To destroy a society it is first necessary to delegitimize its basic institutions so as to detach the identifications and affections of its citizens from the institutions and authorities of the society marked for destruction. This delegitimization may be achieved by attacking a society's practices in terms of its own deeply held values, or it may be achieved by attacking the values themselves. The latter course was undertaken by the fascists and Nazi movements which rejected outright the basic values of Western liberal democratic civilization. They rejected democracy, liberty, equality, and forthrightly, frankly, embraced principles of leadership, obedience and hierarchy as alternatives to the hated basic values of democracy. Unlike the fascists, Marxists, of course, do not attack our basic values forthrightly. Instead, they denounce our societies in terms of our own values. They do not postulate alternative values; they postulate a radical critique of our societies and institutions by expropriating our language, our values. Thus democracies are attacked as not truly democratic, because they cannot guarantee economic equality. The argument follows that this makes political equality impossible and in the absence of political equality, it has been asserted that there cannot be free elections or freedom of any sort. Or the absence of perfect political equality in an electoral system means that the elections are a fraud. Their point is that a regime whose practices systematically betray their basic values is obviously a failed regime. If our practices betray our own deepest values then we fail; we are a failed regime. If we pretend to hallow values which our practices do not perfectly achieve, then we are guilty of falsification. So we are both a failure and a fraud. Obviously, such a regime does not deserve the loyalty or affection of either its citizens or its friends. Thus, if the United States is a fraudulent, falsifying society which exploits its workers and subjugates all in a facade of democracy, then it is obviously not worthy of respect.Z: Our country is under assault by Leftists who have the absurd opinion that perfection is attainable and who feel America is not at all worth of respect. I wish the paragraphs above could be read and discussed in every high school in America today.
z
52 comments:
You can summarize it much easier by simply stating that you can you can pit them against one another.
Just look at Wisconsin as a prime example. The citizens therein are in something of a battle against one another (and of course don't get me wrong as it [public pensions and the like] is a necessary discussion to have) as the much larger and pressing matters confront us.
Boo hoo Alinsky called me names.
Wake me up when the skullcrackin' begins.
Good find, Z.
I'm leaving this up for tomorrow, AOW....it's too important not to be read. I'm glad you agree.
Soapster, that's an interesting thought...diverting attention from the MUCH bigger things Americans should know.
I could go into a list but I don't want to get into that right now.
beamish...not sure of your point. The tactics in Kirkpatrick's piece have been very powerful and successful, don't you think?
"It is equal opportunity vs equal achievement. We cannot live in a country where the government sits around and tries to engineer and design results and outcomes. Every time they try to do that -- everyone has a right to own a home -- how does that end up? Everyone has a right to health care -- how does that end up? The Constitution says 'promote the general welfare,' not provide welfare." -Lt Col Allen West
BZ
Matt Damon's slip of the tongue, not meant as we mean it (I don't think?)and funnier for it:
"I really think he misinterpreted his mandate. A friend of mine said to me the other day, I thought it was a great line, 'I no longer hope for audacity,'" Damon said, referring to the title of Obama's political memoir. "He's doubled down on a lot of things, going back to education ... the idea that we're testing kids and we're tying teachers salaries to how kids are performing on tests, that kind of mechanized thinking has nothing to do with higher order. We're training them, not teaching them."
Ya, "we're training them, not teaching them" First, what's he mean? And second, if he means what WE mean when we think of liberal teachers, he's right. The kids aren't being taught to THINK, they're being trained to belly up to the progressive bar.!!!
By the way, I'm in debt to Dennis Prager, who read this part of the Kirkpatrick speech on his program this morning. Thank God for people who 'get it', who understand what's happening in this country.
Can we turn this around?
"Top down, bottom up, inside out"
Is that what is happening, and is it part of "Alinsky's Rules for Radicals?"
This is a serious question, so I would appreciate a serious answer to it, please.
And no, it's not because I saw something about it on Glen Beck, but because I have done a lot of reading about Van Jones,and others like him, and their views of the things that they feel need to change, and how to accomplish that.
The idea that he was ever appointed to anything in the present admninistration is reprehensible.
That he, and others like him, are still probably more involved there than anyone knows, is something to which any thinking citizen should be giving some serious thought.
This guy is just itching for a revolution., and he isn't the only one, obviously.
Jan, Van JOnes was hired mysteriously and fired late on a Friday night so the media was sleeping. They've been sleeping since.
