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.
Lincoln is the one who wrote a letter to the governor of Florida to support the Corwin Amendment
Good enough for me.
No matter where you stand on the Civil War/War of Northern Aggression matter, Washington was the greatest president.
Have you ever herd of William Rawle?
And some of us pine away for the good ol' days of the Republic, like the one described by de Tocqueville (You know where the citizens lives were virtually untouched by the central government.), or the one that Harvard Professor had in mind.
ML/NJ
>>Negotiations with whom? And how do you capture a fort that was under your command in the first place?<<
>>Able commissioners, Robert W. Barnwell, James H. Adams and James L. Orr, were elected and sent by the convention of the State to treat with the government at Washington for an amicable settlement of this important question, and other questions growing out of the new relation which South Carolina bore to the Union. Pending the action of the commissioners in Washington, an unfortunate move was made by Maj. Robert Anderson, of the United States army, who commanded the only body of troops stationed in the harbor, which ultimately compelled the return of the commissioners and led to the most serious complications.<<
Tell that to Aristotle.
I, for one, would much rather have been Th Jefferson's slave than a coal miner.
ML/NJ
In a later post I gave my reasons why Washington, as great a man as he was, was nowhere close to Lincoln. But it is a decision for each American to make using his own standards of measurement. I'm quite comfortable with mine.
That's really the problem - that is like depending on a bank's management to determine if you can take your money out or not. There really was no controlling authority or higher power to sort out the problem whether secession was permissible. The constitution is totally unclear on the area so it's up to each person's internal bias.
Look at it this way, if a group of counties merge and then later one of them wants to end the merger, who decides if it is permissible? Not the merged county but the State goverment. We have that exact situation going on in Georgia right now where a county that merged with Fulton county back in the depression wants to split off now. Fulton doesn't want it, but it is not up to them - it's up the state to decide.
In the case of state secession, there was no higher authority to arbitrate the issue so the two sides had to fight it out.
I'm satisfied with the results as Sherman's march through Georgia was the best long term thing that could have happened to the Atlanta and the state, but it is a shame that it had to happen.
LOL - especially if you were a cute girl.
Like the American Revolution?
ML/NJ
>I, for one, would much rather have been Th Jefferson's slave than a coal miner.<<
I'd take death before slavery.Coal miners at least can quit their jobs.
Nowhere close to Lincoln????? I'll have to check it out, thanks.
If you are truly "for the Declaration," then maybe you can understand that some of us are more concerned about what happened in the North than what happened in the South.
ML/NJ
Would you like me to start bringing Lincoln quotes where he condemns slavery? There are lots of them. Here's one: ""I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling." --From the April 4, 1864 Letter to Albert Hodges
The fact is that Lincoln was anti-slavery, but thought that the federal government could do little about it in the states where it already existed, which is why he though the Corwin amendment did little but reiterate what he already believed.
Here's the end of the Cooper Union speech:
Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality - its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension - its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did. Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
And when your children are sold off, how would you feel then? Apart from Sally Hemmings and her children, Jefferson didn't free his 187 slaves at his death.
No pending about it. Buchanan made that clear in his message to Congress on December 3rd, weeks before Anderson was forced to move to Sumter. He believed the southern actions were illegal. The Buchanan administration was not interested in giving up the fort. Negotiations over.
So you think the British should have been allowed to remain in their forts too.?
ML/NJ
The Constitution is quite clear on the matter. Article VI makes clear the supremecy of the Constitution. Article III says the judicial power of the Supreme court extended to all cases arising under the Constitution. The Marshall court had shown that the U.S. Supreme court can strike down state laws when they conflict with the Constitution. The Constitution is crystal clear on the matter.
Look at it this way, if a group of counties merge and then later one of them wants to end the merger, who decides if it is permissible?
That would very much depend on the contract they agreed to when they joined or, later, were created.
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