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The Essence of Liberty, Part 96
A Summary of: Lincoln Unmasked: What You're not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Summarized by Toni Jolin
Edited by Dr. Jimmy T (Gunny) LaBaume
Chapter 1: Challenging the Gatekeepers
When Ronald Regan nominated Mel Bradford to head the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1981, a group of intellectuals waged a fierce campaign against the nomination based on the charge that “He's anti-Lincoln!” Things have not changed much since.
The Lincoln cult is willing to do whatever is necessary to keep the public from receiving unflattering information about Lincoln. The gatekeepers choose to ignore such unpleasant facts as: 1) Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus; 2) his imprisonment of tens of thousands of political opponents; 3) his shutting down hundreds of opposing news papers; 4) his micromanagement of a war on civilians; 5) his support of a constitutional amendment that would prohibit the federal government from interfering with slavery; and 6) his lifelong white supremacy views.
The rest of the academia engages in debate of many issues on a daily basis. But, when it comes to Lincoln, no such debate is permitted. Why? The prime motivation is self-interest. The cultists do well financially through government grants and on the lecture circuit. They use foundation funds to give each other “Lincoln Awards”—sometimes worth tens of thousands of dollars. So, any challenge to their views is a challenge to their overblown professional reputations (and bank accounts).
Many Lincoln cultists behave like they do because it serves their political agenda. They are nationalists who favor a more powerful and centralized government. Left-wing cultists see this as a way to expand the welfare state, regulate the economy, and adopt socialism. On the other hand, right-wing cultists are also nationalists. They believe that a more powerful central government is essential for a more aggressive and imperialistic foreign policy. So, they all have one thing in common—the desire for a bigger, more centralized, and more interventionist central government.
The gatekeepers will be (already are) very unhappy over Lincoln Unmasked because it uncovers details that they thought they had effectively swept under the rug. All three parts of the book (What You're Not Supposed to Know about Lincoln and His War; Economic Issues You're Supposed to Ignore; and The Politics of the Lincoln Cult) all reveal numerous facts that Americans are generally unaware of. The book also reveals that many of Lincoln's familiar quotes are simply not factual—he simply never said that. The bottom line is that whole sections of Lincoln's record have been expunged from history and, not only that, other sections have been outright fabricated.
Historians have been falsely portrayed as being benevolent. They are not. Their demonization of the South is mostly due to the fact that the victors of war always get to write the history. The rarely mentioned fact is that slavery existed in the North for some two hundred years. Thus, nineteen-century “Yankees” were never quite as morally superior as they made themselves out to be. Another little touted fact is that Lincoln himself advocated the deportation of the blacks. Furthermore, there was much more Northern opposition to the war than most Americans realize. For example:
Northern abolitionist, Lysander Spooner, believed that the North fought the war to consolidate political power for the benefit of Northern industrialists and that the slavery issue was little more than a political smoke screen. To the contrary, every generation since has been told the lie that the states' rights issue was only an excuse for slavery. The fact is that the states' rights doctrine was embraced by the citizens of all states—until 1865, that is.
Chapter 8 chronicles the death of states' rights and the founding fathers' notion of “divided sovereignty.” To the founders, government could not be trusted to be the arbiter of the limits to its own powers. This approach to government ended in 1865. Since then the federal government has been the sole judge of the limits to its own powers. Is it surprising that it has subsequently decided that there are no limits to those powers? This is just as the founders warned.
Chapter 9 explains Lincoln's assertion that the citizens of the states were never sovereign and the Constitution was somehow adopted by “the whole people.” In reality, the “the whole people” had nothing to do with the adoption of the constitution.
Chapter 10 provides a detailed account of Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and his issuance of a warrant for the arrest of the chief justice of the Supreme Court who had ruled that this was illegal.
Lincoln destroyed the idea of the separation of powers by intimidating federal judges. Like all other politicians, he was mainly interested in money and power. He was a member of the Whig Party for most of his adult life. He was not a “humble rail splitter from Illinois.” The fact is that he was a wealthy trial lawyer who married into an affluent, slave-owning family. He was a prominent railroad industry attorney, a political insider who was also involved in big business circles.
Lincoln's Republican Party used government power to the benefit of its corporate supporters. Lincoln, himself, was a “lobbyist” for the railroad industry. He also spent his entire political career promoting protectionist tariffs, inflation, and a federal bank that could print paper money not redeemable in silver or gold.
Today, the legacy of Lincoln is used to promote imperialistic totalitarianism. Even the Pledge of Allegiance has much less to do with expressing love for one's country than a blind obedience to the centralized state. It was authored by a socialist who saw it to be useful for indoctrinating school children into the ideology of big government. Also today, the Lincoln cult uses his imprisoning of congressional opposition as evidence that such a practice might be acceptable today.
However, thanks to truth seekers like Thomas DiLorenzo, the gatekeepers are loosing their influence.
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At the time this work was completed, Toni Jolin was a student in the School of Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences at Sul Ross State University where Jimmy T. LaBaume, PhD, ChFC is a Professor of Economics and Statistics.
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