Another Stupid Hitler Comparison: This Time It’s Lincoln

[corbe]

Another Stupid Hitler Comparison: This Time It’s Lincoln

By J. Cal Davenport  |  April 13, 2017, 11:42am  |  @J_Cal_Davenport.

If you’re entertained by Hitler comparisons, this has been your week. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer attempted to show how terrible Bashar al-Assad is by stating that even Hitler did not use chemical weapons. This line has been ridiculed as it deserved, and even though no one seriously considers Spicer to be a Holocaust denier, his comment could not have come at a worse time than the week Passover begins.

People, even those whose job it is to communicate, tend to step in it when they make such specious comparisons. Too often, they are simply employed as an ad hominem attack in a stupid debate. There are a number of reasons that Hitler comparisons should be retired for good.

Someone should tell North Carolina General Assembly member Larry Pittman, who called Abraham Lincoln “the same sort if (sic) tyrant” as Adolf Hitler. On Tuesday, the Republican lawmaker was using his political Facebook page — another inadvisable decision — to defend a bill he introduced that “would restore a ban on same-sex marriage, in defiance of the US Supreme Court,” according to Business Insider.

A commenter told him to get over it; same-sex marriage is the law of the land. Pittman was not ready to get over it, responding, “And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort (of) tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional.”

What the final sentence has to do with the rest of Pittman’s point, I have no idea. Hitler comparisons in all their forms are silly, but at least Sean Spicer was comparing the leader of the Third Reich to an authoritarian who had gassed his own people. Assad could reasonably be considered a tyrant. Lincoln cannot, despite the pro-Confederacy, anti-historical meme that he was.

South Carolina began the train of secessions and Confederate forces began to lay siege to Fort Sumter before Lincoln even took office. His actions were intended to hold together the country the Constitution of which he had sworn to uphold. Some argue that the right to secession is immutable and certainly applied here, as the North was about to take the South’s slaves.

That was untrue, but even if it were, the claim does not hold up against the views of the founders of the United States. Lincoln, a studied aficionado of Thomas Jefferson, was well aware that the Declaration of Independence — purportedly a document of secessionist precedence — argued that prudence dictates that “Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”

The colonies’ secession, if you want to call it that, the Declaration states is justified only “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.” There was absolute despotism in the United States at the time. It was called slavery and it existed in states which were attempting to secede. Far from having the rights listed in the Declaration violated, they were in fact hoping to escape the prospect that their violation of those rights toward others would be stopped.

Lincoln, inarguably, was standing for freedom, as well as the preservation of the country he was sworn to defend from enemies foreign or domestic.

So far, so good, but what of his means? Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, it is true, but only after wrestling with the constitutionality of it. The placement of the clause pertaining to habeus corpus is in Article I, implying that it is Congress’s to suspend. Lincoln’s conclusion was that Congress was compromised, fractured by the split in the states which its members represented. He took action, ordering the suspension, which was later upheld by Congress.

Even with as pressing a matter as the Civil War to consider — a war that Lincoln had to micromanage militarily in the beginning due to lack of competent generals — the details of individual rights mattered to him. In response to roving bands of Sioux that were killing and plundering in the Minnesota territory (part of little known, but fascinating and sad part of American history), Lincoln dispatched troops to end the matter.

Upon the Sioux surrender, hundreds were arrested and tried without due process. 303 were sentenced to be hanged. The overworked Lincoln was told simply to sign off on their execution, but instead had every case reviewed for evidence of participation and, finding none in the vast majority of cases, commuted the sentences of all but 38.

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http://theresurgent.com/another-stupid-hitler-comparison-this-time-lincoln/

[Idaho_Cowboy]

Whatdya expect from the sooth?

[Cripplecreek]

I saw the confederacy compared to nazi Germany here the other day.

As a lifelong Yankee I think that's damn ridiculous.

[goatprairie]

As a veteran of many of the  "Lincoln was a tyrant" or "southerners were slavers/traitors" threads from TOS,  I never saw one where one of the posters became convinced of the other side's argument.  Everybody dug in their heels. Do we want to go through that again?

[Cripplecreek]

As a veteran of many of the  "Lincoln was a tyrant" or "southerners were slavers/traitors" threads from TOS,  I never saw one where one of the posters became convinced of the other side's argument.  Everybody dug in their heels. Do we want to go through that again?

For the second time today I suggest that both sides should read the autobiography of Booker T Washington. The man was the king of reconciliation.

I would also suggest reading about Sam Houston, the Confederacy, and the civil war.

[EC]

I recommend a couple more civil wars. Make one last over 30 years. It gives you perspective that you don't get with just the one short one. 

[goatprairie]

I recommend a couple more civil wars. Make one last over 30 years. It gives you perspective that you don't get with just the one short one. 

The way the country is going, we just might see another one. Never say never.
 My alternate dream situation is where we have a trial split for ten years. I guarantee you after two to five years many millions of the residents of The Socialist States of America will be at the border clamoring, begging to be let into our country.

[Cripplecreek]

The way the country is going, we just might see another one. Never say never.
 My alternate dream situation is where we have a trial split for ten years. I guarantee you after two to five years many millions of the residents of The Socialist States of America will be at the border clamoring, begging to be let into our country.

There are no borders based on ideology between states anymore. Some states with large cities are pushed to the socialist end of the scale but the rural areas have no choice. People don't necessarily want to move for ideological reasons and very few would.

[goatprairie]

There are no borders based on ideology between states anymore. Some states with large cities are pushed to the socialist end of the scale but the rural areas have no choice. People don't necessarily want to move for ideological reasons and very few would.

I guarantee you, if they established boundaries, and where the wife and I currently reside was in the socialist country, we're moving out. No question.
There would have to be some sort of job bank set up to help people moving out of the socialist country, but in the long run it would be worth it. 

[Bigun]

The way the country is going, we just might see another one. Never say never.
 My alternate dream situation is where we have a trial split for ten years. I guarantee you after two to five years many millions of the residents of The Socialist States of America will be at the border clamoring, begging to be let into our country.

We've never had a civil war in this country to date but one may well be coming and it won't be one region vs another when it happens!

[Cripplecreek]

We've never had a civil war in this country to date but one may well be coming and it won't be one region vs another when it happens!

Just a few miles can make a million miles worth of distance. I live about 30 miles from Ann Arbor where the university of Michigan is and its a whole different country here.

[Bigun]

Just a few miles can make a million miles worth of distance. I live about 30 miles from Ann Arbor where the university of Michigan is and its a whole different country here.

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Thomas Jefferson

“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.”

Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230

"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.”

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Papers 12:442

“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.”

Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173

“Our cities... exhibit specimens of London only; our country is a different nation.”

 Thomas Jefferson to Andre de Daschkoff, 1809. ME 12:304

He was right beyond even his own understanding!