Abraham Lincoln: American Dictator

[Captain X]

Already done. Now how about you show me where you answered my question instead of deflecting to Saudi Arabia, like that's got any relevance to this thread?

Simple - because they wanted to leave from what was and should have been a voluntary association. I don't have to agree with their reasons for wanting to fuck off. Hell, I'd love it if the commie parts of the country fucked off right now.

As for the rest of the shit you said:

So the solution is to regulate it and avoid setting up situations which would allow for it to be abused, like the slave states did.

You mean like Lincoln did? You mean like how Lefties have more currently?

The fact that you would say this in defense of literal slavers is fucking hilarious.

History is full of ironies.

And yet he still made efforts to slowly work toward abolition, eventually managing to live long enough to see the 13th Amendment get through Congress.

And yet that isn't why the Union started the war.

OK, sure I guess, even though the posts I'm pulling these from are on this very page. I'll even quote my rebuttals.

And after looking through all of these, you have yet to quote me where I said he arrested priests for not leading prayers for him. I'll save you some time - I never made that claim. It's almost like you're ascribing positions to me that I never took. You know, like I've been saying.

I'll take this as a concession.

Well go ahead then, quote yourself just as I did myself. Where did you say anything to the effect of 'yes, the slaves and Southern Unionists should have had a say in secession' or 'no, the slaves and Southern Unionists should not have had a say in secession'? This should be easy, as I said it was a yes or no question.

You seem to have gotten lost in your own argument. So I'll repeat myself - how exactly did putting people in jail without trail because they said something Lincoln didn't like further the Union cause? Why Lincoln is just declaring habeas corpus to be suspended on his own authority just fine?

For someone who claims to not be a Confederate sympathizer, you are striving mightily to defend their secession and to demonize any effort, large or small, to stop them.

As in literally, just the secession. This goes back to the reasons for the war, specifically from the Union side. You know, the said that claimed it wasn't about ending slavery, but about "preserving the Union." My question is, that being the case, why? I extend this rationale to other, more current issues, such as the desire of some counties to split off from the states they are in and either form new states or join other bordering states which are more in line with their values. Just as I connect the issue of an executive declaring themselves to have more power because of some crisis in order to stomp down on the civil liberties of others to more current events.

Yeah, that's about what I expected outta you at this point. Just remember, if you don't want to keep embarrassing yourself, all you've got to do is stop responding to me; I'm not holding a gun to your head, forcing you to respond every time I post something, and you can walk away from this argument at any time.

Same could be said of you. You'd at the very least save a lot of time not writing those walls of text.

You can even put me on ignore if you so wish,

Nah, I'm not the kind of person who needs to do that.

it's what I do to people who I can't stand nor do I believe I can have a reasonable debate with.

Or I guess we could keep going until I start feeling so bad for you that I stop responding myself, your call.

Up to you.

lol, I'll cop to poor wording: I meant that, while Russia never having admitted Ukraine was separate from itself would be a necessary prerequisite, having Ukraine additionally run by monsters comparable to Confederate slaveocrats could also be helpful to making the comparison really work. If Ukraine was only run by Nazis (which it's not), without the other part, that doesn't really work as a comparison.

It does in that you have one country claiming that another belongs to it. Which would be why I made the comparison to begin with. Hell, they even made it better by claiming they were actually liberating said country. I am simply applying the same standard in both examples.

Unless you want to argue that the United States used ending slavery as its justification for refusing to let the states secede.

I never thought of it that way, but after arguing with some of the disingenuous twats that I have in this thread, I see it being used that way after the fact. I used to only think Leftists did that shit, because, for example, if one were to bring up those counties in the West Coast states wanting to leave said states and form their own, the very first thing they'll do is bring up slavery and accuse you of being a Confederate sympathizer. I guess I've learned here that they aren't the only ones.

Contemporarily, by which I mean 1861, not 1865. I'll wait for that argument with bated breath.

They never claimed to be in it to end slavery. That's the point I've been getting at. You seem to keep forgetting that just because it was about slavery to the South that the same wasn't true for the North. That was added after the fact.

P.S. A reminder that "who I am to argue with Russia that Ukraine is a country" is someone with access to the historical record in which Russia agreed for decades that Ukraine was a country.

And I am someone who sympathizes with Ukraine's right to exist.

