Posted on 04/19/2010 8:18:35 AM PDT by erod
Hi FRiends,
I have two brothers who I love very much, they’re young and libertarian Ron Paul supporters, sigh. We get along and I’m hoping that one day they’ll come back to conservatism, but they have bought into a theory that I don’t think makes much sense:
Abe Lincoln was a dictator.
There are many websites dedicated to this nonsense you can Google "Abe Lincoln dictator" and get some weird stuff, if you want to check it out.
I need your help in busting this myth are there any books I can read on this subject to dispel this stuff? Do you know any of the arguments to combat this nonsense? Ie. Lincoln did not want to free the slaves.
Thanks for taking time out of your day to help me out, -Erod
Would a dictator have given someone like Booth the opportunity Booth had?
Argue that he wasn’t a dictator to the nearly 13K people he imprisoned on suspicion of being a spy - including women and children. Make the argument with consideration that he rescinded Habeus Corpus. Make the argument to the people whose country he invaded and private property he seized - and never made restitution. And make the argument to the people whose sons he slew in the invasion of said country. All for the sake of cotton and the almighty dollar. The slavery argument was BS - Jefferson Davis freed the slaves long before Lincoln.
The difference is Lincoln did what he had to do and the result is he saved the nation.
Only if you consider an occupied colong stripped of its economic heart part of a nation. My take is he did it all to perserve his “relevancy”. Just saying.
He is a relatively new poster.
Say what???
We were intended to be a union of "the several states". Up until 1860, the phrase "these united states" was commonly used. All of that was thrown away when the federal government asserted primacy over each and every state.
We now speak of "the United States" and we pay no attention to the 10th Amendment at all.
Lincoln is the first guy to "burn the village in order to save it".
“He was a tyrant. He valued the Union so much that he shat all over the Constitution. Obama has more respect for the Constitution than Lincoln did.”
And that ain’t sayin’ much.......
Excepting that it was Lincoln who started the war.
Well, there was no mention of that...
...but you never know!
ping
When the "economic heart" is based upon holding fellow human beings as chattel, then maybe that heart needed to be stripped out.
Well, he did suspend Habeas Corpus for a couple years, signed an arrest warrant for some newspaper editors, started conscription, levied the Revenue Act (3% on incomes) to raise cash for the war, prohibited trade between states, blockaded US ports, approved the Confiscation Act...
Yeah!
Everyone knows it was Robert E. Lee who freed the slaves!
(Source: “Guns of the South” by Harry Turtledove)
;-)
Who bombarded Sumter?
But never mind that, I'm fascinated by your "Jeff Davis freed the slaves" claim. Can you elaborate on that?
When the “economic heart” is based upon holding fellow human beings as chattel, then maybe that heart needed to be stripped out.
Lead by example. Remember a number of Union States held slaves (i.e., MD, MO, DE, WV, KY). Further, the war was fought “To Preserve the Union” not free the slaves. Lincoln thought he could win quick and be done with it. He was wrong. If the Union had followed its Constitution, there would have been no War. The fact was the Federal Government at the time was financed by land sales in western frontiers and tariffs. Its largest source of revenue came from tariffs on exported agricultural goods, first of which was cotton. Get your facts straight.
One eye opener, is Lincoln and Teddy are the only Republicans leftist ever liked.
Nobody ever mentions the attempt by Connecticut to secede during the war of 1812. The fact is that there have been attempts to secede almost from the very beginning and every last one has failed.
You might want to do the same. Tariffs are applied to imported goods, not exports. Per Article I, Section 9: "No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State."
I wonder if these people feel the same about other presidents who have put down secessionist movements?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Convention
I've always preferred the term tyrant.
Now, if the originator of this thread wanted to take the "pro" side of the "resolved" "Lincoln was a Christian," well, then, he'd really have his work cut out for him.
Caveat: I think Lincoln was one of the 2 or 3 bona fide geniuses to ever hold the office.
He was a tyrant, though....and a white supremecist.
“The difference is Lincoln did what he had to do and the result is he saved the nation.”
Yes but in so doing, he established precedents that subsequent presidents have used to push us closer and closer to socialism. We will never know for sure but we might well have been better off as two neighboring countries, sharing a language but little else. Similar to France and Belgium.
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