Like Hunting Bigfoot!
Posted on 06/21/2012 1:41:20 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The title, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," guarantees about 15 good minutes. Just on the strength and novelty of the gimmick - combining the real details of Lincoln's life with a secret antivampire history - the movie was bound to command a certain absurd appeal. The trick was in getting audiences past those 15 minutes, and that's what the movie does.
Based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" is a money-making stunt that its author - who also wrote the screenplay - wisely decided to treat with seriousness, or at least an attitude of seriousness.
Instead of getting smirky and campy and blowing out the joke in the first few scenes, Grahame-Smith and director Timur Bekmambetov straight-face it. They ask themselves, well, what would it be like if the main struggle of Lincoln's life were with vampires intent on taking over the new world? And they answer the question as realistically and soberly as they can within this loony framework.
A greater Lincoln
Further, they invest emotionally in the conceit of the story and in Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) as a man. Imagine: He didn't just save the union and free the slaves. Here was a man dedicated to the proposition that all vampires must be destroyed. That makes for an even greater Lincoln, one yet more worthy of reverential treatment.
Along the way, Grahame-Smith comes up with a metaphor that is appropriately descriptive of slavery and flattering to the Union. In this telling, the Old Confederacy was a hotbed of vampirism. Perhaps this should not come as a big surprise, given that the slaveholders were sucking the life out of their slaves.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
"George Washington, Vampire Hunter" Was
"JFK, Vampire Hunter"Slept with vampyrs.
"Benjamin Franklin, Vampire Hunter"Was, but also slept with vampyrs
"Woodrow Wilson, Vampire Hunter"Was a Vampyr
"Andrew Jackson, Vampire Hunter"Was
"Harry Truman, Vampire Hunter"...Wasn't, but vaporized quite a few. Good man!
“It has been wisely said that while the Constitution was designed to handle an enormous range of issues, it was not designed to handle a civil war.”
Yes, it was. It was desinged for everything. Hence the lack of a “civil war” or “emergency” clause saying, “In the event you don’t want to bother with the rest of this document, aw hell, do whatever feels right.”
“That is, of course, why the Founders allowed for suspension of civil liberties in cases of insurrection or invasion. It is notable that this is permitted by simple majority vote of Congress. The courts cannot overrule it.”
You’re talking about the suspension of habeas corpus I presume. Well, that is not specified as being permitted by simple majority vote. We only infer that given how the Constitution says it can only be suspended in so and so a situation. The Constitution is incomplete in that way.
That being said, I see no reason why the courts can’t overrule it. Say there was no insurrection, for instance.
That also being said, Lincoln did not get Congress to suspend habeas corpus for him. He did that all on his own, without any clause to point to for justification. He did a great many unprecedented things unilaterally, all based on the emergency and his so-called war powers. Most of which in my opinion were unjustified, and which aren’t even implied in the Constitution.
“If the body politic is permanently destroyed, so are the liberties it was designed to protect”
First of all, who said the body politic was in danger of being destroyed? Where? When? Did somehow the volley on Ft. Sumter land on freedom of speech?
More importantly, this is the old “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” argument. Yes, it is. There is no way out. You cannot save it by breaking it like Bush the Younger saved capitalism by abandoning it for socialism. The country ceasing to exist is a better outcome than the government ruling outside the Constitution.
“If the body politic is permanently destroyed, so are the liberties it was designed to protect.”
We’ll never know what relation to liberty the seperate North and South would’ve had. What we do know is that the North, on its own, during the war abandoned it. We know one of the reasons the South pulled the eject lever was because it was upset with the liberties already trampled upon and the fear of further trampling in future by the more numerous North. What I also know is that the North and South under the Constitution is not liberty itself. Liberty can exist with or without it.
I also know that we lost our liberty and our Constitution nominally under it eventually.
“This is well shown by the original Roman institution of the dictatorship. In extreme existential emergency the Senate appointed a dictator to exercise all functions of the state for a limited period. When this period was over he reverted to ordinary status.”
I trust you’re aware we are not Rome and never had such an institution. I’ve heard a great many justify Lincoln this way, and it is refreshingly honest. It’s just that a lot of us, you must understand, do not hear the word “dictator” and smile. A lot of us think it’s a bad thing to be. A lot of us think Caesar, for instance, killed the republic.
“The USA has of course never been in this type of crisis, though the Civil War is the closest we’ve come”
This gets to the nub of the issue, and why your words seem so off the wall to me. You make a seperation between North and South akin to, say, Nazi Germany besieging Russia. The U.S. Constitution was not being conquered from without. Some of the entities under it opted out, is all.
Well, and fired on one of the forts the states under the Constition held onto. But this, even, is not like a foreign sword coming to tear into our liberties. The union would’ve still been there, just smaller. The South did not invade the North to impose a new government upon them.
This whole idea of an “extreme existential emergency” is extremly preposterous.
A lot us us see Cincinattus as the model of the temporary git-r-done-and-get out dictator.
As for Julius Caesar, he was not appointed dictator in the traditional Roman way. Ordered to Rome to stand trial, he instead marched his legions against the government and siezed power, eventually coercing the disempowered senate into proclaiming him dictator for life, a title without precedent.
