Posted by
cavalier973 on Thursday, February 12, 2009 9:56:15 PM
If you listened to Rush Limbaugh today, you got to hear this monologue:
Despite his unalloyed praise of Lincoln, Rush got one thing right; he said, "[Lincoln] was so singularly focused on preserving the union that he didn't even tolerate dissent in his own ranks about it! He put people in jail or otherwise silenced them."
So the lesson we learn from Lincoln is that Union Trumps Liberty.
This is true on a couple of levels. First, the obvious implication revolves around Lincoln's opposition to the right of Secession, which was generally held to be valid, since the United States itself practiced that right by seceding from the British Empire. Lincoln's idea of Union trumped the Southern States' (and every other state's, for that matter) right to be independent of a central government that no longer served their interests, and indeed, actively worked against their interests. The Republican Party was big on having a protective tariff, which would raise revenues for the government to spend on American industries. This is called "Crony Capitalism", and is a version of the Mercantilist System. The recent "Bailouts" are a symptom of this type of thinking; Lincoln would have heartily approved of the Bailouts. It so happened that the Southern States, being agricultural, wound up paying something like 80% of this tariff-tax; the revenues were overwhelmingly spent on industries located in the Northern States, however. The South was a defacto colony of the North, and wanted separation as much for this reason as for protecting the institution of Slavery. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, did threaten to invade the Seceding States, but not in order to free the slaves; his threatened invasion was in order to enforce the recently passed Morrill Tariff. Lincoln was quite willing to allow slavery to exist in the Southern States as long as the States paid their taxes.
Which brings us to the second level of the philosophy of Union Trumps Liberty. In his inaugural address, Lincoln also expressed support for a proposed 13th Amendment to the Constitution. No, not the one that ended slavery. This 13th Amendment (named the Corwin Amendment) said rather the opposite; it would have prohibited the Federal Government from EVER interfering with Slavery in the Southern States. Southern Slavery would have been made a perpetual institution. Lincoln's support of this amendment was an attempt to keep the Southern States from seceding. So, in both senses, Union Trumped Liberty; over the Southern States' right to political separation from the central government, and over the slaves' right to liberty.
Lincoln was by all accounts a fierce opponent to slavery; even with a cursory reading of his writings one gets the passion of his opposition. Nevertheless, Lincoln was willing to sacrifice the slaves' freedom in order to keep the Union together.
I believe that if Lincoln were alive today, and running for office, we conservatives would certainly call him a RINO. He supported high taxes and corporate welfare, he instituted the first Income Tax, and ran roughshod over the Free-Speech Liberties of anyone who disagreed with his policies. Rush Limbaugh finds something praiseworthy in Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus, and in his throwing newspaper editors in jail. But then he turns around and decrys the Fairness Doctrine. I guess as long as Obama claims that the Fairness Doctrine is important to preserving the Union, then Limbaugh might change his mind about it. Yeah, right.