Video Implies Lincoln Would Have Supported Liberal Causes

CNSNEWS.com ^ | 2/04/03 | Marc Morano

[Ditto]

Why is it that idolaters always act that way when they are outed?

Outed as a 'idolater"? Call me an admirer --- I don't idolize anyone on this earth.

Now tell me why people like you and the lefties need so much to create mythical monsters and straw man villins.

Go to Did Lincoln Kill the Constitution at the Family Research Council to see just how shallow your views are and how they are virtually identical with those of the radical left.

[GOPcapitalist]

You don't quote Lincoln either.

I have many times before and you ignore every one of them, so I ask myself - why make the effort? If you want to see it, read Richard Hofstadter's chapter on The Lincoln in "The American Political Tradition." He takes up the issue of contradictory statements in detail with full sourced quotes.

[x]

I'm certainly no theologian or church historian, but I do think that a look at Calvin's Geneva, Knox's Scotland or Winthrop's Massachusetts Bay would raise serious questions about your interpretation. A look at the Prohibitionist Pary, the YMCA and the Methodists would also call the view of social uplift and reform as a unitarian development into question.

[WhiskeyPapa]

You don't quote Lincoln either.

I have many times before and you ignore every one of them, so I ask myself - why make the effort?

As usual, you are totally disingenuous.

I never post to you, or for you. It's for the lurkers that I post.

You know you can't sway them with your positions so you put up this constant barrage of BS.

Walt

[Grand Old Partisan]

Yes, but Breckinridge wanted the railroad to go from Texas to San Diego, so as to spread the planatation system to California.

[Colt .45]

And they wonder how Lincoln could've espoused a socialist belief. If any of the damnYankees cared to study the framing of the Constitution, they would find out that the Constitution was put in place to limit governmental power and give more power to the States and Individual. They would find that self-determination and Individual Liberty were paramount, and the more limited the government was, the more freedom the Individual had. But Lincoln changed all that. He was a Whig first before becoming a Republican.

To put it bluntly ... Lincoln was the anti-thesis of what the Founders believed about governments, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[Wallace T.]

Calvin's Geneva, Knox's Scotland, and Winthrop's Massachusetts Bay did not prohibit the production or consumption of alcoholic beverages. Nor did those societies attempt to legislate equality between the sexes and compel people not to eat foods deemed unhealthful. There was, however, a great emphasis on restraint and moderation, one that parallels Scripture. The Bible does not command total abstinence from alcohol; after all, why would Jesus have turned water into wine at Cana if alcohol consumption per se was a sin? The Bible regards drunkenness and gluttony as sins, not drinking a glass of wine or a eating a ribeye steak. These Calvinist societies emphasized the need for upright living and moral reform by individual Christians, a theme we can see at other places and times: the Catholic monk Savonarola in 15th Century Florence, for example.

As for Methodism, it, too, began as a reform movement within the Church of England, emphasizing moral reform and holy living. The Wesleys did not deal with civil matters, but emphasized the charity of Christians as the means of assisting the poor. The Salvation Army, an offshoot of Methodism, best illustrates the Wesleyan approach to social reform: small scale and person to person, the antithesis of the modern welfare state. That the Northern and later the United Methodists of the 20th Century became an "Amen corner" for big government is reflective of the rise of liberalism in that denomination. The "Social Gospel" preached by men such as Walter Rauschenbusch and Bromley Oxnam was merely humanistic socialism with a Christian veneer. Rauschenbusch and Oxnam were heretical in other respects, such as denying the plenary inspiration of Scripture.

There was aspects of these three Calvinist states that were undesirable: intrusion into private and family affairs by civil magistrates to ensure church attendance and punishment of those who did not hold to church doctrine. However, these intrusions were known throughout Europe, in both Catholic and Protestant states, as seen by the Inquisition in the Catholic states. The Reformers were not consistent in their application of Scripture to civil government and relied instead on medieval legal theories that did not distinguish between the proper and separate roles of church and state. The full development of the concepts of freedom of conscience and limited government occured after the 17th century wars of religion. This development was found in the writings of Calvinists (Samuel Rutherford, John Witherspoon), Anglicans (Blackstone), nominal Christians (John Locke), deists (Jefferson, Montesquieu), and Catholics (Lord Acton, Frederic Bastiat).

