How We Got To The Brink Of Civil War, And How To Stop It

My wife related a disturbing story to me about a ride with an Uber driver late last week. The gentleman behind the wheel was black, and a Navy veteran, so he and my wife had at least two things in common.
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The Party of Lincoln AND Calhoun? The Right and the Civil War

“When the intellectual authors of the modern right created its doctrines in the 1950s,” wrote Sam Tanenhaus in The New Republic, “they drew on nineteenth-century political thought, borrowing explicitly from the great apologists for slavery, above all, the intellectually fierce South Carolinian John C. Calhoun…. The party of Lincoln… has become the party of Calhoun.” At first glance, such a statement sounds laughable. The Republican Party is indeed the party of Lincoln, a fact it has fully embraced over many years.  A 1992 political button for the campaign for president of George H.W. Bush in my possession claims “a proud tradition” for the GOP, featuring photographs of party luminaries Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.


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Seven Score and Four Years Ago

GRAND OLD PARTISAN BLOG, 12/15/2009 by Michael Zak - The United States emerged from the Civil War a vastly different county. No longer could Democrats hinder economic progress so as to protect the slave system. Once most Democrats in Congress had gone with the Confederacy, Republicans met little opposition in enacting their pro-growth economic agenda: a national banking system and a national currency, free land for farmers in the Plains states, land-grant colleges, the transcontinental railroad, and other structural reforms that soon made the United States the wealthiest country in the world. Read more at the Grand Old Partisan... Read More......

Bear what price, or burden?

Learning not to repeat the exit mistake of Vietnam
WASHINGTON TIMES, 8/19/2009 by Richard Botkin, Vietnam historian and Marine Corp veteran, (Hat tip: World Net Daily) - With the stroke of a pen 36 years ago this month, a Democratic-majority Congress passed the Fulbright-Aiken Amendment, a law that assured American politics, rather than battlefield achievement, would determine the freedom and fate of millions of South Vietnamese citizens. ∴ The Fulbright-Aiken Amendment cut off funding for ongoing American military operations in support of our Vietnamese ally. The amendment outlined a dramatic change in policy that said;

"Notwithstanding any other provision of the law, on or after August 15, 1973, no funds herein or heretofore appropriated may be obligated or expended to finance directly or indirectly combat activities by United States military forces in or over or from off the shores of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia."

In Iraq, democracy is balancing on a razor's edge. Read more at the Washington Times... Read More......

Iraq: Hold And Build, Or Lose

WASHINGTON POST, 5/12/2009 by Anthony H. Cordesman - Despite the violence of the past few weeks, it is Iraq that now risks becoming the "forgotten war." Iraq has become both a perceived "victory" and a war that many Americans and members of Congress would like to forget. As a result, we may rush toward the "exit" without a strategy -- and lose both the ongoing war and the peace that could follow. ∴ It is all too easy to forget that we "won" in Vietnam. We left having defeated the Viet Cong, having forced North Vietnam to halt its offensives -- and having gotten a Nobel Prize for the settlement. We created something approaching a functioning democracy, a reasonable level of development, and Vietnamese forces that seemed able to defend both without our support. It only took a few years, however, to show how costly an exit without a strategy can be. Read more at the Washington Post...

Hat tip: John H. Detweiler
John says, "As Jeff Limon says, 'History may not repeat but it rhymes.'" Read More......

LETTER: Remember Republican history

Corvallis Gazette-Times OPINION/Letters, February 1, 2009
"Remember Republican History" by Jeff Limón

Republicans invented the Civil Rights movement. It was the post-Civil War Republicans who pushed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments (banning slavery, conferring equal protection under the law to the former slaves and giving the former slaves of the right to vote.)

These initiatives were staunchly supported by Republicans and furiously opposed by Democrats. We also pioneered women’s suffrage and were largely responsible for the passage of the 19th amendment.

Yet today, no one dares credit Republicans for these gains. No one remembers that when it came to voting on the Civil Right Act of 1964, a larger percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted “yes” in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. No one mentions that Sen. Robert Byrd, a former Klansman, filibustered against the Civil Rights bill for 14 hours.

I am a Republican because I believe in the fundamental wisdom and intelligence of ordinary people, just as the first Republicans believed that the slaves possessed these qualities, and more.

Lincoln referred to Frederick Douglass as “one of the most meritorious men in all of America.” Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, used racial slurs to describe Douglass.

Lincoln believed that the former slaves could govern themselves just as Republicans today believe that good government means less government. Johnson believed that if the former slaves governed themselves, they would “descend into barbarism.”

I believe that Lincoln got it right, and I am proud of the Republicans’ contribution to civil rights and to America.

Jeff Limon
Corvallis

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