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To: BroJoeK
Relative to their population, Confederates arrested as many pro-Union Southerners as the Union arrested Copperhead Democrats.

Bro, this is not an argument to justify why Lincoln did it.

You are advancing a fallacy known as "argumentum ad tu quoque." Which means, "Because someone else did something bad, you can't complain about my guy doing something bad."

Well yes. Yes we can. Your guy shouldn't have done the bad thing, and neither should the other guy, but what the other guy did doesn't excuse your guy.

148 posted on 02/15/2024 10:16:50 AM PST by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: DiogenesLamp
Bro, this is not an argument to justify why Lincoln did it. You are advancing a fallacy known as "argumentum ad tu quoque." Which means, "Because someone else did something bad, you can't complain about my guy doing something bad." Well yes. Yes we can. Your guy shouldn't have done the bad thing, and neither should the other guy, but what the other guy did doesn't excuse your guy.

Its not even true. No less a PC Revisionist than James McPherson confirms that.

"Davis . . . possessed the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for a total of only sixteen months. During most of that time he exercised this power more sparingly than did his counterpart in Washington. The rhetoric of southern libertarians about executive tyranny thus seems overblown." (McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 435)

150 posted on 02/15/2024 11:13:04 AM PST by FLT-bird
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To: DiogenesLamp
DiogenesLamp: "You are advancing a fallacy known as "argumentum ad tu quoque." Which means, "Because someone else did something bad, you can't complain about my guy doing something bad." "

What's at issue is the claim that Lincoln was a "tyrant" and I'm simply saying that word "tyrant" can mean pretty much anything you want it to mean.

In this particular case, if you want to label Lincoln a "tyrant", then so was Jefferson Davis a "tyrant", and are you happy with calling Davis a "tyrant"?

I actually don't think either one deserves the sobriquet "tyrant" because real tyrants are such monsters as Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao or... a long list of blood-thirsty dictators, with no similarities to either Lincoln or Davis.

But, if you must absolutely insist that Lincoln was a "tyrant", then Davis was also just as much a "tyrant" as Lincoln.
Are you happy with that?

166 posted on 02/16/2024 2:23:22 AM PST by BroJoeK (future DDG 134 -- we remember)
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