Posted on 12/19/2004 6:19:45 AM PST by TFine80
It is news guaranteed to make many Republicans squirm. Was Abraham Lincoln, founder of the party now seeking a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in America, actually gay himself?
A new book, published next month, certainly thinks so. The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by C.A. Tripp produces evidence that one of America's greatest Presidents had a long-term relationship with a youthful friend, Joshua Speed, and shared his bed with David Derickson, captain of his bodyguards.
Tripp, a former researcher for sex scientist Alfred Kinsey and an influential gay writer, includes asides by many of Lincoln's close friends. 'He was not very fond of girls, as he seemed to me,' his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, once told a friend.
It also includes a diary excerpt by one upper-class Washington woman who wrote of Derickson: 'There is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him, and when Mrs L is not home, sleeps with him. What stuff!'
Scholars have long debated Lincoln's sexuality, and as early as the 1920s were making veiled references to his relationship with Speed. However, critics say that in the pioneer days men sleeping together in rough circumstances was not uncommon.
Now Tripp has discovered letters between Lincoln and Speed which supposedly betray a deep intimacy.
But Tripp's book really breaks new ground in its exhaustive portrayal of many of Lincoln's possible gay lovers, including one man who said Lincoln's thighs 'were as perfect as a human being could be'.
'Make no mistake - Abe Lincoln was gay,' said Professor Scott Thompson, from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts.
But David Donald, a Harvard professor and respected Lincoln biographer, has disputed Tripp's findings in his own book, We Are Lincoln Men, published last year, and says there is no definitive proof of Lincoln having affairs with any men.
Lincoln said he would not interfere with slavery in the states where it then existed because he lacked legal authority. He did not say that he would permit states to secede, or to fire on federal property.
The immediate cause of the war was secession. But that begs the question of why the southern states seceded. And you cannot answer the question of why the southern states seceded by looking solely at what Lincoln said. That should be obvious to any reasonable person. Which you clearly are not.
Bye-bye.
With all of the real history to teach, why do they make it up? Could it be that almost everyone, with a few exceptions, exalts Lincoln, and if they can place this monicre on him it will further the cause of the queer. Lincoln never humped a man. Lincoln was never humped himself. Show me the pictures or the sworn statements or shut up. The good professor should be tarred and feathered and fisted and run out of town on a rail.
I hate the word gay. They have messed up a perfectly good word by redefining it. I will never use the word gay to refer to homsexual behavior.
No, he just looked queer, especially with that stovepipe hat..
Not a bit. I just didn't understand I had to put a straightforward concept into thrid-grade level chunks before you'd understand it.
Your post # 191 said that slavery was the primary cause and triggering issue of the war.
And it was. The prospective banning of slavery from new territories and other slavery-related issues are the "but for" cause that led the south to secede. I haven't wavered from that one iota. And like I told your fellow apologist, I don't really care if either of you guys believe that or not.
Then in your post #235 you offer that upcoming Congressional Reapportionment was the reason leading to secession.
No, I said nothing about Congressional Reapportionment. That's something very specific that happens only every ten years. I wasn't referring to that, and never used those words.
("They will become a smaller and smaller minority, and eventually the addition of new free territories as free states will give the North the ability to vote to end slavery in the entire country. If all territories as future states are free, the slaveholding states are doomed.")
Right. And you're saying what I said doesn't support my poit that slavery was the issue? You seem to be laboring under the delusion that I said something to the effect that the North intended to end slavery immediately. It didn't, and I never stated or implied that it did. But you seem to be refutting that point ad nauseum as if it is the point I made. Which it isn't.
Then in post #241 you say: "The immediate cause of the war was secession".
Right. And my opinion is that slavery was the "but for" reason the South seceded. You disagree. Fine.
Yawn.
I see he's giving you the same treatment. Unable to respond to much of anything you said, he spewed invective and gratuitous crap until his stores of it were depleted then made a quick dash for the back door. You can always tell these types are losing and they know it when they react that way not once but time and time again to virtually everbody they encounter.
Two of the most "free" countries in the world are the United States and Canada (compared to, say, Cuba, not to a laissez faire ideal). Some of the most repressive are the smallest in either area or population.
I don't think there is a shred of correlation between freedom and land area/population. What's important isn't the overall size of government, but its size relative to population. And even then, "size" isn't a very good proxy for level of government repression or control. So when you're talking about the virtues of a "smaller" governmnet", I agree, but I don't think the correct measurement of "smaller" is land area.
No Mass would not be freer, unless your idea of freer is homosexual marriage. But the rest of us would be freer by not being dragged down by those Kennedy re-electing knuckleheads. And they would suffer under their own wealth redistributing system, until hopefully it crashed down and they came to their senses.
