AMERICANS NEED TO SEE SOME RUNS ON BANKS TO SEE WHAT THEIR SYSTEM IS REALLY BASED ON

"Oh we have plenty of reserves. And of course, we can always print more."

RE LINCOLN

The Republican platform for 1860 certainly contemplated attacking the slave holding states, especially those that seceded from the Republican held Union.

You can read the Republican platform for 1860 for yourself.

Question: had a non slaveholding state chosen to side with the seceding states and secede, on the principle of a right in the several states of secession, which they all clearly had thought that they had, what would have been the Republican Party's, and Lincoln's, position on that secession?

On the other hand, one had several slave holding but non seceding states.  How do you think they were treated? How should they have been treated by the various factions? How, under the Platform?

The whole thing politically was a disaster. 

See border states (American Civil War) Wikipedia:

"Border secessionists paid less attention to the slavery issue in 1861, since their states' economies were based more on trade with the North than on cotton. Their main concern in 1861 was federal coercion; some residents viewed Lincoln's call to arms as a repudiation of the American traditions of states rights, democracy, liberty, and a republican form of government. Secessionists insisted that Washington had usurped illegitimate powers in defiance of the Constitution, and thereby had lost its legitimacy."

Maryland:

"Union troops had to go through Maryland to reach the national capital at Washington, D.C. Had Maryland also joined the Confederacy, Washington, D.C. would have been surrounded. There was popular support for the Confederacy in Baltimore, Southern Maryland, and the Eastern Shore, the latter two areas with numerous slaveholders and slaves. Baltimore was strongly tied to the cotton trade and related businesses of the South. The Maryland Legislature rejected secession in the spring of 1861, though it refused to reopen rail links with the North. It requested that Union troops be removed from Maryland.^[24] The state legislature did not want to secede, but it also did not want to aid in killing southern neighbors in order to force them back into the Union.^[25] Maryland's wish for neutrality within the Union was a major obstacle given Lincoln's desire to force the South back into the Union militarily.

To protect the national capital Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, and imprisoned without charges or trials one sitting U.S. Congressman as well the mayor, police chief, entire Board of Police, and the city council of Baltimore.^[26] Chief Justice Roger Taney, acting only as a circuit judge, ruled on June 4, 1861 in ex parte Merryman that Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus was unconstitutional, but the president ignored the ruling in order to meet a national emergency. On September 17, 1861, the day the legislature reconvened, federal troops arrested without charge twenty-seven state legislators (one-third of the Maryland General Assembly).^[27][28] They were held temporarily at Fort McHenry, and later released when Maryland was secured for the Union. Because a large part of the legislature was now imprisoned, the session was canceled and representatives did not considered any additional anti-war measures. The song "Maryland, My Maryland" was written to attack Lincoln's action in blocking pro-Confederate elements. Maryland contributed troops to both the Union (60,000), and the Confederate (25,000) armies.

Maryland adopted a new state constitution in 1864 that prohibited slavery, thus emancipating all remaining slaves in the state."

RE HOMEGROWN EXTREMISTS GO BACK TO BEFORE THE BEGINNING HERE

Reviewing Bailyn's work and that of several others, one can see that the very founding of the US was, unfortunately, based mainly, (although their rhetoric was merely formally oppositional in  tenor), on anti government civil libertarian extremism, combined with local, intra colonial, as well as inter colonial self interests.

Cf. Ideological Origins..., The Origins Of American Politics

RE TPP PRESIDENTIAL POWER OVER TRADE AND DIPLOMACY LINKAGE

It has been the same story, over and over again, for decades.

Terms search: trading American interests

RE TERROR AND CONSENT

RE pages 11 to 13, I could not disagree more with this vision of past or future states of affairs.

The concept of market states, whatever those things may be, being better able to do what nation states signally failed to do, protect civilians, is a frank chimera.

Nation state nationalism is still the bogey of Western nations, among the misguided liberal establishment, long after the intra Western civilizational underpinnings for critiquing it have vanished, ironically, in Western lead globalization. Professor Kaiser apparently shared this liberal, post Milner Group, globalist view, at least back when he wrote Politics and War. See p. 410. 

Unfortunately, Bobbitt's account of his concept of the emergence of the market state or of market states, in Shield, does not make sense either. See eg Ch 10. Weaker states with a stronger presidency, less government but more, a stronger presidency, a new state committed to protecting its civilians, (notice he goes to civilians rather than citizens), all this is not merely paradoxical, as he admits, but frankly nonsensical as an improvement on a nation state concept. 

