Admittedly, there were a few things I was willing to believe before seeing this, while still thinking overall it couldn't have been THAT bad. But after seeing only half of that video, and the clips he uses for making the point, now everything is up in the air. Because these are things you'd NEVER hear in school.
There are a lot of things Razorfist says that you will not hear in school so I knew what to expect watching that video but for a guy that is new to this whole red pill and waking up, it's gotta be outrageous. Even me that are used to this sort of revelation, didn't expect it to be this bad.
I knew Lincoln's anti-slavery pretenses were bullshit and that the war was ostensibly about taxing the south, but god damn, I was still not prepared for some of this shit.
I've said this forever: States Rights and Slavery are the same issue. It's States Rights about Slavery. Slavery was the cultural touchstone of the time, the Industrial Revolution's economic consequences around slavery fed into the problem. It was an issue during the founding of the constitution, and it only got worse as industrialization made slavery as an economic activity preposterously stupid. It's all kind of jumbled up into one massive morass. It's like saying: "Our modern cultural divisions are about the Left's over-financialization of the global economy. That has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism!" That's just wrong. It's not one or the other. Fabian Socialists are using the financialization of the economy as a mechanism to control it in order to enact Socialism. It's the same issue. On a similar point, yes: it's about taxes, tariffs, industrialization, federal centralization, Hamiltonian v. Jeffersonian philosophy, which inform States Rights... which falls into the power of Slaveocratic rule by the plantation south, the mass immigration they initiated, the protectionism they gave themselves, and the broader abolitionist movement that would have destroyed their economic order. It's the same issue..
And as we know, if you are using your rights for a bad thing then your rights should be stripped away by any means necessary. War, suffering, precedence that will cause problems for centuries are all justified if you did a naughty with the rights allowed to you. Alternative measures and long term planning be damned, just stomp right in and force them to play by your rules for how you think rights should be used.
After all, why would anyone use the First Amendment to say nigger or other hate speech? Those rights shouldn't be allowed to be used that way either!
Shocking, but not really. But then, when you come into a conversation so assured of how right you are you just copypasta yourself, its to be expected to be closed minded.
I'm sorry man, I just don't know how your comment follows from mine. I feel like you must have misunderstood something. You're being sarcastic about the 1st Amendment, but I don't know why.
Even this comment is a bit confusing. Are you saying I'm closed-minded, or your closed minded? "It's expected" doesn't clarify whom you're talking about. I'm seeing one of two possible statements: "If you do X, you should expect others to be closed minded" or "If you do X, I expect you to be closed minded".
I grant you that I'm being a little lazy by carbon-copying my own post, but I literally just wrote the parent comment for way too long, and it already contained everything I already said. I was going to end up adding the same words and ideas but in a different order.
And yeah, I am pretty sure I'm right about my interpretation, that's why I have it.
It follows because you wrote that State's Rights and Slavery are the same issue. I made a direct comparison to a modern day talking point, which is that Leftists say that all Free Speech whining is just people who want to say nigger. Aka "just the same issue." Which then means its far easier to justify all actions taken, because you've simplified it down to "only bad people care about this problem."
I called you closed minded because you were so self assured and high on your own "I'm smarter than everyone else" you don't even respond to a person, you just copy paste yourself.
Like I said, I wasn't going to write anything different than what I had already said but in a different order. That's not self-assured, it's just a bit lazy.
Leftists say that all Free Speech whining is just people who want to say nigger. Aka "just the same issue." Which then means its far easier to justify all actions taken, because you've simplified it down to "only bad people care about this problem."
Well, there's two problems there. Saying nigger is included in Free Speech, not the same subject. I'm saying States Rights regarding Slavery is the issue culturally, legally, and otherwise. The Leftists, as you note, are using it as a smear generally. I'm not using it as a smear because States Rights regarding Slavery involves both the Abolitionists arguing for total abolition and violating the south's state power on regulating slavery, the north arguing for a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act (which was a violation of the free state's power on regulating slavery in their borders), and the south's argument that slavery should be perpetually expanded (because the restriction of slavery's expansion would weak their political and economic power generally) and that the feds couldn't regulate it unless it was in their favor..
This is the whole point, everybody argued their state's rights were already violated, and everybody argued that it had been violated regarding the legalization, abolition, or restriction of slavery. Then everybody proceeded to violate those state rights and tell everybody else to get fucked. No one being honest can argue that anyone, north or south, was for resisting federal power because both sides had been using and abusing federal power to their hearts content for decades. Like all bubbles, the commodity expands and concentrates until the whole bubble pops all at once. In this case, you had a power bubble that burst into a civil war because no one wanted to compromise, and no one wanted to settle.
Who said Lincoln cared about the slaves beyond hoping for slave revolts? The Baptist Church didn't split over tariffs. It split over Slavery. There was a moral argument about slavery that had been ongoing since the very beginning of the country and earlier.
Secession was partly about slavery. The war was not.
Although the South stupidly shot first after being incited into it, the war was pressed by the North for Lincoln's reasons. Since secession is the right of a free people, the war and it's causes can only be laid at the feet of the federal government. The confederacy's motivations aren't needed.
I think you missed my point but I don't know how better to explain it than the middle sentence I already wrote. Sure if you are analyzing things from a war historian's perspective then it's important to know the full context and what motivated both sides leading up to it for 100 years. If one is simply asking "was the civil war fought over slavery?" then conflating that with secession muddies the waters and causes us to talk past each other. As Lincoln's war, it's only necessary to look at his political concerns and writings to answer the question.
I don't disagree so long as we are contextualizing the question.
"Was slavery the central issue to Lincoln's War?" No. Hell no. Obviously. No argument exists to say that slavery was the primary motivator in Lincoln's decision making regarding a military response to secession. In fact, propaganda efforts on both sides were made to specifically identify it as a "White Man's War", that blacks shouldn't even be involved in.
But, objectively, was slavery the central issue to the American Civil War? I would say yes. If the issue of slavery was already settled, would the American Civil War have even happened? No, I don't think so. Best you might get was a small scale conflict, but the issue of slavery was broiling the culture to a fever pitch, and had been doing so for decades. Economics, taxes, tariffs, central government control, all of these played a part and could certainly caused a secession crisis, but in both previous crises, neither resulted in the death of 2% of the population of the US.
So yeah, if we're speaking clearly about what our context is, then our statements make sense.
I can even admit that slavery was indirectly a cause from Lincoln's side. The abolitionists were a strong political faction, so some of what he did was playing to that bloc despite thinking they were fools.
Most of what he says is denotative true, but there's a few things are wrong.
