Since this topic appears to have gone off the reservation, let me reign you back in for a moment.

I encourage you to re-watch the video we're commenting on.

This whole discussion, including the commentary by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, is all a response to Judge Napolitano's comments, on what is supposed to be an actual news network and, I imagine, supposed to be taken seriously?

Napolitano says: "Instead of allowing it to die, helping it to die, or even purchasing the slaves and then freeing them, which would have cost a lot less money than the Civil War cost, Lincoln set out on the most murderous war in American history."

That's what he said. In this very video, which is what we're all commenting on.

I just quoted you claiming that Napolitano believes that the Lincoln pursued the war to restore the union, when that's exactly what he's not saying here.

You're attacking the comedians for making jokes about this and accusing them for doing what Napolitano just did!

He's the one claiming that Lincoln attacked the south to free the slaves!

So, again I ask, what are you even talking about?

This video, the daily show response, all of this argument, was supposed to be about Napolitano being totally wrong. I originally commented here because you were parroting his claims that Lincoln had a lot of options, but chose "murderous war" instead of buying every slave or whatever other imagined option you think he had.

So either you understand why the Civil War started, and we agree, as you sometimes seem to indicate, or you're in agreement with Napolitano and his view that Lincoln started the Civil War as one of his apparently many options for ending slavery.

So which is it?

Do you understand why you make no sense?

Delaware is considered a northern state. Maybe not by you but by others.
And when I lived in Maryland, everyone there seemed to consider it a northern state too. But ok, you don't consider it a northern state. Cool.
(Ask anyone in Boston if he is a "Yankee" and see how that goes!)

But what's your point now? You agree that the Civil War was a "War to preserve the Union, not a Lincoln crusade to end slavery". That's why he did not invade or interfere with the border states. They did not secede. So how is this relevant to the original point about Jon Stewart thinking otherwise and going off on Andrew Napolitano about it? And are you now trying to claim that the north was acting in "self-defense" because of southern attacks on federal forts?


"In 1862, the General Assembly replied to Lincoln's compensated emancipation offer with a resolution stating that, "when the people of Delaware desire to abolish slavery within her borders, they will do so in their own way, having due regard to strict equity." And they furthermore notified the administration that they regarded "any interference from without" as "improper," and a thing to be "harshly repelled.""

The proposal was never put to a vote. It was not tried in other states. And it was not addressed directly to the slave owners but to politicians in the Assembly. No effort was put into it.

Among the tactics employed by the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Danes, and others were slave rebellions, abolitionist campaigns to gain public support for emancipation, election of anti-slavery politicians, encouragement and assistance of runaway slaves, raising private funds to purchase the freedom of slaves, and the use of tax dollars to buy the freedom of slaves.

The most charitable thing I could say is that Lincoln tried but failed to come up with and implement any other way to end slavery but to engage in 'bloodshed and violence' (putting aside that he claimed to not care to end slavery except as a way to get one over on the South).

Still, that only says something about his competency, his "political genius" as some say (or lack of it), but not about whether there were other options available that could have worked without the 620,000 dead and 800,000+ more maimed-or-disfigured-for-life.

Of course, there is no empirical way to 'prove' or 'disprove' that any more than there is any empirical way to 'prove' or 'disprove' that, without two nukes, Japan would have lost the war, or that without the Korean war, the Communists would have taken over the world, or that without the Iraq invasion, Saddam would not have built "weapons of mass destruction" to unleash on the world.

What if 'peaceful secession' would have neutered the federal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (which Lincoln strongly supported), creating a flood of runaway slaves that could not have been stopped and would have broken the back of the slave system'?

The Soviet Union collapsed on its own without the US and its allies going into a bloody war against it. Maybe if the US had started a third world war with the USSR, it would have collapsed sooner. But it certainly would not have been worth the 'blood and violence'. And it is far from certain that the 5 years of Civil War accelerated the end of slavery, while it has certainly served to bolster and continue the decades of segregation, discrimination, and abuse that followed.

The first Republican president seems to have set a precedent for later Republican neocons. When faced with a problem ---> go to war.

I only ask this of those who insist that Lincoln went to war to "free the slaves" (which is what Stewart and Wilmore suggest in the video). Obviously if you dismiss that as nonsense, then sure, the answer is obvious, because he didn't care to, he just wanted to preserve the union. So, where's the contradiction?


