# Think Tank > History >  Lincoln wrote some good stuff

## teacherone

> "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. .


The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, "Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p. 109

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## tpreitzel

> The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, "Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p. 109


Yes, and it's ironic that Lincoln played a major role in the internal destruction of the American republic.

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## FrankRep

Karl Marx was a fan of Abraham Lincoln too!

*Marx's letter to Abraham Lincoln*
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...oln-letter.htm

*Thomas J. DiLorenzo: Lincolnian Totalitarians*
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo77.html






*The Real Lincoln:*
A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War 
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo 


As DiLorenzo reveals, the myths surrounding Lincoln obscure the true origins of the Civil War. DiLorenzo looks beyond Lincoln's iconic image, detailing how his policies undermined federalism and helped create the modern imperial presidency. (2003, 384pp, pb)

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## teacherone

> Karl Marx was a fan of Abraham Lincoln too!




Lincoln was a COMMIE...!!!!

You got quite the obsession my friend.

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## acptulsa

> Karl Marx was a fan of Abraham Lincoln too!


Frank, no one said they were a fan of Lincoln.  Just that the man could write.

And he could.  Are we not all fighting to make sure that this government of  the people, by the people and for the people is restored to the Earth?  Have you ever in your life heard our goal described more eloquently?

Well then.

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## FrankRep

> Lincoln was a COMMIE...!!!!
> 
> You got quite the obsession my friend.


*But I'm right!*

*Karl Marx's letter to Abraham Lincoln*
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...oln-letter.htm

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## marc1888

I think we do a great disservice to ourselves and our message when we try to portray the enemies of liberty and freedom as lacking in mental ability. Of course Lincoln was intelligent. Hitler and Marx were pretty smart as well. If the enemies of liberty were dumb we wouldn't need to worry about them :-) The fact that they are intelligent, manipulative and masters of propaganda is our biggest obstacle. That and the fact that most people are pretty much sheep and easily led by a few emotive words...

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## jmdrake

> *But I'm right!*
> 
> *Karl Marx's letter to Abraham Lincoln*
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...oln-letter.htm


And yet...*Lincoln didn't write back*.

_Ambassador Adams Replies

Legation of the United States
London, 28th January, 1865

Sir:

I am directed to inform you that the address of the Central Council of your Association, which was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United [States], has been received by him.
....._

Using your logic, Don Black sent Ron Paul a donation, so Ron Paul must be a white nationalist.  Further Paul became president someday and Don Black or some other white supremacist wrote him and someone else in the administration sent some form letter back that would be *absolute proof* Ron Paul was racist.  Enough with the "guilt by association".

I will say this.  Karl Marx was spot on in his analysis about the Morril Tariff and the civil war by pointing out the tariff was *after* 7 states had seceded.  Yes it was secession that allowed the hated tariff to pass, as opposed to passage of the tariff that caused secession.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Tariff
_
The second session of the 36th Congress began in December 1860. At first it appeared that Hunter would keep the Morrill bill tabled until the end of the term in March.

However, in December 1860 and January 1861, seven southern states declared secession, and their low-tariff Senators withdrew. Republicans took control of the Senate in February, and Hunter lost his hold on the Finance Committee.

Meanwhile the Treasury was in financial crisis, with less than $500,000 on hand and millions in unpaid bills. The Union urgently needed new revenue. A recent historian concludes, "the impetus for revising the tariff arose as an attempt to augment revenue, stave off 'ruin,' and address the accumulating debt."[5]

The Morrill bill was brought to the Senate floor for a vote on February 20, and passed 25 to 14. It was supported by 24 Republicans and Democrat William Bigler of Pennsylvania, and opposed by seven southern Democrats, three from the Border, two from the north, and two from the far west. Five northern and three Border Democrats abstained, as did one Republican; the remaining four Senators were paired, as some had to be absent for personal reasons.[6]

There were some minor amendments related to the tariffs on tea and coffee, which required a conference committee with the House, but these were resolved and the final bill was approved by unanimous consent on March 2.

Though a Democrat himself, outgoing President James Buchanan favored the biill because of the interests of his home state, Pennsylvania. He signed the bill into law as one of his last acts in office._

Do the math.  If the 14 senators who left due to secession before the bill came up had stated *the Morrill Tariff would have been defeated 28 to 25!*

Karl Marx's analysis:

_Communist philosopher Karl Marx  was among the few writers in Britain who saw slavery as the major cause of the war. Marx wrote extensively in the British press and served as a London correspondent for several North American newspapers including Horace Greeley's New York Tribune.  Marx reacted to those who blamed the war on Morrill's bill, arguing instead that slavery had induced secession and that the tariff was just a pretext. Marx wrote, in October 1861:

    Naturally, in America everyone knew that from 1846 to 1861 a free trade system prevailed, and that Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress, but, at most, the Morrill tariff went through Congress because secession had taken place.[15]
_

I'm no fan of Marx, but a broken clock is right twice a day.

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## erowe1

> As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.


You know, the Constitution never once refers to the USA as a nation, it's always a plurality of states. Why do you suppose Lincoln chose to call it a nation here, and what do you suppose he meant by suicide?

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## acptulsa

> *But I'm right!*


Rush Limberger is a legend in his own mind, too.  No wonder you sound like him.

Now tell us who said in this thread that they like anything about Lincoln but his elegant use of the language.  Or better still, show us you can use the English language half as well.  I dare you.

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## LibertyEagle

> Frank, no one said they were a fan of Lincoln.  Just that the man could write.
> 
> And he could.  Are we not all fighting to make sure that this government of  the people, by the people and for the people is restored to the Earth?  Have you ever in your life heard our goal described more eloquently?
> 
> Well then.


Very true.  But, I'm still glad he posted the link to DiLorenzo's book.  We have a lot of lurkers here and just maybe some will take the initiative to buy the book to find out more about good 'ol Abe that they probably have never heard before.

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## erowe1

> Now tell us who said in this thread that they like anything about Lincoln but his elegant use of the language.


If that's what this thread is about, I agree he was eloquent. But I read the OP to mean not just that the quote was well-worded, but that it was good in its content. They didn't specify which they meant by calling it good, and some of the early points made in the quote were good, but I see that line at the end as insidious, given what he probably meant by it.

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## jmdrake

Oh, and Frank, what do you think of Murry Rothbard calling Che Guevara a "heroic figure of our time"?

http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_3/3_3_1.pdf

Sure Rothbard was quick to point out that he didn't like Che's communism, but since if we're going to go all "guilt by association" then does that matter?

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## jmdrake

> Very true.  But, I'm still glad he posted the link to DiLorenzo's book.  We have a lot of lurkers here and just maybe some will take the initiative to buy the book to find out more about good 'ol Abe that they probably have never heard before.


