Posted on 02/18/2012 11:09:23 AM PST by HMS Surprise
There is nothing more irritating to a warrior-poet than an unwillingness to debate. If speech is troubling, or blatantly false, or amateurish, then it will fall of its own weight. I dont need, and I suspect a majority of truthseekers dont want, an administrator hovering above the public forum deciding which issues are too controversial for polite company.
The Civil War has become untouchable, unless you agree with the standard arguments. 1. Lincoln was a god among men. 2. The South was evil. 3. Union is the ultimate goal of the American experiment. 4. The Federal governments design trumps the rights of the People, and the States. 5. Political bands are eternal, and must be preserved at all costs. 6. The ends justify the means.
The arguments for the necessity of the War between the States are considered unassailable, and I have noticed lately that the political-correctness has reached such a high level that even purportedly conservative blogs are beginning to remove threads that stray into pro-rebellion territory.
I understand the temptation to ignore this issue for political expediency, but the goal of individual liberty (personal freedom), as well as State sovereignty (political freedom), can never be accomplished unless we acknowledge and understand that the Civil War planted the seeds of the eventual unconstitutional federal takeover of every aspect of American life.
Some basics that are undeniable, albiet censorable, follows.
(Excerpt) Read more at teapartytribune.com ...
Anti-American? Explain please. I have been a pro-Constitution, pro-2nd Amendment, Heinlein-loving, libertarian-leaning, Ronald Reagan supporting, stand and deliver American for 30 years. This is precisely why the above article is needed. On this issue conservatives lose their mind and all semblance of rational thought is pitched into the dumpster. Klan? You sir, are a MORON.
Another bombshell that most people can’t get their heads around. If the federal government has assumed arbitrary jurisdiction over the States, and even worse the people within the States, there is no Republic left for the Constitution to defend. The Constitution is a dead letter if the feds can walk into a school and snatch a bagged lunch from a four year old to certify its contents.
Rather, the south could have allowed the new President to take office, and could have kept their representatives in the House and Senate to hinder tariff increases, or to compromise on lower tax increases. They could have continued to be an important part of the nation, and another 600,000 men would have been alive for that.
I know. That is what the southern boys did after they got their butts whipped.
And my boots are so clean now.
I would agree, that no war would have been better. I wish the southern rebels hadn’t started one. But better, once they started a war for them to lose it, and to lose it so badly that noone with any sense would start another.
Oh we have read the ratifying documents. It is key to note that the ratifying documents, none of them assert that a single state can de-ratify at pleasure. It was recognized that the union had greater power than a single state, and that the union pre-existed the constitution, and even the declaration of independence.
That the southern partisans pretend that the ratification documents justify state usurpation of rights that belong to all the states is a mark of their ignorance or their deceit, and I don’t think they are that ignorant.
Unfortunately the declaration of Independence has become a sick parody also.
The Lincoln Coven performing live....
My original response to you was because you stated the British government/Parliament was essentially trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor Americans, while refusing to tax the British themselves.
I was trying to point out that this was exactly backwards. The Brits were being very heavily taxed at the time, while it is likely the Americans were more tax-free then any people in history.
While (by contemporary standards, things have gotten much worse since) the British government of the time was corrupt, that had very little to do with the high rate of taxation. Also, the Brits did not have a great many bureaucrats at the time, as most administration was carried on thru essentially unpaid means by the local "gentry." The origin of the justice of the peace notion.
Britain had just completed the 7 Years War, basically a world war, that it had won primarily by outspending the enemy, an early example of the strategy by which America later won WWII and the Cold War. Britain could do so because its fiscal strength and its ability to mobilize this strength by taxation for national purposes was infinitely greater than that of France.
Much of this money had been spent in America and by doing so the Brits removed the only real enemy the Americans had on the continent. The Brits logically, though perhaps illegally, wanted the Americans to help pay some of the cost of the debt incurred by a war in which they had been among the primary benefeciaries.
The inability of the French government to match the British ability to tax efficiently, combined with its enormous expenditures in the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War, led to its fiscal collapse and the French Revolution. Just about everything modern American conservatives deplore in the modern world springs from the French Revolution.
So one can make a good case that the (net) good of the American Revolution was the primary direct cause of the evils against which we fight today.
It was unfinished in 1861, but by no means obsolete, as Union forces found when they failed to force their way into Charleston Harbor later in the war.
Ft. Sumter played a very effective role in this defense of the harbor.
I agree the ideals of the Constitution and Declaration have been perverted.
Yet I revere them and want them restored.
I don’t “hate” them, as the author of the sentiments you chose as your tagline did.
You will NEVER convince the Free Republic Lincoln Coven that we live in a failed republic and their hero God Abe aka The Illinois Butcher, is the one that go the destruction ball rolling.
For an alternative scholarly discussion of whether Lincoln was the true father of Big Government, I recommend this article.
To a considerable extent, your argument consists of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Lincoln’s defense of the Union preceded our present descent into government over-reach, therefore it caused that overreach, which would not have happened had Lincoln not fought back against secession.
BTW, I agree we are heading in the direction of a failed republic, although I don’t believe we’ve reached the destination just yet.
That would be because either plain stupidity or denial prevents you from arriving at reality-ville. The republic of 1787 is dead. Get it? It died in April 1865, you may disagree on the date but it is dead, dead, dead.
If you truly loved your country and the republic you would drop the pretense. Everyone thinks about the Bill of Rights when thinking about the USC. Well they(BOR) were an after thought.
The US Constitution primary goal was to establish a republic, with a limited central government. The Federal was to have a limited role and letting the states do everything else. The BOR's was/is secondary to that primary function....
I believe this is what my forefathers in grey were fighting for, none owned slaves, most were very poor. But they believed in the republic.
“Here’s the thing: we’ve been arguing about this stuff for years. All the arguments have been tossed around for a long time and we know what they are, so we use shorthand. “
Your side has lost all of the arguments, yet you keep arguing for the totalitarian side. Just how conservative are you?
school lunches is not comparable to states defending slavery under the guise of states rights
Lincoln was pro-slavery, and actually said that he would prefer that slavery continued if the North and South would reunite and avoid war. Lincoln made it about slavery to win, an ignominious act in my estimation. The War was about sovereignty, and the South had the strange notion based on facts, that the Union was not a in and of itself a slavery institution. All contracts are voluntary my friend, even big ones with fancy words and calligraphic penmanship. If they are not, they produce tyranny and enslave. I am a supporter of our contract, but it is beyond school lunches, and you know it, but you would rather make a debate points than face the truth. So be it.
I held off on Funky Winkerbean to see if he was merely misguided or completely delusional. Delusional it would seem. So the “funkhouser” affect is so deemed.
“All contracts are voluntary my friend, even big ones with fancy words and calligraphic penmanship.”
They are voluntarily entered into. That doesn’t make it excusable to voluntarily break them. If you breach a contract, break an agreement, go back on your word, you should expect those affected to extract a penalty from you if they can.
So, to prove your point you would demand war, death, destruction, disease, etc.. And at the end you would say, “You promised!” There are two types of law, contract and criminal. Criminal acts require action up to and including war. Contract violations require negotiation, penalties, and perhaps violence, but if you say it was necessary in all cases involving issues of political maps you are the epitomy of a warmonger. Self-determination is not scary unless your only goal is to maintain power.
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