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Is there such a thing?
I am continuing to read 'Hamilton's Curse'.
The part on Ole Abe is quite revealing (to me, anyway) in citing the things he actually took on himself to do, and he was called a benevolent dictator by some.
Of course he had to have a willing congress to allow such, but still it really blew my mind to find out he ..
>began a war without the consent of Congress
>illegal suspended the writ of habeas corpus
>imprisoned 10's of thousands of political deserters
>censored telegraph communications
>confiscated firearms in border states (violation of the 2nd amendment)
>deported a Congressman that stood up against him
>issued an arrest warrant for a Supreme Court judge that tried to stand against him
>shut down newspapers; imprisoning editors in some cases
>illegally orchestrated the succession of W VA from VA
..and the worst thing of all - he started a war that killed thousands on thousands of citizens, when it did not have to happen at all. It was not about slaves. It was about economics and control - BIG government control.
I do wonder if the possibility exists for something like this from the regime that is in the White House now? The Congress we have lost it's balls long ago, so there is nothing to stop it, when you think on it.
Wonder how he got the name 'Honest Abe'?
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' Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. '' (C S Lewis ; on Evil Men) 89 764 (170K), '94 940T (265K), 92 245 (150K)
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I'm not sure old Abe did all of those things.
We first have to examine the Constitution, which all of the States, even those in the South, ratified in 1787.
Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution provides that "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. "
While the act of secession is a murky area - it's not explicity prohibited by the language of the Constitution - the formation of the CSA was a clear act of rebellion.
Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 states that "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." The newly, and illegally, formed CSA levied war against the United States.
Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 states that "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Given the state of rebellion that existed once the Southern States seceded and formed an illegal confederacy, the United States government was clearly within its right to suspend Habeas Corpus.
I heard Southerners argue that the Civil War was not about slavery, and they are only partially correct. For the United States, the war was about enforcing the Constitution, putting down the rebellion and preserving the Union.
For the South/CSA, however, the war, which they started, was about nothing other than slavery, and the fears of abolishment and, in their minds, economic ruin.
Here's a link to the South Carolina Declaration of Secession. I come away from reading it with the sense that their actions were solely designed to preserve the institution of slavery.
http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/decl-sc.htm
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Well, there are a lot of folks who report that he did. Here is just one report I found doing a Google. There are many more.
http://www.markdankof.com/RealLincolnbookreview.htm
It would be easy to go back and forth about this. I for one would have never before thought this possible prior to doing some digging. What I have found is not just Abe, but many in our political history that were corrupted by special interests to take extreme positions, and I think the Civil War was an extreme.
The thing I am not really sure of is what our nation might be like if we had followed the States Rights model that the Constitution set in place for us. It is obvious that greed changed the course of what the original framers intended, and that same greed is bringing us into a new realm of political reality ...even as I type.
Yes, we have change - but is it good change? Personally I think not.
Edit w/ PS.
The last question I posed may very well be answered in my next read 'How Capitalism saved America'. That will surely open a whole new can of worms. :)
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' Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. '' (C S Lewis ; on Evil Men) 89 764 (170K), '94 940T (265K), 92 245 (150K)
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Who started a war?
It was the confederate forces who attacked a United States military base in South Carolina that started the armed conflict. Clear case of armed treason and declaration of war against the United States.
mormit
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02 S40 , 98 V70 T5 Koni FSDs, IPD swaybars and HD Endlinks, 85 245DL 278,000mi V15cam It takes a licking and keeps on ticking
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Up to that point States rights was a very important issue for many.
I probably do need to go back and read a bit more about the actual start of the war, but from what I have read the industrialized north was becoming increasingly powerful and that power was being demonstrated through a national government that was already bought and paid for by the rich and powerful. The tariff system that the US government enforced was very unfair to the South, and the move to keep the South from trading with foreign countries was one major tipping point toward succession.
Bottom line ..the supposed central issue that the civil war was fought over could have been handled in a better way. Slavery had been abolished in many other areas of the world without a shot. The only real reason was powerful people in the north, rich and powerful politicians - desired a highly centralized form of government over the states rights model outlined in the Constitution. The Civil War was the power play to lay some nails in the coffin of that model that Jefferson brought to the table, with, I might add - those who were part of the Constitutional Convention from the original colonies made states.
I know many will think I am crazy for saying this, but why should any State that would desire to succeed from this nation be stopped? Why is that such a bad idea? I used to be one of many who would wave the grand ole flag just about any time. I still support the men and women who have fought for freedom, but I am fast seeing that freedom is given to us in whatever measure those in power decide we are to get. Those in power have little regard for Patriotism. Their driving force is wealth, greed, power ..and they have manipulated the masses almost from the inception of the country. One way is to bring us into National unity behind the cause is Patriotism, and then they get the minions to fight wars, thin the herd ..and keep the money flowing into their coffers.