First, he says that troops from Fredricksburg were sent to quell the draft riots. That was Gettysburg. That's a misidentification.
Second, he mentioned that the Union forces were being destroyed by the Confederates with some minor victories. Meh, the Eastern Theater was going sideways, but that was mostly thanks to McClellan being an idiot. Yeah, Lincoln micromanaged a bit, that's because McClellan failed to even attack a Confederate force of maybe 12,000 with over 180,000 troops for months. Union generals repeatedly lost battles and withdrew. Grant is described as murderous to his own troops, but most of them supported him because he kept attacking even when he lost, meaning that the Union forces would still gain ground, even when they lost battles. The Confederacy basically never had any chance to win the Civil War once the US Navy up-ended their blockade of Chesapeake Bay, tactically. George McClellan was the only chance they actually had at winning, had he won an election, he would have sued for peace. He got BTFO'd in the election (though that election wasn't exactly "clean" by any measure, even on a philosophical basis: hey, if the rebel states didn't leave, can't they still vote in that election?)
Third, he said that the South was the economic powerhouse of the country. Not really. They were. The Civil War took place during the Industrial Revolution. The Northern states' industries were incredibly powerful, but we hadn't reached the Guilded Age power levels yet. The South's lack of rail infrastructure, and lack of industrialization meant that a war economy was utterly inept compared to the North's. The South didn't believe that, and were warned that a war of secession would go badly, and really thought they'd be likely to win. Instead, the plantation & slave economy of the south is basically proof of how retarded it had gotten. By the time of the 1860's, slaves were being trained to run, fix, and maintain cotton gins, and early proto-tractors. Industrialized agriculture was beginning and would have utterly eradicated slavery anyway, but the South just couldn't fucking fathom plantations without slaves. They even tried to burn their own stockpiles of cotton to drive up the price, only to have France and Britain build non-slave cotton fields in Africa and India respectively, meaning the south literally set it's own economy on fire for no reason.
Fourth, he mentioned that the South felt unrepresented. Yes, they did, but it also wasn't exactly true. For the past 100 years, political power reigned almost entirely within the South, maybe Virginia specifically. Yes, there was a conspiracy of northern, industrialist, pro-tariff, Hamiltonians in seeking to seize power from the plantation south. This had been an ongoing fight that had lasted decades already. But that doesn't mean that the South was out of power. Lincoln may have gotten the war he wanted, but he was elected because of the shit that southern plantation owners had been doing to expand slavery even when it wasn't wanted. This is best shown in Bleeding Kansas, where Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and a host of other slave states, basically sent troops and militants into Kansas to start an insurrection with the population because the settlers didn't want slavery in their state. In order to preserve the power of the slave states, the south invaded and the fighting continued into the civil war, until Topeka was raised to the fucking ground. We can also point out that the Fugitive Slave Law, and it's ratification by the Supreme Court, was a desperate attempt to permanently institutionalize slavery, even in the north, where it was illegal in many states. I've ranted about the Fugitive Slave Law before, but it's a wild violation of constitutional authority, and an eradication of states rights pushed by the south. But, like Razor said, the south doesn't have to be good, for Lincoln to be bad. The unfortunate truth is, the Jeffersonian Republic that Thomas envisioned was already dead by the 1850's. This is what the Industrial Revolution just kind of does.
Fifth, I don't know about the accusations of mass rapes by Union troops. There's no question they looted, burned, and pillaged. That was intentional. Rape specifically? I just haven't heard accusations like that that are confirmed by anything. It's kind of like accusations of open murder. There is no evidence that Union troops went out, lined people up against walls, and shot them one by one. The Civil War is actually most remarkable in that it has some of the fewest civilian casualties of any American war. The entire battle of Gettysburg killed one civilian. One. She was outside and was accidentally shot by a stray round as the armies were moving through the town. Yes, Atlanta, Charleston, and Columbia were entirely raised, but deaths were very few, if any at all. Frankly, Reconstruction killed a hell of a lot more civilians than the Civil War did. But rapes specifically? It's just not something I've seen documented or testified to. I know how Sherman talked, and he absolutely destroyed everything he touched except the people. That doesn't mean that they might not have died in the winter, or gone through rough hardships, but when it comes to American commanders that are serial killers, Curtis LeMay still tops Sherman by a lot.
Sixth, I've said this forever, States Rights and Slavery are the same issue. It's States Rights about Slavery. Slavery was the cultural touchstone of the time, the Industrial Revolution's economic consequences around slavery fed into the problem. It was an issue during the founding of the constitution, and it only got worse as industrialization made slavery as an economic activity preposterously stupid. It's all kind of jumbled up into one massive morass. It's like saying: "Our modern cultural divisions are about the Left's over-financialization of the global economy. That has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism!" That's just wrong. It's not one or the other. Fabian Socialists are using the financialization of the economy as a mechanism to control it in order to enact Socialism. It's the same issue. On a similar point, yes: it's about taxes, tariffs, industrialization, federal centralization, Hamiltonian v. Jeffersonian philosophy, which inform States Rights... which falls into the power of Slaveocratic rule by the plantation south, the mass immigration they initiated, the protectionism they gave themselves, and the broader abolitionist movement that would have destroyed their economic order. It's the same issue..
Maybe post all this in a YT comment? Or some of it. Most of the comments criticizing RazorFist are the really stupid LINCOLN GOOD SOUTH BAD variety. He has replied to a few point-by-point refutations in the comments already. It might inspire him to make a Part 2 video.
And about the events leading up to the war...
political power reigned almost entirely within the South
a conspiracy of northern, industrialist, pro-tariff, Hamiltonians in seeking to seize power
sent troops and militants into Kansas to start an insurrection with the population because the settlers didn't want slavery in their state
a desperate attempt to permanently institutionalize slavery, even in the north, where it was illegal in many states
the Jeffersonian Republic ... was already dead by the 1850's
It sounds like instead of states with wildly different value systems vying for control of an empire, having two separate nations would have been better for both sides.
To be honest, his issue is mostly a little bit of lost nuance, and a few perceptive issues, but other than that all I can tell him is that his fundamental point about the video is entirely correct.
None of my criticisms even approach a refutation of that, because he's not wrong.
If any American president in the modern era declared "War Powers" they'd be called a dictator to. In fact, they were. Several US governors enacted the equivalent of "War Powers" by just asserting that a medical emergency gave them unlimited gubernatorial fiat to suspend protests, empty jails, and create massive fines. Some even tried to instantiate intra-state hard borders. These are dictatorial powers. The fact that Lincoln pulled the same shit Cuomo did, tells me that yes these are dictatorial powers.
