Posted on 05/01/2004 8:23:20 PM PDT by Lando Lincoln
WASHINGTON – We caught up with Sen. John Kerry as he prepared to debate fellow Democrat Stephen Douglas for the right to challenge likely Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election.
We wanted to clarify Sen. Kerry’s position on slavery, the most divisive issue in American politics. Republicans will campaign on a strong anti-slavery platform, while Democrats are equally staunch in their support of the ''peculiar institution.''
Yesterday at a noontime rally, Sen. Kerry defended the rights of slaveholders in the face of mounting criticism from Christian clergy, who call slavery immoral and an affront to Christianity.
Responding to abolitionists picketing the rally with signs saying ''Shame, shame Mr. Kerry,'' he said that as a Christian he personally opposes slavery but supports the rights of property owners.
Spokesman David Wade said Sen. Kerry believes the separation of church and state ''helped make religious affiliation a non-issue in American politics.''
''I believe that in the year 1860, we deserve a president who understands that a stronger America is where property owners’ rights are just that: Rights, not political weapons to be used by politicians of this nation,'' Sen. Kerry told cheering slavery proponents.
He urged leadership to ''protect the right of choice,'' noting that the Supreme Court upheld the right of slave ownership in the 1857 Dred Scott decision.
Sen. Kerry graciously agreed to a question and answer session. Following are excerpts from our conversation.
Sen. Kerry, what is your basic position on this issue?
''Slavery should be rare, but it should be safe and legal, and the government should stay off of the plantation.''
Do you believe slavery is permitted under our Constitution?
''I believe the right of privacy is a constitutional right. The right to privacy is not pro-slavery, it is pro-choice…pro the rights of property owners. Protecting the right to privacy is protecting the full measure of rights of property owners in this country.
''The right to choose didn’t just happen. People made it happen…. We need to energize a new generation of citizens who care about freedom – who care about respect for property owners.''
It has been two years since Dred Scott. Please respond to some comments by opponents of the decision: The New York Tribune wrote that ''The decision, we need hardly say, is entitled to just as much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar-room.''
The Chicago Tribune editorialized that ''We must confess we are shocked at the violence and servility of the judicial revolution caused by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. We scarcely know how to express our detestation of its inhuman dicta or fathom the wicked consequences which may flow from it . . . . To say or suppose, that a free people can respect or will obey a decision so fraught with disastrous consequences to the people and their liberties, is to dream of impossibilities.''
''The second anniversary of Dred Scott marks the year when property owners who were not afraid to stand up and fight won a victory for choice. But today, it also marks a moment when all Americans must stand up and fight harder than ever to preserve this victory. Never in my years in public service have the rights of property owners been at such risk….
“I have always believed that property owners have the right to control their own property, their own lives, and their own destinies. And I am proud that I am the only presidential candidate to pledge that I will support only pro-choice judges to the Supreme Court. Some may call this a litmus test – but I call it a test of our will to uphold a Constitutional right that protects property owners’ rights to choose and to make their own decisions.''
As a professing Christian, you have been under increasing criticism by church leaders for your pro-slavery position. How do you answer your critics?
''We have a separation of church and state in this country [and] I will be a president who happens to be Christian, not a Christian president... I don't tell church officials what to do, and church officials shouldn't tell American politicians what to do in the context of our public life.
''I think that it's important to not have the church instructing politicians.''
Any final comments?
''I trust property owners to make their own decisions. Republicans do not. And that’s the difference. We will never, ever let this right be taken away.''
Dennis Campbell is a freelance writer and former newspaper reporter and editor. He resides in New Mexico and receives e-mail at: denniscampbell@sisna.com.
This most worthless man just wanted money for the coffers. Money that would be spent unconstitutionally. If Chronwatch wants to point out the differences between the two parties on the issue of abortion, I would suggest they pick a different topic. One perhaps the parties disagreed about. Say oppressive tariffs?
Excellent point, sir.
Wasn't that Bill Clinton's line?
Well that is if the historical parties strongly disagreed it would. However they did not. If the author of the article were to pick a topic that the parties disagreed on in 1860, the simulation may be more applicable to the issue of abortion
The states had the rights from the beginning, even as evidenced in the northern tyrant's Inaugural Address. You can't compare a woman's right to an abortion to how a state handles its internal affairs.
“It’s not a person; it’s my body/my plantation.”
So by your argument, property rights are thrown out the door because you disagree with the practices on said property? Especially since all parties at the time had no problem with the practice?
“It couldn’t survive without me because it’s too undeveloped/inferior.”
I would suggest you go back and read the 16th President's comments to Confederate Vice President Stephens. Especially the story of 'root, pig, or perish'. More members of the Confederate States than many want to accept knew that slavery would die out. Look at General Lee's statement on the issue on what to be done with the slaves once they were emancipated. Much better than the northern 'saviour'
“The people who want to take away my right to a slave/abortion are motivated by their own personal religious beliefs, which they shouldn’t impose on me.”
Again, a wonderful statement on abortion and as a Christian, I happen to believe that it should be outlawed. By the states. But you are under the false impression that more than a handful of citizens of the respective states cared about the slaves. The Abolitionist Party of 1860 was less than 100,000 people. Out of a nation of 20 million. Secondly, I wonder if you would be interested (I know I would) in how many of those 'caring' northerners belonged to the Colonization Society. Considering several of the northern states had outlawed blacks from even living in their states (Oregon, 1859, Illinois, 1853, etc) this handful wanted what any good liberal wants. Deal with the issue but don't make me live with it.