That being said, there was a strain of Protestant social uplift and reform that derived from the Second Great Awakening (circa 1800) and particularly the Third Great Awakening (circa 1850s). These revivals brought the Baptists into prominence as well as new groups such as the Campbellites (Churches of Christ) and the precursors of the Pentecostal movement. The theology preached by such revivialists as Dwight Moody, while orthodox in many respects, rejected the Reformation concepts of the bondage of the will and the sovereignty of God. Instead, emphasis was placed on the role of the individual will in accepting Jesus as Savior, as well as the ability of a saved person to lose his salvation through sin. Because of the emphasis on individual choice and a lack of reliance on God's sovereign grace, these Christians started looking to government as a means of preventing people from going astray.

Thus, we see the rise after 1880, particularly in the Midwest and South, of the Populist movement, of which Prohibition advocacy was an aspect. Populists favored government regulations on railroads, price supports for farmers, and a inflation of the money supply. They also favored alcohol and later drug prohibition and strict anti-pornography laws. While the Populists were, by and large, professing Christians, they rejected the reliance on God's grace and sovereignty that characterized Calvinism. This doctrinal flaw made them susceptible to the appeals of non-Christians and nominal Christians who saw in the state a means of creating a "heaven on earth."

Populism a "red zone" political movement, united with the Progressives, who were the heirs to the Unitarian based social uplift movement that began in the Northeast before the Civil War. In essence, Progressives such as Woodrow Wilson told their Populist counterparts such as William Jennings Bryan, "Sure we'll agree to Prohibition, but you must support an income tax, direct election of Senators, and a Federal Reserve System in return." This alliance, which by the era of the New Deal was joined by the rapidly rising union movement and a majority of white Catholics, was responsible for turning the Democratic Party of Jefferson and Jackson into the prime advocate of expansive Federal government power. But in this alliance, it was the humanists who were in the driver's seat, and the revivalists and later the Catholics who were along for the ride.

Historic Protestantism, whether we look at the 16th and 17th Century Reformers, or the later Pietist and Methodist movements, placed a strong emphasis on moral living and personal responsibility for oneself and for others. The primary thrust for social reform through government action derived from Unitarians and others that rejected much of both the core of Christian doctrine and the Reformation distinctives. That there were evangelical allies to the social reform movements after 1880 cannot be denied. However, they were not in charge of the overall thrust away from inedividual responsibility and toward statism. Also, these evangelicals rejected several key points of Calvinist doctrine, notably the bondage of the will and the sovereignty of God. To characterize these evangelicals as heirs of the Puritans or the Scottish Covenanters is to do violence to both history and theology.

[WhiskeyPapa]

If any of the damnYankees cared to study the framing of the Constitution, they would find out that the Constitution was put in place to limit governmental power and give more power to the States and Individual.

No, the Constitutional Convention was called because everything was going to hell in a handbasket under the Articles. The founders beleived the central government needed MORE power, not less.

James Madison wrote this letter:

To General Washington

New York, April 16th, 1787

Dear Sir,

--I have been honored with your letter of the 31 March, and find, with much pleasure, that your views of the reform which ought to be pursued by the Convention give a sanction to those I entertained. Temporizing applications will dishonor the councils which propose them, and may foment the internal malignity of the disease, at the same time that they produce an ostensible palliation of it. Radical attempts, although unsuccessful, will at least justify the authors of them.

Having been lately led to revolve the subject which is to undergo the discussion of the Convention, and formed some outlines of a new system, I take the liberty of submitting them without apology to your eye.

Conceiving that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcilable with their aggregate sovereignty, and that a consolidation of the whole into one simple republic would be as inexpedient as it is unattainable, I have sought for middle ground, which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and not exclude the local authorities wherever they can be subordinately useful.

I would propose as the groundwork, that a change be made in the principle of representation. According to the present form of the Union, in which the intervention of the States is in all great cases necessary to effectuate the measures of Congress, an equality of suffrage does not destroy the inequality of importance in the several members. No one will deny that Virginia and Massachusetts have more weight and influence, both within and without Congress, than Delaware or Rhode Island. Under a system which would operate in many essential points without the intervention of the State legislatures, the case would be materially altered. A vote in the national Councils from Delaware would then have the same effect and value as one from the largest State in the Union. I am ready to believe that such a change would not be attended with much difficulty. A majority of the States, and those of greatest influence, will regard it as favorable to them. To the northern States it will be recommended by their present populousness; to the Southern, by their expected advantage in this respect. The lesser States must in every event yield to the predominant will. But the consideration which particularly urges a change in the representation is, that it will obviate the principal objections of the larger States to the necessary concessions of power.

I would propose next, that in addition to the present federal powers, the national Government should be armed with positive and complete authority in all cases which require uniformity; such as the regulation of trade, including the right of taxing both exports and imports, the fixing the terms and forms of naturalization, &c., &c.

