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Lincoln Prepares for Office |
Libertarians like Ron Paul believe that Abraham Lincoln (believed by many to be our greatest president) was actually our most despotic, our greatest shredder of the Constitution. A few days ago, one of the writers at Powerline asked, somewhat humorously, if Ron Paul thought Lincoln was such a Constitution shredder, why did Paul belong to the party of Lincoln?
Powerline's question was stupid and it irked me. Paul is a Republican because it is the lesser of two evils. No doubt Paul feels he can find more allies for common cause in the Republican Party than he ever could in the Democratic. What other choice does he have? I assume Powerline is aware that the current Republican Party is not invading sovereign states, shutting down newspapers, arresting entire state legislatures, deporting federal congressmen who disagree, suspending habeas corpus, imprisoning thousands without charges or trial, and attempting to arrest the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for ruling against them.
Of course, if any president were doing this today he would be run out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered and speedily impeached. However, when you are a martyr from assassination and live safely in the distant past, one is more likely to discount your crimes and even celebrate them and hold them up as an example of heroic behavior.
Most people are just unaware of Lincoln's actual legacy. He has been beatified, apotheosized, his face made into an icon and submerged into our consciences from kindergarten on. His stern visage is displayed along side that of Washington, is carved on Mt. Rushmore and printed on the five dollar bill. His mythology has been made into an unquestioned article of faith, and anyone who questions it guilty of apostasy. He was the Great Emancipator, the rail-splitter, the young man who studied law by his fireplace in a log cabin, using charcoal sticks to write his lessons on the back of a shovel. A shovel, it seems, is exactly what is needed to shed a more accurate light on this man's career and character.
In any case, I responded to Powerline's really dumb question by informing them that Lincoln's crimes against the Constitution were well known and easily listed, and I listed some of them as proof. This brought some angry responses from some of the Powerline readers, one of whom was really vicious. People who revere Abraham Lincoln do not like having holes poked in their fantasies, and it showed. I am neither a libertarian nor a supporter of Ron Paul (I have attacked him far more in this blog than I have supported him, and you can look it up). However, I am a Confederate descendant, and when it was your ancestors that bore the brunt of this president's total war against states and civilians, you tend not to be so mesmerized by the man's shining myth.
I started looking for material on Lincoln, and found a similar thread at Free Republic, where the pro-Lincoln commenters were even more vicious than those at Powerline. (I was banned from Free Republic several years ago for defending the South.)
Well my search for material on Lincoln's crimes yielded fruit, and at some time in the future I will list those crimes and why they are important to acknowledge in the here and now. In short, Lincoln assumed the role of a dictator during the Civil War and swept away all Constitutional safeguards in pursuit of empire. He did not save the Union, he destroyed it, replacing it with something else, a consolidated republic wherein the individual (and formerly sovereign) states are little more than postal zones.
I don't agree with the libertarians much at all when it comes to foreign policy, but when it comes to Abraham Lincoln, they got it right. The man was a disaster.
Here is one of my resources; an online book you can read for free. It's called "America's Caesar," by Greg Loren Durand.
Read it at this link.