 

[Circle of Willis]

As for the rest of the shit you said:

This is an answer as to why you think the Confederacy was right in seceding, it's not an answer as to whether the slaves and Southern Unionists should have had a say in secession.

The slaves and Southern Unionists were pretty widely geographically distributed as well (unlike the case today where for example the red counties in California & Oregon are largely geographically contained to the east of these states), had by some miracle counter-secession been allowed on a county-by-county basis you'd have bordergore for the ages - just for the Unionists alone you'd need to go on a town-by-town basis in many places I'd expect, not even county-by-county. Not practical even if the Confederacy allowed it (in large part because it'd make their country unworkable Swiss cheese), which they obviously would not and did not.

You mean like Lincoln did? You mean like how Lefties have more currently?

The Founding Fathers did well enough with their initial regulations and Lincoln handled it pretty mildly all things considered (note that even in the easiest case in which to accuse him of overreach, suspending habeas corpus, he released the detained after a few months and still sought formal Congressional authorization until he received it). In regard to whatever abuse and overreach may have happened, blame rightly and ultimately still falls upon the Confederacy. Like I've been saying since the very first post I made in this thread, literally nothing Lincoln did - good and bad - would have been possible without secession and the outbreak of civil war.

History is full of ironies.

That much is certain, like libertarians falling over themselves to try to excuse slavers' secession with the intent of preserving slavery.

And yet that isn't why the Union started the war.

Yet it was what the Union had been taking steps toward even since the beginning of the war in 1861, when its 'contraband' policy already started de facto freeing slaves who got picked up by the Union Army.

And after looking through all of these, you have yet to quote me where I said he arrested priests for not leading prayers for him. I'll save you some time - I never made that claim. It's almost like you're ascribing positions to me that I never took. You know, like I've been saying.

Is this really where you must stoop, so bereft as you are of substantial arguments? Trying to find the slightest errors in my wording to score points? Okay, sure, I guess I can allow you a point here - I mixed up Razorfist's own arguments with yours in this instance. You know what you did say though, you said that Lincoln had judges arrested and that he gunned down 'protesters', and I duly offered up corrections in both regards. Indeed that is what I should have said in place of the priests dealio.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, have you got anything of substance to say in response to my rebuttals to the points you did make or not?

You seem to have gotten lost in your own argument. So I'll repeat myself - how exactly did putting people in jail without trail because they said something Lincoln didn't like further the Union cause? Why Lincoln is just declaring habeas corpus to be suspended on his own authority just fine?

The presses Lincoln suppressed did not 'say something he [Lincoln] didn't like'. He shut down the New York Journal of Commerce and the New York World in 1864 because they printed fake news - a false proclamation that he was drafting 400,000 more men - in a city where a draft proclamation had already sparked massively destructive rioting. Notably, before this point, when yet another overzealous general acting without his orders shut down the Chicago Times for repeatedly criticizing the war, Lincoln ordered that that outlet be allowed to resume publication. And for all that, two years before Lincoln shut down the NYJC and NYW, it was Copperheads - Southern simps living in the North - who destroyed a press outlet that supported Lincoln (the Dayton Journal).

This is what I mean by 'suppressing subversion in a state of civil war'. Is it not manifestly obvious as to why censoring press outlets that have gone so far beyond merely expressing sympathy for the Confederacy that they are trying to incite another race riot, in a city that just survived one a year before, with unquestionably fake news furthers the Union cause? The benefits of making a snap decision on habeas corpus when Congress was too dysfunctional to do so and Maryland, which surrounds the federal capital, was wracked with Confederate plots & riots should be equally obvious.

As in literally, just the secession. This goes back to the reasons for the war, specifically from the Union side. You know, the said that claimed it wasn't about ending slavery, but about "preserving the Union." My question is, that being the case, why? I extend this rationale to other, more current issues, such as the desire of some counties to split off from the states they are in and either form new states or join other bordering states which are more in line with their values. Just as I connect the issue of an executive declaring themselves to have more power because of some crisis in order to stomp down on the civil liberties of others to more current events.

Nothing exists in a vacuum, least of all political theories & ideas that are actually implemented IRL and consequently have massive physical consequences. It's impossible to separate secession itself from the 'why' (because nobody takes the massive step of seceding from their country just for fun, the Founding Fathers too had actual reasons for wanting independence from Britain for example) which, in the case of the Confederacy, holds an utterly odious answer.