Over and above this positive power, a negative in all cases whatsoever on the Legislative acts of the States, as heretofore exercised by the Kingly prerogative, appears to me to be absolutely necessary, and to be the least possible encroachment on the State jurisdictions. Without this defensive power, every positive power that can be given on paper will be evaded or defeated. The States will continue to invade the National jurisdiction, to violate treaties, and the law of nations, and to harass each other with rival and spiteful measures dictated by mistaken views of interest. . . .

The national supremacy ought also to be extended, as I conceive, to the Judiciary departments. If those who are to expound and apply the laws are connected by their interests and their oaths with the particular States wholly, and not with the Union, the participation of the Union in the making of the laws may be possibly rendered unavailing. It seems at least necessary that the oaths of the Judges should include a fidelity to the general as well as local Constitution, and that an appeal should lie to some National tribunal in all cases to which foreigners or inhabitants or other States may be parties. The admiralty jurisdiction seems to fall entirely within the purview of the National Government.

The National supremacy in the Executive departments is liable to some difficulty, unless the officers administering them could be made appointable by the Supreme Government. The Militia ought certainly to be placed, in some form or other, under the authority which is entrusted with the general protection and defense.

A Government composed of such extensive powers should be well organized and balanced. The legislative department might be divided into two branches; one of them chosen every. . .years, by the people at large, or by the Legislatures; the other to consist of fewer members, to hold their places for a longer term, and to go out in such rotation as always to leave in office a large majority of old members. Perhaps the negative on the laws might be most conveniently exercised by this branch. As a further check, a Council of revision, including the great ministerial officers, might be superadded.

A National Executive must also be provided. I have scarcely ventured, as yet, to form my own opinion either of the manner in which it ought to be constituted, or of the authorities with which it ought to be clothed. An article should be inserted expressly guaranteeing the tranquility of the States against internal as well as external dangers.

In like manner the right of coercion should be expressly declared. With the resources of commerce in hand, the National administration might always find means of exerting it either by sea or land. But the difficulty and awkwardness of operating by force on the collective will of a State render it particularly desirable that the necessity of it might be precluded. Perhaps the negative on the laws might create such a mutuality of dependence between the general and particular authorities as to answer this purpose. Or, perhaps, some defined objects of taxation might be submitted, along with commerce, to the general authority.

To give a new system its proper validity and energy, a ratification must be obtained from the people, and not merely from the ordination of the Legislatures. This will be the more essential, as inroads on the existing Constitutions of the States will be unavoidable."

And this makes a lot of sense:

"The men at the convention, it is clear enough, assumed that the national government must have the power to throw down state laws that contradicted federal ones: it was obvious to them that the states could not be permitted to pass laws contravening federal ones...

It did not take long for the supremacy of the Supreme Court to become clear. Shortly after the new government was installed under the new Constitution, people realized that the final say had to be given to somebody, and the Connecticut Jurist and delegate to the Convention Oliver Ellsworth wrote the judicary act of 1789, which gave the Supreme Court the clear power of declaring state laws unconstitutional, and by implication allowing it to interpret the Constitution. The power to overturn laws passed by Congress was assumed by the Supreme Court in 1803 and became accepted practice duing the second half of the nineteenth century."

"The convention was slow to tackle the problem of an army, defense, and internal police. The Virginia Plan said nothing about a standing army, but it did say that the national government could 'call forth the force of the union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof.' The delegates had expected to discuss something like this clause, for one of the great problems had been the inability of the old Congress to enforce its laws. Surely it should be able to march troops into states when necessary to get state governments to obey.

But in the days before the convention opened Madison had been thinking it over, and he had concluded that the idea was a mistake. You might well march your troops into Georgia or Connecticut, but then what? Could you really force a legislature to disgorge money at bayonet point? 'The use of force against a state,' Madison said, as the debate started on May 31, 'would be 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.' Although he did not say so at the moment, he had another way of enforcing national law, which not only would be more effective, but also philosophically sounder. As the government was to derive its power from the people, it ought to act on the people directly. Instead of trying to punish a state, which was, after all, an abstraction, for failure to obey the law, the U.S. government could punish individuals directly. Some person -- a governor, a tax collector, a state treasurer -- would be held responsible for failure to deliver the taxes. Similarly, the national government would not punish a state government for allowing say, illegal deals with Indians over western lands, but would directly punish the people making the deals. All of this seemed eminently sensible to the convention and early in the debate on the Virginia Plan the power of the national government to 'call forth the power of the Union' was dropped. And so was the idea that the government should be able to compell the states disappeared from the convention. It is rather surprising, in view of the fact that the convention had been called mainly to curb the independence of the states, that the concept went out so easily. The explanation is, in part, that the states' righters were glad to see it go; and in part that Madison's logic was persuasive: it is hard to arrest an abstraction."

