Abraham Lincoln was one of the worst presidents

I was joking about Cicero and you being a ‘true' moderate. Those are different arguments for a different time. Anyways…if you said the Civil War was necessary, then you need to show why. Your argument seems to be that a civil war happens in all major countries. And since it happens in all major countries, it must happen in ours in order for us to be a major source of prosperity and freedom. And that civil wars end up insuring freedom, justice, and liberties (a.k.a. freedoms) for the future. These things are not attainable without a civil war? Does there have to be people dying in order for there to be order and wealth? What kind of world is that? Does that also mean that if we kill more people than there will be more peace? Why do we not sacrifice people for peace then? Now I know that you do not believe that and so I am asking why aren't you following your logic all the way? Why don't you see that this mentality will promote emotion, no doubt as all wars are very emotional, but it produces death above all things? If we place our presidents above humanity, we fail ourselves. Too often we think that the government knows what is best for us. No man knows what is best for him, besides himself. If man makes a mistake, then he will change and make better choices the next time. Abraham Lincoln was a man that did not know what was best for everyone. I agree that he had a vast amount of responsibility and that he needed to make decisions, but to say that he knew more about the individual states than the states knew about themselves, sounds as if he were much more elevated than a human. Only if angels are the ruling authority should we totally trust in the government. Lincoln did not know what was best for each of the individual states and should have let them decide for themselves. I totally agree that people go to war for a better future and I agree that America is better off now than it was 100 or 200 years ago. But we are not as good as we could be because of bad legislation and overall government authority. I don't see exactly how you can say that America was not suffering badly after the Civil War and did nothing to repute any of my claims. I also find it funny the wording that you used, "…and build our nation back up." That goes to say that the nation needed to be built back up and was beat down by a needless war. I also agree that Lincoln was not the only culprit for the Civil War, and I showed how this was in my earlier debate. I talked about companies and lobbyists and Washington in general. The Congress was to blame as well. I would say Congress and not just say Lincoln's political party. The thing that you seem to forget is that the states agreed to stay together if it was in their best interests. When it wasn't, they had the right to secede and they tried to start a new nation. Lincoln took the communistic approach of caring for the nation as a whole and not letting the people decide what they wanted for themselves. That was what he should have done. This talk of the ‘interest of the nation' sounds vaguely similar to what communist leaders tell their citizens. Justice does allow for equal treatment of peoples but does not make all people equal. So we agree on this point. I don't think that your view of justice is that off center. But we have to make sure that we are following our logic and that our logic leads where we want to go. (Sorry about last round…)