America Lost the Civil War With The Lincoln War State

[American Dream]

One more quote, this time from Vijay Prashad:

Conservatism

In his new book, Suicide of a Superpower, Pat Buchanan bemoans the decline of the United States and of white, Christian culture. What is left to conserve, asks the old warrior for the Right? Not much. He calls for a decline in the nation’s debt and an end to its imperial postures (including an end to its bases and its wars). These are important gestures. Then he falls to his knees, begging for a return of the United States to Christianity and Whiteness. Buchanan knows this is ridiculous. He makes no attempt to say how this return must take place. His is an exhortation.

But Buchanan is not so far from the general tenor of the entire political class, whether putatively liberal or conservative. It is not capable of dealing with the transformation. It is deluded into the belief that the United States can enjoy another “American Century,” and that if only the Chinese revalue their currency, everything would be back to the Golden Age. It is also deluded into the belief that the toxic rhetoric about “taking back the country” is going to silence the darker bodies, who have tasted freedom since 1965 and want more of it.

The idea of “taking back the country” produces what Aijaz Ahmad calls “cultures of cruelty.” By “cultures of cruelty,” Aijaz means the “wider web of social sanctions in which one kind of violence can be tolerated all the more because many other kinds of violence are tolerated anyway.” Police brutality and domestic violence, ICE raids against undocumented workers and comical mimicry of the foreign accent, aerial bombardment in the borderlands of Afghanistan and sanctified misogyny in our cinema – these forms of routine violence set the stage for the “a more generalized ethical numbness toward cruelty.” It is on this prepared terrain of cruelty that the forces of the Far Right, the Tea Party for instance, can make its hallowed appearance – ready to dance on the misfortunes and struggles of the migrants, the workers and the disposed. The pre-existing cultures of cruelty sustain the Far Right, and allow it to appear increasingly normal, taking back the country from you know who.

http://www.leftturn.org/occupying-imagi ... w-politics

[Sounder]

But I thought this was a thread about The Civil War and Federalism being used as a bridge toward Imperialism.

I missed the memo maybe.

[American Dream]

Conservatism

In his new book, Suicide of a Superpower, Pat Buchanan bemoans the decline of the United States and of white, Christian culture. What is left to conserve, asks the old warrior for the Right? Not much. He calls for a decline in the nation’s debt and an end to its imperial postures (including an end to its bases and its wars). These are important gestures. Then he falls to his knees, begging for a return of the United States to Christianity and Whiteness. Buchanan knows this is ridiculous. He makes no attempt to say how this return must take place. His is an exhortation.

But Buchanan is not so far from the general tenor of the entire political class, whether putatively liberal or conservative. It is not capable of dealing with the transformation. It is deluded into the belief that the United States can enjoy another “American Century,” and that if only the Chinese revalue their currency, everything would be back to the Golden Age. It is also deluded into the belief that the toxic rhetoric about “taking back the country” is going to silence the darker bodies, who have tasted freedom since 1965 and want more of it.

The idea of “taking back the country” produces what Aijaz Ahmad calls “cultures of cruelty.” By “cultures of cruelty,” Aijaz means the “wider web of social sanctions in which one kind of violence can be tolerated all the more because many other kinds of violence are tolerated anyway.” Police brutality and domestic violence, ICE raids against undocumented workers and comical mimicry of the foreign accent, aerial bombardment in the borderlands of Afghanistan and sanctified misogyny in our cinema – these forms of routine violence set the stage for the “a more generalized ethical numbness toward cruelty.” It is on this prepared terrain of cruelty that the forces of the Far Right, the Tea Party for instance, can make its hallowed appearance – ready to dance on the misfortunes and struggles of the migrants, the workers and the disposed. The pre-existing cultures of cruelty sustain the Far Right, and allow it to appear increasingly normal, taking back the country from you know who.

http://www.leftturn.org/occupying-imagi ... w-politics

This I think points towards two great mobilizations of the reactionary forces: the Statist and the putatively "anti-Statist".

To a significant degree, it seems that their efforts will be complementary- whether they admit it, or not...

[publius]

Federal Force is Federal Fascism. Macht Politik by the State subjugates the North and South. Lincoln is dead. Whitman offers him a lilac.

