Capitalism's Savior (Everything You Believe About FDR Is False)

Wall Street Journal ^ | Wednesday, October 29, 2003 | CONRAD BLACK

[Restorer]

That should obviously be "inappropriately."

[William McKinley]

A "great President" is someone who sees the country through a great crisis. He doesn't have to be someone that we'd agree with or find universally admirable. It's enough if he is able to preserve something essential at a time when it's threatened.

I think that this is one way to earn the mantle of 'great', but I don't think it is the only one. I do think a President can be great, even if not faced with a great crisis. Ironically, it may be more difficult to achieve greatness in the absense of greaet peril, but I do think it is possible. For example, I do not believe that the situation when Reagan came into power was dire. It was nighttime in America, not midnight. And I do consider Reagan to have been 'great'.

[JohnGalt]

You were close but much too forgiving to the Lincoln's handling of Virginia. In what would typically be phrased in the current parlance as "Who lost Virginia?" it was Lincoln's people's insistence in marching through Virginia and occupying the state while war was made on the South.

I cannot see a scenario where anyone of the time would believe that patriotic Virginia's would in the majority tolerate such a situation so I can only assume the stance was not clumsy politics but an outright provocation.

Hence, my conclusion that Lincoln was not a man of peace, or a great statesman, but the figurehead for a political element that wanted a war made on their fellow countrymen. The South, fully radicalized against the North, was a willing combatant. While the statesmen of both sides failed to avert war, it was Lincoln invasion of Virginia, where most of the war was fought mind you, that ensured total war--the utmost anti-Christian type of war.

[Restorer]

Did Virginian forces not attack Harper's Ferry and Hampton Roads before federal forces "invaded" Virginia? I'm not sure of this timeline because I don't have my reference books with me. (I'm on the road.)

If they did, seems to me they started a war and then claimed that they were invaded without provocation.

Considering they also were proud to become the capital for those attempting to destroy the United States, doesn't seem to me they had any right to the status of innocent bystanders.

You didn't answer my question about where precisely Lincoln behaved inappropriately.

[JohnGalt]

Lincoln lost Virginia throuh either a) incompetence, or b) intention. I stated that several times, and if you look at the time period (in the sense that you look at what the newspaper editors and politicans were saying) Feb-April 1861 you will come to the same conclusion.

You can forgive him all you want, but that makes you more an apologist than a neutral observer.

Lincoln supported a policy of war made on civilians in order to win a re-election. His efforts for reelection put the Clinton Body Count to shame.

[presidio9]

Why can't you just accept the fact that ending slavery took a terrible toll on this nation, but that history tells us that the net result was positive? Why do you persist in seeking out exceptions to the rule, like bringing the Sudan into the conversation. There are several reasons why your analogy is unweildy.

The most obvious is that the Sudan was never part of this nation. It was never aided by our laws. Its citizens never directly benefitted by being part of our government. In short, it is not our fault or our problem that slavery exists in the Sudan. I know that one of the resident Klukkers on this thread is going to focus on that first fact, but it needed to be said.

Moving right along, from a Christian standpoint, yes, it would be worth many many lives to end slavery in the Sudan. I think Iraq has shown us that we would not be talking about anything near the 300,000 you mentioned, but yes, it would be worth many lives. The problem is that we are comitted elsewhere and lack the resources. In a sense, we are currently engaged in ending a form of slavery today in Iraq. Do I mourn the loss of every American soldier? Unquestionably. Do I think the losses are necessary and "acceptable?" Soberly, I say "yes."

Would I be willing to fight and die for freedom? I answered earlier on this thread that I would support a President who went to war to end abortion, and I would put my life on the line for that cause. So how come I am not fighting the war against terrorism? In a sense, I am. The war started for me 2 years ago when an airplane flew into the building across the street from me. And then the one next to it. When I got finished burying my many friends and family months later, I was out of a job. My company did not survive. I went so far as to look into enlisting. But I was told that I was too old. So, yeah, it may sound like a copout (I could care less) but I do my part today by showing up at my new job in the number one terrorist target in New York City. I am biding my time until the new Trade Center gets built. I can't wait to be the first tenant.

