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Thursday, July 1, 2010 - 11:36pmSanction this postReply
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A quote loaded with irony, given how Lincoln acted during his presidency.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 - 4:04pmSanction this postReply
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And Jefferson Davis was content with blacks having no consent, for anything.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 - 12:35amSanction this postReply
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John --

I will stipulate that the president of that temporary Southern nation, who most certainly was illiberal on this topic (in the sense of "liberal" as it was used at that time) and did not state nor believe that consent was needed to enslave others, did indeed help continue the enslavement of those others.

Perhaps you could stipulate that the president of the nation that won that war, who did in fact state that consent was needed merely to govern others, much less to enslave them (not that it is even possible to consent in any meaningful way to being enslaved), did in fact govern cruelly and unconstitutionally and without the consent of those so abused, and in fact said the following:

"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. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."

That is, Lincoln felt so strongly about taking away the right of citizens of a state to decide whether to consent or to withdraw their consent to being governed, by taking away their right to secede from the union, that he was willing to not free any slaves at all if it would help him achieve that non-consent to governance.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 - 4:30pmSanction this postReply
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And yet what ultimately happened? The southern government that sanctioned slavery, which had no legitimate right to exist as a slave nation, was destroyed and the slaves were freed, all deeds committed by Lincoln. It's as if the man's actual actions are less important than the words he spoke. It's an ass backwards way of morally judging a man's character. But nevertheless, Jon had a similar conversation with you before here. I also had a similar discussion on the topic with Ryan here.

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Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - 6:25amSanction this postReply
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Some man is good enough to govern another man with that other's consent.

How good must one man be in order to govern another with that other's consent?

Does any good man govern another with or without that other's consent?

Is there a correlation between amount of goodness and amount of governance, so that at some level of goodness, one man becomes absolutely qualified, and that as goodness increases, so does governance?  Is there a limit on that.  I mean, would Buddha or Confucius (who were not divine) meet a very high standard for near-complete but not total governance.  (Total governance would require perfection.) 

What about Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the other slave-owners who governed.  Were they not good enough to govern their slaves, but good enough to govern free people?  How does that work?  I mean, if they were good enough to govern some men by consent, then how were they not good enough to govern others without it?  I mean, surely, they also governed women of their time[*] who could not vote or own property.  The basic question is that if they were not good enough to govern their slaves, what made them good enough to govern anyone?

What is govern-ment?  Is it the administration of res publica, the public thing(s), such as roads, schools, ports and harbors, libraries and museums, or is it moral oversight that prevents parents from denying education or healthcare to their children?  If I do not consent to the operation of public schools, does that invalidate the credentials of school administrators?  But if I change my mind, and agree that they are fit to rule, how does that change their nature from "not good enough" to "good enough"?

[*] The rights held by women over time and place have not been universal, or universally denied.  Long before any federal constitutional amendment, women owned property and voted in local elections, both in the American states, as well the United Kingdom and other European countries. 


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