Posted on 09/06/2003 9:14:08 AM PDT by quidnunc
Abraham Lincoln is thought of by many as not only the greatest American statesman but as a great conservative. He was neither. Understanding this is a necessary condition for any genuinely American conservatism. When Lincoln took office, the American polity was regarded as a compact between sovereign states which had created a central government as their agent, hedging it in by a doctrine of enumerated powers. Since the compact between the states was voluntary, secession was considered an option by public leaders in every section of the Union during the antebellum period. Given this tradition — deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence — a great statesman in 1860 would have negotiated a settlement with the disaffected states, even if it meant the withdrawal of some from the Union. But Lincoln refused even to accept Confederate commissioners, much less negotiate with them. Most of the Union could have been kept together. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to remain in the Union even after the Confederacy was formed; they reversed themselves only when Lincoln decided on a war of coercion. A great statesman does not seduce his people into a needless war; he keeps them out of it.
When the Soviet Union dissolved by peaceful secession, it was only 70 years old — the same age as the United States when it dissolved in 1860. Did Gorbachev fail as a statesman because he negotiated a peaceful dissolution of the U.S.S.R.? Likewise, if all states west of the Mississippi were to secede tomorrow, would we praise, as a great statesman, a president who refused to negotiate and launched total war against the civilian population merely to preserve the Union? The number of Southerners who died as a result of Lincoln’s invasion was greater than the total of all Americans killed by Hitler and Tojo. By the end of the war, nearly one half of the white male population of military age was either dead or mutilated. No country in World War II suffered casualties of that magnitude.
Not only would Lincoln not receive Confederate commissioners, he refused, for three crucial months, to call Congress. Alone, he illegally raised money, illegally raised troops, and started the war. To crush Northern opposition, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of the war and rounded up some 20,000 political prisoners. (Mussolini arrested some 12,000 but convicted only 1,624.) When the chief justice of the Supreme Court declared the suspension blatantly unconstitutional and ordered the prisoners released, Lincoln ordered his arrest. This American Caesar shut down over 300 newspapers, arrested editors, and smashed presses. He broke up state legislatures; arrested Democratic candidates who urged an armistice; and used the military to elect Republicans (including himself, in 1864, by a margin of around 38,000 popular votes). He illegally created a “state” in West Virginia and imported a large army of foreign mercenaries. B.H. Liddell Hart traces the origin of modern total war to Lincoln’s decision to direct war against the civilian population. Sherman acknowledged that, by the rules of war taught at West Point, he was guilty of war crimes punishable by death. But who was to enforce those rules?
These actions are justified by nationalist historians as the energetic and extraordinary efforts of a great helmsman rising to the painful duty of preserving an indivisible Union. But Lincoln had inherited no such Union from the Framers. Rather, like Bismarck, he created one with a policy of blood and iron. What we call the “Civil War” was in fact America’s French Revolution, and Lincoln was the first Jacobin president. He claimed legitimacy for his actions with a “conservative” rhetoric, rooted in an historically false theory of the Constitution which held that the states had never been sovereign. The Union created the states, he said, not the states the Union. In time, this corrupt and corrupting doctrine would suck nearly every reserved power of the states into the central government. Lincoln seared into the American mind an ideological style of politics which, through a sort of alchemy, transmuted a federative “union” of states into a French revolutionary “nation” launched on an unending global mission of achieving equality. Lincoln’s corrupt constitutionalism and his ideological style of politics have, over time, led to the hollowing out of traditional American society and the obscene concentration of power in the central government that the Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent.
A genuinely American conservatism, then, must adopt the project of preserving and restoring the decentralized federative polity of the Framers rooted in state and local sovereignty. The central government has no constitutional authority to do most of what it does today. The first question posed by an authentic American conservative politics is not whether a policy is good or bad, but what agency (the states or the central government — if either) has the authority to enact it. This is the principle of subsidiarity: that as much as possible should be done by the smallest political unit.
The Democratic and Republican parties are Lincolnian parties. Neither honestly questions the limits of federal authority to do this or that. In 1861, the central government broke free from what Jefferson called “the chains of the Constitution,” and we have, consequently, inherited a fractured historical memory. There are now two Americanisms: pre-Lincolnian and post-Lincolnian. The latter is Jacobinism by other means. Only the former can lay claim to being the primordial American conservatism.
