Thursday is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. I would be perplexed by the Lincoln cult if I thought the prime Lincoln idolizers gave a damn about individual liberty. Lincoln is lionized not because he saved self-government, but primarily because he sanctified and vastly extended Leviathan.
Here is a riff I did on Lincoln for a National Review Online symposium on Lincoln 8 years ago, and a snippet on Abe from Attention Deficit Democracy
James Bovard
Author of Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion & Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years
How can the same people who vigorously support indicting Serbian leaders for war crimes also claim that Lincoln was a great American president?
Lincoln bears ultimate responsibility for how the North chose to fight the Civil War. The attitude of some of the Northern commanders paralleled those of Bosnian Serb commanders more than many contemporary Americans would like to admit.
In a September 17, 1863, letter to the War Department, Gen. William Sherman wrote: “The United States has the right, and … the … power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain. We will remove and destroy every obstacle — if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper.” President Lincoln liked Sherman’s letter so much that he declared that it should be published.
On June 21, 1864, before his bloody March to the Sea, Sherman wrote to the secretary of war: “There is a class of people [in the South] — men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.” How would U.N. war crimes investigators react if Slobodan Milosevic had made this comment about ethnic Albanians?
On October 9, 1864, Sherman wrote to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant: “Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources.” Sherman lived up to his boast — and left a swath of devastation and misery that helped plunge the South into decades of poverty.
General Grant used similar tactics in Virginia, ordering his troops “make all the valleys south of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad a desert as high up as possible.”
The Scorched Earth tactics the North used made life far more difficult for both white and black survivors of the Civil War.
Lincoln was blinded by his belief in the righteousness of federal supremacy. The abuses and tyranny that he authorized set legions of precedents that subverted the vision of government the Founding Fathers bequeathed to America.
****From Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, 2006):
The more vehemently a president equates democracy with freedom, the greater the danger he likely poses to Americans’ rights. President Abraham Lincoln was by far the most avid champion of democracy among nineteenth century presidents—and the president with the greatest visible contempt for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Lincoln swayed people to view national unity as the ultimate test of the essence of freedom or self-rule. That Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, jailed 20,000 people without charges, forcibly shut down hundreds of newspapers that criticized him, and sent in federal troops to shut down state legislatures was irrelevant because he proclaimed “that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
***
Lysander Spooner, a Massachusetts abolitionist, ridiculed President Lincoln’s claim that the Civil War was fought to preserve a “government by consent.” Spooner observed, “The only idea . . . ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this—that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.”
If Lincoln’s career had gone no further than working as prominent railroad lawyer it would have made a wonderful rags to riches story. When unusual ambition has mixed with American politics, however, the results have often been less than desirable if maintaining strictly limited government is the standard used for evaluation. Sadly, only the victors write history and deification of their wartime leaders has often been one of the customary benefits. The practice can be traced back to the beginning of written history in Babylonia and Egypt.
Ahhhhh Spooner, bless the old curmudgeon. Concurrent with the deification of the Armed Federal
Mercenary, any notion of “States Rights” was burned to a crisp as well. Mention “States Rights” today and one is assumed to be a closet Slave-holder in favor of enforced illiteracy. There is a straight line from the Mexican War , through the Civil War and right to the doorstep of Neo-Con Torture-lust. Artillery unites them all and Democracy is the very last thing cared about.
The Taliban are group of thugs who spout religion as the basis of their actions. They claim they are on the side of God, and just doing the will of God.
Do they really believe their own nonsense? OR is it just about the power, prestige, and pussy they get from it?
Who knows? It doesn’t matter if they really believe it, or just use it. They are scum sucking violent pigs who should be stopped.
WHich is almost exactly like the Confederacy. The Confederates were a group of violent thugs who regularly beat women who resisted – burned to death men who rebelled against slavery.
And naturally, they said they were “based on the the will of Almighty God”. Every Confederate leader that left any writing behind about slavery said it was the will of God.
WHo spoke more about the will of God, the Taliban or the slave rapers and child sellers? It’s a toss up.
But even the Taliban apparently does not use God to justify slave rape and then sell their own children from rape into slavery. This distinction belongs solely to the Confederacy, who did it all while praising Jesus.
In fact the Confederate leaders bragged that they were just the FIRST nation to literally be based on slavery. Other nations had allowed slavery in some form or nother. But the Confederate leaders said to screaming adoring crowds that they were doing slavery right – only enslaving niggers, and “total subjugation” of the black race according to “revealed will of Almighty God”
Just like violence is the way of life for the Taliban – so so violence was the way of life for the slave raping south. You can’t have slavery without violence.
Violence to get the slaves, violence to work the slaves, violence to sell the slave children, violence to rape the slaves.
Violence to catch the fleeing slave, violence and fire to burn to death those slaves who fought back.
Violence to stop free speech, even violence against whites to make sure they had no free speech. Violence in the territories, violence in Congress, violence against children, against women, against any human right they thought denied them slave pussy or slave profit.
Violence to stop free elections — the South would not allow free elections, even in 1860. No one was allowed on the ballot in the Deep South who was anti slavery. And anyone who was caught with any printed material against slavery was whipped and jailed.
Whey you fucking lunatics talk your shit about “strong government” why the fuck are you not talking about the nazi like total government control of the Slave states. Forget their total control over blacks you dumb fucks – forget the total control even over who the blacks could fuck, what they did every day of their lives, where their children went, where they all lived, believed and met — forget all that government control you fuck heads.
Look at the control they had – by violence — of whites. Total control of what was printed, what was spoken, who got on the “ballot”. You fucking lunatics had elections like Saddam had them. No one got on the fucking ballot in Iraq, unless Saddam wanted them. Same thing in the fucking south — no one got on the ballot unless the slave rapers wanted them on their.
It’s no wonder the Confederates attacked the North — they knew no other way but violence.
Lincoln told them to secede legally if they must – but the Confederates were used to violence. They had always been rewarded for violence was how they lived.
Then Lincoln kicked their ass. He had a lot of help – -because many in the South hated the Confederate slave rapers. 25% of the Union soldiers came from slave states.
Plus many in the South fought the slave rapers and child sellers out of uniform.
Many average citizens in the South wouldn’t help the Confederates. Eventually the South lost because their public support was far lower than you luntics today like to pretend. Of 480,000 CSA soldiers who should have been on the field — only 120,000 were. The rest had deserted. The largest desertion rate of any modern army belongs to the Confederates.
But what do the lunatic Confederate apologist do now? They cry about Lincoln kicking their ass. They say Lincoln was too harsh.
Funny they didn’t mind the harsh slave rapes, the harsh selling of children, the harsh burning to death those brave men who rebelled against slavery.
Funny how they never see that as harsh. It was that bad old Lincoln who was harsh, and that bad old Lincoln who was for strong government.
Sorry dumb fucks – Lincoln stood up to the tyrants and kicked their ass – and you pussies have cried about it for 150 years. You were fuck heads then, and you are fuck heads now.