Confederate Kook Still Smarts Under Civil War "Occupation" (El Rushbo Defends The Union Alert)

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | 12/04/2006 | Rush Limbaugh

[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.

[Gondring]

Stalin was keeping people enslaved.

Lets see, who was doing that?

Stop whinging about Gitmo!

[Non-Sequitur]

So if you're in my house and I tell you to get out, I have no right to expel you?

But it wasn't your house. Sumter was the property of the federal government, built on land deeded to the government free and clear by the South Carolina legislature. Even if their acts of secession had been legal, the state had absolutely no legal claim to the property. Seizing it would be theft, pure and simple.

[Non-Sequitur]

I could have sworn that Honest Abe sign an amendment protecting Slavery for all time. But I guess GoodWin forgot to put that in her book.

Presidential signatures are not part of the amendment process, read the Constitution.

[Non-Sequitur]

He's an upstanding Southern gentleman who has a wealth of knowledge and some interesting stories.

But he insists on presenting those interesting stories as fact, when they aren't anything but the product of his vivid imagination. Having said that, however, I consider stand a valued opponent and I always enjoy discussions with him. When all is said and done, his fairy tales aren't any more outrageous than the rest of the southron myths.

[Non-Sequitur]

I'll bet you couldn't tell the difference between the CSA Constitution and the USA Constitution if they were side by side.

Here's a hint. The confederate constitution is the one that protected slave imports.

[MACVSOG68]

Thank you.

[Non-Sequitur]

Grant tactically lost almost every engagement with Lee, but unlike the generals before him, he kept going.

Golly, having beaten Grant so badly then why was Lee stupid enough to surrender to him? </sarcasm>

[fortheDeclaration]

But wait...the discussion at hand was how Lincoln was supposedly this great crusader against slavery everywhere!

It was?

That is a straw man that the pro-Confederates like to throw around.

Lincoln was anti-slavery, and that is why the South attempted to secede, because he was so.

Jefferson Davis said as much to the Confederate provincial Congress.

Lincoln did two great things, kept the Union intact and freed the slaves.

It seems many on these threads regret both.

[fortheDeclaration]

Yet in actual implementation, which I noted, there were initially more slave states in the Union than in the Confederacy

And so?

It was the South that was willing to go to war to keep them.

[fortheDeclaration]

Stalin was keeping people enslaved. Lets see, who was doing that? Stop whinging about Gitmo!

?

[gondramB]

>>Here's a hint. The confederate constitution is the one that protected slave imports.<<

Good point. The U.S. constitution recognized slavery but not new imports.

>>Golly, having beaten Grant so badly then why was Lee stupid enough to surrender to him? </sarcasm><<

An off-topic serious answer - The North used only 10% of its population for troops but had 2.8 million troops while the South used 13% of its population but still had only 1.06 million - nearly a 2.8:1 advantage for the North in troops plus an even larger advantage in industrial production. Then there was the blockade that even denied food shipments...

http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/other/stats/warcost.htm

[fortheDeclaration]

Most of the the expansion of central gov't did not occur after the Civil War, it occured during the Progressive period. It happened in both instances. One set the stage for the other.

The Civil War did not make centralization a given.

After the war, the income tax was removed (it being unconstitutional), gold was restored as the basis for the currency.

The Federal gov't drastically downsized, to the amazement of the European powers.

[Non-Sequitur]

Of course Lincoln intended to provoke the War, there aren't many Lincoln apologists who even bother to dispute that.

Here's one.

They usually just admire his cleverness in provoking the South into firing the first shot, so that he could rally the north into supporting the war he wanted.

Yeah. We call it the "We wuz sooo stoopid we couldn't see through Lincon's plot" southern defense.

Fort Sumter was a fort for the collection of tariffs.

Having been stationed in Charleston for a number of years I can say that the tariff collection point in 1861 was in the Customs House, which, if I recall correctly, was on East Bay Street. Right by the wharfs. Where the cargo was landed. Not miles away in a fort.

Tariffs were the main source of income for the federal government. The Confederacy intended to set itself up as a free trade zone, and this would have siphoned off commerce from northern ports.

That makes zero sense if you only stop and think about it. Any goods destined for Northern consumers would sooner or later have to pay the Northern tariff. Even had the SOuthern tariff been zero it would have made no sense to land them in the south.

Did he have reason to expect trouble by sending in troops to collect taxes?

Nice hyperbole, but it's killed by the fact that no tariff income was ever collected in Sumter, none was ever intended to be collected there. It was a fort, pure and simple.

[fortheDeclaration]

If Secession were an option, the mechanism for it would have been put into the Constitution. 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.

LOL!

Were they afraid to use the word?

Secession became an issue after the Kentucky-Virginia resolutions and Jefferson went to far in saying how much the states could resist the Federal gov't.

Madision rejected Jefferson radical view, and believed that the Federal gov't did have final say in making of laws.

That was supported by Marshal Supreme Court, which held Federal laws to be superior to state ones and demanded compliance by the states.

[Non-Sequitur]

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.

There was a body of the Virginia legislature not engaged in the rebellion which was recognized as the legal government of the commonwealth. They approved the partition. The action that created West Virginia was legal and Constitutional.

[Non-Sequitur]

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).

Such an act, if it actually happened, was a violation of the Virginia constitution and the Constitution of the confederacy. But then again, what did they care about constitutions?

[wtc911]

I guarantee you there are a number on this forum with perverted ideas very similar to those of the caller. Your thread might just be graced by one or two of them.

-------------------------------------

I heard the first part of the call and I honestly thought that the guy was probably a freeper (one of the fringe dwelling type though).

[Non-Sequitur]

Really, you know this? How many of these black Union soldiers do you think there were?

Estimates run as high as 200,000.

Do you think there were more of them than there were black Confederate soldiers?

Yes.

[libstripper]

Rush caught a live one and decided to have some fun.

[MACVSOG68]

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.

A reading of the anti-Federalist papers will reflect that if anything the "founding fathers" were hardly in lock step. I'm not sure there was much in common between Jefferson and Adams respecting the "meaning" of the government.

For a President to declare war without the consent of Congress is totally against the Constitution.

Since the United States had been attacked and its property seized, I'd say Lincoln had "right" on his side, if not "form". Most on this forum defend President Bush in his war on terror because they know the importance of a strong response to islamofascism. Historians will judge his greatness or lack thereof based on results achieved, not on how he achieved them. Just as history has judged Lincoln.

Lincoln was nothing more than an American version of Julius Caesar.

Which is exactly what this Nation required to preserve it. His was the greatest challenge of any president, and he not only met that challenge by preventing an unconstitutional attempt to dissolve the Union, but set in motion the ultimate freedom for millions and their eventual acceptance as human beings in our society. But for some here, nothing great about that.