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.
please see 460
No. Also in the Virginia ratification is the wording that they accept the Constitution as passed out of convention. And the Constitution makes it clear that it forms the basis for the supreme law of the land and that it is superior to any local laws or state constitutions, and state ratification documents as well. The Supreme Court ruled that unilateral secession as practiced by the Southern states was illegal. Based on that there is no other conclusion but that the Viginia secession was not legal.
No...the north had their own codes in place. Remember, they had a large white immigrant labor population to protect. They weren't going to tolerate competition from freed slaves. Many northern and mid American states outright banned free black men/women from immigrating to their states and the sole purpose for that was to protect the white labor force and reduce the black population within those states. Jim Crow-like laws were in effect in the North BEFORE the Civil War even started! Bet the American kidlets don't read about that in history class today, huh?
As did all the Southern states.
Sumter was wholly within the United States, and was entirely Federal property, Constitutionally acquired. South Carolina ceded all claim to it in 1836, maintaining only the right to serve civil and criminal processes on the land.
Even if I accept the legal fiction of lawful secession for argument's sake, South Carolina would have been attempting to steal a facility that they renounced any rights to, and which, by their own lights, belonged rightfully to a "foreign" government. They might as well have laid claim to the Bahamas with the same reasoning: neither was part of South Carolina, any more than DC is part of Virginia or Maryland.
'Nuff said.
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. " Alexander Stephens, VP, CSA.
'Nuff said.
Nor were beer distributors required to give up their money when prohibition was enacted. And American participation in the slave trade was a small fraction of that of the Brits and the Portugese.
I was under the impression that Beauregard was shelling Ft. Sumter, not trying to serve an arrest warrant on an occupant.
No, you miss the point. The US did not recognize the secession as legal. All actions proceeding from an illegal act are also illegal. South Carolina made no attempt to test the legality of its actions, via the courts, nor to use the clear and indisputable avenue of Constitutional amendment to sanction it. It did nothing to exhaust all legal avenues and options before acting precipitously.
Instead, SC unilaterally abrogated its compact with the Union and stole property that did not belong to it, and attempted to make laws and do actions it had no legal right to do. When resisted, it resorted to force. No different in essence from breaking a contract and stealing the assets of the company.
But, even if secession HAD been deemed legal, SC would STILL have had no right to the Federally owned facilities, such as forts. It ceded all claim to them when they were acquired.
Lincoln did not consider Blacks to be the equals of Whites, a view held by many current members of the Harvard faculty in private, some in public. As he stated in the Lincoln-Douglas debate, a Black woman may not be the equal of a White man, but in the right to the bread which she by her own hand had earned, she was his equal, Judge Douglas' equal, the equal of any man. An enlightened view for the time.
Eviction.
If you want to argue if secession was legal or not then that is a reasonable argument. You originally were arguing that South Carolina would have to keep letting the federal government collect taxes from the port of charleston.
Do you think that the colonies let the British continue collecting taxes when they separated themselves from the British empire?
The only issue is if succession was permissible or not.
BTW, when colonies joined the Union, they were not 'acquired'. They were independent entities that chose to form a union - they did not agree to be acquired.
The land under the forts was acquired by the federal government, with the state ceding all claim.
I think that the colonies didn't resort to a legalistic argument. The were open about the fact that they were in rebellion. If the south admitted the same, there'd be little to argue about. But it's a key plank of the Lost Cause platform to deny that they were in rebellion.
Basically, the Brits had every legal right to collect taxes where they could until the Treaty of Paris was signed and the colonists had every natural right to oppose them.
And South Carolina 'nationalized' it when they seceded. As a sovereign nation, as South Carolina felt it was, it had that power.
Now a person can argue that South Carolina didn't have the power to secede, but the argument that if even secession was permissible that the US could still control and collect taxes from the port of Charleston is silly.
The south didn't feel they were in rebellion - most of the southern states were independent entities before the joined the union and they felt they could leave it if it didn't work out.
It's not an open or shut case like either side tries to make it. The south haters want to believe that it is obvious that it was rebellion and the opposite side feels that it is obvious that it wasn't.
Reasonable people that don't have a hate toward a region see that the consitution is pretty unclear on the matter.
Re-read the 9th and 10th Amendments, oh and while your at it re-read the first two paragraphs of the Declaration. Otherwise change your screen name.
And there were laws to help keep southerners from enslaving free blacks.
It still wasn't as bad as the South after the Civil War.
Based on what? When the British left the United States after the Revolution the ownership of their property was decided by treaty, not by the U.S. rushing in like a spoiled 5 year old screeching, "MINE! MINE!" The forts and arsenals and customs houses and the like were the property of the United States, in effect the property of all the states. They were not South Carolina's to take at a whim without compensation to the owners.
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