"War to preserve the Union, not a Lincoln crusade to end slavery."

Again, I understand what you are saying, I only mention the freeing of the slaves for those (like Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore apparently) who insist that the war was about "freeing the slaves."

Tom Woods would agree with this. In fact, he's written about it: that the Civil War was a "War to preserve the Union, not a Lincoln crusade to end slavery."

You obviously haven't read him.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, Tom Woods, Ron Paul, and many libertarians agree that it was (in your own words) a "War to preserve the Union, not a Lincoln crusade to end slavery". Get it? There is no disagreement there. Get it?

The issue of buying the slaves' freedom is only for those who say that the war was "necessary" to free the slaves. But it was not and it was not the main reason the war was fought. Get it?

So, about this you are in fact in agreement with Tom Woods and Andrew Napolitano and you are in disagreement with Jon Stewart. Get it?

"Whether or not Lincoln could have bought all the slaves is entirely irrelevant."

Irrelevant to what? Jon Stewart's comment?

"That is not why the Civil War was fought."

And?

"Buying the slaves wasn't an option."

It was not an option because that would not have prevented confederate secession. As you say, Lincoln did not care about freeing the slaves only about preserving the union no matter how many were killed or maimed in the process. It is totally relevant to Judge Andrew Napolitano saying that if Lincoln had wanted to free the slaves, the Civil War would have been unnecessary. But as you say (and he would agree), freeing the slaves were not Lincoln's concern.

So you are right, totally correct. For someone who did not want the South to secede and for whom it did not matter if the slaves were freed or not (in his own words), as long as the South would keep paying its tariffs, paying to free the slaves and avoiding bloodshed was not an option. Avoiding bloodshed was not his primary concern. Preventing secession was.

From his first inaugural:
"[T]here needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it is forced upon the national authority."

Basically, obey the "national authority" or suffer bloodshed and violence.

Which they did.

While the "bloodshed and violence" were unnecessary to free the slaves, had that been the goal, at least it would have been a worthy goal even if the means were monstrous. But "bloodshed and violence" to "preserve the union" or to collect taxes, that's beyond the pale.

Obama has flipped twice: for > against > for.
O'Reilly flipped last year as well.
Janet Napolitano flipped fairly recently, I believe.
I'm sure there's others.

You apparently have a problem with reading comprehension.

re-read my challenge and try again.

Here's a hint, I already pointed out how Stossel confronted Napolitano with this and Napolitano dodged.

I'm sorry but you just don't really have a case. If Americans truly had a problem with being surveilled. They wouldn't have let corporations do it, much less the gov't. If you've got a cell phone or use the internet and you're mad about this, then you're a hypocrite, pure and simple.

Privacy as you apparently think of it, is an outdated concept. People by and large obviously do not have a problem with this. = implied consent.

Snowden is just a convenient excuse to rage and for internet blowhards to pretend to be righteous.

Daily modern life as we know it is consent to surveillance in some form or another. to feign outrage about it now is just absurdly disingenuous

Can't say that Stossel got school here. He was simply lobbing softballs for Napolitano to make his strong points.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by chicchorea.

*isdupe=http://videosift.com/video/A-series-of-questions-by-Napolitano

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by Grimm. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

Thought this looked familiar...sorry but...

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/A-series-of-questions-by-Napolitano

That's damned fine food for thought from Napolitano! It was obviously too objective and thought provoking, however. Fox News doesn't want its audience to think, just angrily nod and agree.

This is a really weird juxtaposition -- Andrew Napolitano engaging in one of his usual right-wing fearmongering rants about the evils of "government", played over protesters getting the shit beaten out of them for protesting...spending cuts to government programs.

This is the kind of video blankfist would post, and then leave me a personal comment saying something about how this video demonstrates that all of my political beliefs are wrong, when all it really demonstrates is the level of cognitive dissonance inherent in the entire conservative worldview.

If you let the concept of cutting government budgets get conflated with the idea of protecting your rights as an individual, then your perceptions have become so skewed you're no longer able to make rational sense out of the world you live in.

But then, I guess modern conservatives don't really believe in individual rights anymore. Not really.

@jonny Yes I meant Judge Napolitano's ice cream dick, sorry for the typo!

>> ^renatojj:

What's the big deal, makes total sense to me.
Except for the napolitano ice cream dicks, that's just fucked up.


Neapolitan? Or did those somehow remind you of Judge Napolitano?