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Charles de Montesquieu

[publius]

Charles Beard in 1918:


There is, of course, in the feeling toward the State a large element of pure filial mysticism. This sense of insecurity, the desire for protection, sends one's desire back to the father and mother, with whom is associated the earliest feeling of protection. It is not for nothing that one's State is still thought of as Fatherland or Motherland, that one's relation towards it is conceived in terms of family affection. The war has shown that nowhere under the shock of danger have these primitive childlike attitudes failed to assert themselves again, as much in this country as anywhere. If we have not the intense Father-sense of the German who worships his Vaterland, at least in Uncle Sam we have a symbol of protecting, kindly authority, and in the many Mother-posts of the Red Cross, we see how easily in the more tender functions of war services, the ruling organization is conceived in family terms. A people at war have become in the most literal sense obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that naive faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care of them, imposes his mild but necessary rule upon them and in whom they lose their responsibility and anxieties. In this recrudescence of the child, there is great comfort, and a certain influx of power. On most people the strain of being an independent adult weighs heavily, and upon none more than those members of the significant classes who have had bequeathed to them or have assumed the responsibilities of governing. The State provides the most convenient of symbols under which these classes can retain all the actual pragmatic satisfaction of governing, but can rid themselves of the psychic burden of adulthood. They continue to direct industry and government and all the institutions of society pretty much as before, but in their own conscious eyes and in the eyes of the general public, they are turned from their selfish and predatory ways, and have become loyal servants of society, or something greater than they - the State. The man who moves from the direction of a large business in New York to a post in the war management industrial services in Washington does not apparently alter very much his power or his administrative technique. But psychically, what a transformation has occurred! His is now not only the power but the glory! And his sense of satisfaction is directly proportional not to the genuine amount of personal sacrifice that may be involved in the change but to the extent to which he retains his industrial prerogative and sense of command.

[American Dream]

The Workers' Solidarity Movement presents a much better model of anti-Authoritarian organizing than the neo-confederates offer:

Anarchism will be created by the class struggle between the vast majority of society (the working class) and the tiny minority that currently rule. A successful revolution will require that anarchist ideas become the leading ideas within the working class. Our role is to make anarchist ideas the leading ideas within the class struggle.

We work within the trade unions as the major focus of our activity where this is possible. We reject those views that dismiss activity in the unions. Within our unions we fight for democratic structures typical of anarcho-syndicalist unions, e.g. control by the membership, grassroots militancy and little or no bureaucracy. However unions, no matter how revolutionary, cannot replace the need for anarchist political organisation(s).

It is vital to work in struggles that happen outside the unions/workplace. These include struggles against particular oppressions, imperialism and indeed the struggles of the working class for a decent place and environment in which to live. Our general approach to these, like our approach to working in unions is to involve ourselves in broad campaigns to promote anarchist methods of organisation - in other words direct democracy and direct action.

We actively oppose all manifestations of prejudice within the workers' movement and identify as a priority working alongside those struggling against racism, sexism, [religious] sectarianism and homophobia. It is vital to the success of the revolution that we build such struggles in the here and now.

We oppose imperialism and put forward anarchism as an alternative goal to nationalism. We defend grassroots anti-imperialist movements while arguing for an anarchist rather than nationalist strategy. We oppose all interventions by the imperialist powers whether directly or indirectly through a UN sanctions program. In the Irish context this means we oppose British imperialism in the north of Ireland but fight for an anarchist and not a nationalist Ireland.

http://struggle.ws/once/join.html

[vanlose kid]

publius,

"Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time"
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.

“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
Eye said that.

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/blog/IanEye/goin%CA%B9_to_croatan_with_vanlose_the_kid_b-163.html

...

*

That is no small thing. We live in the smoky landscape now, as the exhausted troops seek the roads home.
The signposts have been smashed; the maps are blurred.

There is no politician anywhere who can move anyone to hope; the plague recedes, but it is not dead,
and the statesmen are as irrelevant as the tarnished statues in the public parks.
We live with a callous on the heart. Only the artists can remove it.

Only the artists can help the poor land again to feel.

...


and the caravan is painted red and white


that means ev'rybody's staying overnight
and the barefoot gypsy boy


'round the campfire - sing an' play
and the woman tells us of her ways



*[/center]

*[/quote]



Babylon position the queen and set the pawn
And start transform like Deceptacon
Anytime delegates have a discrepence
Well a bare tension with some long weapons
Night vision upon the attack mission
Colaliton of folly-ticians get switch on
If you look in the face of the newly born
The newly born face malnutrition
Suspicion to what is them ambition
Total destruction start to ignition
And the world still a fight over religion
Everyone have a right to a decision
Superstition the people reflect upon, something nuh right
I man suspect a con

Cause them lost inna darkness beyond
And none shall escape except the ones, who
Exodus with no question,
Better put on your khaki uniform
If you-a' driver, leave unnu engine on
If you-a' rider jump pon a unicorn
Lace your shoes if you a pedestrian
Run for the border like a Mexican
Underarm smell green like a Leprechaun
Survival of Jah people