This is what you have to understand: Revisionists who now seek to cast Lincoln as the bad guy sound quite a bit like the nutjobs who once spun America as the agressor against Japan and are now saying the Iraq war is a modern Holocaust. Slavery is always a bad thing.

[presidio9]

Not even sure I understand what you are referring to here. I apologize for mocking you, and I resolve to do my best to resume ignoring you, as several wiser heads have done. You are quite delusional, and nobody but racists and the mentally disturbed share your views or even take them seriously. Feel free to continue wishing you could have a brown person to call your very own. Such thoughts, I supposem are harmless. The reality will never come to pass.

[JohnGalt]

Here is a nearly complete interaction over the last two threads. Can you tell me which theories on Irish immigration you believe I am sourcing to G of NY?

If you want to drag this thing on, I'd be happy to but why be exposed as a dirty player? Just don't lie; there is no reason to; my ideas are radical enough and sourced to historians and family lore. Perhaps it was only a miscommunication; fresh off the boat is a traditional phrase meaning citizens, but not native born.


This was a good thread with lots of passion and it was interesting, but lying is generally considered out of bounds.

LOL, BTW. I guess I am fighting the war on terror, too; I lost my job in large part to 9/11; I was part of a software team working on a deal that litterally was destroyed that day. What a brave and noble bunch we are!

To: presidio9

Revisionism equals "getting history in line with the facts."

The irony of your post is sublime akin to "print the legend" or "might makes right."

Kudos.


88 posted on 10/23/2003 4:08 PM EDT by JohnGalt (Attention Pseudocons: Wilsonianrepublic.com is still available)
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To: JohnGalt

No problem. If you feel the need to begin enslaving people down there prepare for another ass-kicking.


89 posted on 10/23/2003 4:09 PM EDT by presidio9 (Countdown to 27 World Championships...)
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You are either suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or you are one of the descendent of those "brave" New Yorkers who sent the fresh off the boat Irish to the frontlines.

Did you love or hate Gangs of New York?


97 posted on 10/23/2003 4:17 PM EDT by JohnGalt (Attention Pseudocons: Wilsonianrepublic.com is still available)
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To: JohnGalt

Did you love or hate Gangs of New York?

I am merely granting you the level of respect you deserve. Your theories are idiotic. Figures. You base your opinions on idealized movie concepts, rather than the facts. My Irish relations lived in Five Points at the time, but I know the riots were about Irish citizen being outraged over having to fight to protect "n-----s." They were the bad guys, not some Dick Dastardly cartoon charachter. BTW, events in other "historical" Leo DiCaprio movie did not happen exactly the way he portrayed them. You should read a book sometime (if you can) you might find it enlightening.


120 posted on 10/23/2003 5:22 PM EDT by presidio9 (Countdown to 27 World Championships...)
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To: presidio9

So Stockholm Syndrome?

I am a Yankee, too, son, just not a sell out.

No wonder you are hostile; you betrayed your blood.



135 posted on 10/23/2003 10:07 PM EDT by JohnGalt (Attention Pseudocons: Wilsonianrepublic.com is still available)
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You do it again with this post which makes no sense in context.

To: JohnGalt

No wonder you are hostile; you betrayed your blood.

Again, rather than accepting the poetic license of Martin Scorsese as historical fact, why don't you actually take the time to read up on the Five Points Riot. You will be suprised to discover that his (unwatchable) movie is factually incorrect. The riot was about Irish immigrants hating black people. The fact that they had some reason to feel this way (blacks were their direct job competitors in Northern cities) is irrelevant. Like many of their modernday immigrant counterparts, they got off their boats, set foot in this country, and set about declaring that it owed them a living. It was not until they realized that the opposite was true that the Irish really became a force in American politics, industry and culture. I don't really have time today to indulge tangential discourse with someone who gets his facts from movies, so I'll leave it at that.

