A Chicago University honors "Abraham Lincoln Democrat.�

[Gumby]

I'm curious, Benko, but did you happen to hear about this tablet on a Conservative website (i.e. Drudge) that failed to mention the history behind Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones and the 108-year-old tablet? If so, it would seem that your sources are trying to distract you for political purposes.

I suspect that Benko's answer, as well as the answer of the article writer, if you were to ask them, would be something along the lines of, "that context is all very interesting, but labeling Lincoln as a democrat is  still wrong."

Judging vs perceiving.

I suspect one of two things. Either that the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones knew very well what he was doing when we wrote those words and ordered that tablet — as a comment on the changing values of Republicans and Democrats at the time. Or the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones sincerely believed Lincoln was a democrat as the alternate definition describes.

Either way, the Conservatives who are now trying to make a big stink about this — 108-years later — are apparently trying to convince everyone that this is some kind of leftist idiocy or conspiracy (a pure distraction), when in reality it's probably just an outdated political comment or colloquialism from a 1900s Southern minister.

[moda0306]

I thought our debates on definitions had stopped at:

Rights
Libertarian
Property
Sovereignty
Liability
Economic Growth
Demand
Force...

I'm sure there are others.

I guess we can add democrat to that list .

[Pointedstick]

Abraham Lincoln did some f'ed up stuff, but most of it was in the context of the alternative being watching the Union collapse.  This may seem like no big deal to states-rightists, but the implications that states can just come and go as they please leads us to the more legitimate yet much more uncomfortable question of whether individual counties, cities, and individuals (along with their property), could simply dissect themselves from the sovereignty of the states.

From a modern perspective, why is that so uncomfortable? And from a historical perspective, they were really fighting only for the right of states to secede from their nation--a right that had been exercised countless times throughout world political history. It actually wasn't so radical a notion.

Furthermore, West Virginia seceded from Confederate Virginia during the opening salvoes of the conflict and joined a different nation--the union! Apparently old Abe wasn't so against the notion of secession when it benefited his side.

[Gumby]

So... The tablet wasn't wrong in the early 1900s. The more I research this, this more I see that there was a sincere longing, by some, for Republicans and Democrats to be "democrats" (small "d"):

[align=center][/align]

[align=center]Source: The Arena, Volume 37, By Benjamin Orange Flower (1907)[/align]

To "correct" that tablet is to ignore the history and sentiment of that time. Or, put another way...

Northeastern Illinois University recognizes the context that this plaque was created and intends to uphold its integrity.

Source: http://www.neiu.edu/About%20NEIU/NEIU%2 ... ement.html

[Libertarian666]

Abraham Lincoln did some f'ed up stuff, but most of it was in the context of the alternative being watching the Union collapse.  This may seem like no big deal to states-rightists, but the implications that states can just come and go as they please leads us to the more legitimate yet much more uncomfortable question of whether individual counties, cities, and individuals (along with their property), could simply dissect themselves from the sovereignty of the states.

From a modern perspective, why is that so uncomfortable? And from a historical perspective, they were really fighting only for the right of states to secede from their nation--a right that had been exercised countless times throughout world political history. It actually wasn't so radical a notion.

Furthermore, West Virginia seceded from Confederate Virginia during the opening salvoes of the conflict and joined a different nation--the union! Apparently old Abe wasn't so against the notion of secession when it benefited his side.

Who said this?

“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movements.”? ~ Lincoln January 12 1848, expressing the near-universally held Jeffersonian principle, before Lincoln unilaterally destroyed it, that no state could claim its inhabitants as its property.

from (http://www.lewrockwell.com/2002/10/adam ... m-lincoln/)

[moda0306]

Abraham Lincoln did some f'ed up stuff, but most of it was in the context of the alternative being watching the Union collapse.  This may seem like no big deal to states-rightists, but the implications that states can just come and go as they please leads us to the more legitimate yet much more uncomfortable question of whether individual counties, cities, and individuals (along with their property), could simply dissect themselves from the sovereignty of the states.

From a modern perspective, why is that so uncomfortable? And from a historical perspective, they were really fighting only for the right of states to secede from their nation--a right that had been exercised countless times throughout world political history. It actually wasn't so radical a notion.

Furthermore, West Virginia seceded from Confederate Virginia during the opening salvoes of the conflict and joined a different nation--the union! Apparently old Abe wasn't so against the notion of secession when it benefited his side.

