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Why 2012 election looks a lot like 1860
Dakota Voice ^ | June 4, 2011 | Star Parker

Posted on 06/04/2011 12:34:35 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

As the season of presidential politics 2012 unfolds, I’m struck by similarities between today and the tumultuous period in our history that led up to the election of Abraham Lincoln and then on to the Civil War.

So much so that I’m finding it a little eerie that this year we are observing the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War.

No, I am certainly not predicting, God forbid, that today’s divisions and tensions will lead to brother taking up arms against brother.

But profound differences divide us today, as was the case in the 1850′s.

The difference in presidential approval rates between Democrats and Republicans over the course of the Obama presidency and the last few years of the Bush presidency has been in the neighborhood of 70 points. This is the most polarized the nation has been in modern times.

This deep division is driven, as was the case in the 1850′s, by fundamental differences in world-view regarding what this country is about.

Then, of course, the question was can a country “conceived in liberty’, in Lincoln’s words, tolerate slavery.

Today the question is can a country “conceived in liberty” tolerate almost half its economy consumed by government, its citizens increasingly submitting to the dictates of bureaucrats, and wanton destruction of its unborn children.

We wrestle today, as they did then, with the basic question of what defines a free society.

It’s common to hear that “democracy” is synonymous with freedom. We also commonly hear that questions regarding economic growth are separate and apart from issues tied to morality — so called “social issues.”

But Stephen Douglas, who famously debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858, argued both these points. In championing the idea of “popular sovereignty” and the Kansas Nebraska Act, he argued that it made sense for new states to determine by popular vote whether they would permit slavery.

By so doing, argued Douglas, the question of slavery would submit to what he saw as the core American institution — democracy — and, by handling the issue in this fashion, slavery could be removed as an impediment to growth of the union.

Lincoln rejected submitting slavery to the vote, arguing that there are first and inviolable principles of right and wrong on which this nation stands and which cannot be separated from any issue, including considerations of growth and expansion.

The years of the 1850′s saw the demise of a major political party — the Whigs — and the birth of another — the Republican Party. And the Democratic Party, in the election of 1860, splintered into two.

In a Gallup poll of several weeks ago, 52 percent said that neither political party adequately represents the American people and that we need a third party. Of the 52 percent, 68 percent were Independents, 52 percent Republicans, and 33 percent Democrats.

So it’s not surprising that the field of Republicans emerging as possible presidential candidates is wide, diverse, and unconventional.

But another lesson to be learned from 1860 is that conventional wisdom of establishment pundits is not necessarily reliable.

These pundits will explain why the more unconventional stated and potential candidates in the Republican field — Cain, Palin, or Bachmann — don’t have a chance and why we should expect Romney, Pawlenty, or Huntsman.

But going into the Republican Convention in Chicago in 1860, the expected candidate to grab the nomination was former governor and Senator from New York, William H. Seward.

But emerging victorious on the third ballot at the convention was a gangly country lawyer, whose only previous experience in national office was one term in the US congress, to which he was elected fourteen years earlier.

A year or two earlier, no one, except Abraham Lincoln himself, would have expected that he would become president of the United States.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 1858; 1860; 2012; 2012election; 2012elections; abelincoln; abrahamlincoln; cain; civilwar; cwii; cwiiping; democracy; democraticparty; douglas; election2012; elections; kansasnebraskaact; liberalfascism; lincoln; nobama2012; obama; palin; popularsovereignty; republicanparty; seward; slavery; stephandouglas; stephendouglas; whigs; williamhseward; williamseward
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To: Jack Black

You can sure make that argument no matter how much smart folks here like Freepers and Mark Levin loved Lincoln....Reagan loved him too.

Discussion of Lincoln and his legacy reflects human nature.

I believe we need a Washington now more than a Lincoln...or a Madison would do


61 posted on 06/04/2011 9:38:15 AM PDT by wardaddy (ok...so far I am Palin/Rubio 2012....i can explain easy..just ask)
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To: fabian
We are litterally slaves to a partial socialist system and that is similar to the slavery issue back before the civil war.

No we are not.


62 posted on 06/04/2011 9:59:47 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: nathanbedford

Well, you did not refute any of my valid points as far as the taxation. The blacks were fully taxed, so to speak, as slaves...we now are about 20-50% taxed and if you try not paying some of it, you will go to jail and lose your property. And the slave owners did not regularly use the blacks wages to kill unborn babies; ie, tax payer funded planned parenthood.


63 posted on 06/04/2011 10:05:32 AM PDT by fabian (" And a new day will dawn for those who stand long, and the forests will echo with laughter")
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To: nathanbedford
Somewhere among us there is the man for the time and we desperately need him to step forward. Is it Paul Ryan? Is it Gov. Perry? Could it be Sarah Palin?

