form of governance most conducive to their happiness. The individual is sovereign and joins with other individuals to form a polity to enable a society to have legal recourse and power to enforce that which is decided in the courts concerning the rightfuland just laws protecting property, person and liberty. There is no collectivism, there is no state ascendant over the people, that which compels the people through positivistic laws is to be rejected. That which uses force to keep people under a form of governance is slavery regardless of degree.
OH, BTW you've clearly never read the Articles of Association as no governmental structure was enacted through them. Try again the Articles of Confederation which state in Article 2....Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled
Got that?? Free, independent and sovereign.
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 11:45PM
Len,
Why would the several states agree to enter into a "perpetual union," if they thought they could leave whenever they wanted?
Did they not understand what the word "perpetual" meant? Do you?
The provisions of the 13th Article, of the Articles of Confederation, were started in Philedelphia, in 1787, and finished when New Hampshire ratified the U.S. Constitution on June 21, 1788.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 12:34AM
Also, being in a "perpetual Union" does not surrender a state's sovereignty, freedom, and independence.
That is, except to secede.
Because that had been "expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."
Got that??
Len| 6.9.10 @ 9:16AM
Nick I've already addressed some of your errors, but you seem to not grasp them. Anyway,
Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states
You're trying to pick and choose by saying that the perpetual union continues, while the A of C do not. Either the entirety of the A of C are still in effect or they are not, and the US constitution is in effect as being the new choice of a form of governance and compact.
You also ignore what I point out before that the states ratified a new instrument of governance despite the 13 Article prohibiting it. There is also the 7th Article.....No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue.
Do you see? Despite the express prohibitions against forming an union in another manner the states went ahead and did it anyway. They did this because it was recognized that the people in their respective polities are always sovereign and always retain the right to determine for themselves of their own free will that form of government most beneficial to their desired ends.
Also, again the 1st Congress went into session in violation of the A of C, without all the states having ratified the US constitution. To say then that the perpetual union was never repealed is highly fallacious as the entire instrument of the A of C was discarded, thus...We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 5:21PM
Len,
I'm not picking and choosing. It was the 6th Article, not the 7th, by the way.
The 6th and 13th Articles are not outright prohibitions. They list the conditions that must be met for the actions to be lawful.
The conditions required by the 13th Article were all met. The 13th Article also states that "the union shall be perpetual," that is PERMANENT.
The U.S. Constitution nowhere states that it is repealing the Articles of Confederation. You'd think the Framers would have stated something so important, if it were true.
The Constitution amended the Articles of Confederation, per the 13th Article. Provisions in the Articles survived in the Constitution. Like determining peace and war, and making treaties, among others.
Although, I will grant that the opposite is also true. It would have been just as easy for the Framers to deny the states the power to secede in Article 1, Section 10, of the U.S. Constitution.
Unless, of course, they were all on the same page, and all agreed that the states had agreed to become a PERMANENT UNION in 1778.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 5:39PM
Len,
I just read Mr. Lord's response below. I can't believe I forgot about that prohibition. So, disregard my statement about the opposite being true.
Seciton 10 of Article I amends Section 2 of Article 6:
"No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the united States in congress assembled [...]."
- 6th Article of Confederation
"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation [...]."
-Article I, Section 10, U.S. Constitution
Under the Articles of Confederation, states could enter into alliances with each other, with the consent of Congress. This was amended by the Constitution, and prohibited.
So, states that had entered into a permanent Union, could not enter into a confederacy with other states in the permanent Union.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 9:21PM
The Constitution REPLACED the Articles. The Articles also specified the staes were sovereign, and created an even weaker federal govt than teh Constitution did. Perpetual in my reading refers to the Articles.
Again, you would have us believe the very same men who just seceeded from the most powerful nation on earth would forbid secession in their new constitution.
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 11:57PM
Crusader,
"The Constitution REPLACED the Articles."
The U.S. Constitution AMENDED the Articles of Confederation.
"Perpetual in my reading refers to the Articles."
It specifically states: "[...] perpetual Union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia."
The Articles of Conferderation could not be "perpetual", because the 13th Article allowed for them to be changed in the future. The preamble is clearly stating that the Union between the 13 states would be perpetual, i.e. permanent.
If it was the Articles of Confederation that were "perpetual", as you claim, are you arguing that the original 13 states are still bound by them?
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 9:29PM
Nick, further, my simple question is being avoided by the author and also by you. That is,
Allowing that the specific right to State secession is not mentioned in the US Constitution, would it not be understood that this was a right (along with any others not specifically delegated to the federal govt) retained by the States under the 10th Amendment?
The Founders was purposely specific with respect to the Federal Govt's responsibilities/rights and purposely ambiguous with respect the the States' and the peoples' rights. Would you rather have it the other way around? To me, and granted I am not an Ivy League egghead lawyer (I'm just a barbarian) in a nutshell the Constitution basically sez:
Federal govt can do this, this, this and this. Everything else we didn't mention? Yeah that's for the sovereign States and the People.
Am I wrong?????
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 12:26AM
Crusader,
I would agree with you about the 10th Article of Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as it concerns secession, if you take the Constitution out of the context of history.
But, I cannot ignore history. As I stated above, I agree with President Lincoln's arguments. The original 13 states entered a PERPETUAL Union in 1778. All subsequent states came from U.S. territory, or existing states, and joined the PERPETUAL Union.
Without the history of the 13 Colonies, first becoming an Association in 1774; then making "A Declaration by the Representatives of the United Colonies of North-America, Now Met in Congress at Philadelphia, Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms" in 1775; then declaring themselves free and independent states in 1776; and finally entering into a Confederacy and perpetual Union in 1778; the 10th Article of Amendment WOULD allow states to secede. The Constitution, by itself, is silent on the question.
But, there is a long history leading up to ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
Although, I agree, this didn't stop the New England states from threatening to secede early in the history of the Republic. But they didn't, because they couldn't win the argument.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 7:29AM
"I would agree with you about the 10th Article of Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as it concerns secession, if you take the Constitution out of the context of history."
You mean the context of history of, I dunno, the Founders seceding from England? THAT history?
This is the same arguments the anti-gun crowd makes. The Consitution is a "living" document and we can divine this and that from it based on the "times." No. It means what it says.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 5:54PM
Crusader,
We don't have a "Declaration of Secession," do we?
The United States, in Congress assembled, declared themselves Free and Independent states and that they were absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown.
This is not the same as leaving a mutual alliance. The colonies were British territory. The Founders knew they would have to fight for it.
The Founders also listed their grievances and spent over a decade trying to resolve them. The South should've done the same.
You didn't answer my question above, so I will repeat it:
If it was the Articles of Confederation that were "perpetual", as you claim, are you arguing that the original 13 states are still bound by them?
Jeffrey Lord| 6.9.10 @ 12:52AM
"No State shall enter into any... Confederation"
Article 1, Section 10. US Constitution
The "Confederate" States of America was, by definition, unconstitutional.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 7:24AM
I scrolled from the bottom up, but wow, this is even lamer when it stands alone.
Mr Lord, I'm thinking the government of, oh, I don't know, pick a country? How about Spain? OK, the government of Spain is unconstitutional, so maybe we should wage war against it???
To me, if I voluntarily enter a contract then as long as I remain a member the "rules" as they were apply to me. If I voluntarily leave the rules of that group no longer apply to me.
Again, I guess if you read the Constitution from a literal standpoint and take NO HISTORY into account, you could make this lame argument. However I am pretty sure the Founders meant entering into confederations with say, France or England and working against the whole while still part of the whole.
My question remains, if a State secedes does the US Constitution still apply to it? If so, does the UCMJ still apply to me even though I retired from active duty last year? How about this one---I just became a member of a gun club where I live. If I decide NOT to renew my membership next year, do I still have to volunteer time at the range cleaning up, or making target stands, or pay dues anyway? If I decide to leave, because say the president of the gun club says all of the members who live in my zip code have to pay 3x the dues as everyone else, can the president of the gun club form a posse, come to my house and force me to remain a member by threatening to kill me and my family and burn down my house? Just curious.
S.L. Toddard| 6.9.10 @ 8:02AM
"No State shall enter into any... Confederation"
Article 1, Section 10. US Constitution
The states of the Confederacy, having seceded from the Union, were (obviously) no longer bound by the United States constitution, just as the states, having seceded from Great Britain, were no longer subject to King George.
It's not rocket science, Mr. Lord.
S.L. Toddard| 6.9.10 @ 8:07AM
Jesus Nick. The Articles are no longer binding. That is not even up for debate - it's the very least you need to understand to debate the issue.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 6:00PM
I didn't claim the Articles of Confederation were still binding, Toddard. I stated they were amendend by the Constitution.
I agree with President Lincoln's argument that the 13 original states entered into a PERMANENT Union in 1778. The Constitution did not disolve this Union, nor did it repeal or amend the statement: "[...] the union shall be perpetual [...]."
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 9:32PM
So Mr Lord, since you say,
"While slavery was immoral, it was not illegal. It was being dealt with within the confines of the Constitution, and would have eventually lost out because opponents were well on their way to outnumbering supporters."
So are you saying here that the "Civil" war was unnecessary?