So yes, he did destroy the Republic, but not by accepting the normal Roman temporary dictatorship.
Like Hunting Bigfoot!
As for Julius Caesar, he was not appointed dictator in the traditional Roman way. Ordered to Rome to stand trial, he instead marched his legions against the government and seized power, eventually coercing the disempowered senate into proclaiming him dictator for life, a title without precedent.
So yes, he did destroy the Republic, but not by accepting the normal Roman temporary dictatorship.
Whatever else he did, Lincoln did not rise to the level of a 19th C AD Cincinattus.
“A lot us us see Cincinattus as the model of the temporary git-r-done-and-get out dictator.”
First of all, Lincoln may have got out, but against his will. Not to say he would’ve made himself King for Life or anything, but the Republicans he left behind ruled the South like a colony for more than a decade. Novelties of the war may not have carried on in force and in every detail. The draft ended, the income tax disappeared, there were pardons, martial law in the North left, habeas corpus was restored, the greenbacks stopped coming off the presses. But everyone knows things didn’t revert to what they had been antebellum.
There was a “ratchet effect,” as there is with every big war, especially the War Between the States, WWI, and WWII. Government power did not stay where it was at its high-water mark, but after ‘65 it never was again what it had been in ‘61. This is hardly like Cincinnatus returning peacefully to his farm after bailing out the Republic. It’s more akin to Caesar leaving behind Octavian to declare his principate (progressives, maybe?) and the rest of the Julio-Claudian line to pull it into decay (the New Deal?).
Also, an important point about Cincinnatus is that being dictator was not his idea. The Civil War was Lincoln’s, against the advice in many of his own (admittedly nascent) party. And it’s not as if Rome was supressing rebellion in the provinces, or something. Cincinnatus responded to an army in the field being besieged by neighboring tribes. Presumably if they lost Rome would be open to sacking. The South, contrarywise was not threatening invasion. That was the other way around.
Lincoln is no Cincinnatus. If anyone was, it’s Washington.
“As for Julius Caesar, he was not appointed dictator in the traditional Roman way.”
In what traditional way did Lincoln become dictator? Aside from the fact that there is no such American tradition, he merely declared he was so. Not in so many words, but he just went ahead and did it. Those who disagreed might be jailed or exiled. SCOTUS’ backtalk he ignored. Does that sound more like Cincinnatus or Caesar?
“Whatever else he did, Lincoln did not rise to the level of a 19th C AD Cincinattus.”
Yes, exactly. The way people talk about the union being broken as akin to an enemy force invading and destroying the Constitution and our liberty is weird. I don’t get it. The union wouldn’t cease to be, it just wouldn’t have been what it was.
Lincoln did not temporarily assume dictatorial powers to save the republic. He assumed them to keep southern states within the union. And we all know they ended up not being entirely temporary, though some of them were. Of course, Lincoln had no hand in extending abuses past the war, as he died with the war. But he shares responsibility for the infinite extension of federal prerogative.
By the way, Rome did not have a written constitution, just one of the many superiorities of our system. Having the Constitution, I must be able to read somewhere in actual words that in such and such circumstances the president has dictatorial powers and you have to listen to him or else. Since I can’t, no such powers legitimately exist.
In other words, however great was Cincinnatus and however unlike his dictatorship was Caesar’s, that venerable Roman tradition is not among ours, and we have no such office.
I thought we were discussing vampires? How did this degenerate to this lvl?Discuss,,,,Did or did not Lincoln hunt vampires?
In WJC’s case, I think you spell it “Succuboss.”
My old GF got so into the vampire thing that she would let me visit her only periodically.
placemarker thank you
You are quite correct that Caesar killed the Republic. Except it had already been dead for a century or so and JC just put it out of its misery. The late Republic resembles a mafia state more than anything else.
The institution of the dictatorship had worked reasonably well for several centuries till Sulla perverted it.
Let me try to be clear on what I mean by an existential threat. I mean it quite literally. Had the Romans lost certain wars, they would have ceased to exist as a nation and as a people. Their government would have been destroyed and they would have all have been sold into slavery. The END of Rome. With the exception of the Cold War the US has never faced such a threat.
The Romans were quite clear on this point, as they had done the same to numerous other peoples, most notably the Carthaginians.
So given the choice of utter destruction or six months to a year of restricted freedoms, which do you think it is reasonable to choose?
This is not addressing the modern perversion of the word and original concept of dictatorship, the essence of which was that it was time-limited and emergency in nature.
Also not addressing the fact that many think a true emergency is a great opportunity to advance what you wanted to do anyway.
***I don’t understand the fascination with vampires. ***
Well at least it is not another zombie flick! Just think of all those slain Civil War soldiers rising and marching on Washington.
RE: Mentioning Lincoln on Free Republic is akin to waving a red flag at a bull.
My goodness, I meant to talk only about the MOVIE. Suddenly, this thread became a debate about his historical legacy...
****He said he read a lot of Lenin and couldn’t write about him as a vampire hunter.....****
That is because Lenin was a real vampire with his fangs in the collective Russian neck, sucking the life out of Russia.
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