That he was hired at all is a travesty but what you might not remember is how Valerie Garrett waxed eloquent on how "We've been WATCHING HIM FOR YEARS AND THINK HE"S WONDERFUL" (or words exactly to that effect)
They knew EXACTLY what his ties were and his mindset....and WE PAID HIM, JAN! Yes, he's still involved; I forget how, but he's very much still involved.
Jeane Kirkpatrick was one of only 2women I could ever have voted for for President. The other one couldn't have run: Margaret Thatcher. Most women I can't even take seriously. Sorry 'bout that.
Silvrlady
To understand how and why our traditional values and mores have been denigrated, lampooned, and successfully undermined in academia and the popular culture it would be a good idea to look up "Critical Theory" in conjunction with The Frankfurt School. Also the influence of Freudian Psychology on Western Civilization.
Plato and Socrates - also Hippocrates
Really gave Civilization a boost.
Then the cruel Romans, Crusades and the Germans
Marx, Freud and Split Atoms its prospects reduced.
By the way, Jeane Kirkpatrick, born in 1926, started out as an out-and-out socialist, and remained a self-described "AFL-CIO Democrat" until 1985, when very much impressed with Ronald Reagan and his staunch anti-Communist foreign policy, she turned full circle and became an avowed neo-Conservative Republican.
Kirkpatrick was outspokenly in favor of US support of foreign dictators who were anti-Communist and sympathetic to America's best interests abroad no matter how brutal they may have been to their subjects. She also supported the neo-Imperialist quasi-expansionist agenda of the neocons best exemplified in Project for a New American Century (PNAC) an idea whose origins are generally credited to Bill Kristol.
Amazing how some people are able to grow and change in the course of a lifetime -- an capacity which unfortunately is given to very few.
beamish...not sure of your point. The tactics in Kirkpatrick's piece have been very powerful and successful, don't you think?
Depends on the definition of "powerful" and "sucessful." Kirkpatrick seems to be latching on to ridicule and irreverence as the left's most potent weapons.
Seems to ignore the left's history of guillotine beheadings, union labor bomb-throwing, assassins and firing squads, jackbooted thugs, death camps and gas chambers to forward their cause.
The left burns American flags because they're currently too timid to burn Americans instead.
That'll change, it has before. And the left will have its ass handed to it by Americans again.
beamish, how's she supposed to cover everything against the left in one speech?
Her point is well made; she outlines what professors are doing to our country, what the media's doing...all based on liberal dopiness that IF WE ARE NOT PERFECT, WE DON"T DESERVE TO EXIST, right?
Don't get me wrong, Z. I have tremendous respect for Jeane Kirkpatrick.
I think with this speech she just falls into the absurdities that anyone can fall into when they go about believing the left is actually capable of rational thought. It does a disservice to honest discussion when she neglects to mention that leftists, without single exception, are all blithering idiots.
Society is only "destroyed" when the left's premises are accepted without challenge. It is only a sign of the decay of academia as a whole that retreaded leftist ideologies are not laughed out of the court of public discourse on sight.
Then again, given that Americans spend thousands of dollars on college to ensure that their children are dumber than a bag of hammers, maybe Kirkpatrick has a point.
I just think there is a point of diminishing returns to the Alinsky / Cloward-Piven strategy of dumping turds in the punchbowl.
They still have to make most people drink it.
aaaah, Beamish, so what you're saying is they're not SMART ENOUGH to have plotted and planned all of this leftist BS? Is that what you mean?
But they ARE clever and cunning, you know that? You don't think Alinsky's had his way with them and they're plodding along beautifully indoctrinating our kids, etc etc...? Seems pretty effective to me, or how could O have been elected? That's not stupidity.
I hope you're right about diminishing returns; I don't have your optimism but I admire it and hope I"m REAL REAL wrong, of course.
Equating all violent, cruel, tyrannical, barbaric, anarchic, fiercely anti-social activity with Marxism, Bolshevism, Communism, Socialism or Progressivism may not be strictly accurate.
The aggression of the Roman Legions, the invasions of the Huns, Goths and Visigoths, the brutality of the Crusades, Cromwell's Persecutions, the Spanish Inquisition, the Star Chamber, the outrageous behavior of Henry VIII, the brutal incursions of the Conquistadors in Central America, the barbarism of Vlad the Impaler, the activities of the Mongol Hordes led by Genghis Khan, the aggression that built the British Empire, the horror that was the Slave Trade, the barbarous atrocities committed during the Civil War, had little or nothing to do either with Hegelian Philosophy or the Marxism it is said to inspired.
