Of course we all indulge in arguments that might not be the best. I do it as well. I certainly admit that I have reacted hastily sometimes and made mistakes, but my hope was to get beyond shallow tit for tat, at least sometimes. Scoring ephemeral points against each other or chalking up hollow, rhetorical victories doesn't advance our understanding a whit.
I began by responding to the characterization of Lincoln as a "big government thug." I thought to deal directly with what I took to be the commonest arguments against Lincoln. I maintained that Lincoln's protectionist and developmental policies can't simply be characterized as "thuggery" and aren't very "big government" by 20th century standards and were in consonance with the policies of other, earlier and highly respected political leaders.
There are other reasons why Lincoln wasn't a "big government thug." We have been arguing related questions long enough, that I presumed it to be understood that we all have arguments that, in such an informal discussion, we don't bring forward immediately. The size of government contracted after the war. Lincoln was trying to deal with a rebellion and the chaos it brought. And yes, slavery was the ultimate in thuggery and required a large governmental apparatus to maintain it. That isn't a red herring. And facing it is unavoidable in coming to a balanced assessment of the Civil War era.
You seem to associate discussion of slavery with "relativism." I have to wonder what you mean by "relativism." In truth, that discussion introduces absolute moral concerns into debate. There are of course other moral absolutes, but if slavery isn't wrong, then nothing is wrong. Taking slavery off the table creates an atmosphere of relativism. Just as wholly removing other questions of right and wrong from any historical discussion would.
You seem to be saying that including such a powerful absolute moral issue as slavery in the discussion leads to a "relativistic" acceptance of other evils. But surely the same result is produced if one makes free trade or state sovereignty or racial equality or inequality an absolute value. Perhaps we should take these off the table as well. The fact that an issue weighs heavily against one's side morally certainly doesn't mean that talking about it relativizes dicussion of the matter at hand.
Comparison of the goods and evils brought by any course of action is not relativism. It is inherent in any practical application of morality. Excluding such moral concerns because those on the other side may outweigh those on one's own is true relativism. I don't argue that opposition to slavery justifies everything, but one can't come to a fair assessment of how things stood, practically or morally, without taking slavery into account.
If you read Jaffa, rather than merely abuse him, you would understand the moral importance of the question of slavery and its expansion. While Jaffa may have his faults, he certainly does have a deeper, more comprehensive and more philosophical understanding than DiLorenzo or any other neo-confederate hack of the week. And one can't express moral fervor about tariffs and simply ignore the question of slavery or call it a "red herring."
This eternal "tit for tat," "I'm rubber you're glue" leads nowhere. I do have some respect for your intelligence, or at least cleverness. You have a very quick mind, but your general behavior isn't that of a person I want to talk to, so I will sign off this discussion.
Once again, the fealing is mutual.
You are very narowly focused on winning and losing and not on understanding history in context or understanding ideas for their own sake.
Yet again, you indicate your ability to develop comments better suited for a mirror than for FR. You truly are not one to talk on understanding ideas for their own sake, considering your recent attempt to obscure the conversation by weighing its matters through the lens of slavery.
Your frequent ad hominem attacks indicate this
Occasional acts of mockery toward the deserving and absurd has no harm to it, nor is it excessively ad hominem in nature. If I were responding to your argument by randomly calling you names, now that would constitute ad hominem. Seeing as I have not done so and seeing as my greatest "offense" against you is calling you to task on your use of a fraudulent argument tactic, I don't believe you have the grounds to complain.
as does your persistent use of the schoolyard "mirror" analogy.
I only use it when it is applicable to what you are saying, and it's certainly not my fault you say a large ammount of stuff that better describes yourself than any other person on this board. You seem to frequently engage in the art of fault projecting, as you just did above when you of all people accused me of refusing to understand ideas for their own sake. The fact that I note that you recently engaged in a lengthy attempt to deny examination of The Lincoln's economic policies for their own sake by irrationally insisting that they be judged through the lens of slavery is no fault of my own so long as it is a valid point of contention with you. I believe that it is so and have made my case why. If your only response is a blanket dismissal of my many calls against your equally many projections simply for making those calls, it becomes readily apparent that what you are offering is wholly inadequite.
Scoring ephemeral points against each other or chalking up hollow, rhetorical victories doesn't advance our understanding a whit.
Perhaps not, but absent the ability to dissect and refute an argument's merits, a similar situation emerges in which the conversation tends not to move beyond those arguments, however weak they may be.
I began by responding to the characterization of Lincoln as a "big government thug." I thought to deal directly with what I took to be the commonest arguments against Lincoln. I maintained that Lincoln's protectionist and developmental policies can't simply be characterized as "thuggery" and aren't very "big government" by 20th century standards and were in consonance with the policies of other, earlier and highly respected political leaders.
Yes. And you also maintained that they were in no way a "recipe" for big government. I disputed that assertion and made my case, to which you responded by throwing out the slavery card as your lens to judge everything else.
