Lincoln and the Question of Self-Government

[Chris]

Lincoln and the Question of Self-Government is a review of Michael P. Zuckert's A Nation So Conceived: Abraham Lincoln and the Paradox of Democratic Sovereignty.

I'm more interested in the reviewer Staussian views. I'm going to break up the opening paragraph into smaller ones. If it matters, I would consider myself an East-Coast Straussian.

There are East-Coast Straussians and there are West-Coast Straussians.

Reduced to a single mouthful, East-Coasters can be said to believe that liberal modernity is a bad thing for politics and ethics. Since the American political experiment was born out of the Enlightenment, it unavoidably shares in modernity’s defects—among which are a dismissal of religious and ethical restraints and a depressing weakness for the tyranny of the majority.

West-Coasters agree that liberal modernity, as so defined, has had some lamentable consequences; but they understand the American experiment as an effort to recur to the first principles of classical politics (and particularly to Aristotle), and that recurrence renders American political history as the tale of a struggle between a righteous classicism and a lethal relativism.

(Of the two, we may take Allan Bloom as emblematic of the East-Coasters, and Harry Jaffa of the West-Coasters).

Between these upper and nether millstones, there is also a Midwestern Straussianism, which agrees that modernity is toxic (in the worst Hobbesian or Nietzschean sense of the word) and that the American experiment is indeed a modern one, but an experiment whose instincts struggle to tame the worst features of political modernity. And Michael P. Zuckert, the author of A Nation So Conceived: Abraham Lincoln and the Paradox of Democratic Sovereignty, is one of its prophets.

[Chuck]

Lincoln was a dictator and had no belief in 'self-government'; he was a railroad lawyer and a fan of the old Whig 'American System', which was similar to Alexander Hamilton's advocacy of corporate welfare state and monopoly capitalism, not 'free enterprise'. The Republican Party has never been supportive of 'free markets' or individual enterprise, not then and not now, either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americ...economic_plan)

The American System was an economic plan that played an important role in American policy during the first half of the 19th century, rooted in the "American School" ideas of Alexander Hamilton.^[1]
A plan to strengthen and unify the nation, the American System was advanced by the Whig Party and a number of leading politicians including Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams. Clay was the first to refer to it as the "American System". Motivated by a growing American economy bolstered with major exports such as cotton, tobacco, native sod, and tar they sought to create a structure for expanding trade. This System included such policies as:

• Support for a high tariff to protect American industries and generate revenue for the federal government
• Maintenance of high public land prices to generate federal revenue
• Preservation of the Bank of the United States to stabilize the currency and rein in risky state and local banks
• Development of a system of internal improvements (such as roads and canals) which would knit the nation together and be financed by the tariff and land sales.

Like Hamilton, the GOP has always advocated 'total corruption' in government, in practice if not in rhetoric. The Left jumped aboard that train in the 1950's, and the Democrats' 'Watergate Babies' in the 1970's helped the GOP get rid of the old populists and fancied themselves 'Technocrats' and helped the Reagan administration do away with anti-monopolist enforcement and let banks and conglomerates run amuck, with few exceptions. Now the economy is almost entirely a collection of duopolies and monopolies, all 'too big to fail'. There is little in the way of small to mid-sized competitors who take business away from the giants if they fail to produce goods, so they just charge more and produce less, and make higher profits and focus on dividend yields and stock price over product improvement and reinvestment, i.e. financial capitalism goals has driven out industrial capitalism goals.

Nobody actually pays attention to Strauss or the Austrians or the left wing think tank apologia when making business and political decisions.

[Chris]

That is true, right up into the early 1900s the GOP was the party of big government against free commerce. The Progressive Era began with TR, a Republican, but by the end of the era, the parties had switched positions on government intrusion and management of the economy.

[Chuck]

That is true, right up into the early 1900s the GOP was the party of big government against free commerce. The Progressive Era began with TR, a Republican, but by the end of the era, the parties had switched positions on government intrusion and management of the economy.