That's entirely regarding the Civil War itself. Just his War Powers doctrine is dictatorial, and is objectively unconstitutional by every legal analysis. Even FDR, LBJ, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon never pulled that shit. Even they needed to go to congress to allow them to engage in "Peacekeeping Operations" or to "prosecute foreign conflicts to the benefit of the interests of the US". You can't just declare war powers and claim that you have unlimited authority until you are removed from power by an election. That's some fucking Caesar level rationalization there. In fact, Caesar (formally) had less.
To become literal dictator for 10 years, a Proconsol would have to have his Dicatatorship ratified by the Senate. Caesar only did that after he seized Rome, defeated Pompey, removed most of the Senate, and had Cesareans declare him Dictator Perpetuo well after all public dissent had been crushed, including a kind of cucked Cicero who failed to stop him.
... until he was assassinated 11 days later.
Lincoln had those powers for years.
It sounds like instead of states with wildly different value systems vying for control of an empire,
It was. That's the saddest part. Despite Americans having heroic tales from both sides of the war, there were no good guys. The Constitution was dead with the Dredd Scott decision; Chief Justice Taney and President Buchanan had guaranteed that, even while Kansas burned. The Radical Republicans had no concern for mollifying the political upheaval. The Southern Democrats had no interest in compromising on any issue regarding slavery, and wanted to maintain the political power they'd always had. The Whigs were quickly vanishing, and the only politicians that seemed legitimate were the ones claiming they would explicitly "Do Nothing", regardless of what happened politically.
having two separate nations would have been better, or no worse, for both sides.
I kinda think that if the Confederates had split off, they would devolved into infighting, economically failed, and re-integrated to the union by the time WW1 took place.
I kinda think that if the Confederates had split off, they would devolved into infighting, economically failed, and re-integrated to the union by the time WW1 took place.
Without a navy or access to rail and ports, the South would have been utterly vulnerable to navel blockade, privateers or even pirate action. Their markets were across the biggest stretch of open water in the world. The South would have instantly been made a banana republic, and been at the mercy of any power with a fleet.
The Union would have been fools not to punish the shit out of the confederacy with a trade embargo. It would have strengthened the Union financial centers and consolidated the Union's own domestic market, helping to speed along industrialization.
I do not think that things would have been better for anyone to postpone a conflict.
And as the video states, every Confederate state that listed slavery as a reason were owned by former Whigs. Shitheads like you are no different to braindead atheists who claim "all war is the result of religion, man" and end up (at best) reducing a complex issue to an infantile understanding of the issues and (at worst) end up spreading outright falsehoods that further retard people's understanding of the issue.
Whig subversion doesn't change the fact that the Confederacy was desperately hanging on to the institution of slavery regardless of the negative effects on it's economy or people, and that institution of slavery was the basis of their political elites and economic system. And it was still a major cultural and religious argument in the US.
reducing a complex issue to an infantile understanding
I've been saying the opposite.
You can't remove slavery from the list of causes. Just like you can't remove States Rights from the list of causes. It's the same problem.
You can't claim that the problem with modern society is Globalization, but not Cultural Marxism.
I appreciate this. You remind me of my old history teacher and I always enjoyed reading the complexities of history and not pop culture remakes even if most of my classmates hated it.
I used to agree with Razor's take here, but a couple years ago I had this epiphany: The South were all ran by Democrats. So if you assume for a second that the bastards behaved in the same lying, ultra manipulative, maliciously-complying, gaslighting and backstabbing bullshit ways as they do today, then it becomes understandable exactly why Lincoln had to behave the way he did. Pretend for a moment that Southern California and Portland just announced they were seceding from the Union over tranny rights or some equally hot bullshit social cause cause. Imagine how corrupt and rigged and slimy everything around it would be, and how much overbearing force and bullshitting of our own it would take to rip that crap out by the roots and end it.
And tell me the Dems there wouldn't spend the next hundred years whining about it as "muh glorious lost cause." You know they would. So today, even knowing what Razor is on about I cut Lincoln a whole lot of slack.
If you want a simplification the powerful slave owners who were a minority mostly cared for their bottom line which necessitated slavery remaining legal which meant states had to be able to declare their own laws outside if those solely invested in federal government by the constitution the same but opposite for the factory owners of the north. Everyone else had a myriad of interests including just basic freedom from a segment of the country that to this day views them as undignified hicks deserving to be mocked.
Yes, because holding an election cancels out having soldiers storm into a statehouse and arrest 1/3 of a state legislature. Lincoln is easily in the top 3 authoritarian US presidents, alongside FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
As Kienan put it in another comment, if you want to argue over whether or not Lincoln was justified we can do that, but he basically used the constitution as toilet paper. Go watch the video, you'll almost certainly learn quite a few things.
Yes, because holding an election cancels out having soldiers storm into a statehouse and arrest 1/3 of a state legislature.
Whether you think it's justified or not, acting against a state legislature doesn't make him a dictator.
Lincoln is easily in the top 3 authoritarian US presidents, alongside FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
Anything else they had in common?
he basically used the constitution as toilet paper.
Which parts? Actually, I think he did make the argument that it was justified, by saying that it's better to violate a part of it than that the whole should die.
Go watch the video, you'll almost certainly learn quite a few things.
I doubt it, and I don't think he's objective. It seems none of the people who did watch it were able to come up with compelling arguments, so there's that.
Whether you think it's justified or not, acting against a state legislature doesn't make him a dictator.
Well, that flat out proves you're not objective and any further discussion is pointless. I don't think there's anything you'd accept as a (as you put it) "compelling argument" short of getting a time machine and recording a video of Lincoln twirling an evil mustache and laughing maniacally about how he is now the king of the US, since all your responses to people giving have been "Well, he was justified!" or "Well, Stalin was worse!". What do you want to see?
I don't think there's anything you'd accept as a (as you put it) "compelling argument" short of getting a time machine and recording a video of Lincoln twirling an evil mustache and laughing maniacally about how he is now the king of the US
Wait, so it's not objective to... not waste your time on someone who is not objective? Come on.
since all your responses to people giving have been "Well, he was justified!" or "Well, Stalin was worse!". What do you want to see?
If you claim that he was a 'dictator', I expect something establishing that.
But most of the responses are in the tune of "he did some bad things". Well, then argue that instead of the hyperventilation!
And what do you think qualifies someone as being a dictator? Because you have said that arresting people without charge, sending the army marching into statehouses, shutting down hostile press and exiling political opponents does not. So, what is the cutoff in your mind?