David W. Livingston is a professor of philosophy at Emory University and the author of Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium (University of Chicago Press).
[non-seq] Try Jefferson Davis or Robert Lee.
I did not know Davis and Lee were Freepers. I suppose Lincoln, et al, are on DU.
"People often ask, why make such a fuss about a few niggers?"
- Abraham Lincoln CW 3:495
He said he did not want "the Territories transformed into asylums for slavery and niggers."
- Abraham Lincoln CW 3:487
I don't know. What do you think?
| 495 |[Non-Seq] And Foner and McPherson are Marxist on your say-so? Anyone who doesn't swallow the sothron position hook, line, and sinker has to be a Marxist? Well, that certainly clears that up.
McPherson the Socialist
Well, they aren't. But neither is Lincoln. You claim nobody was supporting slavery and then toss in a couple of Lincoln quotes. Given that it's only fair to point out that both Davis and Lee were supporters of slavery.
Beats me. You're the one first claiming McPherson was a Marxist and then claiming he was a socialist.
Tariffs played no sifnificant part in the coming of the war.
"What, then, is necessary to be done? The Northern States must strike from their statute books their personal liberty bills, and fulfill their consitutional obligations in regard to fugitive slaves and fugitives from justice. If our slaves escape into non-slaveholding states, they must be delivered up; if abandoned, depraved, and desperately wicked men come into slave States to excite insurrections, or to commit other crimes against our laws, and escape into free States, they must be given up for trial and punishment, when lawfully demanded by the constituted authorities of those States whose laws have been violated.
Second --- We must have proper and effective guarantees for the protection of slavery in the district of Columbia. We can never consent to the abolition of slavery in the district, until Maryland shall emancipate her slaves; and not then, unless it shall be demanded by the citizens of the district.
Third --- Our equality in the States and Territories must be fully recognized, and our rights of person and property adequately protected and accured. We must have guarantees that slavery shall not be interdicted in any Territory now belonging to, or which hereafter may be acquired by, the general government; either by the Congress of the United States or by the Territorial Legislature: that we shall be permitted to pass through the free States and Territories without molestation, and if a slave shall be abducted, that the State in which he or she shall be lost, shall pay the full value of such slave to the owner.
Fourth --- Like guarantees must be given, that the transmission of slaves between the slaveholding States, either by land or water, shall not be interfered with.
Fifth --- The passage and enforcement of rigid laws for the punishment of such persons in the free States as shall organize, or aid and abet in organizing, either by the contribution of money, arms, munitions of war, or in any other mode whatsoever, companies of men, with a view to assail the slaveholding States, and to excite slaves to insurrection.
Sixth --- That the general government shall be deprived of the power of appointing to local offices in the slaveholding States, persons who are hostile to their institutions, or inimical to their rights -- the object being to prevent the appointing power from using patronage to sow the seeds of strife and disunion between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding classes in the Southern States.
These guarantees can be given without prejudice to the honor or rights, and without a sacrifice of the interest, of either of the non-slaveholding states. We ask nothing, therefore, which is not clearly right and necessary for our protection: And surely, when so much is at stake, it will be freely, cheerfully and promptly assented to. It is the interest of the North and South to preserve the Government from destruction, and they should omit the use of no proper or honorable means to avert so great a calamity. The public safety and welfare demand instant action."
--John Letcher, January, 1861 speech to Virginia Legislature
There's not a word about tariffs there.
Walt
The south controlled both the government and the Congress for decades prior to the ACW. Tariffs were exactly what they wanted them to be.
The election of Abraham Lincoln showed that they couldn't control the government to the extent they had previously, so they tried to bolt.
Walt
Not at all. They won the case in the circuit court. Tell me, walt. Would you ever appeal against your own WIN in court?
They obviously won nothing worth winning in the circuit court, as the president ignored the ruling. Getting the issue before the whole Court would have put a lot more pressure on President Lincoln. Taney didn't pursue that.
