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.
The right to rebel is an individual right, but rebellion must be when all other avenues to change the Gov't have failed and the abuses offer no other option.
That is why we have the 2nd Amendment.
What about American Kook?
I know that the Union black soldiers were not fighting to gain their freedom since they were already free.
The Southern ones were fighting so they could be freed.
Imagine writing in your Constitution that you had a right to enslave the negro and then asking him to fight for you!
LOL!
As for numbers, I think the black Union soldiers and sailors were in far greater numbers, indeed entire Regiments were formed of entirely black troops (except for their white officers)
Carolyn
The caller probably belongs to the Libertarian Party
Most gov't activities were handled by the states and local gov't.
But the Federal gov't was to make sure that they did not overstep their legal limits also.
That was on reason the Constitution was formed, due to abuses of individual freedom on the state level.
In fact, Madison said we had more to fear from local tyranny than we did from Federal one.
What we need is a total return of the Bill of Rights in both the Federal and state levels.
It was Southern states after the Civil War that made gun control laws that specified race as a qualifying factor in owning a weapon.
I would think that Southerners would want to be Americans of their own choice.
By today's standards so were Robert Lee, Thomas Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and every other southern leader.
And the loser gets to write the myths.
Fine. Hide under your desk then.
What, you retailing the "suitors of Penelope" theory of the Union again? Lock the doors and kill everybody?
There is nothing in the Constitution that gives it or any other state the right to leave it, no more then it does for any state to be ejected.
Your thinking on this subject is so heavily polluted with the spirit of totalitarianism and with the psychic need to vindicate your hero, that I don't think we can have a conversation.
States do NOT "receive" their "rights" from the Constitution. It's the other way around -- and we aren't talking about "rights" with respect to governments, but about powers and sovereignty. But you knew that, didn't you? You've been told often enough.
It isn't that you are constitutionally illiterate. It's that you are wilfully ignorant of your great heritage, that makes you such a tiny, tiny person.
I think the only people who had a complaint about their comings and goings being interfered with were the slaves.
The subject at hand was powers, and the nature of the People and their government. Here you go again.
If you are willing to deny other men their freedom, don't complain about losing yours.
You refract the dark radiance of your badness through multiple prisms of malevolence, ignorance, and stupidity.
One, how can you claim the United States is a great, free country when you admit, as you did in your last blundering quote, that people in this country are no longer free, because of what your hero did?
But you gave up a critical point, in order to indulge your dark passion for teleological gloating, to justify which you point the moralizing finger of the old Yankee Abolitionists -- many of whom were only a degree or two removed from the slave trade themselves, and many of whom voted for discriminatory, racist laws in their own States out of a hypocritical abundance of racist sentiment in their own breasts.
What twaddle. What a fool you are. You've read all this, in hundreds of posts on dozens of threads in which all these issues were discussed at length by posters better-versed than I in all of them, and then you put up something like that last post anyway. Don't you ever tire of being beaten like a big bass drum? You're a sectional bigot, and a snore. You bore me.
Your list is a little bit on the short side, and it seems to be confined to one side of the river. Was that intentional, or just an oversight?
Don't forget Illinois's black codes. Plenty of blame to go 'round, if you're into blame.
Actually, no.
Things so obvious as secession--and whose implementation were the business of the states--were not included in the Constitution. As it should be, there's no mechanism prescribing the many details on how an individual state chooses its representatino in the Federal compact, for example.
Read about the discussion surrounding the New York and Virginia ratification, and you'll find that secession was the point, even if the word wasn't used.
The greatest president?! I think you went back and studied what the Founders' intended for our government to be, and what Lincoln made it, you will see that he wasn't even close to being the greatest. Please read the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, Constitutional Debates, and the Constitution itself. For a President to declare war without the consent of Congress is totally against the Constitution. He didn't have that power, nor could he suspend Habeas Corpus without Congress, I believe Congress was supposed to do that with the advice of the Judiciary. I've heard the old "The Constitution doesn't say that he couldn't about some of his actions, but Madison said "When the Constitution doesn't say something, you MUST go back to what it DOES say" (paraphrased). Lincoln was nothing more than an American version of Julius Caesar.
Do you have anything from Lee or Jackson or Davis or any other Southern leader indicating that they stood for blacks voting or holding office or serving on a jury?
Grant also beat every southern general he came up against while Lee lost to lesser generals like McClelland and Meade. Criticize Grant's strategy if you want, but it was also the only strategy that would actually bring Lee to surrender. Grant was right for adopting it.
Yet in actual implementation, which I noted, there were initially more slave states in the Union than in the Confederacy.
Anyone who has studied the confederacy knows that the Davis government brought government intrusion and power to heights never dreamed of by Abraham Lincoln. If you want to blame today's ills on Lincoln go right ahead. But be aware it would have been even worse in an independent confederacy.
But wait...the discussion at hand was how Lincoln was supposedly this great crusader against slavery everywhere!
By modern standards, almost all the principal leaders of both sides of the conflict would have been considered racist. It is fair to say that Lincoln did modify some of his views after becoming President. His support for removing blacks to Africa or Latin America basically ended while in the White House. Lincoln was initially opposed to abolition of slavery, but issued the Emancipation Proclamation and later supported the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery not only in the Confederacy, but in the border states that remained in the Union.
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