Eh, I'm far from fully informed on the issue, but there was a lot of sketchy shit. He did some things right, but plenty wrong and, yes, he was pretty dictatorial. He went out of his way to punish and instigate pre-war, and he actively went against past treaties and the Constitution to try to "keep the country together."
I'm not here to wave a Confederate flag or anything, but the South should have been allowed to secede, and friendly relations should have been attempted instead of a bloody civil war. Also, he was far from kind to black people, luring escaped slaves in with promises of freedom before drafting them to go back and fight, and the like. Now, I admit to my biases, and this is certainly my very small government lolbertarian coming out, but yeah, I think the war could have been avoided instead of stoked, and I think slavery would have faded out on its own anyway.
We can argue over whether or not Lincoln was justified, but I think he was pretty clearly a dictator.
We can argue over whether or not Lincoln was justified, but I think he was pretty clearly a dictator.
Almost all Lincoln love is based on hindsight. If he had failed then history would have seen many of these flaws as his primary traits. But because he won, the South was mega evil, all actions against them justified, and he is ultra saint because slavery and shit.
And truly, slavery could have and likely would have ended entirely without his actions within time as the entire global market was shifting against it. But instead we now still have a broken South dragging the country down and a race problem that has no end, entirely as a result of his methodology.
It's funny because the same people that whine about how other countries are only bad off because the US government attacked them have zero problem mocking the south even though we are their fellow countrymen
I agree Lincoln is wrongly deified in American culture but I still think the real villains were the abolitionists.
Important to understand that it would have been possible to avoid civil war and end slavery by having the federal government purchase and free all slaves. But abolitionists wouldn't have that, they didn't want slaveowners to be rewarded. They wanted the entire south dead, and they were going to get a war with or without Lincoln. To what extent Lincoln worsened or lessened the bloodthirst of the north is up for debate.
To his credit, when he realized the same banks funded the north and south (and he had to pay all the debts) he printed his own currency any paid them with that. The banks were furious, and a short while later he was dead.
Yeah, Brazil, which was colonized by some Confederates, showed very clearly that Slavery could be ended with compensation and regulation over time. It took longer, but 2% of their population wasn't killed.
Real Politik says that if the foundation of a countries economy tries to secede, the response is one of force.
Economic wealth comes from the value-add step of production / distribution. You create wealth by getting something, then turn it into something that is sold for more.
This is always isolated by geography. 40% of the Iron Ore in the world comes from Australia. Most of that comes from WA. Most of that comes from a few mines.
If WA tries to take their dominance over the global Iron and Steel market, and just fuck off... well the answer is simple. Roll in tanks, crush the resistance then promptly set about addressing the genuine issues that the Western Australians have, so that they don't want to do it again.
You can make parallel examples using industrial production in Germany. Germany is one of the three biggest economies in Europe. The vast majority of their wealth comes from a few provinces that take cheap Russian gas and turn it into manufactured goods in sophisticated factories. If those provinces decide to just leave, the economy of Germany will implode overnight.
The Art of War says: To win without fighting is best. There was plenty of time to address the real and genuine concerns of the south. Failing that, the solution was to break them with military force and then fix the pieces.
At that juncture the alternative was to cede half the union and then have a hostile power on the southern border; which would have been untenable. It would have lead directly to military build-up and an even bigger war within 50 years.
The short answer is because of the same reasons the south was unhappy before the Civil war.
Access to road and port infrastructure. Lack of a Navy or merchant navy. Taxes on their goods and trade.
Border security would have been a nightmare, and it would have lead to escalating smuggling etc. as the Union would have attempted to impose tariffs and duties.
Both the North and the South would be required to arm and send troops to the border to guard them.
Add to the fact that slaves running to the Union would have immediately become free... and you have a volatile political situation.
We won't know what would have happened, but at the very least it would have set a precedent for splitting the union further every time that a state or group of states got upset.
Funny you should mention WA and secession because there's always been a simmering desire for it here, and they voted 60/40 for it in the 1930s. It wasn't accepted by England and then labor (note the unaustralian spelling of the party's name) came into power and squashed it.
They did do as you suggested to some degree, in that they solved some of the issues with a more equitable share of gov funds going to WA. And when WA's share of those same funds (largely generated by that mining you mentioned) plummeted again in 2010 or so and they tried to put in a mining tax, that is when you saw a burgeoning resurgence of those secessionist views.
The other states close down or throttle their mines and their (tasmania) lumber industries. Fine. That's their choice. But they shouldn't then get to take money from WA mines, is the reasonable WA viewpoint viewpoint. No mooching.
If WA tries to take their dominance over the global Iron and Steel market, and just fuck off... well the answer is simple. Roll in tanks, crush the resistance
This is a description you can use for literally everyone in history.
he was pretty dictatorial.
If you can name me one leader in a (civil) war who was less 'dictatorial', that'd be great.
He went out of his way to punish and instigate pre-war, and he actively went against past treaties and the Constitution to try to "keep the country together."
How? I like how the anti-Lincoln folks simultaneously bash him for supporting the amendment to guarantee slavery where it already existed (which wouldn't change anything), and also say that he was war-mongering.
I'm not here to wave a Confederate flag or anything
There's nothing wrong with that either. In fact, from a European POV, I'd have preferred that the Confederates had won, because we wouldn't have been subjugated under the yoke of a unified America with no regional rivals.
and friendly relations should have been attempted instead of a bloody civil war.
And he did, until the Confederates made the major mistake of attacking Fort Sumter. Even people who support the Confederates should admit that this was a major mistake.
Also, he was far from kind to black people, luring escaped slaves in with promises of freedom before drafting them to go back and fight, and the like.
Were they actually forced to fight?
Now, I admit to my biases, and this is certainly my very small government lolbertarian coming out
That I actually completely understand, although it is my understanding that there was not that much of a watershed in federal power after the Civil War. Hell, the Republicans could not even enforce civil rights in the south.
We can argue over whether or not Lincoln was justified, but I think he was pretty clearly a dictator.
That's fine to discuss, but let's stick to the topic. During World War II, Britain did not even hold elections, because.... there was a war going on. So it's pretty great to have elections in the middle of a (civil) war.
An election where ballots that didn't vote for him were color-coded and held in "special storage" (i.e. the garbage bin). And that was only Northern votes, his own side, for obvious reasons. Election Fortification™ at its finest.
Everything we were taught was a lie? It was always been.
Admittedly, there were a few things I was willing to believe before seeing this, while still thinking overall it couldn't have been THAT bad. But after seeing only half of that video, and the clips he uses for making the point, now everything is up in the air. Because these are things you'd NEVER hear in school.
