Posted on 04/29/2002 10:04:22 PM PDT by davidjquackenbush
I did this above.
In case you missed it, I repeat, with minor edits.
********
Returning to DiLorenzo, other remarkable errors include his snipping a quote to make Lincoln in favor of "any legislation for reclaiming of their fugitives." [pg. 13, see footnote 11] having Lincoln address Illinois Legislators, as a member in 1857, when Lincoln was not in the legislature, [pg. 18] and making the preposterous claim that "[W]hen it [the Declaration] mentions equality, it is equality of the people of the several states." [pg 86]
This vaguely put assertion either means that Jefferson boldly declared that it was self-evident that New York was equal to North Carolina, or that the people [citizens?] of all of the 13 colonies were equal, each to each, not what all sensible men take Jefferson to have meant, "ALL MEN are created equal."
...let me add one last general point bearing on this book and the whole debate over secession. DiLorenzo and many of his crowd never even consider the possibility of a distinction between the sophistry of "legal secession" and a justified revolution, with an appeal to "the laws of nature and of nature's God."
Now, even if that distinction is ill-made, which I admantly deny, it was operative the minds of Lincoln, J.Q. Adams, Madison, and many, many other American Statesmen. Failure even to notice the distinction makes DiLorenzo misrepresent these men, espcially Adams and Madison.
There, that's it for now. This was probably too long, but I've had it with the device of folks on one thread saying, OK, he made a little mistake. What about "x,y,z" which you haven't spoken to? We have spoken to these things, here, at WND, at the Declaration Foundation Forum, and elsewhere. We have proved the book is tendentious, sloppy, and essentially false.
Maybe now good people can read a scholarly but accessible book like William Miller's Lincoln's Virtues, and think about his accurate and not at all one-sided presentation of the questions Lincoln's statesmanship poses.
****
There you have some of what you ask for.
Regards,
Richard F.
I have to give a speech in Ohio on Friday, and I'll be away from my keyboard starting sometime tomorrow.
Best to all,
Richard F.
The bank recieved more than a word. Slavery was the topic, but the bank definately recieved a word. Therefore McPherson overstated in his characterization.
The person who snipped that quote is you just now. DiLorenzo quotes the segment reading "When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives"
The entirity of the sentence states "When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one." It is truncated for brevity and directness, but the quote itself is valid in DiLorenzo. Try again.
having Lincoln address Illinois Legislators, as a member in 1857, when Lincoln was not in the legislature, [pg. 18]
This appears to be nothing more than a typo, likely referring to 1837. Unless you are in the business of obsessive pettyness, this is not the damning error you make it out to be. Try again.
and making the preposterous claim that "[W]hen it [the Declaration] mentions equality, it is equality of the people of the several states." [pg 86]
As I noted previously, that is a matter of opinion that, if anything, would require DiLorenzo's clarification to discuss properly. I guess that makes three strikes. Got anything else?
I've had it with the device of folks on one thread saying, OK, he made a little mistake. What about "x,y,z" which you haven't spoken to? We have spoken to these things, here, at WND, at the Declaration Foundation Forum, and elsewhere.
Perhaps you should step back and cool down for a second before proceding. Could not the fact that obviously many people don't think you are addressing the whole thing evidence that there might be some truth to that? It is easy to think of yourself as having done so when you've participated in many heated debates. But that may not necessarily be the case.
Speaking from personal experience upon my entry into this debate, I have read what I believe to be the bulk of your articles and David Quackenbush's articles on this subject. This includes your World Net Daily articles and interview plus several posted on the declaration foundation website. Most of these have also been pasted here on FR as well. Of what I have seen, it rarely moves beyond these 4 or 5 or 6 petty little complaints beaten down to an absurdly tedious and obsessive pulp of semantic nonsense. When you do leave those passages, it is only in general terms, and then sure enough you return to those passages and continue to squeeze them for something more. The only thing remaining for you to do is convert these 5 passages into latin, flip them upside down, and look for a secret confederate code announcing to all the rebels in hiding that the time has come for the south to rise again.