More on habeas:
"Only Congress can suspend" was and is not "obvious." The phrase is in the Constitution where Congressional obligations are laid out but it does not limit the suspension to only Congress. Read Article I, Sec. 8 with its "Congress shall" and compare with sec. 9 which does not specifically lay out who is responsible. Reverdy Johnson, a very conservative Marylander, but also an unconditional Unionist, wrote a devastating attack on Taney's Merryman decision.
At the Constitutional Convention, the original proposal for this section of the Constitution made its suspension specially a power of the legislative branch but the legislative limitation was dropped when the convention took up the matter. A good precedent for the president to assume the power.
In 1861, the primary precedent for the executive branch suspending the writ had been Gen. Jackson in New Orleans in 1814-15. With the city under threat of imminent invasion by the British, Andrew Jackson declared martial law. Martial law remained in effect after the January battle, but rumors reached the city that peace was declared. Pierre Louaillier, the leader of the Louisiana State House of Representatives, wrote and published a letter attacked Jackson. The general responded by throwing Louaillier in jail and refusing a writ issued by Dominick Hall, the United States district court judge. When Hall issued the writ, Jackson not only ignored it, but arrested Hall and sent him beyond the lines. The very next day official word reached Jackson that the war was over. The general revoked martial law, freed all the political prisoners, and allowed Hall to return.
Hall then convened his court, and fined Jackson $1,000 for contempt for his refusal to recognize the court's writ. Jackson paid the fine under protest.
Thirty years later, in February 1844, the United States Congress ordered the fine refunded with interest from the date of Jackson's payment (31 March 1815). The bill passed the House 158 to 28 and there was no division in the Senate. With fine irony, the bill was supported by Southerners, both Democrats and Whigs and by Northern Democrats and was opposed by Northern Whigs.
The supporters' view was best expressed by Cong. James Belser, a Whig from Alabama:
"The suspension of the habeas corpus, which has ever been recognized under all free governments as the bulwark of liberty, could only take place in cases of rebellion or invasion—when the public safety absolutely required it be suspended. That was the limitation; and it was important to contemplate another point, viz: that the Constitution secures to every state a republican form of government. He admitted that there were but few cases which would authorize a commander in this country to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. But there were such cases, and they were above all law; they existed antecedent to the adoption of the Constitution and the formation of the Government. He contended that the facts, as they existed in this case fully justified General Jackson; and the gentlemen might as well attempt to turn the course of the Mississippi, as to endeavor to alter the public verdict which had been rendered by seventeen states of this Union in Justification of General Jackson." The last is reference to resolutions received by Congress from 17 state legislatures requesting the refund of the fine. The 17 included all of the then admitted states which would form the Confederacy—missing only Jackson's home state, Tennessee! [Congressional Globe, 28th Cong. 1st Sess., January 8, 1844, p. 119]
The $1,000 fine was not a small matter—as a major general, Jackson's base pay in 1815 was $2400 per year."
From the ACW moderated newsgroup.
Walt
The logic behind that conclusion completely neglects Article I, which explicitly states that all powers granted within that article are to be vested in Congress. NONE of the founders saw it any other way, and quite frankly I'll take their word for it over that of some guy named Reverdy Johnson and that leftist hag Sandra Day O'Connor any day.