--"Decision in Philadelphia" by Collier and Collier

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

To put it bluntly ... Lincoln was the anti-thesis of what the Founders believed about governments, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There was not a nickel's worth of difference in what Washington, Madison, Jackson and Lincoln thought about Union and the Constitution.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

You mean like shipping blacks out of the continental United States because they were "inferior" (Lincoln's words) to whites?

Quote Lincoln on the idea that blacks were "inferior" to whites.

Walt

[Ditto]

To put it bluntly ... Lincoln was the anti-thesis of what the Founders believed about governments, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

To put it bluntly... you are full of crap. It was the Confederates who rejected the ideals of the founders. Little Alec Stephens summed the 40-year long journey of the Slaveocracy away from the Founding principles in his "Cornerstone speech".

The Cornerstone Speech
CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens
Savannah; Georgia, March 21, 1861

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago.

[Maelstrom]

Well, that's the first positive thing I heard from Lincoln...did he mean it for all free people or was he implying a denigration toward blacks from a Leftist point of view:

They can't make it without government, so let them root hog or die.

[x]

Thanks for the information. I have to admit that I don't know so much about church history. I agree that predestination, voluntarism and social determinism have very different consequences for policy, and that a decline in religious faith and orthodoxy was a major reason for the rise of statism in the 19th and 20th centuries. But I'm not so sure one can divide Christianity into an orthodoxy which is politically libertarian and gives the right answers and heresies which are statist and give the wrong answers, or that the statist elements in religion can be dismissed as medieval survivals. I'm also not sure that those who lived under the strict regulations of Calvinist Geneva, Scotland, or Massachusetts would necessary have appreciated the distinctions you draw between paternal rule in those days and later.

While Unitarianism may have been behind many of the more radical mid-nineteenth century reformist trends, the desire for change also made its way through other traditions, as you note, so I don't think I don't think it valid to link reform movements and Unitarianism as tightly as some do. Unitarians may have been a vanguard, but those Methodist reformers and populist evangelicals you site didn't need to take orders from them. Remove the Unitarians and the flavor of politics and intellectual life would have changed, but the actual policies might not have been so different.

To characterize these evangelicals as heirs of the Puritans or the Scottish Covenanters is to do violence to both history and theology.

That is certainly a very Calvinist insistence on clear lines and distinctions. But sometimes ancestries aren't so clear and unambiguous. Confronted with social conditions that they disapproved of Calvinists in various countries did come to adopt social and political ideas that led to statist policies. Is this heresy or an ongoing evolution sparked by the interaction of religious ideas and social conditions? Some of the reconciliations of Calvinist theology and state action were quite ingenious and sophisticated.

I would guess that where we differ is that you are looking at a clash of religious ideas, and I am looking at how interests, desires, and ideas make their way felt in religion and politics. So rather than see an ongoing battle of theologies, I see ideas and conditions affecting various religious traditions in similar directions. Seen from a strict Calvinist perspective, every step away from Calvinism probably does lead inevitably and ineluctably to our present day troubles, but that's not my perspective. American religion, like American politics has long been a kind of halfway house, but that condition hasn't been a complete loss.

[4CJ]

Now tell me again why we have a monument to a man that stood for everything the Constitution didn't?

Bump.

[Marines981]

And this rumor, as all others, are found deep within the democrats. they have goonies that carry their idealogy around you know, their own little posse.

[4CJ]

LOL! Why indeed, would they be offended?

[PJ-Comix]

Lincoln was something approaching an abolitionist...

Um....no. Lincoln only wanted to keep slavery from spreading into the new territories. He never mentioned abolishing slavery in the 1860 election.

a religious free thinker...

And that makes one a Commie? If so, then Jefferson was a Bolshevik.

Lincoln might still have been a Republican today, but he would have been a country club Republican, and probably would have accepted all sorts of PC.

Key word: "might". It's impossible to extrapolate what someone might do in the future.

[Aurelius]

"Quote Lincoln on the idea that blacks were "inferior" to whites."

This is the whole of it, and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position.

I agree with Judge Douglas, [the black man] is not my equal in many respects -- certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral and intellectual endownments; ....

[GOPcapitalist]

I never post to you, or for you. It's for the lurkers that I post.

May I ask if it is for their entertainment? Or are you simply trying to annoy them with your redundancy and ineptitude?

[Aurelius]

"As usual, you are totally disingenuous."

Congratulations, Wlat! A five syllable word in your vocabulary! And used correctly! Dishonestly of course, but how much can one expect?