Well I hope they continue to do their research and find out how the south really didn't secede because of passage of the Morril Tariff (it passed only *because* of secession) or how the south abrogated states rights in its own constitution (it barred states from ending slaves in their own borders) or how after having all of this talk about the "right of secession" the south did not include any such right in its own constitution.  Or how about the fact that Robert E. Lee hated slavery so much that he went to court to prevent immediate execution of his father in laws will freeing his slaves?

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## FrankRep

> And yet...*Lincoln didn't write back*.


*I ONLY said Karl Marx was a fan of Lincoln.* 


Read this from LewRockwell.com:


*Lincolnian Totalitarians*


Thomas J. DiLorenzo | LewRockwell.com
August 31, 2004


In his book Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the Civil War the literary critic Edmund Wilson explained the most important consequence of that war in a single profound paragraph: 


The impulse to unification was strong in the nineteenth century . . . and if we would grasp the significance of the Civil War in relation to the history of our time, we should consider Abraham Lincoln in connection with the other leaders who have engaged in similar tasks.

The chief of these leaders have been Bismarck and Lenin. They with Lincoln have presided over the unifications of the three great new modern powers . . . . Each established a strong central government over hitherto loosely coordinated peoples. Lincoln kept the Union together by subordinating the South to the North; Bismarck imposed on the German states the cohesive hegemony of Prussia; Lenin . . . began the work of binding Russia . . . in a tight bureaucratic net.

Each of these men, wrote Wilson, "became an uncompromising dictator" and was succeeded by newly formed bureaucracies that continued to expand the power of the state and diminish freedom so that "all the bad potentialities of the policies he had initiated were realized, after his removal, in the most undesirable ways."

Defenders of the free society have long recognized this truth. In the August 24, 1965 issue of National Review, for example, the magazines editor, Frank Meyer, wrote that Lincolns "pivotal role in our history was essentially negative to the genius and freedom of our country." This was so because of the "harshness of his repressive policies and his responsibility for methods of waging war approaching the horror of total war," among other things.

"Under the spurious slogan of Union," wrote Meyer, Lincoln "moved at every point . . . to consolidate central power and render nugatory the autonomy of the states. . . . It is on his shoulders that the responsibility for the war must be placed." "We all know his gentle words, with malice toward none, with charity toward all," Meyer said, "but his actions belie this rhetoric." Here Meyer referred to Lincolns win-at-any-cost strategy, his refusal to consider a negotiated peace, his imposition of a "repressive dictatorship" in the North and the "brigand campaigns waged against civilians by Sherman" in the South.

"Were it not for the wounds that Lincoln inflicted upon the Constitution, it would have been infinitely more difficult for Franklin Roosevelt to carry through his revolution [and] for the coercive welfare state to come into being . . . . Lincoln, I would maintain, undermined the constitutional safeguards of freedom as he opened the way to centralized government with all its attendant political evils."

This of course is precisely why totalitarians of all stripes have always lionized Lincoln. In Mein Kampf (1996 Houghton-Mifflin edition, p. 566) Adolf Hitler paraphrased the (false) theory that Lincoln introduced in his first inaugural address that no such thing as states rights ever existed in America to make his case for the abolition of states rights in Germany.

When some 3,000 Americans, most of whom were members of the Communist Party U.S.A., went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the side of communists, they thought it quite natural to call themselves the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade." Indeed, in his book Lincoln Reconsidered, Pulitzer prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Donald wrote that the Communist Party U.S.A. adorned its office walls with huge portraits of Abe, and held annual "Lincoln-Lenin Day" parades in New York City.

*Karl Marx himself wrote Lincoln on January 28, 1865 to say, "Sir: We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority." In the same letter Marx assured Lincoln that the European communist movement was with him: "From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class," the father of totalitarian communism wrote. (This and other of Marxs writings can be found at www.marxists.org.)*

*Many of the dubious theories of the causes of the War to Prevent Southern Independence that have become accepted dogma among modern "Lincoln scholars" were dreamed up by Karl Marx.* For example, despite the fact that in his first inaugural address Lincoln promised to invade any state that refused to collect the newly-doubled Morrill Tariff, and kept his promise, Lincoln scholars adamantly  and sometimes violently  deny that tariffs had anything at all to do with the war. In a recent issue of North and South magazine, historian William C. Davis threw a fit over my suggestion that the tariff was important and smugly denounced the idea as an "old chestnut." This was Karl Marxs position as well.

In an October 20, 1861 article entitled "On the North American Civil War," Marx wrote, "Naturally in America everyone knew that from 1846 to 1861 a free trade system prevailed, and that Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress, but, at most, the Morrill tariff went through Congress because secession had taken place."

*As is true of almost everything Marx ever wrote about economics, this statement is patently false.* The Morrill Tariff passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 10, 1860, before Lincolns election and before any state had seceded. It passed the U.S. Senate on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincolns inauguration. (Abe vigorously lobbied for the bill, telling a Pittsburgh, Pa. audience two weeks before his inauguration that no other issue  none  was more important.)

Whenever the Lincoln cult admits that Lincoln and the Republicans did not oppose Southern slavery in 1861, but only the extension of slavery into the new territories, they usually ignore the actual reasons that were given for this position by the Republican Party (the desire to keep the territories all white and to limit congressional representation of the Democratic Party) and repeat another one of Marxs dubious theories. As Gerald Gunderson duly repeated in a review of The Real Lincoln on an economic history web site (see my LRC article, "The Economics of Slavery"), the Republican position was supposedly to "pick the low-hanging fruit," i.e., oppose the introduction of slavery into the territories, so that the institution would eventually die off.

This is a particularly bad analogy: Picking low-hanging fruit does not kill off a fruit tree. But besides that, it is not nearly as supportive of the "saint Abraham" image that Gunderson and others wish to portray. Even if the theory was correct, how long would it take for slavery to end in this way? Fifty years? A century? This is praiseworthy?

Moreover, if the South was so hell bent on extending slavery into the new territories, it would not have seceded. With secession, the South had no chance at all of ever introducing slavery into the territories if the U.S. government did not want it to. This fact belies the whole "low-hanging fruit" theory that has been repeated endlessly for over a century.

And the theory probably originated with Karl Marx. In his October 20, 1861 article on the "North American Civil War" Marx wrote that "the whole [secession] movement was and is based" on "whether the vast Territories of the republic should be nurseries for free states or for slavery . . ." He went on to offer the theory that is today faithfully repeated by James McPherson, Eric Foner, Harry Jaffa, and virtually all the more politically correct historians and scholars that slavery was the one and only cause of the war and that secession was illegal.