Exodus...movement of Jah people

Boom!
Chicken merry, Hawk is near
Tell them beware, but them still won't hear
Life is a road so you drive with care
Tire can't bust cause you got no spare
Whole-heap of lust in your atmosphere
Step pon di gas and you start draw gear
Dis Rastafari you do not dare
Some don't share and then that's not fair
Make a move, before they make a move and you
Making moves and still move and go thru
Moving things weh you not supposed to move
Watch your move and where you moving to
Who you move with, you move with you crew

Move some fool from up off the avenue
Move a pound and boost your revenue
Move uptown and overlook the view
Move around and get from one to two
Make a wrong move in the game you lose
I stand up and I refuse to move
Substance weh mi know mi nah go use
Metric measurement mi nah go choose
Moving on and you still need a clue
Car keys are the only keys wi' move
Moving on...Lord!

Boom!
Music, business as usual
Mi' spliff and Guiness as usual
Royal and muffin as usual
Highgrade we puffin as usual
Fight down the system as usual
The system fight we down as usual
The cops dem a watch we as usual
And a we a watch the cops as usual
No strap would be unusual
Roll wid it inna we lap as usual
Always ready fi clap as usual
Rastaman deh pon top as usual
Standard never drop as usual
Man-a' cream of the crop as usual
Run right 'round the clock as usual
Movement non-stop as usual

*

EXODUS!

Zion-Croatan.

*

[vanlose kid]

from way back before the critical thinkuisition really got into gear.

in sum, lincoln's war was not a "just war" of emancipation, and the image of it as one is a bit... can't find the word.

*

In sum, it wasn't Lincoln's war at all, but the war of the Confederacy to impose slavery on the rest of the United States, since slavery in the South was possible only by expanding it to the West and by compelling the North to enforce Southern slave laws and give free run to Southern gangs hunting escaped slaves. This is why, after the election of a Republican president pledged to stop the expansion of slavery, but also committed to allowing its preservation in the South, the slave states nevertheless seceded and initiated aggressions against Union troops and facilities. Total war thus became inevitable: had the Union failed to engage then, the Confederacy would have seized and fought over Western territory until a frontal engagement began. In fact, this war was the culmination of a long struggle of the Southern slave-holding comprador elite to impose slavery on the continent, from Canada to Panama with hostilities initiated by Southern-based elements prior to 1860. It was why these self-same elites had initiated a war of aggression and conquest on Mexico just 15 years earlier, so as to seize an enormous new territory and turn it into new slave states. And no aggression in the five years of war can outdo the centuries of continuous aggression practiced daily by this slave-holding elite as a condition for holding down millions of enslaved human beings.

That in itself justifies nothing that the Union did, but seems sorely to be missing from this one-sided tale of Evil Lincoln (who, though evil, was just about to do the right thing after all when the Rothschilds killed him!).

Lincoln: "I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." ... My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.... I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... planations

saying the civil war was fought in order to emancipate slaves is like saying WWII was fought in order to save the jews.

seems to me the fight was over two economic models. that Lincoln's war was not the Just War it is made out to be. looks like business as usual.

is that too sacrilegious?

*

[Elihu]

at which an anarchist theorist spoke. She alluded to the problematic inherent in an emphasis on autonomy and anti-Statism as it concerns the fact that there are some pretty scary people out there who also want self-rule. These people, who operate from values antithetical to what most of us would ever want to uphold: white supremacy, Christian dominance, homophobia, oppression of women (especially where reproductive freedoms are concerned), transphobia, and other such reactionary values.

********** what guarantees of safety can the state offer? edited for obnoxiousness, apologies.******

The State currently does a great deal to protect all of us from the depredations of such people (though it also uses them sometimes as plausibly deniable agents).

sometimes it's good. and sometimes it's not good. some animals are more equal than others. there you have it in practice.

If there is no State, what then will happen?

does it follow that demoting fantastical "protection" from the state's top reason for being, mean anarchy? a possibility so remote as to be worse than meaningless. a diversion even?

[vanlose kid]

...If there is no [BABYLON], what then will happen?...

some crazy baldhead gon come say we need to build a new one, only better seh?

*

[American Dream]

The State currently does a great deal to protect all of us from the depredations of such people (though it also uses them sometimes as plausibly deniable agents).

excuse the pun, but black or white? that deal's been tried numerous times comrade. that is not the kind of "protection" i desire.

Exactly- there is no black and white.

We have every reason to reject the bourgeoisie State but also the hollow "utopias" of racist neo-Nazis and and neo-Confederates who wrap themselves in the mantle of "National Anarchism" or "sovereignty"...

