[quote]ZEB wrote:
ALDurr wrote:
thunderbolt23 wrote:
Oh, and as for the ‘silence is deafening’ - melodramatic, and silly.
You seem to have captured AL’s essence pretty well.
I would only add hate filled to round it out.
[/quote]
One of the most intolerant and hate-filled people on this forum is calling me hate-filled and claims to know my essence? The fact that you wrote this says way more about you than what I did says about me.
You do own a mirror, don’t you? Just remember, stones and glass houses as well as pot and kettle. Oh that’s right, because I am responding to your attack instead of initiating it, in your perception, I will be the hate-filled bad guy. How very Rovian of you.
You think making up a cause IN AMERICA simply for monetary gain is better?
[/quote]
Making up a cause? So the slave thing was a myth? Or is that just what they teach you guys in Texas?
[quote]
You think committing these misdeeds against Americans is better than committing them against people who have attacked us and want to convert or kill every last one of us?[/quote]
Which misdeeds are we talking about?
And besides this, the North and South were on a collision course just as much as the West and Islam are today.
[quote]ALDurr wrote:
ZEB wrote:
ALDurr wrote:
thunderbolt23 wrote:
Oh, and as for the ‘silence is deafening’ - melodramatic, and silly.
You seem to have captured AL’s essence pretty well.
I would only add hate filled to round it out.
One of the most intolerant and hate-filled people on this forum is calling me hate-filled and claims to know my essence? The fact that you wrote this says way more about you than what I did says about me.
You do own a mirror, don’t you? Just remember, stones and glass houses as well as pot and kettle. Oh that’s right, because I am responding to your attack instead of initiating it, in your perception, I will be the hate-filled bad guy. How very Rovian of you.[/quote]
Right on man! Zeb is the most hate-filled person I have ever encountered. Every post he has ever had has been rude, perverse, vulgar, and obnoxious. And, I’m pretty sure he shoots rabbits with a bb-gun from his backyard deck!
You know damn good and well the war didn’t start over slavery. You know the war started over tariffs that were enriching the North at the South’s expense. You know the South was having to bail out Northern banks. You know damn well that Lincoln didn’t free ALL slaves, right? Just those in states still in rebellion. Meaning those in border states which had not seceded from the Union, and those in states already under Union control weren’t freed.
They do teach you this stuff in Jersey, right? Or do your textbooks just dumb it down for you?
To start with, the Constitution itself protected slavery.
Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in some areas (Baltimore and New York) as early as April 1861, and throughout the nation on Sept. 24, 1862.
The first proclamation to remove the Writ of Habeas Corpus was made in September of 1862. Not only did this proclamation, which had no scheduled end, remove the writ, it also established Marshall law. It gave full power to close down “hostile, anti war newspapers,” and to arrest individuals for protesting the war. His administration made over 13,000 arbitrary arrests.
Hey Doogie: you forgot to mention how Lincoln suspended the First Amendment as well.
Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the United States, had the audacity to opine that suspension of habeas corpus by the President was an unconstitutional act (only Congress can do this, sayeth the Constitution).
After Justice Taney went on record with this opinion, in the case of Ex Parte Merriman in 1861, Lincoln had a warrant issued for his arrest. The only problem was, he couldn’t find a Federal Marshal who would serve the warrrant.
I wonder if Justice Taney would have ended up in the same Union gulag that the other 13 thousand political dissenters ended up in.
You think making up a cause IN AMERICA simply for monetary gain is better?
FightinIrish26 wrote:
Making up a cause? So the slave thing was a myth? Or is that just what they teach you guys in Texas?
You know damn good and well the war didn’t start over slavery. You know the war started over tariffs that were enriching the North at the South’s expense. You know the South was having to bail out Northern banks.
[/quote]
This is southern revisionist history.
Slavery was the greatest issue of the age since America’s inception, even in the Constitutional Congress in 1787.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, The Missouri Compromise, the Wilmot Proviso, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown’s Raid, The Compromise of 1850, the Crittenden Compromise… these were all the Roe v. Wades of the day. If you cannot see that slavery was by far the biggest issue in Congress and in American politics, then you are a fool.
Take your pick:
“In other words, the two governments (US & CS) that differed on so many matters were in agreement on that one point- they weren’t fighting over slavery. Yet of course, they were. The war was about slavery. Slavery had caused it: if slavery had vanished before 1861, the war simply would not have taken place.”
