Jeffersonian vs Lincolnian America

[ChristopherABrown]

A modern constitutional convention is a dangerous thing. It would only further destroy America.

No, a modern Con Con would be the end of America, as envisioned by the delegates to the 1789 Convention.

You're not wrong.

Wouldn't it be nice though if we could do one an go back to the basics. And then put a heavy heavy very short leash on the government.
Currently impossible I know.

Yep, impossible currently. The problem today is not with the Constitution but with the people. What good is a Constitution if those in power (and those who vote them into it) don't care what is written in it.

Yes, the problem is with the people.

But which problem is the one that will cost them their rights and freedoms? Which problem will lead to the loss of the republic and constitution defining it?

I maintain that the inability for authority to recognize the peoples need to share information vital to the act of unification for the purpose of altering or abolishing government destructive to their rights, is the fatal dysfunction.

That is the PURPOSE of free speech. With it, all problems can be addressed.

Priority of speech is vital, and our current first amendment has none. Our right is not enumerated properly,

Yes, a modern constitutional convention could further destroy America IF the people allow one without proper preparation.

Therein we have another vital right, one not enumerated at all. The right to prepare for Article 5.

We only need to agree upon this to enforce the right and have it properly enumerated. That is our right under the 9th amendment.

Accordingly, we need to agree upon that before all other things, or else they to will be destroyed. Destroyed eventually, convention or not.

[ChristopherABrown]

Participating in this thread has caused recall from someplace in memory that indeed, Lincoln had made a deal with government and those that assisted with his election.

That deal was that IF he could rally the American people to participate in compelling their states to properly conduct Article V, that he would be allowed to oversee that from the office of president without reprisal.

Because the press was controlled by the a English interests that also wanted the war to divide the nation, put it in debt while usurping the constitutional constraints over the government, Lincoln failed. Lincoln did not know the extent of control by those foreign elements over the press.

When he failed, his part of the bargain was engaged if he were to be president. That was to conduct the war as the financiers of it wanted it done.

Therefore, all of the accusation are true, but there is a reason for them. The American people FAILED to overcome the pervasive influence of the press and support their constitution.

This, undoubtably was done by vesting in the false promise of greatness and power promised by the many industrialists that wished to gain the control needed to exploit labor and resource for the enrichment of themselves and perpetuation of their power.

[ajax]

A Simple Explanation
By Valerie Protopapas on Oct 14, 2020
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog ... planation/

What separated the Jeffersonian understanding of government embraced by the South from the philosophy of Lincoln and the people of the North? For if Lincoln had believed as Jefferson, the war would not have happened. Indeed, it is probable that the circumstances leading up to the war would not have happened. So, what in fact, did happen?! Truth to tell, there were two philosophies of government or rather of the nature of man that undergirded North and South. The South held to the Aristotlean philosophy, later articulated by Locke, that Man was a communal being who naturally created groups in which to live. Within those groups government was necessary, but only to provide protection for the citizenry. The creed of this philosophy was voiced by Jefferson: “Government governs best that governs least.”

The other philosophy of government arose from the teachings of British philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes opined that man was not a communal being but rather, like the tiger, man was a solitary, making his way as best he could as a practitioner of the Law of the Jungle; that is, the survival of the fittest. Therefore, in order for man to be “civilized,” he had to be forced into a relationship with his fellows and that relationship could only be sustained through coercion. Naturally, the only means by which such coercion could be applied was government. Thus government was the means by which civilization and society were maintained. If there were no central government or if that government was weak and thus such coercion not efficacious, the result would be social and political chaos!

This was the philosophy of Abraham Lincoln and his political allies! Secession of the Southern states meant to Lincoln—besides the loss of revenue—the beginning of the breakup of what had been to that time an ever expanding Union. This, in turn, would lead to a weakening of central authority and, hence, anarchy, something which simply could not be permitted! Anything and everything needful to prevent that breakup was acceptable in light of the unmitigated disaster that would follow a weakening of the central authority and its ability to force a naturally unruly populace into submission! No act was too barbarous, no crime too egregious to be shunned if by its commission the Union was preserved. This mindset answers many questions about the Union strategy of total war and why the people of the North did not cavil or later repent of the commission of such atrocities because they were seen as “necessary.”

Of course, Lincoln as a Hobbesian was not talking about “union” as most men understood it then—or now for that matter. A true “union” is by its very nature voluntary. Union at the point of a gun is conquest, occupation and subjugation. Lincoln’s definition of “union” was the submission of the American people—North and South—to the will of the central government. And under that arrangement, the states became nothing more than “counties” within a national government. And as counties have no separate powers within their states, so states then have no separate powers within the central government but become bureaucratic entities used for the collection of revenues and the imposition of federal laws, mandates and regulations.

This is, in effect, what happened as a result of the war of 1861. Lincoln and Hobbes won. Aristotle, Locke—and Jefferson—lost and so did the vision of the Founders and We the People. Besides explaining how and why a ruinous war came about when sovereign states exercised their constitutional right to depart from a union that was no longer to their collective benefits, it also explains what is going on 150 years later as the same questions arise again as Jefferson Davis prophesied. Indeed, the major question remains: who rules—We the People or the Government?