There are a lot of things Razorfist says that you will not hear in school so I knew what to expect watching that video but for a guy that is new to this whole red pill and waking up, it's gotta be outrageous. Even me that are used to this sort of revelation, didn't expect it to be this bad.
Idk about you but I was taught about it in high school and college. My undergrad degree is traditionally conservative though
Video unavailable
Sorry guys, wasn't expecting that would happen here, but the link should take you to the video on YT.
https://rumble.com/v25kg0j-abraham-lincoln-american-dictator.html
Just use a platform that isn't cocks-in-both-eye-sockets fucked.
That's an uploader setting.
Ooh, exciting. Can't wait to watch/listen. He kept saying he'd do it, and now it's here.
Nice, I was waiting for this since he started dropping hints about Lincoln in other videos.
Glad I watched this one, holy shit.
I knew Lincoln's anti-slavery pretenses were bullshit and that the war was ostensibly about taxing the south, but god damn, I was still not prepared for some of this shit.
Eh. I'll copypasta what I already wrote:
I've said this forever: States Rights and Slavery are the same issue. It's States Rights about Slavery. Slavery was the cultural touchstone of the time, the Industrial Revolution's economic consequences around slavery fed into the problem. It was an issue during the founding of the constitution, and it only got worse as industrialization made slavery as an economic activity preposterously stupid. It's all kind of jumbled up into one massive morass. It's like saying: "Our modern cultural divisions are about the Left's over-financialization of the global economy. That has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism!" That's just wrong. It's not one or the other. Fabian Socialists are using the financialization of the economy as a mechanism to control it in order to enact Socialism. It's the same issue. On a similar point, yes: it's about taxes, tariffs, industrialization, federal centralization, Hamiltonian v. Jeffersonian philosophy, which inform States Rights... which falls into the power of Slaveocratic rule by the plantation south, the mass immigration they initiated, the protectionism they gave themselves, and the broader abolitionist movement that would have destroyed their economic order. It's the same issue..
And as we know, if you are using your rights for a bad thing then your rights should be stripped away by any means necessary. War, suffering, precedence that will cause problems for centuries are all justified if you did a naughty with the rights allowed to you. Alternative measures and long term planning be damned, just stomp right in and force them to play by your rules for how you think rights should be used.
After all, why would anyone use the First Amendment to say nigger or other hate speech? Those rights shouldn't be allowed to be used that way either!
I don't know what this has to do with my comment.
Shocking, but not really. But then, when you come into a conversation so assured of how right you are you just copypasta yourself, its to be expected to be closed minded.
I'm sorry man, I just don't know how your comment follows from mine. I feel like you must have misunderstood something. You're being sarcastic about the 1st Amendment, but I don't know why.
Even this comment is a bit confusing. Are you saying I'm closed-minded, or your closed minded? "It's expected" doesn't clarify whom you're talking about. I'm seeing one of two possible statements: "If you do X, you should expect others to be closed minded" or "If you do X, I expect you to be closed minded".
I grant you that I'm being a little lazy by carbon-copying my own post, but I literally just wrote the parent comment for way too long, and it already contained everything I already said. I was going to end up adding the same words and ideas but in a different order.
And yeah, I am pretty sure I'm right about my interpretation, that's why I have it.
It follows because you wrote that State's Rights and Slavery are the same issue. I made a direct comparison to a modern day talking point, which is that Leftists say that all Free Speech whining is just people who want to say nigger. Aka "just the same issue." Which then means its far easier to justify all actions taken, because you've simplified it down to "only bad people care about this problem."
I called you closed minded because you were so self assured and high on your own "I'm smarter than everyone else" you don't even respond to a person, you just copy paste yourself.
Like I said, I wasn't going to write anything different than what I had already said but in a different order. That's not self-assured, it's just a bit lazy.
Well, there's two problems there. Saying nigger is included in Free Speech, not the same subject. I'm saying States Rights regarding Slavery is the issue culturally, legally, and otherwise. The Leftists, as you note, are using it as a smear generally. I'm not using it as a smear because States Rights regarding Slavery involves both the Abolitionists arguing for total abolition and violating the south's state power on regulating slavery, the north arguing for a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act (which was a violation of the free state's power on regulating slavery in their borders), and the south's argument that slavery should be perpetually expanded (because the restriction of slavery's expansion would weak their political and economic power generally) and that the feds couldn't regulate it unless it was in their favor..
This is the whole point, everybody argued their state's rights were already violated, and everybody argued that it had been violated regarding the legalization, abolition, or restriction of slavery. Then everybody proceeded to violate those state rights and tell everybody else to get fucked. No one being honest can argue that anyone, north or south, was for resisting federal power because both sides had been using and abusing federal power to their hearts content for decades. Like all bubbles, the commodity expands and concentrates until the whole bubble pops all at once. In this case, you had a power bubble that burst into a civil war because no one wanted to compromise, and no one wanted to settle.
How about you make an actual point or (gasp) respond to an actual point; rather than being a sarcastic, insulting blow-hard?
You might actually enlighten people in the audience.
I thought my point was quite obvious. Maybe if those people can't figure it out, they aren't smart enough to be worth enlightening.
If that's the case, why is there no evidence that lincoln gave a single solitary fuck about slaves?
Why did Europe succeed in buying out all its slave owners while in the US, massive war had to be fought?
Why is the taxation not mentioned?
Who said Lincoln cared about the slaves beyond hoping for slave revolts? The Baptist Church didn't split over tariffs. It split over Slavery. There was a moral argument about slavery that had been ongoing since the very beginning of the country and earlier.
Secession was partly about slavery. The war was not.
Although the South stupidly shot first after being incited into it, the war was pressed by the North for Lincoln's reasons. Since secession is the right of a free people, the war and it's causes can only be laid at the feet of the federal government. The confederacy's motivations aren't needed.
Didn't John Brown slaughter a while confederate town before the war started
There is no difference. The war was about secession, about state's rights, and about slavery.
wut?
All belligerent's motivations are needed in all conflicts.
I think you missed my point but I don't know how better to explain it than the middle sentence I already wrote. Sure if you are analyzing things from a war historian's perspective then it's important to know the full context and what motivated both sides leading up to it for 100 years. If one is simply asking "was the civil war fought over slavery?" then conflating that with secession muddies the waters and causes us to talk past each other. As Lincoln's war, it's only necessary to look at his political concerns and writings to answer the question.
I don't disagree so long as we are contextualizing the question.
"Was slavery the central issue to Lincoln's War?" No. Hell no. Obviously. No argument exists to say that slavery was the primary motivator in Lincoln's decision making regarding a military response to secession. In fact, propaganda efforts on both sides were made to specifically identify it as a "White Man's War", that blacks shouldn't even be involved in.
