Saturday, March 22, 2014

On "Historian", Doris Kearns Goodwin, Referring to Lincoln as a "Master Politician"

She meant it as a compliment. Need to know more?

5 comments:

dmarks said...

By the way, there real neo-confederates about. I found several at AOW's blog.... they even argued passionately and specifically in favor of the institution of slavery. I find this ideology to be one of the most detestable parts of the modern political landscape.

You, Will, and Les, are no kind of neo-confederate. And yet those steeped in the politics of hatred accuse you of being so.

Flying Jr, famed for his imagination-based obsessive hatred of George W. Bush, has no idea what he is talking about.

Rusty Shackelford said...



In the eyes of our favorite village idiot we are all racist for believing the war was not started only over slavery.

He believes unless we accept that fact we will never get beyond our racist past.He also added we will never get by our racist present until people like me are dead.

That is on sick puppy.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

It's a common strategy, dmraks (those opposed to the Vietnam War were often called Commies), but it totally ignores the complexity of the era; the fact that there were actually slave-owning people from the North (New Jersey) fighting nonslave-owning farmers from the South, the fact that there were a great many abolitionists who strongly opposed the war, etc.. I knew that I was stepping into a hornet's nest over this but you gotta speak the truth to power, right (whether it be Reagan, FDR, OR Lincoln)?

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

He's a total moron, Russ. Anybody who's taken as little as an introductory history course knows that slavery wasn't the predominant reason for Lincoln's actions or even the South's (as Professor Garraty eloquently stated, slavery wasn't even remotely in trouble and so it had to have been economic and nationalistic reasons for those states to secede). But, yes, he has to have narrative and anybody who challenges it he has to label as evil. The man is utterly grade-school, Russ.

Les Carpenter said...

Sometimes, especially with people who are vehemently passionate about their beliefs, arguing is like shouting into a strong wind when those whose attention you are trying to get are 500 feet away.

Slavery was a despicable institution and our nation will forever have a stain on its character because of it. .How its continued existence following the Declaration of Independence is one of the greatest contradictions in our history.

The purpose of this discussion was to present a view held by many historians. The point is the North did not go to war initially to free the slaves, and by this I refer to the federal government of 1860.. The south was more concerned with preserving slavery and their agrarian way of life.

In a nutshell, no minds are being changed and it really serves no usual purpose to continue pointing out the same arguments at nauseam. What's the definition of insanity?...