One of the best-known contemporary "Civil War" historians is Eric Foner of Columbia University, a past president of the American Historical Association and a self-described Marxist. Foner is such a devoted Marxist that he has criticized some of his own earlier publications for not being sufficiently Marxist in their methodology. For decades, he was an apologist for the Soviet Union. After the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union a Moscow display of the Soviet Gulag system drew a bitter denunciation by Foner, who complained of "the obsessive need to fill in the blank pages in the history of the Soviet era," an odd position indeed for an historian to take (See John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage, p. 40). In his 1988 book, The Story of American Freedom, he lavishly praises the Communist Party U.S.A. as a "cultural front that helped to redraw the boundaries of American freedom" (Haynes and Klehr, p. 40). In a review of Foners work John Patrick Diggins referred to Foner as "an unabashed apologist for the Soviet system" (The National Interest, Fall 2002, p. 85).

Indeed, Foner is such an apologist for Soviet communism that he opposed the breakup of the Soviet Union and, naturally, invoked Abraham Lincoln as his reason. He railed against the secession movements in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Georgia in the early 1990s and urged Gorbachev to deal with them in the same manner that Lincoln dealt with the Southern secessionists.

In an editorial in the February 11, 1991 issue of The Nation magazine entitled "Lincoln's Lesson," Foner called the breakup of the Soviet Union, which at the time was being wildly cheered by freedom lovers everywhere, as "a crisis" that threatened the "laudable goal" of creating a system that demanded "overarching loyalty to the Soviet Union" while at the same time allowing separate republics to exist. No "leader of a powerful nation," Foner wrote, should allow such a thing as "the dismemberment of the Soviet Union."

He concluded that "The Civil War was a central step in the consolidation of national authority in the United States," which he of course views as a great event. One cannot adopt socialism  in the United States or anywhere else  without a highly centralized, monopolistic government. "The Union, Lincoln passionately believed, was a permanent government . . . and . . . Gorbachev would surely agree."

Harry Jaffa would also agree, although he is certainly no communist. During my May 2002 debate with him at the Independent Institute he answered repeated questions from the audience about whether or not a state ever had a right to secede from the Union and he consistently answered "no."

Jaffa and his fellow Straussians and neocons are no communists, but they do advocate and support the same kind of governmental system that the Eric Foners of the world do: a highly centralized, powerful, consolidated state.

Also during our debate, Jaffa said that 9/11 "proves" that we need a "strong federal government" now more than ever. My position is that the opposite is true: 9/11 proved that our "strong federal government" is incapable of protecting us and has failed miserably. Lincoln cultists always jump at the chance to advocate a more powerful central government.

Many people are fooled by the pretenses of Jaffa and his fellow Lincoln idolaters who call themselves "conservatives" by mistakenly believing that they therefore must favor limited government. But Jaffa has long been a part of the "conservative" establishment that was re-created by William F. Buckley, Jr. in the 1950s that essentially purged the genuine, limited government conservatives, and adopted Big Government Conservatism, known today as neoconservatism. 

As Murray Rothbard pointed out in a January 25, 1952 article in The Commonweal magazine (reprinted as "Buckley Revealed" in the Rothbard archives in LRC), Buckley had long favored, in his own words, "the extensive and productive tax laws that are needed to support a vigorous anti-communist foreign policy"; and that "we have got to accept Big Government for the duration [of the Cold War]  for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged . . . except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores"  (emphasis added). We must all support, announced Buckley, "large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington . . ."

This of course is why Buckley directly opposed Frank Meyers criticisms of Lincoln and embraced Jaffas literary superstitions in his magazine all during the Cold War years: they added "moral legitimacy" to his goal of establishing a "totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores." Buckley really is, as Rothbard concluded, "a totalitarian socialist, and what is more, admits it," despite the odd fact that many considered him to be some kind of individualist.

Thus, the Lincoln fable has been instrumental to the political aspirations of both left-wing and right-wing totalitarians, just as Edmund Wilson predicted back in 1962. They both advocate the consolidated, monopolistic, Lincolnian state despite their occasional lip service to states rights and limited government. Consolidated or monopolistic government is always and everywhere the enemy of freedom and the Lincoln myth, above all else, serves to prop it up, just as Frank Meyer wrote back in 1965.


*SOURCE:*
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo77.html

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## jmdrake

> *I ONLY said Karl Marx was a fan of Lincoln.*


Uh-huh.  *And Don Black is a fan of Ron Paul!*  So what's your point?

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## FrankRep

> Uh-huh.  *And Don Black is a fan of Ron Paul!*  So what's your point?


Read this sometime. 

The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
-Thomas DiLorenzo

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...3/lewrockwell/

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## jmdrake

> Read this sometime. 
> 
> The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
> -Thomas DiLorenzo
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...3/lewrockwell/


 Read the confederate constitution sometimes.  Read the analysis I gave about the fact that the Morill Tariff *only passed BECAUSE OF SECESSION!*  The south was its own worst enemy.

Really Frank, *I've read ALL of the neo-confederate propaganda at this point that I need to and then some!*  Better yet *I've gone back and read all of the original source documents*!  I've read the articles of secession.  I've read Lincoln's first and second inaugural addresses.  I've read the confederate constitution.  I don't rely on regurgitated material that fits my viewpoint.  Again I go back to the *original sources*.  You should do the same.

Also note that you are still have not addressed my point about Don Black.  Why is that?

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## erowe1

> *I ONLY said Karl Marx was a fan of Lincoln.*


I haven't researched it. But there seems to be at least some evidence that the feeling was mutual.
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Republican...dp/0595446981/

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## jmdrake

> I haven't researched it. But there seems to be at least some evidence that the feeling was mutual.
> http://www.amazon.com/Red-Republican...dp/0595446981/


Somebody writes a book claiming Lincoln was marxist.  Someone will probably write a book (if they haven't already) claiming Ron Paul was racist.  I'd take that with a grain...no make that a *box* of salt.

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## Sola_Fide

Lysander Spooner destroyed Lincoln in my opinion.


Spooner argued that chattel slavery was just as evil as statist slavery, which is what Lincoln was offering.

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## Guitarzan

"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."

Abraham Lincoln

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## erowe1

> Somebody writes a book claiming Lincoln was marxist.  Someone will probably write a book (if they haven't already) claiming Ron Paul was racist.  I'd take that with a grain...no make that a *box* of salt.


I don't know what evidence if any exists that will stick to Lincoln. But at the very least it's definitely the case that many of the forty-eighters of Europe came to America, were welcomed into the Republican party, became heavily involved, and in a  handful of cases rose high in the ranks of the Union Army. That doesn't make Lincoln a Marxist, but I think it does illustrate something about his party.

