President Lincoln Was A Terrorist, History Just Won’t Admit It

Randys Right ^ | Randy's Right

[RandysRight]

This article gives another perspective on liberals, libertarians and conservatives. The history both Lincoln and Sherman has been written by the victors and beyond reproach. Do we want to restore honor in this country? Can we restore honor by bringing up subjects over 100 years old? Comments are encouraged.

Randy's Right aka Randy Dye NC Freedom

The American Lenin by L. Neil Smith lneil@lneilsmith.org

It’s harder and harder these days to tell a liberal from a conservative — given the former category’s increasingly blatant hostility toward the First Amendment, and the latter’s prissy new disdain for the Second Amendment — but it’s still easy to tell a liberal from a libertarian.

Just ask about either Amendment.

If what you get back is a spirited defense of the ideas of this country’s Founding Fathers, what you’ve got is a libertarian. By shameful default, libertarians have become America’s last and only reliable stewards of the Bill of Rights.

But if — and this usually seems a bit more difficult to most people — you’d like to know whether an individual is a libertarian or a conservative, ask about Abraham Lincoln.

Suppose a woman — with plenty of personal faults herself, let that be stipulated — desired to leave her husband: partly because he made a regular practice, in order to go out and get drunk, of stealing money she had earned herself by raising chickens or taking in laundry; and partly because he’d already demonstrated a proclivity for domestic violence the first time she’d complained about his stealing.

Now, when he stood in the doorway and beat her to a bloody pulp to keep her home, would we memorialize him as a hero? Or would we treat him like a dangerous lunatic who should be locked up, if for no other reason, then for trying to maintain the appearance of a relationship where there wasn’t a relationship any more? What value, we would ask, does he find in continuing to possess her in an involuntary association, when her heart and mind had left him long ago?

History tells us that Lincoln was a politically ambitious lawyer who eagerly prostituted himself to northern industrialists who were unwilling to pay world prices for their raw materials and who, rather than practice real capitalism, enlisted brute government force — “sell to us at our price or pay a fine that’ll put you out of business” — for dealing with uncooperative southern suppliers. That’s what a tariff’s all about. In support of this “noble principle”, when southerners demonstrated what amounted to no more than token resistance, Lincoln permitted an internal war to begin that butchered more Americans than all of this country’s foreign wars — before or afterward — rolled into one.

Lincoln saw the introduction of total war on the American continent — indiscriminate mass slaughter and destruction without regard to age, gender, or combat status of the victims — and oversaw the systematic shelling and burning of entire cities for strategic and tactical purposes. For the same purposes, Lincoln declared, rather late in the war, that black slaves were now free in the south — where he had no effective jurisdiction — while declaring at the same time, somewhat more quietly but for the record nonetheless, that if maintaining slavery could have won his war for him, he’d have done that, instead.

The fact is, Lincoln didn’t abolish slavery at all, he nationalized it, imposing income taxation and military conscription upon what had been a free country before he took over — income taxation and military conscription to which newly “freed” blacks soon found themselves subjected right alongside newly-enslaved whites. If the civil war was truly fought against slavery — a dubious, “politically correct” assertion with no historical evidence to back it up — then clearly, slavery won.

Lincoln brought secret police to America, along with the traditional midnight “knock on the door”, illegally suspending the Bill of Rights and, like the Latin America dictators he anticipated, “disappearing” thousands in the north whose only crime was that they disagreed with him. To finance his crimes against humanity, Lincoln allowed the printing of worthless paper money in unprecedented volumes, ultimately plunging America into a long, grim depression — in the south, it lasted half a century — he didn’t have to live through, himself.

In the end, Lincoln didn’t unite this country — that can’t be done by force — he divided it along lines of an unspeakably ugly hatred and resentment that continue to exist almost a century and a half after they were drawn. If Lincoln could have been put on trial in Nuremburg for war crimes, he’d have received the same sentence as the highest-ranking Nazis.

If libertarians ran things, they’d melt all the Lincoln pennies, shred all the Lincoln fives, take a wrecking ball to the Lincoln Memorial, and consider erecting monuments to John Wilkes Booth. Libertarians know Lincoln as the worst President America has ever had to suffer, with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson running a distant second, third, and fourth.

Conservatives, on the other hand, adore Lincoln, publicly admire his methods, and revere him as the best President America ever had. One wonders: is this because they’d like to do, all over again, all of the things Lincoln did to the American people? Judging from their taste for executions as a substitute for individual self-defense, their penchant for putting people behind bars — more than any other country in the world, per capita, no matter how poorly it works to reduce crime — and the bitter distaste they display for Constitutional “technicalities” like the exclusionary rule, which are all that keep America from becoming the world’s largest banana republic, one is well-justified in wondering.