Bloodlust -- the compulsive urge to kill, maim, subjugate, enslave and otherwise damage one's fellow creatures -- is a fundamental part of human nature, and has been with us ever since Cain slew Abel. Certainly since the earliest days of tribalism and the caves.
While Fabian socialists pursue essentially the same ends as their Marxist-Bolshevik relatives, their ambition is to achieve those ends peacefully through the power of persuasion (and sophistry and seduction!) rather than through wholesale murder and the widespread destruction of property. The Fabians have been on the wrong track, but their motives have been worthy. There really have been lots of social ills that have desperately needed to be addressed for countless centuries. The desire to right perceived wrongs hardly belongs exclusively to the left. It's actually a very Christian thing.
Many claim the French Revolution was a "leftist" affair. Well it certainly involved a violent, morbidly vengeful revolt of the peasants, the subsequent persecution and systematic murder of the former ruling class as well as the theft of their property, so in that way it closely resembled the deadly deeds of the Bolsheviks who came later. However, I don't believe it was inspired by a particular political philosophy dreamed up by intellectual malcontents and social misfits then craftily inserted into the educational system and popular entertainment media of the day with malice aforethought.
The French revolution was not inspired and then instigated by Hegel, Marx, Engels or the likes of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin.
Murder, Mayhem, Rape, Theft, Vandalism, Extortion, Enslavement, Intimidation and Harassment are always wrong, but they are not the exclusive property of leftists. Sadly they are regrettably common to every facet of humankind. It's our Fallen Nature that transcends all ethnic, religious and philosophical barriers. No one is immune to the capacity for grievous sin.
And then there is our own American Revolution. That too involved incredible temerity, much blood-letting and great suffering, but we wouldn't want to view it as a LEFTIST thing. would we?
And what about our Civil War -- the bloodiest, most brutal and by far the costliest struggle we've ever engaged in -- should that too be regarded as a leftist phenomenon?
The Abolitionists and Lincoln were certainly reformers dedicated to fomenting what-we-would-call-today "Social Change," and they were bent on achieving what-we-would-now-call "Social Justice" (for the Negro), but could you properly call the Civil War "leftist" in origin and motivation? It was certainly brutal and barbaric, but was it truly akin to Bolshevism and the diseased, self-destructive behavior that has overtaken our land since the Sick-sties?
Anonymous,
If you're asking if I believe all revolutions and revolutionaries are inherently leftist, my answer is no, I do not.
I also don't believe Marxism to be the only strain of leftism to emerge in history.
But to run down your list:
The American Revolution was not leftist in character. Run down the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence. Not only did the Continental Congress seek representation in the British Parliament, they were contending with a brutal regime that among other atrocities would dig deep holes and throw prisoners in them to starve to death. In many ways, the American Revolution is a continuation of the peasant revolts in England going back to the 13th Century that established Parliament in the first place. Revolution over and more than two centuries later, British common law still forms the basis of independent American government.
They overthrew their ruler, not the rules that ruler was ignoring.
Robespierre's Reign of Terror is essentially leftist in that it didn't stop with overthrowing the ruling class, but went on to overthrow the rules themselves. The Napoleonic code came after the Thermidorian backlash, establishing a new order.
The American Civil War was when anti-Federalist opposition to the US Constitution came to a flashpoint, when Democrats fed up with their Constitutionally being taxed a half-ounce of gold per slave sold across state lines and fed up with not being able to pad the enumeration of their state's delegates to Congress with the full weight of their enslaved, disenfranchised populations decided to fire upon US military installations rather than try to press their case that the Constitution needed to be amended to preserve slavery. The Abolitionist movement was conservative Christian in character, and Lincoln, in especially his Cooper Union speech, laid out the case that the framers of the Constitution explicitly and implicitly sought to end slavery. The Confederacy had not one legitimate leg to stand on, and then as now the Democrats were more interested in subverting the US Constitution than defending it. The Confederacy was essentially leftist for that alone. Pointing out that they wanted to treat human beings like property to exploit merely bolsters the case that they were leftist. Keep in mind that these Southern Democrats / anti-Federalists were not long after that the most amenable to the New Deal work camp socialism of FDR.
The self-destructive behaviors of leftism in America were apparent by the mid-1820s, really. When Andrew Jackson decided he had guns and the Supreme Court doesn't and drove the Cherokee and other tribes to Oklahoma, we got our first glimpse of what happens when America is stupid enough to put a Democrat in the White House.