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## Sola_Fide

Lincoln was horrible.


He funded the War Between the States with hyper-inflated Greenbacks, much like our FED does today.


Lincoln began the insane system of the US money supply being created out of debt by the buying of government bonds and issuing them from reserves for bank notes, therefore making money debt itself.

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## YumYum

According to Griffin, the Confederacy was backed by Rothschild, and yet Lincoln showed the Rothschild's agents the door. For that alone he should get a brownie button.

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## YumYum

> Lincoln was horrible.
> 
> 
> He funded the War Between the States with hyper-inflated Greenbacks, much like our FED does today.
> 
> 
> Lincoln began the insane system of the US money supply being created out of debt by the buying of government bonds and issuing them from reserves for bank notes, therefore making money debt itself.


True, but he made the fatal discovery that the Treasury could print the greenbacks without using a Central Bank. For that, he took a bullet to the head.

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## FrankRep

> Somebody writes a book claiming Lincoln was marxist.  Someone will probably write a book (if they haven't already) claiming Ron Paul was racist.  I'd take that with a grain...no make that a *box* of salt.



*More on the Lincoln-Marx connection.*


*The Lincoln Gambit*


William Norman Grigg | LewRockwell.com
December 4, 2008


"The president addressed Congress the other day. I don't know which was scarier – the speech, or Congress cheering him on. He *invoked Lincoln*. Whenever a president is going to get us in serious trouble, they always use Lincoln."

~ Victor Milson, space adviser to the U.S. president, reporting ominous news from home to his friend Dr. Heywood Floyd (who is en route to Jupiter); from the film 2010: The Year We Make Contact

While it cares little for customary piety, our ruling Nomenklatura displays the intolerant fervor of Paradise-bound Jihadis in defending the sanctity of the Almighty State and its avatars. In that pantheon there is none holier than the martyred founder of the Second (or People's) American Republic – Abraham the Almighty, whose sacred likeness sits in stoic majesty in the Imperial Capital's most celebrated pagan cathedral.

Despite the fact that the candidate had a background barren of worthwhile accomplishments and a political vita that could be inscribed on the note inside a fortune cookie, Barack Obama's followers – most likely in the thrall of a campaign-generated meme – routinely compared him to Jesus.

Lincoln, by way of contrast, wasn't deified in this fashion until after his assassination. Now that he's scant weeks away from being garlanded with Caesar's crown and swaddled in the Imperial purple, the media's image-makers have joined in the chorus of deification, widely and shamelessly anointing him son and heir to Abraham the Divine.

In fact, Obama is the beneficiary of what could be called an affirmative action apotheosis: He's being sanctified before he's had an opportunity to do anything. Already, even before the Electoral College has assembled to cast its votes, Obama is being treated as the sitting president: He is conducting business with Congress and state governors, and reporters at press conferences convened by the "Office of the President-Elect" are required to stand as one in solemn, chastened reverence as His Holiness strides to the microphone, presumably hovering an appropriate distance above the ground so as not to be soiled by contact with the mundane. 

YouTube - President-elect Obama announces two more leaders of economic team

*(Don't bother to watch the whole thing; just take note of the first few seconds in which Obama bids the chastened throng to be seated.)*

The first Lincoln, we should recall, was not greeted as a savior; instead, his election-by-plurality as a regional candidate was the result of a freak political bank-shot, and its impact immediately flung seven states from the Union.

Obama's ascent, by way of contrast, has had exactly the opposite effect. Rather than contemplating secession, state governments are looking forward with eagerness to Obama's reign, and governors are panting after the "stimulus" subsidies the Holy One has promised for public works projects.

Unlike banks accused of "hoarding" cash, and consumers who have quite wisely decided to pare down household spending, the state-level specimens of the political class aren't inclined toward thrift.

In pleading for Washington to shower them with plundered wealth, thereby preventing the need to thin the ranks of publicly supported parasites, the nation's governors have explicitly promised the incoming Obama Regime: You send it, we'll spend it.

So Obama won't confront a crisis of "disunion" from the moment he places his hand on whatever holy book he chooses next January 20 and perjures himself by promising to protect a Constitution for which he has no documentable respect. Like nearly all of those who held the office since Lincoln, Obama (at least on the basis of what record he's compiled, and his public statements) is a devotee of what Marxist historian George P. Fletcher calls "The Secret Constitution" – an unwritten document that transposes the existing Constitution, which created a decentralized republic into a unitary state with an all-powerful central government.

It's not well remembered now, but Lincoln was perfectly willing to permit slavery to exist in perpetuity, and to allow restive states to be independent in everything but name, as long as Washington, D.C. was able to continue collecting the taxes necessary to keep its bondholders happy.

In his first Inaugural Address, Lincoln put forward the remarkable claim that the Union – which he described, in near-theological terms, as an eternal and indivisible entity – "is much older than the Constitution" and the states that formed it. For this reason it was impermissible to permit any of its constituent states to depart, since this would make the Union "less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity."

For the purposes of maintaining the holy unity of the divine Union, Lincoln was willing to abide practically any compromise. Not only could he support the permanent institutionalization of chattel slavery, Lincoln was prepared to countenance outright insurrection – as long as it fell short of formal political separation and, most importantly, the refusal of citizens to pay, and state officials to collect, federal taxes.

"The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the [federal] Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere," Lincoln promised. "Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers [the federal talent pool being devoid of any other variety – WNG] among the people for that object."

Of course, the same politician who offered that remarkable promise later reprovisioned Ft. Sumter, a tax-collection post situated in the territorial waters of a state that had withdrawn from the Union, as a deliberate provocation intended to precipitate the war.

Professor Thomas DiLorenzo of Loyola College, author of a the definitive short biography The Real Lincoln (as well as the indispensable new book Hamilton's Curse) points out that at the time of the attack on Ft. Sumter several major northern newspapers described the event as the consummation of Lincoln's provocative designs. "Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate a civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor," commented the April 13, 1861 Providence Daily Post. That observation came a day after the Jersey City American Statesman described the resupply vessel as "a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South."

After the war began, Lincoln punished his media critics in predictable fashion by dispatching the military to close down thousands of northern newspapers, at least until their editorial boards were brought to heel. Call this a pre-Marconi version of the "Fairness Doctrine." "After Fort Sumter," observes DiLorenzo, "Lincoln wrote to his naval commander Gustavus Fox thanking him for his assistance in drawing the first shot."