Bruce Catton, Reflections on the Civil War Pg. 5
"As a Mississippi “unionist” explained after Lincoln’s election, he was no longer a “union man in which the sense that the North was the Union; the North had violateed the condition by electing Lincoln. COoperationists in Alabama who hvoted against secession cautioned outsiders not to “miscontrue” their actions: " We scorn the black Republicans”, the declared. “The state of Alabama cannot and will not submit to the administration of Lincoln…WE intend to resist…but our resitance is based upon…unity of action with other slave states”.
Page 238, McPhereson
“Bondage seemed an increasingly peculiar institution in a democratic republic experiencing a rapid transition into free labor industrial capitalism. In the eyes of a growing number of Yankees, slavery degraded labor,inhibited economic development, discouraged education, and engendered a domineering master class determind to rule the country iun the interests of its backward institution” McPhereson, 39
"Underlying all of these differences was the peculiar institution. ‘On the subject of slavery’, declared the Charleston Mercury, ‘are not only two peoples, but they are rival, hostile peoples’. This rivalry concerned the future of the Republic. To the 19th century Americans, the West represented the future. Expansionism had been the country’s lifeblood. So long as the slave controversey focused on the morality of the institution where it already existed, the two party system managed to contain the passions it aroused. But when, in the 1840s,the controversey began to focus on the expansion of slavery into new territories, it became irrepresible. (39)
James McPhereson, The Battle Cry of Freedom (If you want more from him, than you read the damn book, because I already have).
[New states] were admitted into the Union, each of these allied itself with either the free states or the slave states. It became a contest between the two economic systems…In the years preceding the war, many compromises were offered to try to maintain this equality. However, a strong feeling grew in the North among an increasing amount of people that slavery was morally wrong and must be abolished. The feeling then began to express itself in many ways, often violently…A deep hostility gradually developed between the two sections. With every oassing year came new arguments, each more bitter, more violent than the last.
Lt. Col. Joseph B. Mitchell, pg. 14, Decisive Battles of the Civil War.
Should I go on? Because I can, although I think I made my point.
That was a military stategy. If he freed those in the border states, Washington would have been engulfed in slave states, which would have destroyed the war effort. What’s your point? If it wouldn’t have broken the war, he would have done that too.
I wouldn’t know, because I never read them. I read these books by these people called “historians”. You should check them out once in a while, they’re some good shits.
This is for you too Varq-
"Attorney General Bates, though reluctant to oppose Taney, upheld Lincoln’s suspension (of Habeas Corpus). OVer a period of weeks, he drafted a twenty six page opinion, arguing that, "In a time like the present, when the very existence of the Nation is assailed, by a great and dangerous insurrection, the President has teh lawful discretionary power to arrest and hold, in custody, persons known to have criminal intercourse with the insurgents.
Lincoln later defended his decision…As a chief executive, he was responsible for ensuring “that the laws be faithfully executed.” An insurrection in “nearly one third of the States” had subverted “the whole of the laws…are all laws, ut one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, less one be violated?” His logic was unanswerable".
Doris Goodwin, Team of Rivals; The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln Page 355.
This isn’t a war in a forign land we are talking about, this is the capital of the country, your country, becoming surrounded with slave holding, brutally repressive states. You’re not going to suspend habeas corpus?
So the same men that hold other men in bondage are allowed to bitch when their own freedom is curtailed?
"Attorney General Bates, though reluctant to oppose Taney, upheld Lincoln’s suspension (of Habeas Corpus). OVer a period of weeks, he drafted a twenty six page opinion, arguing that, "In a time like the present, when the very existence of the Nation is assailed, by a great and dangerous insurrection, the President has the lawful discretionary power to arrest and hold, in custody, persons known to have criminal intercourse with the insurgents. [/quote]
Ah, yes. The Attorney General defended the President’s policy, even though it was unconstitutional.
Rather like Ashcroft defending the Patriot Act, I suppose.
Edward Bates is an interesting character. He was a good Virginia boy, who had in fact been a slave owner, but who later freed his slaves (for the principle of the thing, I’m sure…not for any political reason).
He was nominated by the Republican Party to run for President, but when he realized how popular Lincoln was, he became an Honest Abe supporter, and got the AG position as a reward (no, silly, not the Americangirl position…and you shut up, Ragoo!)
