SC Ping
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Posted on 04/11/2004 5:14:37 AM PDT by aomagrat
Leni
The Union did not outlaw slavery (for themselves) until Lincoln was in his grave and the 14th amendment was ratified.
The much vaunted Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the Rebel States.
Don't like it, John? Then don't go to Charleston this week.
}:-)4
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All the Virginia Founders -- Jefferson, Washington, Lee -- were slaveholders. Tens of thousands of slaveholders supported the Patriot cause.
Contrary to Jaffa's mystic, metaphysical reading of the Declaration's equality clause, the Founders did not undertake the War of Independence with the aim of establishing universal social, economic or political equality. They wished only to free themselves and their states from British rule -- a very limited aim.
Jaffa pretends that self-government is incompatible with slavery. But both the Greeks (democracy) and Romans (republican) were slave-owning societies. And the American colonies had exercised local self-government for more than a century before the War of Independence, even while slavery flourished.
Jaffa, like others of his ilk, focus all their attention on a couple of dozen words in Jefferson's preamble, utterly ignoring the enumeration of specific grievances -- especially the indictments of the British for fostering servile insurrection and inciting the "Indian savages" -- which rather contradict the notion that the signers of the Declaration meant to usher in the universal brotherhood of man.
It seems to me that anti-Confederate conservatives like yourself (and Dr. Jaffa) are doing one of two things:
1. Intellectualizing a deeply held prejudice against the South; or
2. Seeking an historical pedigree for a "conservative" ideology that can embrace the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and '60s.
This second (and more likely) supposition points to a dividing line in the history of American conservatism. National Review, including Bill Buckley, opposed the civil rights movement from its inception; Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What neo-cons are engaged in, metaphorically speaking, is an effort to draft Martin Luther King Jr. as a "conservative" icon. This is neither accurate nor fair, either to MLK or to conservatism.
It is worth noting that many Confederate leaders, among them Robert E. Lee, welcomed the abolition of slavery as a blessing. In the same way, many Southern conservatives welcomed the abolition of Jim Crow. But just as Lee never repudiated his stand for Southern independence, Southern conservatives feel no need to repudiate George Wallace ... or Jeff Davis.
Principle ought to count for something, and if the principles of conservatism include limited federal government and opposition to radical egalitarianism, then both Lee and Wallace ought to be counted as partisans of the conservative cause. Otherwise, one is required to construct some sort of "conservative" pedigree for Wendell Phillips and Stokely Carmichael.
My belief is that it is easier to admit the inconvenient fact than to attempt, dishonestly, to square the circle. Conservatives have, in the past, given their support to causes which are today viewed as immoral or unjust. So be it. But let us not pervert the meaning of conservatism in a public-relations campaign to convince liberals that conservatism and liberalism are the same thing.
When I do get to visit the museum it will surprise me no end if I don't find blacks among the tour guides, curators or managers. What will not surprise me will be finding they treat their subject with respect and reverence (and matter of fact) that such events are due.
I will suspect they are descendents of ex slaves, freemen or freedmen that fought for the Confederacy.
People that can't look at that watershed in American history without denigrating the Confederacy (Let's see: South = Slavery = Evil) have never earned any rights to anything important in this world. They aren't smart enough to learn anything by experience. Some people put on a resume that they have 10 years of experience. What they really have is the same year only 10 times over.
The Confederacy produced some people as honorable as any that ever lived in the United States. The last crew of the Hunley should be marked as among them. For the life of me, I can't imagine volunteering for such a mission especially knowing the fate of previous crews on that very same boat.
I was born and raised in Minnesota.
I'm sure Heinz could provide the funds and Jessie Jackson has a kid somewhere who'd make a fine curator.
Do you not see the danger of Lincoln's claim? Where does this "constant labor" end? Drivers licenses for illegal immigrants? Gay marriage? The right of the "homeless" to trespass on private property? Where is there any inequality that cannot be attacked using this Lincolnian construction?
This Lincoln quote could be cited just as favorably by the ACLU or the National Lawyers Guild.
You've read Jaffa; you ought to read his nemesis, M.E. Bradford, who tried to expose the danger of the "teleocratic" conception of the Founding -- the idea (shared by Lincoln, Jaffa and, apparently, yourself) that the Founders, rather than seeking to establish a stable legal and political order (a "nomocratic" order, Bradford calls it), were setting afoot a chimerical quest for perfect equality.
One is faced with a stark choice: Bradford's "nomocratic" order, with a definite legal order within which the citizen may make his choices, certain that the same order will persist in the future, so that he or his descendants are not harmed by some unanticipated political intervention; or the Lincoln/Jaffa "teleocratic" order, where the sudden passions of the electorate (or the whims of "enlightened" jurists) constantly threaten to wreak havoc on the social order and its "little platoons."
The Lawrence v. Texas decision is one which suits Jaffa and Lincoln's idea of a continual pursuit of equality. Bradford would say not merely that Lawrence was wrongly decided, but rather that the Court never had any business hearing the case, since the Founders clearly never intended the federal government (in any of its three branches) to have the power to nullify such state laws as concerned only the ordinary police powers.
The constitutional crisis now upon us cannot be laid at the feet of a Confederate view of the Constitution, sir. You Yankees, however, have much to answer for.
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