Posted on 08/16/2002 3:44:14 PM PDT by GOPcapitalist
No, the line is a paraphrase of Aleister Crowley's famous blasphemy, "Do what thou wilt, and that shall be the whole of the law". He claimed that was the law of Satan for humankind.
Seeing it paraphrased as though total lawlessness would be the order of the nation if the Constitution was set aside is what made me speak up. So9 could be making a good point if he made it clear that this is now the rule followed by federal politicians in governing. It wasn't made so clear as that by any means.
It's worth your while. He was a genuine abolitionist - not one of the many yankee fakes who claimed the title after the war for themselves. Expect to find in him a flamboyant brand of what abolitionism truly was - a passionate but fringe movement containing a strong mixture of both brilliance and kookyness that remained in the fringes despite its name being hijacked by yankees in need of a "moral" position to justify their immorally waged war. That also explains why Spooner, the authentic abolitionist, was so mad when the yankees started up their "look at us - we saved the union and freed the slaves" rhetoric.
Exactly correct. Abolitionism as it existed among the lunatics of New England was the movement which had coopted and rejected the basic thesis of the colonization movement, which had been popular even in the South. The New England radicals didn't simply want slavery abolished as it had been done in the British colonies, they wanted it accomplished by means of slave uprisings and the slaughter of all white people living in the states where slavery was legal, regardless of whether they owned slaves themselves or not. They were also adamantly opposed to returning Africans to Africa, even those who had recently been smuggled in here in defiance of the law.
These same lunatics wanted capitalism destroyed at a stroke. They were never a majority as you observed.
No doubt. Chuckleheads are always laughing for no reason. There's no inconsistency at all in pointing out what one of the actual proponents of abolition had to say about the phony claim of the victorious republicans that they had fought a war for the nonsensical reasons you keep repeating.
It's comforting to you commies to repeat that Southerners have a "lost cause" we're pursuing. Our cause is the restoration of the constitutional republic founded by ratification of the USConstitution. You fervently hope our cause is lost. I don't think it is.
Thanks for demonstrating that you've missed the point entirely and made a fool of yourself in doing so.
For over a century your side of the debate has cast itself as the heir to abolitionism and based on that title you stake out a claim to some unnamed moral highground on slavery. You have nothing of the sort and instead come from a tradition of the yankee war machine, its unjustly waged war, its coerced obedience, and its political - as opposed to moral - motives.
Faced with an authentic abolitionist such as Spooner you are repulsed as undeniably the guy was a fringe extremist. But that was exactly what abolitionism embodied, and Spooner as one of it's leaders filled the role of a brilliant yet flamboyant crackpot.
Revisionist yankeeland stole the name of abolitionism as the root of its supposed moral claim to justify an immorally waged war. Only one problem - the real abolitionists were still there and the crackpots pitched a fit when their fringe movement was usurped by political power grabbers to justify their agenda and behavior. That's why Spooner was so mad, and that is why his commentary is so telling - it exposes as a fraud the whole of your side's claim to abolitionism and, by popularly promoted albeit flawed inference, morally-grounded anti-slavery activism.
And as a side note, most political historians tend to include Spooner as a libertarian or anarcho-libertarian philosopher. He's still a fringer, but he's not the same as a leftist anarchist ala the marxian communalism you are probably referencing.
The Blumenfeld book has gotten very hard to find. I don't understand why he hasn't done another edition; there is not one available even at his website. It covers crucial material.
Frank's book has just come out in the last month. I highly recommend it to anyone who aspires to freedom for themselves or their progeny.
These are two books that, IMO, you must have to know truthful American history. Both deal with the Socialist-Unitarian-Communist-humanist-egalitarianist rejection of Christianity. Frank Conner's book goes into great detail in exposing what has been and is being done not only to the South but to civilisation as we know it. In other words, all men and women who are not simply fair-weather Christians MUST read these books!
