In Lincoln’s letter to Greeley, he stated his paramount concern was not slavery, rather saving the Union. Also pursued plans to send slaves either to Africa or Cental America?
That said, l do not condone slavery and consider it abhorrent. But do realize that it has been part and parcel of human history since recorded time and relatively worldwide in application.
Just stating Lincoln might not have been as magnanimous as advertised.
Lincoln faced a practical problem even if the moral one was resolved - what to do with freed slaves once they were liberated? Attitudes and prejudices don’t disappear overnight once a law is passed ending slavery.
Lincoln even notes that there would be a difference if whites and blacks had started together in a society as free peers, but that the presence of slavery and the social views it reinforced compromised white society’s ability to view blacks as peers once the were liberated.
Removal to Liberia or wherever was a middle option among abolitionist-minded people, who had a range of opinions on what post-slavery life should/would look like after the moral sin of slavery was eradicated, even though they agreed it should be eradicated. A lot of abolitionists hated slavery, but didn’t think newly freed blacks would ever be compatible with whites.
With this idea, Lincoln is trying to build consensus to resolve that issue. We always think of Lincoln as a high-minded statesman (and he was), but he was also a consummate politician with an eye for achieving results through pragmatic dealmaking.
And one other thing on this point - that was and is true. Lincoln’s immediate challenge was a response to the unlawful rebellion and holding the Union together. That was the only thing in his authority to do. Lincoln had no unilateral ability to end slavery once elected.
Bolt and Treco:
Keep this is mind too.
What you say in terms of Lincoln and his concerns for the Union were true…but he also felt that slavery was an unsustainable, moral “cancer” that would steadily destroy the very soul of the Country from within.
BTW I wanted to say racist/white supremacist/Nazi is just code word for anyone who is unapologetically on the right. Leftists have used these terms quite effectively to shut down conversation and only now are we starting to see these terms lose their effectiveness.
Many thanks to @anonym for being an exemplar of what I’m talking about. As soon as a psychologically gelded male is hit with one of these labels he cowers in fear and completely back tracks from his stance.
The irony here is that you are engaging in the exact behavior you decry. That is, you are endeavoring to delegitimize any criticism of bigoted remarks by preemptively throwing your ‘PC foul’ flag, and in doing so, cutting off conversation before it occurs.
A more aboveboard approach to such disagreements is to evaluate them on a case-by-case basis, rather than via blanket condemnations before the fact.
You are all over the internet tweeting about “miscegenation” and “dindus,” trying, like an infatuated tween, to get some white-supremacist loser named James Weidmann to tweet back at you. You whiny fucking snowflake.
Can you defeat any of my actual arguments or is this as far as you go?
Well, it’s kind of difficult to have a normal discussion and address specific arguments with you being a pathetic neo-Nazi and all.
I love how you are now following me off this site to find reasons to avoid taking on my arguments head on
What’s hilarious is the guy im tweeting is a jew who I have a constant friendly teasing back and forth with. I’m sure you don’t get it because I can tell you probably don’t understand human relations
First of all, it’s Jews with a capital J. Only antisemites use “jew”. “Speak English, your in America” - you know, as Trump supporters would say.
Secondly, I have family in Israel and I don’t tease back and forth with them over the Holocaust - “Ha, ha, you’d be on the first train to Dachau”
So based on this empirical evidence alone I’d say I know more about human relations that you.
I defeated the living shit our of your “arguments” re: Trump-Russia just the other day. Remember when you suggested “allegations” ought to be dismissed out of hand, and then I showed that you don’t actually believe this – that you in fact peddle some of the flimsiest, worst-sourced shit that has ever appeared hereabouts? Remember when you openly submitted to the discussion the admission that you didn’t know even the basic timeline of the issue at hand? Remember when you proved this to be so by stupidly citing a report from early December in support of the claim that FBI didn’t concur with CIA’s conclusion that the Kremlin had intended to help Trump win, whereafter I showed that this report was called into question five days later by the very same news outlet and then definitively & explicitly refuted by the FBI itself on January 6? Remember how I explained that this showed you weren’t equipped to debate this with me because you hadn’t even bothered to nail down the basic facts, you fucking frantic headless chicken?
In fact, take a look above. You imply that my post re: your repugnant racism does not deal with any of your “actual arguments.” But what incited it? You said “racist/white supremacist/Nazi is just code word for anyone who is unapologetically on the right.” I replied by proving – that you are the sort of person who uses the word “dindus” constitutes proof, yes – that my use of the terms “racist” and “white supremacist” to describe you had nothing to do with your being “unapologetically on the right” and everything to do with your being…a racist and white supremacist. So even here you have failed: I was defeating your “actual argument.” Not that I take any special pride in this: you are too stupid, and too far up the great neo-Nazi hivemind’s ass, for me to take anything but the cheapest & most superficial pleasure in utterly destroying your “arguments.”
Your source being WaPo the paper that has repeatedly been caught lying about the POTUS for literally a straight year and a half.
By the way there has been plenty discussed here - muslims most recently. I noticed you’re entirely quiet on practically every topic but Trump-Russia. Why is that?
