Posted on 03/22/2010 10:10:57 AM PDT by Between the Lines
When the one time pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak was stammering through his bizarre press conference announcing that he and his cohorts would support ObamaCare, a friend texted me, "That's all she wrote." I fired back, "Hardly."
Here's why: if I asked you to name a famous battle of the American Civil War, what would you say? Most would name Gettysburg, some might mention Bull Run, Antietam, Shiloh, or even Sherman's March to the Sea. But left off most everyone's list would be the battle that started it all...the firing on Fort Sumter. That's primarily due to the fact that though it was the sparking event, the skirmish paled in comparison to the back-and-forth drama that would unfold over the next half a decade.
What happened Sunday in the House of Representatives was merely the opening skirmish of a coming war over not just healthcare in America, but abortion, states' rights, and the Constitution itself.
In the days leading up to the vote, several Democrats on Capitol Hill were heard remarking that they just wanted to get this vote behind them and move on with other business. That might have been possible if they would have voted to kill this unconstitutional monstrosity that is now poised to obliterate state economies. But they didn't. Instead, they fired on Fort Sumter.
So where will we see the next offensive in this unfolding war? Most likely the federal courts will take center stage as the embittered states fight back against the betrayal of their sovereignty and the shattering of their budgets.
(Excerpt) Read more at onenewsnow.com ...
See #40
See #40
I say cut off the snake's head - after that it's just a mop-up operation.
See #40.
Japan still had the ability to defend itself and there were military objectives there as well.
Sherman didn’t go just to kill the crops. He was a madman.
Since slavery was Constitutional prior to the Thirteenth Amendment, it should come as no surprise that only extra-Constitutional action could bring an end to it.
If all fifty states supported abortion as a right and the federal government insisted that it was murder, which side would you be on?
Personally, I am sick and tired of the persistent Dixiecrat claim that modern leftism vindicates the Confederacy. It does nothing of the kind.
The Republican party was not an abolitionist party. It was a nonextentionist party. Abraham Lincoln had not the slightest intention of interfering in the internal affairs of the slave states, and the Dixiecrats know this (some of them even admit it). They seceded because they had been in the process (thanks to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Fugitive Slave Law, and the Dred Scott decision) of extending slavery into every state and territory in the country, with no way to keep it out. Anti-slavery Northerners had to sit and watch escaped slaves being captured and chained in the streets of their towns and were told they had to like it. The people of Kansas were told that if enough immigrants from Missouri came over and outvoted them to introduce slavery, well . . . that was democracy in action--sort of like our own illegal aliens today.
Neither the Dixiecrats nor the Left is telling the true story of our Civil War. It was not a proto-Marxist crusade to free an inherently subversive population (and if that population was "inherently subversive," they never should have been brought over here in the first place). Neither was it a "noble battle for states' rights." Both of these claims are sheer propaganda and hooey.
My ancestors are not Democrats who became Republicans in 1964 or in 1932. My ancestors were Southerners who fought for the Union and have been continuously Republican since Lincoln. And a lot of Southerners fought for the Union just as a lot of Northerners fought for/sympathized with the Confederacy.
I honor and respect the Confederate dead. Unfortunately, this is not reciprocated. My ancestors, who followed their consciences exactly as did the Confederate soldiers, are vilified not only by neo-Confederates but by palaeo-conservatives as inhuman proto-Communist fiends. Being a Southerner, I detest this slur on my ancestors and the ancestors of all the brave boys in blue who were just as brave and honorable as the brave boys in gray.
There has always, from the very moment the Constitution was ratified, been two schools of interpretation of that document and of the Union it created. One is the Jeffersonian school of a strict construction and a "compact among sovereign states." The other is the Hamiltonian: loose constructionism and the United States of America as a Nation (you know, like China under Chiang or Spain under Franco, two "centralizing tyrants" one never hears neo-Confederates criticize). Both of these are valid. They are both as American as apple pie. And the neo-Confederates and "palaeo"cons who insist that the interpretation of the Jacobin sympathizing deist Thomas Jefferson is "the official and true interpretation of the United States Constitution" are parroting a falsehood.
Hamiltonianism is still American, and it is still every bit as legitimate as Jeffersonianism. And a Hamiltonian will rebel against an evil, tyrannical government every bit as soon as a Jeffersonian--without having to eviscerate his bible with a razor blade to do it.
If you can’t get to the head, the belly works also.
“And one other thing, the best thing that happened to America at that time was the hole put in Lincoln’s head. Too bad it didn’t happen earlier. Does that get your dander up?”
I doubt that it gets anyone’s dander up, but it sure gets your credibility down. Thanks for revealing.
That's about it. And the Dems are figuring out how they can regulate around that.
The full quote;
Sherman proposes his march to the sea:
“I propose that we break up the railroad from Chattanooga forward, and that we strike out with our wagons for Milledgeville, Millen, and Savannah. Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless for us to occupy it; but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people, will cripple their military resources. By attempting to hold the roads, we will lose a thousand men each month, and will gain no result. I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!” —from a telegram, dated 9 Oct 1864, from W.T. Sherman to U.S. Grant. Vol II, p. 152
“’Actually it was the ratification of the Constitution in 1787-88.’
