Why 2012 election looks a lot like 1860

Dakota Voice ^ | June 4, 2011 | Star Parker

[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.

[delacoert]

1. …can a country “conceived in liberty’, in Lincoln’s words, tolerate slavery.
2. …can a country “conceived in liberty” [in Star Parker's words] tolerate almost half its economy consumed by government, its citizens increasingly submitting to the dictates of bureaucrats, and wanton destruction of its unborn children.

A complete lack of parallelism. Worthy of an eighth grade cheerleader. She would have gotten an "A" for it in eighth grade and obviously hasn't progressed.

[fabian]

...Good God man is it necessary to articulate to you the difference between human bondage and legal obligation?...
Yes it is necessary and you have not done it! We have zero obligation to tax a confiscatory tax on our wages and homes which then is used to destroy our very nation in so many ways. Yes, it was a revolution against excessive taxation. THey would have revolted from those high taxes from the King even if they had good representation..then again, the taxes would not have been laid if they had the decision making capabilities of them. The war with the King was over far far less taxation than we are slaves to now. They could never have dreamed of their very income being taxed to 50%! good lord man, where is your healthy outrage? Yes, we still have the voting power, but their is a whole system and power structure that we have to overcome now and I pray that the vote will be able to...otherwise we will have to do what the founders said we should anytime a government becomes oppressive.

[DTogo]

Why does America have to continue in it's current form with 50 states?

On it's current course toward fiscal/social collapse, preemption by secession might not be a bad idea and a more peaceful solution.

Not so much for the remaining Liberal-filled states, which would lose their productive citizens and likely end up in fiscal/social collapse anyway.

[nathanbedford]

Rubbish!

This is what you said:

We are litterally slaves to a partial socialist system and that is similar to the slavery issue back before the civil war.

We are not "literally" slaves. A literal slave is in bondage, cannot get out of slavery, is not recompensed, can be physically abused, and has no recourse. There is no similarity. If you want me to be outraged over our tax and spending policies I will join you, I will get on a soapbox with you, but I will not make an ass of myself professing that which simply is not true.

As to the rest of it, the country waged its Revolutionary war to gain the right to tax itself not to be free of taxes. It ratified a Constitution which provided for taxing power which provided a constitutional method of regulating taxing and spending by a representative body. That ain't slavery. Now, it may come to pass that that representative body enacts bad or foolish policy but that is just what it is, bad policy, not slavery.

Let's say there's a young lurker running down this thread deciding whether his honest inclinations toward conservatism are the right philosophy for him. What will he think as he says to himself, "to be a conservative do I have to believe this stuff which is patently untrue?"

[lentulusgracchus]

Personally, I think we do have a Reagan in development. But it’s a she.

Because of the depth and the degree of power-politics involved in these issues -- and the larger issue of the NWO and American resistance (under the Exceptionalism banner) to integration in the power-junkies' plans, I fear for her safety.

[vanilla swirl]

bring it!

[lentulusgracchus]

to offer decent terms to the states he defeated...well there he does have my undying respect and that sets him apart from the jackals that were chomping at the bit behind him to destroy the south as punishment...

The jackals were more honest. Lincoln's feigned magnanimity was explained centuries earlier by Julius Caesar in his Commentaries. Magnanimity in victory is about submission and hand-licking, not kindness.

No submission, no clasping the hem of the robe ..... then he'd have been perfectly willing to burn the entire South to the ground, until there was not one stone standing on another, and nothing left moving except ex-slaves and mountain-county Unionists.

Lee repented his surrender eventually, and wished he'd died at Appomattox instead with his sword in his hand.

[fabian]

That lurker will probably see your weakness. We are indeed slaves. If we do not pay an illegal tax..income...and it is illegal the way it is enforced, then we will be thrown in jail just as some have been and are now. The colonists fought for low taxation, not simply the ability to tax themselves, that is ridiculous. They knew the fallen nature of most men and thus made a taxing system that was just and not on income for heaven sakes. I agree that the blacks enslavement was more severe, but we still are slaves non the less and for you not to see that is a testimony to the effectiveness of the socialist brainwashing techniques of the marxists that run so many of our institutions now. Check out the fhu.com and Roy’s new book, he delves deeply and unlike any other commentator today about how we have been taken over already.

[lentulusgracchus]

The war with the King was over far far less taxation than we are slaves to now.