It's uncomfortable because of the logical conclusion that whenever someone is unhappy they can just "secede" their acre, 10 acres, or 100 acres of land from a government.  It makes for an awfully unstable business/political environment.  Also, it probably wouldn't be recognized by the states, so their moral position is flawed at the outset, as the individual is the only truly sovereign entity, is it not?  Who says states are so precious?  It seems to me, just different forms of fascists.

They were fighting for that right, but there's a few things to realize here: 1) they wouldn't have cared to Secede if it wasn't for their adoration for the institution of slavery (which is often completely misled about by libertarians/states-rightists) even though Abe Lincoln was clear he wasn't even going to abolish it, 2) the right to secede wasn't clearly laid out in the Constitution (if you're going to put an exit-clause in a legal document, make it f'king clear), 3) the very reason we abandoned the Articles of Confederation was the overly disorganized nature.  Allowing secession was obviously valued by some founding fathers, but not by others, and to the latter, it was for the very reason the original formation of this country was flawed t begin with.

The legal "right" and "sovereignty" of the states was questionable, and we can probably agree that if there is any such thing as a true natural moral "right" or existence of any "sovereignty," then it is at the level of individual, not that of any political entity.  So if anyone was usurping any "rights," it was the state governments for enforcing and expanding slavery of 30% of the population.

This idea that these "sovereign" states somehow had the moral high-ground is asinine to me. It was an ugly situation of control and power, most of which was illegitimate to one degree or another, but the easiest way to look at this is "who usurped individual soveriegnty of others and who did not?"  The Union did some by enacting a draft to fight a war, but the Southern states did the same, while simultaneously holding a huge portion of its population as slaves.

[moda0306]

Abraham Lincoln did some f'ed up stuff, but most of it was in the context of the alternative being watching the Union collapse.  This may seem like no big deal to states-rightists, but the implications that states can just come and go as they please leads us to the more legitimate yet much more uncomfortable question of whether individual counties, cities, and individuals (along with their property), could simply dissect themselves from the sovereignty of the states.

From a modern perspective, why is that so uncomfortable? And from a historical perspective, they were really fighting only for the right of states to secede from their nation--a right that had been exercised countless times throughout world political history. It actually wasn't so radical a notion.

Furthermore, West Virginia seceded from Confederate Virginia during the opening salvoes of the conflict and joined a different nation--the union! Apparently old Abe wasn't so against the notion of secession when it benefited his side.

Who said this?

“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movements.”? ~ Lincoln January 12 1848, expressing the near-universally held Jeffersonian principle, before Lincoln unilaterally destroyed it, that no state could claim its inhabitants as its property.

from (http://www.lewrockwell.com/2002/10/adam ... m-lincoln/)

Pontificating quotes are fine and all, but I have yet to see a properly organized case for the right of Secession from the level of Sub-government to the individual, and even if I did see one, it would probably be quite arbitrary.  I'm sure Lincoln contradicted himself more than some libertarians have .  This isn't really all that relevant to me.  What's relevant is that a "state" is really just a bunch of guys who've seized power by some means, that have some control over a political/legal entity.  What a "state" wants to Secede, what that really means is "some guys in power" want to secede the state... and for many within that state, this meant contiued state-sponsored enslavement.

If states can secede, can counties?  Cities?  Individuals and their few acres of land?  If my county secedes from my state against my will, I'm now forcibly placed under the authority of my new county government.  What if I want to re-join the "Minnesota Union?"  Just me... me and my .75 acre lot?

Quotes llike this sound nice but are ridiculous if you carry them to their logical conclusion.  I tend to think of that episode of "Family Guy" where Peter "secedes" from the United States, and all the things that ensue. 

[Gumby]

So... The tablet wasn't wrong in the early 1900s. The more I research this, this more I see that there was a sincere longing, by some, for Republicans and Democrats to be "democrats" (small "d"):

To correct that tablet is to ignore the history and sentiment of that time.

Clearly history is wrong.  Why are you leaving out the part about Obama and his role in this?

I'll keep digging. 

[Pointedstick]

Talking about logical conclusions of arguments gets us into the realm of the ridiculous. The logical conclusion of the notion that secession is inappropriate is that we should have one giant global government that nobody should ever be able to secede from, and if they try, they should be killed. Is that what you're arguing? Of course not (I think).

Let's keep it to the topic at hand: one sub-national political unit seceding from its government. It's happened thousands of times before throughout human history, so again, this isn't some kind of radical pro-slavery anarcho-utopian plot or something.

edit: wow, that was a spelling-and-grammar-error-ridden post. Fixed.

