The 5 Presidents that Built America verse the 5 Presidents that Broke America

[zymurgy]

Of course I approved of the force used against the Southern rednecks. Again, without Lincoln and the North putting the South's seceding nonsense to rest, America would probably have been on course to destroy our Constitution altogether. Would you still be ragging on Lincoln if the South
had won that civil war, and our constitution was torn to pieces from that outcome?

And now you’ve simply admitted my point: you approve of the force because you approve of the outcome. Fine. But that is an ends-justify-the-means argument, not an argument that Lincoln “broke nothing.”

If the Confederacy had successfully seceded, the U.S. Constitution would not have magically ceased to exist. The remaining United States would still have had it, while the Confederacy had already adopted its own constitution—one heavily modeled on the U.S. Constitution, albeit with explicit protections for slavery.


So no, the choice was not “Lincoln wages war or the Constitution gets torn to pieces.”


You cannot simultaneously celebrate Lincoln for using federal force to transform the Union and then insist that he transformed nothing.

 

[Jade Dragon]

Still high on colon fumes, I see, Hater Boy. Your bogus praise of King Huckster Trump is disturbed behavior.

 

[Into the Night]

And there it is. When the constitutional argument runs out,

What 'constitutional argument'?

just reduce hundreds of thousands of dead Americans to “redneck heads” and cheer.

You really should visit the South some time.

That pretty well illustrates the problem with Lincoln worship:

Go learn what 'worship' means. Buzzword fallacy.

federal force becomes virtuous simply because you approve of who it was used against.

No one ever made any such argument. Put down the bong. You are hallucinating again.

And saying Lincoln “broke nothing” is absurd. Why do we even distinguish the antebellum constitutional order from the constitutional order that followed the Civil War? Because the old federal arrangement did not survive intact. The war settled secession by force, dramatically expanded federal and executive power, and created the conditions for Reconstruction and the Reconstruction Amendments.

The United States has never suffered a civil war.
The Constitution of the United States is not an order. It is law.
The War of Secession was indeed settled by force. That's what wars are settled by.
Lincoln did not force or write any amendment.

You cannot seriously argue nothing was broken when the entire federal-state constitutional relationship was transformed.

It wasn't. States are still sovereign. They are each a republic. They are united under a federal republic.

What I find comical about your list is the inconsistency. Wilson is bad, Lincoln is great, and FDR—the president who presided over perhaps the largest peacetime expansion of federal power in American history—is mysteriously absent.

Wilson was a socialist, attempting to impose socialism by force. He was President during WW1, which did not end in a victory.
He helped form the League of Nations, which utterly failed.

Lincoln attacked another nation that was threatening the Union. That nation lost and was dissolved, bringing those states back into the Union, and ending legal slavery.

FDR stole the gold from people, issued fiat currency, then devalued it by 30% almost immediately afterward. He cause the Great Depression to be Great. It lasted well into the 50's. He was President during WW2 (after Wilson's failures), and failed to win that war, passing away before the War ended.

Fortunately for all involved (except the Germans of course!), Eisenhower was appointed by the George C Marshall and the Senate to oversee the European theater of that war and won it spectacularly.

That looks less like a coherent constitutional standard and more like the standard of the typical neoconservative: centralization and executive power are terrible when you dislike the president or his purposes, but admirable when they are attached to a war or cause you approve of.

The Constitution of the United States makes no such statement.
DON'T TRY TO HIDE BEHIND THE CONSTITUTION YOU DESPISE!

If breaking the old constitutional restraints makes Lincoln “great,” then by your own apparent measuring stick, FDR deserves a prominent place on the list.

FDR should have a prominent place on the list, as a destroyer. This was missed.

Ultimately, though, your rankings seem to have at least as much to do with whether there is an “R” next to the president’s name as with any consistent principle about limited government, constitutional restraint, or the actual institutional damage each president left behind.

Wilson did not believe in limited government. He was a socialist.
FDR did not believe in a limited government. He was a socialist.
Obama did not believe in a limited government. He was a socialist.

 

[Into the Night]

And now you’ve simply admitted my point: you approve of the force because you approve of the outcome.

Attempted proof by synthesis.
He has not proved your point, moron.
Obviously, you support slavery.

Fine. But that is an ends-justify-the-means argument, not an argument that Lincoln “broke nothing.”

Lincoln broke nothing, except the CSA.

If the Confederacy had successfully seceded,

It DID successfully secede, moron, forming the CSA.

the U.S. Constitution would not have magically ceased to exist.

The Constitution of the United States does not apply to the CSA or any other nation.

The remaining United States would still have had it, while the Confederacy had already adopted its own constitution—one heavily modeled on the U.S. Constitution, albeit with explicit protections for slavery.

The goal of the CSA during the War of Secession was to destroy the government of the United States, the Constitution of the United States, and implement their own constitution in it's place.

So no, the choice was not “Lincoln wages war or the Constitution gets torn to pieces.”

Yes it was, moron.

You cannot simultaneously celebrate Lincoln for using federal force to transform the Union and then insist that he transformed nothing.

Lincoln did not transform the Union.
Lincoln did not change anything in the Constitution.
Lincoln DID successfully destroy the CSA, putting those state back on the path to rejoining the Union and ending legal slavery.