He bitterly opposed the war, saying it would “would soon become a social war, the horrors of which need not be dwelt upon.” History, it seems, has proven him right.
Lastly, he favored general amnesty and property rights for all the Confederates. Lincoln essentially told him to fuck off, and went ahead with his own plans for Reconstruction. Bates resigned.
Today, the echoes of Reconstruction can still be heard as New Jersey taxpayers fork out the lion’s share for paving roads in Alabama.
You can thank Abraham Lincoln for that, Irish.
[quote]This isn’t a war in a forign land we are talking about, this is the capital of the country, your country, becoming surrounded with slave holding, brutally repressive states. You’re not going to suspend habeas corpus?
So the same men that hold other men in bondage are allowed to bitch when their own freedom is curtailed?
I think fucking not.[/quote]
I don’t think you’re going to find anyone arguing that slavery was a good thing. It was not. It was a reprehensible, degrading practice that had no place in a democratic republic founded on the belief of all men being equal.
However, it was also a fact of life for nearly five thousand years of human history, and for nearly two hundred years in North America, right up to the thirteenth Amendment…well, sort of (see previous post on the limitations of this amendment). Furthermore, it was an institution protected by law, until the law was changed.
Secession was another right protected by law. So were the rights of free speech, free assembly, and the rights enumerated in the fourth and fifth amendments.
Evidently, these laws as well were changed as a result of the Civil War.
Why do I have to tell American citizens about the concepts involved in the founding of their own great country?
I see it was only a matter of time before you added a conceit that you were so much more informed that everyone else - but who have you lectured about the concepts?
Me?
I mean, these issues, these concepts that were fought over, that established democracy on the planet, that established systems and ideals to be held up to the world, that made America perhaps the greatest place on the planet, are better known to people outside of the US than inside of it?
How is that? An arrogant - and unfounded - conclusion on your part.
“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”
Abraham Lincoln, inaugural address, 1861. The South was stupid enough to believe him.
But Varqanir did you a disservice - read the rest of the Address, which is a clear warning that secession is an act of rebellion and that Lincoln had a duty to put it down.
Lincoln wasn’t giving the South an option by referencing the American Revolution - he was clear that war followed secession.
And, I have to say - I am curiously baffled about how the liberals on this board are making the case for the Confederacy.
[/quote]
Wow, was I out to lunch on this great thread!
Thunder,
As I explained in another thread, liberals are actually in favor of slavery. They created big government, they created a bureaucracy that dominates our lives. They are simply carrying on the traditions of the Dem party from before the Civil War.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Wow, was I out to lunch on this great thread!
Thunder,
As I explained in another thread, liberals are actually in favor of slavery. They created big government, they created a bureaucracy that dominates our lives. They are simply carrying on the traditions of the Dem party from before the Civil War.
HH
[/quote]
Man, this just isn’t my day.
Does this mean I have to agree with you, too Headhunter?
Then again, is the big government bureaucracy created by a Democratic administration (say, the Clinton administration) more dominating than that created by a Republican administration (say, the Bush administration)?
This is not, by the way, a glib question. Or, if you prefer, Headhunter, a “set-up question”. I have been out of the states since Dubya’s daddy was in the White House, so I’ve kinda missed out on all the fun.
Conservatives and Liberals alike, I’d like to hear what you think about this. Under which administration have you felt more free? A big Democratic government, or a big Republican government?
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
You know, it’s a real treat to see the conservatives bashing a Republican president, and the liberals defending him. This doesn’t happen every day.
Seriously, though, I think Lincoln’s justifications for his actions were pretty shaky, but even assuming he had ironclad reasons, the result was to set a precedent for abuse of executive power that continues to this day.
Sic semper tyrannis.[/quote]
Quoting Boothe after he shot Lincoln? That’s the way to solidify your argument.
Do you guys realize that if Lincoln had NOT done what he did (questionable, certainly), there’d probably be a crazy quilt of countries here, like the Balkan states? Who’d have saved all your asses then? Varqanir, you’d probably be in the Japanese army, occupying China and raping Chinese women. The Prof would probably be a slave and Vroom? Who the hell knows what he’d be doing? Working in a Jello factory, most likely.
Now, what is a liberal? A liberal believes that he can set moral standards for humanity. He believes that the community comes before the individual (like the Nazis believed). A liberal believes that a large government should exist, to control all the ignorant fools who don’t want to work for the benefit of others. That, gents, is a liberal.