Jeffrey Lord| 6.9.10 @ 12:41AM
Yes - of course. Slavery would have been - and certainly should have been - outlawed within the confines of the Constitution. The Confederate states decided they were going to lose and so they tried to leave. And no, they did not have the right to leave. The Constitution quite specifically forbade states from entering into a "Confederation" - but 11 did. It was null. Void. Illegal. Unconstitutional.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 7:07AM
So if you agree the "Civil" war was unnecessary, does that make it unconstitutional? I mean after all, when Northern States refused to send troops in support of his war, Lincoln raised HIS OWN Army, even conscripted from Europe's jails. You know, stuff that is EXPRESSLY forbidden in the Constitution. So therefore are you saying that waging an unconstitutional war is OK as long as you feel the other side is being MORE unconstitutional? Two wrongs in this case make a right? Its ok to be unconstitutional as long as you're, I don't know, not AS unconstitutional as you think the other side is being???
Again, you CAN NOT show me where secession is forbidden in the Constitution. I posit that it is allowed per the 10th Amendment. Your argument against it is pretty much, "No it's not." OK then.
So a "confederation" is forbidden by the US Constitution? Confederation = secession?????
Ok then, well, when an individual State secedes does the US Constitution apply to it any longer? I mean that is like saying when you leave military service the UCMJ still applies to you. It just doesn't make any sense.
If you are OK with Lincoln's war then you really can't say too much about the Healthcare Bill, or the takeover of car companies, etc etc.
S.L. Toddard| 6.9.10 @ 8:08AM
"The Constitution quite specifically forbade states from entering into a "Confederation"
Forbids any state, or forbids states within the Union?
JimP| 6.8.10 @ 9:33PM
This is mistaken Constitutional thought, prior to the Northern victory. Jefferson and Madison, to name but two Founding Fathers, wrote about secession and its legality/Constitutionality. The right of secession was not questioned prior to the 'Civil' War. Lincoln himself is quoted in the Congressional Record in 1848 acknowledging the right of the states to secede. Virginia, as part of its Ratification of the Constitution documents reseverd the right of the Commonwealth to secede. It was not the only state to do so.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 5:25PM
Secession wasn't mentioned because it was UNDERSTOOD by every American at that time to be unalienable.
Also, States don't seceed from "government" as you say. They seceeded from the union of States.
Nice try though.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 6:05PM
What part of alter or abolish do you not understand? Am I to live under tyranny when the majority elects those who favor oppressing the people? How is what we have today despite elections any different that a protection racket? Give us your money to give to other people or we throw you in prison and take your property, government Soprano style.
When votes can be bought and sold as they are now? Are the living to be bound by the decisions of the dead? Who gets to decide when the structure of governance is no longer beneficial for those whom are governed?
"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48
You also continue to ignore that Lincoln was not waging the war for the purpose of freeing the slaves, and that the US constitution clearly prohibited interference with the internal laws of the states. Was and is slavery wrong? Yes. Isn't forcing people to accept your laws and governance at the end of a gun the same thing as slavery? Yes.
History 101| 6.8.10 @ 2:40PM
The states pre-exist the union. The states existed as political bodies before the American revolution. They are in fact called "states" because, unlike territories, states are more often sovereign and free. The people of these states traditionally lived semi-autonomously. The British government was a remote entity that held little sway over their lives. When it came to be believed that that traditional autonomy was being infringed upon the states banded together to throw the British out, with the justification that when citizens decide a government is destructive to their life liberty etc. it is their right to "alter or abolish" it. It was the entire justification for American independence, and was taken for granted to be inalienable - literally incapable of being surrendered or repudiated. Eventually, these states (who had won their independence fighting for the right to live free of a hostile government) formed a compact for mutual protection etc. Having just wagered their lives and fortunes to establish self-government and freedom from tyrannous government as inalienable rights in the states/former colonies, and being by nature mistrustful of remote authority, this compact set narrow boundaries for what the legal limits of the general government's authority were, and mandated that changes made to the compact need be made through the amendment process. Nowhere do the states surrender that right that they fought for - the right to "alter or abolish" government that is hostile to its people's interests - it is categorically and by definition incapable of being surrendered. The parties to a compact hold final authority as to whether the compact has been violated - not the body selected to execute that compact. Anything else would be ludicrous, and would have seemed so those revolutionaries. The most significant and fundamental difference between North and South (with regards to the causes of secession) is that the Southern states never discarded that right that they fought for in the revolution while we, in the North, renounced that right and abdicated the duty it compelled.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 2:53PM
Actually the old Federalists of the NE threatened to seceed in the early 1800s when they were pissed about President Jefferson's embargo w/England, but I'm guessing Ken and Margie never learned about that.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 2:57PM
Absolutely true. I don't suppose Ken is familiar with the Hartford Convention, and I know Marge isn't. They are not concerned with pesky little facts - they have been told to worship Lincoln and by George they'll do it.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:25PM
because, unlike territories, states are more often sovereign and free. "
Pray tell what would the territories existing in the Midwest and Far West at that time have become if such as yourself had had your way?
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:27PM
"Absolutely true. I don't suppose Ken is familiar with the Hartford Convention, and I know Marge isn't. They are not concerned with pesky little facts - they have been told to worship Lincoln and by George they'll do it. "
We don't worship Lincoln, anymore than you worship Jefferson Davis!
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 2:58PM
HISTORY 101
Dumb,bunny..........didn't your copy paste guy 'splain to break up stupid paragraphs...in your copy/pastes?
You are too stupid for words.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 3:01PM
Ken, why don't you google search that paragraph and tell us where it is "copy pasted" from.
Ken reads a paragraph like that and thinks "By gorry sum edjumacated egg-head musta writ it!"
Great Scot, man - visit a library.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 3:41PM
LOL!!!!!
Len| 6.8.10 @ 3:04PM
There we go again, Old Fool resorts to name calling, rather than attempting to deal with facts. What makes this funny is Crusaders post above with the countdown.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 3:08PM
" that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Effective demagoguery, to be sure, but malicious and fallacious all the same. Mr. Lord, when was the government of the United States in danger of perishing "from the earth" during Lincoln's presidency?
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:32PM
It wasn't, Lincoln was being hyperbolic;
but if you had been president 1861- '65, Toddard, America would have perished.
Thank God you were not president then, and thank Lincoln for what he did correctly that you wouldn't have done.
Jeffrey Lord| 6.8.10 @ 4:41PM
Since the government of the United States was composed of...yes...the states....and the several states involved decided to leave...the United States government, no longer United and having lost 11 states was in danger of perishing from the earth. Not rocket science.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 5:10PM
In much the same way England perished after the united States of America seceeded from it?
The "government of the United States was composed of the states?" Really? Is that how the Founders set it up?
Why did the previous 5, count 'em, 5 surviving preseidents who were all from the North all oppose Lincoln's war on Constitutional grounds?
Now that I think about it, the united States of America DID perish via Lincoln's war, only to be replaced with the United States.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 6:08PM
Perishing "from the earth" appears to be an exaggeration: Germany ceased to exist as an entity in 1945; but the United States would still have existed in some form if the Union had lost the Civil War.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 6:13PM
"Germany ceased to exist as an entity in 1945"
That is to say, Germany ceased to exist as a governmental entity in '45.
But the American Union, had it lost the war, would have existed as a government, albeit minus the 11 Southern states.
Occam's Tool| 6.8.10 @ 6:35PM
I must disagree, respectfully, with the above assertion by Mr. Brroks. Should the Union have failed, centripental pressures (keep in mind that New England also attempted nullification at one point before 1865) and Britain and France's greed might have spelled the end of the Republics on American soil. Lincoln foresaw that, and that is why he fought so hard.
Thom| 6.8.10 @ 7:05PM
So killing 194,000 men of fighting age and destroying the economy of the South for decades was a good defense against Britian and France? Not to mention the loss of 285,000 Union troops not available to fight off those pesky British and French in 1865. I believe the Germans and French had other plans and Britian was a bit tied down all around the world for this to have any credibility at all.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 7:37PM
Hahaha. What a brilliant tactician!
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 7:49PM
Also, Thom, note the depth of Occam's arguments - they're just assertions. "If the United States were 22 colonies at the end of the WBTS self-government would have eventually been destroyed." Imagine reading that and thinking "Oh my, there's a good argument."
Here is a perfectly valid rebuttal: Nuh-uh.
Or: No it would not.
That is how deep most arguments go here.
Thom| 6.8.10 @ 9:30PM
Lincoln worship always starts out ignoring the inconvenient historical facts; when that fails it moves to the emotional arguments; when that fails it usually falls back on some version of “we won”……… which makes my sole point that there is no principled argument involved but worship of an ideal surrounding a flawed flesh and blood man that made a terrible mistake and didn’t live to perhaps improve upon the outcome vs. those that followed him. The idea that Lincoln stood for what this nation was founded upon is pure nonsense through simple observation of the historical facts then and now. 145 years after Lincoln’s crusade freed the “slaves” 94% of their ancestors have volunteered to be modern day versions of the same slave party, the Democrat Party and I don’t see any Lincoln worshipers volunteering to free these slaves with another 6 million or so dead laying all over the ground in this country as the price. What Lincoln worshipers need to bear is in mind is that 618,000 number in 1860 terms and what kind of convictions it takes to have over 3.5 million men under arms go at it over something that was legal under the Constitution and the South did not go to war over. The simplistic view of the “War between the States” is usually the wrong view even among “educated” men.