"The privileges and benefit of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall be enjoyed in this Government, in the most expeditious and ample manner; and shall not be suspended by the Legislature, except upon the most urgent and pressing occasions, and for a limited time not exceeding months." - Charles Pickney, announcing the proposal to limit the suspension of habeas corpus, Constitutional Convention, 1787
"The people by adopting the federal constitution, give congress general powers to institute a distinct and new judiciary, new courts, and to regulate all proceedings in them, under the eight limitations mentioned in a former letter; and the further one, that the benefits of the habeas corpus act shall be enjoyed by individuals." - Richard Henry Lee, Anti-Federalist #16, "Federal Farmer"
"In the same section it is provided, that "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion and invasion, the public safety may require it." This clause limits the power of the legislature to deprive a citizen of the right of habeas corpus, to particular cases viz. those of rebellion and invasion; the reason is plain, because in no other cases can this power be exercised for the general good." - Robert Yates, delegate to the Constitutional Convetion, Anti-Federalist #9, "Brutus"
"The safest and best restriction, therefore, arises from the nature of the cases in which Congress are authorized to exercise that power [of suspending habeas corpus] at all, namely, in those of rebellion or invasion. These are clear and certain terms, facts of public notoriety, and whenever these shall cease to exist, the suspension of the writ must necessarily cease also." - Judge Francis Dana, presenting the Constitution to the Massachusetts Ratification Convention
"In the United States, it can be suspended, only, by the authority of congress; but not whenever congress may think proper; for it cannot be suspended, unless in cases of actual rebellion, or invasion. A suspension under any other circumstances, whatever might be the pretext, would be unconstitutional, and consequently must be disregarded by those whose duty it is to grant the writ." - St. George Tucker, Commentaries, 1803
"The decision that the individual shall be imprisoned must always precede the application for a writ of habeas corpus, and this writ must always be for the purpose of revising that decision, and therefore appellate in its nature. But this point also is decided in Hamilton's case and in Burford's case. If at any time the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the legislature to say so. That question depends on political considerations, on which the legislature is to decide." - Justice John Marshall, writing for the majority in Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout, United States Supreme Court, 1807
"Those respecting the press, religion, & juries, with several others, of great value, were accordingly made; but the Habeas corpus was left to the discretion of Congress, and the amendment against the reeligibility of the President was not proposed by that body." - Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821
"The Constitution seems to have secured this benefit [habeas corpus] to the citizen by the description of the writ, and in an unqualified manner admitting its efficacy, while it declares that it shall not he suspended unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety shall require it. This writ is believed to be known only in countries governed by the common law, as it is established in England; but in that country the benefit of it may at any time be withheld by the authority of parliament, whereas we see that in this country it cannot be suspended even in cases of rebellion or invasion, unless the public safety shall require it. Of this necessity the Constitution probably intends, that the legislature of the United States shall be the judges. Charged as they are with the preservation of the United States from both those evils, and superseding the powers of the several states in the prosecution of the measures they may find it expedient to adopt, it seems not unreasonable that this control over the writ of habeas corpus, which ought only to be exercised on extraordinary occasions, should rest with them. It is at any rate certain, that congress, which has authorized the courts and judges of the United States to issue writs of habeas corpus in cases within their jurisdiction, can alone suspend their power" - William Rawle, "A View of the Constitution of the United States of America," 1826
"It would seem, as the power is given to congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion, that the right to judge, whether exigency had arisen, must exclusively belong to that body." - Justice Joseph Story, "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States," Book 3, Chapter XXXII, § 1336, 1833
"And who could hold for a moment, when the writ of habeas corpus cannot be suspended by the legislature itself, either in the general government or most of the States, without an express constitutional permission, that all other writs and laws could be suspended, and martial law substituted for them over the whole State or country, without any express constitutional license to that effect, in any emergency? Much more is this last improbable when even the mitigated measure, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, has never yet been found proper by Congress, and, it is believed, by neither of the States, since the Federal Constitution was adopted." - Justice Levi Woodbury, dissent in Luther v. Borden, United States Supreme Court, 1849
"With such provisions in the constitution, expressed in language too clear to be misunderstood by any one, I can see no ground whatever for supposing that the president, in any emergency, or in any state of things, can authorize the suspension of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, or the arrest of a citizen, except in aid of the judicial power. He certainly does not faithfully execute the laws, if he takes upon himself legislative power, by suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and the judicial power also, by arresting and imprisoning a person without due process of law." - Justice Roger B. Taney, Ex Parte Merryman, US Circuit Court of Appeals, 1861
"There has been much discussion concerning the question whether the power to suspend the "privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" is conferred by the Constitution on Congress, or on the President. The only judicial decisions which have been made upon this question have been adverse to the power of the President.Still, very able lawyers have endeavored to maintain -- perhaps to the satisfaction of others -- have maintained, that the power to deprive a particular person of the "privilege of the writ," is an executive power. For while it has been generally, and, so far as I know, universally admitted, that Congress alone can suspend a law, or render it inoperative, and consequently that Congress alone can prohibit the courts from issuing the writ, yet that the executive might, in particular cases, suspend or deny the privilege which the writ was designed to secure. I am not aware that any one has attempted to show that under this grant of power to suspend "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus," the President may annul the laws of States, create new offences unknown to the laws of the United States, erect military commissions to try and punish them, and then, by a sweeping decree, suspend the writ of habeas corpus as to all persons who shall be "arrested by any military authority." I think he would make a more bold than wise experiment on the credulity of the people, who should attempt to convince them that this power is found in the habeas corpus clause of the Constitution. No such attempt has been, and I think none such will be made. And therefore I repeat, that no other source of this power has ever been suggested save that described by the President himself, as belonging to him as commander-in-chief." - Justice Benjamin R. Curtis, "Executive Power," 1862
At the Constitutional Convention, the original proposal for this section of the Constitution made its suspension specially a power of the legislative branch but the legislative limitation was dropped when the convention took up the matter.