It wasn't just guaranteeing blacks a vote in the South that flipped those states towards voting Republican in Presidential elections. Kennedy playing nuclear chicken with their populations in the Cuban Missile Crisis rounded out with businesses and industries moving into the South after 100 year Reconstruction bonds were paid off and local taxation lowered in the 1970s had something to do with it as well. But, I'm going off topic a bit.
My question is, did the Civil War preserve the Union or not? If you look at the history and character of the peoples involved on both sides of the Civil War in the context of the Constitution of the United States, I don't think you can come away not thinking the Confederacy was a left-wing contrivance.
aaaah, Beamish, so what you're saying is they're not SMART ENOUGH to have plotted and planned all of this leftist BS? Is that what you mean?
The people left alive after the purge might be smart enough. Robespierre's Reign of Terror, Hitler's Night of the Long Knives, Stalin's purges, Mao's "cultural revolution" ...
Leftist usurpers don't have much use for people skilled in overthrowing government once they've secured power for themselves.
There may be some smart people on the left, but they do quite a damn excellent job of remaining away from anyone chronicling their words for posterity. For the most part, the left buys the Che Guevara T-Shirt without knowing a thing about him and does what they're told to do and thinks what they're told to think.
But they ARE clever and cunning, you know that? You don't think Alinsky's had his way with them and they're plodding along beautifully indoctrinating our kids, etc etc...? Seems pretty effective to me, or how could O have been elected? That's not stupidity.
Obama was elected mostly because the Republican primaries decided McCain would be the candidate before most states even voted on it. Maybe they'll fix that, but I doubt it. Still, of the candidates in those primaries we could have ended up with a lot worse.
I hope you're right about diminishing returns; I don't have your optimism but I admire it and hope I"m REAL REAL wrong, of course.
I'm not optimistic. I just know that the left will eventually revert to type and use more violent means. They've already raised up the idiot bootlickers for it.
You did see the video at my blog of the feral union thugs in Wisconsin getting close to lynching a Republican state senator?
It's coming.
"Soapster, that's an interesting thought...diverting attention from the MUCH bigger things Americans should know.
I could go into a list but I don't want to get into that right now."
Doesn't even need to be a laundry list Z. The state pension battle/discussion is comparable to the discussion they tried to have over "earmarks" and can be summed up as another diversion. It's miniscule by comparison. It distracts from the larger budget issue. It is in short simply window dressing; putting lipstick on a pig, call it what you will.
American taxpayers, as a whole, are on the hook for (by some estimates) as much as tens if not hundreds of trillions of dollars in fraudulent derivatives. Until that is written off, the state pension battle is moot and only pits us against the real enemy.
*edit
"Pits us against each other rather than the real enemy."
Thank you, beamish, for the elucidation. You have considerably broadened the traditional definition of what the term "leftist" might mean.
I have always understood it to refer to individuals, factions or interest groups who pit themselves against a given Establishment and dedicate themselves to the overthrow of that Establishment in order to effect radical changes in fiscal, economic and social policies. Most older sources [I don't trust contemporary ones, frankly, since all appear to have been tainted with Marxist ideology and its outgrowth "Political Correctness"] define leftism as advocating Reform usually through the implementation of liberal policies, which for the past hundred years has meant Socialism or Communism.
So, in that sense there's some justification for identifying all movements dedicated to the overthrow of established Authority as a radical move from the Left.
Also, one could make a pretty good case for defining the position of the South as inherently Conservative in that it was rooted in a desire to maintain the established order, economic underpinnings and traditional mores of the region, which is basically what conservatism is all about.
If we could bring ourselves to accept that premise, the position of the Abolitionists and the newly formed Republican party, which initially stood for reform and change, might well be regarded as classic leftism.
Regardless of how one views history up to and just past the Civil War, the kind of leftism that plagues us today most certainly is rooted primarily in Marxist ideology and its numerous, equally pernicious derivatives -- an ideology that appeals mostly to ignorant peasants, social misfits, malcontents, and bored, overindulged, unhappy rich kids searching to attach themselves to something that might justify their empty existence in their own warped, underdeveloped minds. Oh, and let's not forget those vapid middle-class folk who have been too easily influenced by leftist guile into feeling a misplaced sense of guilt at their own good fortune -- or in many cases guilt simply for having been born Caucasian -- who mindlessly sigh on to an agenda that effectively spells their Doom.