Is Public Education Necessary? by Samuel Blumenfeld
The South Under Siege 1830 - 2000/ A History of the Relations Between the North and the South by Frank Conner
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOUTHERN HISTORY WITH THE HAIR ON
A new book titled, "The South Under Siege 1830 - 2000/ A History of the Relations Between the North and the South," by Frank Conner (me) will go on sale Monday (7/15/02). It is a 6 X 9 hardcover book, 752 pages, with bibliography and index, but no footnotes. (However, when discussing controversial material in the book, I generally cite my source.)
The thesis of this book is that various groups of Northern liberals have been waging a nonstop ideological war against the conservative white South from the 1830s to the present, using black civil rights as their primary weapon against us. The book tells what the liberals have done to us; why they said they were doing those terrible things; why they were actually doing them; and what the results have been. When you see that history from 1830 to 2000 laid out in one volume, you see that the liberals had a very different primary motive than that of aiding the blacks. I contend that they have been using the South as their battleground for the past 170 years to discredit Christianity in the US, and replace it with secular humanism (ideological liberalism) as the official religion of the US.
This book exposes the sickening hypocrisy and blatant viciousness of the Northern liberals in dealing with the conservative South. I believe that if you read this book, it will change forever your impressions of the North and the Northerners, and the South and the Southerners.
In its final chapter, the book proposes a fairly-detailed plan whereby the Southerners can --with the resources presently available to us-- mount a lawful ideological revolutionary war (i.e. of carefully-chosen words, not bullets) to reclaim our souls and our region from the ruinous rule of the liberals.
In researching this book, I just followed my nose --as is my wont; consequently, in its pages I gore some hitherto-sacrosanct sacred cows. In other words, this book is politically incorrect. If you like the way things are going in the South, don't buy this book! If you have delicate sensibilities, don't buy this book! If you are an ideological liberal, don't buy this book! For everybody else, there is nothing else like this book on the market-- and there may never be another one like it.
The price of the book is $37.40 postpaid to residents of Georgia; or $34.95 postpaid to everyone else in the continental US. To order it, please send your check to:
Collards Publishing Company
P.O. Box 71996
Newnan, Georgia 30271-1996.
Sorry, no e-mail or telephone orders, or discounts for volume, or sales to booksellers (whom I admire tremendously, but I simply don't have the margin for that built into this first edition), or via other venues.
Frank Conner
For over a century your side of the debate has cast itself as the heir to abolitionism and based on that title you stake out a claim to some unnamed moral highground on slavery.
Thanks for demonstrating yet again that you have no conception of the politics and sentiment of the people of the time. Spooner was an abolitionist and a very radical one at that. Abolitionists only made up a small fraction of the anti-slavery side in that age. The vast majority of anti-slavery people, both north and south, were like Lincoln who favored the gradual elimination of slavery because the understood the political and economic realities. Radicals like Spooner wanted an immediate end to slavery, fire and brimstone for slave owners, and were perfectly willing to destroy the constitution and the nation to reach that goal. To say, as you do, that one could only be pro-slavery or be an abolitionist is like saying that the anti-abortion fight of today one can only be an abortionist or a member of Operation Rescue.
Spooner was the ying to Ruffin's yang. Neither gave a damn for the nation. They were irresponsible radicals and nothing but minor footnotes to the great events of the age.
It would be interesting to see some of the things Garrison said about Lincoln.....and Wendell Phillips said....but then, Lincoln was a first-rate politician who wasn't letting much out of his hat, I don't think, about what he really intended to accomplish with the Civil War. I have posted that I suspect he always, from 1856 forward, intended to end slavery in the South, by securing the Presidency and then resorting either to constitutional crisis, or a constitutional novelty, or to allowing open conflict to arise.
I've been posting over on the other thread ("Area Confederate Soldiers") so I've been pretty busy.
That's a very heavy charge, 'Dees. You're asserting that the Yankee abolitionists essentially wanted emancipation of the black slaves so that they could murder white Southerners ... that they were advocating genocide at one remove. Wow. I've never seen that one before.
It's worth noting that a lot of abolitionists came out of New England seminaries -- but this would be the ultimate in hellfire-and-damnation from the New England pulpit. What, exactly, did the Southerners do that pissed these people off so royally?
Is there a quote anywhere, about that genocidal rage you attribute to them, where we can read the lethal wish in the original? Or have you read someone who attributed that motive to them?