Charles Adams, who has written several authoritative studies of that variety of institutionalized theft called taxation, points out that Lincoln's reaction to secession wasn't to exclaim "What will happen to those unfortunate human beings held in bondage?" but rather, "What will become of my tariff?" Through the tariff, the agricultural South was forced to subsidize the industrial North's embryonic corporatist system.

Just a few generations prior to Ft. Sumter, firebrands among the colonial Patriot movement were not assuaged by London's promise to govern with a lighter hand, and even to suspend the collection of certain taxes for a brief period. London still claimed the legitimate authority to extract taxes, and to use duress as necessary to accomplish that objective. Accordingly, the colonial Patriots weren't willing to settle for anything less than political independence. The drive for Southern independence was informed by the same calculations, and propelled by the same ideals, however imperfectly realized.

Lincoln, who had been willing to make slavery permanent, or to re-settle black Americans in Africa, cynically co-opted the emanicpation issue as a war tactic. This didn't change the core objective of his war, however, which was to create a monolithic federal state operating on corporatist principles – that is, socialism for the wealthy and politically connected, such as the railroad trust that conveyed Lincoln to the White House.

*In their fascinating recent book Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists: Marxism in the Civil War, Walter D. Kennedy and Al Benson, Jr. examine the role of the "48ers" – veterans of the 18 interconnected revolutions that convulsed Europe in 1848–1849 – in creating the Republican Party, bringing Lincoln to power, and conducting the war against the South.

Lincoln himself hailed the proto-Marxist revolution of 1848 in terms that seem, for him, profoundly odd. "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better," insisted Lincoln in a January 12, 1848 speech. "Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit."*

Those seeking to "revolutionize" Europe weren't secessionists content to withdraw from existing political entities and leave others in peace. Their objective, as described by Kennedy and Benson, was to overthrow the existing political order under which they lived, and then consolidate power over larger territories. The objective was to reconstruct society, not merely to withdraw from oppressive, unjust political arrangements.

Germany provided both the best example of this centralizing revolutionary effort and a large supply of failed revolutionaries who migrated to the United States and later joined the struggle to suppress Southern independence. German revolutionaries, in describing their vision, declared that all of Germany – which at the time was a fractious collection of principalities – henceforth would be "a united indivisible republic."

Certainly, the revolutionary program appealed to idealistic impulses by promising to free people from arbitrary rule and feudalist institutions. "People were to be freed from local decentralized control," write Kennedy and Benson, only to be "placed instead under centralized authoritarian control" in the name of "Democracy."

When the revolt of 1848–49 was crushed, the "48er" diaspora brought many of the most ambitious and radical of the revolutionaries to the United States, where they were taken into the bosom of America's home-grown collectivist movement.

Many of them were instrumental in creating the Republican Party and mobilizing fellow expatriates to vote for Fremont and Lincoln. Some of them – such as Joseph Wedemeyer, Charles A. Dana, Franz Sigel, August Willich, and Carl Schurz, to name just a few – rose to commanding heights in the Union Army during the war. Dana, a personal friend of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, was assistant secretary of war under Lincoln.

Gen. Wedemeyer was a friend and close associate of Marx in the London Communist League before migrating to the United States, where he distinguished himself as a publisher of Communist tracts (including the first American edition of the Communist Manifesto) and helped organize the Republican Party, and commanded a Union army.

Gen. Willich, whom Marx incongruously described as "A Communist with a heart," served on the Central Committee of the Communist League. His fellow 48ers referred to the Union General as "The reddest of the Red." A passionate admirer of the deranged terrorist John Brown, Willich gave a speech in 1859 urging his audience to "whet their sabers with the blood" of southern slaveholders.

Franz Sigel's command experience at the time he was given a Union army consisted of leading socialist troops in a failed uprising in Baden, Germany. Carl Schurz, another veteran of the German socialist uprising, did little to distinguish himself as a Union general, but had lasting influence as a Senator from Missouri and Secretary of the Interior.

It was Schurz who created the American Gulag Archipelago called the Indian Reservation system (and it was his wife who pioneered the kindergarten system, better described as the ante-chamber to the Regime's collectivist mind-laundry).

Revolutionary collectivists of this variety clustered around Lincoln and his party because they understood the need to forge a unitary state out of the decentralized American republic – and they were very aware of the fact that this could only be accomplished through total war. This view was well expressed in a hopeful note Engels wrote to Weydemeyer in which the war against the South was described as "the preliminaries of the proletarian revolution, the measures that prepare the battleground and clear the way for us."

Lincoln's war didn't preserve or restore the Union; it destroyed it and supplanted it with a new polity based on radically different premises. Just as Marxists of his era gravitated naturally toward Lincoln and vibrated like tuning forks when he spoke the language of raw power and ruthless centralization, Marxist academicians of our era understand the true nature of what Lincoln accomplished.

Among that number can be found Columbia School of Law professor George P. Fletcher, whose above-mentioned book The Secret Constitution acknowledges what Lincoln's critics have long maintained, in the teeth of criticism and contumely: The so-called Civil War was an effort to bring about "the consolidation of the United States in the mid-nineteenth-century European sense of the term" – or, if you will, the post-1848 sense of the expression.

"One year into the war," continues Fletcher, "after a string of Union defeats, Lincoln learned that the old Union could not possibly survive. `A new one had to be embraced.' And the new Union would have to be based on a new constitutional order."

That new order, Fletcher elaborated, would be based on the premise that "the federal government, victorious in warfare, must continue its aggressive intervention in the lives of its citizens." Familiar institutions would remain, but their roles would be redefined and their powers completely revised within "a new framework of government, a structure based on values fundamentally different from those that went before."

For decades, the Soviet Regime and its agents celebrated Lincoln as a precursor to Lenin, and for very good reason: Both Lincoln and Lenin displayed nearly limitless tactical flexibility in pursuit of the power they exercised ruthlessly in the effort to create a vast, centralized Union (or Soyuz).

Shortly before his death, General Lee – in a characteristically graceful reply to a kind note he'd received from Lord Acton – explained that "the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people [were] the safeguard to the continuance of a free government." By suppressing the option of secession, which is the ultimate peaceful check on the ambitions of a central government, the North had destroyed that safeguard.

In words that have the undeniable heft of fulfilled prophecy, Lee predicted that "the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it."

Cast a look about you, ladies and gentlemen, and you'll behold the "ruin" of which Lee wrote. Those ruling us have pledged something in excess of $8 trillion – more than half of this year's gross domestic product – to provide a financial cushion for the politically connected criminals who preside over our financial system. In that fact we can see the real nature of the "Union" created by Lincoln: It is a forced marriage between the ignorant or deceived host and eager, esurient parasites.