[moda0306]

If anyone had a rightful claim to rise up and claim anything, it would have been the slaves to rise up, kill their masters and overseers, as well as to destroy/upend the political establishment that enforced their status as property, and take the farm lands they worked as property (the last being an arbirary add-on).

Anyone who stood in their way would be a direct enemy to their own sovereignty.

You don't get to enslave an entire mass of population, by force of your local/state governments, and then get to claim that either your status as a property-owner or the states status as a soveriegn entity is legitimate.  You lost before the fight even started.

Beyond that, I don't see this as anything but a big, messy power-grab amongst players in a bloody game of political/economic chess.

[Pointedstick]

Beyond that, I don't see this as anything but a big, messy power-grab amongst players in a bloody game of political/economic chess.

Welcome to human history.

In the realm of politics, there are almost no moral fights, no righteous struggles, no glorious victories. 99.9% of it is powerful men killing other more or less powerful men to preserve their own wealth and power or acquire someone else's.

[Pointedstick]

Don't get me wrong, I think slavery was awful. But I also think the slaveholding state governments had an abstract political right to try to leave, just like the government they left had an abstract political right to try to stop them. When governments disagree, it's back to might makes right, which is exactly what happened, and the Confederacy lost because they weren't mighty enough. If they wanted their own country, they needed to win that war, and they didn't. End of story.

Do I think Montana or New York has the abstract political right to secede from today's United States of America? Yes. Would there be a fight if they tried? Of course. As Harry Browne teaches us, your perceived rights never help you accomplish anything. It's good old fashioned cold steel that settles the day when the blades come out.

[moda0306]

Talking about logical conclusions of arguments gets us into the realm of the ridiculous. The logical conclusion of the notion that secession is inappropriate is that we should have one giant global government that nobody should ever be able to secede from, and if they try, they should be killed. Is that what you're arguing? Of course not (I think).

Let's keep it to the topic at hand: one sub-national political unit seceding from its government. It's happened thousands of times before throughout human history, so again, this isn't some kind of radical pro-slavery anarcho-utopian plot or something.

edit: wow, that was a spelling-and-grammar-error-ridden post. Fixed.

I'm not saying that Secession is "inappropriate," just that "state sovereignty" or "sub-government sovereignty" isn't all that clear, ESPECIALLY if said government is enforcing the enslavement of 30% of the human population, which is obviously a direct affron to the individual sovereignty of those people... oh and let's not forget that they were still able to use 3/5 of that 30% to increase their political power in the national government without having to give any political power to the people they'd enslaved.

Just because it's "happened in the past" doesn't make a moral statement about it.  So have Civil Wars.  So have genocides.

If "sub-government" sovereignty is so clear, than what about "sub-sub government sovereignty?"

I guess maybe what I'm getting at is the following two points:

1) Sub-government sovereignty isn't a very clearly laid-out right, and

2) Even if it were, if a sub-government enforces the enslavement, rape and murder of 30% of its population as simply actions taken upon property, then it, by definition, is not sovereign.  It is a fascist state, and a threat to liberty, and all-things equal, should just be destroyed (the state... not the entire population, obviously)

[moda0306]

Don't get me wrong, I think slavery was awful. But I also think the slaveholding state governments had an abstract political right to try to leave, just like the government they left had an abstract political right to try to stop them. When governments disagree, it's back to might makes right, which is exactly what happened, and the Confederacy lost because they weren't mighty enough. If they wanted their own country, they needed to win that war, and they didn't. End of story.

Do I think Montana or New York has the abstract political right to secede from today's United States of America? Yes. Would there be a fight if they tried? Of course. As Harry Browne teaches us, your perceived rights never help you accomplish anything. It's good old fashioned cold steel that settles the day when the blades come out.

I think this idea of "conflicting abstract political rights" is about as close as we may come to agreeing on this... Rights are sorta goofy afterall... both politically-based and (hopefully) fundamentally morally held (that we're not bugs that can be squashed with no tragedy existing).

[Xan]

Hang on now, are we arguing about Southern secession in 1861, or secession in general?  Moda, your points are against secession in general.  Your arguments apply to the colonies in 1776.  I don't think they apply in 1861.

There's nothing sub-government about the states the way the US was originally constituted.  Sovereign states banded together, creating a central entity and designating (not surrendering) certain authority to it.  The primary unit of government in the US is the state.  There's simply no question about that.

To even form the federal government under the Constitution, the states all had to secede from the previous union.  At least four of them really didn't want to do it, but the other nine illegally (I believe the Articles of Confederation specifically forbade secession) abandoned them.