That is false. NO effort to drop the legislative limitation appears anywhere in the debates. The clause was simply assigned under Article I, which clearly designated the powers within it as congressional ones thereby making a second designation redundant and unnecessary.
In 1861, the primary precedent for the executive branch suspending the writ had been Gen. Jackson in New Orleans in 1814-15.
Precedent for executive suspension? I think not. Andrew Jackson was not president in 1814 nor would he be for another decade and a half.
I'm suggesting that the presense of such declarations in state constitutions certainly makes it look that way. I wonder if anyone has insight into the ratification debates on the BOR to see if the (let's just pick one:) Virginia delegation really thought that 9 of the 13 could put restrictions on what they could do at the state level?
How many state constitutions even have these rights enumerated?
Just out of curiosity, I google'd up a few. Iowa, Ohio, and Virginia all explicitly enumarate freedom of religion, assembly, speech, rights of the accused (basically fully redundant to federal BOR). Iowa is one of only 4 states that does not have a state counterpart to the 2nd, but I think that may have been more a function of the times (1857).
Yes they did.
"Sir, I have presented these views in regard to this tariff for the purpose of showing how it will operate upon the whole country; for the purpose of showing how it will operate upon the non-slaveholding States themselves. I have said nothing about my own State [Virginia] or my own section. Within the last four or five years, my State has been reviving; the tide of emigration, which was getting out to a great degree, has ceased; the statistics will show that she has been increasing in population and wealth. But pass this bill, and you send a blight over that land; the tide of emigration will commence - I fear to flow outward - once more, and we shall begin to decline and retrograde, instead of advancing, as I had fondly hoped we should do. And what I say of my own State I may justly say of the other southern States. But, sir, I do not press that view of the subject. I know that here we are too weak to resist or to defend ourselves; those who sympathize with our wrongs are too weak to help us; those who are strong enough to help us do not sympathize with our wrongs, or whatever we may suffer under it. No, sir; this bill will pass. And let it pass into the statute-book; let it pass into history, that we may know how it is that the South has been dealt with when New England and Pennsylvania held the power to deal with her interests." - Sen. Robert M. T. Hunter, February 1861
"We may bandy witticisms; we may show our adroitness in debate; but this is a question which we have to look at practically. One of two things must be done: either you must prevent imports into those States, which I do not think you can do – and I do not suppose there is a Senator on this floor who believes that, under the existing laws, the President has authority to do it – or you must call Congress together, and invest him with some authority. If you do not do that, you must establish a line of custom houses on the border. Is it not better for us to meet this question frankly on its merits? My apprehension, as I have already expressed it, is that the Administration intend, (I hope I may be deceived) as soon as they can collect the force to have a war, to begin; and then call Congress suddenly together, and say, “The honor of the country is concerned; the flag is insulted. You must come up and vote men and money.” That is, I suppose, to be its policy; not to call Congress together just now. There are two reasons, perhaps, for that. In the first place, it would be like a note of alarm down south; and, in the next place, if you call Congress together, and deliberately submit it to them whether they will go to war with the confederate States or not, I do not believe they would agree to do it. Of course, I do not know what is the temper of gentlemen on the other side; but, though they will have a large majority in the next Congress, I take it for granted from what little I have heard, that it will be difficult to get a bill through Congress for the war before the war begins; but it is a different thing after fighting begins at the forts." - Sen. Thomas L. Clingman, March 19, 1861