The troubling truth is that, more than anybody else’s, Abraham Lincoln’s career resembles and foreshadows that of V.I. Lenin, who, with somewhat better technology at his disposal, slaughtered millions of innocents — rather than mere hundreds of thousands — to enforce an impossibly stupid idea which, in the end, like forced association, was proven by history to be a resounding failure. Abraham Lincoln was America’s Lenin, and when America has finally absorbed that painful but illuminating truth, it will finally have begun to recover from the War between the States.

Source: John Ainsworth

http://www.americasremedy.com/

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Hard to control posting impulses sometimes when the Lincoln was a tyrant fable and the Yankee army was mean nonsense gets to be too much. It’s one thing to speak well of some of the Confederate personalities and of the element of common soldiers who thought they were fighting to defend their homes, but it’s quite another thing to try to rewrite history to justify a regime with a cornerstone of slavery propped up by a systematic exploitation of the mass of poorer white folks.

[Idabilly]

Oh barf. Jefferson Davis was anyhing but a great statesman.

The fiction is your crutch.

Our cause is onward. Our car is the Constitution; our fires are up; let all who would ride into the haven of a peaceful country come on board, and those who will not, I warn that the cow- catcher is down--let stragglers beware! [Cheers.] We have before us in this canvass the highest duty which can prompt the devoted patriot. Our country is in danger. Our Constitution is assailed by those who would escape from declaring their opinions--by those who seek to torture its meaning, and by those who would trample upon its obligations. What is our Union? A bond of fraternity, by the mutual agreement of sovereign States; it is to be preserved by good faith--by strictly adhering to the obligations which exist between its friendly and confederate States. Otherwise we should transmit to our children the very evil under which our fathers groaned--a government hostile to the rights of the people, not resting upon their consent, trampling upon their privileges, and calling for their resistance.

[lentulusgracchus]

A few comments about your long post:

1. Since it's a re-posting in full of the Sandefur article from 2006 that you had previously posted in 2007 for discussion to the extent of 170 comments, JMHO says you could better have simply linked the article and referred to it, as you did in your later post to Non-Sequitur.

2. Sandefur speaks to, and allegedly as, a Libertarian, but in fact his entire article is Declarationist and his footnotes make numerous references to Union triumphalists like Jack Rakove, James McPherson, and Declarationist golem Harry Jaffa. This is not a "Libertarian" school of thought, but an imperial and nationalistic one.

3. The links to Eugene Volokh's weblog (yours, and the one in Sandefur's article separately) show that he, too, is frankly hostile to the South and is happy to consider the whole region stained ground and its people as the equivalent of only slightly-reclaimed Nazi Germans.

4. Sandefur's article contains a number of erroneous claims, esp. w/ respect to the nature of ratification and his claim that the Constitution was in fact ratified by a jumbo-ized, nationalized, lumpen-proletariat "Peepul" of an organic and unitary United States (rendered by the infamous paperhanger in German as, Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer!" </genocidal rant off>). This claim is flatly untrue, but is advanced (cynically IMHO) to support the novel inventions of Webster and Lincoln about their "Mystical Union". (We've been over all that, by the way. Sandefur is just wrong.)

[lentulusgracchus]

Sorry. You don't get to call the game.

Sorry, I do. You're wrong.

It was a weak example and a strawman.

Not a strawman at all. The whole point of the Freesoil boomlet was to exclude not slaves, but Southerners, from the Territories, and to ensure that all the States that joined the Union henceforward would be "anti-slavery" States, i.e. anti-Southern ones, so that the Millocracy, merchants, and banksters could eventually break the agriculturalists.

That's why John Quincy Adams fought so bitterly for ten years to keep Texas out of the Union, from 1836 until partway through 1845. He also saw to it that the Texas economy starved for cash. That's real enmity -- admit it, it's identical to your own -- and Adams started it.

[SeeSharp]

You are betraying your ignorance. The colonies lived under a monarchical form of government where all must swear allegiance to a King. The revolution was not intended to preserve a monarchy, or even about replacing one monarch with another. Its intent was to end monarchy and create a Republic based on the rule of law. It is an insult to history to equate the cause of the Revolution and the lame excuses (only conjured only after the war) for the secession of the slave states. At the time of secession, they were quite honest that the only difference they had and the only thing they cared to preserve, was their ability to spread slavery where ever they could.

It is you who are betraying you prejudices with you fairy tale narrative. The American colonies had mostly governed themselves under the Whig policy of Benign Neglect for most of the 18th century. When the Tories came into power they set about centralizing authority, raising taxes, and perusing foreign territorial acquisitions. The American colonies would have happily remained within the British Empire had it not been for these changes. The War of independence was a resistance to change and was primarily conservative in nature.

It is an insult to history to simply repeat cartoonish propaganda.

[lentulusgracchus]

The colonists did not 'secede'. They rebelled.

But they absolutely did secede in 1787-9, and Madison concedes as much in The Federalist (No. 43, iirc), when he describes the "transition" from the "Perpetual Union" of the Articles of Confederation to the new Union.