So I don't think general arguments against secession apply to states leaving the US.  American independence was based on states declaring their independence (the treaty of Paris is an agreement between Britain and each of the 13 states, individually), and then the current Constitution is based on states dropping out of a "permanent" union.

[Benko]

1.

Judging vs perceiving.

You really like myers brigg (a strange variant as I recall) don't you?.  Sorry, but I'm borderline introvert/extrovert NFP and very much a perceiver So my personal biases have nothing to do with this.  Watching the big lie used for political gain over and over and over and any attempt to point out the truth was met with smokes screen.  I don't think the main stream media which has been to a large extent covering up for Obama and explaining why he didn't really lie (you can keep your policy period) has an J problem, I think it is how they do business.

2. I didn't know the plaque was ancient.  This of course does not mean it was not meant to mislead for political purposes, as I dont' think anyone recently has invented that.

[Pointedstick]

1.

Judging vs perceiving.

You really like myers brigg (a strange variant as I recall) don't you?.  Sorry, but I'm borderline introvert/extrovert NFP and very much a perceiver

Well darn then!

[Xan]

1.

Judging vs perceiving.

You really like myers brigg (a strange variant as I recall) don't you?.  Sorry, but I'm borderline introvert/extrovert NFP and very much a perceiver

Well darn then!

Well I'm an INTJ, if that helps, PS.  :-)

[Benko]

Keep in mind that we live in a society where universities, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC/CNBC, PBS all tout the party line and condition people to view things as they do and do exactly what happened in this thread whenever something happens which disagrees with their view of reality. 

[Mountaineer]

This thread might make a good X Files episode - perhaps we could rekindle interest 

A side note to PS:  I think your sourse of factual data is a bit incorrect.  Virginia broke away from West Virginia on June 20, 1861.  At least that is my version of WV history. 

... Mountaineer

[Gumby]

I didn't know the plaque was ancient.  This of course does not mean it was not meant to mislead for political purposes, as I dont' think anyone recently has invented that.

Benko, I think you are being way too cynical. Even Theodore Roosevelt — a Republican — once wrote that Lincoln was a "genuine democrat":

"Lincoln — who, as you finely put it, conscientiously carried out the Hamilton tradition, was superior to Hamilton just because he was a politician and was a genuine democrat, and therefore suited to lead a genuine democracy." — Theodore Roosevelt

Source: Scribner's Magazine, Volume 67, January—June 1920

It was just a part of the lexicon at the time. Saying someone was a "democrat" (small "d") meant far more than the interchangeable party names back then.

[Pointedstick]

Gotta say, Gumby's research kinda says "case closed" on the plaque thing to me. Are we still talking about that, anyway? I thought we'd moved on to the far more interesting subject on the legitimacy/morality/appropriateness of secession!

[moda0306]

The states were nothing more than an arbitrary political conglomerate propped up by land-owning male interests. These weren't beacons of individual sovereignty.  Don't get me wrong, there are some phenomenal ideas built within federalism, the branches and levels of government, etc, but states were just another level of what was a quasi-illegitimate unit of force.

But now we're getting into the idea of "rights" again. I'm afraid if we can't even agree on the rights of an individual, or even what a right really is (political/cultural vs intrinsic moral concept), we're never going to hash out the "rights" of an arbitrarily sized/organized political unit.

It's not that I don't like debating you fellas, but we have to take these arguments so deep that everything seems like it's eventually going to lead to a debate about the nature of existence.

[Pointedstick]

It's not that I don't like debating you fellas, but we have to take these arguments so deep that everything seems like it's eventually going to lead to a debate about the nature of existence.

To be fair, you're always the one who takes it that deep. We were starting to have a discussion about whether Lincoln was right to prevent the states from seceding and you turned it into a discussion of secession in general with logical conclusions like personal secession, and then the moral legitimacy and sovereignty of different levels of political authority.

If you don't want to have those discussions… then don't start them!

I appreciate that you're able to get to the core of an issue, and that can be satisfying from a philosophical perspective, but we're discussing messy political realities. Principles fly out the window once the bullets fly out the gun barrels. There are no moral actors when we're looking at wars, and in the end all political struggles boil down to "might makes right."

[moda0306]

PS,

I know I'm the one who does it haha. I should have been more clear on that.  I'm just saying that it can be exhausting looking at a debate knowing that we'll be carrying 5 levels deep into different topics.

And we are trying to have a philosophical debate here, right?  Not a functional one using "might makes right?"  If that's the case, the holocaust was moral because it happened.