It's as I have said before. The Confederacy helped poison the theory of secession and state's rights with its legacy, as surely as its Dixiecrat successors further did. If you are truly of a libertarian bent you should absolutely revile them for it, vastly more-so than you should detest Lincoln and the wartime Union for reacting to them.

Same could be said of you. You'd at the very least save a lot of time not writing those walls of text.

Well, I had plenty of time to kill today. Trust me, if something that's of greater importance than an Internet pissing match comes up on my end, you'll notice it from the instant drop in the frequency of my replies. In fact, to be up-front I can say that it's getting very late where I'm at, and that this will be my last post before I turn in.

Nah, I'm not the kind of person who needs to do that.

Suit yourself. I'm happy to use technology for my own benefit where it exists, and it should be clear by now that I always prioritize practicality over any sort of ideological rigidity.

Up to you.

Hell we've gone 11 pages, what's another 11 more. See you tomorrow!

 

[Yinko]

The Confederacy helped poison the theory of secession and state's rights with its legacy

I'm aware that slavery was written into the constitution of the CSA, but in good-faith let's say that broad social claims of the video that this thread revolves around are accurate. The north wanted their states to be largely monoracial and the south wanted to not be economically suppressed.

How does this poison the theory of secession? From these base principles it seems acceptable to claim that the Union poisoned the well of Confederate succession after the fact by bending the narrative. The only ways I can see to poison the well otherwise are to either say that losing is justification for irrelevance or that post-hock justifications are valid because they are written by the victor.

 

[Captain X]

This is an answer as to why you think the Confederacy was right in seceding, it's not an answer as to whether the slaves and Southern Unionists should have had a say in secession.

Because it had nothing to do with what I was asking about. I asked why the states should not have been allowed to leave because I knew full well that Lincoln and the Feds did not fight them about it over slavery. So, why exactly would you insist on forcing yourself on people that you don't like and who don't like you either?

The Founding Fathers did well enough with their initial regulations and Lincoln handled it pretty mildly all things considered (note that even in the easiest case in which to accuse him of overreach, suspending habeas corpus, he released the detained after a few months and still sought formal Congressional authorization until he received it). In regard to whatever abuse and overreach may have happened, blame rightly and ultimately still falls upon the Confederacy. Like I've been saying since the very first post I made in this thread, literally nothing Lincoln did - good and bad - would have been possible without secession and the outbreak of civil war.

Even if I take your word for it that Lincoln let his critics go a lot quicker than Congress is handling the Jan 6th "insurrectionists" case, it's still pretty intellectually weak to turn around and blame someone else for making you act like an asshole. The point is that you acted like an asshole and shouldn't have.

Yet it was what the Union had been taking steps toward even since the beginning of the war in 1861, when its 'contraband' policy already started de facto freeing slaves who got picked up by the Union Army.

And yet that isn't what's in the docs. Just as Southern apologists will insist now that the war wasn't about slavery, the docs do not bear them out, the docs show that the Union was way, way more concerned with the idea that states just shouldn't be able to decide for themselves if they can leave. You know, the whole "preserving the Union" meme. Which leads people like myself to ask them, why exactly?

Is this really where you must stoop, so bereft as you are of substantial arguments? Trying to find the slightest errors in my wording to score points?

I'm not stooping to anything - you are the one who has been ascribing arguments to me that I've never made. All I did was pick an easy example of it.

Okay, sure, I guess I can allow you a point here - I mixed up Razorfist's own arguments with yours in this instance. You know what you did say though, you said that Lincoln had judges arrested and that he gunned down 'protesters', and I duly offered up corrections in both regards. Indeed that is what I should have said in place of the priests dealio.

The judge getting arrested goes back to my high school history. I also heard about the protesters getting gunned down much earlier than Razorfist's video. If this is incorrect, well, I guess that's what I get for believing the shit I was taught. As for your corrections, I'm honestly too lazy to go look them up now that I actually have a little free time to do it. I could still argue, though, that you still seemed to be cool with it even before you came in here with those corrections. I'd like to think you actually did think that'd be pretty fucked up even if you did defend Lincoln for doing it.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, have you got anything of substance to say in response to my rebuttals to the points you did make or not?