Perhaps the lesson for children wuld be better if the political parties were left out of the comparison of slavery and abortion.
Perhaps the lesson for children would be better if those that claim some comparative semblance of the issues of slavery and abortion were to study their history books and realize there was never an outcry for slavery on the level of abortion. Most, unlike the issue of abortion, didn't care for one reason or the other
The issue in 1860 was certainly not slavey, as such; but the rights of slaveholders in the territories, where the population did not want slaves brought in. That is very different from that suggested by the bulk of the article.
It also grossly misrepresents the religious issues, etc..
I consider this sort of humor an effront to the spirit of mutual toleration between American settlers with different value systems, which made our Federal Union possible. This is just the sort of sectional antagonism against which George Washington warned in 1796. The intervening history does not make it one whit more palatable to me.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Small point, but Johnson was a Democrat, not a Republican. Lincon selected him for the second term to help gain support of "Union Democrats".
But the point of the article is valid none-the-less. The privacy issues in 1860 were every bit as distorted as they are today, and Roe v. Wade is every bit as bad a decision as Dred Scott was then.
No. And that but illustrates that the "metaphor" is not apt. Both the abortionists and the abolitionists attacked the right of the several States to not accept their (the abortionists and abolitionists) imposed "morality." It is of particular note that the abortion decision, overturning the traditional laws of every State, was made possible by the 14th Amendment, which was the creature of the Republican Radicals, who sprung from the Abolitionist movement. Both movements were absolutely intolerant of any dissent.
But the most significant reason for rejecting this "metaphor," is that it completely misunderstands the players, then and now. The abortion movement is a Feminist creation. Feminism sprung from the same ideological roots as the Abolitionist and Prohibitionist movements. All three were launched by the same groups in upstate New York, Massachusetts, etc., in the 1830s and 1840s. This is very evident to me, because the Western outpost of the three-headed movement was in Oberlin, Ohio, where I went to College. (I went there to better train myself to fight the "Liberals," not join them; but I can attest the historic influence of the three-headed movement up there.)
I realize that it may surprise some who are not educated as to the period, to read that Prohibition grew out of the same roots as Abolitionism and Feminism; but it is true. In fact, to recur to the Oberlin example, it should be noted that the Anti-Saloon League was founded in the Oberlin College Library in the 1890s. It was the Anti-Saloon League which pushed the 18th Amendment through immediately after World War I. (And, of course, Oberlin was founded by Abolitionists, booted out of the Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, in 1833. It was a center of Feminist activity from its start, being also the first coeducational Liberal Arts College.)
Now you have gotten me to go into some of the details I was trying to avoid. But let me suggest a better "metaphor," the murderous abolitionist John Brown and his fanatics and the screaming "right to choosers," advocating mass killing today.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Yes, of course, it is a religious principle that one does not whimsically kill little babies, reposing where nature intended in their Mothers' wombs. But it is not a religious principle limited to a particular sectarian doctrine. It is a principle recognizable to anyone who is not simply reeling incoherently without a sense of truth and reality. The narrow dogma being imposed, is that of the Secular Humanist fanatic, he or she, who would deny anything based upon a Higher Power; those who would deny a realization that we are not in a Universe governed by the principles of Anarchy--or by the whims of the moment.
The Left has used the big lie to turn every philosophical principle upside down.
William Flax
The issue in 1860 was certainly not slavey, as such; but the rights of slaveholders in the territories, where the population did not want slaves brought in. That is very different from that suggested by the bulk of the article.
The issue was indeed the expansion of slavery to the territories, but the justification for doing so was "popular sovereignty" which would overturn earlier compromises and allow slaves in if votes could be found in the territory. This encouraged pro-slavery elements to move into Kansas and get slavery approved. The broader question was whether there were values beyond majority rule that would justify keeping slavery out by federal action, at least until a state could be formed. Doubtless it looked to Kansas Free Soilers as though slavery were being imposed on them, but the arguments of the day were different from what you've said.
And that was and is the question: whether there are moral absolutes that make free compensated labor preferable to slavery or whether there is only a relativism that makes moral choices of good or evil equivalent. Lincoln was in constitutional terms, far more of a "state's righter" than most Americans are today, and he's reviled today for saying that states had the right to assert the sort of domestic arrangements that they wished. In his own day, he was attacked for clearly asserting the moral preferability of freedom to slavery and the existence of a moral standard above the wishes of the collective.
The idea that our Western Heritage justified support of slavery or segregation or moral indifference to it is a mistaken one, though it was often heard in the 1850s or 1950s. Like it or not, it was that same Western and Christian heritage that inspired many in the abolitionist and integrationist movements. And indeed, American laws restricting abortion go back to the same period of reform and moral uplift that inspired abolitionism, prohibitionism and early feminism. What 19th century feminsts thought about abortion depends on who one takes to be representative of the movement and just what policy one considers to be truly "pro-life" or "pro-choice," but it's clear that some of the most prominent leaders considered abortion to be reprehensible.
There certainly are good and evil ideas or principles now and in the past. But people like to believe that this means that one unfailingly good team struggles with one unchangingly bad side throughout history, and it's just not the case. Sometimes the "good guys" go too far, and sometimes the "bad guys" get it right. It would be nice if it were possible simply to sign up for the good team and then stop thinking and questioning, but life isn't like that.
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