Rodrik's account of keeping the nation state, over against the onslaught of globalization, flawed as it has been, makes more sense in context, and at least has more of a sense for economic realities than Bobbitt's, which has almost none, even though he calls the emerging order of states market states.

AMERICANS WERE ALWAYS TOLD THEY WON WWII

Then they were told they had won the Cold War.

Surprise.

RE POWER AND PLENTY

Reading this now.

Although this old comment needs to be revised re China, it still has a ring of truth:

Terms search: Historical weight.

RE STABS IN THE FRONT

What could this topic comprise?

audience today snapshot

Entry	Pageviews
Canada	6
Hong Kong	5
United States	3
France	2
Germany	1
Netherlands	1
Poland	1
Ukraine	1

RE WHAT A CHARMING STORY

For those familiar with his jurisprudence work, The Shield, and his book on terrorism.

http://abovethelaw.com/2012/02/a-law-school-love-story-prominent-professor-marries-columbia-3l/

Here was a great interview re Terror And Consent.

Unfortunately, it is over most heads:

http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/1731

RE COUNTERINSURGENCY AND STABS IN THE BACK

"...The American effort was doomed because there was no long-term political basis for creating the kind of Iraq we had in mind--a pluralistic democracy allied with the United States...." DK


Paraphrasing, and generalizing, Kennan's remark re ambassadors: 
"They don't really know, to tell the truth, what a war is 

for...." 

I realize that Professor Kaiser would not put it this way.

RE BAILYN THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN POLITICS

This is a great short monograph re why our system has never worked very well.

Maybe there are other good treatments this short, I don't know.

RE AMERICAN ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY

Never in the history of human conflict....................

THE FOLLY OF FREE TRADE

This was one of the few enlightened articles, back in 1986, on the subject. Culbertson, HBR. 

I had never read it.

RE NYT TODAY SOBLE

He even calls diplomacy not simply ' diplomacy ', but 
' American economic diplomacy '.

' Political economy ', still a no no here; 

' economic nationalism ', a dirty word term. Rodrik makes contrary noises, but as an economist, he knows he is on shaky ground. 

Thus we have had globalization as an ostensible antidote, since 1919, and things like the EU, etc., even though Wilson, bless his misguided heart, had called,  back in 1919, for self determination........

But ( presidential ) American economic diplomacy, that has always been fine, here.

Terms search: trading American interests

CALL OUR SYSTEM OF AMBASSADORIAL APPOINTMENTS

a monetocracy .

Locus classicus: Ambassador Sembler. Italy.

terms search

ambassadors

Here is Kennan, re our Ambassadors, and also, I think, our diplomats, in general, here:

'FLASHBACKS'

"...ambassador to Moscow. The assignment has nothing to do with Soviet - American relations. The present ambassador, it seems, is leaving.  It is the election year of 1952. For purely domestic political reasons, the administration is afraid to leave the post vacant.  Foreign policy -- policy toward the Soviet Union -- plays no part in the decision.  It never occurs to people in the administration that the position of American ambassador to Moscow has anything to do with policy.  They don't really know, to tell the truth, what an ambassador is for...."  

"They don't really know, to tell the truth, what an 

ambassador is for...." 



Appointments, from what I can see, have most often 

been bones thrown to important presidential campaign 

contributors. That is not what even someone like David 

Brooks would call, in a sober moment, a meritocratic 

system.

RE A BLOW FOR DIPLOMACY

He points out that we recognized the French revolutionary regime, as a good example, presumably, of good, strictly presidential, constitutional, diplomacy.

terms search: presidency, trading American interests, Trading Places, American rebellion, Kennan, etc.

KEYNES CAME DOWN FROM THE CLOUDS

http://www.panarchy.org/keynes/national.1933.html

re soccer corruption

terms search team play

THE SO CALLED ORTHODOX CIVILIZATION AND THE SO CALLED EAST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS PLURAL

in effect, won the 20th Century Western Civilizational Wars, by defeating Western Civilization at, and after, the fact. 

The Orthodox world won, over Western Civ, outright, at the end of WWII. 

East Asia's victory, over the West, came somewhat later, with Cold War concomitant Western Civ globalization.

This has not been appreciated by most anyone in the West, other than by people like Huntington and his progeny, because of Western Civ's now defeated utopian universalist multiculturalist ideology.

audience today snapshot now

Entry	Pageviews
United States	18
Russia	7
Portugal	2
France	1
India	1
Mexico	1

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS ARCHITECTURE 9/11 FOUNTAINHEAD

Mohammed Atta 

Howard Roark

See Scruton's discussion.

terms search

free trade please