Posted on 12/04/2006 6:10:06 PM PST by goldstategop
RUSH: John in Shreveport, Louisiana. Hello.
CALLER: Mr. Rush, don't you think you're being a hypocrite when you're not -- when you don't want the Iraqis to decide the problems themselves, especially since Abraham Lincoln took two -- two generals named Lincoln [sic--Grant] and Sherman who were responsible for the deaths of 59,000 southern people? And since you hate Confederate heritage that much, don't you think that we should allow the people of Iraq to decide their own fate?
RUSH: (Laughing.) Gee. I hate Confederate heritage?
CALLER: No kidding.
RUSH: On the basis of what do you say that?
CALLER: Okay, allow me to quote you from 2001: "The American Civil War was the first conflict in human history to set a people free from the bondage of slavery." Your quote, sir.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: And that's not --
RUSH: Well, the point is, we fought --
CALLER: -- power --
RUSH: Are we going to have this argument, Steve?
CALLER: Yes, sir, we are, if you've got the nerve to hold it!
RUSH: I'll have this argument with you any time you want. I've been hearing from you guys since I started this show. I know, it's about states' rights, it was about freedom; it was about independence. But it was about preserving the union -- and Abraham Lincoln knew that you couldn't preserve an America with the institutions defined by our Constitution if one man was allowed to own another.
CALLER: Well, you could not preserve the Constitution as long as you could override it by military power and invasion.
RUSH: Well, there was the preservation of the union that was the number one --
CALLER: How about the preservation of the Constitution, shouldn't that be predominant?
RUSH: Look, you still want to secede? What's your solution?
CALLER: We have no choice, we're under occupation now. The thing about it is you still have to lie about Abraham Lincoln to prove your, to make your point.
RUSH: I'm not lying about Abraham Lincoln. What do you mean, you're still under occupation?
CALLER: Put it this way. The South was not allowed to vote its own way; we're not going to allow Iraq to vote its own government, either.
RUSH: But we did.
CALLER: Do you think we're really abiding by that? What they voted for, we're trying to subvert it by military occupation. No difference than what they did here for 12 years in Louisiana. You don't think we don't see that? You don't think we don't see you as a hypocrite for what you say about, oh, yeah, preserve the union, but let's never mind, let's take away the vote from those who are the voting citizens --
RUSH: I cannot believe this!
CALLER: -- Constitution!
RUSH: I can't believe this. You are taking out your frustrations at having lost the Civil War on me and claiming I'm a hypocrite because of my stance on the Iraq war?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Which I don't even think you know what it is.
CALLER: I don't think you know -- I don't think you know who Abraham Lincoln was.
RUSH: I certainly know who Abraham Lincoln was. He's one of the greatest presidents in the history of the country.
CALLER: Who said that --
RUSH: And it wasn't because he defeated the south. It was because he preserved the union.
CALLER: He preserved the union by trampling the Constitution!
RUSH: He did not trample the Constitution. He suspended habeas corpus. He did do some things I wish Bush would do.
CALLER: Like kill 59,000 innocent civilians?
RUSH: Are you talking about Sherman's march through Atlanta?
CALLER: And -- and -- and Grant's shelling the city of Vicksburg. Hello?
RUSH: It won the war, didn't it? You ever heard of Gettysburg? It won the war and that was the objective. I'll tell you what I wish Bush would do that Lincoln did. Take all these anti-war agitators and send 'em to Canada. Send the National Guard in there. Send Harry Reid over to Baghdad if he's going to be so socially --
CALLER: Like that Ohio Congressman Vallandigham, huh?
RUSH: Absolutely, like that Ohio congressman, that Democrat that was snatched out of his house and sent down to Jefferson Davis, who also didn't want him.
CALLER: Well, at least I got you to acknowledge that.
RUSH: Acknowledge what?
CALLER: Well, the fact that Lincoln did have his secret police who went into people's houses, pulled them out in the middle of the night, and had them -- and had them --
RUSH: You know what? I hope before you die you learn to thank God for Abraham Lincoln.
CALLER: I hope before you die you learn what a racist and a bigot and a power-hungry maniac he was.
RUSH: I'm the racist and the bigot?
CALLER: I didn't say you were. I said he was!
RUSH: Oh. Abraham Lincoln? How in the world you can call a guy who ended slavery a racist and a bigot? I have heard everything now. Everything, in 22 years of hosting this program, I have heard everything.
And it destroyed the Federalist Party as a national party, because they were thought to be traitors.
Lincoln was not going to interfere with slavery was it already existed.
He did not compromise on not allowing it to go into the new territories, which was why he was elected.