But, objectively, was slavery the central issue to the American Civil War? I would say yes. If the issue of slavery was already settled, would the American Civil War have even happened? No, I don't think so. Best you might get was a small scale conflict, but the issue of slavery was broiling the culture to a fever pitch, and had been doing so for decades. Economics, taxes, tariffs, central government control, all of these played a part and could certainly caused a secession crisis, but in both previous crises, neither resulted in the death of 2% of the population of the US.
So yeah, if we're speaking clearly about what our context is, then our statements make sense.
I can even admit that slavery was indirectly a cause from Lincoln's side. The abolitionists were a strong political faction, so some of what he did was playing to that bloc despite thinking they were fools.
Alright, yeah, that's fair. The Republican Party definitely gained prominence using slavery as a cultural issue.
The columns of Lincoln's throne are fasces. It is no coincidence that Mussolini used the same symbol.
Most of what he says is denotative true, but there's a few things are wrong.
First, he says that troops from Fredricksburg were sent to quell the draft riots. That was Gettysburg. That's a misidentification.
Second, he mentioned that the Union forces were being destroyed by the Confederates with some minor victories. Meh, the Eastern Theater was going sideways, but that was mostly thanks to McClellan being an idiot. Yeah, Lincoln micromanaged a bit, that's because McClellan failed to even attack a Confederate force of maybe 12,000 with over 180,000 troops for months. Union generals repeatedly lost battles and withdrew. Grant is described as murderous to his own troops, but most of them supported him because he kept attacking even when he lost, meaning that the Union forces would still gain ground, even when they lost battles. The Confederacy basically never had any chance to win the Civil War once the US Navy up-ended their blockade of Chesapeake Bay, tactically. George McClellan was the only chance they actually had at winning, had he won an election, he would have sued for peace. He got BTFO'd in the election (though that election wasn't exactly "clean" by any measure, even on a philosophical basis: hey, if the rebel states didn't leave, can't they still vote in that election?)
Third, he said that the South was the economic powerhouse of the country. Not really. They were. The Civil War took place during the Industrial Revolution. The Northern states' industries were incredibly powerful, but we hadn't reached the Guilded Age power levels yet. The South's lack of rail infrastructure, and lack of industrialization meant that a war economy was utterly inept compared to the North's. The South didn't believe that, and were warned that a war of secession would go badly, and really thought they'd be likely to win. Instead, the plantation & slave economy of the south is basically proof of how retarded it had gotten. By the time of the 1860's, slaves were being trained to run, fix, and maintain cotton gins, and early proto-tractors. Industrialized agriculture was beginning and would have utterly eradicated slavery anyway, but the South just couldn't fucking fathom plantations without slaves. They even tried to burn their own stockpiles of cotton to drive up the price, only to have France and Britain build non-slave cotton fields in Africa and India respectively, meaning the south literally set it's own economy on fire for no reason.
Fourth, he mentioned that the South felt unrepresented. Yes, they did, but it also wasn't exactly true. For the past 100 years, political power reigned almost entirely within the South, maybe Virginia specifically. Yes, there was a conspiracy of northern, industrialist, pro-tariff, Hamiltonians in seeking to seize power from the plantation south. This had been an ongoing fight that had lasted decades already. But that doesn't mean that the South was out of power. Lincoln may have gotten the war he wanted, but he was elected because of the shit that southern plantation owners had been doing to expand slavery even when it wasn't wanted. This is best shown in Bleeding Kansas, where Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and a host of other slave states, basically sent troops and militants into Kansas to start an insurrection with the population because the settlers didn't want slavery in their state. In order to preserve the power of the slave states, the south invaded and the fighting continued into the civil war, until Topeka was raised to the fucking ground. We can also point out that the Fugitive Slave Law, and it's ratification by the Supreme Court, was a desperate attempt to permanently institutionalize slavery, even in the north, where it was illegal in many states. I've ranted about the Fugitive Slave Law before, but it's a wild violation of constitutional authority, and an eradication of states rights pushed by the south. But, like Razor said, the south doesn't have to be good, for Lincoln to be bad. The unfortunate truth is, the Jeffersonian Republic that Thomas envisioned was already dead by the 1850's. This is what the Industrial Revolution just kind of does.
Fifth, I don't know about the accusations of mass rapes by Union troops. There's no question they looted, burned, and pillaged. That was intentional. Rape specifically? I just haven't heard accusations like that that are confirmed by anything. It's kind of like accusations of open murder. There is no evidence that Union troops went out, lined people up against walls, and shot them one by one. The Civil War is actually most remarkable in that it has some of the fewest civilian casualties of any American war. The entire battle of Gettysburg killed one civilian. One. She was outside and was accidentally shot by a stray round as the armies were moving through the town. Yes, Atlanta, Charleston, and Columbia were entirely raised, but deaths were very few, if any at all. Frankly, Reconstruction killed a hell of a lot more civilians than the Civil War did. But rapes specifically? It's just not something I've seen documented or testified to. I know how Sherman talked, and he absolutely destroyed everything he touched except the people. That doesn't mean that they might not have died in the winter, or gone through rough hardships, but when it comes to American commanders that are serial killers, Curtis LeMay still tops Sherman by a lot.
Sixth, I've said this forever, States Rights and Slavery are the same issue. It's States Rights about Slavery. Slavery was the cultural touchstone of the time, the Industrial Revolution's economic consequences around slavery fed into the problem. It was an issue during the founding of the constitution, and it only got worse as industrialization made slavery as an economic activity preposterously stupid. It's all kind of jumbled up into one massive morass. It's like saying: "Our modern cultural divisions are about the Left's over-financialization of the global economy. That has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism!" That's just wrong. It's not one or the other. Fabian Socialists are using the financialization of the economy as a mechanism to control it in order to enact Socialism. It's the same issue. On a similar point, yes: it's about taxes, tariffs, industrialization, federal centralization, Hamiltonian v. Jeffersonian philosophy, which inform States Rights... which falls into the power of Slaveocratic rule by the plantation south, the mass immigration they initiated, the protectionism they gave themselves, and the broader abolitionist movement that would have destroyed their economic order. It's the same issue..
Maybe post all this in a YT comment? Or some of it. Most of the comments criticizing RazorFist are the really stupid LINCOLN GOOD SOUTH BAD variety. He has replied to a few point-by-point refutations in the comments already. It might inspire him to make a Part 2 video.
And about the events leading up to the war...
It sounds like instead of states with wildly different value systems vying for control of an empire, having two separate nations would have been better for both sides.