Lincoln's slavery position after the mid 1850's is extremely difficult to guage. He does seem to aim in the direction toward abolition, but at other times he's perfectly willing to set back the accomplishment of emancipation for decades so long as he thought doing so would help him with the greater prize of maintaining his power in a coerced union. The Corwin amendment is perhaps the greatest example of this.
Oh, I don't think anything of the sort has happened. You're just mad that I called you on missing the entire point of this thread and needed to throw out an attack to cover yourself.
Spooner was an abolitionist and a very radical one at that.
Most abolitionists were very radical, and I fully concede Spooner was one of them, though his radical drive was more restrained than the murderers and domestic terrorists of his movement at the same time.
Abolitionists only made up a small fraction of the anti-slavery side in that age.
5% of the northern population according to John Calhoun in 1847. Most estimates put the number at between 5-10% by 1860.
The problem is that abolitionism is most frequently equated, be it accurate or not, with opposition to slavery on "moral" grounds and its name is the one seized by northerners to justify their cause.
The vast majority of anti-slavery people, both north and south, were like Lincoln who favored the gradual elimination of slavery because the understood the political and economic realities.
I'll agree with that, holding that you concede their understanding of political and economic realities to be just that - many opposed slavery for economic and political reasons, not the moral ones frequently attributed to them. You may see this evidenced throughout their writings. Lincoln's famous Peoria speech mentions it when he declares the purpose of opposing slavery's expansion into the territories - to retain those territories for free white laborers to escape to without the competition of blacks. I also invite you to check out Alexis de Tocqueville's commentary on the same subject where he asserted that most northerners hold anti-slavery positions not for the concern of the slaves but for themselves and their economics.
You'll also note that this is Spooner's very grievance in the above essay. He complains that the moralistic claim being made to have freed the slaves was itself fraudulent because the war was not waged to free the slaves and they were only freed because doing so benefitted the northern cause. He continues noting that had they wished the moral title they claim they needed only to say so when they undertook the cause of anti-slavery but they had not.
Radicals like Spooner wanted an immediate end to slavery, fire and brimstone for slave owners
Yes.
and were perfectly willing to destroy the constitution and the nation to reach that goal.
Now that's interesting, because that is exactly what Spooner argued had happened when they did it by what was supposedly "the other way." History gives credibility to his characterization in the most obvious of ways. After all, was not the nation physically destroyed by the war to a degree never before and never since seen? Did not Lincoln trample upon the Constitution's plain meaning in order wage that same war?
To say, as you do, that one could only be pro-slavery or be an abolitionist
I see you've taken up the art of scarecrow conduction. Show me where I ever said anything of the sort as I don't believe you can. I on the other hand would be more than happy to provide you with writing samples from James McPherson where he uses abolitionism and Lincoln interchangably as if they were one in the same to display what he purports to have been THE northern position.
Today, 8-19-02, Lew Rockwell is featuring that chapter of the Lysander Spooner book that you post here. Thanks again for a great piece of forensic history work that surely pisses off the statist pigs who have infiltrated FR.
The entire book is online here.
That is a very biased view of Lincoln’s feelings toward slavery. Yes, he opposed it on economic grounds (like Spooner, he saw slavery as a flawed economy that rendered free-labor politically and economically subservient to the wealthy landed class). But any fair reading of Lincoln’s words on slavery show that he also opposed it on moral, religious and philosophical grounds as well. Go here for a compilation of Lincoln’s words on slavery I’d also remind you of the numerous southerners who justified slavery solely on economic grounds and refused to attempt to make a moral case for it.
After all, was not the nation physically destroyed by the war to a degree never before and never since seen? Did not Lincoln trample upon the Constitution's plain meaning in order wage that same war?
The reality is that the largest economic expansion in the history of the world occurred in the 30 years after the war. It is true that much of the south did not enjoy as many fruits from that expansion as did the rest of the nation. But that was the fault of the south itself for attempting to resurrect their pre-Civil War economic and class systems and not breaking the power of the aristocrat class that dominated their politics and economies. The opportunity was there. They did not avail themselves to it.