Man, I am really getting pissed off. Forgive me.
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' Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. '' (C S Lewis ; on Evil Men) 89 764 (170K), '94 940T (265K), 92 245 (150K)
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I know many will think I am crazy for saying this, but why should any State that would desire to succeed from this nation be stopped? Why is that such a bad idea?
In theory, I'm inclined to agree with you. In fact, there are a couple of states I would encourage to leave the Union right now, and I'd be quite pleased if my state and a couple of its neighbors decided to join Canada. ;-) In practice, however, a lot of negatives would kick in in terms of trade and other economic matters and national security. No matter how you slice it, the old "there's safety in numbers" cliché carries a lot of validity.
Those in power have little regard for Patriotism. and One way is to bring us into National unity behind the cause is Patriotism,
Frankly, I'm with Samuel Johnson on that one: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Our own history, recent included, supports that assertion and, we should not confuse acts of heroism and/or self-sacrifice for the sake of the country with what is all too often paraded as "patriotism".
Their driving force is wealth, greed, power ..and they have manipulated the masses almost from the inception of the country.
Granted; but wouldn't the same thing happen if "states rights" were more assiduously respected, or, going to the extreme, within a state that seceded from the Union?
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Much of what you listed in your bullet points occurred during the last administration as well and much of it has been continuing under the current one so there really is no need to wonder; yes it does happen here and now.
My theory on why Congress has "lost it's balls" has to do with term limits placed on the Presidency but not correspondingly on the Congress. Now that the Executive has a limited time in office it becomes easier to cede the hard and potentially career damaging decisions and the power that goes with them to the man who will be gone in maximum of two and a half terms anyway because if he makes an unpopular decision he doesn't have as much to loose as those in Congress. That way the numb-skulls in Congress get to avoid doing anything that might make them look bad to their constituents and they can constantly be campaigning for their next term and obsessing about their image with a minimized risk of becoming unpopular. This is an imbalance of power that has been growing since the death of FDR and I believe it is dangerous and places too much authority in the executive branch. Once a "new" power is vested in or claimed by the Presidency it is never relinquished which results in an ever increasing consolidation of authority in the executive branch, if this trend continues the best that we could hope for would be "benevolence". If term limits were imposed on the Congress you would see those clowns become a little less willing to hand over their power to the President and maybe a little more willing to make the hard decisions. In my gut I don't like the idea of term limits because they are actually democracy limits but I see no logical alternative for helping to clean up our current state of affairs.
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“If at first you don’t succeed redefine what you did as success.”- Stephen Colbert
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This is getting really scary. That's two posts this month that I have agreed with you.
Now allow me to ask a question........Would you have voted to join in a union from which you knew beforehand that you could not leave? I don't think that anyone would have joined the Union of the United States of America knowing that they could not leave.
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I don't think that I can really give your question a fair or concise answer. On the one hand there is no clear provision for leaving outlined in the "contract" we call the Constitution and there are several provisions that BoxVolvo pointed out suggesting that secession would not be an option anymore than a county can secede from a state. So, if that is the case why join in the first place? Well what were the alternatives at the time? Being absorbed or invaded by Spain, England, France or Russia or maybe being forcefully taken back by Indians? Maybe the threat of insecurity was greater than the fear of not being able to leave the Union once joined. At the time of the "joining" all entities involved had much more in common then they were to have later, the split between agricultural and industrial economies and lifestyles that resulted in an imbalance of powers had yet to occur and was not readily foreseeable. Maybe there was just no reason to think that joining the Union could possibly ever be anything other than a good thing. At the time it seemed that all of the states were on a roughly equal footing with roughly equal potentials but that changed rather quickly with the development of industrial capabilities and the accompanying economic shift.
Personally, I would love to see states be able to go their own way if they chose. It would be neat to see Texans with distended bellies and flies walking on their eyeballs while Mexican drug cartels ran their “country”, it would serve their smug asses right. See, I couldn't let you agree with me for too long.;-)
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“If at first you don’t succeed redefine what you did as success.”- Stephen Colbert
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Have you ever considered the possibility that should Texas no longer be a State, then they would and could deal with the Mexican Drug Cartels in the manner that most Texans would like to do?
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Agree. Get the guns out, settle the matter.
None of this namby, pamby politically correct garbage. :)
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' Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. '' (C S Lewis ; on Evil Men) 89 764 (170K), '94 940T (265K), 92 245 (150K)
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Good luck with that is what I say.