Palin and Ryan are not afraid to speak the truth about Obama, the Democrats and the media. That is the kind of candidate we need for this time. I would also add Bachmann and Cain to that list.

Perry?? What sign has he show that he is the one for this time.

64 posted on 06/04/2011 10:09:31 AM PDT by FreeReign
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To: luvbach1

“A fatuous comparison.”

Accurate criminal profiling.


65 posted on 06/04/2011 10:13:04 AM PDT by Psalm 144 (Voodoo Republicans: Don't read their lips - watch their hands.)
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To: Jack Black
Lincoln is the most central character in the ending of the Old Republic and the establishment of the increasingly despotic central state that we all must serve today.

I am a loss to understand how Lincoln is responsible for light bulbs or how he enslaved free men but I am inclined to agree with you, as I have already posted, about the abortions.

As to Lincoln's heavy handedness in conducting the war, I have already acknowledged that.

There is every evidence that Lincoln was quite prepared to accept the Confederacy back into the Union with "malice toward none" and John Wilkes Booth deprived us of knowing that for a certainty. The radical Republicans who ran reconstruction were so adamant that they nearly convicted the impeached Andrew Johnson but might not have been nearly so presumptuous against Abraham Lincoln, of their own party. After reconstruction, the South in many respects returned to its traditional role of state sovereignty which lasted until Woodrow Wilson. Even after Wilson, the South was still solid in terms of its independence in many respects even through the New Deal and until Lyndon Johnson really finished federalism off.

The historical sweep of the Industrial Revolution, the migration of peoples, westward expansion, the Great Depression, 2 world wars, and the general federalization because the income tax poured money into Washington, cannot be blamed on Abraham Lincoln but they can be seen as causes of our modern federal system.


66 posted on 06/04/2011 10:15:00 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: BillyBoy

[ If democracy was the road to communism then how come the FIRST thing the commies did when they SEIZED power was ABOLISH democratic elections? ]

Your WRONG the commies DO NOT abolish elections.. they abolish the other partys..
Russia always had elections.. as do the Chinese..

The patina of democracy is still kept in any democratic country..
As every democracy does as well keeping the patina of fair elections..
And it all seems quite fair to “democrats”.. who do not think too deeply about it..

You know............. like YOU do..


67 posted on 06/04/2011 10:21:14 AM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole...)
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To: fabian
Good God man is it necessary to articulate to you the difference between human bondage and legal obligation?

Is it necessary to articulate the difference between committing a crime and being incarcerated for that and being incarcerated for your human condition?

Is it necessary to articulate the difference between a choice one has to pay a tax and the lack of choice one has when he is a slave?

Is it necessary to articulate the difference between one who chooses to work and create the conditions which obligate one to pay a tax and those who have no choice but must work because they are slaves without any recompense whatsoever?

Is it necessary to articulate the difference between those in a representative democracy who can vote their taxes in or out and slaves who have no vote concerning their freedom or the conditions of their servitude?

Remember, we did not wage a war against taxation, we waged a war against taxation without representation.


68 posted on 06/04/2011 10:22:41 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The Continental magazine of 1862 ran an article describing how the ‘free traders’ of the day fomented the American Civil War.

‘free trade’ is causing a similar division in the citizens of this country today.

I’d say there is more than one reason this election looks like 1860.


69 posted on 06/04/2011 10:33:15 AM PDT by hedgetrimmer
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
It's to bad that the author of this almost good piece has so many of his "facts" wrong.

Then, of course, the question was can a country “conceived in liberty’, in Lincoln’s words, tolerate slavery.

Clearly he is mixing up things up, the reason for the war was states rights, slavery was the occasion not the cause. The Revolutionary war wasn't about tea and taxes.

Lincoln rejected submitting slavery to the vote, arguing that there are first and inviolable principles of right and wrong on which this nation stands and which cannot be separated from any issue, including considerations of growth and expansion.

More reconstructed history: Lincoln opposed slavery in the territories because he thought the new territories need to be all white. Lincoln was a racist to the nth degree.

70 posted on 06/04/2011 10:42:34 AM PDT by central_va ( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: RKBA Democrat
No. I don’t. I think things would have been much better if he had lived. If for no other reason than he would have had to have cleaned up his own mess. Andrew Johnson would have never been President. And rather than endure this sort demigod mystique we’ve had to ever since as a result of his assassination, we would have a more objective writing of history.

I agree with everything you just posted. Nice handling of the stock troll question too.

71 posted on 06/04/2011 10:45:39 AM PDT by central_va ( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: newzjunkey
Palin made comments to Hannity on FoxNews about a 3rd party threat if the GOP don’t come around to Tea Party principles but instead continue to do things as usual.

