From your post #114:
Because most of us rather like the way things are going.
When you say "most of us", that includes you.
I find it odd that one of your first reactions when questioned is to suggest that the questioner should be kicked out of the game.
I was perfectly clear in my statement. If you are happy with the way things are going, towards socialization, then you cannot be a conservative, indeed, you must be a liberal and liberals aren't allowed on FR.
it appears that we will elect a liberal Democrat president, and probably significantly increase liberal Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress. Which means that by 2012, our first real opportunity to reverse things, there will also be at least a 7 to 2 liberal majority on the Supreme Court.
If that happens and the libs get even a 5 to 4 majority on the bench, the RKBA will be tested again and this time we'll lose. That will be the beginning. Once they've taken firearms away from the citizenry, they will be totally fearless and will not hesitate to give full amnesty to the border jumpers, nationalize Big Oil, raise taxes to unprecedented heights, essentially turning the United States of America into the United Socialist States of America.
How is this possible? Because the power base is centralized.
Who centralized it? disHonest Abe and the damn yankee coven.
What exactly is your suggestion for dealing with this? Pretend those who vote for such "change" aren't "real Americans?" Try to prevent them from voting? Start a violent revolution to force the people to favor of the system you prefer? How does one lead a revolution in the name of the people against the considerable majority of the actual people?
Quite frankly, if the far left succeed in taking over Washington, DC, the red states should secede.
That’s just sad.
When did you abandon reason in favor of hysterical emotion?
Not necessarily. The "us" in this sentence referred to Americans as a group. The phrase "most of us" implies that "some of us" Americans don't feel that way.
Who centralized it? disHonest Abe and the damn yankee coven.
I've reviewed the history on this, and you've made no real attempt to prove my analysis wrong. The centralization of the Civil War was 90% reversed when the war ended. For decades after the war the government wasn't much more centralized or intrusive in American life than before the war. The Progressive Era, WWI, the New Deal, WWII, the Cold War and the Great Society have been far more important than the transitory centralization established by Lincoln.
In fact, all advanced societies have become more centralized during this period. There is no logical reason to assume the US would have been immune to this trend if Lincoln had never lived, except of course there would be no US today, with at least two independent and quite possibly hostile countries occupying its territory.
While Lincoln established a precedent that was not positive in all areas, by no stretch of the imagination is our present condition something he caused or would have approved.
Let me try an imperfect analogy. Let's assume I have gangrene. Left untreated it will kill me in short order. Antibiotics aren't working, so the docs cut off my leg.
Do you think it would be appropriate for me to harshly criticize the doctors who saved my life because now I am a cripple?
Secession was in the process of killing the United States. Lincoln employed harsh measures to save its life. Arguably some of those measures were overly harsh and some may not have been necessary. But the more I study the period the more I realize how very near a thing it war. The USA survived by the skin of its teeth, although it was a somewhat different society and government that emerged from the surgery.
I truly believe Lincoln was the only man who had what it took to save the USA from disintegration, and I am profoundly grateful that he did.