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“If at first you don’t succeed redefine what you did as success.”- Stephen Colbert
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Would you have voted to join in a union from which you knew beforehand that you could not leave?
If you knew that you'd be able to leave, you wouldn't be voting to "join", you be voting for conditional affiliation.
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Have you ever joined an organization and later regretted joining, or found that said organization did not meet your expectations? Are you still a member, or did you leave? Following your logic, you should still be a member.
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Exactly. That's why I don't "join" organizations.
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Supposing the question is posed to all, I would say NO ... especially knowing the battle that ensued at the convention amongst those who would follow Hamilton's model or Jefferson's model.
Jefferson's model won the day, but fell to defeat in years following.
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' Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. '' (C S Lewis ; on Evil Men) 89 764 (170K), '94 940T (265K), 92 245 (150K)
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I'm not so certain that Hamilton's model won the day, but rather that with the passage of time, and the changing of our economy from agrarian to industrial, Jefferson's became less relevant and Hamilton's more relevant.
I read with interest your comment that other areas had dealt with the issue of slavery in a more peaceful manner. Perhaps one of the great failings of the Constitution is that it failed to address the question of slavery in a more direct manner. There are only two references to slavery in the Constitution. The first prohibits the importation of slaves after 1806, signalling that the framers were interested in fostering and end to slavery at some point in the future. (The other reference is the "three-fifths" provision in determining the allocation of representatives among the states.) I've always felt that the failure was in refusing to deal with the offspring of the slaves held in 1789, their children and their grandchildren and so on. If the Constitution would have provided that children of slaves, and all of their progeny, would be born free, then slavery would have ended by attrition.
Even with that failure, and with the words of the South Carolina Declaration of Secession in mind, one has to wonder why the southern states did not pursue their constitutional claims of states rights in the courts. They certainly had a receptive panel in the Taney court, as evidenced by the Dred Scott decision. There were several cases in the lower circuits dealing with fugitive slaves given safe harbor in the North, and judging by the precedents in the Taney court, the southern states would like have received favorable decisions in those cases.
And that, I think, is the point. The Constitution is a document of law, a contract that provides an alternative to armed conflict as a method of resolving differences. I think the Southern states lost sight of the marvel of that compact.
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Well, as I said elsewhere - I am still reading and learning.
In saying that, logic tells me (and it is logic based on what I read) that Lincoln was not about to honor the Tany courts opinion in the Dread Scott case. (I almost said 'ruling', as that is what we have today ..for sure with our 9 black robed Kings)
The reason I say that Lincoln would not honor that opinion is that, to my understanding - the Supreme Court did not hold the clout it does today. If an administration or congress was in agreement with the court, that was great - but that was not always the case back then. So it makes sense to me that the South had already seen the handwriting on the wall, so to speak.
As far as losing sight of the marvel of the document, I think both the North and South did so then - as most do today ...or, they have NO IDEA what is in there. So far in my reading it seems that the rich industrialized North, with politicians and greedy lawyers in step, was more than willing to sidestep the Constitution at whim. As for the South's lack of respect for the document, I would venture they were pushed to an extreme position by many things ..but especially tax and tariff policies that favored the North exceedingly.
After all, it is not much different today. The elitists we have in DC and Wall Street know they are more intelligent than the masses and have enough power to direct everyone's future. They will make sure we stay in line ...their line of course. It does not apply to them, though
The Constitution is not perfect, for sure. That is why there was a method to change it, even sometimes for the worst of reasons - like the 17th amendment passed in 1913.
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' Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. '' (C S Lewis ; on Evil Men) 89 764 (170K), '94 940T (265K), 92 245 (150K)
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Bullet points>
Absolutely feel the same, even beyond "her and now". Actually I see it as being evident in pretty much every administration since FDR, and FDR was as bad or possibly worse at this abuse of power than Abe was, from what I read.
The point of DiLorenzo's work is that since FDR, with the Congress, and the courts - all in cahoots with big corporate and Wall Street - making big money and garnering more and more power ...they have become the enemy of the people.
"Lost it's balls" may be the lesser of descriptive terms that should be applied to Congress. They have been bought, and are so entrenched that it would take a miracle to get rid of them. Thieves every one, and the populace stands and watches - as long as their comfort level is not too diminished.
As for 2 1/2 terms, maybe when there is a national emergency and someone like Obama is deemed worthy by the masses to be king, maybe then there wlll be an awakening.
I hold my breath - not!
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' Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. '' (C S Lewis ; on Evil Men) 89 764 (170K), '94 940T (265K), 92 245 (150K)
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