The logic of Lincoln's triumph, wrote biographer Charles C.L. Minor, is that "the right to govern is paramount over the right to live, that man is made for government, rather than government for man, and that for men to claim the right of self-government is to deserve and incur the death penalty." This is why the Power Elite exalts Lincoln's name above all others and celebrates him as the Holy State made Flesh.

For those who reside within the bunkers and gated communities of the Power Elite, the rest of us are useful only as something to be consumed: We are producers whose earnings can be taxed, whose properties can be seized, whose children can be conscripted.

Peeling away the sentiment and mythology that encrust the relevant history, the comparison between Obama and Lincoln is an apt one, and not just because they're both tall, skinny men from Illinois (albeit by way of Kentucky in Lincoln's case, and Kenya – most likely – in Obama's).

Obama, a well-compensated legal agitator and foundation-connected "community organizer," straddles the narrow divide between collectivists of the corporate variety and those of the cultural Marxist persuasion.

Obama's vote for the plutocrat bailout demonstrated his fealty to the Wall Street interests that funded his campaign. His cabinet selections indicate a continued commitment to bipartisan bellicosity in foreign affairs, and to continued subsidy of corporate kleptocrats until the government's bankruptcy is consummated, the dollar collapses, and our country goes the way of Zimbabwe.

Here's a very sobering thought: The indecent eagerness of the opinion-molding elite to sanctify Obama as the New Lincoln may indicate that those who know the tempo of our unfolding collapse are aware that precious little time is left before the final catastrophe.

And I'm just cynical enough to wonder – and either bold or stupid enough to do so aloud, for public consumption – if the Power Elite might decide that Obama should join Lincoln in "martyrdom." Some people are already dropping some pretty potent hints of that variety.

That's why I earnestly pray that Barack Obama will enjoy a long, healthy life following a single, forgettable term in the White House.


*SOURCE:*
http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w62.html

----------


## Sola_Fide

> True, but he made the fatal discovery that the Treasury could print the greenbacks without using a Central Bank. For that, he took a bullet to the head.


Good point.

----------


## YumYum

> Good point.


Thank you! Welcome to the board!

----------


## jmdrake

> Lincoln was horrible.
> 
> 
> He funded the War Between the States with hyper-inflated Greenbacks, much like our FED does today.
> 
> 
> Lincoln began the insane system of the US money supply being created out of debt by the buying of government bonds and issuing them from reserves for bank notes, therefore making money debt itself.


And the continental congress did the same thing to fund the revolutionary war (ever heard the term "Not worth a continental"?)  Confederate currency was wildly inflated too.

http://www.kwaves.com/fiat.htm

http://www.bivouacbooks.com/bbv5i2s1.htm

Was Lincoln a saint?  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  He wrongly suppressed dissent of antiwar newspapers, initiated a draft, suspended habeas corpus and did a lot of other things I disagree with.  But this "southern mythology" that pervades RPF and prevents certain people from looking at *any* information that is even *remotely* critical of the south is annoying to say the least.

----------


## jmdrake

> *More on the Lincoln-Marx connection.*
> 
> 
> *The Lincoln Gambit*
> 
> 
> William Norman Grigg | LewRockwell.com
> December 4, 2008


William Norman Grigg is a self hating black racist that thinks the KKK was justified.  He's no different than Woodrow Wilson in my book except that he's black and thankfully will never be elected president.

That said, you still haven't addressed my point about Don Black.  Why is that?

I notice that your response to simple questions like "What do you think about Murray Rothbard praising Che Guevara" or "What do you think about the fact that the Morill Tariff *would not have passed* if not for secession" or "What about the confederate constitution abrogating states rights" is to ignore the question and then post some TLDR article that often has nothing to do with the question.  Do you believe in guilt by association or don't you?

I'm especially curious about what you think of Rothbard praising Guevara.  The full quote:

*What made Che such a historic figure for our time is that he, more than any other man of our epoch or even our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of Revolution*.

So how is that any worse than the Lincoln quote, referring to the Bolshevik revolution, saying that people have a right to throw off oppressive governments?  And worse, Rothbard made this comment long after the effects of communism were quite apparent.  Are you ready to call Rothbard a marxist?  Or are you going to continue with your "selective outrage", ignore facts that don't back up your viewpoint, and post another TLDR article from someone I don't respect?

----------


## erowe1

> Was Lincoln a saint?  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  He wrongly suppressed dissent of antiwar newspapers, initiated a draft, suspended habeas corpus and did a lot of other things I disagree with.  But this "southern mythology" that pervades RPF and prevents certain people from looking at *any* information that is even *remotely* critical of the south is annoying to say the least.


Well put.

----------


## erowe1

> William Norman Grigg is a self hating black racist that thinks the KKK was justified.  He's no different than Woodrow Wilson in my book except that he's black and thankfully will never be elected president.


What's your basis for this? I've always liked Grigg, and my understanding was that the reason he was ousted from JBS (or left it or whatever happened) was because he was too favorable to multiculturalism.

----------


## FrankRep

> I've always liked Grigg, and my understanding was that the reason he was ousted from JBS (or left it or whatever happened) was because he was too favorable to multiculturalism.


No, William Norman Grigg was ousted from the JBS because of his Hateful public attacks on Mormonism. Grigg was a major liability for the JBS because he was a public figure and speaker.

(William Norman Grigg is an ex-Mormon.)

----------


## Anti Federalist

> William Norman Grigg is a self hating black racist that thinks the KKK was justified.  He's no different than Woodrow Wilson in my book except that he's black and thankfully will never be elected president.


The hell is that...?

I've found Grigg, over the years, to be an outstanding advocate of liberty, especially on police and constitutional rights issues.

I'm going to need to see some pretty damning evidence, to even come close to how you are thinking of him.

----------


## Sola_Fide

> And the continental congress did the same thing to fund the revolutionary war (ever heard the term "Not worth a continental"?)  Confederate currency was wildly inflated too.




True.  No wonder that the Founders favored an asset backed currency at the writing of the Constitution.

----------


## Sola_Fide

> Was Lincoln a saint?  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  He wrongly suppressed dissent of antiwar newspapers, initiated a draft, suspended habeas corpus and did a lot of other things I disagree with.  But this "southern mythology" that pervades RPF and prevents certain people from looking at *any* information that is even *remotely* critical of the south is annoying to say the least.




I see where you are coming from.  Are there some good things about Lincoln?  Sure.  He expressed some beautiful maxims about equality.  Are there a lot of bad things?  Yeah.  War usually brings out the worst of even the most mild Statists.


Lysander Spooner's demolition of Lincoln "No Treason" is a great read.

----------


## jmdrake

> The hell is that...?


This:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w149.html

It plays like a rewriting of "Birth of a Nation".  The south had to be "saved" from the "evil Yankees" and their "negro allies" by the klan.  Give me a break!  And worse he equates the civil rights movement to terrorism.  (Indirectly.  He rightly calls Sherman's total war "terrorism" but then equates the civil rights movement with continuation of "total war").  It's fine that he disagrees with the civil rights act.  But he has no right to call the movement itself "terrorist" nor to try to explain away the klan as mere "blowback".  The KKK was organized in part by our arch enemy and high level mason Albert Pike.  "Blowback" my butt!

----------


## jmdrake

> I see where you are coming from.  Are there some good things about Lincoln?  Sure.  He expressed some beautiful maxims about equality.  Are there a lot of bad things?  Yeah.  War usually brings out the worst of even the most mild Statists.
> 
> 
> Lysander Spooner's demolition of Lincoln "No Treason" is a great read.


Note.  I *do* like Lysander Spooner!

----------


## Sola_Fide

Cool!

----------


## jmdrake

> The hell is that...?
> 
> I've found Grigg, over the years, to be an outstanding advocate of liberty, especially on police and constitutional rights issues.
> 
> I'm going to need to see some pretty damning evidence, to even come close to how you are thinking of him.


Well to me the evidence I posted in response is pretty damning.  Admittedly that was my introduction to Grigg.  May have have written some good stuff?  I'm sure.  But (and I hate to admit it) I occasionally agree with David Duke too.

----------


## erowe1

> This:
> 
> http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w149.html
> 
> It plays like a rewriting of "Birth of a Nation".  The south had to be "saved" from the "evil Yankees" and their "negro allies" by the klan.  Give me a break!  And worse he equates the civil rights movement to terrorism.  (Indirectly.  He rightly calls Sherman's total war "terrorism" but then equates the civil rights movement with continuation of "total war").  It's fine that he disagrees with the civil rights act.  But he has no right to call the movement itself "terrorist" nor to try to explain away the klan as mere "blowback".  The KKK was organized in part by our arch enemy and high level mason Albert Pike.  "Blowback" my butt!


That article doesn't come across to me nearly as bad as you make it sound. I don't see any black self-hate in it, and I don't see any praise of the KKK. He calls it blowback for northern subjugation of the South, but he doesn't praise it as good in itself. In fact, to call it blowback is to imply that there's something wrong with it.

----------


## specsaregood

> Lincoln was horrible.
> He funded the War Between the States with hyper-inflated Greenbacks, much like our FED does today.
> Lincoln began the insane system of the US money supply being created out of debt by the buying of government bonds and issuing them from reserves for bank notes, therefore making money debt itself.





> And the continental congress did the same thing to fund the revolutionary war (ever heard the term "Not worth a continental"?)  Confederate currency was wildly inflated too.





> True.  No wonder that the Founders favored an asset backed currency at the writing of the Constitution.


I'll just put this here:



> The North financed the Civil War with hundreds of millions
> of dollars of irredeemable Greenback notes, and as a result,
> prices more than doubled from 1861 to 1865.
> 
> *During the Greenback inflation, people in California continued
> to use gold as their money.* "In California, as in other
> states," points out Frank Taussig, "paper was legal tender "
> that is, people could be forced to accept it. Although there was
> no antipathy towards the Federal government, people believed
> ...


From Gold Peace and Prosperity by Dr. Ron Paul. pg. 45

----------


## Galileo Galilei

> Karl Marx was a fan of Abraham Lincoln too!
> 
> *Marx's letter to Abraham Lincoln*
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...oln-letter.htm
> 
> *Thomas J. DiLorenzo: Lincolnian Totalitarians*
> http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo77.html
> 
> 
> ...


Interesting that Lincoln was a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, but not of James Madison.  No wonder Lincoln didn't follow the Constitution.

----------


## Sola_Fide

> I'll just put this here:
> 
> From Gold Peace and Prosperity by Dr. Ron Paul. pg. 45




Great quote!


Good argument for introducing a competing currency to reserve notes.

----------


## jmdrake

> That article doesn't come across to me nearly as bad as you make it sound. I don't see any black self-hate in it, and I don't see any praise of the KKK. He calls it blowback for northern subjugation of the South, but he doesn't praise it as good in itself. In fact, to call it blowback is to imply that there's something wrong with it.


I didn't say he praised the KKK.  I said he *justified* it.  And he did.  He has this made up point about the "union leagues" (which he never offers any citation for.  From what I could find the were benign organizations set up to help freed slaves).  And there's the part about the "14,000-man militia composed mainly of black troops" serving as a "Praetorian Guard".  And all of this was "bad" because it was "intended to destroy an aristocratic Southern culture".  Well that "aristocratic culture" depended on slavery.

Lastly, this part is nonsense.

_Although the post-war military dictatorship in the South ended in 1877, the 1964 "civil rights" act is a continuation  and expansion  of Reconstruction. That act was designed and intended to make every private institution, transaction, and relationship subject to federal scrutiny in the name of abolishing "discrimination."_

Anybody who knows anything about the legal foundation of the civil rights act knows that *every private transaction was subject to federal scrutiny back in 1942!*  The civil rights act did *NOT* expand federal power.  It simply used it in a different direction.  Back in 1942 FDR took complete control of private businesses through the expansion of the interpretation of the interstate commerce clause.  But white southerners didn't care because they were going on the "New Deal" sugar tit.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Interesting that Lincoln was a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, but not of James Madison.  No wonder Lincoln didn't follow the Constitution.


At least you admit that the Constitution doesn't _actually_ limit the regime (except in the fantasies of neo-federalists).  I have to give you credit for that.

----------


## erowe1

> I didn't say he praised the KKK.  I said he *justified* it.  And he did.


I disagree. He put it in a context that explained it as a result of what the North did to the South. That's not justifying it. You can disagree with his interpretation. But to justify it would be to say that the KKK was in the right. To call it blowback is to imply that it was in the wrong, but that there are mitigating circumstances that make it not right but understandable, which is the same way "blowback" is used in reference to modern terrorism.

----------


## FrankRep

> William Norman Grigg is a self hating black racist that thinks the KKK was justified.





> This:
> 
> http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w149.html
> 
> It plays like a rewriting of "Birth of a Nation".  The south had to be "saved" from the "evil Yankees" and their "negro allies" by the klan.  Give me a break!  And worse he equates the civil rights movement to terrorism.  (Indirectly.  He rightly calls Sherman's total war "terrorism" but then equates the civil rights movement with continuation of "total war").  It's fine that he disagrees with the civil rights act.  But he has no right to call the movement itself "terrorist" nor to try to explain away the klan as mere "blowback".  The KKK was organized in part by our arch enemy and high level mason Albert Pike.  "Blowback" my butt!