Len | 6.8.10 @ 6:16PM
So the goal is to erect a monument called the United States or to enact a government on behalf of the states for their mutual protection and general welfare? Your being silly and sophomoric in your defense, and ignoring the fact that the strength of the union was not to be in it's size, but in the liberty of the people, otherwise China and the former USSR are likewise to be considered good governments. Yes the states entered into a mutual compact so that their combined strength would make them less vulnerable, but size was never and can never be the sole purpose of government. You also elevate Lincoln's statement concerning the perpetuity of the United States as gospel that would supercede the rights of the people to form government in the manner they desire. You also act as if his statement was the preamble to the US constitution, rather than common defense or general welfare. Who cares if the "United States" exist if the principles of life,liberty and property are ignored?
Len| 6.8.10 @ 6:33PM
Let me put it this way, the federal government exists for the benefit of the states, not vice versa as in the states existing for the benefit of the federal government. It is ludicrous and indicative of an unsound mind to even suggest that one group of people may employ force against others merely to maintain a behemoth that makes the first group servile.
BTW who ultimately gets to decide if a compact is violated? Those committing the violations or those who have been wronged? The southern states determined that by refusing to enforce the provisions in the US constitution for the return of slaves and by the imposition of high tariffs which tilted the economic balance in favor of the north that the instrument that was to benefit them was now being used to their detriment. It was their right to voluntarily the union that they had voluntarily entered.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 7:26PM
Mr Lord, could you please answer Crusader's question? When the colonies seceded from Great Britain, did Great Britain cease to exist - did it "perish from the Earth"? How would that happen anyway? If the United States consisted only of 22 states after the WBTS then what - Washington DC would have evaporated? Would the country have changed its name? How would it have perished?
Did it disappear during the WBTS? Please - if its "not rocket science" we could really use an explanation.
Margie| 6.8.10 @ 3:28PM
The lying Paleo-con artists and Leftist Libertarian liars are out in full force! What speciman of vileness to behold. You all truly deserve each other, and to where you are headed.
"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of Religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people." 2 Tim. 3:1-5.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 3:46PM
I'll bite. Margie, please tell me where I have lied in my assertions about President Lincoln. Not in my personal dislike for hte man, as that is opinion and everyone has one, but in the facts I've stated about how he carried out the war. If you can dispute that he suspended habeus corpus, or maybe you know something I don't with regard to his imprisonment of the MD legislature, please let me know. I value Truth, so if I am misinformed, please correct me. Do not hide behind the Bible/Biblical verses when the Truth becomes inconvenient.
Thank you.
Cpm| 6.8.10 @ 3:32PM
I laugh every time the name Lincoln is mentioned around here and all the constitutional scholars and amateur historians and other assorted crybabies come out to cry over spilled milk, try to justify the ugliest chapter in our nation's history and lament the correction of that bad behavior, flipping it all around and blaming it all on the guy charged with keeping it all together. You are about 150 years too late.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 3:39PM
You mean that ugly chapter that lasted from 1776 to 1865? That contained within it the birth of our federal union? That saw the leadership of those villainous, slave-mongering secessionists George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison?
Such a horrible, ugly chapter. Yuck!
Len| 6.8.10 @ 3:55PM
Slavery...ugly? Yes. Violates man's natural right to liberty and overall self-determination? Yes.
Lincoln's war..ugly? Yes. Hundreds of thousands killed not to protect liberty or property, but to preserve the union created to protect that property and liberty. People exercising their supposed to be protected right to free speech and press? Killed or newspapers shut down and writers and owners thrown in prison. Not ugly? Hardly.
Women raped, towns burnt to the ground, homes looted, inhumane prisons (Andersonville), slaves killed (oops, not freed, too much trouble). Yes these were all pretty things.
Oh, BTW, the President is not supposed to keep things together, but to faithfully enact the constitution, which is the instrument that formally declares what the states want done for their benefit. This mean that he can do nothing martially without the US congress directing him to do so. His role as CINC is to lead the forces after the congress has declared war. The framers were very intent on preventing one man from aggregating power unto himself, which is why they lodged the power of war with the US congress, and as Article 2, Section 2 of the US constitution says..........The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States...WHEN CALLED!! Where is the power for calling or declaring war lodged? With the congress.
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water
Len| 6.8.10 @ 3:40PM
Again Margie you are the one who insulted people, called them liars, bore false witness and have avoided actually discussing facts. Now you resort to the use of scripture as some kind of justification for your actions. How about this.."Don't take the Lord's name in vain."?
This is why the other day I called you a cultural christian, you actually hate people who disagree with your moral opinion and thus attack them. Having known many true Christians in my life, they were more interested in turning me toward God, not continually slandering me or calling me a liar, particularly when citing the historical record.
Again Margie, how do you call people liars who merely tell the truth? Are you actually trying to say Lincoln did none of these things? Are you actually trying to say that the Declaration of Independence is to be ignored and that the principles contained in it are wrong?You make no effort to disprove what is said, but attack the people saying them. You make no effort to put forward what you see as the right principles of governance.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 3:51PM
Len, look at who you're attempting to argue with. Go back and read just her posts in this thread. Pity the poor girl, but don't try to reason with her. She will go on to middle and high school and then out into the world and she will gain a very different perspective than the one she has (or rather doesn't have) now.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:37PM
"This is why the other day I called you a cultural christian, you actually hate people who disagree with your moral opinion and thus attack them."
Libertarians are the most vicious-- they don't usually get their candidates elected, they are so cannibalistic.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 5:01PM
Alan you are merely proving my point. Whenever I cite facts or put forward a constitutional argument here, I am often attacked, rather than engaged in discussion. Now you are also attacking me, though in a more subtle manner with your indirect cannibalistic comment. I would have to disagree anyway as the most vicious forum I've been in is dailykos.
Even were you correct in your assertion concerning verbal viciousness, at least libertarians (though I've always considered myself a conservative as opposed to the right wing progressive moralists and neo -cons masquerading as conservatives), do not seek to use force to get others to comply with their desired political aims. I find it strange that people want to use government for ends other than justice/legal recourse and the means to enforce judicial decisions. If government is not protecting person and property why do we need it? This would not preclude communities from being formed around their societal goals, but certainly does that of an overreaching homogenizing structure of governance. This at the least would be federalism, where state governments as the 1oth says determine their internal laws, but externally are represented in military and trade matters by a stronger entity.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 6:22PM
Your position is Utopian and gullible; we have not nearly reached the stage in our evolution where we can be free; we don't even live in a civilization yet--merely in a state of controlled barbarism. It CAN change, but only after all other possibilities have been exhausted.
I say libertarians are cannibalistic because after being at a few of their meetings it became apparent that they were interested far, far more in suppressing each other than in liberty.
Only people I have seen as verbally violent as libertarians have been Communists & Fascists. It appears libertarians are totalitarian anarchists.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 6:29PM
PS,
when libertarians hold caucuses they shred each other so much they can hardly get to the starting line so they can run for offices!
How many libertarian governors have been elected? Senators? Congressmen? Or if you think 'libertarian' is too narrow, then tell us how many genuine freedom-loving, non-hypocritical politicians in high office are there? or in lower offices? I wont live to see a free world, and frankly, I don't think you will, either. At least two generations.
A long row to hoe, Joe.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 6:44PM
Utopian, not really. I know man is corrupt and no matter what form of government that is in play wrong will be done. Regardless it is absurd to think that you can have a right to tell others what they may or may not do. Sure you can gather the biggest gang to force your will on others, but to say that others are your property to be commanded in their life's decisions is only a lighter form of totalitarianism. Apparently you think you are greater than God himself who gave man free will to decide for himself how he will conduct his life. You are no different than the liberal progressives who desire to rule over their fellow man because they see them as unable to decide for themselves what is right or wrong. You differ only in your conception of morality.
Len | 6.8.10 @ 6:47PM
Speaking of violent, why don't you watch this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx3_ynHjL-M
I'm sure you'll try to whitewash what is just plain murder.
Dick Simmons| 6.8.10 @ 4:02PM
I've read the papers of my ancestor who decided to fight for Abe and the "old flag". He didn't really follow the finer points of the arguments that have been shouted back and forth on this discussion. Mostly he and his siblings were tired of being pushed around and intimidated by gang of self-appointed guardians of the state: in this case Virginia, so much so that they threw in their alleigance to a higher unifying idea, the USA. The history of his county was one of bushwacking, property theft, lynching, and brute threats against anyone who opposed the Noble South. The one Medal of Honor winner of the county was a 15-year-old who "borrowed" his uncle's mount and road 10 miles to the nearest pro-union village to enlist. Every family lived on the razor's edge for the next four years, living out a precarious existence hoping their neighbor wouldn't decide to turn on them. When it was over both sides bear the blame for choosing to look away, and not question themselves too closely about what it was all about. After 600,000 dead (the equivalent of many millions now) no one wanted to open that wound, and so the scab festered. The left wants to damn America for the fact of slavery existing and the libertarian right damn Lincoln for using force to resist its hegemony. Thus this hissing match will last as long as the republic. And yes, America did "save" the world much later. Hitler and Stalin and their heirs could not have been stopped by Richmond.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 4:05PM
Nor could a Union bereft of the South have imposed upon Germany the Treaty of Versailles, which means: no Hitler.
We can play this fun game all you like. It doesn't change the fact that states had the right to secede, or that Lincoln fought the war to prevent Southern independence, not to free the slaves (as he himself stated numerous times).