What more is there to say beyond that I care a lot more about civil liberties than you do, and that I think it's pretty fucked up that you think it's cool for a President to do what Lincoln did. Shit, people give Trump all kinds of shit and call him a fascist and all he ever did was call different media outlets fake news and the enemy of the people, but he never shut any of them down or used any secret police to harass anyone.

Is it not manifestly obvious as to why censoring press outlets that have gone so far beyond merely expressing sympathy for the Confederacy that they are trying to incite another race riot, in a city that just survived one a year before, with unquestionably fake news furthers the Union cause? The benefits of making a snap decision on habeas corpus when Congress was too dysfunctional to do so and Maryland, which surrounds the federal capital, was wracked with Confederate plots & riots should be equally obvious.

Nope, still going to disagree on that. I am extremely anti-censorship, and I also do not believe anyone should be able to suspend habeas corpus, let alone without bothering to follow what legal framework exists to do that. That has all the makings of a tyrant, even if he did have regrets about it later.

Nothing exists in a vacuum, least of all political theories & ideas that are actually implemented IRL and consequently have massive physical consequences. It's impossible to separate secession itself from the 'why' (because nobody takes the massive step of seceding from their country just for fun, the Founding Fathers too had actual reasons for wanting independence from Britain for example) which, in the case of the Confederacy, holds an utterly odious answer.

It's only impossible for people like yourself. Honestly there isn't much difference between you and all the other people who ree and accuse people of being pro-slavery whenever the subject of a national divorce is brought up. Whereas I, knowing what I know of the Union during this time, can't help but see some parallels there between the reasons Lincoln and other Northerners used for pursuing this war and those used by the modern day Left in attacking people like us. They can't stand the idea of states breaking off an leaving them either.

Well, I had plenty of time to kill today. Trust me, if something that's of greater importance than an Internet pissing match comes up on my end, you'll notice it from the instant drop in the frequency of my replies. In fact, to be up-front I can say that it's getting very late where I'm at, and that this will be my last post before I turn in.

That's fine. I'm still going to remind you that you're cool with suspending civil liberties and that might makes right as far as you're concerned whenever you bitch about the Left doing its usual shit, though. A promise is a promise.

 

[LordsFire]

How does this poison the theory of secession?

Because they associated it with slavery.

 

[strunkenwhite]

It does in that you have one country claiming that another belongs to it. Which would be why I made the comparison to begin with. Hell, they even made it better by claiming they were actually liberating said country. I am simply applying the same standard in both examples.

The reason it doesn't work is that the Russia-Ukraine conflict doesn't feature Ukrainian traitors (to Russia) forcing loyalist Ukrainians to choose between their homes and their Union.

I never thought of it that way, but after arguing with some of the disingenuous twats that I have in this thread, I see it being used that way after the fact.

They never claimed to be in it to end slavery. That's the point I've been getting at. You seem to keep forgetting that just because it was about slavery to the South that the same wasn't true for the North. That was added after the fact.

Where was this? I thought I was just pointing out that such a position (that no one here held) was the only way to make your comparison valid.

So no, I didn't forget.

And I am someone who sympathizes with Ukraine's right to exist.

Do you also sympathize with the right to exist of the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk? If so, wouldn't you have to agree that Russia is actually justified in warring on Ukraine for warring on those poor republics that just want to secede from Ukraine?

 

[strunkenwhite]

I care a lot more about civil liberties than you do

Is it really caring more about civil liberties if you are indirectly advocating for the expansion of slavery? Which the Confederacy 100% intended to do, otherwise secession wouldn't have been more attractive than the Corwin Amendment. Conquest of non-slaving countries to impose Confederate rule and slavery upon them. If the CSA could go toe to toe with the Union, I doubt any of the Central American nations in their sights would have been able to fend them off. So either the expansion of slavery, or the Union boys come to the rescue after all (or UK/France/whoever, but I don't see how it matters exactly who is slapping them down in this hypothetical scenario).

 

[Captain X]

The reason it doesn't work is that the Russia-Ukraine conflict doesn't feature Ukrainian traitors (to Russia) forcing loyalist Ukrainians to choose between their homes and their Union.

Except it kind of does because Russians/Ukrainians who wanted to be part of Russia but not leave their home was part of the stated reason for annexing Crimea and for the actions they took more recently in trying to annex the whole country by force.