How does this statement by Grigg justify the KKK?

----------


## specsaregood

> Great quote!
> Good argument for introducing a competing currency to reserve notes.


Yes it is.  It comes from a great little 60pg "book".
Available free online, my favorite introductory reading material on the subject for people. 
https://mises.org/books/goldpeace.pdf

----------


## teacherone

jesus people... chill out

i just liked the quote--- we've gone from Commies to the KKK in a blink of an eye here.

----------


## jmdrake

> How does this statement by Grigg justify the KKK?


It's more justification of the KKK than your silly quote by Lincoln was justification of marxism.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> jesus people... chill out
> 
> i just liked the quote--- we've gone from Commies to the KKK in a blink of an eye here.


yeah, I feel you, brother.  The kind of anti-intellectual,hyper-reactionary behavior you're witnessing is one of the reasons I don't bother with the debate threads much at all anymore.

----------


## Anti Federalist

> This:
> 
> http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w149.html
> 
> It plays like a rewriting of "Birth of a Nation".  The south had to be "saved" from the "evil Yankees" and their "negro allies" by the klan.  Give me a break!  And worse he equates the civil rights movement to terrorism.  (Indirectly.  He rightly calls Sherman's total war "terrorism" but then equates the civil rights movement with continuation of "total war").  It's fine that he disagrees with the civil rights act.  But he has no right to call the movement itself "terrorist" nor to try to explain away the klan as mere "blowback".  The KKK was organized in part by our arch enemy and high level mason Albert Pike.  "Blowback" my butt!


From the article:




> State-sponsored terrorism in the occupied South precipitated the creation of the Ku Klux Klan  a development that could be considered the first recorded example of "blowback." 
> 
> In both its ritualized, oath-bound organizational structure and the terrorist tactics it employed, the KKK was morally indistinguishable from the terrorists whose depredations inspired the Klan's creation. Unlike the Union League-aligned terrorists, however, the Klan operated without federal sanction. Thus in 1870 and 1871, Congress passed two Enforcement Acts (the second commonly called the "Ku Klux Klan Act") under which President Grant deployed troops to suppress "rebellion" in the occupied South.


This is the only reference to the Klan in the whole article, which, after two careful readings of it, (the whole article) I have little, if anything, to find fault with and agree with Grigg's premise. In fact, I believe I posted that article when it came out.

Albert Pike having anything to do with the formation of the Klan is tenuous, at best. At the point in time Grigg is referring to, the founder and leader would have been Nathan Bedford Forrest.

But even if he, Pike, did, it would be blowback with foreknowledge, no different than our association and funding of bin-Laden prior to 9/11.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call your statement against Grigg an unsubstantiated smear.

----------


## erowe1

> yeah, I feel you, brother.  The kind of anti-intellectual,hyper-reactionary behavior you're witnessing is one of the reasons I don't bother with the debate threads much at all anymore.


Yeah, we really blew it. The thread title is obviously an invitation to highbrow intellectual discussion.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Yeah, we really blew it. The thread title is obviously an invitation to highbrow intellectual discussion.


lolz

----------


## teacherone

> Yeah, we really blew it. The thread title is obviously an invitation to highbrow intellectual discussion.


Sorry, unlike Lincoln I attended public school.

----------


## jmdrake

> From the article:
> 
> 
> 
> This is the only reference to the Klan in the whole article, which, after two careful readings of it, (the whole article) I have little, if anything, to find fault with and agree with Grigg's premise. In fact, I believe I posted that article when it came out.
> 
> Albert Pike having anything to do with the formation of the Klan is tenuous, at best. At the point in time Grigg is referring to, the founder and leader would have been Nathan Bedford Forrest.
> 
> But even if he, Pike, did, it would be blowback with foreknowledge, no different than our association and funding of bin-Laden prior to 9/11.
> ...


1) Consider the context of the conversation.  FrankRep is "smearing" Lincoln based on a quote where Lincoln says the serfs in Russia had a reason to rebel.  So if Lincoln was supporting or apologizing for Marxism by his quote, then Grigg was supporting or apologizing the klan by his.  Maybe it's just me, but I have this need to at least try to be consistent.

2) Albert Pike and Nathan Bedford Forrest were contemporaries.  Both were civil war generals and both members of the klan at the same time.  Forrest left the klan because it became too violent even for him.  Pike was the worse of the two.  Forrest and Pike co-founded the klan together with 4 other confederate officers.

http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/kkk.html

Pike wrote the rituals for the klan.  Why do you think klan officers had occult names like "grand exalted cyclops"?  If we're going with the "9/11 analogy" then Albert Pike represents the same "shadow government" conspiracy intentionally created the modern terrorist threat because they (the shadow government) hates us for our freedoms.

3) You know me well enough to know that I'm no fan of the "blowback" argument because it oversimplifies what happened.  The way Grigg is using it here is *NOT* the way you are using it.  Grigg isn't saying the union funded the klan the way we funded Al Qaeda.  He's saying it was a "natural result" of the meddling by the "evil yankees".  Also Albert Pike doesn't fit the "blowback" argument since he wasn't a union officer.  (Blowback is the unintended consequences that "blowback" the way you don't want it too.  In what way did Albert Pike not intend the result that he created with the klan?)

4) I'm sorry you're "sorry".  We just disagree.

----------


## jmdrake

> jesus people... chill out
> 
> i just liked the quote--- we've gone from Commies to the KKK in a blink of an eye here.


Sorry your thread got derailed.  Some folks have an automatic reaction every time the word "Lincoln" is mentioned and feel the need to tell everyone how "evil" he was.  It's like when I posted a clip on another forum that was critical of the health care bill.  The clip started with a quote from Thomas Jefferson.  Someone went into a tirade about how "evil" slave owning Thomas Jefferson was and ignored the clip entirely.  Such is life on the net.

----------


## tpreitzel

> You know, the Constitution never once refers to the USA as a nation, it's always a plurality of states. Why do you suppose Lincoln chose to call it a nation here, and what do you suppose he meant by suicide?


One of the most important contributions to this thread. People's allegiances are strongly tied to identities. Over the course of ~ 75 years, the identity of the people slowly shifted from their respective states to the union, a grave mistake. To recapture to whole essence of our constitutional republic, we'll have to once again shift our identity from the union to our respective states, the latter is occurring now (10th amendment), but nearly 100 years too late.

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## Humanae Libertas

> "You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."
> 
> Abraham Lincoln


Lol. That's a bogus quote attributed to Lincoln.

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