Leftism to me indicates a pronounced tendency to mind other people's business. Leftists always seem to want to tell other people what's good for them, and how they ought to live their lives. I've never met a leftist yet who wasn't an inveterate busybody, a scold, a chronic complainer, an alarmist, an agitator a troublemaker, and an all around pain-in-the-ass.
Leftists rarely-if-ever examine their own failings, rarely-if-ever attend properly to their own domestic affairs, rarely-if-ever treat others with courtesy, kindness, understanding or appreciation. Leftists are always much too busy Saving the World to bother with petty trifles like raising their own children, building loving and enduring personal relationships and enjoying what they already have within their grasp.
Oh no! Leftists want to be your BOSS not your friend. They want to DOMINATE and DIRECT you. The are not the least bit interested in LOVING you, and i the end the only thing they are about is the expansion of their power to dictate and dominate.
[NOTE: I was interested to learn the broader and more basic definition of Thermidor. Before this discussion I had never related it to anything other than a classic recipe for serving Lobster.]
Also, one could make a pretty good case for defining the position of the South as inherently Conservative in that it was rooted in a desire to maintain the established order, economic underpinnings and traditional mores of the region, which is basically what conservatism is all about.
There's a lot more to conservatism that "not changing." Conservatives can seek change without a revolt, by reform and renovation instead. By seeking redress of grievances in a court. The Confederacy eschewed non-violent means to make their case.
Contrast this with the plight of the Cherokee in what is now ironically called "Georgia" after the King that Americans revolted against. The Cherokee Nation was established by treaty and borders with the US Government, served in war as coalitional allies with the United States against hostile tribes [like the Creek], and even pressed their sovereignty claims to the Supreme Court AND WON. Yet anti-Federalist President Andrew Jackson, in the act that defines Democrat Presidencies, disregarded the Supreme Court, shredded the US Constitution, and ethnically cleansed the Southeast of Cherokee and other tribes, deporting most of them all to the Oklahoma Territory. [To the Eastern Band's credit, my relatives, they went up in the Appalachian Mountains and basically said "I dare you to try to come get us" and their superiority in mountain warfare spared them the "Trail of Tears" death march of their Western Band cousins]
The Cherokee had a Constitutionally backed, legitimate grievance and successfully pressed it to the Supreme Court. And the Democrat President, the first Democrat President in American history, trampled the checks and balances of the Constitutional seperation of powers to first ignore the Cherokee sovereignty claims upheld by the Supreme Court then violently coerce them off their lands without a declaration of war from Congress and a with a violation of treaty ratified by the US Senate.
Did South Carolina have any level of Constitutionally redressible grievances to press in court before their violent insurrection against the Constitution itself? I think not. The established order was that overseas slave importation was illegal, crossing state lines with a slave incurred a half-ounce of gold ($10) tax, that the federal territories on the frontier were also illegal to import slaves into, and that slave-holding states could not use their enslaved population to gain more seats in Congress to change tax laws. The Constitution was decidedly hostile to the institution of slavery. If, hypothetically, there is a legitimate, persuasive case for why a man should be allowed and sanctioned to purchase and trade and enslave another man and enjoin him to labor without compensation, the slaveholders and slavebreeders and slavetraders never attempted to press their grievances through legitimate avenues. And why would they? The anti-Federalists / Democrats, then as now, hate the Constitution. The rules were always set in opposition to them.
Johnny Reb was a leftist, fighting for his "rats to enslave a nigra."
[NOTE: I was interested to learn the broader and more basic definition of Thermidor. Before this discussion I had never related it to anything other than a classic recipe for serving Lobster.]
It's a useful term when analogizing any revolution to the French Revolution. You might say that the American Revolution was a "Thermidorian reaction" against King George's "reign of terror" and ignoring the legitimate grievances they attempted to press in Parliament [Sir Edmund Burke was a British MP and supporter of the American revolution - the "father" of conservatism himself backed the American Revolution - because he understood it as being in the same cause as the peasant grievances and revolts against the monarchy in British history for over 500 years before him]
Here's an interesting checklist from Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, which is deeply entrenched in Burkean conservatism:
1.) A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
2.) An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
3.) A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions;
4.) A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
5.) A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
6.) A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.
It's easily arguable that the violent Confederate insurrectionists did not match any of those criteria.
http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/03/jesse-jackson-jr-wants-to-add-right-to-economic-security-to-constitution-just-like-the-soviets-video/
Your wish is Jesse Jackson, Jr's command!
