The Litmus Test for American Conservatism (The paloeconservative view of Abe Lincoln.)

Abraham Lincoln is thought of by many as not only the greatest American statesman but as a great conservative. He was neither. Understanding this is a necessary condition for any genuinely American conservatism. When Lincoln took office, the American polity was regarded as a compact between sovereign states which had created a central government as their agent, hedging it in by a doctrine of enumerated powers. Since the compact between the states was voluntary, secession was considered an option by public leaders in every section of the Union during the antebellum period. Given this tradition — deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence — a great statesman in 1860 would have negotiated a settlement with the disaffected states, even if it meant the withdrawal of some from the Union. But Lincoln refused even to accept Confederate commissioners, much less negotiate with them. Most of the Union could have been kept together. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to remain in the Union even after the Confederacy was formed; they reversed themselves only when Lincoln decided on a war of coercion. A great statesman does not seduce his people into a needless war; he keeps them out of it.

When the Soviet Union dissolved by peaceful secession, it was only 70 years old — the same age as the United States when it dissolved in 1860. Did Gorbachev fail as a statesman because he negotiated a peaceful dissolution of the U.S.S.R.? Likewise, if all states west of the Mississippi were to secede tomorrow, would we praise, as a great statesman, a president who refused to negotiate and launched total war against the civilian population merely to preserve the Union? The number of Southerners who died as a result of Lincoln’s invasion was greater than the total of all Americans killed by Hitler and Tojo. By the end of the war, nearly one half of the white male population of military age was either dead or mutilated. No country in World War II suffered casualties of that magnitude.

Not only would Lincoln not receive Confederate commissioners, he refused, for three crucial months, to call Congress. Alone, he illegally raised money, illegally raised troops, and started the war. To crush Northern opposition, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of the war and rounded up some 20,000 political prisoners. (Mussolini arrested some 12,000 but convicted only 1,624.) When the chief justice of the Supreme Court declared the suspension blatantly unconstitutional and ordered the prisoners released, Lincoln ordered his arrest. This American Caesar shut down over 300 newspapers, arrested editors, and smashed presses. He broke up state legislatures; arrested Democratic candidates who urged an armistice; and used the military to elect Republicans (including himself, in 1864, by a margin of around 38,000 popular votes). He illegally created a “state” in West Virginia and imported a large army of foreign mercenaries. B.H. Liddell Hart traces the origin of modern total war to Lincoln’s decision to direct war against the civilian population. Sherman acknowledged that, by the rules of war taught at West Point, he was guilty of war crimes punishable by death. But who was to enforce those rules?

These actions are justified by nationalist historians as the energetic and extraordinary efforts of a great helmsman rising to the painful duty of preserving an indivisible Union. But Lincoln had inherited no such Union from the Framers. Rather, like Bismarck, he created one with a policy of blood and iron. What we call the “Civil War” was in fact America’s French Revolution, and Lincoln was the first Jacobin president. He claimed legitimacy for his actions with a “conservative” rhetoric, rooted in an historically false theory of the Constitution which held that the states had never been sovereign. The Union created the states, he said, not the states the Union. In time, this corrupt and corrupting doctrine would suck nearly every reserved power of the states into the central government. Lincoln seared into the American mind an ideological style of politics which, through a sort of alchemy, transmuted a federative “union” of states into a French revolutionary “nation” launched on an unending global mission of achieving equality. Lincoln’s corrupt constitutionalism and his ideological style of politics have, over time, led to the hollowing out of traditional American society and the obscene concentration of power in the central government that the Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent.

A genuinely American conservatism, then, must adopt the project of preserving and restoring the decentralized federative polity of the Framers rooted in state and local sovereignty. The central government has no constitutional authority to do most of what it does today. The first question posed by an authentic American conservative politics is not whether a policy is good or bad, but what agency (the states or the central government — if either) has the authority to enact it. This is the principle of subsidiarity: that as much as possible should be done by the smallest political unit.

The Democratic and Republican parties are Lincolnian parties. Neither honestly questions the limits of federal authority to do this or that. In 1861, the central government broke free from what Jefferson called “the chains of the Constitution,” and we have, consequently, inherited a fractured historical memory. There are now two Americanisms: pre-Lincolnian and post-Lincolnian. The latter is Jacobinism by other means. Only the former can lay claim to being the primordial American conservatism.

David W. Livingston is a professor of philosophy at Emory University and the author of Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium (University of Chicago Press).

Then when questions come down to "outsourcing", the Libertarian answer is "STFU, Learn to Be competititve."

"Screw you, I want to buy things at rock bottom prices", and the only way that this can be done is by getting these products from anyone other than an American.

Sort of a gross generalization, no? There are many products that are best purchased from Americans. St Croix (fishing) Rods comes to mind. Foreign-built rods are cheaper, but of lesser quality. Certainly in this case, and American has stepped in to fill a void and been successful.

When Libertarians return back to Earth and recognize that as long as massive taxes and onerous regulation stay in place, the US worker will never be competitive. If you believe that taxes and regulation need to be removed FIRST, then say so,

Of course they believe that, but who's responsibility is it to lobby for removal of those regulations? It's certainly not in my best interest to expend capital (money, time, energy) removing a regulation that does me little or no good - remember, I can buy from a foreign competitor who is already free of such.