To be honest, his issue is mostly a little bit of lost nuance, and a few perceptive issues, but other than that all I can tell him is that his fundamental point about the video is entirely correct.
None of my criticisms even approach a refutation of that, because he's not wrong.
If any American president in the modern era declared "War Powers" they'd be called a dictator to. In fact, they were. Several US governors enacted the equivalent of "War Powers" by just asserting that a medical emergency gave them unlimited gubernatorial fiat to suspend protests, empty jails, and create massive fines. Some even tried to instantiate intra-state hard borders. These are dictatorial powers. The fact that Lincoln pulled the same shit Cuomo did, tells me that yes these are dictatorial powers.
That's entirely regarding the Civil War itself. Just his War Powers doctrine is dictatorial, and is objectively unconstitutional by every legal analysis. Even FDR, LBJ, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon never pulled that shit. Even they needed to go to congress to allow them to engage in "Peacekeeping Operations" or to "prosecute foreign conflicts to the benefit of the interests of the US". You can't just declare war powers and claim that you have unlimited authority until you are removed from power by an election. That's some fucking Caesar level rationalization there. In fact, Caesar (formally) had less.
To become literal dictator for 10 years, a Proconsol would have to have his Dicatatorship ratified by the Senate. Caesar only did that after he seized Rome, defeated Pompey, removed most of the Senate, and had Cesareans declare him Dictator Perpetuo well after all public dissent had been crushed, including a kind of cucked Cicero who failed to stop him.
... until he was assassinated 11 days later.
Lincoln had those powers for years.
It was. That's the saddest part. Despite Americans having heroic tales from both sides of the war, there were no good guys. The Constitution was dead with the Dredd Scott decision; Chief Justice Taney and President Buchanan had guaranteed that, even while Kansas burned. The Radical Republicans had no concern for mollifying the political upheaval. The Southern Democrats had no interest in compromising on any issue regarding slavery, and wanted to maintain the political power they'd always had. The Whigs were quickly vanishing, and the only politicians that seemed legitimate were the ones claiming they would explicitly "Do Nothing", regardless of what happened politically.
I kinda think that if the Confederates had split off, they would devolved into infighting, economically failed, and re-integrated to the union by the time WW1 took place.
Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus alone puts him as one of the most tyrannical presidents
You'll get no argument from me on that.
this right here
Without a navy or access to rail and ports, the South would have been utterly vulnerable to navel blockade, privateers or even pirate action. Their markets were across the biggest stretch of open water in the world. The South would have instantly been made a banana republic, and been at the mercy of any power with a fleet.
The Union would have been fools not to punish the shit out of the confederacy with a trade embargo. It would have strengthened the Union financial centers and consolidated the Union's own domestic market, helping to speed along industrialization.
I do not think that things would have been better for anyone to postpone a conflict.
And as the video states, every Confederate state that listed slavery as a reason were owned by former Whigs. Shitheads like you are no different to braindead atheists who claim "all war is the result of religion, man" and end up (at best) reducing a complex issue to an infantile understanding of the issues and (at worst) end up spreading outright falsehoods that further retard people's understanding of the issue.
Whig subversion doesn't change the fact that the Confederacy was desperately hanging on to the institution of slavery regardless of the negative effects on it's economy or people, and that institution of slavery was the basis of their political elites and economic system. And it was still a major cultural and religious argument in the US.
I've been saying the opposite.
You can't remove slavery from the list of causes. Just like you can't remove States Rights from the list of causes. It's the same problem.
You can't claim that the problem with modern society is Globalization, but not Cultural Marxism.
I appreciate this. You remind me of my old history teacher and I always enjoyed reading the complexities of history and not pop culture remakes even if most of my classmates hated it.
I literally did that in school.
I appreciate the writeup here, thanks.
No problem, I'm thankful you took the time to read it.
well worth the watch
I used to agree with Razor's take here, but a couple years ago I had this epiphany: The South were all ran by Democrats. So if you assume for a second that the bastards behaved in the same lying, ultra manipulative, maliciously-complying, gaslighting and backstabbing bullshit ways as they do today, then it becomes understandable exactly why Lincoln had to behave the way he did. Pretend for a moment that Southern California and Portland just announced they were seceding from the Union over tranny rights or some equally hot bullshit social cause cause. Imagine how corrupt and rigged and slimy everything around it would be, and how much overbearing force and bullshitting of our own it would take to rip that crap out by the roots and end it.
And tell me the Dems there wouldn't spend the next hundred years whining about it as "muh glorious lost cause." You know they would. So today, even knowing what Razor is on about I cut Lincoln a whole lot of slack.
If you want a simplification the powerful slave owners who were a minority mostly cared for their bottom line which necessitated slavery remaining legal which meant states had to be able to declare their own laws outside if those solely invested in federal government by the constitution the same but opposite for the factory owners of the north. Everyone else had a myriad of interests including just basic freedom from a segment of the country that to this day views them as undignified hicks deserving to be mocked.
Dictator? Literally the only guy to hold an election in the middle of a civil war. Retarded.
Yes, because holding an election cancels out having soldiers storm into a statehouse and arrest 1/3 of a state legislature. Lincoln is easily in the top 3 authoritarian US presidents, alongside FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
As Kienan put it in another comment, if you want to argue over whether or not Lincoln was justified we can do that, but he basically used the constitution as toilet paper. Go watch the video, you'll almost certainly learn quite a few things.
Whether you think it's justified or not, acting against a state legislature doesn't make him a dictator.
Anything else they had in common?
Which parts? Actually, I think he did make the argument that it was justified, by saying that it's better to violate a part of it than that the whole should die.
I doubt it, and I don't think he's objective. It seems none of the people who did watch it were able to come up with compelling arguments, so there's that.
Well, that flat out proves you're not objective and any further discussion is pointless. I don't think there's anything you'd accept as a (as you put it) "compelling argument" short of getting a time machine and recording a video of Lincoln twirling an evil mustache and laughing maniacally about how he is now the king of the US, since all your responses to people giving have been "Well, he was justified!" or "Well, Stalin was worse!". What do you want to see?
Wait, so it's not objective to... not waste your time on someone who is not objective? Come on.
If you claim that he was a 'dictator', I expect something establishing that.
But most of the responses are in the tune of "he did some bad things". Well, then argue that instead of the hyperventilation!
And what do you think qualifies someone as being a dictator? Because you have said that arresting people without charge, sending the army marching into statehouses, shutting down hostile press and exiling political opponents does not. So, what is the cutoff in your mind?
