It is no more possible to be a political supporter of Abraham Lincoln and oppose chattel slavery (to say nothing of bondage to the state inherent in all support for government) than it is to be an Adolf Hitler supporter yet oppose the Holocaust. This is not a provocative or antagonistic statement, as many would contend, but rather a value-neutral statement of objective fact, maintained in cool deliberation, with a calm, sober, even inviting countenance, all performed with nonchalant references to basic history and the rules of logic. It is a statement of the truth with which no subjective or personal valuations have been included. To assert offense taken at this statement can be likened to one taking offense at the statement water is wet. This is a value-neutral statement of objective fact, verified by both unafraid observation and rigorous deductive reasoning. To assert water is wet is to neither approve of waters wetness nor to disapprove of its wetness, only to acknowledge it. It is not antagonistic, and he who finds himself antagonized by pointing the wetness of water reveals more about himself in his shedding of tears than he does about the statement. In fact, his tears have absolutely no effect on the statements truth. To oppose something, in particular to oppose a moral evil (such as slavery), requires opposing it as a matter of principle, not simply when it is convenient for you. For example, most persons would openly concede that a man who proposed he was against the rape of children with qualifiers and exceptions is not, in fact, opposed to the rape of children. He may oppose particular cases of it, but this is no substitute for opposing pedophilia-in-action as such. His claims of opposing the rape of children would be taken even less seriously when he himself is a child rapist. Yet categorically identical reasoning is not only tolerated when discussing public officials, but is enthusiastically encouraged. Lincoln cannot have been opposed to slavery, as that would have required his moral opposition to it _as such_, not merely at moments of political (or legal, during his private life) convenience as was actually the case. The establishment, nevertheless, has somehow conditioned people to profess a position which, on the one hand, supports a man who upheld slavery when it presented conveniences (_exempli gratia_, his support for the Corwin Amendment, his enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and countless other examples), yet on the other hand, opposes slavery, and to profess such a position, first, with a straight face, second, with laudatory self-congratulation for claiming to oppose an evil from a century and a half ago that requires no bravery to verbally decry today. During the thirty-something years of Lincolns political and legal career, spent as it was promoting the agenda of the corrupt financial interests of his era, one could have found plenty genuinely anti-slavery abolitionists who devoted their lives and their livelihoods to promote the cause of abolition, no matter how much they might destroy themselves in doing so. Yet we never hear of these, because the establishment has no use for those who sacrifice themselves for others if it does nothing to confer laudatory praise to the Omnipotent State.
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 23:11:22 +0000
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