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.
We have democratic institutions that reflect the will of the people --- BUT --- the Constitution limits what a majority of the people can do to the minority.
Pure Democracy = Two wolves and a sheep deciding on what to have for dinner.
Constitutional Republic (or Monarchy) with democratic institutions = Wolves aren't allowed to eat the sheep no matter how many damn votes they have.
The Constitution is all we have. Respect it, protect it and cherish it.
I am not claiming ,demanding or insisting that the United States of America is a strict republic . You are putting up a straw man argument .
We are as a nation a republic with DEMOCRATIC TRADITIONS and INSTITUTIONS.
As for those who think this nation is a direct democracy merely look at the political left in this nation from the Democrat party onwards to the left end of the political spectrum.
They proclaim that America is a “DEMOCRACY” exclamation point, leaving the impression that this nation is in fact a direct democracy & if things don’t go as the mob led by socialist /marxist rabble rousers want then the message is that the folks who say that this nation is a republic are against the will of the people,that they are against “Democracy & freedom “ and that these people are unworthy of any rights & come the revolution they can be hunted down at will & killed.
Lots of freepers have used the exact phrase "a Republic, NOT a democracy", thereby stating the United States is in fact a strict with Republic with no democracy. I am not paraphrasing them at all, I am quoting them verbatim. If are you one of the "abolish the 17th amendment" types who doesn't use this phrase, you are in the minority. Their argument is simply wrong. Cuba, China, and North Korea are "Republics, not Democracies" The United States is a democratic Republic where we the people are the ultimate source of authority. The United States governs with the just consent of the govern. It that "offends" any so-called "conservative" and they really believe that appointed legislators are far superior to elected ones, they are free to move to a country where they are not allowed any input on who represents them in the national government. It's rather disturbing that so many conservatives are "offended" by the premise that individual citizens and not government bureaucrats can make the best decisions on how government is run.
>> They proclaim that America is a “DEMOCRACY” exclamation point, leaving the impression that this nation is in fact a direct democracy"
Now you're the one who is putting words in people's mouth and paraphrasing what they say to make your point. I cannot find ONE person who has ever argued the United States is a "DIRECT Democracy", but you use those words yourself to claim they "mean" that whenever they simply mention America has democracy. Again, if "democracy" implies an absolute democracy, when people use the phrase "monarchy" to describe the U.K. are they trying to argue the Queen of England has absolute authority over the country and can do whatever she wants? Of course not.
If politicians were trying to insist America were a DIRECT democracy by using the word democracy, they would have insisted that Obamacare be put to national referendum where all 300+ million Americans get to vote on it, that gays in the military get a national referendum, that California's ban on gay marriage can't be overturned unless millions of California agree to it, etc. The federal government would have all cigarette smokers and alcahol drinkers in America vote on whether not they can increase cigarette and tobacco taxes. Chicago politicians would insist all 3 million Chicagoans get to vote on whether they can ban guns. The gerrymandered Illinois state legislature would insist every Illinois voter get to vote on their remap proposal to toss all Republican incumbents into the same districts. Are they doing this? Hell NO!
Open your eyes. Democrats, despite their party name, HATE Democracy. They don't want to let the little people interfere with their socialist schemes. They may talk about "democracy" alot in speeches to put on a dog and pony show, but they are working to make America LESS democratic, not more. We don't have enough democracy in America, we have activist judges running rampant and career politicians rigging districts so they can serve for life and nobody will be able to vote them out no matter how they govern. MORE democracy is a good thing, and democracy is not a dirty word that will lead to absolute democracy or "mob rule". It will be a cold day in hell before Obama, Pelosi, and Reid let the American people vote on their socialist agenda.
I am not disagreeing that the politicians hate democracy .
I am stating bluntly that they use the techniques of advertising & propaganda combined with a deliberately dumbed down education system to keep themselves in power .
I have understood that the politicians were working to make this country less free & its people more in the grip of govt. control for nearly 30 years!
It’s both parties Democrats and Republicans that view you as being to stupid to wipe ,flush, wash your hands in the right order when you use the toilet not me . It is both parties that are working to make you a slave . Realize that fact & you are on your way to being free.
Thank you for that retraction. It helps to keep the air clear.
Historian Richard Hofstadter, in his posthumous America at 1750, informs us that Rhode Island was the slaver home-port of choice.
American bottoms carried about 1/12th of the slave trade in colonial America, the great bulk of the rest of the slavers being British. Of the American proportion, far and away the majority were Rhode Islanders.
American slave ships were generally much smaller than their British counterparts, being about a third the tonnage. This was a deliberate practice based on familiarity with the mathematical principle of "gambler's ruin", since each ship would otherwise represent too great a wager on every voyage.
Slavery and abortion resemble one another only in that they are moral issues to some people and not to others.
Lincoln made slavery a moral issue, as did the Abolitionists of his day, while claiming to be not an Abolitionist (I think for tactical reasons, to avoid a label he might have deserved).
Whereas modern abortion opponents do indeed oppose abortion on strictly moral grounds, much as the Israelites condemned Jezebel for her institution of a tophet (a sacrifice of children) in the holy city of Jerusalem, it will continue to mystify historians whether the secretive Lincoln was in fact a moralist, or even a deist. Some suspect he was neither, and that his use of the slavery issue (and its "cure", civil war) was pragmatic and drily instrumental, and that his real motive in argument -- his motive -- was to implement the American System of Henry Clay, a strictly economic agenda that needed some sort of left-handed way of being implemented in the agrarian United States of his day.
In other words, the Civil War may have been all about instituting high tariffs and subsidies for manufacturers and better business conditions, and subsidies, for railroads -- remember, Lincoln was a railroad and patent lawyer.
It might all have been about the money, and all the rest, window dressing for a dark victory of the money power.
Now I fully understand.
Enough to justify your absurd opinions? Or are you angry about something else?
Using another one of your false choice analogies I see.
Pea, whatever our differences I’ve always regarded you as a well-researched opponent. If you believe any portion of that Molotov-cocktail throwers’ bullspit then you clearly don’t understand anything at all.
If abortion is to be the new Moral Issue That Cannot Be Compromised or Negotiated, must we have another "coming of the Lord" with a "terrible swift sword" for all the unbelievers and other people who condemn themselves to death and worse by disagreeing with you?
See how sticky this moral-issue business gets, and how quickly?
By the way, that's the essential game the Left likes to play. Moral issue + radicalization => pogrom.
No, it was the Southern leadership clinging to their slaves, who were responsible for that.
Lincoln upheld the rule of law.
Speaking of “Molotov-cocktail throwing”, have you read “donmeaker” lately?
Do Jefferson and Washington get a waiver from af vet?
What causes that indoctrination is "reconstructed history" or the "Lincoln curse".
This is what happens when the country mindless turns a President into a deity.
Thank you for confirming my suspicions.
Nobody gets a waiver from af vet.
Were he in anybody else's position, he'd have done the right thing. Guaranteed.
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