"Attorney General Bates, though reluctant to oppose Taney, upheld Lincoln’s suspension (of Habeas Corpus). OVer a period of weeks, he drafted a twenty six page opinion, arguing that, "In a time like the present, when the very existence of the Nation is assailed, by a great and dangerous insurrection, the President has the lawful discretionary power to arrest and hold, in custody, persons known to have criminal intercourse with the insurgents.
Ah, yes. The Attorney General defended the President’s policy, even though it was unconstitutional.
Rather like Ashcroft defending the Patriot Act, I suppose.
Edward Bates is an interesting character. He was a good Virginia boy, who had in fact been a slave owner, but who later freed his slaves (for the principle of the thing, I’m sure…not for any political reason).
He was nominated by the Republican Party to run for President, but when he realized how popular Lincoln was, he became an Honest Abe supporter, and got the AG position as a reward (no, silly, not the Americangirl position…and you shut up, Ragoo!)
He bitterly opposed the war, saying it would “would soon become a social war, the horrors of which need not be dwelt upon.” History, it seems, has proven him right.
Lastly, he favored general amnesty and property rights for all the Confederates. Lincoln essentially told him to fuck off, and went ahead with his own plans for Reconstruction. Bates resigned.
Today, the echoes of Reconstruction can still be heard as New Jersey taxpayers fork out the lion’s share for paving roads in Alabama.
You can thank Abraham Lincoln for that, Irish.
This isn’t a war in a forign land we are talking about, this is the capital of the country, your country, becoming surrounded with slave holding, brutally repressive states. You’re not going to suspend habeas corpus?
So the same men that hold other men in bondage are allowed to bitch when their own freedom is curtailed?
I think fucking not.
I don’t think you’re going to find anyone arguing that slavery was a good thing. It was not. It was a reprehensible, degrading practice that had no place in a democratic republic founded on the belief of all men being equal.
However, it was also a fact of life for nearly five thousand years of human history, and for nearly two hundred years in North America, right up to the thirteenth Amendment…well, sort of (see previous post on the limitations of this amendment). Furthermore, it was an institution protected by law, until the law was changed.
Secession was another right protected by law. So were the rights of free speech, free assembly, and the rights enumerated in the fourth and fifth amendments.
Evidently, these laws as well were changed as a result of the Civil War.
[/quote]
First of all, secession was NOT protected by law. It may have been implicit as a right, but was never spelled out. This is why Lincoln had to address the issue in his Inaugural address.
Secondly, to call prisoners incarcerated for crimes slaves is just foolish. Slaves were in bondage due to their being Negroes, something that was not a conscious choice. To rob a bank, for example, is a choice.
Varqanir, you are intelligent and well-read. However, your liberal bias and desire to insult Americans colors your arguments.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Wow, was I out to lunch on this great thread!
Thunder,
As I explained in another thread, liberals are actually in favor of slavery. They created big government, they created a bureaucracy that dominates our lives. They are simply carrying on the traditions of the Dem party from before the Civil War.
HH
Man, this just isn’t my day.
Does this mean I have to agree with you, too Headhunter?
Then again, is the big government bureaucracy created by a Democratic administration (say, the Clinton administration) more dominating than that created by a Republican administration (say, the Bush administration)?
This is not, by the way, a glib question. Or, if you prefer, Headhunter, a “set-up question”. I have been out of the states since Dubya’s daddy was in the White House, so I’ve kinda missed out on all the fun.
Conservatives and Liberals alike, I’d like to hear what you think about this. Under which administration have you felt more free? A big Democratic government, or a big Republican government?
[/quote]
In the Great Depression, the USA endured some pretty radical changes: government became much more pervasive and the USA began building up for its transition to being the hegemonic power. Each of the political parties follows these basic premises from that era. That being the case, I don’t think I ‘felt more free’ in one circumstance as opposed to another.
In either case, we’re headed for an unprecedented disaster. We are 9 trillion in debt. Someday, the rest of the world won’t want our IOUs. Watch for the day the music stops. At that point, the large government the libs created will become a full-fledged fascist regime.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
You know, it’s a real treat to see the conservatives bashing a Republican president, and the liberals defending him. This doesn’t happen every day.
Seriously, though, I think Lincoln’s justifications for his actions were pretty shaky, but even assuming he had ironclad reasons, the result was to set a precedent for abuse of executive power that continues to this day.