Len| 6.8.10 @ 4:24PM
As S.L. points out the US actually created the conditions that led to WW2. Let's say though that the US wasn't involved in WW2, more than likely Germany and the USSR would have entered into a war of attrition thus weakening both of them.
Let's do a farther what if..Lincoln let's the South secede peacefully, slavery slips away into the night and the Confederacy and the Union reunite with the principles of freedom more predominant than before. Due to the period of separation the north was unable to continue high tariffs and subsidies, thus leading to greater economic freedom, quicker development of the West due to more efficient business models, the Indians rather than being massacred for their land profit from just purchases of their land and by the 20th century more countries desire to emulate the principles of freedom that have made the people of the US so prosperous, integrated and peaceful.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 5:18PM
That's the thing Lincoln apologists can't seem to grasp. The fact that when you voluntarily enter a mutually beneficial compact and one party violates it, threatening to leave or actually leaving usually means the offending party backs off and the original tenets of the compact are respected again. This allows the offended party to rejoin the compact. Like you said, the tenets then are strengthened as further vilation might mean permanent secession.
You usually don't have the offending party pointing a gun at you and threatening to kill you and your family if you decide to leave. Normally this is viewed as a crime. Except of course in the case of the "Civil" War.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 7:16PM
Here is a fact: if the inalienable right to secession were still recognized by our government Roe V Wade would never have happened. The federal government, the courts - they wouldn't have spine to create new rights out of thin air and impose them on the country if it meant losing states. NEVER.
The right to political independence - the principle on which this very country was founded, and which anti-Southern and anti-American bigots abhor and denounce - could and should be the primary engine of conservatism in government. It should act as a brake on the schemes of utopians and levelers and liberals. The general government and the Supreme Court should respect the people of these United States, and should fear outraging them by violating their actual rights - but they do not. They do not fear the people of the states, they do not respect the people of the states, because what can the people do? What recourse do they have if the Union is no longer voluntary but held together through coercion, through brute force, on which the state has a monopoly?
And Ken and Margie - this was not written for you or to you. I am not interested in whatever stock phrases you are ready to repeat in response. There is an actual debate to have, there are arguments to be made against myself these other gentlemen, you know - Daniel Webster makes them. You aren't making them, you aren't familiar with them, and you wouldn't understand them because you don't have the slightest clue what the issue is.
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 8:31PM
Here is an argument for you, in case you missed it, from above:
"How would they have ceased to exist?"
Because, Toddard, where would the seceding have stopped. Every time a state, county, or city didn't like a law that effected them, they would have seceded.
Try reading President Lincoln's first inaugural address. He made a very good argument against secession: "If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority."
http://libertyonline.hypermall.....oln-1.html
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 8:50PM
Umm, the seceeding would have stopped when the federal government stopped abusing its power?
I dunno just a thought.
Your argument is kinda like the hoplophobic anti-gun nuts who think folks on the pro-gun side of the fence are for everyone having a nuclear missle silo in their backyard.
Taking an opponents argument to the outskirts of the extreme to gin up fear is really no way to re-enforce your own argument. If your argument had any merit it would stand on its own.
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 9:10PM
Crusader,
This is not my argument, it is President Lincoln's. I think he makes a good point.
If he had let the Southern states secede, how would he have stopped another state from so doing? The precedent would've been set.
Also, how would the C.S. of A. had stopped any of it's states from seceding in the future?
Len | 6.8.10 @ 9:20PM
Secession is not necessary when the government actually benefits the people.
RCV| 6.8.10 @ 10:58PM
So, then the black human beings being held in bondage -- who were hardly being benefited by their Southern governments -- had every right to rise up in arms against their oppressors and secede, I would hope you would agree, and John Brown's arrest and so-called "trial" in Virginia was wholly illegal.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 6:50AM
Obviously you are ignorant of the DoI and Constitution. Secession is a right granted to States, not individual people.
Even your boy Lincoln thought Brown was a kook--heck even other abolitionists thought he was a kook--so yeah bad example I'm thinking.
RCV| 6.9.10 @ 12:31PM
Ah yes, the defender of rights of entities but not of people. Governments are instituted among men to secure rights of individuals. The southern states, having denied those rights to a large bulk of their citizenry, had no moral legitimacy and no power to secede without the consent of their governed. Your moral reasoning is vacant, crusader.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 2:58PM
rcv aka liberal troll aka freedom-hating communist aka leviathan-loving redistributor of wealth, aka nanny-statist,
Then pray tell how did the united States of America exist from 1789 - 1865? you can't say the Southern states had no right to form a govt b/c of slavery while at the same time holding the opinion that the USA was legitimate prior to 1865, so please explain yourself? Obviously based on your definition then the united States of America was illegitimate until the end of the "Civil" war and passage of the 13A? Heck, maybe in 1789 the slaves wanted to remain a part of the British Empire, you know? They had no consent in the creation of the united States of America.
Your lame attempt at logic is vacant, oh sucker of the government teat, oh worshipper of federal control and hater of individual and STATE rights, and destroyer of the Constitution.
Obviously ignorant of American History, this question was answered in the 3/5 decision on how to count the slaves.
What part of
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
does your simple mind NOT understand? Do you see the word "States" in there or what????? Or does your blind allegiance to the federal govt also blind you to Truth and logic?
rcv you are a hater of God and His Natural Law, and a lover and worshipper of man and his power of the gun.
RCV| 6.9.10 @ 6:13PM
So you have resorted to junior-high name-calling when cornered. I am a "hater of individual rights" because I vehemently oppose the legitimacy of states that held human beings in bondage, bought and sold them, brutalized them, violently separated husbands from wives and parents from their children. If you defend the state entities that did that, it is you who are a hater of God and of his creation, Mr. Crusader.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 11:06PM
Haha, when all else fails, self-proposed "conservatives" fall back onto Alinsky tactics just like libtards. Pathetic actually.
Since you vehemently oppose the legitimacy of States that held humans in bondage, answer the question I posited: Do you then believe the founding of our country was illegitimate? Funny how you Truth-hating, freedom-hating, God-hating self absolutely REFUSES to answer that question. Life's hard when you get caught in a contradiction, huh?
Here's a clue BTW: Slavery has been dead in America since 1865. Calm down about it.
But its racists like you who like to keep bringing it up to keep the races at odds with each other. Yeah, you don't like slavery as it was practiced in AMERICA, not just the South, but ALL OF AMERICA from 1789 - 1865, but you sure do love you some of that govt-sanctioned slavery like welfare, and affirmative action, progressive taxation, dumbing down school curriculum, doncha you frigging RACIST? Doncha like keeping the black folk in their place at the govt's teat, constantly telling them they need big daddy gubmint b/c of evil slavery and how the white man kept them down for so long, as if slavery just ended yesterday?
Take your fake self-righteousness and stick it, OK?
RCV| 6.10.10 @ 12:18AM
Here's a clue to you BTW: The Confederacy has also been dead since 1865; get over it. As for your other babbles: I sure don't like "keeping black folk (your term, of course) in their place." I've worked all my life to fight the efforts of your cherished freedom-loving states in the South from lynching them, denying them the vote, keeping them from education (even the dumbed-down kind like they just adopted in Texas), treating them like shit. And yes, I do like progressive taxation, providing food to hungry children, and lots of other programs we've adopted thanks to real leaders like Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and Barack Obama, that have made our country a more decent, humane place. I make no apologies for it. Spoiled little brats like you who think you're in "slavery" because you have to part with taxes to pay for the roads you use, the police, firefighters, teachers, and soldiers who make live better for you, are of little interest and less concern to me. Your idealized world of yesterday never existed. Life in the 18th and 19th century was hard, brutal, and for a good portion of our countrymen who happened not to born in circumstances you were lucky enough to inherit, pure hell. Count your blessings for living in the society you're fortunate enough to be born in, and stop bitching like a little boy.
Crusader| 6.10.10 @ 9:53PM
Wow, can I call 'em or what? So the Lincoln apologist finally admits he/she/it is a frigging progressive socialist.
Wow. Imagine that. I would have NEVER guessed. **eyeroll**
Crusader| 6.10.10 @ 9:58PM
So then you MUST vehemently oppose the legitimacy of the entire untied States of America from its inception? Answer the question, progressive socialist swine.
I mean is that the basis for it? Is that the basis for your boy's wanting to "fundamentally change America" as he put it? I mean you are right here admitting you hate America. And its all because of slavery? Wow.
As if that is really a surprise.
Tell ya what, go back and help the little black chil'en cuz obviously you don't think they can help themselves. Racist.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 9:52PM
Nick, I gave you the answer. Secession would have stopped whent he federal government got "back in bounds" as they say. When the federal govt is abusive, the last option left for States is to secede. Unfortunately the right to secession has been effectively "bred out" of generations of Americans who have been fed lies and who now view it as somehow rebellious or "subversive."
Its actually kind of ironic in a country where 50%+ of marriages end in divorce, but I digress.
Nick| 6.8.10 @ 11:13PM
Crusader,
"Nick, I gave you the answer. Secession would have stopped whent he federal government got "back in bounds" as they say."
That is not THEE answer, it is your opinion. One, which I disagree with.
How was the federal government being "abusive" in the run up to the attack on Ft. Sumter?
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 6:40AM
Nick, I can't read books for you--you're gonna have to do that yourself. Some of the abuses have already been outlined here. Obviously you do not know, yet you want to engage in a debate about something you know little of. Whatever. Go read a book or two or three and come back.
