[iowamark]

"Paul A. Rahe holds The Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College, where he is Professor of History. He is author of Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992) and of Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic (2008), co-editor of Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws (2001), and editor of Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy (2006).

In 2009, Professor Rahe published two books: Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, which has as its subtitle War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic, and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect. He can be reached at www.paularahe.com."

[Berlin_Freeper]

[VanDeKoik]

Sucession was wasted on the CSA.

Some of their cultist devotion to slavery just seems bizarre even by their standards.

[Gondring]

And the American Revolution was about tea.

How sad that even Dr. Rahe is unable to recognize the emptiness of his conclusion. Abraham Lincoln worked hard to justify a "repudiation of the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence." Did that indicate it was necessary for the Union?

  I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.]

[...]

I give [Douglas] the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes. [Continued laughter and applause.]

I will add one further word, which is this, that I do not understand there is any place where an alteration of the social and political relations of the negro and the white man can be made except in the State Legislature---not in the Congress of the United States---and as I do not really apprehend the approach of any such thing myself, and as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror that some such danger is rapidly approaching [...]

--Abraham Lincoln

Plus, he misses how economic and legal factors don't rely upon the justification. We often find legal decisions that are not just to a third party, for example.

[Hatteras]

Just like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, I guess somebody needs to keep rehashing the same ol’ crap to pay the bills. Unlike the South, the yankees just won’t let it go.

[Sherman Logan]

I find it fascinating that Alex Stephens rejected the natural rights language of the Declaration on the grounds that “modern science” had shown it to be invalid.

Sound familiar?