Posted on 06/04/2011 12:34:35 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As the season of presidential politics 2012 unfolds, I’m struck by similarities between today and the tumultuous period in our history that led up to the election of Abraham Lincoln and then on to the Civil War.
So much so that I’m finding it a little eerie that this year we are observing the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War.
No, I am certainly not predicting, God forbid, that today’s divisions and tensions will lead to brother taking up arms against brother.
But profound differences divide us today, as was the case in the 1850′s.
The difference in presidential approval rates between Democrats and Republicans over the course of the Obama presidency and the last few years of the Bush presidency has been in the neighborhood of 70 points. This is the most polarized the nation has been in modern times.
This deep division is driven, as was the case in the 1850′s, by fundamental differences in world-view regarding what this country is about.
Then, of course, the question was can a country “conceived in liberty’, in Lincoln’s words, tolerate slavery.
Today the question is can a country “conceived in liberty” tolerate almost half its economy consumed by government, its citizens increasingly submitting to the dictates of bureaucrats, and wanton destruction of its unborn children.
We wrestle today, as they did then, with the basic question of what defines a free society.
It’s common to hear that “democracy” is synonymous with freedom. We also commonly hear that questions regarding economic growth are separate and apart from issues tied to morality — so called “social issues.”
But Stephen Douglas, who famously debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858, argued both these points. In championing the idea of “popular sovereignty” and the Kansas Nebraska Act, he argued that it made sense for new states to determine by popular vote whether they would permit slavery.
By so doing, argued Douglas, the question of slavery would submit to what he saw as the core American institution — democracy — and, by handling the issue in this fashion, slavery could be removed as an impediment to growth of the union.
Lincoln rejected submitting slavery to the vote, arguing that there are first and inviolable principles of right and wrong on which this nation stands and which cannot be separated from any issue, including considerations of growth and expansion.
The years of the 1850′s saw the demise of a major political party — the Whigs — and the birth of another — the Republican Party. And the Democratic Party, in the election of 1860, splintered into two.
In a Gallup poll of several weeks ago, 52 percent said that neither political party adequately represents the American people and that we need a third party. Of the 52 percent, 68 percent were Independents, 52 percent Republicans, and 33 percent Democrats.
So it’s not surprising that the field of Republicans emerging as possible presidential candidates is wide, diverse, and unconventional.
But another lesson to be learned from 1860 is that conventional wisdom of establishment pundits is not necessarily reliable.
These pundits will explain why the more unconventional stated and potential candidates in the Republican field — Cain, Palin, or Bachmann — don’t have a chance and why we should expect Romney, Pawlenty, or Huntsman.
But going into the Republican Convention in Chicago in 1860, the expected candidate to grab the nomination was former governor and Senator from New York, William H. Seward.
But emerging victorious on the third ballot at the convention was a gangly country lawyer, whose only previous experience in national office was one term in the US congress, to which he was elected fourteen years earlier.
A year or two earlier, no one, except Abraham Lincoln himself, would have expected that he would become president of the United States.
Human bondage can not be justified. Your attempt to rehabilitate such disgusting practice is to be rejected by any sensible and warm bloodied human being. I am shocked that any living and insightful free person can maintain such a empathetic view of this clearly barbaric practice. That the US legal system tolerated, and gave legal shelter to same for so long is awful. And the fowl defenders of such a system, who must have known better, having a pulse at the time, were, are, and ever will be, scum.
Why would anyone rise to defend these creeps? Do you think that human sensibilities have been drastically altered in 150 years? The evil scum knew, invited and caused the war. Dummy, dummy, dummy. How great the honor to such people who killed hundreds of thousands to keep their slaves. Yuck!
Our modern battle is with communists who would enslave us all - where do you stand on that?
That's not to say that States don't have rights - they are clearly acknowledged in the Constitution, and perhaps they (meaning their citizens) may have to fight, and have that right, to assert and/or retain them; but God damn it, fight for freedom and human liberty, not slavery (what were these people thinking of?)!...
I like that, but clearly you made that up!
And “nobody goes there anymore, because it is too busy!”
Oh, quite agreed. Lincoln was God’s tool.
This deep division is driven, as was the case in the 1850′s, by fundamental differences in world-view regarding what this country is about.
There's something to that, but it's not quite the whole story.
Political parties are internally more homogenous and more polarized against each other than they were in the past. Conservative Southern Democrats and socially conservative Depression-era Democrats aren't really much of a factor. Nor are the socially liberal East Coast Establishment Republicans that prominent.
So partisan opinion about presidents of the other party is bound to be more negative than it was in the days where a large portion of each party was likely to be at least in part in sympathy with much of the worldview of the other party.
All the more so, since the "narrowcasting" brought about by the Internet and cable TV have altered our manners and behavior so much. Thinking the worst of the other party is the "new normal" and that is certainly different from how things were in the days of Ike and JFK.