Attack on Ft Sumter, that's a good one. Yeah, you could stand to read a book or two that ain't a HS textbook.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 6:46PM
Crusader,
You could at least list one grievance or abuse, instead of being snarky.
In the Declaration of Independence, the Congress listed all the abuses by the king. It was a long list. The only abuse listed by South Carolina is that the non-slaveholding states were not abiding by the fugitive slave laws. Oh..and that the Northern states were hostile to the slaveholding states.
The colonies had no representation in parliament. The slave-holding states had plenty of representation.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 10:55PM
Not being snarky, but obviously you need to read a book or two. Just a suggestion. You could start with the obscene tariffs paid by the South.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 12:46AM
Crusader,
Also, secession did not stop with the Confederate States of America.
West Virginia was formed, in 1863, when they seceded from the Confederacy, and asked for statehood in the United States.
Again, where would it have ended if President Lincoln had let the precedent be set by the South?
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 6:36AM
You mean when Lincoln used secession to his advantage and carved WV out of VA? Then it was OK huh?
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 6:45AM
Nick that's your opinion and I disagree with it. That answer worked for you a few posts up, so I am invoking the "Nick Rule," which states you keep asking the same question over and over until you get the asnwer you WANT to hear, not the answer that is, you know, the correct answer.
Look Nick, obviously you can say secession would've kept going. Fine. I say it would have stopped. Fine. Since it didn't play out that way as Lincoln chose to attack a sovereign nation, I guess we'll never know. Now, is it OK for you to hold the opinion that it would have kept going but not OK for me to hold the opinion that it would have stopped? That would be par for the course for this board I'm afraid.
At least I base my opinion on precedent. When the Founders seceded from England the USA was kept in tact for about 70 years or so before the Federal Govt became too abusive for the South. What do you base your opinion on?
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 7:13PM
Crusader,
I gave you the basis for my opinion, above. West Virginia seceded from the Confederacy. More accurately, they remained loyal to the Union.
All you have are assertions. And, your claim that the colonials "seceded" from Great Britain proves my point. 80 years after the War for Independence, the slaveholding states wanted to do the same. How long before it would have happened again, if President Lincoln had just let them go?
What about the counties listed in the Emancipation Proclamation, who were loyal to the Union? Didn't they have the right to determine the kind of government under which they wanted to live? What about the towns in those counties?
See where this ends up?
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 10:48PM
Ya mean those counties where Lincoln the freedom-loving slave emancipator continued to allow slavery? You DO know that's why those counties and parrishes are listed in it, doncha?
Anyway you have hijacked this enough and turned it from a debate about the tyrant Lincoln to some kooky liberal "theory" that secession would've just kept going and going.
Y aknow what? I say good. I say any place that feels it needs to secede to continue the freedom principles this country was originally founded on should secede so I can go live there. Lincoln worshippers believe secession on its face is bad, and have no answer for why then secession from England was good. Secession in the face of oppresssion is ALWAYS a good thing.
On the flip side if the nanny-statists want to secede and go form their own utopian communistic society go ahead. Instead they force their oppression on the rest of us. But that's OK, cuz secession is bad, right?
S.L. Toddard| 6.9.10 @ 7:52AM
"Because, Toddard, where would the seceding have stopped."
It would have stopped when the general government acted in accordance with the wishes of the people of the states.
"Every time a state, county, or city didn't like a law that effected them, they would have seceded"
On what are you basing that? What evidence is there that the states left in the Union were itching to secede as well?
"If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority."
That is an argument why it would be unwise for a state to secede (because eventually that state might break up into its contituent parts), not for why self government and independence are not allowed under our laws and traditions.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 7:33PM
"It would have stopped when the general government acted in accordance with the wishes of the people of the states."
What is a "general government," Toddard? And, when would this have happened? It is in man's fallen nature to exert power over others, and to abuse this power. The Framers understood this fact of life.
"On what are you basing that?"
As I stated above, on the fact that 48 counties in Virginia decided to remain loyal to the Union and leave the C.S.A. to become West Virginia. As well as the other counties in Virginia and Louisiana mentioned in the Emancipation Proclamation that remained loyat to the Union.
Didn't these counties have the right to self-government and self-determination? What about the towns in those counties?
President Lincoln's argument was that the Founders understood why it was, in your words, "unwise" to allow secession; and why they entered into a PERMANENT Union in 1778; and then completely prohibited states from entering into alliances and confederacies wtih each other, under the Constitution, in 1787.
Alan Brooks| 6.8.10 @ 4:41PM
"Nor could a Union bereft of the South have imposed upon Germany the Treaty of Versailles, which means: no Hitler. "
But you are a crypto-antisemite, Toddard, you are secretly glad Hitler killed off several million Jews; to reply otherwise would be you crying crocodile tears. We could prove it by hooking you up to a polygraph to see what you actually think.
S.L. Toddard| 6.8.10 @ 7:20PM
Ah, Alan Brooks - our resident genius. What an opening salvo!
Mr. Brooks, how would replying otherwise (meaning if I had not responded by arguing that the loss of the South would have meant no Versailles and so no Hitler) have been crying "crocodile tears" for the the Jews killed by Nazis? Why don't you explain that to everyone. I'm sure your explanation will be brilliant as usual.
Dick Simmons| 6.8.10 @ 4:04PM
And that's "rode" not "road" ---sorry for the misprint
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 5:51PM
Mr. Lord,
Thank you for helping us "out" the idiots among us.
We have our own war to fight in these days, and these idiots want to go back and fight a war of ideas that was lost in 1865.
Barbarians just never do understand we have to give up a "leetle" freedom in order to enjoy civilization ...do they?
Best regards
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 8:46PM
Wow I can't believe you finally admitted it. Doesn't surprise this freedom-loving barbarian though.
RCV| 6.8.10 @ 11:01PM
No one who defends the holding of human beings as chattel could ever be called "freedom-loving"; "barbarian" yes, "freedom-loving", no.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 6:35AM
When did I defend that? Please point out where I did. You'll probably have the same luck doing that as Margie did finding lies. Funny how she split soon after I challenged her too. Anyway.
So yeah, point out where I defended that, OK?
RCV| 6.9.10 @ 12:32PM
See above.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 2:44PM
No tool. You made the accusation, so the burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused. YOU have to prove I said it, I don't have to prove I didn't say it. Unless you guys don't believe in innocent until PROVEN guilty either?
Wouldn't actually surprise me though.
RCV| 6.9.10 @ 6:16PM
Crusader, you trumpet the cause of state entities that held human beings in bondage, bought and sold them, brutalized them, violently separated husbands from wives and parents from their children. In doing so, you disgrace God's creation and the rights of man. Blacks are human beings too, deserving of rights every bit as much as those noble whites who enslaved them.
Occam's Tool| 6.8.10 @ 6:30PM
I read Mr. Toddard's comments with the usual disgust.
My wife had relatives who fought on both sides of the Civil War. The interesting thing that we've always found is that the Southerners had better manners, but worse morals, than the Yankees. They staked their State's Rights arguments on one of the most reprehensible institutions in the history of man.
Had the Union not held, self-government would have eventually been destroyed. It is for this that we recognize and appreciate Abraham Lincoln. Ultimately, he believed that Liberty in the real world was more important than sophistry. But sophistry is Toddard's stock in trade. That, and anti-semitism.
By the way, a Union bereft of the South may not have won WWII later. The best air schools were in the South.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 8:05PM
What twisted reasoning. Your assertion is that by denying self government as the southern states were asserting, that self governance was upheld by the end of a gun. Miraculous, compulsion actually brings about freedom!
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 8:45PM
Have to second Len's post. So self-governance would have been destroyed had Lincoln not destroyed the South's attempt at self-governance? Hmm. Is that kinda like BHO saying we need to borrow and spend our way out of debt?
I guess my question would be what exactly was stopping Lincoln from just having a self-governing North and leaving the CSA alone? I mean if good ol' Honest Abe just kept the Union chugging along that self-governing path, how would self-governance have been destroyed? Would it not have survived in the Negro-loving, self-governance utopian North?
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.8.10 @ 7:09PM
hey, Tool,
Good points. Anybody on the same page as Toddard...are ..........STUPID!
(...KNOWING BETTER and writing it anyway.)
ooooh, I love your term "sophistry". The perfect term for the Toddards, Crusaders, and Lens..es of the earth.
Mr. Lincoln has long since been examined by the "Lord and Creator of the Universe"....as will you and I. Every one of his hairs are counted, and every motivation disected and judged.
I can leave all that to God with no hesitation whatsoever.
I personally believe that every "pedant" has earned a special place in hell. I weep for them.
Good post, and thank you.
Len| 6.8.10 @ 8:19PM
Ken you Old Hypocrite, what place in hell do you think is reserved for those who openly insult their fellow man and take the name of the Lord in vain?
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 8:40PM
LOL! Name-calling. Now there's something I didn't expect!
Thom| 6.8.10 @ 7:24PM
As I’ve said on many of these Lincoln love fest discussions, those who worship the image of Lincoln the 1st and ignore the wrong he did that laid down the precedents of Federal supremacy over the “several states” have no ground to stand on with the abuses of those same powers with Lincoln the 2nd. None. All that remains is the “end justifies the means”.