Where was this? I thought I was just pointing out that such a position (that no one here held) was the only way to make your comparison valid.

And I'm pointing out that you're actually correct on that point, even if it isn't in the way you intended to be.

So no, I didn't forget.

Apparently so since you're still ignoring what the actual motives of the North were.

Do you also sympathize with the right to exist of the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk? If so, wouldn't you have to agree that Russia is actually justified in warring on Ukraine for warring on those poor republics that just want to secede from Ukraine?

I would if I thought it was genuine and not part of an excuse to simply annex that region, or to simply invade Ukraine, which they actually ended up doing. Nice try, though.

Is it really caring more about civil liberties if you are indirectly advocating for the expansion of slavery?

And here you go being disingenuous again. The comment you are quoting was about free speech, having a right to a trial, etc. You are once again claiming I am advocating for something I never once did.

 

[LordsFire]

And here you go being disingenuous again. The comment you are quoting was about free speech, having a right to a trial, etc. You are once again claiming I am advocating for something I never once did.

No, you really have.

'Why couldn't they just let the southern states go?'

Not an exact quote of your position, but pretty clearly holds the meaning. You've made it abundantly clear you think the North should have let the South have its way, and that would have meant not just slavery remaining there, but being expanded by force out of the Confederacy.

Thus, you support slavery being allowed to remain.

 

[strunkenwhite]

Except it kind of does because Russians/Ukrainians who wanted to be part of Russia but not leave their home was part of the stated reason for annexing Crimea and for the actions they took more recently in trying to annex the whole country by force.

You're making it sound like you favor a world where anyone can secede from any larger polity at will, inevitably down to the individual level. A principle which would very quickly become absurd (unworkable) if applied to reality, as Circle of Willis has already pointed out. Although I guess that does "solve" the slavery issue, as the slaves just have to secede from their masters.

 

[Captain X]

No, you really have.

'Why couldn't they just let the southern states go?'

Not an exact quote of your position, but pretty clearly holds the meaning. You've made it abundantly clear you think the North should have let the South have its way, and that would have meant not just slavery remaining there, but being expanded by force out of the Confederacy.

Thus, you support slavery being allowed to remain.

Only through convoluted reasoning.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

If anything this thread is essentially exhibit A of: lolberts don't understand war, especially civil war.

 

[Captain X]

If anything this thread is essentially exhibit A of: lolberts don't understand war, especially civil war.

I'd say it exhibits how successful propaganda campaigns can be at sanitizing history.

 

[Megadeath]

-Snip-
Thus you are all about forcing people you don't get along with to live with you anyway, under your iron fist, apparently.
-Snip-

Or, more accurate perhaps to say that they're not cool with a group of people who don't want to be a part of the country any more fucking off (Illegaly) with a whole load of people who did live in the United States before secession and who very much did want to continue to, and weren't given any choice in the matter. The CS belief in a moral right to self determination apparently only applied to their selves as they certainly weren't okay with anyone they considered "theirs" joining the union now were they? That's the huge hypocrisy at the centre of secession; how can you claim that you have any kind of moral right to freedom of choice whilst keeping 4,000,000 slaves who can't choose so much as what they eat or when they sleep?

You have exacerbated this throughout the thread by talking about the states as if they're individuals. "The Southern states wanted this." or "The South cared more about X." and all the statements like that. "The South" is a nebulous concept, represented by an illegitimate and non representative government. That you of all people would equate any government, but especially one like the CS government with the many people with wildly different views and beliefs that they "represented" is pretty funny.

-Snip-
And yet that isn't why the Union started the war.
-Snip-

Well, that's true in the sense that the union didn't start the war. Slavery is why the CS started the war though as you've said yourself. The US fought back on it, because they didn't believe that a small group of people should be allowed to use force of arms to force acceptance of their shitty legal interpretations, shittier politics and shittiest morality on millions of people who would be effected and who disagreed with them.

Also when I read past your earlier post with the "Sherman destroyed towns. The Nazis destroyed towns too. Therefor Sherman is equivalent to nazis." hot take I couldn't help but think of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Russian's in Berlin, and a whole host of other atrocities from that war. By your childish moral equivalence, every side in WW2 was just as bad, and their was no actual moral victory in defeating Nazism. And if you're actually going to argue it would have been fine if the Nazis won than wow. You know who else was fine with the nazis winning? The Nazis!!!