If you must continue your moronic line of reasoning concerning Lincoln I insist that you begin by answering the following question: How, in your (unimformed) opinion, would we be better off today if Lincoln had not abolished slavery or if he had allowed the South to secede?


142 posted on 10/24/2003 11:29 AM EDT by presidio9 (Countdown to 27 World Championships...)
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To: presidio9

Uninformed? You just wrote that Lincoln freed the slaves, which most educated people know he did not.

I was hardly using the movie as the basis of fact for my opinion, I only saw that you were from NY so I took a flier for effect. (A much better movie about what the tyrant did to our ancestors was in Gods and Generals when the Northern Irish brigade was shredded by the deeply entrenched Southern Irish brigade.)

The point is that the Northern elite treated the Irish far worse than the typical slave owner treated his slaves and used the Irish as fodder in their war to ensure Southern tariff revenue would prop of the Northern elite for time eternal.

What kind of military commander sends men into a frontal assault? How did said military commander select the brigade to make the assault?

The right of secession would have maintained a powerful check on the power of the federal government. The threat had been enormously powerful in the first decades of the country to prevent total wars and over centralization.

Without Lincoln's assault on the Constitution the federal government never could have grown to the size it is today. There never would have been a Spanish-American War, or an American entry into the First World War which disrupted the balance of power in Europe and laid the scenario for Luddendorf to put Lenin on a train to Moscow to 'cause trouble.'

American entry into the First World War, which would never have occurred unless there was a supra-state large enough to effect balance's of power in Europe, laid the ground work for not only the Russian Marxist revolution but the Second World War as a resurgent Germany hoped to correct the wrongs of Versailles.

Only a large country could go so deep into debt, print a worthless paper currency and manipulate its value to so destroy the once vibrant American economy.

Only a very large state, could regulate what sexual conduct is legal or illegal in a Texas town.

Should we keep going with this?

Only a large state could ring up a debt of $22 trillion dollars, steal 60% of the annual earnings of its citizenry, and still find sheep like yourself describing the wonders of its 'accomplishments' on a conservative web site. Lincoln destroyed the most powerful check on the power of Leviathan a free people had.


149 posted on 10/27/2003 9:28 AM EST by JohnGalt (Attention Pseudocons: Wilsonianrepublic.com is still available)
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To: presidio9

Read a book before you come to a conservative web site and praise the glory of Lincoln.

Sheep.


151 posted on 10/27/2003 11:23 AM EST by JohnGalt (Attention Pseudocons: Wilsonianrepublic.com is still available)
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To: JohnGalt

Please. I'm not the one offering dramatic cinema recreations as documentary evidence. Lincoln is universally accepted as this country's greatest conservative hero, and on only crackpots like yourself even begin to suggest otherwise. Seriously: SEEK HELP.


152 posted on 10/27/2003 11:34 AM EST by presidio9 (Countdown to 27 World Championships...)
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On this thread:

To: rdb3

Can you believe this?

This a-hole has been arguing that Lincoln was our worst president for some time now. He acquired his vast knowledge of Irish immigration watching Martin Scorcese's "Gangs Of New York." Seriously.


24 posted on 10/29/2003 10:42 AM EST by presidio9 (gungagalunga)
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[GladesGuru]

Slavery is inefficient, so the elemination of it was good. However, Lincoln wanted to ship all africans back to Africa, as he felt that black and white could never live in peace.

So much for the "Great Emancipator" myth. And don't forget that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to lands where Lincoln had no power, the Southern states still in the Civil War.

[presidio9]

Exactly. You presented the exact ficticous story line for the ridiculous "Gangs of New York" as historical fact, complete with "fresh off the boat to the frontlines." I rest my case. Thanks for doing my research for me. If you want to find out what really happened (I suspect you don't). There are several more plausible books I could recommend. Unfortunately most will conclude by saying poor JohnGault can no longer leagally own a brown person.