To summarize, the “several states” formed the Federal government and limited its power over them by very specific language in the Federal Constitution and Bill of Rights. Thanks to what Lincoln the 1st accomplished by killing over 618,000 Americans those documents are but relics today and irrelevant to individual liberty and property rights as understood at the founding of this Nation which wasn’t done at the point of a sword. It stands to reason that which is voluntarily entered into can be voluntarily exited else reasonable people won’t enter into what could become a suicide pack. Those that can’t understand the central tenets of a social compact like that ratified and the importance of it being honored have no grounds to complain about the letter and spirit of the law not being upheld today by Lincoln the 2nd since Lincoln the 1st made the “several state” Constitutions, Bill of Rights and their function as a “check and balance” on unchecked Federal Power moot. In fact, as I’m fond of pointing out to my “several states” representatives the State governments of today are completely redundant in the scheme of things and serve only the purpose of being minor league recruiters for Federal Government positions and jobs. That wasn’t the way it was prior to 1865 and part and parcel to why the “several states” let the Federal Government of today bankrupt them and none of them can get by without Federal monies on their own. The corrupting influence of what Lincoln the 1st set into motion is plain for anyone to see that cares to actually look beyond the myths and writings of the man and more carefully at his actions which like the current Lincoln the 2nd tend to be the opposite of what he says.
If “several state” governments vote to leave that which was voluntarily entered into and the other party takes up arms against them that is not a “union of United States” but just MOB rule and the one with 3 times the manpower and 5 times the resources and monies running amok. The “save the Union” slogan didn’t hold water very long after Lincoln’s first five managers being put in charge of the vastly more numerous and powerful Union War machine demonstrated their shear incompetence on the battlefield against grossly inferior numbers . The idea that the South declared “war” on the North and was in rebellion is simply not supported by the facts at any level. Howdy Doody could have been put in charge of the Union Army in 1864 and the South still would have collapsed some time in 1865. If Lincoln the 1st had been a little bit cool about his long term strategy and let the “south go” it wouldn’t have been too long before the South realized they couldn’t prosper on a single “crop” in a world market increasingly turning against “slavery” produced products. Economics trumps emotion almost every time given enough time and distance to think things through. Of course, Lincoln the 1st would have none of that so today half of us are “slaves” to the “income” tax that Lincoln introduced and all the rest of his kind improved upon. So to those Lincoln worshipers that think his “war” to “save the Union” was the right choice I ask one simple question: When Lincoln the 2nd bankrupts this Nation, creates open anarchy in the streets between those that produce the taxes the other half live off of which side are you going to be on? By default using your own arguments you will have to go with Lincoln the 2nd and his “save the Union” battle cry. That’s the bed’s you’ve made for yourself in worshiping the image of Lincoln the 1st, ignoring the damage he did to the “republic” and using specious speculation about how things would be today if he had not raised an army to hold the South by the point of the sword. I’m sure Lincoln the 2nd can recite Lincoln the 1st just as well as anyone can and all he needs is a “cause” on which to crusade his version of “save the Union”.
It goes without saying that when you throw the principles of good governance established by enumerated social contracts such as this Republic used to be based upon out the window because they are not “perfect” you will eventually have no principle to stand upon at all. What does that leave in the broader scheme of things? The evidence is all around us and it is far uglier than most want to come to grips with. Lincoln had a tough choice to make of his own choosing and he proved beyond any doubt that his words and actions were not in synch and he wasn’t up to the task that he himself had a great deal with bringing on. The carnage his crusade brought on and accumulated damage to the “republic” have no resemblance to the utopian view some see produced by the outcome vs. the reality that existed before the Civil War. This is what happens when people worship the image and myth of a man vs. the abstract rule of law. Lincoln the 2nd has a lot of worshipers and too many of his distracters worship another man with a proven record of wrecking the country and costing what would be 6 million lives lost today if replayed using weapons of 1860.
The moral argument against slavery was no more pertinent to the events of 1861 than the day the first person was “enslaved” so far back in time that there aren’t records of even their existence. The moral imperative for ending “slavery” in 1861 vs. 1776, 1787, etc escapes me here. If the “might makes right” argument is all that matters to worshipers of Lincoln the 1st I hope you’ve been sized for your Union uniforms because your arguments play right into Lincoln the 2nd’s hands.
Crusader| 6.8.10 @ 8:52PM
From one freedom-loving barbarian to another I say bravo sir.
Thom| 6.8.10 @ 9:00PM
Without the "slave owning" South in 1776-1781 there would be no United States or Washington, Jefferson to name a few that contributed ideas the founding of this "republic" of the "several states". Slavery was just as imoral in 1776 as in 1860, not more, no less. We are all "barbarians" in some elistists eyes. Always been that way of course.
Jim Thunder| 6.8.10 @ 9:12PM
My father, 96, was at Iwo Jima. It is hard to believe that we are more years distant from WWII (65) than the 48 years he was from the Civil War at his birth in 1913. In the 1920s, he met a man who had been a Union drummer boy. He has been alive for nearly half of the life of this Republic.
Long Ben| 6.8.10 @ 9:40PM
Wonderful words in the Gettysburg address ,though not wonderful enough to proscribe the fact that Mr. Lincolns war was unlawful when you consider the founders organic utterances found in the Federalist Papers, as concerned the rights of the several states to be separate if they would. As to the effect of the war
on States Rights , Mr Lincoln may as well said : and government of , by and for the Federal Jackboot shall not perish from the earth !
Red Phillips | 6.9.10 @ 7:59AM
The days when someone can post unrestrained praise of Lincoln on a conservative website and think it will be met with nothing but cheers are over. (They should have never been here to start with, but good riddance.) Thanks to the strong work of men like Thomas DiLorenzo and Donnie Kennedy, conservatives are on to Lincoln and his Constitution defying ways.
Here are two things that really should not be debatable among authentic conservatives in the American grain. Secession was and is a legal option for states. And the South was the faction fighting to preserve the constitutional republican (small r) polity left to us by the Framers.
Why nonsense like this article makes it on an allegedly conservative website like American Spectator is beyond me unless someone just wants to generate a lot of comments. It is a shame that all those young men died at Gettysburg, but they would not have had to die had not tyrant Lincoln INVADED US, and the South been allowed to peacefully secede as was our right.
Red Phillips | 6.9.10 @ 8:48AM
Toddard, Mr. Lord, et al. Do you think it is a coincidence that the people who currently support America policing the world to smite evil generally tend to view Lincoln favorably and accept the Unionist view of history, and those (on the right) who oppose the US policing the world generally tend to view Lincoln unfavorably and accept the Confederate view of history? Hmmm... Makes you think the views are somehow related, doesn't it?
S.L. Toddard| 6.9.10 @ 10:54AM
It is the triumphalist narrative/Whig history of progressives, which is why it is so out of place in conservative publications.
Red Phillips | 6.9.10 @ 3:22PM
Absolutely. And it is the Messianic Nation complex common to Jacobins. First France was going to enlighten the rest of the world whether they liked it or not. Now that role has fallen to the US. What is particularly distressing about this belief is that for the Christians who believe it, it borders on idolatry. There is only one Messiah and He isn't a nation, and He did not come to bring the blessings of liberal democracy. He came to save us from our sins. "Which is why it is so out of place in conservative [Christian] publications."
Jeffrey Lord| 6.9.10 @ 9:04AM
Red...
Do you really believe Americans like "policing" the world? Whether one likes it or not, the world is small, we are big, and when we don't "police" our own national security Americans die by the hundreds of thousands...see: World War II. The idea that we should sit here quietly until we're murdered has never appealed somehow...
Len| 6.9.10 @ 9:22AM
See WW2, those hundreds of thousands died in the war, not as a result of bad "policing". Further, it was FDR that got us involved in the European front when there was no need for us to be, and quite likely we could have avoided war with Japan if FDR hadn't meddled in the Asian sphere.
Red Phillips | 6.9.10 @ 3:38PM
Mr. Lord, thanks for the reply. I absolutely do think some interventionist conservatives get some sort of personal validation out of their belief that theirs is the "indispensable nation" and they are part of the group of righteous and clear thinking individuals who understand and cheer on this national mission. Whether that means they "like" policing the world I will leave for others to determine.
But whether or not they like America intervening around the globe, they believe it to be essential. This belief has become such a fundamental part of their worldview that they simply can't imagine otherwise. Your post is a perfect example. If we just "sit here quietly" we will all surely be murdered. That is silly on its face.
Mr. Lord, you are an intelligent man. Such mindless alarmism is beneath you.
Margie| 6.9.10 @ 9:20AM
The hot Toddies and Red Phillips and Lens et al DO really believe America is "The world's police." They are liars. They show up on threads like this to bash America's greatest, or whenever there's a thread about Israel, they show up to bash conservative and those who back Israel. Anti-semitism is at thier ugly cores, and they always side with the enemy. While proclaiming to be the only "true" conservatives, they side with the terrorists and blame America for the terrorists being terrorists, like thier cult leader, Ron Paul. They have not one ounce of conservatism in thier horrid bones.
Len| 6.9.10 @ 9:26AM
Margie you fake christian you continue to "bash" me and falsely attribute characteristics and motivations to me. You friggin idiot I am Jewish, I have many friends who have moved to Israel, my dad has been there enough times that he is actually a certified tour guide. I have never said a word in support of any terrorists. You are a liar who can't deal with the truth.
Margie| 6.9.10 @ 9:30AM
So says Len, the Christian basher!
