July 4, 1861 -- exactly a hundred and fifty years ago -- witnessed the reading aloud, on the floor of Congress, of Abraham Lincoln's Message to Congress in Special Session.
The circumstantial appeal of Lincoln's message turned on his defense of the Union against the threat posed by secession, and that is the part most people have in mind when they recall the most famous words of the address: "This is essentially a People's contest." Lincoln was speaking for democracy. He was also speaking for a Union, popular in character and progressive in direction, as the heart of all future hopes for democracy.
Another part of the Special Message matters more to us today. For Lincoln saw
an unresolvable tension between the constitution of a democratic republic and
the policies of aggrandizement and intemperate self-interest that lead from the
manners of freedom to the slavish love of power. He spoke of the difference
between the work of establishing a constitutional republic and the longer task
of maintaining it. But maintaining it against what? Lincoln's answer was always
the same: against the internal pressure of greed, and the external pressure of
war. The predicament of the country in 1861, he said, "forces us to ask: 'Is
there, in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness? Must a government,
of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to
maintain its own existence?'"
We are now ten years into a policy shared by two successive administrations
to plant a new understanding of the spirit of the laws in America. That policy
has pretended there is a "trade-off" between liberty and security, and that in
a time of crisis, security ought to have the upper hand. The Cheney-Bush and
Obama administrations have accustomed us to laws and language concerned
above all with the "protection" of citizens -- as if there were something higher
or more worth protecting than the liberty that is guaranteed by our laws and
the framework of laws, the Constitution.
Today, as in Lincoln's day, we are involved in "a struggle for maintaining
...that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate
the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights from all shoulders -- to clear
the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to afford all, an unfettered start, and
a fair chance, in the race of life." Yet the main peril in that struggle today
comes not from any foreign power capable of destroying us from without, but the
lapse of thought and faith that threatens us now from within. We are divided
between two parties: one that thinks government should be used for nothing but
wars, another that thinks government should be used for wars (whether justified
or not) in order to prove the value of government for other purposes.
Over the past decade we have taken many long steps across the divide that
separates a republic from an empire. The recovery of our proper ground depends
on our seeing again the rightness of Lincoln's recoil from wars that are not
wars of necessity. The words of his Special Message leave an incitement, too,
by listing the goods he valued above the new forms of power and luxury that war
can add to life. Elevating the condition of men. Lifting artificial weights from
all shoulders. Clearing the paths of laudable pursuit for all. By doing this at
home, we offer an example to those who would try it abroad. As Lincoln said in
other words in other places, that is the only honest way for a democracy to
advance the cause of democracy.
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Subjects under the American Empire lose valuable rights such as labor rights gained at the expense of reformers.
No serious student of Constitutional law wants to be a mere subject.
In twenty years hence, you will have no rights. See how you like that.
Look, I get it. All Progressives, and many others, want the federal government of the United States to take those however many 100's of B's of $'s and spend that money on entitlements (ie; "Free Stuff"), instead. No convincing case can be constructed upon a falsehood, no matter how "TaDa!" the rhetorical flourish announcing it may be.
America has global obligations, but America no longer has an Empire. We *had* an Empire, briefly, between the end of the Spanish-American War and the end of WWII (or so). We no longer have even that vestige, although our global obligations remain.
Here is the "true truth": at the end of WWII, we assumed responsibility for the external security of West Germany (Russia assumed responsibility for the East side) and we assumed responsibility for the external security of Japan. Not because we were nice guys, but because a) it sorta looked like it was in everyone's best interest, including our own, and b) nobody nobody nobody trusted either Germany or Japan to re-arm so they could defend themselves.
con't below...
Now, the Russian army was in Berlin in 1945, and if we withdraw our 77,000 (most of them in Germnay) from Europe, and if the Germans rearm (which they have little choice but to do, what with traditional foes England, France, and Russia already having done so), you just hide and watch what happens.
And in East Asia, you're invited to pull up a comfortable chair and watch what Red China does if we pull our 50,000+ troops out of Japan and SoKorea and the Japanese reconstitute their regional organic defense capability.
And especially in either of the above cases, which is as likely as not, if either Germany, Japan, much less both, acquire a nuclear capability. Because if they don't, until Russia and China go nuke-free, it's either that or we continue to provide a nuclear umbrella for them.
The Americans who want "More Free Stuff for Americans" won't like this, and I'm sure there will be a lot of arm waving, eye rolling, and spittle in the air, but those are the facts. Progressives use "Empire" as a trump card, but it's a Magic Marker trump card ... doctored, false, a cheat.