[Idabilly]

St. George Tucker:

....Nor must we forget that solemn declaration to which every one of the confederate states assented . … that whenever any form of government is destructive of the ends of its institution, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government. Consequently whenever the people of any state, or number of states, discovered the inadequacy of the first form of federal government to promote or preserve their independence, happiness, and union, they only exerted that natural right in rejecting it, and adopting another, which all had unanimously assented to, and of which no force or compact can deprive the people of any state, whenever they see the necessity, and possess the power to do it. And since the seceding states, by establishing a new constitution and form of federal government among themselves, without the consent of the rest, have shown that they consider the right to do so whenever the occasion may, in their opinion require it, as unquestionable, we may infer that that right has not been diminished by any new compact which they may since have entered into, since none could be more solemn or explicit than the first, nor more binding upon the contracting parties. Their obligation, therefore, to preserve the present constitution, is not greater than their former obligations were, to adhere to the articles of confederation; each state possessing the same right of withdrawing itself from the confederacy without the consent of the rest, as any number of them do, or ever did, possess.

[Non-Sequitur]

The fiction is your crutch.

The fiction is Jeff Davis being anything approaching a statesman.

[Non-Sequitur]

But they absolutely did secede in 1787-9, and Madison concedes as much in The Federalist (No. 43, iirc), when he describes the "transition" from the "Perpetual Union" of the Articles of Confederation to the new Union.

So....they seceded from the United States in order to form...the United States? I suppose that makes sense to you but I'll be damned if I can make any out of it.

[IrishCatholic]

No, you don't get to call the game simply because you don't like the facts. Although you are closer to admitting them here with the acknowledgment it WAS about slavery. In fact, this post validates the original post from me.
Thank you, and thank you for playing. Drive home safe.

[A.Hun]

Yep.

[wardaddy]

BTW, the notion that Washington would have ever raised his hand against Virginia is simply laughable.

no doubt...and this notion Sherman as humanitarian is just as laughable...he is lauded for doing things to southerners both black and white that we today court martial our troops for and our media today uses such fodder to tarnish any war we engage in yet Sherman who unlike Grant or say Schofield and Colonel Cox where I now type never really proved his mettle against a serious corps head to head is granted a pass...that is arguably where I really have an issue with NeoYankees here....I'm ambivalent on Lincoln...he's no hero of mine and neither are the even worse radical Republicans (off your knees Glenn) of the day but I do understand some of Lincoln's practical behavior after the war began and his terms would have been better than his peers....ironically Sherman's terms were good too

No question Lincoln fed the Leviathan more than any president we have ever had...amusing to see small government types worship him

my biggest beef is that it was all avoidable...much like WWI...some wars simply did not have to happen...but some do...the next conflict on these shores will be more needed and unimaginably cataclysmic and the seeds go back indeed to that war and it's aftermath

[mojitojoe]

On the other other hand, Booth wasn’t there to see the play, he had a different agenda and he accomplished it. Lincoln on the other hand.....

[mojitojoe]

I don’t respect trolls that old time Freepers that have been here since day one don’t respect either. You have been labeled a nutty troll since you came here. They gave you the nickname “squirter” long before I ever knew FR existed.
Anyone stalking you is another figment of your deranged imagination fo shizzle. Right?

[mojitojoe]

That was just for you. I knew you would love that.

[lentulusgracchus]

No, you don't get to call the game simply because you don't like the facts.

Funny, you didn't have any -- just opinions. Sorry.

Although you are closer to admitting them here with the acknowledgment it WAS about slavery.

No, it was about money and power. The usual. Slavery was a phony issue. Invented by your side, sort of like, oh, I dunno, bangs or no bangs, appropriate hem lengths, Oxford or broadcloth, "drunk driving" vs. social drinking, and so on.

The real issue was, Yankee businessmen making the rest of the nation their punk bitch.

In fact, this post validates the original post from me.

Not hardly. Try the driver's license office.

Thank you, and thank you for playing. Drive home safe.

Thanks for all the money. Better luck next time, boyo. Have a nice day.

[lentulusgracchus]

Shades of Davis' threat ....

Irrelevant, red herring -- the point is that Lincoln's associates were thuggy and liked machine, wired-up arrangements.

They made it so, in Chicago.

[rockrr]

The real issue was, Yankee businessmen making the rest of the nation their punk bitch.

You know that's not the case. I find it amusing that you would even go there since, if it were true, not only did the south fail epically, but they got their asses handed to them in the process.

[Non-Sequitur]

That was just for you. I knew you would love that.

Of course it was.

[lentulusgracchus]

He's right, and the speeches of the period proves it. Sorry.

Sorry, you only need one Nullification Crisis to prove that the long-running beefathon was NOT about the peculiar institution. It was about, the South existed and the South resisted the machine thugboys of the Bidness Wing (later -> Yacht Club Wing).

It was about New York paydays and who was going to get any.