Why don't you just ignore him? Isn't it better than spending the day advertising his presence?

Why don't you just ignore the people who aren't ignoring Bucky1?

Twit.

No one else.

"posting here has reduced my relish to read Glenn's work"

Maybe you could restore your relish for Glenn's work by posting less.

Just sayin'.

You could read Glenn's posts and not venture into the comment threads at all. Nothing wrong with it.

Just sayin'.

Even if he never said it, it's still true, isn't it?

Maybe I am a fool. -- Gordon

Whoa dude, are you saying what I think you're saying? How about saying what you mean. -- omooex

I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, but that's just me. --L.W.M.

Behind the secession of the South from the Union, after Lincoln was elected President in the fall of 1860 as candidate of the new Republican party, was a long series of policy clashes between South and North. The clash was not over slavery as a moral institution-most northerners did not care enough about slavery to make sacrifices for it, certainly not the sacrifice of war. It was not a clash of peoples (most northern whites were not economically favored, not politically powerful; most southern whites were poor farmers, not decisionmakers) but of elites. The northern elite wanted economic expansion-free land, free labor, a free market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers, a bank of the United States. The slave interests opposed all that; they saw Lincoln and the Republicans as making continuation of their pleasant and prosperous way of life impossible in the future.

So, when Lincoln was elected, seven southern states seceded from the Union. Lincoln initiated hostilities by trying to repossess the federal base at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and four more states seceded. The Confederacy was formed; the Civil War was on.

Lincoln's first Inaugural Address, in March 1861, was conciliatory toward the South and the seceded states: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." And with the war four months on, when General John C. Fremont in Missouri declared martial law and said slaves of owners resisting the United States were to he free, Lincoln countermanded this order. He was anxious to hold in the Union the slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware.

It was only as the war grew more bitter, the casualties mounted, desperation to win heightened, and the criticism of the abolitionists threatened to unravel the tattered coalition behind Lincoln that he began to act against slavery. Hofstadter puts it this way: "Like a delicate barometer, he recorded the trend of pressures, and as the Radical pressure increased he moved toward the left." Wendell Phillips said that if Lincoln was able to grow "it is because we have watered him."

Racism in the North was as entrenched as slavery in the South, and it would take the war to shake both. New York blacks could not vote unless they owned $250 in property (a qualification not applied to whites). A proposal to abolish this, put on the ballot in 1860, was defeated two to one (although Lincoln carried New York by 50,000 votes). Frederick Douglass commented: "The black baby of Negro suffrage was thought too ugly to exhibit on so grand an occasion. The Negro was stowed away like some people put out of sight their deformed children when company comes."

Then we see that, yes, the issue was slavery, a factor that figured intimately into virtually every aspect of the southern US' economy. We see further, that [gasp!] President Lincoln was a politician, who gauged the changing political, temperamental, and tactical winds, balancing means & ends, risks, costs & benefits as he followed a complicated twisting path on the road of Union preservation.

Or, maybe that's just me.

How much political experience did Arnold Schwarzenegger have before he was elected as Governor of California?

How much political experience did John Edwards have before he was elected to the US Senate? -- Jebbie

This was what the voters' wanted, not what the people wanted.

not voters'

What will become of me?

regulars here who think Obama is the messiah -- heru-ur

You are angry about the imperial/human rights abuses of our USA. Got that. Near as I can tell, Obama supporters who post regularly here seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach, and that really grates on you for some reason. Got that, too. None of them (except maybe one, but so far, even she gets the benefit of the doubt) has indicated a messianic view of an "Obama, the One" administration, much less a merely myopic view. No, instead you (having opened a door to making wild judgments about people you do not know) seem obsessed with being proven "right" ahead of events, an attitude which could (among many possibilities) reflect a constitutional inability to internalize an understanding (according to studies cited by ondelette, for example) of the innate potential barbarity of virtually all people, including yourself. Somehow in this mode, maybe you think you can exculpate yourself, or at least avoid heartbreak. Since we are making wild contemptuous judgments about people we don't know.

;-)

Maybe, on the other hand, the reference to "messianism" is rhetorical excess. That probably doesn't help whatever case it is you are trying to make, but that is your problem. Or maybe that's just me.

;-)

You are just as guilty as everyone else.

"Regular posters" here are just as innocent as you.

You might be "right." Who cares about being "right" besides you?

Work the problem*.

*Hint: The problem is not in these pages.