 

[DarthOne]

I'd say it exhibits how successful propaganda campaigns can be at sanitizing history.

You mean like how the Lost Cause has white washed a great many Confederates, including such notables as Robert E Lee?

 

[Husky_Khan]

Also when I read past your earlier post with the "Sherman destroyed towns. The Nazis destroyed towns too. Therefor Sherman is equivalent to nazis." hot take I couldn't help but think of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Russian's in Berlin, and a whole host of other atrocities from that war. By your childish moral equivalence, every side in WW2 was just as bad, and their was no actual moral victory in defeating Nazism. And if you're actually going to argue it would have been fine if the Nazis won than wow. You know who else was fine with the nazis winning? The Nazis!!!

That is some Norm MacDonald level punchlinery.

 

[Circle of Willis]

I'm aware that slavery was written into the constitution of the CSA, but in good-faith let's say that broad social claims of the video that this thread revolves around are accurate. The north wanted their states to be largely monoracial and the south wanted to not be economically suppressed.

How does this poison the theory of secession? From these base principles it seems acceptable to claim that the Union poisoned the well of Confederate succession after the fact by bending the narrative. The only ways I can see to poison the well otherwise are to either say that losing is justification for irrelevance or that post-hock justifications are valid because they are written by the victor.

On account of your first sentence, I think your question is overall better suited to the AH subforum. Re: poisoning the well of secession, I think my old answer from however many pages ago will suffice for now.

As an aside, I actually do think Razor's argument that secession is not morally wrong in & of itself (and that it had been tried before, not over slavery, in the decades preceding the ACW) holds water. If the CSA hadn't explicitly seceded to defend slavery, as said not only in various declarations of secession but also enshrined in their constitution, I don't believe they'd have even close to the odious reputation they do now. The whole slavery business is also like 90% of what gets mentioned/taught about Lincoln abroad, so without it, he wouldn't be considered heroic not just by a lot of modern Americans but also on an international scale as well. But, it is all what it is.

Because it had nothing to do with what I was asking about. I asked why the states should not have been allowed to leave because I knew full well that Lincoln and the Feds did not fight them about it over slavery. So, why exactly would you insist on forcing yourself on people that you don't like and who don't like you either?

Of course it has something to do with what we've been arguing about for almost a dozen pages now (secession). 'States' are not people, they aren't Hetalia characters walking around IRL, they are abstract governmental entities comprised of and theoretically representing people. Therefore it's not accurate to say 'Mississippi wants to leave', it would be accurate instead to say 'the slaveowning planters of Mississippi want to leave', because craploads of people within those states clearly did not share the slavers' wishes. Setting aside the counter-seceding Southern Unionists we have been discussing, if you take into account just how the slaves themselves (the first half of my original question) might've chosen had they been given a choice in the matter at all, states like the aforementioned Mississippi and even South Carolina - the fucking 'cockpit of secession' - wouldn't have been able to secede at all because they were black majority states until the Great Depression. In short, to answer your final question up there: oh I don't know, how about you ask a slaver?

Even if I take your word for it that Lincoln let his critics go a lot quicker than Congress is handling the Jan 6th "insurrectionists" case, it's still pretty intellectually weak to turn around and blame someone else for making you act like an asshole. The point is that you acted like an asshole and shouldn't have.

I would think it obvious that the circumstances made acting like an 'asshole' unavoidable.

And yet that isn't what's in the docs. Just as Southern apologists will insist now that the war wasn't about slavery, the docs do not bear them out, the docs show that the Union was way, way more concerned with the idea that states just shouldn't be able to decide for themselves if they can leave. You know, the whole "preserving the Union" meme. Which leads people like myself to ask them, why exactly?

Unlike the provision to suspend habeas corpus in times of rebellion as supplied by the Constitution, Lincoln did not have even the slightest theoretical underpinning to unilaterally abolish slavery in the United States (which is the legal 'why' as to why the Emancipation Proclamation applied to the states in rebellion and not slave states still then in the Union, such as Missouri and Maryland). That had to be done by way of a constitutional amendment, which he did eventually push through right before his death, and unlike suspending habeas corpus he wasn't under imminent threat of capture and probable death when he went about it the slow way. It is bizarre that you're arguing on one hand that Lincoln was a tyrant, and on the other basically suggesting that he actually should've been even more of a tyrant (certainly that is how he would have been perceived by his contemporaries if he rammed abolition through in all states by executive fiat) to get shit done when he actually didn't have to be.