We don't need yet another class of nuclear submarines, another carrier task force, or what ever space based boon doggle the USAF and Space Command are dreaming up.
We need to fix our infrastructure and re-industrialize.
Making more and better weapons to export to other countries and despots does not make us safer, only morally bankrupt and one step closer to fascism.
-AJB
I never said a word about the Cold War. It looks like you had a spiel all ready to go and as soon as you saw "nuclear" and "Russia" you unloaded. What I refer to is far older and deeper than the transitory standoff between the USA and the USSR (which you'll notice, if you go back and read what I actually wrote, I never once mentioned). The deeper and far more looming problem for world civil and military stability is how to get Germany and Japan sufficiently rehabilitated in the eyes of Russia and China that they can reconstitute an external defense capability adequate to their, and their regional, needs.
Right now, regardless of how much we are despised, the US is the only power on Earth that is sufficiently trusted by THOSE WHO MATTER (ie; not mobs in the street) to provide external security for a number of problematic nations.
Government spending will never in ten thousand years fix our problem. We've been spending like drunken sailors on every project under the sun for over 30 years, we have a monumental debt that cannot even be calculated to show for it, and zero self-sustaining results.
I will say this in plain words: no plan based on any currently embraced economic theory will return the United States to prosperity.
Not the Republican approach, nor the Democratic approach. We've stopped thinking and now substitute partisan rhetoric for the dialog of investigation.
The issue is whether Empires are that good for the subjects of the Empire. The general rule is that they are not. Applying the facts to the general rule, you would end up with the exact opposite of the conclusions you have drawn.
Bread and Games was used by Empires to entertain the citizens with violent shows and spectacle. Victorian England was not a nice place to be. Neither was Rome. By the time of Augustus, there was no Republic or democracy.
I don't think that's the issue at all. I think the issue is whether the United States has an Empire (ie; is an imperial power) or not. My answer to that is, we scarcely were back then, and we're absolutely not, today.
The United States bears not the slightest resemblance to either the British or the Roman Empire. They RULED THEIR EMPIRES, we SERVE THE WORLD. I'm sorry, but anyone who makes those analogies is being driven by Motivated Reasoning, there is no shred of objective fact that supports it.
"When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny." John Adams
"As riches increase and accumulate in few hands . . . the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard." Alexander Hamilton
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."
- Thomas Jefferson
So you would have been a Tory for the British?
The USA is an oligarchy wrapped in populist Democratic rhettoric. Its like China or other former communist countries that were Oligarchies wrapped in populist communist rhettoric. Do youself a favor and read the wikipedia entry for "neoliberal" - it explains how economic inequality drives political inequality. How the autocratic structure of corporations shapes an autocratic structure for US gov. etc there are plenty of cycles to study but the cycle youre describing is not a climax of democracy.
because Northerners were extremely concerned about the rights of slaves in the South.
Obviously it had nothing to do with the fact that Southern states decided to form their own country.
That was just a confidence.
This forms a really quaint part of American cultural mythology.
The Republicans use unsubstantiated soundbites over and over to delude the people while the Democrats never challenge them.
Immigration exceeds job creation which means we can't lower unemployment when Democrats are so devoted to immigrants that won't even mention this source of the problem. Republicans just want to hire the immigrants.
Our corporations send factories and jobs overseas and keep their profits there to avoid US taxes. All the while we are spending trillions of dollars on our world wide police force to protect those foreign interests of the corporations.
The Media refuses to even mention these and many more malfeasances.
Ben Franklin.
If you sacrifice the protections in the constitution to protect the constitution haven't you already lost the battle?
As Churchill said: "Americans can be trusted to always do the right thing--after they've exhausted all other alternatives."
Especially, when it comes to the oil companies. God forbid, anyone get in the way of their quest to own the world's oil supply, at the expense of our soldiers.
faved
www.freedomfest.com
entirely in behalf of the Military industry who cannot buy the cheaper overseas products.
These US manufacturers could not produce a product that could compete globally and so they need the military and the constant state of war to survive. These companies employ many Americans who vote their interest. And those corporations pay for the politicians that legislate in their interests.
It's the decline of the small manufacturer in the U.S. that's destroyed our economy. They have no politicians speaking for their intersts and little political clout.
When you look at American social and civil history it can easily be seen as one of gradually expanding the reach of the Constitution to all citizens.