[presidio9]

Net result: No slavery. No President of the United States ever did anything more important. You want to argue Lincoln wasn't the best President? You are entitled to that opinion. You want to argue that he was the worst? You are either, ignorant, delusional, or a racist. Take your pick. I know somebody who is all three.

[JohnGalt]

Where did I do this? Is it your honest belief that the Irish were greeted with great paying jobs and a home in suburbia?

G of NY is a movie; the movie used something we call metaphor to illustrate the historical fact that first generation immigrants filled the ranks of the federalis army. I trust you were educated in a gubmint school with no humanities program.

What line do you see sourced to the movie?

I realize you have a peculiar dislike for your immigrant roots (trouble with dad at home?) but just aesthetically speaking, G of NY was very kind to the Irish say compared to a Tom Clancy novel.

You have no game, son. You repeat what you heard in school, would be willing, like a liberal, to pay any price to achieve your perceived 'good end', and you are actually delusional enough to post on a web site that you are participating in the war on terror by getting laid off because of 9/11.

And listen, John Galt (no 'u') is the anti-hero protagonist from Atlas Shrugged...lurkers are already questioning your conservative credentials but to keep getting the name wrong does not help your cause.

[presidio9]

1) Immigration is SUPPOSED to be hard. Last time I checked, we were not handing suburban homes out to Mexicans today.

2) All of my education was at the hands of the Catholic Church.

3) Your goofy description of men being drafted on the gang planks happened only in the movie. Not in any recorded history.

4) As I pointed out earlier, I love being Irish. My relationship with my American dad is great, we live in 2003 America, not in 1860's squalor. But, since you asked, I am very inovolved with a major Belfast charity to the point where I have personally met Bertie Ahern several times. BTW, I enjoy Clancy's stories very much because I don't take them seriously either. It's FICTION dumbass.

5) I am participating in the war by not being afraid. There have been days in the past two years where we were warned that our building was a direct target. That's the best I can do. If it makes you feel any better, I employ both Irish Americans and African Americans. I notice no major differences between them.

6) Note it crazy person: Ayn Rand is a Libertarian, not a Conservative, lol. And the "lurkers" that you speak of are sending me private FReepmails commenting on what a complete lunatic you are and wondering what is giving me the patience to put up with you.

7) Just for laughs, please tell us again how ending slavery was a bad thing.

[Restorer]

I guess you are unwilling to answer my questions, perhaps because they illustrate that when Lincoln sent federal troops into VA, he was actly stictly in accordance with the Constitution and his oath of office.

VA attacked the Union before the Union fought back. Whether Lincoln could have kept VA in the Union by doing something different is something we'll never know, and is comprehensively irrelevant to whether Lincoln should have fought back when sneak attacks were launched on federal forces by VA.

[JohnGalt]

1) The question at hand was the treatment of the Irish as cannon fodder for the federalis; you are arguing both sides now. Pick one and stick with it.

2) Then why do you behave like you have never seen this point of view before? You do read conservatives don't you?

3) Again, 'fresh off the boat' is a metaphor for non-native born citizens-- they did teach you metaphor right? Despite your claim there is historical reference to Irish immigrants being drafted literally off the boat. Suffice to say, the federalis encouraged a policy of immigration to fill their ranks.

http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itsv/0699/ijse/portrait.htm
"During the U.S. Civil War (1861-65), the U.S. Government -- the Union -- helped fill its roster of troops by encouraging emigration from Europe, especially from the German states. In return for service in the Union army, immigrants were offered grants of land. By 1865, about one in five Union soldiers was a wartime immigrant. Today, 22 percent of Americans have German ancestry."


4) While a noble attribute, we were talking about Lincoln right? Structuring a defense of the Irish during the time period takes work, but I am not inclined to dump on their struggles since I did not have to face such things in my life. Such is the burden of reconciling the Irish experience in America with man's noble struggle for liberty but I embrace the challenge.