The size of government contracted after the war.
The decline in military need alone is often enough to do that in any war of a similar nature. I also do not think that those residing in the south at the time, who were under literal yankee occupation and virtual dictatorship, believed that government had contracted after the war.
Lincoln was trying to deal with a rebellion and the chaos it brought.
In that case, it all becomes a matter of handling. I believe that he handled it poorly and achieved a pyrrhic victory. You seem to believe otherwise.
And yes, slavery was the ultimate in thuggery and required a large governmental apparatus to maintain it. That isn't a red herring.
It is when we're discussing economic policy and you throw it out as the standard of judgment while implying that, because slavery was such a bad thing, other complaints of wrong are meaningless or to be neglected in its presence. Your comments indicate an attempt to do exactly that. Look at your post in #36. I had commented at length in response to your characterization of The Lincoln's economic policy. Your response, which I repost here, was not to address those issues of economic policy but to throw out that red herring of slavery, declare that it "dwarfs" any of those other wrongs of The Lincoln, and conclude that because of that the other issues are not relevant points of contention. From your post, which was made in response to my comments on a subject unrelated to slavery:
"What is slavery, but a way of "giving unfair advantages to a certain few at the expense of" others -- and a way a good deal more savage than any protective tariff could be. That "foot" was already in the "door," and Lincoln's generation did much to get it out. To extract the profits of uncompensated labor and to use the resources of others to protect that compelled labor source dwarfs anything the Republican party ever did."
And facing it is unavoidable in coming to a balanced assessment of the Civil War era.
Nobody ever disputed that. Again my contention is not with slavery being an issue, but with your use of it as a tool to obscure other issues in this discussion. Any reasonable reading of your statement above indicates that, rather than respond to my comments about The Lincoln's economic policies, your interests were in obscuring them by throwing out slavery as a relative measure and concluding that it outweighs and minimizes all those other things with the implication that therefore they are of little concern.
You seem to associate discussion of slavery with "relativism."
No, only your use of slavery as a tool of relative judgment to consider and dismiss other matters.
I have to wonder what you mean by "relativism."
It is not a difficult concept to understand in the use I have given it. Your argument, as is indicated in your statement that I reposted above, is to give consideration to other matters by way of their relative situation to your chosen standard lens of slavery. A proper consideration would seek to weigh other matters and ideas, as you recently put it, "for their own sake."
In truth, that discussion introduces absolute moral concerns into debate.
Not when the absolute wrongs within slavery are used as a lens to diminish, obscure, and dismiss other sins of another nature in other situations. Doing so reorients consideration of those other factors to their relative position as judged by slavery. Such a position is unsupportable.
There are of course other moral absolutes, but if slavery isn't wrong, then nothing is wrong.
Not so, though slavery itself is wrong. To suggest as you do sets up a relationship of contingency - to say "if slavery isn't wrong, then nothing is wrong" suggests that the condition of "wrongness" for all other things that are wrong is contingent upon slavery first being wrong. Aside from begging the questions of "why slavery?" and "why not murder, or rape, or drunkardly conduct, or using a cell phone in a movie theater?," your position of setting up a contingency carries the implication that "wrongness" is not inherent to the act but rather it is relative to some external force that, as you have shown by doing so, is itself arbitrarily chosen.
Things are not "wrong" because of their relationship of being weighed against something else that is the "top wrong." Other things are not wrong because slavery is wrong. They are wrong intrinsically, as is slavery. For want of avoiding further redundancy beyond this statement, I will simply note that this seems to be the point of contention between our arguments. Your system seeks to measure something else by its relative position viewed through a single arbitrarily chosen absolute. Mine seeks to measure each item through intrinsic absoluteness without the contingency upon other absolutes your standard places.
If you read Jaffa, rather than merely abuse him, you would understand the moral importance of the question of slavery and its expansion.
I've had the misfortune of reading him previously and have concluded that (1) he does not truly convey the moral importance of the slavery question and in fact heavily corrupts the importance of that question by a terribly misguided historical approach that is flawed right down to its philosophical core, and that (2) he is fully deserving of a reaction not unlike what one would give to a mohammedan fanatic propagating his false prophet's cultism directly in the face of obvious greater truths and reality itself.
While Jaffa may have his faults, he certainly does have a deeper, more comprehensive and more philosophical understanding than DiLorenzo or any other neo-confederate hack of the week.
Jaffa has his own philosophical understandings, but as I have noted, they are ones containing misguided direction and terribly flawed consequences. I also believe you underestimate the philosophical background of DiLorenzo's arguments. They too are rooted in an approach to truth and human interaction with that truth, but of a different lineage than the straussian redemptionist line pushed by the Abratollah. DiLorenzo comes out of a philosophical tradition that is prominent in conservative economic theory - man's pursuit of the self, which ultimately relates to the corrupted nature of man's existence.