As to “trampling upon the Constitution” that is your opinion. My opinion is that the southern states had no constitutional right to unilateral secession and attempted to destroy the constitution with their actions.
I see you've taken up the art of scarecrow conduction. Show me where I ever said anything of the sort as I don't believe you can. I on the other hand would be more than happy to provide you with writing samples from James McPherson where he uses abolitionism and Lincoln interchangably as if they were one in the same to display what he purports to have been THE northern position.
I apologize to you if you have not done that, but you know other Lincoln bashers constantly do --- the most notable recently has been Thomas DiLorenzo and his sock-puppet, Walter Williams. (sorry to Dr. Williams --- I respect his economic knowledge, but as a historian --- he’s a pitiful.) Neither, it appears, understands the dynamics of the age or the broad-spectrum of opinions that drove those dynamics. I’m not sure what quotes from McPherson you have in mind, but I would caution that there is and was a significant difference between “abolitionism” and Abolitionists. The American Colonization Society sought the gradual abolition of slavery for over 40 years. Would anyone call members of that organization like Madison or Clay Abolitionists? They were both slave-owners! Abolitionism was a belief that slavery should be ended, and Abolitionists were an organized political faction whose sole purpose was to end slavery through any means available. I return to my analogy over abortion today. I am opposed to abortion on demand for moral, religious and philosophical reasons rooted in our founding documents. But I have no patience with Operation Rescue or other organizations that are willing to use violence to end the practice. I want to work within the laws to settle the issue. A century from now, will some demagogue like DiLorenzo say that I wasn’t opposed to abortion?
Does he mean that the federal government could have abolished chattel slavery in 1861 and that would somehow have prevented the War, which was founght essentially because southerners saw Lincoln's election as a harbinger of a distant threat to the institution? Huh?
The Union in 1861 was given only three choices by the South. Fight, allow the Union to dissolve, or institute massive federal interference with the individual and states' rights of northerners to protect the institution of slavery.
It is not to be disguised, that a war has broken out between the North and the South. -- Political and commercial men are industriously striving to restore peace; but the peace, which they would effect, is superficial, false, and temporary. True, permanent peace can never be restored, until slavery, the occasion of the war, has ceased. The sword, which is now drawn, will never be returned to its scabbard, until victory, entire, decisive victory, is ours or theirs; not, until that broad and deep and damning stain on our country's escutcheon is clean washed out -- that plague spot on our country's honor gone forever; -- or, until slavery has riveted anew her present chains, and brought our heads also to bow beneath her withering power. It is idle -- it is criminal, to hope for the restoration of the peace, on any other condition. Gerrit Smith to the New York Anti-Slavery Society Presbyterian Church in Peterboro NY, October 21, 1835
Note that Smith said this in 1835. These people actually believed they were at war with the South that early. Read some of the works of Garrison in his whackjob newspaper, The Liberator. He and his fellow lunatics were unable to restrain themselves from fantasizing about slaughter and subjugation.
"I do not believe in battles ending this war. You may plant a fort in every district of the South, you may take possession of her capitals and hold them with your armies, but you have not begun to subdue her people. I know it means something like absolute barbarian conquest, I allow it, but I do not believe that there will be any peace until 347,000 men of the South are either hanged or exiled." Wendell Phillips, at the pulpit of Henry Ward Beecher's Church
"If I had the power, I would arm every wolf, panther, catamount and bear in the mountains of America, every crocodile in the swamps of Florida, every negro in the South, every devil in hell, clothe them in the uniform of the Federal army and turn them loose on the rebels of the South and exterminate every man, woman and child south of the Mason and Dixon's line. I would like to see negro troops, under the command of Butler, crowd every rebel into the Gulf of Mexico, and drown them as the devil did the hogs in the Sea of Galilee." "Parson" Brownlow, ex-governor of Tennessee
These last two are wartime speeches, but you can read similar sentiments in the prewar speeches of these lunatics in any collection of their prose. Look into some of Beecher's sermons and the writings in the abolitionist broadsheets of the day. It's surprising to me that you don't already know about the radicals.
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