I guess it'd be interesting to see where you'd end up taking your argument to its conclusion, but from its start it looks like you're saying that Americans are too lazy to create opportunity for themselves. I'd have to disagree and there are sufficient counterexamples to disprove it.

He obeyed the law. Lincoln didn't.

Your opinion only. The Supreme Court never gainsaid what President Lincoln did. And they are the only body with any standing to do so.

But consider:

“We begin our analysis with the use of martial law in contested territory, whether in the border states or the South. Such use of martial law was not unprecedented. During the American revolution, the Continental Congress reacted to threatened British attacks in Pennslvania and Delaware by authorizing a form of martial law: “[W]hereas, principles of policy and self-preservation require all persons who may be reasonably suspected of aiding or abetting the cause ofthe enemy may be presvented from pursuing measures injurious t the public weal,” Congres authorized state governors to arrest and confine disloyal residents.

Similarly, General Jackson imposed martial law in New Orleans when the city was threatened by the British during the war of 1812. He took martial law to extraordinary lengths, expelling the French consul (though France was a friendly power), aresting the author of a letter to the editor for repeating rumors that peace had arrived (wgich turned out to be true), and ultimaltely arresting a federal judge and district attorney for interferring wth these actions.

In a third pre-civil war instance of martial law, the issue ultimately reached the Supreme Court. In Luther v. Borden, the Supreme Court resoundingly upheld the use of martial law, in an opinion by none other than Chief Justice Taney. The case involved a dispute over the legitamacy of the state government in Rhode Island, a dispute that had been resolved in favor of the existing government. In putting down an effort to displace the government by a rival group, the governor had declared martial law. “[U]nquestionably,” Taney pronounced, “a State may use its military power to put down an armed insurrection, too strong to be controlled by the civil authority.” The power to do so “is essential to the existence of every government, essential to the preservation of order and free institutions, and is necessary to the State of this Union as to any other government.” “This “[I] the government of Rhode Island deemed the armed opposition so formidable, and so ramified throughout the State, as to require the use of military force and the declaration of martial law, we see no ground upon which this court cn question its authority.” The case involved “a state of war, and the established government rights and useages of war to maintain itself, and to overcome nlawful opposition.” Hence, the military could arrest suspected supporters of the insurrection and could break into houses where such individuals might be hidden, all without a warrant. Without power to do this, martial law and the military array of the government would be mere parade, and rather encourage attack rather than repel it.”

...Luther was later strongly resaffirmed in Justice Holmes’s opinion in Moyer v. Peabody. In response to a violent miner’s strike, the gvernor had declared the affectted county to be in a state of insurrection and called out the national guard. He arrested the union’s president and held him for several months without trial. Justice Holmes saw no constitutional difficulty. “Of course,” holmes said, the “plaintiff’s position is that he had been deprived of his liberty withut due process of law.” But due process depends on the circumstances. Under federal law, the governor was authorized to call out the national guard in response to invasion or insurection.”That means that he shall make the ordinary use of the soldiers to that end; that he may kill persons who resist, and, of course, that he may use the milder measure of seizing the bodies of those whome he considers to stand in the way of restoring peace.”

“In any event, if prior congresssional authorization was needed, it probably did exist. In the special secession called by Lincoln, Congress ratified all of his orders relating to the miltia or armed forces. Since Lincoln’s suspension directive took the form of an authorization to General Scott, this may well have ratified at least past suspension in cases like Merryman. But, even before the special secession, Lincoln had already probably had whatever congressional authorization he needed, at least for the initial emergency suspension in Merryman.

This source of authority was the militia act. This theory was adopted in Ex parte Field, where the federal circuit held that the statutes empowering Lincoln to call out the militia also implicitly authorized him to declare martial law and hence to suspend habeas."

--"Lincoln's Constitution" by Daniel Farber

Your opinion really doesn't matter.

Walt

He obeyed the law. Lincoln didn't.

A second take on your comment.

Consider what President Lincoln said in his first inaugural:

"I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case, upon the parties to a suit; as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government."

During the era of the Civil War, the generally accepted idea what that each branch of the government interpreted the Constitution itself. Decisions of the Supreme Court were binding only on the parties before the court. The issue of whether the president may suspend the Writ never came before the Supreme Court.

You may not like it, but that is the way it worked.

Walt

When Lincoln took office, the American polity was regarded as a compact between sovereign states which had created a central government as their agent, hedging it in by a doctrine of enumerated powers. Since the compact between the states was voluntary, secession was considered an option by public leaders in every section of the Union during the antebellum period.

Total BS. During the nullification crisis, the Calhoon faction in South Carolina stood alone. A Southern President, Andy Jackson, promised to lead the Army into the state and hang the ringleaders if they did not back down. Jackson had support from opinion leaders from all sections of the country. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, sure as hell didn't think it was an option when he called unilateral secession nothing but revolution and if not done because of intolerable oppression, a violation of a "faith solemnly pledged".

The guy who wrote this bilge may be a fine philosophy professor, but he doesn’t know diddly-squat about history or the constitution.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.