Fox and Friends has a little clip about a scholar's research on Abe Lincoln's transformation from mocker and atheist to a man of deep faith in God and Christ.
For myself, having come to the realization of what an enormous scoundrel Lincoln was, I find it difficult to despise the man with the vituperation he deserves. The reason for that is the constant hagiography of St. Abe who saved the Union and freed the slaves.
To announce a well reasoned dislike of Lincoln is heresy of the highest degree even among conservatives and the Right or religious.
For example, no one ever thinks it strange that Lincoln in his second inauguration effectively adopted the attitude of John Brown that God had judged America and she must pay in blood for the sin of slavery.
No one ever second guesses Lincoln's spiritual evaluation of God's judgment. No one says, "Hmm, odd that determination since no nation on Earth appears to ever have been judged so sorely by God in such a matter."
So why did Lincoln blame God and insist America and the Southerners deserved wrack and ruin over the matter of the best treated slaves in human history?
Guilt. Pure guilt. Lincoln, in attacking the South to maintain the treasury, impede a growing industrial rival (the South had begun industrializing), and maintain the growing American Empire and constraining a future competitor, in doing this, Lincoln was bringing about the monstrous number of deaths and wounded and mutilated men. 700,000 men killed. Over a million more wounded, sick, and maimed. War crimes perpetrated against the civilians in the South and against their property.
And the responsibility for it all resting on Lincoln's despotic shoulders. He shredded the Constitution and instituted a slaughter of men the likes of which rarely, perhaps never, seen on Earth.
Why wouldn't Lincoln "get" religion and assume the pose of a Hebrew prophet "stamping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored"?
Lincoln is difficult to dislike because of his appearance, the martyrdom through assassination, his effusive rhetoric, and tragic mien; just as Julius Caesar is greatly admired for his skill as a general, politician, engineer, conqueror, and figure of a Roman.
Yet what was Caesar really other than a brilliant and greedy opportunist and butcher. The Celts of Gaul did nothing to earn their slaughter except provide Caesar with a chance to make a fortune and a name for himself.
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The truth is that Americans, through indoctrination, refuse to acknowledge that every People have a right to self-determination, and Lincoln squashed that human and inalienable right like bugs beneath his boots. The Constitution was and is not a holy, indelible, unbreakable bond between States. It is an agreement freely entered into by the consent of the people in the States, and freely altered or revoked by the determination of the people of their States.
Lincoln acted as a tyrant and earned his death for it. Unfortunately, it came too late to save the South.
2 comments:
Very interesting, Mark. Joe Sobran's articles on Lincoln presented a side of Lincoln I'd never known, not that that should surprise anyone. You're right about the guilt. Once the war got started and it appeared that something far, far worse than a brisk, short educational expedition was underway, Lincoln must have been horrified at what he had wrought.
Lincoln's ridiculous idea that "the Union" preceded the states was wrong on its face. I've seen articles that posit that L. was influenced by German socialists that fled after the Revolution of 1848. Socialists aren't famous for their disdain for strong, central government. What socialists were like back then is something that warrants further inquiry, but something tells me the socialists of our day can't hold a candle to their tougher ancestors. Those socialists in a hurry we've all heard so much about.
Btaim, I'm glad to see you be willing to take a different tack (or tact, if you're from Long Island). I think we are standing on the cusp of new revolutionary times. All the smelly but convenient fictions of the Post-WWII paradigm have created the problems that we are facing. Everything, and I do mean everything, is on the table. That means St. Abe and - one of my favorites -- the penetration of out-and-out communist at all levels of the press, the federal govt, and acadreamia.
This "agonizing reappraisal" is long overdue. One Southern woman, the wife of a Confederate officer, immediately after that war had the pleasure of seeing her piano loaded into a wagon at the behest of the wife of a Union officer. The soon-to-be-pianoless woman observed that it had not been her understanding that the war had been fought so as to provide the wives of Union officers with pianos. (OWTTE, h/t Chronicles.)
And if you think about it, that piano heist is wondrously emblematic of the post-1865 state/citizen paradigm.
PS - I think my remark "I'm glad to see you be willing to take a different tack" sounds condescening. My apilogies. I didn't mean to be that.
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