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.
Not so. We had a discussion about this before: Link
Implied is the need for Congressional OK to leave altogether.
Not at all. Why would the Founders leave something that important unsaid? Here's why. Proponents of the "once-in-you're-stuck-whatever-comes" position knew the Constitution wouldn't be ratified if they put such a restriction in the Constitution. IMO, they hoped to finesse the issue later, which is indeed what they tried to do.
Witness the three states saying at ratification that they understood the Constitution to mean they could resume their own governance. Witness the 1795 Supreme Court case saying New Hampshire should withdraw herself from the Union if she didn't want to abide by its terms.
Why doesn't that work with Dred Scott? A majority of the members were slave owners and/or southerners? How could any decision of their's concerning slavery be unbiased? Dred Scott flies in the face of the Constitution!
Your bias against Southerners is showing. Jefferson was a slave owner and he pushed for no slavery in the NW Territory. He tried to condemn slavery in the DOI. If I remember correctly, Chief Justice Taney of the Dred Scott ruling freed his own slaves in the 1820s or early 1830s.
I'm no expert on Dred Scott. I don't think the ruling is correct in its holding that free blacks could not be citizens of the US. Some blacks fought for America in the Revolution. If nothing else, that makes them citizens of the US in my view. An even larger number of blacks fought with the British against America. If other free loyalists were accorded US citizenship after the Revolution, why not free black loyalists?
Slaves at that point in American law were property, and, as such, under the Fifth Amendment they could not be taken from their owners without due process of law.
The Southern rebellion was put down by force of arms.
What rebellion?
The question of the legality of their acts of unilateral secession was settled by the Supreme Court.
As I said, Supreme Court rulings do not always follow the Constitution. What was it John Taylor said? "Is the court supreme over the constitution, or the constitution supreme over the court?"
You apparently come down on the side of the court being supreme over the Constitution. That seems to be the position of the majority of the court in its CFR ruling.
Why was it legal and accepted in 4 Union states?
Accepted yes, legal???
There were no laws defining slavery or the means by which any human could be enslaved or how long a slave's condition would last or if it was passed out from generation to generation.
Could a citizen be enslaved? If we use the argument that anything not covered by the constitution is legal then anyone could be enslaved by whatever means necessary to ensure a slave stays enslaved, say like a bill of sale with the mark of the one enslaved upon it.
Lincoln wanted debate and laws written on slavery and to get it he was willing to offer the south the place and the means to make slavery permanent, but only if they won a debate on it, instead they chose war.
The U.N. cannot tax people.
And Buttscrew, Mississippi has a post office. So what? Doesn't make it a sovereign entity.
Having a flag is totally meaningless.
"The Supreme Court disagrees with you".
The Supreme Court disagrees with me on a lot of things.
Your screen name--Bonnie Blue Flag?
Yes.
Thank you. It's a very good name. Brought a smile to my face.
I can't believe that you have to argue this point. These people give us a bad name, especially when they argue in defense of slavery by saying "it wasn't that bad..." I really can't believe my eyes.
Thank you! The name stands for both the Flag and the Song.
And my favorite verse of the song is:
"Now cheer, Boys, cheer
Raise a joyous shout
Texas and fair Louisiana
Now have both gone out!"
Does something have to be declared "legal" to be legal? Breathing was never declared legal as far as I know. Slavery was wrong... and this view is universal. People on both sides of this war owned slaves. Slaves were bought and sold under the American flag for many decades. For some reason, the south is the villain because it went on for a few more years there. I'm not buying into the leftist guilt ride that many try to place on us.
No...they just took back what was theirs anyway.
Romance is for novels.
Um...yeah. ??? Did you read the post I was responding to?
When the shortcomings of the rest of the nation are brought to light, it never fails that the conversation is steered back to the supreme immorality of the south. People just aren't comfortable with any other format.
That's an awfully simplistic way to characterize the issues surrounding the war. Especially considering that many individuals (white, free black men and former slaves) all chose to fight rather than "make slavery illegal." Obviously, it's easy for us to put it in such a box. Those that lived through it could probably explain the complexities that led them to fight (on either side) much better than you or I. However, putting everyone in one corner or the other (for or against slavery) is grossly inaccurate. It's practically historical malpractice.
It should also be noted that (contrary to the impression that the other review gives) this book is no shill for the Confederate cause either. As a political scientist with a focus on finance capital, Bensel does not view the Civil War through the lens of a noble crusade to abolish slavery. At the same time, however, he uses the same lens of political economy to look at the southern state-building as well. Ironically, the "Dixie Leviathan" was even more powerful and autonomous than the Yankee one. The small size of the southern economy and the broad popularity of the war gave the Confederate government both the need and the ability to confiscate property and trample states rights far more effectively than the Republicans did in the Union. (emphasis given) The old slogans of Jeffersonian small government disappeared and big-government national mobilization became Dixie's order of the day. As Bensel makes clear, the constitutional order broke down in 1860 because it could not peacefully regulate conflicts in the US political economy. The Jeffersonian republic died, and the issue in the Civil War was never Leviathan vs. limited government, but one leviathan or two. The ultimate irony is that Yankee Leviathan's swallowing up of Dixie Leviathan ended up recreating the conditions of sectional stalemate that still serve to limit the further growth in power of the American state. (emphasis given)
It is clear, that the South was far more socialistic than the North was.
Also, note that the growth of the power of the Central State was limited after the Civil War.
It was the Progressive period that began what we now see as our modern welfare state.
The Constitution was still intact after the Civil War, but in the Progressive Period the Constitution was amended to allow the welfare state to expand.
See also below, Book Description This book describes the impact of the American Civil War on the development of central state authority in the late nineteenth century. The author contends that intense competition for control of the national political economy between the free North and slave South produced secession, which in turn spawned the formation of two new states, a market-oriented northern Union and a southern Confederacy in which government controls on the economy were much more important. (emphasis given) During the Civil War, the American state both expanded and became the agent of northern economic development. After the war ended, however, tension within the Republican coalition led to the abandonment of Reconstruction and to the return of former Confederates to political power throughout the South. As a result, American state expansion ground to a halt during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book makes a major contribution to the understanding of the causes and consequences of the Civil War and the legacy of the war in the twentieth century.
The UN is made up of sovereign nations.
None of whom gave up their right to tax, to coin money, make treaties, or wage war.
That is what the States did when they entered the Union.
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