Len| 6.9.10 @ 9:45AM
Margie I haven't bashed any Christians, mocked God, said anything disparaging about following Yeshua. I have bashed you, pointed out that you say you are a christian yet act ungodly by lying about others and insulting them.
I've actually asked you to support your position on government with scripture, but you have chosen not to, probably due to your having a preformed opinion without ever having made a decent study of the scriptures to see just what God says about government, free will and the like.
Mimi| 6.9.10 @ 11:07AM
Lenny, Lenny....At 9:26 am you call Margie "A Fake Christian ".... At 9"45 you say..." Margie, I Haven't bashed any Christians". You are in chaos LEN, you come to this site, you tell us you are Jewish. Have you read Norman Podherst book? Conservative and Christians more than any group are PRO-ISRAEL. Join us Lenny, give up your old ways. Our present leaders are not on your side. You have held Jeffrey Lord's article, ( A Beautiful and Good one), hostage to all on this site. Your conflict of your own SOUL is evident. Join the side of the "GOOD" guys!!!
Len| 6.9.10 @ 11:17AM
Mimi, save your little talks for Margie. I am merely pointing out her hypocrisy and tiring of her unsubstantiated remarks. Seriously the woman (Old Fool Ken also) can never make a reasoned argument only accuse people of having evil intentions. Methinks she is engaging in a lot of projection.
In the meantime I would rather stay on track and deal with the constitutionally illiterate folks who distort history and present mythology as fact concerning Lincoln.
Tim*| 6.9.10 @ 9:32AM
It's not the Constitutional mandate of The United States to use it's warriors to force feed democracy around the globe to other sovereign nations.
The National Interests of Israel ,Turkey and The Palestinians are not The National Interests Of The United States.
Margie| 6.9.10 @ 9:34AM
Right on cue, another anti-semite.
Contrary to what better Red than dead says, the anti-semites have free reign here at AmSpec. A lot more so than other conservative sites, where they wouldn't stand a chance.
Enjoy yourselves. For all the world to see.
Len| 6.9.10 @ 9:40AM
DAY 2, heh!
Mr. Lord and others like him to continue to ignore that the clauses in the US constitution prohibiting treaties and the like are not the same as forbidding a state to leave the union.
It has already been established by the Declaration of Independence that it is the people who are sovereign and always retain the right to determine for themselves their form of government....governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Let's go further though to the Articles of Confederation...
Article 7....No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue.
Article 13....Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.
Here we see that despite the constitution at that time prohibiting any alterations or treaties that were not approved through that present congress, the states went ahead and established another union with another constitution and even started passing laws in the 1st congress with 2 states never having ratified the US constitution. This was an act of secession, nothing less, and establishes the principle of the right of secession.
To say that the southern states had no right to secede is to say that the present US constitution is not valid and we must return to the Articles of Confederation.
Another important point is that the living are not bound by the dead and that generations never having actually been involved and giving their consent to a form of government are ever free to choose for themselves what kind of government they will have.
"The generations of men may be considered as bodies or corporations. Each generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance. When it ceases to exist, the usufruct passes on to the succeeding generation free and unencumbered and so on successively from one generation to another forever. We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:270
"Forty years [after a] Constitution... was formed,... two-thirds of the adults then living are... dead. Have, then, the remaining third, even if they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their will and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds who with themselves compose the present mass of adults? If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing, and nothing can not own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident [i.e., attribute]." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. (*) ME 15:42
"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48
Mimi| 6.9.10 @ 11:33AM
LENNY: " Nothing then is unchangeable but the INHERENT (remain fixed) and UNALIENABLE (not to be separated) rights of man" So much of these rights are now being attacked....ie.. right to buy or not to buy, card check, pay much more for utility . So much that is only for the "BARONS" to cash -in. On and On
Len| 6.9.10 @ 11:48AM
Mimi I'm quite aware of this. Right now the FDA is arguing that we do not have the right to consume the food of our choice, in the case that I'm aware of that means raw milk.
“There is no ‘deeply rooted’ historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds.” [p. 26]
“Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.” [p.26]
This is insane, the government (really just other people) can come between me and another person in a mutually consensual free market exchange? This is what happens when you deny people's inalienable rights, and why I detest the Lincoln apologists who love the government using force to compel others to align with their desired goals.
Government, except for truly local government, should only do two things, operate a legal system so that society can have recourse in disputes concerning property and person and a military/police force to protect person and property and enforce judicial decisions. When one group of people use the government, which is really only force, to compel others in their moral decisions this is tyranny. We have the left wing progressives who want to use force through socio-economic programs, and the right wing progressives who want to use force to compel people to live as they see morally right. This is why it will not be long before this country implodes.
Len| 6.9.10 @ 11:50AM
BTW, it would be respectful of you to address me with the name I use posting here, unless you're merely another blowhard like Ken or Margie who delight in personal attacks.
Mimi| 6.9.10 @ 1:45PM
Leonard, Len, Lenny: .....Yup, I'm a blowhard, Just like them Lion of Liberty, Blowhards Margie and Ken.... My analogy? You made a beautiful Book-Review discussion into a trolling session. Go out and buy the Book! I'm a grandmother for God's sake and "LENNY" to me is affectionate and loving. It just goes to show you we're not on the same page.....prayers !!
Thom| 6.9.10 @ 6:35PM
I’ve noticed that many calling themselves “conservatives” regularly confuse and interject “convictions” with “principles”. The above discussions are no exception. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires the United States to let the other guy throw the first punch so to speak. The convictions of many of the Founders at the time leaned toward “isolation” from entanglements in certain world affairs but those convictions were based on very pragmatic reasons and the luxury of being separated by thousands of miles of oceans on both (eventual) coasts from any serious threat to the Republic. Washington’s farewell address warnings was not based on principle but the sure and certain knowledge that the young republic had neither the means or strength to survive another protracted affair as the revolution. The same man that warned against not getting involved in Euro affairs welcomed with open arms a Euro getting involved in our little dust up with Britain. Had France taken his advice in advance of him giving it, we know how that would have probably turned out for the colonies don’t we? His advice was pragmatic in nature and suitable for the times, it was not principled in nature and certainly not written in stone (or this Nation’s practices with its neighbors) in our Founding documents. Principles by definition are not changing and not subject to the external factors that might change them. There are far fewer principles than most people are willing to admit or live by as a result.
Simple illustration since a recurring theme keeps interjecting itself into what a true “conservative” is in the above kinds of discussions. In 1775, mortal threats to the colonies or future republic took months to assemble and transport across the oceans. Said threat was limited to a lethal range of to 800 yards for the most part. Individual weapons were limited to an effective range of 50-100 yards. Such technology simply could not do great harm without advance warnings and time to prepare for. The need for a “standing” army simply did not exists on the scale we see today but the need for a navy to protect our trade was essential and both Britain, France and Pirates interfered with our trade and conflicts followed.
Fast forward to the beginning of WWII which some people think was “avoidable”. By the beginning of our entry into the war, bomber fleets made up of hundreds and eventually a thousand heavy bombers when we got cranking could fly hundreds of miles and wipe out a single city and kill hundreds of thousands of people a day. By the end of the war a single heavy bomber could fly across the Atlantic and drop one bomb to do the same job. A 12 flight across the Atlantic could take out an American city with little to no warning.
By the end of the 1950s hundreds of Soviet bombers could cross the North Pole and take out hundreds of American cities with said technology. By the early 60s, an advanced version of the V2 type rocket developed by those peace loving Germans could do the same job as a bomber in half an hour. A thousand such rockets with crude atomic warheads could do more damage to this nation in half an hour than all the accumulated damage from all our wars ten times over before most people would even know we were at “war”. By the end of the sixties, sub launched shorter range versions of same could hit their targets from outside continual waters in under 7 minutes.
Today what used to weigh 10,000 lbs and being a magnitude of order more powerful can be delivered to your address by UPS or FEDEX with a little effort to hide its “signature”. Only one such item has to make it to target to make all our war dead from all our wars look like a footnote in history. If “isolationism” were a principle, it would remain as effective as it was in the 16th century regardless of technological advances in the nature of the threats. We’ve got some data points on that approach from the 1930s and it didn’t work very well. The longer we let the threat grow the more powerful and hungry it became. We stopped trading with Japan due to their behavior in China which is our right to do both as a Nation and individuals and they attack us because we cut off resources they needed to keep their war machine going. Did the Japanese have the right to make us trade with them? Did the Germans have the right to attack our commercial ships because we traded with Britain? Their decision to attack our trade interest is just as much interference in our affairs as what “isolationists” claim we did after the fact by joining the war effort. The virtues of 16th century isolationism as afforded by our geographical location haven’t had any virtue for nearly a hundred years. The Poles have lost track of the number of invading armies from both the east and west they’ve had to deal with. They’ve never had the luxury to stay out of other nation’s affairs since they’ve been the affairs of other Nations for much of their history.
There is a real world difference between the pragmatic wisdom of the 16th century as practiced on this continent and a world where an entire nation can disappear in under 7 minutes time without warning. Wishful thinking has never been much of a foreign policy but in today’s world it is beyond naïve to think we will be better off letting the evolving and concentration of massive power for evil run amok if it leaves us till last. We’ve tried that approach and the end result cost half our GDP for four years and the lives of over 60,000,000 people around the world to stop after it got going. Those who put your “faith” in specious speculations about “what ifs”, I hope you are making more money in the market than I with such speculations about future events. My market valuation is still at 13,000 basis points and that wasn’t the result of wishful thinking.
