Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Featurette

[Agnostic Pope]

I agree and just about everybody here agrees as well. Except for the "old south" users. :P

[Anenome]

Originally Posted by Anenome

He couldn't come out and state directly that it was about slavery because he would've lost some of the states bordering the south,

It had been awhile since I read up on Lincoln, and I was fuzzy on exactly why Lincoln couldn't come out perfectly frankly about the war being about slavery--this statement was what I remembered. That's not reflected in the quote above, and was probably a smaller issue, but iirc, it was still an issue. Lincoln picked an cover-issue, the union, to achieve the larger objective of abolition.

And, btw, when Lincoln was elected, many people said right then that war was thereby unavoidable. Might ask yourself why that was the case.

[Anenome]

Actually, I don't agree with Lincoln that preserving the union was even a worthy moral goal. People should have freedom of association, even in terms of legal organizations.

However, the south wanted to separate in order to continue aggressing against an entire class of people. And since I believe it is moral to inject yourself into a situation where you see someone being aggressed against (eg: if you saw someone being raped, you'd be perfectly moral to jump in and stop that), the South's attempt to separate politically to protect a 'way of life' that was innately immoral would not have protected them legally from an invasion by the north. Sovereignty is no sovereignty when it's being used for unethical purposes.

[vallor]

Originally Posted by Anenome

I have lots of room to criticize Lincoln on other grounds--he was pro protectionist-tariffs, pro tax and spend, etc. But I will never knock him for the awesome job he did fixing the central flaw of America from the beginning--the acceptance of slavery. Finally, a country predicated on individual freedom lived up to its rhetoric. He did a great thing.

And yes, he did it to end slavery.

I never thought about how tough it would be; I guess I just take it for granted that any sane, real human being would want slavery TO END!

I started with the Reconstruction in University which basically said "yeah, so the slaves were freed THEN blah blah blah". It rarely touched on pre/during Civil War politics.

Thanks for teaching me something today.

EDIT: Added the end to the first sentence

[OmegaVader]

It's too bad Lincoln wouldn't recognize the GOP today, and they'd probably call him a communist.

[OmegaVader]

Oh, and that jump-off-the-wall spin-move thing; when the hell is Hollywood going to stop doing that? It's been in a million movies now and it looks stupid every time. Even in The Matrix, which brought us the modern, 21st century action movie, that move was lame.

[Anenome]

Originally Posted by vallor

I never thought about how tough it would be; I guess I just take it for granted that any sane, real human being would want slavery

It's understandable. One of the great difficulties of analyzing history is the natural human tendency to apply today's value structure to yesteryear's events. When Lincoln lived, being anti-slavery was the radical position.

At the time slavery was legal and in practice everywhere in the world quite literally. Only London (the city) had abolished slavery, but not the country of Britain. America was the first to repudiate it nationally, afaik.

It's also interesting that, historically, whites were considered the best race to make slaves of. We get the word 'slave' from the Slavic peoples, that's how prevalent it was. Muslims (that is the Saracens--wait, did your history teachers even mention the Saracens or the Byzantines? I know mine didn't) took untold numbers of slaves (both white and black). Everyone else did as well. Slavery wasn't even racial. Blacks owned black slaves, etc. Slavery was simply taken for granted. Slaves were the original labor saving device.

Greeks held slaves. Spartans predicated their entire society on slavery, becoming militaristic in order to keep the slavery population in check that out-numbered them 10 to 1 (or w/e it was, 20 to 1, 100 to 1?).

Originally Posted by vallor

I started with the Reconstruction in University which basically said "yeah, so the slaves were freed THEN blah blah blah". It rarely touched on pre/during Civil War politics.

Thanks for teaching me something today.

Sure thing. I visited the Lincoln monument recently, couple months ago. It was a bit annoying to walk into the underground addition that was added in recent times, with many quotes from the man. And one of those quotes is the one you mentioned, the one about him supposedly claiming he wasn't trying to free the slaves necessarily in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Makes me angry. I can only imagine how black people must feel seeing that and not knowing the truth about the man and his actual ideals.

They make it sound like freeing the slaves was merely a tactic to win the war. Ridiculous.

Originally Posted by OmegaVader

Oh, and that jump-off-the-wall spin-move thing; when the hell is Hollywood going to stop doing that? It's been in a million movies now and it looks stupid every time. Even in The Matrix, which brought us the modern, 21st century action movie, that move was lame.

I agree, that was the lamest part of the trailer, action-wise. Luckily, a lot of the rest of it was extremely fresh, he's good with that axe! I love the part where he coats the axe in silver to use on the vamps

And if you look at his life, it's ideal for this kind of story. Lincoln's beloved mother died young, his sister died, and then his wife died--in the movie they posit vampires as the cause :P His (illiterate) father beat him and put him to hard labor. And he had only a single year of formal schooling, basically teaching himself to read. Also, the left side of his face is considerably smaller than his right, giving him that twisted appearance! He's got a completely miserable personal history.

Originally Posted by OmegaVader

It's too bad Lincoln wouldn't recognize the GOP today, and they'd probably call him a communist.

Not so sure about that. Lincoln talked big game when it came to the principles of freedom, he's on the right side of history as it comes to slavery. Communism is the slavery of an entire society.

But in Lincoln's time, economics was not well understood. Lincoln thought protectionist tariffs were good for farmers, without any principle to explain it. We know now tariffs hurt everyone.

I think republicans today would call him a populist on economic issues. I guess you're right on one thing tho, it's the communists today trying to put in place protectionist tariffs :P