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Should We Worship Lincoln?mises.org/friday-philosophy/should-we-worship-lincoln

196 sats \ 24 comments \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 6h BooksAndArticles

[The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and The Fight for America by Glenn Ellmers, Encounter Books, 2021; 514pp.]

Glenn Ellmers—following his teacher Harry Jaffa—asks a good question, but his answer to it is wrong-headed. It is widely acknowledged that Americans are polarized in their political opinions between “Reds” and “Blues,” with the former being more populist and traditional, while the latter is more elitist, favoring rule by so-called “experts” and more “liberal” in the modern sense, that is to say, more leftwing. Given this polarity, how may Americans come together as a united people?

One could challenge the premise that Americans should come together as a united people: perhaps, for example, “woke” and “anti-woke” Americans don’t want to come together. But we can put this issue aside by conditionalizing the question, that is, we can ask, “If Americans want to come together as a united people, what should they do?”

Ellmers’s answer to this question is most implausible. He suggests that Americans should come together around the equality clause of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” as this clause was interpreted by Abraham Lincoln. (There is a disagreement about whether “equality clause” refers to the full paragraph we have quoted or just to “all men are created equal,” but this is a mere matter of semantics.)

The author of this review takes the point of view that Lincoln was not worthy of the worship that he is receiving currently from modern Americans. Lincoln’s purpose was never to end slavery, and, as the author points out, drafted the Corwin Amendment that would have enshrined slavery into the constitution. Contrarily, he was in it for the money; to continue collecting the tariffs and imposts from the Southern states imports and exports. The image we hold of Lincoln is the image written by the victors.

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20 sats \ 6 replies \ @kepford 3h

The bottom line on Lincoln is that modern politicians need Lincoln to be a hero because he is the creator of the modern US where the federal government holds a gun pointed at the head of each state. Prior to Lincoln the feds were not nearly as strong and the mindset of the people was very different.

I don't think Lincoln is one of the best presidents but rather one of the worst for what he created and the lives that were lost as a result of his actions. Slavery needed to end. There were MANY how both opposed slavery and opposed the war. These people were persecuted in the north.

History is complex. Lincoln isn't all bad but the cult around him isn't helpful to understanding the problems in the United States and how many of them started.

56 sats \ 5 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 3h

Yes, one big difference in thought was they talked about these united States not the United States. People saw their state as the nation they lived in and the union as a federated group of states. This is a totally different concept than we have now of the unitary state.

20 sats \ 4 replies \ @kepford 3h

That's my point. You are making it even stronger. Even Lincoln didn't view these united States as people do today. When you read the words of the founders and early people of the country its obvious that the states created the union and that the union exists at the pleasure of the states. Today the view is that the states are just sub-units of the USA. Completely backwards.

Its an example of how powerless paper and written rules are in reality. The Constitution is a beautiful document but its an utter failure. It was created to limit the powers of the federal government and protect the rights of each state and its people. On that account it is a failure.

But it was doomed to fail from the start.

64 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 3h

If you want to see about states’ rights and how they use them get a gander at this post: #854283

57 sats \ 2 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 3h

If you want to see what the founders thought of the federal system, you may want to look up: The Preamble to the Bill of Rights to see what the purpose of the Constitution and Bill of Rights was. It is an interesting read, because it is never included with the Bill of Rights, any more.

BTW, Lincoln is the one who ultimately killed the idea of the states being the ultimate power in the federation. Although, people are now coming around to understand it a bit better.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 2h

I forget what they are called but the writings of the signers debating the Constitution are also helpful in understanding what they thought the document meant. Before I discovered all this sort of stuff I used to waste time arguing with people about the Constitution. I learned that people do not care. Its just a dumb thing they can say to "support" their desired outcome. No one cares about the Constitution. Winning is all they care about.

This is what conservatives used to do. I don't think they fall into this trap as much anymore but back in the hey day of Rush Limbaugh when I was a kid it was all about the Constitution and the left didn't give a flip.

Trump has kinda ripped to veil off and exposed the clear struggle for power and influence. It was always there but less obvious.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 1h

It (the power struggle) is still there and working as hard as ever. The lust for power by the power junkies is so powerful that they will do anything possible to keep it. This is why we have so many motherWEFers willing to sell out for the chance to be powerful and get the money and pelf. I don’t think that there is any way to stop it besides crushing the state as a vehicle for this behavior.

