December 26, 2005

The recent publicity over revelations that the National Security Agency and other fedgov organizations have been wiretapping and in other ways spying on American citizens in the United States has added a new element to the current debate in Congress on renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act. It has further complicated the national debate over the “war on terrorism” and over the continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has also cast a new light on the ways in which both state and federal governments are spying on various segments of the population, in a way reminiscent of Beria, Himmler, and Big Brother. Although it should come as no surprise, this has added little but vitriol and a further hardening of positions (if such is even possible) for those who love Bush and those who hate Bush. At the same time (and again no surprise), conservatives are rallying once more to W’s defense, and liberals are crowing loudly about the entire matter, which helps hide their own peccadilloes a bit more. Some are crowing so loudly and enthusiastically that they are making claims about their own past action that aren’t even true – again, business as usual.

But it is to one particular train of thought promoted by several conservatives (including both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity) that I wish to direct our attention in this article. “We are at war,” we are told, and “every wartime president” has exercised such power. “It is necessary” they intone, to cut corners like this, and the same standard (i.e., the Bill of Rights) does not apply to belligerent actions as to criminal and civil actions. Two “wartime presidents” were immediately brought up by these apologists for President Bush.

The first, of course, is that most beloved of presidents to liberals, the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This man is thrown back in the face of liberal haters of President Bush for his actions in interning the Americans who had been, or were the descendants, of Japanese. “This was not enough to harm the image of FDR, but for less than this you want to impeach Bush?” the commentators say. If they are particularly daring, they bring up other odorous actions of the Roosevelt administration, and again ask, “If FDR could do these things, why do you object to Bush doing them?”

It is, of course, a valid question, and one which is definitely embarrassing to liberals, at least when told to the 5 or 10% of the population who remembers Japanese internment camps or even that Japan was an enemy of the United States in World War Two. And there is no answer: if the USA were Rome, or the Soviet Union, or Red China, the name of FDR would have already been obliterated from the history books for his intolerant actions, and his statues pulled down and melted down. But even too many conservatives worship FDR, and his little “quirks” like goading Japan into war and stealing millions of acres of land from all and sundry, and his inherent fascism, are ignored because he is a great man! We even put his picture on our dimes, and how can someone on money be evil?

But that president is only the opening salvo – for next Limbaugh and Hannity (and others) bring up an even greater American political demigod than FDR. (And after all, there are still some conservatives, somewhere, who still believe that Franklin of the New Deal was, if not Satan incarnate, certainly one of the evil one’s thirteen disciples.) I speak of none other than the log-splitter himself, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, president of the United States from 1861 to 1865. After all, I constantly heard, even Abraham Lincoln saw it necessary to suspend habeas corpus and conduct domestic spying in the crucible of the “Civil War” – so how can anyone fault George W. Bush for following the example of the Great Emancipator? Even Democrats, Liberals, yes, and Libertarians must surely not refuse to revere the memory of this man who saved the American Union, freed the slaves, and wrote the Gettysburg Address.

So once more, it is time to remind all and sundry that IF George W. Bush is indeed walking in the steps of one Abraham Lincoln, that there are more than ever grounds for considering our current president to be nothing more than a dictator and a hypocrite who will use any means to further his aims. For indeed, to most of those familiar with history and not national myth, Abraham Lincoln is indeed that and more. To them, having the face of Abraham Lincoln on the front of Mount Rushmore, that “Shrine to Democracy” is as inappropriate and upsetting as it would be to have his figure carved on Stone Mountain.

Abraham Lincoln was nothing more than an elected dictator, and for that matter, elected by a minority vote even weaker than Bill Clinton’s election and even more subject to claims of fraud than either of George W Bush’s elections. Far from being a supporter of Black American’s rights, he was a bigoted racist who cruelly and opportunistically used the abolition of slavery as the means to an end. Far from being the defender of government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” (a quote from his hypocritical Gettysburg Address long recognized by such as HL Mencken as just that he was nothing less than a tyrant who foreshadowed the totalitarian regimes that drenched the world in blood; and in fact, the blood of more Americans than every other president combined stains his hands.

None of this is new, although many of us (myself included), still continue to discover new depths to his infamy. An excellent introduction to this side of Lincoln is found in the writing of L. Neil Smith (“American Lenin” ). It does not take an apologist for the Southron Confederacy to condemn Lincoln as the butcher, tyrant, and fascist that he was; nor does it mean that we are justifying an assassin.

Lincoln not only suspended habeas corpus (a fundamental and essential right for which much blood was shed, and an important part of our legacy as the descendants of free Englishmen), but he illegally arrested and imprisoned tens of thousands of American civilians for the most trivial of offenses – in the northern, loyal states. He participated in, and sometimes led in, actions which involved military tribunals of civilians, including in at least one case a serving member of Congress. He engineered the outbreak of hostilities which became the War Between the States, with the sole intent of illegally preserving a Union for the sake of the industrial and trade interests to which he devoted his professional and political life. He betrayed hundreds of thousands of men and women by using their patriotism and thirst for liberty against their every interest, and allowing them to be butchered as a result. There are several excellent books on this evil genius, who like Lenin, Mao, and Hitler after him, used a tremendous ability as a demagogue to hoodwink an entire nation into following him, and like them, became a mass murderer on an unprecedented scale, while gaining a reputation as a faithful servant of the people and preserver of the Republic.

To provide just one example of his actions: The publication of the Emancipation Proclamation (which freed slaves ONLY in those very parts of the former United States where there was no federal control) was viewed by many Unionists as nothing more than a betrayal of the cause of reuniting the country. For Northern Democrats (already demonized by Lincoln as traitorous “copperheads” ), this was one more proof that the abolitionists were willing to destroy the constitution and Union for the sake of negro liberation. The resentment of the Proclamation was especially bad in the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan) and as a result many troops in regiments from those states refused to re-enlist and even deserted. Others, including officers, who spoke out against the Proclamation, were arrested and cashiered, in some cases imprisoned next to Confederate soldiers captured on the battlefield.

When the Indiana legislature refused to authorize new spending to conduct the war and raise more troops, the governor, with Lincoln’s backing, arrested the legislature, dismissed it, and ran the state by executive fiat for the next two years. As a result, several conspiracies to either declare neutrality or actually launch another succession movement to form a “Northwest Confederacy” were established, ultimately involving tens of thousands of men and women. A series of events, including federal spies and Sherman’s victories in Georgia, in 1864, caused these efforts to fail, but thousands more were arrested, often without any more suspicion than being friends of people involved in the conspiracies, and imprisoned. In some cases, illegal military tribunals condemned people to death.

If this all sounds familiar, it should – although the Lincoln administration (and Lincoln himself) was not as “politically correct” as modern American administrations, still the trend is similar, and the dangers as great or greater today. And certainly, the period of 1860-1876 saw a fundamental shift of power from sovereign states to a centralized, and often repressive government; a government still far better than virtually anything else in the world then or since, but a far cry from what the Founders established, and what common sense considers liberty.

So when these people justify President Bush’s actions by citing Presidents Roosevelt or Lincoln as establishing such powers, and tells you that nothing horrible happened then but that “evil” was defeated, look it up for yourself. You may be very sadly disappointed in what the last several wartime presidents did to the cause of liberty in our nation and the world.

It must not happen again.

Archives

Churches and Concealed Carry

Why one libertarian doesn’t support Cindy Sheehan

Looters: The Low-down on the Low-down

Bakers Dozen ™: Hot-Wash Lessons Learned From Katrina, Week 1

Baker’s Dozen ™ Hints to Prepare for Disaster

What is a "person" In modern America?

Complete Archives for Nathan Barton