[Peace-discuss] July 4th float -- okay, seriously...

Fri May 22 11:24:13 CDT 2009

Oh, okay I get it. Cherry pick the commonalities, regardless of any underlying or aux info... Like Hitler and Bernie Sanders were both elected legally... and Hitler and many on this list are vegetarians??
 --Jenifer

--- On Thu, 5/21/09, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:

From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] July 4th float -- okay, seriously...
To: "Jenifer Cartwright" <jencart13 at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Neil Parthun" <lennybrucefan at gmail.com>, "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Date: Thursday, May 21, 2009, 11:24 PM

Equating two heads of state probably doesn't mean much, but comparing and
contrasting them can be instructive, e.g., Stalin did all he could to avoid the
great war that he eventually won, while we've agreed (I think) that Lincoln didn't.

On Churchill, I recommend Nicholson Baker's remarkable book from last year,
"Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization."

Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> I don't equate opposing the US preemptive attack on Iraq before during and
> afterwards (which btw millions also did and still do, not that that's the
> issue) with exposing (as seen thru our modern lens) Lincoln's flawed views
> now (in the year of the bicentennial, not that that's the issue either).... do
> YOU?? And nobody with any intelligence at all can seriously equate Lincoln
> with Stalin (or Churchill with Stalin, not that that's the issue either).
> 
> I may have to demand an AWARE membership card, just so I have something to
> tear up. --Jenifer
> 
> --- On *Thu, 5/21/09, Neil Parthun /<lennybrucefan at gmail.com>/* wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Neil Parthun <lennybrucefan at gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss]
> July 4th float -- okay, seriously... To: "Jenifer Cartwright"
> <jencart13 at yahoo.com> Cc: "E. Wayne Johnson" <ewj at pigs.ag>, "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> Date: Thursday, May 21, 2009, 7:23 PM
> 
> If we want to talk powerful speeches, then how about his support of indefinite detentions during wartime that was even used by the Supreme Court
> to defend their wartime curtailing of freedoms?  If only Bush would have been
> so bold to extend the suspension of the writ of habeas rights as Lincoln
> did...
> 
> Just because the myth of Lincoln is popular doesn't mean it shouldn't be
> challenged.  Didn't we commit political "suicide" (her words) in the
> days/weeks after 9/11 when we questioned the efficacy of bombing/invasion of
> a country?  Didn't we commit political "suicide" when we opposed the Iraq war
> since its inception when it was totally unpopular to do so?
> 
> From David Greenberg's piece "Lincoln's Suspension of Habeas Corpus" (bolded
> portions for yr. reading pleasure)
> 
> Several times during the war, Lincoln or his Cabinet officers issued orders
> suspending the writ. The first came early in his presidency. Lincoln had been
> in office for barely a month when Confederate troops attacked the federal
> garrison at Fort Sumter in April 1861, starting the Civil War. One of his
> immediate concerns was how to keep an unobstructed route between Washington,
> D.C., and the North. He worried that if Maryland joined Virginia and seceded
> from the Union, the nation's capital would be stranded amid hostile states. On April 19, 20,000 Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore tried to stop Union
> troops from traveling from one train station to another en route to
> Washington, causing a riot. So on April 27 Lincoln suspended the habeas
> corpus privilege on points along the Philadelphia-Washington route. That
> meant Union generals could arrest and detain without trial anyone in the area
> who threatened "public safety."
> 
> Controversy followed. The most explosive incident centered on John Merryman,
> a Marylander arrested for insurrectionary activities. Summarily jailed,
> Merryman petitioned for a habeas corpus writ, which Chief Justice Roger Taney
> granted. But the commanding officer at Fort McHenry, where Merryman was held,
> refused to release the prisoner, citing Lincoln's edict. With the army loyal
> to Lincoln, Taney couldn't enforce his order and railed against the president
>  while Merryman stewed in jail for seven more weeks. After being freed, he
> was never tried.
> 
> The Merryman case and others like it ignited a debate over Lincoln's actions.
> Democrats argued they were unconstitutional. Taney noted that Article 1 of
> the Constitution, where habeas corpus is discussed, deals exclusively with
> congressional powers, meaning that Congress alone can authorize the
> privilege's suspension. Although correct, Taney's argument framed the debate
> around a legalistic and secondary issue, that of congressional versus
> presidential power. It skirted the question of whether the situation
> warranted a suspension of habeas corpus at all. Thus when in March 1863
> Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act, effectively endorsing Lincoln's
> actions, civil libertarians were stripped of their main argument.
> 
> Where Democrats marshaled constitutional arguments against Lincoln's order,
> *Republicans replied that in an emergency, only the president could act fast
> enough to protect the public safety. Lincoln himself took this line in a
> famous July 4, 1861, speech to Congress. He also, more memorably, used a
> pragmatic argument. "Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted," he chided
> his critics, "and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be
> violated?" The phrase has been quoted ever since and even provided the title
> of a recent apologia by Chief Justice William Rehnquist for wartime suppression of freedoms.*
> 
> *Despite the rhetorical power of Lincoln's speech, there's no evidence the
> government would have gone to pieces. By the time he issued his April 27
> order, Union troops had made their way through Baltimore, and it should have
> been clear that Washington wasn't going to be fatally isolated.* As for
> dissuading Maryland from seceding, contemporaneous accounts suggest that
> whatever the administration's fears, no such move was imminent.
> 
> If Lincoln's Maryland actions were dubious, a wave of arrests the following
> summer under another habeas corpus suspension was downright indefensible.
> *The wave began after Congress instituted the first-ever military draft in
> July 1862. Because the draft proved highly unpopular and hard to enforce,
> Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, at Lincoln's behest, issued sweeping orders
> on Aug. 8 suspending habeas corpus nationwide—the first time the writ was suspended beyond a narrowly defined emergency area. Stanton decreed that
> anyone "engaged, by act, speech, or writing, in discouraging volunteer
> enlistments, or in any way giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or in any
> other disloyal practice against the United States" was subject to arrest and
> trial "before a military commission."*
> 
> The exceedingly broad mandate precipitated a civil liberties disaster. *It
> allowed local sheriffs and constables to decide arbitrarily who was loyal or
> disloyal, without even considering the administration's main goal of
> enforcing the draft. At least 350 people were arrested in the following
> month, an all-time high. Some of the accused had done nothing worse than
> bad-mouth the president. (That was also true before Aug. 8. On Aug. 6, for
> example, Union Gen. Henry Halleck arrested one Missourian for saying, "[I]
> wouldn't wipe my ass with the stars and stripes.")*
> 
> On Sept. 8, the federal official overseeing these arrests decreed that law
> enforcement agents were enforcing the Aug. 8 orders too stringently. It was
> evident that people were being arrested who posed no threat to the public
> safety. Thereafter, the arrests subsided. Still, Lincoln himself reiterated
> the suspension on Sept. 24, and arrests without trial continued. *Overall
> between 10,000 and 15,000 people were incarcerated without a prompt trial.. On
> balance, their detention almost certainly did not enhance American security nor hasten the Union victory.*
> 
> Solidarity, -N.
> 
> Neil Parthun Sports journalist, Public i  ||  http://publici.ucimc.org <http://publici.ucimc.org/>
> 
> "There are many victories worse than a defeat." - George Eliot
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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