5) LOL, Jesse. By implying that I am a crypto racist because I don't see the world through the gubmint's eyes, you are the victim here, not me. And after all the strutting, your best effort is 'not being afraid'? My goodness, what kind of stock is afraid of cave dwellers to begin with? So afraid that they will support a policy of sending female teenagers from West Virginia into harms way?

6) I suggested that you would help establish yourself as being either a conservative or libertarian if you spelled Galt correctly. I did not say that Rand was a conservative-- she most certainly was not. Rand is much closer to a neoconservative (who are also not conservative) not an America conservative libertarian or Jeffersonian conservative. Her ideas on liberty were far more Prussian than they were American.

That there are lots of liberals and post-conservatives on this site that Freepmail you is to be expected. The number of FDR fans on this thread alone is proof positive.

7) Is that the best you got? I would have been among the Northern Copperhead Abolitionists of the day; that you have no clue who those people might have been is rather revealing about your one-sided account of the time period.

The process by which this country ended slavery was the problem. My faith in the laws of the marketplace and the good decency demonstrated by the English who outlawed slavery without a bloody revolution. Lincoln presided over the worst possible handling of the situation and tolerated a policy of making war on American civilians.

Worst President ever.

[JohnGalt]

Apologies, my intent was not to skip over that piece, but it's a separate can of worms. Lincoln failed to convene Congress when he began the invasion of Virginia let alone secure a Declaration of War or introduce some sort of bill to explain the action-- hardly the spirit of the Constitution. I left it alone since the topic was "Who Lost Virginia."

I came across this which is also interesting as it reference newspapers of the day which I did mention are key to understanding the time period, rather than look for after the fact explanations (see Iraq War for a contemporary example.)
"In "Lincoln and the First Shot" (in Reassessing the Presidency, edited by John Denson), John Denson painstakingly shows how Lincoln maneuvered the Confederates into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. Northern newspapers all recognized this at the time, but Winik seems to know nothing at all about it. As the Providence Daily Post wrote on April 13, 1861, "Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor" by reprovisioning Fort Sumter. On the day before that the Jersey City American Statesman wrote that "This unarmed vessel, it is well understood, is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South." Lincoln’s personal secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, clearly stated after the war that Lincoln successfully duped the Confederates into firing on Fort Sumter. And as Shelby Foote wrote in The Civil War, "Lincoln had maneuvered [the Confederates] into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war."

After Fort Sumter Lincoln wrote to his naval commander Gustavus Fox thanking him for his assistance in drawing the first shot. "

[presidio9]

John, I don't have time to continue playing in your mental sandbox, but let me just say this:

The people that are Freepmailing me probably run the gamut of the political spectrum. You be suprised to learn who some of them are. But that's not the point. Few of them are even bothering to agree or disagree with me, because the facts on this issue couldn't be more clear. What that are writing me to say is that you are completely off your rocker. SEEK HELP (this is a directive, not a joke).

[JohnGalt]

The only reason we had to drag this out was your poor taste in gamesmanship.

Doubt I'd be that surprised who Freepmailed you.

"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice" and all that...

[presidio9]

The only reason we had to drag this out is because you suffer from obsessive narcissism. The only reason I am growing tired of you is because your posts are getting longer and longer and more and more tangential as you try to fight your way out of the corner you are in. I knew I had to go when I found myself analyzing your assertion that "Ayn Rand's neoconservatism far more Prussian than American" on a thread about Lincoln. Mercy! I am not kidding: You have psycological issues. SEEK HELP.

[JohnGalt]

Youposted to another person that I was using Ga movie as the basis for my opinion. Despite the numerous links I posted on two days of a back and forth, I thought it strange that there was not even a little respect for the enemy. Thinking the best of you, I wanted to give you the opportunity to demonstrate you were a straight shooter.