alt.war.civil.usa

On Sep 30, 8:57?am, Mike Griffith < ...@ >
wrote:
> The following principles have been expressly defended by Lincoln
> apologists in this newsgroup.


Pshaw. You've constructed so many strawmen with this that the price
of straw's skyrocketed.



Those who know what Lincoln did
> understand why his defenders would defend these principles-because
> they're the very principles that he followed and practiced.

Except you roundly misstate most of the positions and conflate
unrelated items in your points, and you completely ignore the context
of most events if it's inconvenient to you. Par for the course,
though, given your apparent lack of reading comprehension skills and
obsessively partisan paradigm.

?Regular
> readers of this newsgroup will quickly recognize that these principles
> have appeared repeatedly in this group.


Readers of this newsgroup will also quickly recognize the complete
line of bull you've constructed. As I have a life, I'm not going to
spend all night debating every single fallacy you've committed, but
I've got time for one or two...


>
> 1. The federal government has the right to shut down newspapers that
> are questioning the morality and/or legality of an ongoing war.


Mikey here doesn't understand the difference between printing military
secrets during wartime, or printing seditious items. There were many
newspapers critical of Lincoln and the Republicans that did not get
shut down during the war.



>
> 2. The federal government has the right to jail newspaper editors who
> are questioning the morality and/or legality of an ongoing war.

See above. Mikey and his cohorts like to inflate the numbers and
ignore the details of exactly why some of these men were arrested or
suppressed. Same with the tales about arrested legislators.




>
> 12. It's treason for the citizens of a state to want to withdraw
> their state from the Union, even though the Constitution does not say
> ratification is irrevocable and even though it never once describes
> the Union as permanent or perpetual.


You're a moron, Mike. First of all, no one holds the position that
it's treason to WANT a state to leave the Union. Period. Do try to
get your facts straight and figure out there's a difference between
thought and action. I can want to smack you upside the head for being
a twit all I want and it's perfectly legal. The tricky bit is that
it's illegal to actually DO it. See the difference? Try to get a
handle on the language.


In other words, it's treason for
> the citizens of a state to want independence for their state, even if
> they want to maintain friendly relations with the national government
> from which they want to withdraw. (The applause you hear in the
> background is King George III cheering this principle from the grave.)

Again with the want, see above.

And, you moron, you've completely missed the fact that I, among others
in the past have actually said that secession is possible. In your
manic frenzy to paint all your opponents with the same brush you
incompetently overlook that little fact.


>
> 13. If the citizens of a state or colony want their state to be
> independent, neither the national government nor any other government
> has any moral obligation to respect their desire. The only "right"
> those citizens have to be independent is to try to win their state's
> independence through war.


Oh, how nice. Mike has the same trouble distinguishing "moral" and
"legal" that he does in distinguishing "natural" and "legal" rights.
And again Mike short term memory loss prevents him from realizing that
people on this very newsgroup have said that secession is possible,
which kicks the legs right out from under him here. What is objected
to is the exact means the south attempted to utilize to achieve it,
not the idea of secession itself.




>
> 14. Waging war on civilians is acceptable if those civilians are
> citizens of a state that is trying to leave the Union without the
> permission of the federal government. The rules of war don't apply to
> civilians who resist the federal government's attempt to force their
> state back into the Union against their will.


Mike isn't smart enough to realize that the government is perfectly
within its rights to combat a rebellion, especially when that
rebellion has organized field armies using arms stolen from the very
government they're rebelling against. As for rules of war, they were
observed. Probably more rigorously by the north than the south, to be
honest. Unless Mike wants to dispute things that happened at places
like Fort Pillow, Milliken's Bend, the Crater and so on.



>
> Mike Griffith
> Civil War website /mikegriffith1/