{"id":876,"date":"2013-06-10T12:20:52","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T16:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=876"},"modified":"2013-06-10T12:20:52","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T16:20:52","slug":"a-response-to-rich-lowrys-conservative-defense-of-abraham-lincoln-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2013\/06\/a-response-to-rich-lowrys-conservative-defense-of-abraham-lincoln-ii.html","title":{"rendered":"A Response to Rich Lowry’s “Conservative” Defense of Abraham Lincoln II"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest issue of National Review, <\/i>Rich Lowry promotes his latest book on Abraham Lincoln while blasting away at those of our 16th<\/sup> president\u2019s contemporary critics on the political right\u2014those to whom he derisively refers as \u201cLincoln haters.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

And here we have it: staring back at him in the one-dimensional caricature to which Lowry reduces Lincoln\u2019s critics is the reflection of his own argument.\u00a0 Not unsurprisingly\u2014self-awareness and self-righteousness do not a union make\u2014Lowry doesn\u2019t see it. But if he wasn\u2019t blinded by both the certainty of his own cause as well as his contempt for the \u201cpeople-owning libertarians\u201d who inhabit places like \u201cthe fever swamp at Lewrockwell.com,\u201d he would have recognized that the path toward the destruction of one\u2019s opponents is almost always paved with lies and not a little irrationality.<\/p>\n

Lowry\u2019s argument suffers from a poverty that is at once intellectual and moral.<\/p>\n

His opponents, the \u201cLincoln haters,\u201d are people who, in Lowry\u2019s estimation, \u201capparently hate federal power more than they abhor slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are few topics in all of human history, to say nothing of American history, regarding which there exists as much literature as that of \u201cthe American Civil War.\u201d\u00a0 That is, it has always been and remains an immensely complex and, thus, controversial issue\u2014for most people.\u00a0 For Lowry, however, the matter is quite simple: either we join him in revering Lincoln as \u201cperhaps the foremost proponent of opportunity in all of American history\u201d or else we support slavery.<\/p>\n

So, because they reject Lincoln, his \u201clibertarian\u201d critics support, or at least are not sufficiently opposed to, the enslavement <\/i>of blacks. \u00a0This is outrageous.\u00a0 It is also idiotic, so much so that even those upon whom he sets his sights should be more than a bit embarrassed for <\/i>Lowry.<\/p>\n

For Lincoln\u2019s critics, past and present, the abolition of slavery never trumped all countervailing considerations.\u00a0 This makes them wrong and disreputable, for the abolition of slavery is an end that justifies the use of any and all means. This is what Lowry appears to be saying.\u00a0 Yet before the tribunal of this reasoning, the country\u2019s founders who Lowry praises stand equally condemned\u2014whether they sympathized with slavery or abhorred it.<\/p>\n

There would have been no America had those of the country\u2019s founders who opposed slavery insisted on its abolition.\u00a0 In other words, there would have been no union <\/i>of colonies turned independent <\/i>states had slavery\u2019s nemeses at America\u2019s birth pushed too hard for its demise.\u00a0 With the exception of hard leftists, everyone else, including neoconservatives like Lowry, have long insisted upon this point in defending the founders. However, given his critique of the Old South and its contemporary apologists, Lowry undermines this defense.<\/p>\n

Clearly, none of the founders ascribed categorical importance to ending slavery.\u00a0 Even when they acknowledged its evil, the men who ratified the Constitution nevertheless prized above all else the sovereignty of these <\/i>United States.\u00a0 If the latter promised to come about only at the cost of tolerating slavery while seeking to phase it out gradually, <\/i>then this was the cost that they were willing to pay.<\/p>\n

If Lowry is right and Lincoln\u2019s critics must \u201chate federal power more than they abhor slavery,\u201d then the founders and framers must have been guilty of the same.\u00a0 If Lincoln\u2019s critics are disreputable, then the founders were as well.\u00a0 In fact, consistency demands that Lowry recognize the latter as retroactive or honorary Lincoln haters.<\/p>\n

Philosophically speaking, the distinction between \u201cfederal power\u201d and \u201cslavery\u201d is one without a difference.\u00a0 This, at any rate, is the verdict that the founders drew, and it is the one that \u201cLincoln haters\u201d past and present would have to infer as well.\u00a0 In short, \u201cfederal power\u201d is dreaded precisely because it amounts to slavery<\/i>\u2014the enslavement of the sovereign states by the central government.<\/p>\n

The concept of a state implies the concept of sovereignty, and the latter in turn implies the existence of an authority that is indivisible.\u00a0 By the very logic of the notion, then, a state has the authority to unite with or disengage (secede) from other sovereign agents\u2014for whatever reasons.\u00a0 This authority is denied once the sovereign in question is subject to compulsion by some force outside of itself.\u00a0 Its integrity as a state is then undermined, and it is reduced to a territory or a fief, i.e. the analog of a slave.<\/p>\n

Perhaps none of this is worth delving into, for Lowry\u2019s essay makes it painfully clear that he is about as interested in logic and philosophy as he is interested in history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest issue of National Review, Rich Lowry promotes his latest book on Abraham Lincoln while blasting away at those of our 16th president\u2019s contemporary critics on the political right\u2014those to whom he derisively refers as \u201cLincoln haters.\u201d And here we have it: staring back at him in the one-dimensional caricature to which Lowry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA Response to Rich Lowry's "Conservative" Defense of Abraham Lincoln II<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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