That's a point often misunderstood. It wasn't the rate of the tax. It was the fact that America was being set up to follow Ireland, not England, in the parliamentary tax regime, which was rapacious and confiscatory in Ireland.

Without representation in Parliament, we were set up to become the next Ireland, our productivity having already surpassed England's and teased up the institutional avarice of Parliament's "appropriators".

[nathanbedford]

... for you not to see that is a testimony to the effectiveness of the socialist brainwashing techniques of the marxists that run so many of our institutions now.

I can go you one better by quoting Greg Gutfeld: "if you don't agree with me you are a racist."

[nathanbedford]

And of course the signal injustice visited upon the Irish was the fact that they were virtually defenseless, having no real representation in Parliament at that time and being governed by the Anglican ascendancy. Besides, Parliament was a corrupt body with many "rotten boroughs."

I say again, the essence was not to avoid tax altogether but to protect oneself by getting representation. The colonials knew that they were bound to be on the wrong end of the mercantile system unless they themselves could regulate it and that requires representation or autonomy.

[fabian]

Yes, of course. But they were ruled with excise and very moderate sales taxes on products. Our entire taxation system has been corrupted and taken over by leftism. It is theft at this point.

[Nebr FAL owner]

Actually direct democracy is in fact mod rule . The folks that wrote & approved the Constitution knew this .

That is why the form of govt. that this country has is a representational republic with democratic traditions NOT a true direct democracy.

Your references to dope smoking ,Chaiman Mao, & the college kids killed at Tiananmen square merely show that you don’t quite know what you are talking about.

[NFHale]

“...brother taking up arms against brother...”

Depends upon whom you consider your “brother”.

For me, it would be “Americans taking up arms against socialist parasites and communist thug wannabes.”

Not a hard choice to make, should the balloon go up.

They’re willing to kill half the country to bring on their little Utopia dream; we’d better be willing to do whatever is necessary to stifle that dream.

[af_vet_rr]

On it's current course toward fiscal/social collapse, preemption by secession might not be a bad idea and a more peaceful solution.

Any kind of secession would not be peaceful because the states are divided internally. It'd be one thing if you could find a state where 95% of the residents agree on the same thing, but you can't. Dividing up the US would only weaken us militarily and economically. We're in enough trouble with China and with problems along the Mexican border as it is.

One of the very very few issues I agree with Rick Perry on is secession - he's never believed in it and would never support it, and neither would I.

[RKBA Democrat]

“Nice handling of the stock troll question too.”

Thanks. There are a lot of tyrant lincoln apologists on this website. Probably stems from the fact that he was the first one elected on the republican ticket.

Unfortunately, the history from that time also tends to be dominated by lincoln veneration. One of the spoils of victory is that your side gets to spin the history.

[9YearLurker]

She is right.

I didn’t see what she was up to when she had her pizza with Donald, but now I do. She offered an incredible warning shot to the GOP, because if she actually teamed up with Trump they could take the party down in 2012. She’s still going for the Herculean task of shoveling out the GOP stables—while winning the presidency for them—but they are on notice.

[GregoryFul]

The Emancipation Proclamation was a taking of property without just compensation and therefore unconstitutional.

It is a disgusting, putrid and intolerable thought that people can be held as property! Luckily for us, their god given freedom vindicated by Lincoln and the multitude of warriors sacrificing their lives to defeat the evil slaveholders of the south. Property, indeed! Idiot.

[Psalm 144]

We track, sir.

[GregoryFul]

Lincoln did not start the war, and historically was not for the freeing of slaves if it meant the dissolution of the nation; it was a reluctant emaciation proclamation emitted years after the start of the war (effective 1863, and then only applied to states in rebellion, as a war measure: A hesitant, partial affirmation that all people, all people, have a right to a free existence, and that right will/shall be protected by a government of the people).

It just happened to be that the nation was finally ready to fight over the issue. The southern rabble started bloody hostilities by raising treasonous armies and finally attacking Ft. Sumter. And the traitorous leaders ordered it in order to preserve the barbaric notion that some people could own other people - completely antithetical to the founding spirit; clearly those people were not Americans. It was high time that the barbaric notion was choked out of existence, and many of the (more educated) people knew it.

Our American shame is that it took so long for a people of good conscience to permit such a disgustingly evil system to exist as long as it did.

And also a pure wonder and bloody effort, with God's help, that the people managed to fling it off.