I have not seen anything to indicate that the GOP is going to engage in anything but business as usual. I see a GOP that signed off on the PATRIOT Act AGAIN, I see Boner going out to play golf with Obama and probably share a few tears about those mean old Conservatives, etc.

Unless we start booting Republicans out in the primaries, I see no indication that anything will change. Many of the same people who supported Bush over the PATRIOT Act and No Child Left Behind are still in Congress.

We are constantly told that a liberal with an (R) next to their name is still preferable to a liberal with a (D) next to their name and that we should automatically support them, even though a liberal with an (R) next to their name is still a liberal and is ultimately out to screw us over. The moderates running the GOP are doing everything they can to keep their power.

I don't agree with Palin on a lot of things, but she's right here. The GOP shows no signs of moving to the right, and a lot of us are going to stop paying attention to the letter next to somebody's name and start paying more attention to what a candidate or politician actually believes in and actually does.

For me, whether or not somebody is a Conservative is more important than the letter next to their name. A liberal with an (R) next to their name is still going to lead us down the road to socialism, they'll just do it a little bit slower than a liberal with a (D) next to their name.
72 posted on 06/04/2011 11:02:56 AM PDT by af_vet_rr
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To: RKBA Democrat
I respectfully disagree with your point regarding the democrats and gop. The d’s have, as you indicate, become the party of race-baiters and socialists. The gop, however, has had almost as much of a hand in the fiscal destruction of the republic as their so-called opposition.

Let us not forget that the mother of all bailouts, TARP, was initiated not under the current maladministration but under that of President Bush. This was not just the camel’s nose but the whole camel in the tent.


Let us also not forget that things like the PATRIOT Act and No Child Left Behind, both of which helped increase the power and reach of the federal government, were implemented under the administration of President Bush and supported then and now by many Republicans.
73 posted on 06/04/2011 11:05:04 AM PDT by af_vet_rr
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To: af_vet_rr

See my tagline.


74 posted on 06/04/2011 11:06:31 AM PDT by Lazamataz (The Democrat Party is Communist. The Republican Party is Socialist. The Tea Party is Capitalist.)
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To: Sherman Logan

Hard core southerners asserted that northern states didn’t have the right to ban slavery. They claimed the right under Dred Scott to take their slaves to free states, and have the government help them keep their ‘PROPERTY’ enslaved.


75 posted on 06/04/2011 11:26:47 AM PDT by donmeaker ("To every simple question, there is a neat, simple answer, that is dead wrong." Mark Twain)
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To: nathanbedford

“Somewhere among us there is the man for the time and we desperately need him to step forward. Is it Paul Ryan? Is it Gov. Perry? Could it be Sarah Palin?”

Only Allen West meets your criteria and he isn’t running. Secession may be the only answer.


76 posted on 06/04/2011 11:41:26 AM PDT by SVTCobra03 (You can never have enough friends, horsepower or ammunition.)
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To: Jim Noble
I do not believe that Lincoln caused the war.

I agree with you. The Civil war was going to happen, it was just a matter of time. We had already had one civil war in the late 1700s over the issues of freedom. The ingredients were there. You had a group of hardcore Christians angry that other Christians are enslaved or who think that man was created in the image of God and that to enslave him is a sin. Toss in a bunch of immigrants who felt threatened over having to compete with slave labor, and don't forget that both groups turned out to vote in large numbers, and things are not going to end well. It could have happened a decade earlier it could have happened a decade later, but it was going to happen.

Not saying Lincoln handled it the best or not, but it was going to happen.

I do not thing the GOP can unify behind a single candidate because their division is over fundamentals.

I also agree with this. Conservatives are finally starting to unify and for the first time, many are starting to realize that the moderates in the GOP are not going to give us what we want. They try to buy us off with half-measures, and that worked in the past, but things are too critical now. The federal government keeps growing in power and size and it's been helped along by moderate Republicans.
77 posted on 06/04/2011 11:47:55 AM PDT by af_vet_rr
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To: EternalVigilance
Right. The fact that we're butchering thousands of little babies every day in this country is far worse than the wicked, tyrannical practice of slavery.

Amen. Every time somebody says we are headed for another civil war, I have to laugh. If we aren't willing to have a civil war over the loss of 50 million innocent babies since the 1970s, we aren't willing to have another civil war, period. People will complain and go right back to watching their stupid reality and housewife and American Idols shows.
78 posted on 06/04/2011 11:50:37 AM PDT by af_vet_rr
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To: BillyBoy

It’s the “one person, one vote, one time” system.


79 posted on 06/04/2011 11:52:13 AM PDT by tbw2
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To: Lazamataz

80 posted on 06/04/2011 11:53:17 AM PDT by driftdiver (I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)
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