The problem I have is with your "they". That "they" may include a very sizeable minority of freedom-loving people like you and I. I am very concerned about how the rights of them -- my fellow citizens -- would be trampled by a People's Republic of Massachusetts. Enforced collectivism, government appropriation of all wealth without compensation, etc.
If there were some way to put all the socialists in their own little dinghy and cast them adrift, I'd applaud the hell out of that. The problem is that their dinghy is a cruise ship with an awful lot of innocents aboard.
. If there were some good conservative Americans still living in Mass, and I'm sure there are a few, surely liberal Mass would not begrudge them exiting the State and I would have no problems giving them back their citizenship.
A fat lot of good that would do them if the PRM took all their property and left them with nothing. Sure, they could emigrate. But they wouldn't have enough money to feed their famililes. Or suppose they wouldn't let people emigrate? Suppose they closed the borders. Would that give our government the right to liberate its former citizens by force?
But you seem very hung up on people losing their rights in the seceded government. If a conservative Southern State seceded, what rights would they have less of. Would they have less right to keep and bear arms? Would they be more taxed? Would unborn babies have less rights? Perhaps they would have less right to view porn.
The problem is that you can't pick and choose who will secede, and who will not. Either all states, cities, and counties have that right, or they do not. Either they are fully sovereign after seceding, or not.
Secession does have "inherent virtue" because it strikes a blow at big central government in favor of smaller more local government.
I disagree. A smaller political entity ruled by marxist totalitarians is just as oppressive to its subjects as would be a larger state. I just don't buy your premise that smaller political entities are more likely to have more "free" governments. It all depends on who is running things, and I see no reason to assume that the proportion of people who lean towards totalitarianism would be smaller just because the political subdivision is smaller.
I suppose one current example of this in the "real world" is the little islamofascist enclave that existed for a time in Fallujah. The country as a whole wasn't that oppressive, but the particular clowns running that place were. And the mere fact that their government was smaller in an absolute sense didn't seem to spare anyone any suffering.
Please name me one government where its virtues aren't outweighed by its weaknesses.
Our current government. If it had not existed, the Brits would have reconquered us in 1812.
But if you really believe that the weaknesses of every government outweigh their virtues, you truly are an anarchist. And presumably, you think the signers of the Declaration were way off with that "to preserve these rights, governments are instituted among men" language. Absent some form of government, the physically strong will prey on the weak. See, e.g., the Vikings.
If you really think the virtues of our current government are outweighed by its weaknesses, you'd necessarily support (in addition to eliminating all taxation and government regulation), the immediate decommissioning of the entire U.S. Navy, the dissolution of our other military branches, the immediate dismantling of our nuclear capability, disbanding of the FAA, customs, border patrol, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. Wipe out all your state national guards as well, because those all provide a government service as well.
I suppose at that point, you'd count on the goodwill of our nation's enemies to protect us from terrorists, etc.
And hey, you mentioned permitting those folks in Massachusetts to emigrate to the U.S. Exactly how are you going to work the whole concept of immigration? You've eliminated the government that will control that.
If you truly believe that the weaknesses o every government outweighs its virtues, then that's where you end up.
What if we left the UN and they objected. Wouldn't you tell them to kiss your behind?
Yes.
When Lincoln asked Grant to come see a play, Mrs. Grant told US that she wasn't going, on any terms, if it meant provoking another screaming match from Mary Lincoln. Grant begged off the invite, and Lincoln invited a military aide named Rathbone and his fiancee to see Our American Cousin.
If Grant and some of his staff had been tailing after the President, would Booth have gotten as close?
Wierdly enough, after they married, Rathbone ended up losing his mind and stabbed and shot her (Clara Harris) to death. Fearing the worst, she had locked their kids in their room so he couldn't get to them too.
Tragedy upon tragedy, it seems.
That sounds like a reason for other countries to wish that we'd break apart. But as for the United States, how does it benefit us to become less dangerous to other countries? And of course the flip side is that smaller countries are less able to defend themselves against outside aggression then are larger ones.
I don't think it is controversial to say that the more local the government the closer to the people it is, and I think in general the less likely to tyrannize.
I used to think that was correct, but I think history disproves it. Just as one example, some of the local soviets in the old Soviet Union were worse than the central government. You mention the FAA. Where is regulating airlines or at the time, stagecoach service, mentioned in the Constitution? And please don't mention the much abuse interstate commerce clause.
I would agree that the commerce clase was twisted out of all reasonable meaning a long time ago. But I honestly think the FAA, or at least some of its functions, is legitimate under that clause because virtually every flight is truly interstate. The vast majority of stagecoach traffic was not, so it wasn't addressed.
