Posted on 09/27/2010 1:27:31 PM PDT by RandysRight
This article gives another perspective on liberals, libertarians and conservatives. The history both Lincoln and Sherman has been written by the victors and beyond reproach. Do we want to restore honor in this country? Can we restore honor by bringing up subjects over 100 years old? Comments are encouraged.
Randy's Right aka Randy Dye NC Freedom
The American Lenin by L. Neil Smith lneil@lneilsmith.org
It’s harder and harder these days to tell a liberal from a conservative — given the former category’s increasingly blatant hostility toward the First Amendment, and the latter’s prissy new disdain for the Second Amendment — but it’s still easy to tell a liberal from a libertarian.
Just ask about either Amendment.
If what you get back is a spirited defense of the ideas of this country’s Founding Fathers, what you’ve got is a libertarian. By shameful default, libertarians have become America’s last and only reliable stewards of the Bill of Rights.
But if — and this usually seems a bit more difficult to most people — you’d like to know whether an individual is a libertarian or a conservative, ask about Abraham Lincoln.
Suppose a woman — with plenty of personal faults herself, let that be stipulated — desired to leave her husband: partly because he made a regular practice, in order to go out and get drunk, of stealing money she had earned herself by raising chickens or taking in laundry; and partly because he’d already demonstrated a proclivity for domestic violence the first time she’d complained about his stealing.
Now, when he stood in the doorway and beat her to a bloody pulp to keep her home, would we memorialize him as a hero? Or would we treat him like a dangerous lunatic who should be locked up, if for no other reason, then for trying to maintain the appearance of a relationship where there wasn’t a relationship any more? What value, we would ask, does he find in continuing to possess her in an involuntary association, when her heart and mind had left him long ago?
History tells us that Lincoln was a politically ambitious lawyer who eagerly prostituted himself to northern industrialists who were unwilling to pay world prices for their raw materials and who, rather than practice real capitalism, enlisted brute government force — “sell to us at our price or pay a fine that’ll put you out of business” — for dealing with uncooperative southern suppliers. That’s what a tariff’s all about. In support of this “noble principle”, when southerners demonstrated what amounted to no more than token resistance, Lincoln permitted an internal war to begin that butchered more Americans than all of this country’s foreign wars — before or afterward — rolled into one.
Lincoln saw the introduction of total war on the American continent — indiscriminate mass slaughter and destruction without regard to age, gender, or combat status of the victims — and oversaw the systematic shelling and burning of entire cities for strategic and tactical purposes. For the same purposes, Lincoln declared, rather late in the war, that black slaves were now free in the south — where he had no effective jurisdiction — while declaring at the same time, somewhat more quietly but for the record nonetheless, that if maintaining slavery could have won his war for him, he’d have done that, instead.
The fact is, Lincoln didn’t abolish slavery at all, he nationalized it, imposing income taxation and military conscription upon what had been a free country before he took over — income taxation and military conscription to which newly “freed” blacks soon found themselves subjected right alongside newly-enslaved whites. If the civil war was truly fought against slavery — a dubious, “politically correct” assertion with no historical evidence to back it up — then clearly, slavery won.
Lincoln brought secret police to America, along with the traditional midnight “knock on the door”, illegally suspending the Bill of Rights and, like the Latin America dictators he anticipated, “disappearing” thousands in the north whose only crime was that they disagreed with him. To finance his crimes against humanity, Lincoln allowed the printing of worthless paper money in unprecedented volumes, ultimately plunging America into a long, grim depression — in the south, it lasted half a century — he didn’t have to live through, himself.
In the end, Lincoln didn’t unite this country — that can’t be done by force — he divided it along lines of an unspeakably ugly hatred and resentment that continue to exist almost a century and a half after they were drawn. If Lincoln could have been put on trial in Nuremburg for war crimes, he’d have received the same sentence as the highest-ranking Nazis.
If libertarians ran things, they’d melt all the Lincoln pennies, shred all the Lincoln fives, take a wrecking ball to the Lincoln Memorial, and consider erecting monuments to John Wilkes Booth. Libertarians know Lincoln as the worst President America has ever had to suffer, with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson running a distant second, third, and fourth.
Conservatives, on the other hand, adore Lincoln, publicly admire his methods, and revere him as the best President America ever had. One wonders: is this because they’d like to do, all over again, all of the things Lincoln did to the American people? Judging from their taste for executions as a substitute for individual self-defense, their penchant for putting people behind bars — more than any other country in the world, per capita, no matter how poorly it works to reduce crime — and the bitter distaste they display for Constitutional “technicalities” like the exclusionary rule, which are all that keep America from becoming the world’s largest banana republic, one is well-justified in wondering.
The troubling truth is that, more than anybody else’s, Abraham Lincoln’s career resembles and foreshadows that of V.I. Lenin, who, with somewhat better technology at his disposal, slaughtered millions of innocents — rather than mere hundreds of thousands — to enforce an impossibly stupid idea which, in the end, like forced association, was proven by history to be a resounding failure. Abraham Lincoln was America’s Lenin, and when America has finally absorbed that painful but illuminating truth, it will finally have begun to recover from the War between the States.