I would also venture to say that beyond those 5 or so passages, you start to run dry. Your complaints with DiLorenzo become weaker and weaker. Witness the recent list you provided above as evidence. One is a complaint over what appears by all reasonable means to have been an innocent typo, perhaps even made by the publisher and not DiLorenzo himself for all we know, that ammounts to a difference of a single digit in a year's date. Another complaint is over the fact that DiLorenzo dared engage in the common and acceptable practice of truncating a quote while using it within a sentence. Your third is with a vague characterization, possibly of personal opinion, about the DoI that, IMHO, would require further clarification from DiLorenzo himself before either of us could accurately debate what he means by it and what the merits of his argument for it happen to be. In short, you're out of ammo to fire.
We have proved the book is tendentious, sloppy, and essentially false.
No, you've lodged 4 or 5 isolated complaints with the specifics of its text, many of them long since addressed and an equally many number of them ammounting to petty nonsense.
"When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives."
Note the period.
Lincoln actually said:
"When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one."
Your comment was:
"It is truncated for brevity and directness, but the quote itself is valid in DiLorenzo."
Dear capitalist,
If you can't see the difference between a promise to support any legislation, and to support legislation strongly qualifed [the standard of proof is, after all, rather high in Murder cases ...]I hardly know what will move your mind. That the details of a Fugitive Slave Law were under dispute, even among those who would pledge to support one, is all over the historical record, including Lincoln's first inaugural. Moreover, Lincoln's willingness to support a reasonable law of this kind comes from his sense of duty to uphold the Constitution, which DiLorenzo claims was non-existent.
This is most likely my last reply until late Sunday.
Happy Flag Day to you and all!
Richard F.
The bank recieved more than a word. Slavery was the topic, but the bank definately recieved a word. Therefore McPherson overstated in his characterization.
Does the word, 'evasion' mean anything to you?
And why did you not respond to the most fundamental point I made, about secession and revolution?
That is what the CSA apologists always run away from.
And for good reason.
Cheers,
Richard F.
Let me be blunt.
To use the 1839 speech of J.Q. Adams to support secession is lying at a level not seen since May of 1945.
Or, perhaps, since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Have a nice day.
I'm outta here
Actually, you are incorrect. DiLorenzo quoted that segment of Lincoln's statement within the syntax of his own sentence. As it was not a stand alone quotation, but a grammatically truncated quotation being used in DiLorenzo's own original sentence, your charge is faulty.
Lincoln actually said: "When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one."
That's nice. Did you retype that yourself or cut and paste it from the place where I had included it in my previous post?
Dear capitalist, If you can't see the difference between a promise to support any legislation, and to support legislation strongly qualifed [the standard of proof is, after all, rather high in Murder cases ...]I hardly know what will move your mind.
Dear Richard,
My mind need not be moved as the argument is not made that Lincoln's support for such legislation was unqualified, but rather that Lincoln in fact supported such legislation. I would further note that if you cannot distinguish between a properly truncated quotation included within the syntax of an original sentence and a quotation standing independent in its entirity, you have little standing from which to undertake the textual criticism of DiLorenzo that you have purported yourself to attempt.
Yes. Does it mean anything to you? I ask because, ever since it was pointed out that McPherson's explicit statement, that of not one word, was itself faulty, you have been evading the reality that he himself commits the very charge of overstatement you allege of others upon the authority of his quote.
And why did you not respond to the most fundamental point I made, about secession and revolution?
In light of its being a matter of your own assertion rather than a valid complaint of factual error against DiLorenzo as you appear to present it to be, it need not be rebutted in more than a word. That is, unless you are interested in discussing it as an issue. Are you?
I would additionally note, and validly so, that if you intend to make the issue of your charge, that of unresponsiveness beyond what rejection of your point I have given, please be informed that even the strongest of your arguments in this direction cannot even hope to approach the scale and vollume of complete unresponsiveness on your part to countless numbers of responses and arguments I have put before you. You speak of running away, yet do not bother to notice your own feet are moving you in a direction opposite from me at a pace thrice that of the fastest you allege. Curious.