Considering that it happened in times of war, yeah, it does not. The Southern states were criminalizing criticism of slavery even in peacetime.
What qualifies someone as a dictator?
LINCOLN WAS JUSTIFIED!
Eh, I'm far from fully informed on the issue, but there was a lot of sketchy shit. He did some things right, but plenty wrong and, yes, he was pretty dictatorial. He went out of his way to punish and instigate pre-war, and he actively went against past treaties and the Constitution to try to "keep the country together."
I'm not here to wave a Confederate flag or anything, but the South should have been allowed to secede, and friendly relations should have been attempted instead of a bloody civil war. Also, he was far from kind to black people, luring escaped slaves in with promises of freedom before drafting them to go back and fight, and the like. Now, I admit to my biases, and this is certainly my very small government lolbertarian coming out, but yeah, I think the war could have been avoided instead of stoked, and I think slavery would have faded out on its own anyway.
We can argue over whether or not Lincoln was justified, but I think he was pretty clearly a dictator.
Almost all Lincoln love is based on hindsight. If he had failed then history would have seen many of these flaws as his primary traits. But because he won, the South was mega evil, all actions against them justified, and he is ultra saint because slavery and shit.
And truly, slavery could have and likely would have ended entirely without his actions within time as the entire global market was shifting against it. But instead we now still have a broken South dragging the country down and a race problem that has no end, entirely as a result of his methodology.
It's funny because the same people that whine about how other countries are only bad off because the US government attacked them have zero problem mocking the south even though we are their fellow countrymen
I agree Lincoln is wrongly deified in American culture but I still think the real villains were the abolitionists.
Important to understand that it would have been possible to avoid civil war and end slavery by having the federal government purchase and free all slaves. But abolitionists wouldn't have that, they didn't want slaveowners to be rewarded. They wanted the entire south dead, and they were going to get a war with or without Lincoln. To what extent Lincoln worsened or lessened the bloodthirst of the north is up for debate.
To his credit, when he realized the same banks funded the north and south (and he had to pay all the debts) he printed his own currency any paid them with that. The banks were furious, and a short while later he was dead.
Yeah, Brazil, which was colonized by some Confederates, showed very clearly that Slavery could be ended with compensation and regulation over time. It took longer, but 2% of their population wasn't killed.
Real Politik says that if the foundation of a countries economy tries to secede, the response is one of force.
Economic wealth comes from the value-add step of production / distribution. You create wealth by getting something, then turn it into something that is sold for more.
This is always isolated by geography. 40% of the Iron Ore in the world comes from Australia. Most of that comes from WA. Most of that comes from a few mines.
If WA tries to take their dominance over the global Iron and Steel market, and just fuck off... well the answer is simple. Roll in tanks, crush the resistance then promptly set about addressing the genuine issues that the Western Australians have, so that they don't want to do it again.
You can make parallel examples using industrial production in Germany. Germany is one of the three biggest economies in Europe. The vast majority of their wealth comes from a few provinces that take cheap Russian gas and turn it into manufactured goods in sophisticated factories. If those provinces decide to just leave, the economy of Germany will implode overnight.
The Art of War says: To win without fighting is best. There was plenty of time to address the real and genuine concerns of the south. Failing that, the solution was to break them with military force and then fix the pieces.
At that juncture the alternative was to cede half the union and then have a hostile power on the southern border; which would have been untenable. It would have lead directly to military build-up and an even bigger war within 50 years.
Why would the free southern states be any more hostile and untenable than Canada?
The short answer is because of the same reasons the south was unhappy before the Civil war.
Access to road and port infrastructure. Lack of a Navy or merchant navy. Taxes on their goods and trade.
Border security would have been a nightmare, and it would have lead to escalating smuggling etc. as the Union would have attempted to impose tariffs and duties.
Both the North and the South would be required to arm and send troops to the border to guard them.
Add to the fact that slaves running to the Union would have immediately become free... and you have a volatile political situation.
We won't know what would have happened, but at the very least it would have set a precedent for splitting the union further every time that a state or group of states got upset.
Funny you should mention WA and secession because there's always been a simmering desire for it here, and they voted 60/40 for it in the 1930s. It wasn't accepted by England and then labor (note the unaustralian spelling of the party's name) came into power and squashed it.
They did do as you suggested to some degree, in that they solved some of the issues with a more equitable share of gov funds going to WA. And when WA's share of those same funds (largely generated by that mining you mentioned) plummeted again in 2010 or so and they tried to put in a mining tax, that is when you saw a burgeoning resurgence of those secessionist views.
The other states close down or throttle their mines and their (tasmania) lumber industries. Fine. That's their choice. But they shouldn't then get to take money from WA mines, is the reasonable WA viewpoint viewpoint. No mooching.
Molon labe.
The example was not picked at random.
I don't think that the Sandgropers are managing their Iron Ore or Copper Ore supplies very well, but no one consults with me before they make policy.
This is a description you can use for literally everyone in history.
If you can name me one leader in a (civil) war who was less 'dictatorial', that'd be great.
How? I like how the anti-Lincoln folks simultaneously bash him for supporting the amendment to guarantee slavery where it already existed (which wouldn't change anything), and also say that he was war-mongering.
There's nothing wrong with that either. In fact, from a European POV, I'd have preferred that the Confederates had won, because we wouldn't have been subjugated under the yoke of a unified America with no regional rivals.
And he did, until the Confederates made the major mistake of attacking Fort Sumter. Even people who support the Confederates should admit that this was a major mistake.
Were they actually forced to fight?
That I actually completely understand, although it is my understanding that there was not that much of a watershed in federal power after the Civil War. Hell, the Republicans could not even enforce civil rights in the south.
And I don't see what makes him a 'dictator'./
How about every one of them who decided to permit secession rather than fight a civil war in the first place?
That's fine to discuss, but let's stick to the topic. During World War II, Britain did not even hold elections, because.... there was a war going on. So it's pretty great to have elections in the middle of a (civil) war.
Not if you are arresting people for leading the opposition.
Compared to what? Not allowing elections. Is there any place that meets your standards?
No place on Earth today or in history meets my standards, and that is not a reason to abandon the concept of having standards at all.
Ok, "American" Dictator, Defender of Our Democracy™
don't dictators hold sham elections all the time?
Yes, but they don't hold elections that they can lose, like L did.
An election where ballots that didn't vote for him were color-coded and held in "special storage" (i.e. the garbage bin). And that was only Northern votes, his own side, for obvious reasons. Election Fortification™ at its finest.
Oh? Funny, because there were millions of votes against him.
As opposed to what? Asking the Confederate states which claimed to be independent to hold elections there?