I'm not stooping to anything - you are the one who has been ascribing arguments to me that I've never made. All I did was pick an easy example of it.

Do you think it's illegal for me to bring in outside examples to buttress my arguments or something? FFS, at least I've stuck to mostly American examples and the few foreign ones I brought in had direct relevance to the Civil War (ex. the treatment of the Ottoman Empire after it unleashed a rape train on Bulgaria as part of a response explaining why Sherman couldn't have done the same to the South, or Poland's partition as an example of what happens when a government proves unable or unwilling to infringe on civil liberties to save the country it's governing under great duress). I'm not the one who started talking about completely irrelevant countries like Saudi Arabia and Ukraine apropos of nothing.

The judge getting arrested goes back to my high school history. I also heard about the protesters getting gunned down much earlier than Razorfist's video. If this is incorrect, well, I guess that's what I get for believing the shit I was taught. As for your corrections, I'm honestly too lazy to go look them up now that I actually have a little free time to do it. I could still argue, though, that you still seemed to be cool with it even before you came in here with those corrections. I'd like to think you actually did think that'd be pretty fucked up even if you did defend Lincoln for doing it.

What more is there to say beyond that I care a lot more about civil liberties than you do, and that I think it's pretty fucked up that you think it's cool for a President to do what Lincoln did. Shit, people give Trump all kinds of shit and call him a fascist and all he ever did was call different media outlets fake news and the enemy of the people, but he never shut any of them down or used any secret police to harass anyone.

Nope, still going to disagree on that. I am extremely anti-censorship, and I also do not believe anyone should be able to suspend habeas corpus, let alone without bothering to follow what legal framework exists to do that. That has all the makings of a tyrant, even if he did have regrets about it later.

This is completely unreasonable & unrealistic. When threats on a magnitude as severe as 'imminent city-destroying riot (again)' and 'encirclement of the capital by hostile armies' have manifested as clear and present problems, it is the duty of a government to take decisive action to quash them, else you may as well have no government at all. George Washington knew this, the Founding Fathers knew this, (hence the Constitutional Convention and the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion) even in peacetime American law makes it illegal to incite a riot and the Supreme Court has ruled that 'incitement to imminent lawless action' is not protected by the First Amendment.

It's only impossible for people like yourself. Honestly there isn't much difference between you and all the other people who ree and accuse people of being pro-slavery whenever the subject of a national divorce is brought up. Whereas I, knowing what I know of the Union during this time, can't help but see some parallels there between the reasons Lincoln and other Northerners used for pursuing this war and those used by the modern day Left in attacking people like us. They can't stand the idea of states breaking off an leaving them either.

Slavery gets brought up in the context of 'national divorce' talk because it's the direct cause of the only relevant example of secession that has been seriously attempted in US history. You like to talk a lot about precedent, well from the Confederacy we have a precedent of secession being used to try to entrench severe and institutionalized human rights abuses on a massive scale, and on the count of states' rights generally we have centuries of that term being bandied about to excuse & protect first the same abuse (slavery) and then a slightly lesser one (Jim Crow), in the first case reaching back to even before secession happened.

Literally every bad precedent you think Lincoln set, the slave states had set long before he was even elected and took to far worse & more brutal extremes than he did.

• Restricting speech. Slavers and their supporters were murdering abolitionists and destroying their presses decades before the Civil War, again Elijah Lovejoy stands as exhibit A. Alabamans drove out a bookseller from their state for daring to sell copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the writer, Harriet Beecher Stowe, had not only death threats sent to her but also a slave's ear.
• Violence against government figures who disagree with them. Years before Union generals were arresting judges like Carmichael (only to then be told to release them by Lincoln), Preston Brooks was going a lot further than trying to illegally detain guys who said things he didn't like - he beat fellow legislator Charles Sumner into a coma on the floor of the Capitol.
• 'Secret police'. There was an entire apparatus dedicated to the enforcement of slavery and keeping slaves in bondage, this is what overseers, slave-catchers, etc. were paid for. They sure as fuck didn't limit themselves to spying on the slaves and opening their mail (well, not that slaves were supposed to know how to read & write anyway), but enforced the institution of slavery with incredible violence and tenacity (you know, like chasing slaves into free states and forcing citizens in the latter to cooperate with them under the Fugitive Slave Act).