No, you fucking muppet. Your source was an outdated third-hand report in WaPo that was called into question by that very same paper just five days later. My source was the FBI itself, which settled the matter dispositively by explicitly concluding that Putin intended to help elect Trump:
– ICA: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections
How in the name of God have you managed to not get this yet? How can you have fucked this up so badly that you just tried to impugn the credibility of my source despite the fact that it isn’t my source, it’s yours? How do you do this?
Well, you’re not wrong on raj, but you may possibly be wrong on the news story. In order to keep this long-ass thread on topic I will not try to enter into a topical debate on the news story you highlighted, but I want to bring up this point:
I don’t want crazy people to have guns. Really. However, I also believe that although it is important to keep crazy people from guns, any limitation of an explicitly stated Constitutional right requires a MUCH higher burden of proof in order to justofy said policy. This is not limited to the 2nd amendment in any way, however it is included in “explicitly stated” and is the story under question.
I am not sure that the burden is met here. In a nation with ~350 million privately owned guns, a bill that affects ~75,000 people is spitting into the ocean as well as questionable in meeting that burden of proof. Constitutional rights–even dangerous ones like freedom of press and of speech (and yes speech and press ARE quite dangerous)–must be held to a higher standard when considering whether they can be legitimately curtailed.
We may also consider that the California version of this law (not explicitly “ill” but “danger to themselves or others”) has been under fire for corruption, misuse, overstep by the state in its short life time (under 4 years if I remember correctly?). All things that ahould be extremely troubling.
No, not watching. I read the first 3 or 4 books and they were too dark for me, and I got the feeling that the author was just jerking me around because he didn’t really know where he was going with the story.
I think this is a big reason why he didn’t have much appeal to Mormons. The displays of pride or arrogance, a lot of other things Trump said about religion, ethnicity and women that don’t jive at all with the way we see humanity, but doomsday really doesn’t play well.
Just a word about this idea of “making America great again.” I agree with most of what you said, but please try to understand this just a bit from my perspective. As progressives portray “great” as a desire by many or all Trump voters to go back to something more white, straight, or Christian, they are also burning social capital.
Joe Biden burned quite a lot of social capital with me when he told everybody that Romney wanted to put black people “back in chains.” Yeah. Romney was not only a racist, but itching to reinstitute slavery? We should believe that Romney is a misogynist after the “binders of women” gaff, related to seeing women who wanted to reenter the work force after having kids as a resource. I just want you to see how this idea of social capital goes both ways. I don’t think either side is doing much to built it right now.
I don’t know Mitt and Ann personally, but I know that family, and we have several mutual friends. I’ve been invited to family things. I’ve met a couple of his sons, and his sister. His niece is a dear friend who brought casseroles when my children were born. If those people are racists and misogynists, and all that is evil, then I’ve never seen a single sign of it. Quite the opposite. After Dems vilified him, it was amazing to me to see them come around and act like he’s really a pretty decent guy because now it’s Trump that really is all the bad things. Seriously, my Dem neighbors wishing for Romney as a great Secretary of State pick! Why would they want him, if he’s a misogynist who also wants to “put black people in chains?” Really. During the Trump campaign a few public people, journalists and Dems actually apologized and back tracked in an attempt to tell people that they might have been too harsh in tearing down Romney. That they might have called wolf a little bit. But now, please believe us when we tell you that Trump REALLY is all the bad things.
I have a lot of cousins. Two of them are gay, and married. Not to each other, we’re not from the south. Haha! Seriously, one of my cousins is married to a Hispanic man, the child of Mexican immigrants. My cousin voted for Trump. He’s a small business person. I believe his vote is purely based on economics. He thinks America was “greater” before the regulatory state grew so much. The burden of much of this has disproportionately harmed small business people, like him. Not talking about you here, just the general rhetoric. It’s not helping our country to assume that my gay Trump voting cousin is a closet bigot, or a misogynist, or whatever phobia or ism you want to put on him. If progressives keep that up, they will continue to feed the ill will from their side.
Because it is logically prior to everything else. Nothing else matters until we know whether or not this piece of shit is guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage.
If we were to get into Islam, you would be surprised by my thoughts. After all, though I’m not a New Atheist, I do agree with some of the empirical arguments those assholes make. I could even cite a broken-clock example or two where I agree with you. Then, of course, you ruin it by going full-on-racist-scumbag with mouth-breather reasoning I could defeat in my sleep. Because that’s what you are: a racist scumbag.
But, as I said, it doesn’t matter to me right now. We already know with certainty that the guy in the Oval Office is a disloyal stooge for a foreign thug. All that matters to me is the extent of that disloyalty: is it the sort that calls for condemnation and a resounding defeat in 2020, or is it the sort that calls for a scaffold and a noose? Because make no mistake: in that “great” golden past you have collectively fantasized about with the rest of the Trump hivemind, the price of colluding with foreign spies to subvert an American election involved stringing the shitbag up and clapping until his legs stopped twitching.
But that’s for the other thread, so I’ll leave this one alone for now.
Everyone has taken your arguments head on, and dumptrucked them all.
Good Lord. And scroll around in his feed and you’ll see him retweeting white nationalist Richard Spencer. Disgusting. But not surprising.