But given that it is the new normal it's more chronic than acute, more a function of how things are than a sign of immanent breakup or breakdown. Given that enmity is an ongoing feature of the political scene, it's not necessarily true that people are angrier or more filled with rage, it may just be that we are more forceful in expressing differences that have been around for some time.
Of course a chronic ailment can worsen, become acute distress, and kill the patient. Something like that happened in the 1850s and may happen again. I'm not sure that 2012 will be the new 1860, though.
For one thing we know the main actors involved and know what to expect of them. In 1860, the first Republican president was something of a mystery and the uncertainty drove public fears to the panic stage, particularly in the South.
Also, we know that under usual circumstances what government can do it limited. We understand the checks and balances in the system prevent too much from changing too quickly. If Obama in 2009 and Bush in 2001 and Clinton in 1993, all with control of both Houses of Congress were only able to achieve limited results, it's not likely that whoever wins in 2012 will be able to radically change how things are.
Of course after long strain and tension, the ties that link us together could eventually snap, but 2012 isn't likely to be another 1860.
How “bad” do you think slavery was in 1860?
What if 11 states wanted to secede are you going to impose YOUR will on them? Oh, wait that already happened.
Clearly you don’t understand. Lincoln the butcher was a racist and had no philosophical problem with slavery up until the point he needed more bodies to throw at the Army of N. Va., they were running out of Irish, we are never allowed to desecrate the asshole with the tall black hat. After the Army of the Potomac got their asses handed to them over and over suddenly “them blackies” were AOK with the Illinois Butcher™.
You’re engagining in a whole lot of adjectives and puffery to totally blow past the meaning and intent of my reply to you. Not impressive.
You’re railing against the facts of the past. That railing does not change them, nor does it change the thoughts and motivations of those who lived in that past. You’re projecting modern sensibilities upon a time when human bondage was not viewed as the abject horror that it is in the present time. You engage in anachronism in order to condemn people who participated in a legal practice that had existed, in sundry forms, for all recorded history, and in fact still does.
Go right ahead and sit smugly on your perch in their unknown future and bloviate away. Maybe you can actually alter the past, but I doubt it. You’re dealing with a people who do not care for your brand of revisionism.
As far as communism, well, your completely unhinged way of dealing with a past you dislike is far more indicative of a totalitarian than it would be of myself and people such as me. We do not forget the past and we do not engage in revisionism. We do not reject our forbears on the basis of modern sensibility that other, more recent arrivals seem to believe to encompass the entirety of our history. Recent arrivals who brought communism with them. Your people, I suspect.
So, chew on that for a while and maybe you can come up with some other word you believe to be a hotbutton that will get you out of the ridiculous hole you’ve dug for yourself here, advocating genocide, then trying to come across as some sort of Cold Warrior.
Fool. Begone.
“The biggest problem is that the founding fathers were hypocrites when it came to slavery, or too fearful of upsetting southerners and didn’t have the balls to carry their “All men are created equal” beliefs from the Declaration of Independence into the Constitution.”
I’ve seen enough of your replies over the years to have thought better of you. This shoots right past ignorance and into willful stupidity. George Mason. Read a little, maybe learn something. The incompatibility of the institution of slavery was well recognized by our Founders. Extricating themselves from it proved far more complicated than recognizing the problem, however. Political wrangling and alliances between northern and southern states guaranteed the perpetuation of it at the Convention.
Mason, brilliant man that he was, predicted war over the matter, and the destruction of the new nation. For all intents and purposes, he was right. He was bitterly opposed to the practice but held slaves all his life, and manumitted none of them in his will. Why was that, do you suppose? Hypocrite? No, you’re nowhere near his moral or intellectual equal, and yet you deign to stand in judgment. Phffft.
As I said, read a little. Here’s a start, since you appear to need a push:
http://www.gunstonhall.org/georgemason/slavery/views_on_slavery.html
Talk about Monday morning quarterbacking.
On balance, that might be one of the most ignorant posts ever on Free Republic. Note: I did not say stupid; I said ignorant.
Had you been in the shoes of George Mason or Roger Sherman, there would be no United States of America today.
Please read Miracle In Philadelhia before commenting further on the Founders and the Constitution.
I apologize in advance for any adverse reaction my strong response may garner. But this is a very important issue with regard to our Founders and the founding document.
I’ve read Miracle in Philadelphia and other similar books and the problem they all seem to have is ignorance or a downplaying of the fact that England had abolished slavery within its borders over a decade before the United States was recognized as an independent nation, and England didn’t break out into civil war over slavery. The problem in the colonies was that the slave owners not only gained power over the lives of human beings, they were able to gain political power that they should never have had access to.
You seem to fail to realize that England held colonies wherein numerous forms of human bondage were not just practiced but legally enforced, and that English merchants profited from the slave trade despite the near absence of them in England. How many colonies attempted to halt the importation of African slaves and how were their efforts greeted by England, af_vet_rr? And, what does England’s abolishment of slavery have to do with the price of tea in China when their own colonies were not allowed to do so? You haven’t read a thing on this subject, otherwise you would not be continuing to make such bizarre statements. Please read the George Mason link I provided.
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