SHUCKS! I left an answer (of sorts) to the post before Russell's list on Burke, and it DISAPPEARED.
Too bad! No time to reconstruct now. I guess we've got to write everything in Word first and save it, because this blogger medium is definitely becoming less and less stable.
Later - perhaps ...
The mentality represented by Jesse Jackson's son is as pitiful as it is alarming.
This is what happens when you let ignoramuses vote.
I think, by the way, that there may be a tendency to equate morality, decency and principled behavior with conservatism and vice versa.
I'm not sure it's as simple as that. Just as you find various sorts of individuals with diverse temperaments and personalities in all ethnic, racial and religious groups, so do you likewise in all religious, political and philosophical persuasions.
It's pretty much a given that wherever two or three are gathered together for ANY purpose you're bound to fid disagreement and dissension.
While many would heartily endorse the sentiments of Edmund Burke as given above, many would also differ in their opinion as to how those thoughts might or might not apply to the way they've been applied to the confederacy.
As I tried to say in the "lost" post, how we tend to interpret events and advice all depends on whose ox is being gored.
Just because "the Law is the Law," doesn't mean the Law is necessarily MORAL.
Equating Law with Morality may be an appealing idea, but anyone who thinks that is probably a tad naive.
You know, FT, you can put quotes around the word LOST all you want but I have not deleted any of your posts. Others are losing posts they've published here, too, as you so well have seen by their comments so there is no need to infer anything again.
However, I have been tempted to delete all of your comments, frankly, since I asked you so specifically and in earnest to leave geeeeZ after the horrid things you'd said, so it's all I can do not to delete, but here you are again, after only a couple of days you'd returned and I'm holding my breath before the comments disintegrate again.
I hope they don't.
This gives me absolutely no pleasure to write but I built this blog and enjoy my readers, they enjoy it here, and I want the problems not to return.
While many would heartily endorse the sentiments of Edmund Burke as given above, many would also differ in their opinion as to how those thoughts might or might not apply to the way they've been applied to the confederacy.
Let's give it a whirl.
1.) A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
The violent South Carolinian insurrection that started the Civil War began over President Lincoln legally winning an election via the Constitutional means of holding a Presidential election. They were shooting at US soldiers before he even took office. They were in rejection of the traditions of civil government, as established by that Constitution. Don't even try to make a delusional natural law defense for slavery.
2.) An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
Which basically means, "racists need not apply."
3.) A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions;
Not exactly a cause for rebellion there...
4.) A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
Nor a defense of enslaving someone or making them to be "property" there...
5.) A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
Filing a grievance in court or supporting a candidate for election and accepting the outcome no matter what, is faith in custom, convention, and prescription. Firing cannons at US soldiers because your boy lost the election is not.
6.) A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.
The Confederacy needed to make a persuasive case for enslaving people, a persuasive case for why others should respect their cause and course of enslaving people, and a persuasive case for inflicting their barbaric beliefs in perpetuating slavery upon others and in communities were slavery was already outlawed.
Because they couldn't do these things, they took up guns instead.
They were not conservatives. They were radical leftists.
Just because "the Law is the Law," doesn't mean the Law is necessarily MORAL.
What is immoral about banning slavery importation, making it prohibitively expensive to export and import domestically bred slaves in interstate commerce, illegal to possess and work slaves in federal territory, and not allowing slaveholders to count their slaves towards the enumeration of representatives empowered to create and vote upon tax legislation?
Was the Constitution framers' clear intent to make slaveholding economically and politically unviable and all laws subsequently passed toward that end "immoral?"
Was the ability to purchase (or kidnap) another human being and enjoin him to slave labor "moral?"
"Just because..." nothing. You're either a conservative, or a mendacious, bifurcated, semantics-wielding, red herring tossing goofball psuedo-intelluctual twit, er Ron Paul supporter, er, a delusional cryptoleftist.
Just because some laws aren't moral doesn't mean abolishing slavery was immoral or even that a case for it being immoral can be made.
Stupid people are leftists for a reason, the main one being that they cling to amorphous ideological flights of fancy rather than good ol' fashioned reality.
Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France may be found at this link:
http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm
Like most documents of the period it’s a pretty thorny piece of writing -- possibly one of the most reticent, elegant, elaborate, and circumlocutory bits of condemnatory rhetoric ever penned.
Burke supported the American Revolution, but not the French. His reasons for this are presented in Reflections in stupefying detail. If, like me, you’re too tired or too lazy to wade through Reflections on the Revolution in France, Wikipedia seems to do a pretty good job summing up it’s salient points.