10 sats \ 16 replies \ @NovaRift 6h

>Lincoln’s purpose was never to end slavery

Strange, I read the opposite. Hard to believe what the author wrote.

52 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 6h

The evidence comes from letters that Lincoln, himself, wrote to other people. These are incontrovertible bits of evidence that the true historians use, but not the court historians.

20 sats \ 14 replies \ @Undisciplined 6h

There's a bit of nuance to be had here. Lincoln was personally opposed to slavery (his preference was to ship all the blacks back to Africa). However, it's entirely uncontroversial that he was willing to accept slavery, if that's what would keep the union together (bad priorities).

46 sats \ 3 replies \ @kepford 3h

Yep this ^^

More importantly than his personal beliefs is the fact that the US was the only nation to fight a war over slavery vs. eliminate it peacefully. The modern man just thinks we had to fight a war to end it...

History is not as simple and neat / clean as they teach you in government schools.

75 sats \ 2 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 3h

As I said, Lincoln was only interested in money, money and more money. If we had settled the slavery problem as most countries did, by buying all the chattel and setting them free, it would have been expensive for the federal government. In their times, slaves were very expensive items, a couple of thousand and up when gold was twenty dollars an ounce. At least 100 ounces of gold for a slave. Think of that price to buy out all the slaveholders. BTW, who do you guess THEY were?

63 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 3h

I honestly do not get why so many people get their panties in a wad about saying anything critical about Lincoln. He was very unpopular before he was murdered and when you read critical revisionist history about him sourced from his own writing the picture becomes clear.

As you and others stated mainstream historians when pressed will not debate that Lincoln was more concerned about the union than slavery. That he had advocated for sending them to Africa.

I think criticizing Lincoln shows the religious type of relationship most Americans have with the state. Its like saying Jesus was married to a Christian. Its just appalling. Lincoln is akin to a deity in the religion of the state.

84 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 3h

Yes, you have hit the nail on the head, there. It is Lincoln worship as one of the demiurges of the state in the state religion. To attack Lincoln, or even mention that he was less than perfect is heresy. That kind of ~~religious~~ political heresy is just not taught or expressed in ”polite” society, now-a-days.

64 sats \ 8 replies \ @NovaRift 5h

I fact checked it and found it to be true. Sorry, I didn't know books could be that wrong. Thanks.

■ https://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-lincoln-slavery-and-emancipation

■ https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/14/us/abraham-lincoln-racism-blake/index.html

■ https://theemancipator.org/2022/06/16/topics/histories/lincoln-gets-way-too-much-credit-freeing-enslaved-black-people/

29 sats \ 7 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 5h

Thanks for taking the effort to look into it. You may want to seek different sources than the ones you used, though. There are a lot of sources better than the mouthpiece of the CIA: CNNLOL, but even they had to admit to the truth, at least this once.

15 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 5h

That's true, but at the same time, it's worth knowing how much is not even disputed by the intentional propagandists.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 5h

Yes, you could say, then, that this is an indisputable fact, right? Except, there is someone out there that will dispute it because their hero, Just didn’t do that kind of thing!!!!! I have to say, it, along with other evidence of other things he said and did, doesn’t paint a pretty picture of Lincoln There is a lot of denial and court history out there floating around, though.

10 sats \ 4 replies \ @NovaRift 5h

But I'm not entirely against. I consider CNN to be a reliable, and there are books and other online resources for fact checking as well. I guess I'm a bit different here. What media sources do you consider reliable?

25 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 5h

You may want to look into the DNC emails that were published by Wikileaks. Many people who work for CNN are literally operatives for the DNC. It's almost entirely a propaganda outlet.

33 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 3h

Thank heavens for Wikileaks and Julian Assange for the information that we need but will not see from any state. I hadn’t known that there was hard evidence for CNNLOL operatives being also DNC operatives as well as CIA operatives. Just makes me wonder how tied up with the CIA the DNC is, doesn’t it? There are just too many overlaps to be co-inky-dense.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @NovaRift 5h

I'll check it out, thanks

15 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 5h

None. Gotta go to the original sources to find reliability.

38 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 6h

His priorities, from his own hand and mouth, were money, money and more money for the Union by way of the tariffs and imposts collected at all ports by the federal government. He wanted them collected at all ports, including both the North and South. And to top it all off, he pursued a barbaric unjust war. A war that even Hitler thought was barbaric. Is this what heroes do? Or is this what the court historians say heroes do?