• LookBehindYouNowAndThen@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Conservatives did not consider Lincoln a conservative. They considered a revolutionary. You’re lying.

    But you say you are conservative - eminently conservative - while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;” while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the “gur-reat pur-rinciple” that “if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,” fantastically called “Popular Sovereignty;” but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.

    Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.

    You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

      • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Your profile says you’re a conservative and a fascist? @neuromancer said before they’re incompatible, and he’s a conservative.

        He also says Lincoln was a conservative.

        Why do you both say the opposite? Is conservatism so meaningless that such fundamental differences are just ignored?

        Why do you think conservatives deny that fascists are part of their movement when they clearly are?

        • @annihilation.social
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          2 months ago

          @Zombiepirate

          As to what conservatism is, I write about that a lot:

          https://www.amerika.org/

          It is a focus on order beyond the individual and the social group; we call it realism, and it tends to favor historically-proven results and a case-by-case basis instead of ideological categorical containers.

          About ten thousand people in North America can successfully parse that sentence.

        • @annihilation.social
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          2 months ago

          @Zombiepirate

          Fascists are hybrids. Fascism is corporatism, i.e. state control through corporations.

          What does my profile say?

          “Furthest Right: raging realism plus transcendental reverence. I write at https://www.amerika.org/ and https://www.deathmetal.org/ about topics such as nihilism, ecofascism, paganism, eugenics, capitalism, perennialism, conservatism, natural selection, and of course death metal.”

          Ecofascism is a separate movement. You read your Linkola and Kaczynski?

          Full readout here:
          https://annihilation.social/notice/AgRr091ay4W0HCTtcu

          Lincoln was a radical. He, too, was a hybrid, in that he came from the Anglo tradition but was outside of it as a “radical.”

          He was a progressive of his age. He was closer to Marx than Washington.

            • @annihilation.social
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              2 months ago

              @Zombiepirate

              The most conservative society:

              * Absolute monarchy
              * Ethno-nationalist
              * Free market based
              * Caste system
              * Culture/religion united

              Like anything else, there are degrees of conservatism.

              Some conservatives, like GWB, are barely conservative.

              • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Not all conservatives are free market devotees; that’s a modern twist that is not universal.

                But you agree that they work to the same ends?

                • @annihilation.social
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                  2 months ago

                  @Zombiepirate

                  I disagree. Conservatives naturally favor organic methods like common law, free markets, culture, and hierarchy.

                  As far as work to the same ends, I think you have it backwards. Fascism is a hybrid. It borrows some goals and methods from both Left and Right.

                  • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    Conservatism also borrows from the leftist rhetoric and action though, so that’s not a solid distinction.

                    They’re both counterrevolutionary in nature; I don’t see the distinction that you do. It appears that they are possibly different in degree instead of kind. This is the “ends” that I refer to: opposition to the liberal revolutions since the 18th century.

    • Neuromancer@lemm.eeM
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      2 months ago

      I get you don’t read well but see how Lincoln uses the word we. It’s including himself. Lincoln was a conservative. He was a Republican.

      Lincoln was not a progressive.