James Madison to Daniel Webster
15 Mar. 1833Writings 9:604--5
I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy. Its double aspect, nevertheless, with the countenance recd from certain quarters, is giving it a popular currency here which may influence the approaching elections both for Congress & for the State Legislature. It has gained some advantage also, by mixing itself with the question whether the Constitution of the U.S. was formed by the people or by the States, now under a theoretic discussion by animated partizans.
It is fortunate when disputed theories, can be decided by undisputed facts. And here the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made by the people, but as imbodied into the several states, who were parties to it and therefore made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity. They might, by the same authority & by the same process have converted the Confederacy into a mere league or treaty; or continued it with enlarged or abridged powers; or have imbodied the people of their respective States into one people, nation or sovereignty; or as they did by a mixed form make them one people, nation, or sovereignty, for certain purposes, and not so for others.
The Constitution of the U.S. being established by a Competent authority, by that of the sovereign people of the several States who were the parties to it, it remains only to inquire what the Constitution is; and here it speaks for itself. It organizes a Government into the usual Legislative Executive & Judiciary Departments; invests it with specified powers, leaving others to the parties to the Constitution; it makes the Government like other Governments to operate directly on the people; places at its Command the needful Physical means of executing its powers; and finally proclaims its supremacy, and that of the laws made in pursuance of it, over the Constitutions & laws of the States; the powers of the Government being exercised, as in other elective & responsible Governments, under the controul of its Constituents, the people & legislatures of the States, and subject to the Revolutionary Rights of the people in extreme cases.
It might have been added, that whilst the Constitution, therefore, is admitted to be in force, its operation, in every respect must be precisely the same, whether its authority be derived from that of the people, in the one or the other of the modes, in question; the authority being equally Competent in both; and that, without an annulment of the Constitution itself its supremacy must be submitted to.
The only distinctive effect, between the two modes of forming a Constitution by the authority of the people, is that if formed by them as imbodied into separate communities, as in the case of the Constitution of the U.S. a dissolution of the Constitutional Compact would replace them in the condition of separate communities, that being the Condition in which they entered into the compact; whereas if formed by the people as one community, acting as such by a numerical majority, a dissolution of the compact would reduce them to a state of nature, as so many individual persons. But whilst the Constitutional compact remains undissolved, it must be executed according to the forms and provisions specified in the compact. It must not be forgotten, that compact, express or implied is the vital principle of free Governments as contradistinguished from Governments not free; and that a revolt against this principle leaves no choice but between anarchy and despotism.
The Founders' Constitution Volume 1, Chapter 3, Document 14 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch3s14.html The University of Chicago Press
The Writings of James Madison. Edited by Gaillard Hunt. 9 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1900--1910. See also: Federalist
This is about as rational as asserting that Jesus of Nazareth had an obsession with agricultural policy. After all, "He made it a point to discuss viniculture in nearly all of his parables!"
McPherson and I say, on the contrary, "there is not a word about agricultural policy in any of the Gospels."
And if some literalist simpleton cites the number of times wheat or grapes show up, we smile and pity the poor fool.
Have a nice day.
Richard F.
"And why did you not respond to the most fundamental point I made, about secession and revolution?"
And you replied:
In light of its being a matter of your own assertion rather than a valid complaint of factual error against DiLorenzo as you appear to present it to be, it need not be rebutted in more than a word. That is, unless you are interested in discussing it as an issue. Are you?
As time, and my good wife permit, I am very willing to discuss this.
And as my post above proves, DiLorenzo is, once more, involved in a gross factual error.
But then, who is amazed at that, except for neo-reb fanatics?
The sun rises in the East, water is wet, man was made for woman, and woman for man, pigs can't fly, and Dilorezo is an idiot, a sophist, and a liar.
Some things are so obvious that to prove them is tedious.
Cheers,
Richard F.