Source: John Ainsworth
http://www.americasremedy.com/
"Insurrection?" "Illegal actions?" By all means, please cite for us the specific language from the US Constitution that prohibits a member State from withdrawing from the union.
If you can't, just admit that you're exhibiting "political immaturity at the preschool level."
;>)
If you're going to call for troops to prevent the departure of several States from the union (which was nowhere prohibited by the Constitution), you probably wouldn't want to drive several more States out of the union by that action...
;>)
The specific parts of the Constitution that prohibit the States from secession are Article II, which delegate the power of Commander-in-Chief of all States to the Executive of the United States and the Tenth Amendment which clearly reserves rights which are NOT delegated to the United States to the States thus ones that are delegated (such as Commander-in-Chief power) are prohibited from being a power of the States. The confederate states waged a rebellion to illegally usurp power that was delegated to the United States.
If you were to disagree with this interpretation then you would be at least be honest in your response but you instead simply ignore it thus in reality showing your “political immaturity at the preschool level.”
OK - in what way do you suggest that the President's authority as commander in chief over the republic's military forces, some how applies to civilians? Hmmm? Please be specific. And please provide a detailed explanation as to why the President's military authority some how prohibits State secession...
;>)
(If you can't manage it, I guess it shows your “political immaturity at the preschool level...” ;>)
Article I, Section 10
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
[Who is John Galt?]but the Constitution nowhere prohibited State secession, and therefore there was no violation of constitutional law.
TheBigIf, the Gentleman has went to extreme lengths to show the error of your ways. He has done so with no thanks from you. There was a vote regarding State Secession, for your information. The date was March 2, 1861, and it was decided in the negative. Negative for you that is. The vote count was 28 nays to 18 yeas :
"Under this Constitution, as originally adopted and as it now exists, no State has power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States; and this Constitution, and all laws passed in pursuance of its delegated powers, are the supreme law of the land, anything contained in any constitution, ordinance, or act of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
Lincoln made a lot of cents.
No the gentleman has basically made one line statements of no substance at all. Most of what he says would be better fit for the Howard Stern show.
And your secession convention of traitors carrys no legal weight at all.
Well, he doesn't believe, like you that the President supercedes the rights of the people and their States. I don't feel like I'm going out on a limb stating, you most likely reside in your parents garage and your sweeties name is rockrr.
And your secession convention of traitors carrys no legal weight at all.
Hmmm... That was from the Journal of the Senate of "These" United States, Einstein..... In a way your right. They were traitors during that period, thanks for verifying that for us.....
I never claimed that the President supercedes the rights of the States or of the People. That is exactly were you are distorting the issue. The power delegated to the President was delegated by the States and the People.
And still the failed vote in the Senate still does not supercede the Constitution and the rights of United States citizens as you claim.
I also see that you have the same mentality as Galt in being obsessed with making perverted remarks. I guess it some kind of urge you both succumb to and it certainly explains alot.
Considering that the people of the confederate states were United State citizens it was the traitors of the confederacy that were putting themselves above the rights of the people. That libertine attitude of thinking that they are above the law.
You've been reduced to this? That vote proves one thing, it was understood that Secession was legal - and - a Right. If not... then why vote?
It proves nothing of the sort. I guess you think that every vote in the Senate proves something? I would hope that you are not that gullible.
Larry the Cable Guy? L.O.L!!!!
Sorry I’m dont know much of comedians so I have no idea what your talking about.
Look at the date. Even then.. they had some understanding about them. Maybe, they silently agreed about you Puritans?
"If New England would only be content with the blessings which she imagines she has, we would not disturb her in her happiness." :)
Yea the date was around the time that confederate democrats starting talking about secession. So why should the date be evidence that the vote proves anything?
Your logic here is akin to saying that if the Senate voted that global warming was real then it must prove it? It of course would not.
And are you claiming that I am a New England puritan? I do believe in the Creator but I am not even religious at all.
Started?
Your logic here is akin to saying that if the Senate voted that global warming was real then it must prove it? It of course would not.
Want to "Phone-a-Friend"? Secession was THE issue on March 2, 1861. Your fearless leader Lincoln, the man child, was about as historically incorrect as you are. The Senators casting those votes could not deny the facts, unlike your hero. They knew that the States reserved the right to reassume their own governance:
. all powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to the several states, to be by them exercised.
That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness
Those are Northern States, by the way...
Here is your hero,Lincoln "What is a "sovereignty" in the political sense of the term?"
What is Sovereignty? This is the man you worship?
Who are the parties to it? The people--not the people as composing one great body, but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties.James Madison
The people and their States are Sovereign; they speak as one..
As I have pointed out countless times the power was expressly delegated to the United States making Lincoln Commander-in-Chief over all of the several States (and made to swear to defend the Constitution) and even your own quotes recoginize that the States are reserved powers that are not expressly delegated.
So the Confederate States had no legal right to usurp such power that was expressly delegated.
If secession was meant as a power of the States then where is the outlined procedure for such secession in the Constitution? It isn’t there because the States were prohibited from secession as is pointed out in Article I as well and was posted by a poster above on this page.
And as to your hyberbole that I worship Lincoln, where do you get that from? I simply believe that Lincoln and the republicans were right and that the confederate democrats were wrong.
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