He was not elected to end slavery, he was elected to end its growth and put it on the road to eventual extinction.
You guys toss that statement out by Lincoln and we are suppose to be shocked because he was going to obey the Constitution and not end slavery were it was legal?
What you count on is that we will not know the context of what Lincoln was doing.
In this, your arguments are disingenuous.
Only where it was already legal.
Slavery would not have survived had it been limited in its growth and no gov't action would have been necessarly, as it wasn't in the Northern States where it was ended peacefully.
Try to give the whole truth.
The Confederates wanted to make a particular race (Negro) a slave forever and then claim a moral right to do so.
West Virginia was created a state in Violation of the U.S Constitiuon, Article IV, Secetion 3 New states may be admitted by the Congress into this Union but no new state shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state nor any state be formed by the Junction of two or more states or parts of the states without the consent of
the Legislatures of the states well of the Congress.
It was Violation of the Constituion of the Confederate States of America as well as the Consitiuion of the Commonwealth of Virginia it was illegal and outside of the law.
It was taken for granted that only those powers specifiably listed would be Federal powers but the States accepted the reality of the superior nature of the Federal union by joining it and accepting Art.1 Sec.10.
If Secession were an option, the mechanism for it would have been put into the Constitution.
If secession was a right back then, it must still be a right since nothing has been changed in writing regarding it.
You cannot find the right of secession in the Constitution, it is compact among the People of the states, not the states.
A State can no more secede from the Union than it can be thrown out of the Union.
And the Confederacy was formed to protect slavery.
What the individual soldier was fighting for is irrelevant when discussing the rightness of the Confederacy.
Thats your view
What you mean is that secession was illegal for W. Viginia, but not for Virginia.
So, if you than you must be willing to accept that secession is wrong for Virginia.
Had not Virginia attempted its illegal secession, W. Virginia would not have been broken away to stay in the Union.
The Wheeling convention was conducted without election and without the consent of the people of virginia
What that the Confederacy was formed to defend slavery?
That was the view of the Confederate Vice President, A.H.Stephens as well.
If you, like many of the southern defenders, think the Reb soldiers were defending their homes against what you term an "invading" army, then you understand little about Lincoln's motives for sending troops into the southern states. Lincoln never considered that the Confederacy was a legitimate foreign country...which it wasn't.
When northern generals sent telegrams to Lincoln boasting about driving southern troops from "northern soil", Lincoln just about went apoplectic. He stated to associates "when are my generals going to understant that the whole country is our soil". In short Lincoln sent troops to the south to put down an illegal rebellion...which any good president should have done. My question to you is why did the south think it had to "secede"? What was it "seceding" from? Lincoln wasn't going to do anything to change the "peculiar" institution. What southern rights were being threatened by Lincoln?
The Virginia State legislature never gave it's Consent for such a new to be formed within its boundaries.
And the people of Virginia originally voted to stay in the Union.
When troops were ordered up, the pro-secession group pushed through a secession bill despite the view of many, if not most, Virginians to remain in the Union.
None of the secession passings were done through a popular vote, but through carefully selected conventions.
And the U.S. congress never gave Virginia the right to leave the Union.
It seems that you care about legal matters when it suits you.
Amen and likewise to Johnny Reb.
If something is not prohibited by law, it is LEGAL!
9. Recently the National Park Service, with a recent discovery, recognized that blacks were asked to help defend the city of Petersburg, Virginia and were offered their freedom if they did so (emphasis given).
The leaders of the Confederacy did not want to give the black a chance to fight, stating it would undermine the reason the Confederacy was created.
Throughout the article, the reason the reason those relativity few blacks did serve with the Confederates was to get their freedom.
The same reason many fought on the Colonial side in the Revolution or for the British as well.
That's an interesting concept.
So if something isn't prohibited by the U.S. constitution it is legal.
"The 10th amendment says nothing about the states 'right' to secede."
Of course not, and that was not my point.
The 10th amendment is about limiting federal power. The Civil War was uncharted territory, out of necessity
"The Bill of Rights are about individual freedoms."
The 10th Amendment is not about individual freedoms at all, it's exclusively and unambiguosly about limiting federal power.
"If you want to blame someone for the increase of gov't power since the Civil war, blame the South..."
Friend, last I checked Southerners were still your fellow Americans, per Lincoln's wishes. I blame those who think the unlimited exercise of Federal power is a good thing. It is not a good thing, and if the 10th amendment is not restored THAT will be the end of the Union for the Union will itself be enslaved with sole purpose to feed the federal beast.
By the way, if as you have said slavery was legal because it wasn't in the U.S. Constitution, why was it then necessary to make it legal in the Confederate Constitution?
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