[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, shall we discuss the centralization of power under Lincoln? His legacy in that regard?[/quote]
He realized that freedom for all men was more important than strict adherence to a document that alleged to support the equality of all men while apparently also allowing for the legal ownership of men.
Freedom on one side. A piece of paper on the other. Lincoln chose freedom, the South chose a piece of paper. The South chose economic freedom over individual freedom, Lincoln went the other way. Anyone with a libertarian streak and an ability to recognize the hypocrisy in touting rights while claiming ownership of other men would have made the same choice Lincoln did. There are some things more important than strict adherence to a piece of paper that protects freedoms.
To paraphrase/borrow from George Orwell: All men are created equal, but some men are created more equal than others. That was the attitude of the Southern founding fathers who also owned slaves, and Lincoln saw right through it. He didn’t advocate total equality for blacks, but he certainly understood that no country that stood for freedom could do so in good faith and then enslave an entire race of people.[/quote]
A man who knows his history knows that not just Southern landowners stood for slavery.
Yankee shipowners brought those slaves across the Atlantic.
Yankee politicians supported slavery many times at the state and national level.
The state of New York, for instance, did not even abolish slavery until 1828 – 40 years after the drafting of the Constitution.
Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the US and only one term away from Lincoln’s, was from New Hampshire and yet fiercely protected slavery.
James Buchanan, the president prior to Lincoln, also a Yankee, from Pennsylvania vigorously supported it too.
Yankees owned slaves in the early decades of our Republic.
Blacks owned black slaves too.
Even the Cherokees owned a large number of black slaves.
Southern whites, by percentage, owned very few slaves. It was a rich man’s deal.
What’s the point of this li’l lesson? While Southern landowners are vilified for slavery and rightfully so, it was not limited to them.
[/quote]
This is all completely irrelevant to my point. Southerners, Northerners, Westerners, DownUnderers, whatever. The fact is that Lincoln chose individual freedom for everyone (not complete freedom, but ending slavery is obviously the first gigantic step toward that end) and the South decided that they’d rather secede than uphold the principles that they, and many others outside of the South, hypocritically espoused when it suited them and their needs.
I love America, but I really have a hard time reconciling the massive hypocrisy that a good part of this country was built on. How do others reconcile this? How do we hold up the Constitution as a perfect document that should be treated in absolute terms when the people who wrote it engaged in behavior that was completely inimical to the very fabric of that document?[/quote]
Why does the past vex you so?
Are you responsible for the sins of your ancestors?[/quote]
I do happen to be an actual descendant of John Brown, though. Seriously. He’s some distant ancestor of mine. I don’t feel responsible for his sins. The rest of my ancestors at the time were the Spanish Basque that settled the California coast in the late 18th century, and a bunch of Germans and Italians who came here at the turn of the 20th century. I don’t feel responsible for their sins. Not really sure what they did, though.
I don’t even know what ancestral guilt has to do with any of this. Is this another one of your attempts to ignore the basic thesis of my post and latch onto a minor supporting detail buried somewhere in one of my usual walls of indiscernible text?[/quote]
No one has ever said, especially here on PWI, that the Constitution was a perfect document.
I hinted at your perceived ancestral guilt because I’m trying to figure out why you’ve gone into a virtual epileptic fit about events that happened over 150 years ago the way some people are erupting over, let’s say…oh…ummm…abortion which is occurring CURRENTLY.
[/quote]
Semantics aside, there are plenty who have effectively said that the Constitution is perfect. Original intent vs. Organic Document. If you believe in purely following the original intent of the Founding Fathers, then you necessarily feel that they got things right the first time. If you feel otherwise, then a Model II approach to the Constitution is appropriate. But that isn’t what original intent followers believe.
The reason I am not erupting over abortion is because we are in the Abraham Lincoln thread. I feel as strongly about abortion as I do about slavery. The abortion issue is a dead-end with no discernible opportunity for intellectual stimulation from the opposition, so I avoid those discussions entirely. The pro-choice crowd’s argument is tired, old, and I’m over it. I get nothing out of beating my head against that wall. I have not had a legitimate challenge to my thinking from that crowd, but here I can at least trade blows with people who are going to force me to sharpen my game a little bit.