Circle of Willis
Well-known member
This would seem to be the root of the problem Razor and others of a libertarian bent have with Lincoln. Wars are an inherently cruel and dirty affair, but none more-so than civil wars; yet Lincoln seems to have been singled out for being held to a standard that people like Washington aren't, and frankly wouldn't be able to meet if they were held to the same. Again, we need only look at what happened with Poland's liberum veto and the unwillingness of even legitimately elected authorities to curtail it in the face of obvious destabilization & foreign plotting to see what the maximally, dogmatically libertarian position leads to.Geez … I’ve heard it said many times before, but now I can’t help but think that Lincoln probably was the most conciliatory and magnanimous president anyone could’ve asked for in any crisis period.
Obviously, he wasn’t perfect at everything, and I’m sure you can argue that the expansion of federal power had deleterious long-term consequences well beyond Lincoln’s own lifetime. But even without him, that’s probably how the 1860s would’ve ended, anyway — only then, the ATL president replacing him would’ve been much harsher on the South and more hellbent on punishment instead of reconciliation.
If you can't tell the difference between an expedition abroad in response to a terrorist attack and a literal civil war, and why the limitation or suspension of civil liberties is practically a necessity in one but not the other, then we truly have nothing more to say to each other on this topic.You keep going back to what the South was doing that made them horrible, which I am not even attempting to defend; I keep going back to the fact that basically every aspect of the Constitution was broken, and that if this was basically anyone else, I'm betting you'd have something to say about it. I do not accept that there is any excuse for the actions Lincoln took, like, for example, jailing his critics without trial. Your constant harping about the war sounds just like every Patriot-Act supporting moron post-9/11. This country has almost always been at war or had some other crisis going on, so if that is an excuse to throw the Constitution out the window, then what's the point of even having one?
Wanna remind yourself why the Founding Fathers rose up and then why the Confederates did the same? Or are you of the opinion that wanting to not pay taxes or be subject to draconian edicts and wanting to preserve & expand slavery are morally equivalent? I think you'll also find the Founding Fathers also made genuine efforts to reconcile with the British Crown in good faith during the years leading to the ARW (ex. the Olive Branch Petition) while the slave states conspicuously just kept pushing and pushing against the free ones while rejecting any effort at compromise that they didn't just undermine immediately, such as popular sovereignty.Remind me, how was this country formed again? Oh, right, and insurrection, or maybe what could even be considered a civil war.
So again, why should the South have not been simply allowed to leave?
How kind of you also to remember that the violence in the ARW got to civil war proportions between Loyalists and Patriots, especially in the southern front. Patriot forces scalped Tories and massacred those trying to surrender while the Tories dealt out their own share of atrocities, a good deal harsher treatment than what Lincoln did at his worst. Guess the fuck what, war ain't beanbag, civil war least of all.
What are you even babbling about now? Saudi Arabia and the US are two different countries. The Northern and Southern American states are the same country (at least the Union argued so, successfully, by force of arms once the Confederacy decided to throw down). Why is it hypocritical for the Union to do anything about slavery at home (as it eventually but surely did), and for me to support them in doing so, as long as it doesn't also invade half the world to sort out other human rights issues? At this point you aren't even making a 'you are lynching negroes' argument as a Soviet bot might have, your argument is coming down to 'some entirely different & irrelevant country on the other side of the globe is lynching negroes and until you fix that, you have no right to do anything about slavery at home'.So you're a hypocrite.
But y'know what, I can fess up to not only a bit of hypocrisy in some regards (though not in this specific case!) and its necessity in power politics, you meanwhile are a loon out of touch with historical and political reality. Wake up and smell the roses growing out of history's blood-soaked earth, there hasn't been a single modern leader capable of remaining 100% consistent and avoiding hypocrisy at every single turn, especially not the ones who had to deal with civil conflict. We already talked about Washington, who along with the Founding Fathers you have already denounced as tyrants for giving up on the failed Articles of Confederation and crushing the Whiskey Rebellion (in light of which, BTW, you may wanna step back and consider whether you're the one with the unreasonable perspective & standards here); even in peacetime no less than Thomas Jefferson, King Libertarian himself, threw strict constructionism out the window to grab Louisiana Territory when he had the chance; and even the next most libertarian US presidents in history, Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge, knew to bring the boot down when faced with sufficient chaos (respectively the Pullman Strike and the Boston police strike). And still none of these were under even half the sort of stress Lincoln and the wartime Union were.
Wanna play in the big leagues of politics, you better be able & willing to play ball. When the game is called 'civil war' and the consequence of defeat is 'a huge chunk of your country fucks off, the rest will question whatever integrity your country still has, and foreign powers are circling like vultures' some measure of hypocrisy and repression is unavoidable. Those who can't do what needs to be done inevitably end up becoming the bones on which the victors build their triumphs, as happened with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in its sad end. Fortunately given Lincoln's re-election and the successful prosecution of the Civil War, it would seem that the vast majority of Americans back in the 1860s had a more pragmatic approach to the situation than you do, and weren't willing to wait for some libertarian Mary Sue who could somehow magically deal with the Confederacy, keep the Union together & free of foreign conquerors/kneecappers regardless of whether a war is waged or the South is allowed to walk, and kill no-one & impeccably respect civil liberties all at the same time to materialize.
Oh, and by the way. I already answered your query as to why I don't think the South should have been allowed to leave, but if you need a refresher, you're welcome to go back a page. You haven't answered mine, since that bizarre whataboutist deflection to Saudi Arabia you went on doesn't remotely constitute a logical answer: why shouldn't the feds have stopped the Confederacy's secession? Fundamentally, to restate the arguments which led to your pithy remark up there, on what grounds was their secession legitimate and did the slaves and Southern Unionists deserve to have any say in the decision to secede?
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