Some Republicans did, but many remained in the monopolist and big govt. wing, like Henry Luce and Andrew Mellon. Nixon and Reagan were also big fans of monopoly/Govt. partnerships. Reagan made big noises as if he were a populist but outside of the antitrust suit against AT&T he and Voelker both encouraged merger mania and didn't interfere with conglomeration and market manipulations.

Richard Hofstadter and John Kenneth Galbraith were big advocates of the concentration of monopoly power over the economy and had fans among many big corporate managers and CEOs from the 1950's on. They were big influences on the Democratic Party and big corporations and bankers as well. They didn't like small business, they liked big business; it was easier for them to deal with a few big businesses than a lot of small ones during WW II, and they despised people like Truman and Eisenhower both. The Watergate Babies were heavily influenced by Hofstadter and Galbraith as well, which is why they worked to get rid of the anti-monopolists and populists and join the pro-monopoly wing of the Republicans while posing as being 'for the little people'.

They both run that scam to get votes, neither of them intend to follow through on it; like Marxists, they only view people as consumers and economic units, not citizens in a democracy.

[Chris]

Some Republicans did, but many remained in the monopolist and big govt. wing, like Henry Luce and Andrew Mellon. Nixon and Reagan were also big fans of monopoly/Govt. partnerships. Reagan made big noises as if he were a populist but outside of the antitrust suit against AT&T he and Voelker both encouraged merger mania and didn't interfere with conglomeration and market manipulations.

Richard Hofstadter and John Kenneth Galbraith were big advocates of the concentration of monopoly power over the economy and had fans among many big corporate managers and CEOs from the 1950's on. They were big influences on the Democratic Party and big corporations and bankers as well. They didn't like small business, they liked big business; it was easier for them to deal with a few big businesses than a lot of small ones during WW II, and they despised people like Truman and Eisenhower both. The Watergate Babies were heavily influenced by Hofstadter and Galbraith as well, which is why they worked to get rid of the anti-monopolists and populists and join the pro-monopoly wing of the Republicans while posing as being 'for the little people'.

They both run that scam to get votes, neither of them intend to follow through on it; like Marxists, they only view people as consumers and economic units, not citizens in a democracy.

You cansee that in the beginnings of the conservative movement in the 1950s. Both Buckley and Kirk agreed on the need to promote virtue. Buckley, siding with Frank Meyer in fusing libertarianism argued virtue is best promoted by example while Kirk, rejecting those "Chirping Sectarians," argued virtue was better promoted through legislation. When I was libertarian I sided with Buckley but now have shifted toward Kirk. I think National Conservatism, as a movement now, follows Kirk's view as well.

[LWW]

Lincoln approved the greatest war crime in US history.

Lincoln did not end slavery.

Lincoln did order an opposition legislator jailed.

Lincoln did shutter the free press.

Lincoln probably missed an arrest warrant for a SCOTUS justice, to be used if he crossed Abe again.

[Chuck]

Lincoln approved the greatest war crime in US history.

Lincoln did not end slavery.

Lincoln did order an opposition legislator jailed.

Lincoln did shutter the free press.

Lincoln probably missed an arrest warrant for a SCOTUS justice, to be used if he crossed Abe again.

And he also deported a legally elected opposition leader, and had a private army of his own that controlled the ballot boxes in seven border states at the point of bayonets used against legitimate citizens who wouldn't vote for him and his chosen hacks. He also forced slaves onto plantations to work for next to nothing, and many others died in 'contraband camps' from starvation and disease, rather than let them flee north; some estimates of the death toll run up to a million. Meanwhile the north was exporting food to Europe in massive quantities. Hitler in fact admired him a lot, and obviously Mao probably did as well, since he copied a lot of Lincoln's tactics for political control and mass murders.

[Peter1469]

The US has a consistent historic record of getting around the Constitution in times of crisis. Lincoln saved the nation. Period.