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.
To make a point. Judge one leader by today's standards and you should judge both sides. Lincoln may not have believed that blacks should be jurors, but he did say that blacks were due the same rights as a white man in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Lee and Jackson and Davis believed none of that, but rather believed that slavery was the best place for them.
Don't forget Illinois's black codes. Plenty of blame to go 'round, if you're into blame.
But you don't blame the south for anything. You trot out Illinois black codes and ignore similar, if not worse, legislation in place in every southern state. You want to condemn the North for actions you give the South a free ride on. The Southron position has always been grounded in hypocrisy.
Yes, if you read through this now long thread, you will likely see the rants of the caller, or one of his minions.
Nope, too much effort and I've read it all here before anyway.
No, just abide by your commitment.
It was the South that resorted to violence first.
Funny how those details seem to get lost in all the clever rhetoric.
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.
Those are the facts.
The States cannot leave the Union nor be ejected from it.
It is a bond of the People
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.
States receive their rights from the People and the People transferred those rights to the Federal Gov't, which is what the states agreed to when they entered the Union under the present Constitution.
Any state could have remained outside the Union and become a sovereign nation, but chose not to and as such gave up the right to act like a sovereign nation.
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 this is ad hominem from which I can only conclude that you have no logical, factual argument.
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.
Really?
I hear alot about the poor, poor Southern states, the same states that were holding millions of people against their wills in bondage.
Please excuse me if I don't shed any tears over the demise of the tyrannical Confederacy.
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.
No, I am only citing that great President, Abraham Lincoln.
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?
I never admitted that people were not free because of what Lincoln did.
I stated that socialism came much later then the Civil War.
Lincoln brought freedom to millions of people, something Jeff Davis never 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.
Oh, yes Benjamin Franklin was only degree from the slave trade.
When you are going to admit that slavery was wrong and that the South was wrong to go to war to defend it?
Stop your empty denials.
The South went to war because they did not want slavery to be limited, how noble a cause!
They even wrote into their noble constitution.
A Constitution I am sure you would not change a word in.
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.
And you sound like another Pro-confederate poster who repeats the same nonsense over and over again.
When you can't dispute the message, attack the messenger.
kinda screwed that up didn't I?
I am surprised that some of the Southern States did not secede over it!
Oh, wait, as long as slavery was being defended it was alright.
...and Lincoln didn't know sh** from shinola!
...and neither does Rush!
It is incredibly galling that many consider the systematic slaughter of 59,000 Southern citizens to be quite miniscule. In my opinion, that is the exact reason the Islam folks have been allowed to perform their magic on the United States. All the money hungry, power mongers need to get off their lazy duff and see Lincoln's pathetic reign as it really was...
..and furthermore, the bunglehead who put the part in about one human being owning another outta get a life! Slavery was ended quite peacefully in many other nations around the world at that time. But, oh by gosh by golly, Lincoln would have NOTHING to do with a peaceful end to slavery. One of his Generals(McClellan, whom his men admired and adored) offered a plan to end the war within a couple months. But guess what? Lincoln said, "no, I want to bring the south to her knees". And if anybody chooses to pull in pathetic Sherman and say, oh, he said that. NO, he didn't. Shermy just stole it, as many of the slaughter-prone and lusty generals stole many lives and property! And if there are any further questions, go read up on history...
We did not secede from Great Britain.
We rebelled and formed a new gov't.
The South was not under any intolerable gov't, but were fearful that their slaves would lose their economic value if slavery was limited in its growth.
The South divided their own Democratic Party over slavery.
>>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.<<
What are the "anti-federalist" papers?
>> We did not secede from Great Britain.
We rebelled and formed a new gov't.
The South was not under any intolerable gov't, but were fearful that their slaves would lose their economic value if slavery was limited in its growth. <<
The colonies were part of the British Empire.
Who gets to decide what is "intolerable?" The governed or the government? You correctly point out the South was not unamimous. That was also true in the colonies and in the North.
"What are the "anti-federalist" papers?"
Maybe they're enshrined in the Penumbra.
A history of the debates that resulted in the Constitution. My book is edited by Ralph Ketcham, and is available at Amazon or Barnes. There are many letters, speeches, etc that at least for me illustrates the difficulties of always looking to the "meaning" of some aspect of the Constitution.
I'm reminded of the Democrats today attempting to back away from their war vote by saying "That's not exactly what I intended". In politics, times never change.
Very interesting. Thank you.
Please refer me to the place in the Constitution that governs how a State may leave the United States.
Article VI, which reads in part:
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
The only way to alter this article is through a constitutional amendment, which by the way was attempted.
The actions of South Carolina and the subsequent formation of a confederacy directly violate this article.
"Moreover, the South violated the Constitution by refusing to abide by the laws of the land."
Uh, what law would that be?
" By today's standards so were Robert Lee, Thomas Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and every other southern leader."
Given that slavery was allowed to exist in the United States and given that the war was fought to preserve the union rather than to free slaves -- so were all the leaders in the north.
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