‘Which wouldn’t have been ratified at all had it excluded slavery...which makes your point, well, pointless.’”
Huh? what does slavery have to do with anything? This is what Zionist Conspirator was responding to:
“it was Lincoln and the defeat of the Confederacy that put us on the nationalist path that has given us Obama and ObamaCare.”
And, to be sure, it’s hard to argue that the creation of the national government didn’t put us on the nationalist path more than the Civil War. Firstly, there wouldn’t have been a war without there being a national government. Secondly, Lincoln and the other nationalists were of a ming to assert the supremacy of the national government without the Civil War giving them inspiration. They thought that up all by themselves, so accustomed were they to the preeminence of the America as the U.S.
“Actually it was the ratification of the Constitution in 1787-88.”
Which wouldn’t have been ratified at all had it excluded slavery...
True that.
which makes your point, well, pointless.
Not really. If the slaveholders had merely been content to practice their lifestyle in their own states and not been engaged in a conspiracy to impose it on the rest of the nation against its consent the Republican party would never have arisen. And if they had remained in the Union instead of seceding because they realized they weren't going to get away with it any more there would never have been a Civil War.
Too few people recall that many abolitionists were all for the South seceding. The Republican ideology was nonexention, not abolition.
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-641
Even the Georgia Encyclopedia recognizes that attacks against civilians were quite rare.
Sherman proposes his march to the sea:
“I propose that we break up the railroad from Chattanooga forward, and that we strike out with our wagons for Milledgeville, Millen, and Savannah. Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless for us to occupy it; but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people, will cripple their military resources. By attempting to hold the roads, we will lose a thousand men each month, and will gain no result. I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!” —from a telegram, dated 9 Oct 1864, from W.T. Sherman to U.S. Grant. Vol II, p. 152
Yeah, what am I gonna do, believe the history or the man himself? Don’t be ridiculous.
“Sherman’s goal, as he stated, was to commit genocide against the people of Georgia.”
I seriously doubt he ever stated that goal. And don’t tell me you take quotes like, “the utter destruction of its...people” literally. That’s merely grandiloquence. Sherman’s goal was to end the fighting power of whatever territory he took over, not by confronting the opposing army—which could fight back—but by attacking the “economy” or “infrastructure,” which happened to be defended by civilians.
He was, no doubt, a war criminal, since he clearly violated the code of conduct of the time. He was also an innovator. In what I’d call a bad way, since “total war” is what people don’t like about modern warfare. You can say it’s all about direct or indirectr “military targets,” but come on. Arial bombings and the like are used to terrorize the public. Not that we can get around terrorizing them, I guess, because no war in recent memory ever failed to mobilize the population to one degree or another.
“It was also incredibly successful. I say that as a Southerner. We can learn from every example, and nothing weakens an enemy faster than total war. We can use that also.”
I recall from my reading of his March to Atlanta that he, (Sherman), was intensely effected by the wholesale slaughter that occurred at Shiloh. He knew that the only way to end the War between the States was to make everyone suffer and make war so unpalatable that they, (the populace of the South), would do anything to stop the war.
And it worked at the cost of so much suffering.
“Yeah, what am I gonna do, believe the history or the man himself? Don’t be ridiculous.”
You seem to think that paragraph shouts “genocide!” It doesn’t. That’s in your mind. He intended to terrorize the civilian population, yes. Does that mean the U.S., which did likewise, committed genocide in WWII, for instance? No.
“He knew that the only way to end the War between the States was to make everyone suffer and make war so unpalatable that they, (the populace of the South), would do anything to stop the war.
And it worked at the cost of so much suffering.”
There was also the little fact that Grant was destroying the army of northern virginia. However, you are right, it is quicker to cause a whole lot of suffering, if you can do it without big, costly set-piece battles. Of course, that fact is what makes most people hate modern warfare.
“If the slaveholders had merely been content to practice their lifestyle in their own states and not been engaged in a conspiracy to impose it on the rest of the nation against its consent...”
Well, there you go again. It wasn’t a lifestyle, it was a way of life practiced in both northern and southern states. Seeking to have the law apply to all states is NOT a conspiracy, if we are to believe that southern states were equal partners in governance. Or do you believe they the northern states were more equal and were supposed to have the final say in federal matters? Sure sounds like it.
Re-writing history does not make you right, just misguided.
“I propose that we break up the railroad from Chattanooga forward, and that we strike out with our wagons for Milledgeville, Millen, and Savannah. Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless for us to occupy it; but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people, will cripple their military resources. By attempting to hold the roads, we will lose a thousand men each month, and will gain no result. I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!” —from a telegram, dated 9 Oct 1864, from W.T. Sherman to U.S. Grant. Vol II, p. 152
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