Sic semper tyrannis.
Quoting Boothe after he shot Lincoln? That’s the way to solidify your argument.[/quote]
Boy, that’s gratitude for you. I just said five minutes ago that I agree with you, and now this. ;p Actually, it’s the state motto of Virgina, birthplace of men with names like Tom and George, whose job it was to stand up to tyrants.
Doubtful. As a non-Japanese I probably would have been straight to the POW camps.
Jello factory. That was funny. But I don’t imagine the Professor would stay a slave for very long. More likely, he would break his puny bonds and escape to become a character like Blade: striking in the dead of night, cutting down the slave-owning oppressors in a flash of cold steel and freeing his African brothers and sisters.
Actually I believe slavery as an institution would have petered out anyway as the Industrial Revolution made deeper inroads into the economies of the agrarian South. The cotton gin and combine tractor would have eliminated a need for most of the slave labor that was employed.
And as for the United States becoming the Balkan States, well, who knows? Scandinavia seemed to do pretty well after the Swedish Empire collapsed.
Again, Headhunter, you have no argument with me on this point. The government that governs best is one that governs least.
First of all, secession was NOT protected by law. It may have been implicit as a right, but was never spelled out. This is why Lincoln had to address the issue in his Inaugural address.[/quote]
“Amendment X
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.”
Ergo, protected by law.[quote]
Secondly, to call prisoners incarcerated for crimes slaves is just foolish. [/quote]
Hey, don’t look at me. The 13th Amendment allows for “slavery and involuntary servitude” for people convicted of crimes. Therefore, a prisoner = a slave.
Well, it’s getting easier and easier to become a prisoner. With the United States Code expanding like Topsy, coupled with “three strikes and you’re out” laws putting petty criminals and traffic violators away for life, “conscious choice” seems to be a moot point.[/quote]
[quote]
Varqanir, you are intelligent and well-read. [/quote]
Why thank you. And you, Headhunter, are very tall. I want you to know that I mean that sincerely. Nah, I appreciate it, brother. And I admit, I kind of misjudged you on the Young People thread. But that’s water under the bridge.
I have no desire to insult American colors. I love America. I left because I didn’t like many of the things you enumerated in your last post: big government, pervasive bureaucracy, economic instability. Japan at the time was the place to be. But I will move back…when the place starts looking like America again.
As for my so-called liberal bias, all I can say is,
Aaaaaaaahahahahahahahahaha!
Go take a look at my Liberty Control thread. I love liberty, but that don’t make me a liberal.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
If states can secede from the Union, can counties secede from states?
Can cities secede from counties?
Eastern Tennessee had large pro-Union elements. Could the eastern counties of Tennessee secede from a Confederate Tennessee and join the Union?[/quote]
Are you being an ass, or do you not understand the history of the Constitutional Convention and the ratification?
[quote]doogie wrote:
thunderbolt23 wrote:
If states can secede from the Union, can counties secede from states?
Can cities secede from counties?
Eastern Tennessee had large pro-Union elements. Could the eastern counties of Tennessee secede from a Confederate Tennessee and join the Union?
Are you being an ass, or do you not understand the history of the Constitutional Convention and the ratification?
[/quote]
Far from being an ass - they are fair questions: what is the difference? If a constitution is no more than a treaty by which consent or lack of it allows you to opt in or opt at will, why would there be a difference between a federal and a state constitution?
Just because you don’t have a plausible answer doesn’t mean I am an ass for asking the question.
If the right to secede is natural and inherent, presumably it extends further than the reach of just the federal government.
And I understand the Constitutional Convention, etc., just fine. The Articles of Confederation specifically called for a “perpetual Union”, and the Constitution - ratified as an improvement to the Articles - announced it was seeking a “more perfect Union”. Is there a reason to think that improving the perpetual Articles of Confederation - the point of the Constitution - included weakening its position of perpetuity? Does permitting anarchy on a whim make a more “perfect Union”?
Moreover, the Constitution provides that the federal government can “suppress Insurrections and Rebellions”. A secession ipso facto is a rebellion against the current government, as every rebellion can be boiled down to stating that “the power you had over me yesterday you don’t have today because of my unilateral decision” - so why would the Constitution recognize the right of the national government to suppress rebellions while at the same time permitting unilateral rebellions anytime a state wanted it?