And none of what you are doing now is reversing that. It gets worse every day.
"You"? Exactly what have I done or not done? Obviously, nothing you've done has reversed that either. Not sure why you're pointing the finger at me for the expansion of government power over the course of the last century or so. What makes you think I favor it?
If you are uncomfortable with secession, which you should not be because it was understood to be a right at the time the Constitution was passed....
Not sure that's entirely correct. But certainly, at least by the Presidency of Andrew Jackson, any marginally well-informed person should have realized that the federal government did not consider secession to be permitted. Jackson was very blunt about that. So states like Texas that joined the union after that, and which could have joined upon the express conditon that secession was permitted, screwed themselves.
then at the least why not pledge to only support "conservatives" who will vote no on or veto any spending not authorized by the Constitution. (Funny how us anti-federalist are the ones most insistent on actually following the Constitution.)
Because as much as I might wish our elected officials would do exactly that, I see no point in refusing to support "conservatives" if the only alternative on the ballot is a liberal who is twice as bad. Liberalism infected this country gradually, and it is impossible to reverse it overnight. You seek an instant, immediate cure that has zero possibility of ever occuring. Liberalism infected us incrementally, and incrementally is the only way its going to ever leave. At least if we're talking reality rather than fantasy.
Just out of curiosity, do you think the Constitution, which was hotly contested, would have passed if the States felt at the time they could not leave it voluntarily?
We can't know that for sure. Though it seems odd that some states would have so resisted joining in the first place if they believed they could change their minds as easily as their shoes.
Most of the Republicans here are pretty conservative and, like you, are in favor of shrinking the government. Where the parting of the ways usually occurs is how best to affect that. There are basically two schools of thought. The first is to vote for the lesser of two evils, and hope to reverse course gradually. I think that's the folks you're talking about. The second is to draw a line in the sand and not vote for anyone who doesn't advocate radical change. That's where you and some others are.
I'm in the first group. Not because I like RINOS, but because I look at the current political landscape and see that radical change is not going to happen. IMHO, the course of action most likely to return us to where we want to be is an incremental one. And because its incremental, and we have to roll back each gain made by liberals, "principle" votes against Republican moderates in general elections that help liberals to win hurt the cause.
I believe the time and place to support the true conservatives is in the primaries. The best we can hope for right now is to frame the debate by pulling the majority over to our side more gradually. If we're too abrupt, we lose them. So really, its a disagreement over strategy rather than over the end result.
To make the point a bit more applicable to our discussion, secession just isn't going to happen. No matter how wondeful an idea you may think it is, its not reality. Better to look in other directions that are more possible.
Unless you are in the business of empire building, certainly we have not stake in being dangerous to other countries. Only amply able to defend ourselves.
I don't see a functional difference between being "more dangerous" and being amply able to defend ourselves. Both require an exceptional military. Our wealth inevitably will make us a target for evildoers, and we much have the capability to project power to go after them when and if that is necessary.
Or for the moderates we could cut it a fixed 5% for the next 16 years. Ah. But that is not what is happening and is just about as much a fantasy as ending it all overnight.
Doesn't that make the point, though? If you can't even get 5% reduction a year, what chance does even more radical change have?
What we have now and will have for the indefinite future, unless a lot of folks wake up, is incrementally more socialism.
Agreed. The question is how best to wake them up. And I think proposing what you're proposing is more likely to scare them off. When I think "incrementalism", I think about stuff like welfare reform. Privatization of social security. Those things are possible, and its with the "possible" that we should focus our efforts.
With the so called conservative element wanting to grow it at a slower rate.
I disagree. I don't think the conservatives actually want that. But we do think growth of 2% is better than growth of 5% because its closer to 0%. I don't like Bush's domestic spending at all, but Kerry getting in was going to speed up socialism even more. That wasn't going to help.
We can't win every battle. SO what we need to do is to shape the debate. First, convince them that less government growth is better. Then, convince them that no government growth is better than slower government growth. Finally, convince them that shrinking government is better than freezing it.
That is an admittedly difficult task, and one that is going to have some ups and downs. But I see it as the only way to succeed.
This is just a general reply to the entire forum. Do you realize how much blogs like this contribute to book sales of 'no morals, make a fast buck' type of wingnuts like Tripp? I have my suspicions whether Tripp even really belives Lincoln to have been gay or not. He's just pandering to the "National Enquirer, Star, TV Guide" crowd, he'll make a mess of money too, but it will have to be cashed in on the Judgement Seat following Armageddon, :-).
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