Whaaaa? Put down the pipe.
Posted on 03/10/2010 6:35:02 PM PST by Idabilly
Over the course of American history, there has been no greater conflict of visions than that between Thomas Jefferson’s voluntary republic, founded on the natural right of peaceful secession, and Abraham Lincoln’s permanent empire, founded on the violent denial of that same right.
That these two men somehow shared a common commitment to liberty is a lie so monstrous and so absurd that its pervasiveness in popular culture utterly defies logic.
After all, Jefferson stated unequivocally in the Declaration of Independence that, at any point, it may become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…
And, having done so, he said, it is the people’s right to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Contrast that clear articulation of natural law with Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, where he flatly rejected the notion that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Instead, Lincoln claimed that, despite the clear wording of the Tenth Amendment, no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; [and] resolves and ordinances [such as the Declaration of Independence] to that effect are legally void…
King George III agreed.
(Excerpt) Read more at southernheritage411.com ...
Whaaaa? Put down the pipe.
Ironic that Lincoln, in placing himself in Dunmore's posture generations later, took exactly the same measure to impose the yoke on Virginia that Dunmore had.
Lincoln just had a lot more soldiers than Dunmore; but they shared the view that overwhelming military power could bring Americans into line and show them their place.
Is this your picture?
>>Jefferson became president (as opposed to Burr) due to the efforts of Hamilton!
>
>Please elaborate.
According to the unamended Constitution, the runner-up for President in the elections was the winner for the vice-President position. In that election Jefferson and Burr were tied in the electoral votes, so the election went down to the House (as per procedure); in the House what was needed to get president was a win of nine states. Jefferson only took 8 of them in the 1st through 35th rounds-of-voting (thus failing to win the Presidency). Hamilton, however, during this time encouraged Representatives to vote for Jefferson because he considered Burr to be less dangerous than Jefferson.
I would phrase it as a choice between the Federalists and Jefferson. Many of them saw his election in 1800 as a second American revolution, one which overthrew what they had created.
TJ... Hands down.
Hamilton gets slammed because his side lost. Liberals won in 1800 and he became the poster boy of the evils of Federalism. Its the same thing liberals do to conservatives today.
Nobody wants another civil war. Burning down Taxachusetts as punishment condign, for their having instigated so much misery over the last 400 years or so, has its appeal, but belongs more in the character of divine retribution on a bossy, sinful and prideful Yankee people, and might better be left to the left hand of heaven.
Rather, the work before us is to discern clearly what happened and how the institutions and original intent of the Union were twisted and transformed into an engine of wealth extraction for the benefit of a relatively few people, and to undo all that damage and return the Union to its original spirit of freedom, proportion, and subsidiarity.
Don't be so hasty, this has merit :)
Smoke rising over Atlanta said his side won. As do, in New York, Hamilton's hometown, a lot of finely-appointed Gilded Age parlors, with their elegant woodwork and imported marbles. As contrasted with the bleaching bones of 19th-century American agriculture that are still visible out in Jefferson's "yeoman" country, where New York-run agribusinesses now rule, and Jefferson's "yeomen" cling to a miserable existence as trailer-trash and air-conditioner repairmen.
Liberals won in 1800 and he [Hamilton] became the poster boy of the evils of Federalism. Its the same thing liberals do to conservatives today.
Liberals in 1800 became the conservatives of 2000. Or more precisely, "paleo-cons". People who call themselves "liberals" today are actually "progressives" -- both of which are in ironic quotes because the people in question are neither; they're Marxist-Leninists instead: neo-Stalinists.
There's no evidence of that, or that Jefferson had any real issues with slavery. Had he been pressed the I've no doubt he would have said he was talking about free men and not slaves. And most of the men at Philadelphia then would have agreed with him.
In the end Jefferson Davis proved he was not a statesman. He was just the big boss overseer of the giant slave plantation known as the Confederate States of America.
What do you think about the Southern civilians jailed and murdered by the Jefferson Davis Confederate regime?
Absolutely true! And it should not be overlooked that many of the "leading lights" in the movement that brought Mr. Lincoln to power were active participants in the European socialist revolutions of 1848 who came to the good old USA one step ahead of the hangman after their efforts in Europe had failed. Unfortunately, they did not leave their ideologies behind when they came here.
Jefferson, Paine and their faction was more in line with the French than the American revolution. Jefferson represented a corrupt aristocracy, propped up by an ignorant underclass and a venal press (Fisher Ames' characterization). They were hardly paleo-cons. The Federalist charge (correct in my estimation) was they were Jacobins.
Isn't that what Lincoln said in so many words in the quote that I cited?
"If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?"
So what exactly is your complaint about what Lincoln said? You answer his question, "does it not require all to lawfully rescind it"? with "no". Isn't a "breach" or a "violation" the antithesis of a lawful rescision?
Cordially,
My questions on this thread are not rhetorical.
Cordially,
The authors of the Declaration and "Common Sense" were .... French? Not in line with the American Revolution? Well, saying just arguendo that your stretch is within the bounds of possibility, the fact remains that, even if they were, they'd still be classical liberals, and therefore would be called conservative today.
Jefferson represented a corrupt aristocracy, propped up by an ignorant underclass and a venal press (Fisher Ames' characterization).
Venal press to be sure. They were controlled by the Federalists, according to scholarship, as were the postmasters who held prominent Antifederalists' mail and newspapers to try to impede their participation in the public discussion of the proposed Constitution.
The "ignorant underclass" went out into the wilderness with an axe, a gun, a Bible, and a couple of newspapers .... the yeomanry were always well-informed, never mind the canards and roorbacks of their would-be Federalist masters, whose Kool-Aid you have so enthusiastically drunk, even 200 years later.
Corrupt aristocracy? I'll let you defend that one -- you and Alexander Hamilton, who threw a woman's honor and good name under the bus to protect his own reputation from charges of defalcation.
Correction, he took her honor when he bedded her. He threw her name out on the curb, to be run over by a bus, when the political fur began to fly.
Hamilton was a gold-speculating (against the currency and Treasury he himself had founded) womanizer, economic royalist (a "monarchist without the king") and a Yankee banker to boot -- but thank God he wasn't a "corrupt aristocrat". <snort!>
Pure bombast. Demographically inaccurate, but good enough for Yankee bombast.
Marx was a leading cheerleader for Lincoln.
One suspects that the key was ..... snobbery. These guys loved "the people" in the abstract, and used their concepts as a leg up to power. A hobby horse, if you will.
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