" They will not strike a blow, or stretch a muscle, without bounties from the government. No wonder they cry aloud for the glorious Union; they have the same reason for praising it, that craftsmen of Ephesus had for shouting, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," whom all Asia and the world worshipped. By it they got their wealth; by it they levy tribute on honest labor. It is true that this policy has been largely sustained by the South; it is true that the present tariff was sustained by an almost unanimous vote of the South; but it was a reduction - a reduction necessary from the plethora of the revenue; but the policy of the North soon made it inadequate to meet the public expenditure, by an enormous and profligate increase of the public expenditure; and at the last session of Congress they brought in and passed through the House the most atrocious tariff bill that ever was enacted, raising the present duties from twenty to two hundred and fifty per cent above the existing rates of duty. That bill now lies on the table of the Senate. It was a master stroke of abolition policy; it united cupidity to fanaticism, and thereby made a combination which has swept the country. There were thousands of protectionists in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New-York, and in New-England, who were not abolitionists. There were thousands of abolitionists who were free traders. The mongers brought them together upon a mutual surrender of their principles. The free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists. The result of this coalition was the infamous Morrill bill - the robber and the incendiary struck hands, and united in joint raid against the South." - Robert Toombs, Nov. 13, 1860
It is also a matter of fact that the founding fathers intended for it to be that way. See John Marshall's then-famous but now long forgotten ruling in Barron v. the mayor and city of Baltimore. That ruling defined how the bill of rights was applied until the civil war. It effectively stated in the clearest of terms that the national bill of rights applied only to the national government, meaning that the states were governed by their own respective bills of rights instead.
Questionable. If the BOR was done away with, our "republic" would still stand. The BOR is the foundation for our freedom, not our republic.
Why should a Californian have to move to Nevada to own an "assault weapon"? -- Makes no constitutional sense.
Because the people of CA did not include RKBA in their BOR at the state level. By living there, you grant implicit agreement with their governing documents, which have allowed them the leeway to restrict weapons.
It matters little to me which level of government takes away our RKBA's.
You and I will differ on that point. I think a more careful consideration of federal removal of the RKBA might convince you otherwise. Nobody is holding you hostage in CA, are they? My guess is that there is something about CA that is to your benefit, and the cost of moving out of state currently overrides your desire for a less restrictive RKBA. This sort of cost/benefit analysis is at the crux of every decision we make. If you don't like it, work to amend the CA constitution or move. Until then, you're just complaining because government is working as designed (and no, I don't like it any better than you).
The British tariff on Southern Cotton was 15%? Are you sure? Did the Brits tax imported cotton at all?
Here's the link for the data. It's a .pdf so I can't cut and paste, but go to the table on the last page and read the figures on what the south actually imported and how the Confederates set their tariffs. They were every bit as protectionist as the US tariffs of 1857 were.
That may well be, but it is not a governing document and does not carry the weight of law. Those who quote it as defense against anything might as well be reading from Mellville or Hemmingway.
Moreoever, the Constitution does not grant us our rights, it merely enumerates the ones we already possess by virtue of our humanity.
Agreed, if I slipped and said otherwise, my apologies (lashing own back).
The issue is very simple: you either believe that Rights are inherent and that a just government must preserve them, or that Rights are not inherent but merely "bequeathed" to us by the government.
The issue is much more complicated than you let on, otherwise we would be in a constant state of revolution against the governmnet. The notion that we cannot tolerate any infringement of our rights is a non-starter. The question, in reality, is, "How much can the government infringe our rights without consequence."
may i gently suggest that you turn off your PC, go to the library and do some origional research on the comments/opinions of those at the Constitutional Convention?
none of the state's delegates would have freely entered into a contract of union from which they could never have just as freely left.
that is fact.
jackson was, despite being a southerner, an autocrat who really believed in liberty for the elites,regardless of his public comments. he did not believe that the common individual had separate rights, apart from the whole.
in other words, he wanted more personal/government power.
free dixie,sw
As a side note, call the IRS with the above and let me know how it works out for you. Clearly I have less right to my earnings than someone who makes <$25K does. Laws are passed all the time in favor of one group at the detriment of another (affirmative action, progressive taxes, yadda yadda).
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