Of course people like me are inevitably going to think of the above and the million-plus death toll of the Civil War when secession comes up, just as it's become impossible to hear 'state's rights' without thinking of Bull Connor loosing dogs & fire hoses on children, or 'eugenics' without thinking of the Nazis; these are the most famous and enduring cases of what happened the last time these particular causes (the only time in the case of secession) were raised up. Are skeptics supposed to just pretend these things didn't actually happen when someone floats the term 'secession' and 'state's rights' again, like how Communists would like everyone to ignore what actually happened in past Communist revolutions & states because 'it'll be different this time'? Like I said and will repeat again, ideas & ideologies don't exist in a vacuum completely removed from reality and real consequences.

That's fine. I'm still going to remind you that you're cool with suspending civil liberties and that might makes right as far as you're concerned whenever you bitch about the Left doing its usual shit, though. A promise is a promise.

Yeah, whatever, go right ahead, I already said I don't care like two pages ago. That still hasn't changed.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

This whole thread makes me sick to my stomach at this point. I'm left with a solmn reminder and I am reminded of this story.

Spoiler: Alexander and the Pirate

Alexander the Great and the pirate
There was once a pirate who was notorious to the extreme. He used to sail here and there, plundering small boats and raiding villages along the coastline. He would torture people and then make off with their valuables. It was very difficult for people to resist him because he had all kinds of guns and knives. Everybody was afraid of him.
Nevertheless, there came a time when the people were able to trap this scoundrel and make him their prisoner. They brought him before the mighty Emperor, Alexander the Great. It was almost certain that he would be hanged for his misdeeds.

Alexander the Great said to him, “Now that we have caught you, are you not ashamed of the life you have led? You must know that you will receive a most severe punishment. Before you are condemned, I would like to give you the chance to ask for forgiveness from all those whom you have injured. I cannot restore their valuables, because you have already disposed of them. But if you beg these people to forgive you, I feel it will give them some consolation.”

The pirate said, “I do not want to be punished. I do not want to be forgiven. But there is something that I would like to say.”

“What do you want to say?” asked the Emperor.

The pirate looked directly at the Emperor and said, “If you feel that I should be ashamed of the life I have led, then I want to tell you that you should be infinitely more ashamed of what you are doing.”

No one had ever spoken to the Emperor in this manner before. He was profoundly shocked and disturbed. “Go on,” he said to the prisoner.

The pirate continued, “You and I are doing the same thing. We are leading exactly the same kind of life, only I am doing it in a very small measure. I may rob a few individuals and trading boats here and there, but you are doing it on a wide scale. How many countries you have conquered! How many lives you have needlessly destroyed! How many valuable treasures you and your soldiers have plundered! I tell you, it is you who should be ashamed, not I!”

 

[Husky_Khan]

Imagine having Generals McDowell, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Pope and Fremont as your companion Commanders.

 

[Abhorsen]

I question I have for everyone here. How can we justify Lincoln and yet condemn the WEF? they both come from the same root and use the same justification of fighting a great evil (Heck it would not surprise me if the WEF argued that socialism is a continuation of the fight against the slavery of white privilege) We want sovereignty unless someone does something we don't like and then we are justified to force them to stay. What happens if the WEF decides your sovereignty is too dangerous because you would be polluters or your sovereignty is a threat to global security?

How many of us are going to end up bowing to the globe-commie regime before it's all over?

The only justification is that slavery is an actual, observable, moral evil that existed current to the time in question. Nothing the WEF talks about is even as close as bad.

Except all the shit about Lincoln having his critics arrested and suspending habeas corpus on his own authority, and sending the army to shoot protestors is entirely true. Lincoln really was a tyrant and all the war really did was establish the powerful centralized government he wanted, and remove the option the states had always had up to that point to simply leave the union that they had voluntarily entered into.

It... also ended slavery? The reason the south fought the war? That they cited in every one of their secession documents?

Also, the idea that the war led to an increase in government control over people's lives is a little dubious. On the one hand, yes, the central government expanded. But there was also the 14th amendment, which (eventually, and long after it was designed to do so) vastly limited the ways that individual states could restrict freedom.