Reasoned arguments are the foundation of this “republic”. They are the bedrock and necessary component of any democratic society. Specious speculations, fairy tales and myths making mortal men bigger than life need to be left in the toy box however. By the end of WWII the Japanese high command believed its own propaganda and paid a dear price indeed for holding on to myths and legends. We are all flawed creatures, a work in progress and subject to making terrible mistakes with imperfect information. Abraham Lincoln made a terrible miscalculation of judgment and by whatever filter you see the Civil War, the War Between the States, the net effect has diminished respect for the founding principles and documents and divided this nation just as much as it was in the early 1770s and late 1850s. If enumerated words don’t mean one thing, they ultimately mean anything and nothing at all. That’s where we are today just like 1860.
Nick| 6.9.10 @ 8:02PM
Thom,
So many excellent points, sir.
President Washington didn't say NEVER to have alliances. He said to stop, until such time "when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel."
He was probably directing these words at Jefferson, and others, who wanted to get involved with France's revolution.
Thom| 6.9.10 @ 9:13PM
Nick,
I understand and agree but we live in a world driven by out of context quotes and sound bites to such an extent that the full context and limitation of the writings of those in the past have no merit with the bulk of the population at large. Look at how many people on this site agree that King Obama, aka Lincoln the 2nd is a budding tyrant and concentrating power in what is a central government now while at the same time arguing that Lincoln the 1st doing the same thing was somehow different in kind rather than simply by degree. I'm real fond of telling my close friends be careful what you embrace as principle because you may have to die for it.
Crusader| 6.9.10 @ 11:16PM
Thom, its OK that Lincoln the 1st did it because he was a REPUBLICAN doncha know? Rs only get mad at federal power grabs and/or abuses when Dems do them.
One question they refuse to answer is remember when Lincoln the 2nd (sorry I like that and happen to agree with you on it--I've called Lincoln Obama'a ideological grandfather on these boards before) was inaugurated? Who's "inaugural journey" did he emulate? FDR? No. Wilson? No. Carter? No. Clinton? No.
It was LINCOLN. Do any of you Lincoln-worshippers have the intellectual curiosity to even ask why? Why would Obama, at the time the most liberal Senator in America, choose a "Republican" president to emulate?
Thom| 6.10.10 @ 3:14PM
Crusader,
Unfortunately there is a fair degree of truth in what you say. Mankind has a propensity to worship “men” not the broader abstract ideals necessary for continued “good governance”. Everyone has their “heroes” and myths die real hard even when the objective truth is plain to see. The Founders were flawed human beings, far from being saints even by the norms of their time but they made a real deliberate effort to forge something that had repeatedly failed throughout time with catastrophic results. They made a couple of assumptions that are going to be our eventual undoing. Franklin was right, “a republic if you can keep it”. We are flushing it at a rapid rate.
Lucky4Awhile| 6.9.10 @ 10:48PM
Wow! I thought the Civil War ended in 1865, but after reading some of these posts, I'm not so sure now.
Nathan B. Forrest| 6.10.10 @ 1:13AM
"Wow! I thought the Civil War ended in 1865, but after reading some of these posts, I'm not so sure now."
Confederate apologists, like Holocaust deniers, prove that the truth of that adage that evil things never die.
Thom| 6.10.10 @ 3:51PM
Nathan B. Forrest, or is it Forrest Gump?, I doubt you know much of substance of the life of the man who you have chosen as “handle”. Since you group people who don’t worship the myth of Lincoln the 1st as “confederate apologists” I doubt your understanding of actual historical events prior to your birth is anything but a shallow grave of propaganda received in grade school. Shallow minded ignorant people wrap up the events of 1861-1865, the deaths of 618,000 men, well over million wounded and typically crippled for life into sound bites like, “we won, you lost, take that”, “confederacy = the Nazis”, “slavery was immoral and had to be stamped out at whatever cost it took”, etc. If any of these high and mighty sounding justifications for a force of men three times as strong with 5 times the wealth and equipment were all it takes to justify the “end” I’m truly baffled why Lincoln worshipers like you aren’t leading the charge to free the modern day “slaves” (aka income tax payers) from the sloths that live off the fruits of income tax payer labor and not using a “terrible swift sword” to avenge the blatant slaughter of over 50,000,000 unborn children whose only offense was to be “inconvenient”. The “inconvenient truth” about the “War Between the States” is that it destroyed the function and purpose of the “States” and the concept of this Nation being a “United States” as a result is pure fiction. You have to ignore the trivial part about “a union held together at the point of a sword is no union at all” to believe such nonsense.
If you can’t grasp the larger picture here Nathan, try answering this. If the Northern Confederation of States had expelled the slave owning states from the “union” in order to form a more perfect “union” would there have been a War? If your pea sized brain can’t wrap around that try this, if the Southern Colonies had not ratified the Constitution and remained sovereign Nations as the 1783 Treaty of Paris proscribed would there have been “civil war” between what became the United States and the Confederate States then? If your answer to either of these is “yes” then who starts it? The side with 3 times the manpower, 5 times the wealth and industry capacity and naval supremacy or the one with 1/3 the manpower, 1/5 the wealth and industrial capacity and no capability to produce or sustain a blue water navy and not a chance in hell of winning a sustained war against such an opposing force? Wild ass speculation cuts both ways but what the Lincoln/Union apologists won’t admit is that their “my way or the highway” approach to the issue of slavery in 1860 laid the groundwork for the next crusader to do the same regardless of the cost to the concept of a “republic”. The fight that is coming this time won’t be between a Fox Terrier and three Pit Bulls as was the War Between the States in 1860.
So Forrest, can we put you down in the Blue Army of Lincoln the 2nd in his crusade to “save the union”? What was that Forrest, s…it happens?
Red Phillips | 6.10.10 @ 6:18PM
"Confederate apologists, like Holocaust deniers, prove that the truth of that adage that evil things never die."
So NBF, not only are you a slur artist, you are also clueless. The nationalism that informed National Socialism is MUCH closer to the view of the Unionist that it is the decentralist Confederates. The Nazi view of the nature of the state is MUCH closer to the Union view than it is the Confederate view. Hitler praised Lincoln.
Learn some history and political philosophy and then get back with me.
Thom| 6.10.10 @ 6:42PM
Hey Red,
I wonder if NBF can get within 1,000,000 of the actual dead from the Holocaust? Most people to this day are clueless of the actual scope and depth.
JimP| 6.10.10 @ 9:38PM
Red's right. Hitler and Stalin both were great admirers of Lincoln.
Dan King| 6.10.10 @ 5:09PM
This is possibly the first time I have ever participated in comments such as these in any publication where such comments are allowed and even encouraged. I think it's because of the breadth and depth of the topic along with the very wonderful comments that all have provided to this book review.
As Shelby Foote said in Ken Burns' film, you can't understand America if you don't understand the Civil War. I have read and own many books about it, along with movies, documentaries, the Library of Congress on the internet, etc. Like others in this thread, my father instilled in me a great interest in this monumentally important event in our history. He was born in 1915 (died in 2004), and he, too, told me of witnessing, as a young boy, Civil War veterans in parades in the 1920's. He owned many books on the subject, several of which I talked my family into letting me have when he died. There is a book entitled "Divided We Fought", filled with photos from the war. There is another, published in 1915 on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, with many hundreds of pages with photos and narrative, and I've read most of it.
So what I am leading up to is this. I am convinced that the leaders of the South, who reflected the heart-felt beliefs of the average Southerner, were motivated not so much to protect slavery as an institution than to defend themselves against what they perceived to be tyranny on the part of the North. On the other side, the leaders of the North, also reflecting the heart-felt beliefs of the average Northerner, did not fight against slavery, but believed that the Union must be preserved at all costs, and that the Southern states secession must be reversed, even if it means bloodshed.
I think it was only years later into the war, particularly after the Emancipation Proclamation, that the North began to see that the fight also included the abolition of slavery.
The arguments made here that the South was justified in dissolving the union were the very same ones uttered by the speakers in the Legislatures throughout the Confederacy. The arguments made here that slavery was an evil that had to be abolished before the nation could move forward are also true to some extent, but as even Lincoln himself said, the far larger motive was to preserve the Union.
This is the same "feeling" that after the war gave us Manifest Destiny as the push westward did not stop until the land from coast to coast was under the flag of one nation.
I urge the advocates of the North and the advocates of the South to always remember that the very soldiers themselves, who fought in this terrible war, were ultimately reconciled and vowed that never again would American fight against his fellow American.
Thom| 6.10.10 @ 6:12PM
Dan King,
The thrust of your outline is essentially correct. I would add two things you won’t find in typical history books even today. In every war that followed the War Between the States, the South has been disproportionately over represented in the American military right up to and including today’s wars. An accurate and objective story about Nathan Bedford Forrest’s life from beginning to end would do more to illustrate the complexities of the War Between the Sates than probably any other single player in that war. There are a fair number of open minded “blacks” in Tennessee to this day that know more about this man and his transformation after the war than all the pro union white population combined. Why is that? If you do an in depth study of the personal and professional rivalry between NBF and Sherman right to the end of NBF’s life you will have a far greater appreciation of the complexity, convictions and conflicts that haunt this Nation to this very day over the events “across five Aprils” in the 1860s. It is never as simple as our sound bite, text box driven view of history wants it to be.
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