What is with the love-affair that some paleos have with Gorbo? I can understand the "no foreign entanglement" angle, but why do they cross the line into being outright apologists for the Soviet regime?
This was once a very libertarian nation consisting of loosely federated states able to act independently in most things and collectively for things like free trade and national defence. Now we are pawns of a bloated national state.
Linclon had his view of "nation." He felt the US was ultimately stronger as a nation rather than unaffiliated states. He also had a vision of the US as a nation that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
I believe he also saw the "freedom" of the nation as something to extend to all citizens, although that was not his mandate when he was elected. The fact is he had no mandate when he was elected.
It's so popular these days for some conservatives to hammer Lncoln at every opportunity. What makes me curious about that is if these hammerers feel we will be a better country when the next great schism comes to pass as is the trend.
Finally, given Lincoln's vision of "Country," What could he have done differently and still bring it about. He had a Congress that seemed quite pleased to be able to blame Lincoln for all the evils in the world yet was likley collectively relieved that anyone about was willing to make some decisions about issues at all.
He had a nation, not a loggerheads, but rather, quite literally, at each others throats.
I have always thought, not that he was a conservative, but that it took a fantastic amount of character to pull it off at all. Lincoln was in a truly winless situation, yet he knew that some men must do more than just talk. I find Lincoln as good as any President and better than most.
Today's Republicans are Reagan's Conservative Republicans, NOT Lincoln's Radical Republicans.
That is what the Confederates rejected when they chose to break away from the United States.
They had no good reason for doing so (as the colonies did and stated so in the preamble of the Declaration), but simply did not like the results of the election.
They did not like the fact that slavery was going to be limited.
So, not liking the results of the constitutional election, they decided to leave the Union.
No different in kind then what the Democrates are doing in Texas.
Lincoln was next to Washington, our greatest President.
The socialist agenda that has arisen is not from the loss of the 'right' to secession since that right has never been lost.
The right to secede is simply the right to revolt which is the final appeal when all other appeals have failed.
The South was not being oppressed in any manner, thus had no 'right' to just leave the Union and then on top of that fire on U.S. troops!
The greatest oppression was going on in the South with slavery and it was that oppression that the South wanted to expand.
The politics of division doesn't sell.
State & local governments are independant under our constitutional principles, not sovereign. They are bound to honor our individual rights, and to check & balance excessive federal powers. They have failed.
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.
Very true... Just as it is true that our central federal government is honor bound to to check & balance excessive state/local powers. They have failed.
I believe he actually believed the Union came before the Constitution, which supports the actions to usurp it.
Did Gorbachev fail as a statesman because he negotiated a peaceful dissolution of the U.S.S.R.?
I suspect historians of a closeted enthusiasm for teleology, which in turn is just an upscale version of the kind of agonist-worship cultivated and celebrated in the World Wrestling Federation. Cesare Borgia would have been accounted a greater leader by Machiavelli if he had killed everyone in Italy, rather than allow himself to be overreached by his enemies.
Therefore the definition of a "great leader", as acclaimed by historians, tends to gravitate toward winners, rather than toward good men, principled men, or even great men.
This is not true.
The --People-- have maintained the Union. It belongs to them, not the states. The big four court cases-- Cohens, McCullough, Martin and Chisholm from early in the nation's life make this plain. In all of those cases, the nature of the government is emphasized:
"Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform. Every State Constitution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a state to govern themeselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is likewise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner.
By this great compact however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national Government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc."
--Chief Justice John Jay, Chisholm v. Georgia 1793
"In the case now to be determined, the defendant, a sovereign state, denies the obligation of a law enacted by the legislature of the Union...In discussing this question, the counsel for the state of Maryland deemed it of some importance, in the construction of the Constitution, to consider that instrument as not emanating from the people, but as the act of sovereign and independent states. It would be difficult to maintain this position....
--John Marshall, majority opinon McCullough v. Maryland 1819
"That the United States form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation, has not yet been denied. In war, we are one people. In making peace, we are one people. In all commercial regulations, we are one and the same people. In many other respects, the American people are one; and the government which is alone capable of controlling and managing their interests in all these respects, is the government of the Union. It is their government and in that character, they have no other. America has chosen to be, in many respects, and in many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes, her government is complete; to all these objects it is competent. The people have declared that in the exercise of all powers given for these objects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory.
The constitution and laws of a state, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of of the United States are absolutely void. These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empiure--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."
--Chief Justice John Marshall, writing the majority opinion, Cohens v. Virginia 1821
"The constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the constitution declares, by "the people of the United States."
-Justice Story, Martin v, Hunter's Lessee, 1816
The sovereignty of the United States rests on the people, not the States.
To say anything else is Soviet style disinformation.
Walt
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.