[eyeno]

americandream wrote:
at which an anarchist theorist spoke. She alluded to the problematic inherent in an emphasis on autonomy and anti-Statism as it concerns the fact that there are some pretty scary people out there who also want self-rule. These people, who operate from values antithetical to what most of us would ever want to uphold: white supremacy, Christian dominance, homophobia, oppression of women (especially where reproductive freedoms are concerned), transphobia, and other such reactionary values.

americandream wrote:
The State currently does a great deal to protect all of us from the depredations of such people (though it also uses them sometimes as plausibly deniable agents).

Yes and the state is doing such a wonderful job of protecting black people from the ravages of white supremecy. They give them a cozy safe place to live, free food, exercise yard, tv sometimes, and pay them 25 cents a day for their labor.

For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.
http://cryptogon.com/?p=27207

[American Dream]

The State currently does a great deal to protect all of us from the depredations of such people (though it also uses them sometimes as plausibly deniable agents).

The point being that the racist reactionaries are boasting of arming themselves and suggesting they have plans to take power by force.

Even if they are grossly exaggerating their numbers and their strength- and they surely are- they would certainly want to fill any power vacuum that might exist, if they could.

Meaning that if we want to live without the State as it currently exists, we will need lots of organization based on good principles- but without the gross hierarchies of the fascists, or the bourgeoisie.

[JackRiddler]

from way back before the critical thinkuisition really got into gear.

in sum, lincoln's war was not a "just war" of emancipation, and the image of it as one is a bit... can't find the word.

*

In sum, it wasn't Lincoln's war at all, but the war of the Confederacy to impose slavery on the rest of the United States, since slavery in the South was possible only by expanding it to the West and by compelling the North to enforce Southern slave laws and give free run to Southern gangs hunting escaped slaves. This is why, after the election of a Republican president pledged to stop the expansion of slavery, but also committed to allowing its preservation in the South, the slave states nevertheless seceded and initiated aggressions against Union troops and facilities. Total war thus became inevitable: had the Union failed to engage then, the Confederacy would have seized and fought over Western territory until a frontal engagement began. In fact, this war was the culmination of a long struggle of the Southern slave-holding comprador elite to impose slavery on the continent, from Canada to Panama with hostilities initiated by Southern-based elements prior to 1860. It was why these self-same elites had initiated a war of aggression and conquest on Mexico just 15 years earlier, so as to seize an enormous new territory and turn it into new slave states. And no aggression in the five years of war can outdo the centuries of continuous aggression practiced daily by this slave-holding elite as a condition for holding down millions of enslaved human beings.

That in itself justifies nothing that the Union did, but seems sorely to be missing from this one-sided tale of Evil Lincoln (who, though evil, was just about to do the right thing after all when the Rothschilds killed him!).

Lincoln: "I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." ... My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.... I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... planations

saying the civil war was fought in order to emancipate slaves is like saying WWII was fought in order to save the jews.

seems to me the fight was over two economic models. that Lincoln's war was not the Just War it is made out to be. looks like business as usual.

is that too sacrilegious?

*

You couldn't pick better examples to show that you are talking past the point I made.

The seceding states started the war. I made a case arguing that they started the war. If you disagree, make a case otherwise. It won't do to pretend you didn't hear me and call it "Lincoln's war" without answering my central point: It wasn't Lincoln's war, it was the slave-states who started it.

The reason they started it was because they saw him as a threat to slavery. Not because he was, but because they saw it that way. It only matters what they thought. They didn't give him a chance to show he was amenable to the preservation of slavery, as your quotes say, and as he begged them to believe. They seceded, then they started the war.

It's the same way some very hard-right anti-communist intel and military elements didn't really care about what Noam Chomsky would eventually think of JFK (i.e., that he was a dedicated anti-communist cold warrior). They thought he was a traitor, and they put the bullet in his head. Not Chomsky. Another example is the people who think Obama is a socialist. Obviously that's a joke. Still, they think it. In the Confederate case, what they thought about Lincoln (that he was anti-slavery) mattered more than what you think about him today. In any case, the Republicans were a threat to the expansion of slavery, that is why they were founded: to stop slavery's expansion. And that would have meant the economic demise of slavery in the middle-run of 20 years or so. You're right that the Republicans did not come to power with the intent of immediate abolition. However, this should tip you off that they also did not come to power with the intent of starting a war for abolition! They came to power with the intent of accelerating the inevitable demise of slavery. Seeing this, the slave states seceded and started the war.

How many different ways should I say it? Just one more, to make sure it's finally acknowledged: I dispute the central premise behind this thread, that Lincoln wanted war and started the war, and no one has yet to argue otherwise.(Ignoring me and continuing to call it "Lincoln's war" is not an argument.)

.

[vanlose kid]

...

You couldn't pick better examples to show that you are talking past the point I made.

...

.

yep!

*