America Lost the Civil War With The Lincoln War State

[JackRiddler]

In any case my interest in this thread was offering the counter-narrative that had this war not been fought, Federal fascism would not have triumphed. 150 years of US CORPORATE Imperialism may have not occured.

Oh please. First, agreeing with:

I just don't understand what this quest-for-original-sin thing could possibly avail anyone even if it weren't futile.

But it's a ridiculous statement on so many levels. The seceding states initiated the hostilities. "Had this war not been fought" (i.e., if the Confederacy hadn't started it) then it would have been fought anyway, once secession had begun, because the slave states would have still sought to expand slavery. What's called "federal fascism," which let's call an over-powerful central state with totalizing tendencies, would have happened no matter what, did happen in all these other nations, and in reality was the aim of many of the Constitution's framers in the first place. "US CORPORATE Imperialism" or whatever you want to call it would have been completely unchanged: the southern states were even more "fascist" (repressive and authoritarian) and definitely just as imperialist as the northern (ask Mexico, Nicaragua et al.).

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[compared2what?]

With the Civil War everything changed for the worse and gave rise to the illegal CORPORATE UNITED STATES. Reading writers from that period one is struck by the sentiment-as expressed by Mary Chestnut in her Civil War diary-that the Northern remanant simply wished to impose it's value system by force-as the old US had previously done with the Mormons.

And the Native Americans. And the Mexicans. And slaves. And freed slaves. And, episodically, women and Catholics.

^
That's not even a comprehensive list. But quite apart from it:

The United States of America is an enterprise that was originated by Puritans, ffs. Imposing value systems by force is in its DNA.

[publius]

And had the force of the Civil War not occured, it would be different DNA.

[compared2what?]

And had the force of the Civil War not occured, it would be different DNA.

I know! You're a zombie, aren't you?

Hail to you, my undead brain-eating brother!

I love zombies.

[publius]

Jack, did the North have the "right" to smash the South? Where does this right arise? Do you disagree that the South had the legal right to leave the Union? Why did they not have that right?

[publius]

C2W, I am not a lover of militarism. Have you read Simone Weil?

"The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations to force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it thinks it could direct, as bent under the weight of the force it is subjected to. Those who had dreamed that force, thanks to progress, now belonged to the past, were able to see in the poem an historical document; those who can discern force, today as before, at the very center of human history, find in it the most beautiful, purest of mirrors."

~Simone Weil,

[compared2what?]

C2W, I am not a lover of militarism.

I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

[JackRiddler]

Jack, did the North have the "right" to smash the South? Where does this right arise? Do you disagree that the South had the legal right to leave the Union? Why did they not have that right?

The South was always in a state of war on the enslaved population. Southern settlers brought slavery into Texas and eventually started a war to seize half of Mexico. The South engaged in hostilities for years to expand slavery into the West, and finally the South started the Civil War -- not by seceding but by initiating the aggression. All this I've shown above, and you have yet to respond except by repeating your fantasy statements about how all bad things (including 150 years of "fascism") came from Lincoln.

publius, unfortunately you have the right to continue ignoring what I've already written repeatedly on this thread, but I don't have to answer such clearly misleading questions. In the real world, you need to ask yourself the exact opposite to your questions: "Did the South have the right to use force in its attempt to extend slavery into Kansas and New Mexico? Did the South have the right to expect enforcement of its slavery codes in non-slave states? Where did these rights of the slave states against the non-slave states arise? Do you agree that the South had a legal right to fire on Union troops? Why did they have that right?" Etc.

[publius]

Nor am I undead. All things considered no birth, no death.

Just another hippie from San Francisco By The Sea down on his luck sitting in front of a computer pondering the imbecility of man unkind.

[publius]

Okay. Jack let us try this again. The UNION had legal slavery from it's inception.

Secondly, yes a new nation seeking to exercise it's rights against a hostile power will if feasible take action to seize the military fortifications of the hostile power.

Lincoln engineered a war.