Too bad Burke wasn’t around to give us his thoughts on the American Civil War! Like most truly brilliant and penetrating thinkers he could never be accused of being obvious, dogmatic or simplistic.
A favorite Burke quotation:
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."
~ Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
A Sprinkling of Burke Quotations apropos of nothing in particular on this thread, nevertheless give ample food for worthwhile thought:
“All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.”
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”
“Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.”
“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”
“A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”
“By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.”
“The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.”
Beamish, I think you may be trying to have an argument I had no intention of initiating, and have no intention of joining. I did not come here either to defend slavery or to champion the Confederacy.
I merely wanted to draw the considerable distinction that exists between morality and legality.
While I may agree with that aims and objectives of Abolitionists and later the Civil Rights Activists were highly moral even laudable, I take exception with some justification, I believe, to the extra-legal means by which these admirable objectives were implemented. That's all.
Though reason may be the slave of passion, it's a jolly good thing we are not supposed to be ruled by whatever passion may prevail at a given moment. Or, as my father was fond of quoting when tempers flared, "The sober second thought is seldom wrong."
Here's the link to a pretty good dissertation of the legality of secession under the Constitution. The Founders were in deep disagreement over many vital issues, as I'm sure you know better than I. Out of honest, sober, respectful, well-reasoned disagreement better policies may be discovered.
http://www.etymonline.com/cw/secession2.htm
Beamish, I think you may be trying to have an argument I had no intention of initiating, and have no intention of joining. I did not come here either to defend slavery or to champion the Confederacy.
Oh? Why would these statements - "Also, one could make a pretty good case for defining the position of the South as inherently Conservative in that it was rooted in a desire to maintain the established order, economic underpinnings and traditional mores of the region, which is basically what conservatism is all about" and "Just because "the Law is the Law," doesn't mean the Law is necessarily MORAL. [in response to pointing on the legal constraints on slavery the Confederate insurrectionists were seeking to violently overthrow] - why would those statements lead me to believe you're not trying to initiate an argument in defense of slavery or championing the Confederacy?
Clearly you're not doing that. My bad. You're just engaging in heartfelt masturbation. My mistake.
I merely wanted to draw the considerable distinction that exists between morality and legality.
No one has morality and legality mixed up or confused with each other, and it's supposedly "not your intent" to present either a moral argument or a legal argument for the legitimacy of grievances proffered by Confederate insurrectionists who couldn't themselves make those arguments coherent, sound, relevant, or persuasive and thusly took up violence instead, so what is your point? Do you have one?
While I may agree with that aims and objectives of Abolitionists and later the Civil Rights Activists were highly moral even laudable, I take exception with some justification, I believe, to the extra-legal means by which these admirable objectives were implemented. That's all.
That's weasel talk, and you know it. There was nothing "extra-legal" about the calling forth the militia to put down an insurrection. It's one of the powers vested in the Presidency by the Constitution the Confederate insurrectionists tried to subvert.
Conspicuously missing from your linked "Legality of Secession" essay are the parts of the Constititution ratified by the states which explicitly make secession illegal.
Why would the President be given power to put down insurrections, if secession were legal?
Why would the states be forbidden from the things forbidden them in Article 1 Section 10 of the Constitution, if secession were legal?
No, FeebThinky, the only "extra-legal" action in the Civil War was the insurrection and the formation of the Confederacy itself. Their claim and pretention to forming a seperate government sovereign from that of the US government had no more legitimacy than some meth lab "republic" of white nationalists in Montana filing mispelled and fraudulent property liens to declare their backyard as another country.
Please, steer clear of Ron Paul and get some learnin' in you from someone familiar with the Constitution.
"When misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood."
-Lionel Trilling
What am I misunderstanding, FeebThinky? In the past few months:
- you've cited white supremacist websites to try to smear Martin Luther King.
- you've cited anti-Semitic Holocaust denial websites to try to construct a spot-the-Jew "New World Order" conspiracy theory smear on "neo-conservatives"
- you continuously quote or cite Ron Paul, from even white supremacist / neo-Nazi websites that financially back him, and try to play coy that you know nothing about him or his history of support from neo-Nazi groups
- you now try to paint the Confederate insurrection as having some noble cause (of enslaving blacks) trampled on by a President (Lincoln) that you try to paint as a Constitution-shredding tyrant, while trying to deny that you're doing so.
