Via Nancy
by Valerie Protopapas
Obviously, you are not a stupid man but sadly, your intellect seems to desert you when it comes to your judgment about American leaders. You have stood valiantly against the current socialist trends in the federal government. You have condemned the excesses of Congress and the Administration and the ever growing centralization of power in Washington as well as the trashing of the Constitution. You have shown time and again that such excesses are opposed to the founding principles of the nation, and fly in the face of that same document. And, I have applauded you for your public defense of those republican principles, and the men and women who have championed them.
Yet, the other evening, I heard you -- yet again -- claim that the “gold standard” of American leadership was none other than President Abraham Lincoln. I became so enraged I could not bear to listen any longer, and turned off the TV! Most of the evils we currently endure are because of Abraham Lincoln! It was Lincoln who precipitated the movement to diminish the Sovereignty of individual States and the People, as envisioned by the Founders, and it was Lincoln who seized such power for the Federal Government:
It was also Lincoln who adopted the socialist/Marxist ideologies brought into the United States from Europe with the arrival of the so-called “48ers,” the mostly German followers of Marx fleeing socialism’s failed experiments in Europe.
However, it is also true that Lincoln had adopted those same policies independently before he was influenced by Europe’s socialist upheaval. Did you know that Marx adored Lincoln for the very reason that he worked so studiously to centralize power in the federal government? And did you know that Lincoln’s government and military were filled with Marxists and socialists?
It was Lincoln who abandoned many constitutionally imposed restrictions on the federal government and the presidency when he planned and initiated war against the Southern States. This he did because the South was attempting to exercise a power guaranteed to it in the Constitution, that of secession from a union that was no longer acting in the best interest of its people.
It was Lincoln who deliberately and with malice executed that war without reservation, a war that cost over one million military and civilian live, and destroyed an entire region of the country which had lived peacfully with its neighbors for almost a century.
And the list goes on and on. There is no more infamous lie in the annals of American history than Lincoln’s analysis of the causes of the so-called “Civil War.” War didn’t “come” as Lincoln suggested, Lincoln intentionally precipitated it to prevent the loss of tariff revenues from eleven Southern states, which accounted for 75% of all Treasury receipts. Indeed, the South, by Lincoln’s time, had become little more than a politically impotent colony, supplying endless revenues to enrich the rest of the Union while being driven ever deeper into poverty.
It was Lincoln who embraced—and profited from—Hamilton’s “American System,” which today we call “crony capitalism,” but which is really nothing more than “fascism,” the enemy of free enterprise. Lincoln was supported for the presidency by the economic interests of states such as Pennsylvania, to which he promised a high tariff to protect their manufactured goods and a continuation of the flow of capital and political power from the South to the North.
Lincoln had been a lawyer with one of the railroads supported by such tax-funded largesse and was so successful that he was allowed to choose the eastern terminus for the contemplated trans-continental railroad. It is interesting (and revealing) to note that the property he chose for that site just happened to be owned by him! Lincoln’s sobriquet at that time -- “Honest Abe” -- was bestowed by his enemies, and used in a sarcastic spirit, not as a compliment.
Finally, if you think that we had election fraud in 2008, Lincoln made use of the military to assure his re-election, something that was by no means a certainty in November of 1864. General Benjamin (“Beast”) Butler was sent to New York, from where he triumphantly reported to Lincoln that no Democrats had been permitted to vote.
The same happened in other states such as Ohio where both Lincoln and Lincoln’s war were not popular. Soldiers were permitted to vote in areas where they did not reside, to assure Lincoln’s re-election. Meanwhile, the presence of Union soldiers at the polls was a warning to those who might dare vote Democrat. In fact, in many instances the ballots were color-coded by party, so that any ballot requested by a voter immediately revealed his party to partisan “poll watchers”: Thus, many Americas were “discouraged” from voting lest they happen to choose the wrong ballot.
There is much more evidence concerning Lincoln’s illegal, unconstitutional and immoral actions that are a part of the public record and yet, he continues to be revered, even worshipped, by people who despise and reject the very things for which he stood and the means by which he achieved them. His unconstitutional suspension of “Habeas Corpus” allowed him to indefinitely imprison his critics -– particularly newspaper editors -- and do so without formal charges or even the barest minimum of procedural niceties.
Even the popular belief that Lincoln “freed the slaves” -- or, in fact, had any feeling for them individually or as a group -- is nonsense, proven over and over by his own words and actions. He cared nothing for slavery and even less for “the African,” and was willing to put slavery into the Constitution in the original 13th Amendment (Corwin) if it would keep the Southern states compliant and paying their disproportionate share of federal tariffs.
Even the claim so often made that he fought the war to “preserve the union” is a lie though many Northerners were deceived and indeed fought for that stated purpose. First, a union is by its nature voluntary. Coercion at the point of a bayonet is nothing but conquest and occupation, not “union.”
Thus, Lincoln, his government and all of the states who fought ostensibly to preserve the Union were traitors according to Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution. Indeed, the only act defined as treason in that document is the waging of war against any of the signatory states and aiding and abetting in that war. If there was ever an act worthy of the term “Treason,” it has to be America’s “Civil War,” in which the federal government -- or should I say, the President -- declared war on seven (later eleven) signatory states and initiated total war against them.
Of course, all of those who supported or permitted this war were themselves traitors to a greater or lesser degree. It is ironic that the term “treason” was spread so liberally and successfully on states that had acted Constitutionally in attempting to remove themselves from a hostile and eventually murderous “union,” while the actual traitors have been lauded to the skies historically as heroes and “true Americans.”
No, Mr. O’Reilly, your “stand” against those attempting to establish another “Peoples’ Republic” rings hollow, so long as you refuse to acknowledge where and how America started to leave the path of Aristotle, Locke and the Founding Fathers and embrace the governing theories and actions of Thomas Hobbes and Karl Marx.
Actually, you have only two choices: Either understand and admit that the man you call “the nation’s greatest president” was a traitor and a murderer of millions -- and repudiate his creation of a federal tyranny -- or cling to delusion and myth, and render your own message foolish or dishonest.
You cannot have both Lincoln and the Constitution.