Salvery was not the cause of war, money was the cause of war. If the South had accepted the Republican tariff no Civil War. Now it is quite possible that a new state, say New Mexico, could have had slavery imported with the South still in the Union. It is not however a war over slavery that we are discussing. The issue is money. Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union and he wanted Tariff money.

The politics of the Democrats losing that specific election to Lincoln and following that Republican victory a large tariff and tax dollars directed to the North and not the South was motivation for secession. The rights of black people as a reason for martial law, war dictatorship, and total war is propaganda politics.

[compared2what?]

Jack, did the North have the "right" to smash the South? Where does this right arise? Do you disagree that the South had the legal right to leave the Union? Why did they not have that right?

It's not really a question of legal rights. The Confederate states knew that there was a risk of war when they seceded. After that, at a minimum, they sure didn't do anything to try to avoid it. And that's to say nothing of (useless as I know it is for me to say so) their having started it.

Under those circumstances: You pays your money and takes your chances.

As far as it goes, though....There's a somewhat better case against legal secession than there is for it, imo. However, neither is overwhelmingly persuasive. And anyway, moot point. There was a risk of war. Then there was a war.

[compared2what?]

Nor am I undead. All things considered no birth, no death.

You're a ROBOT??

[publius]

I agree in part and disagree in part. Secession was part of the Virginia constitution. Lincoln early is his political career thought it was legal. Force made it illegal. So, this brings up the question of Macht Politik. Both sections of the nation had fire eaters who wanted war. Both sections of the nation had many who did not want war. Lincoln campaigned on a war ticket. No surpise that he got his war.
=====
Not a robot.
A collection of sermons and dialogues recorded by P’ei Hsiu while in the city of Chun Chou.

The Master said to me: All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measure, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you - begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full aeon, they will not be able to attain it. They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifest in the Buddhas.

[Hammer of Los]

...

My goodness!

My dear Publius!

The pure mind doctrine is my absolute fave!

Know you the secret of the cornucopia?

Who knows?

Who?

With what is the empty vessel filled?

Ha ha!


Er sorry. Is that enough zen koans for one day? I guess it is. My bath is getting cold!







ps I do so love to come into agreement. Don't you?



...

[Sounder]

publius wrote...

asking searchingly, deeply, why we support these wars at all when we know not one of them helps and all hurt.

It would seem that many folk do ask this question, however it is the answer that comes all too quickly, and the strident holding to that answer that gives motivation for the next war.

If we do not support war, why such a large outlay for war?

Even the normative outlook says it does not support war, but structurally of course it requires war.

Do we really consent or is it simply custom?

We both consent and some like you may also spend effort to change the custom.

If custom, when did this arise?

Way back, but in modern terms it happened when intellectual structures were formalized that tended to require a mediator between the common man and a far off “God” (say, Consul of Nicaea time). This allowed for justification of an already existing vertical authority distribution system, the nature of which is maintenance through coercion.

Once upon a time, say 25 years ago, I limited my thinking to World War I and its back story. Somewhat later I realized with a shock that the great prototype war was the Civil War.

You need more shock in your life.

With the Civil War everything changed for the worse and gave rise to the illegal CORPORATE UNITED STATES.

Perhaps it did, but repeating a set of words without adding details runs the risk of creating more empty forms or rhetoric.

Reading writers from that period one is struck by the sentiment-as expressed by Mary Chestnut in her Civil War diary-that the Northern remanant simply wished to impose it's value system by force-as the old US had previously done with the Mormons.

Yeah, any talk about the need for legislated social conformity can be a real touchy subject.

But Mormons? I think as a percentage there are more Mormons doing govt. work than any other denomination. I heard that many ‘special op’ folk are Mormon cause of their language skills. I’m just glad that it’s the Catholics that really run things.

We being mimetic creatures create our own social conformity and might do well to consider a new psychical condition system that starts by assuming the best from the creative impulse rather than assuming the worst (about the nature of both man and the material).