If you think I find it incredulous that you're even trying to pretend to be intellectually honest with your past and present history of being a mendaciously lying pest (not even counting the fact that you remain here after being asked and demanded to depart by the blog's owner) then perhaps you're the one with the misunderstanding.
I welcome honest debate, but that is not possible with leftists, such as yourself.
Goodbye, shitbag.
The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George. I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist oppressive state power. The true patriot is motivated by a sense of responsibility, and out
of self interest -- for himself, his family, and the future of his country -- to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obedience to the state. ... Resistance to illegal and unconstitutional usurpation of our rights is required. Each of us must choose which course of action we should take:education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing.
Ron Paul
Yes, yes, the goverment we can trust is the government that Ron Paul's put in charge of.
::rolls eyes::
And so, pointing out the immorality and illegality of the Confederacy's insurrection against the Constitution of the United States, and it's lack of legitimacy whatsoever as a cause for freedom or natural law is now conflated to "obedience to the state."
You forgot to mention the massive Zionist media efforts to make slavery seem bad.
Get the fuck out of here you simpering moron.
"The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions."
~ Socrates (470-399 B. C. )
Facts are ventriloquists’ dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.
~ Karl Kraus (1874–1936), Austrian satirist. First published in Die Fackel (1902). Morality and Criminal Justice, title essay (1908).
Name calling is the refuge of him who has no claim to legitimacy or substance in the premise of his argument.
~ A. Magus
"This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted."
- Juvenal
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." - Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
=====
Got any more pathetic attempts to deflect attention from the fact that your anti-Semitic, racist, mendacious cryptoleftist tendencies have been caught red-handed time and again, FeebThinky?
Keep them to yourself. Remember, you're the unwanted left-wing racist imbecile here overstaying his welcome.
Your linking to neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to plead your mendacious case destroyed your credibility more that your infantile squirming from scrutiny ever could.
Go cry to the ACLU, you dipshit moron.
Let not those who love the power of the welfare
warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unashamed in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty.
~ Ron Paul - In the Name of Patriotism (Who are the Patriots?), May 22, 2007
No one wants to take away your right to be an anti-Semitic racist twit, FeebThinky.
I just caution that someone such as yourself, with your history of linking to white supremacist / neo-Nazi / Holocaust denial websites and your obvious zeal for aping their mealymouthed content in the form of obsession with seeing conspiracy everywhere, ought not bandy about "one could make a pretty good case for defining the position of the South as inherently Conservative in that it was rooted in a desire to maintain the established order, economic underpinnings and traditional mores of the region, which is basically what conservatism is all about" and expect not to be called on it.
That statement alone reeks even without the pathological history of your anti-Semitic, racist comments and links around here prefacing it.
Anti-semitic, racist, and a romanticizer of Confederate war objectives in defense of the institution of slavery. You're a freakin' profile of cognitive dissonance, man. A caricature incarnate.
Do you romanticize the cause of Pancho Villa too? Che Guevara's? Emma Goldman's? Mao Tse Tung's? Oh? You do have standards? Do tell.
Take us back to the place you last saw your mind. Where'd you put it?
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Sugar is sweet,
But it's not true of you.
Well let me put it sweetly then.
According to your blithe implications thus far, it's either "immoral" for the Constitution to have economically and politically hamstrung the institution of slavery by legal means, or it's "extra-legal" to enforce laws against insurrection and civil rights abuses driven by the immoral cause of perpetuating slavery and those nostalgic for refighting that fundamental aspect of the Founding Father's intent to end slavery.
In your Ron Paulian delusional regard, the Confederates warring to keep slaves in bondage and servitude were really making a "principled libertarian and patriotic" stand against the tyranny of... the US Constitution.
Seriously, FeebThinky. You don't have the grasp of logic required to be a conservative. And certainly not a free-thinker.
None of you leftists do. You'd reap a lot more respect from me if you'd just admit that you're a left-wing idiot.
I mean, you're not even trying to hide your incapacity for rational thought.
FT, maybe you can take this deletion better since it's not on the faith blog, I hope?
C'est vous qui avez tort, Madame, et vous le savez tres bien. Vous n'etes pas raison. Je pense, peut etre, que vous etes un peux derangé ces jours. Je me vous ne comprends plus. Vous etais m'amie bien beaucoup des ans. Je ne vous fais pas mal. J'aime ecrire -- c'etait toutes. Je crois que vous etes une aveugleuse maintenant. Quel dommage!
Au revoir.
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