No we are not.
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.
You can sure make that argument no matter how much smart folks here like Freepers and Mark Levin loved Lincoln....Reagan loved him too.
Discussion of Lincoln and his legacy reflects human nature.
I believe we need a Washington now more than a Lincoln...or a Madison would do
No we are not.
Well, you did not refute any of my valid points as far as the taxation. The blacks were fully taxed, so to speak, as slaves...we now are about 20-50% taxed and if you try not paying some of it, you will go to jail and lose your property. And the slave owners did not regularly use the blacks wages to kill unborn babies; ie, tax payer funded planned parenthood.
Palin and Ryan are not afraid to speak the truth about Obama, the Democrats and the media. That is the kind of candidate we need for this time. I would also add Bachmann and Cain to that list.
Perry?? What sign has he show that he is the one for this time.
“A fatuous comparison.”
Accurate criminal profiling.
I am a loss to understand how Lincoln is responsible for light bulbs or how he enslaved free men but I am inclined to agree with you, as I have already posted, about the abortions.
As to Lincoln's heavy handedness in conducting the war, I have already acknowledged that.
There is every evidence that Lincoln was quite prepared to accept the Confederacy back into the Union with "malice toward none" and John Wilkes Booth deprived us of knowing that for a certainty. The radical Republicans who ran reconstruction were so adamant that they nearly convicted the impeached Andrew Johnson but might not have been nearly so presumptuous against Abraham Lincoln, of their own party. After reconstruction, the South in many respects returned to its traditional role of state sovereignty which lasted until Woodrow Wilson. Even after Wilson, the South was still solid in terms of its independence in many respects even through the New Deal and until Lyndon Johnson really finished federalism off.
The historical sweep of the Industrial Revolution, the migration of peoples, westward expansion, the Great Depression, 2 world wars, and the general federalization because the income tax poured money into Washington, cannot be blamed on Abraham Lincoln but they can be seen as causes of our modern federal system.
[ If democracy was the road to communism then how come the FIRST thing the commies did when they SEIZED power was ABOLISH democratic elections? ]
Your WRONG the commies DO NOT abolish elections.. they abolish the other partys..
Russia always had elections.. as do the Chinese..
The patina of democracy is still kept in any democratic country..
As every democracy does as well keeping the patina of fair elections..
And it all seems quite fair to “democrats”.. who do not think too deeply about it..
You know............. like YOU do..
Is it necessary to articulate the difference between committing a crime and being incarcerated for that and being incarcerated for your human condition?
Is it necessary to articulate the difference between a choice one has to pay a tax and the lack of choice one has when he is a slave?
Is it necessary to articulate the difference between one who chooses to work and create the conditions which obligate one to pay a tax and those who have no choice but must work because they are slaves without any recompense whatsoever?
Is it necessary to articulate the difference between those in a representative democracy who can vote their taxes in or out and slaves who have no vote concerning their freedom or the conditions of their servitude?
Remember, we did not wage a war against taxation, we waged a war against taxation without representation.
The Continental magazine of 1862 ran an article describing how the ‘free traders’ of the day fomented the American Civil War.
‘free trade’ is causing a similar division in the citizens of this country today.
I’d say there is more than one reason this election looks like 1860.
Then, of course, the question was can a country “conceived in liberty’, in Lincoln’s words, tolerate slavery.
Clearly he is mixing up things up, the reason for the war was states rights, slavery was the occasion not the cause. The Revolutionary war wasn't about tea and taxes.
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.
More reconstructed history: Lincoln opposed slavery in the territories because he thought the new territories need to be all white. Lincoln was a racist to the nth degree.
I agree with everything you just posted. Nice handling of the stock troll question too.
See my tagline.
Hard core southerners asserted that northern states didn’t have the right to ban slavery. They claimed the right under Dred Scott to take their slaves to free states, and have the government help them keep their ‘PROPERTY’ enslaved.
“Somewhere among us there is the man for the time and we desperately need him to step forward. Is it Paul Ryan? Is it Gov. Perry? Could it be Sarah Palin?”
Only Allen West meets your criteria and he isn’t running. Secession may be the only answer.
It’s the “one person, one vote, one time” system.
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