Your analogy is faulty. It misstates, and perhaps intentionally so, McPherson's statements. Here is the actual:
"Tariffs, banks, internal improvements, corruption, and other staples of American politics received not a word in these debates"
As I noted, that is simply false. While I will consent that DiLorenzo, particularly in the editorial's assertion, overstates the presence in the debates, it is undeniable that it was mentioned. McPherson says in the most specific of terms, "not a word," that no such thing occured. Yet it did, even if only briefly. Therefore McPherson overstated. No ammount of straw grasping or faulty analogy will get you around that simple straight forward fact, Richard.
"In virtually every one of the Lincoln Douglas debates, Lincoln made it a point to champion the nationalization of money and to demonize Jackson and the Democrats for their opposition to it."
This is false.
He may be a fool, he may be a liar, he may have personal problems ... whatever.
He does not declare, in a published book, the truth.
And this is one of dozens of such cases.
Face it.
Cheers,
Richard F.
[1:54; Madison, 31 May]
The last clause of Resolution 6. authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole agst. a delinquent State came next into consideration.
Mr. Madison, observed that the more he reflected on the use of force, the more he doubted the practicability, the justice and the efficacy of it when applied to people collectively and not individually.-, A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force agst. a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound. He hoped that such a system would be framed as might render this recourse unnecessary, and moved that the clause be postponed. This motion was agreed to nem. con.
[1:61; McHenry, 31 May]
And to call forth the force of the union against any member of the union failing to fulfil its duty under the articles thereof.
postponed.
You ask for more fundamental objections to Dr. D., besides those that show he is careless or sloppy or a fraud.
Well, I've done it, more than once.
What about the secession/revolution distinction? It's fundamental, and grossly ignored by Dr. D.
You have Madison's own words on it. Was he senile or dreaming or out to lunch ... or just having a bad day?
And how can you excuse Dr. D.'s ignoring the issue?
As to the debates, McPherson, and Dr. D., I'd love to put the question to a jury of our peers. Your side would not pass the giggle test.
Sure, go ahead and try to persuade any literate person that the debates show Lincoln, or even Douglas, pressing an economic agenda, or even just trying to revive the bank.
Then try to sell folks a bridge in New York!
I think I'm done on that issue, and ready to be serious about really disputable matters.
There is, indeed, a case for the CSA. But it is not made by Dr. D.
Cheers,
Richard F.
As I have already conceded, it is an overstatement with an element truth behind it. It is not absolutely false as you assert, but simply overstated. In that case, it is a legitimate point to address, but not with a similarly illegitimate overstatement of your own or anothers - namely the assertion that "not a word" was said about anything related to the bank issue.
He does not declare, in a published book, the truth.
A single hyperbole does not discredit an entire book, especially when the majority of the overstatement was extended in an editorial external to the book.
And this is one of dozens of such cases.
I again ask, if that is so, why then do you not produce evidence of these "dozens of cases" you speak of?
After noting that your entire argument seems to revolve around a hypertechnical and downright petty overexamination of 4-5 disputes with the book's text, I asked you this same question earlier. I asked you to provide further examples. Your first attempt at doing so revealed you were grasping at straws.
Your additional examples quickly became significantly weaker than the already questionable presentations you have given on those 4-5 complaints around which you obsess. Many of them broke out of the realm of factual disputes and into DiLorenzo's disagreements with your own editorial beliefs. So if you know of these "dozens" of factual errors, you certainly aren't conveying their specifics very well. I will again give you a chance to do so, though I do not hold my hopes up very high.
Face it.
Why should I have to face a disputed assertion that you yourself have failed to demonstrate despite multiple invitations for you to do so?
Try re-reading the first half of the Federalist, like a man, and not lke a lawyer with a guilty client.
And how about responding to my points, and not slithering away into other matters.
Cheers,
Richard F.
Ask yourself what this refers to.
Then look over the Federalist again.
Then have a nice big glass of Kentucky Bourbon, and try to love "Publius," and to reject Calhoun.
Bottoms up!
Cheers,
Richard F.
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.