Re; Lincoln, Thomas di Lorenzo wrote a book laying out the anti-Lincoln case from the Right a few yrs. ago. http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo47.html The Political Economy of World Domination http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo-arch.html Thomas DiLorenzo: Archives
Past articles by Thomas DiLorenzo on LewRockwell.com
Making Cannon Fodder A Straussian exposes the Lincolnian big-lie.
The Cheap Lincoln Tom DiLorenzo's classic The Real Lincoln is out in a handsome paperback, complete with a new chapter refuting his hystericon critics.
Pledging Allegiance To the omnipotent Lincolnian state.
The Republican Moneyed Elite And why they elected Lincoln.
There's Gambling in Vegas And fascism in DC.
Dishonest Abe The Lincolnians were inside traders.
Statism, Imperialism, Hubris Thomas DiLorenzo on Irving "the Godfather" Kristol's neocon manifesto.
The GOP-Liberian Connection Lincoln started it, with the plan to deport American blacks to Africa.
Supreme Dictators Thanks, as a happy Woodrow Wilson explained, to Lincoln.
The Political Economy of World Domination Thomas DiLorenzo on the neocons and their strange, Eastern European philosophy.
Leo Lincoln No wonder neocons love Abe, says Thomas DiLorenzo.
States Rights vs. Tyranny And tyrannical central banking.
Six Myths About Lincoln Thomas DiLorenzo explodes them.
The 'Buy America' Myth The South, unlike Lincoln and the Buchananites, was right on tariffs, says Thomas DiLorenzo.
Northern States Rights Thomas DiLorenzo on Straussian lies about America.
Lincoln's Spectacular Lie That the central government created the states.
Protectionism Means Hostilities As in 1861.
What Lincoln's Army Did to the Indians No wonder the neocons love General Sherman.
The Lincolnian Graveyard Neocons are whistling past it, says Thomas J. DiLorenzo.
Lincolnites Love Bush Uh oh.
Lincoln: Slavery A-OK Thomas DiLorenzo on the Great Emancipator's real 13th amendment.
Anti-Lincoln Gangs of New York Some effects of Lincoln's military slavery.
The Evil of Politics Thomas DiLorenzo was right from the beginning.
States Rights Mean Freedom Thomas DiLorenzo explains to hyperventilating neocons.
Lincoln's Willing Executioners Their evil marches on, but not on private property.
Lincoln's 'Second American Revolution' Thomas DiLorenzo on our first Republican (i.e., statist and bloodthirsty) president.
Libelers for Lincoln Thomas DiLorenzo on court historians.
Financing the Empire How it all began, with the anti-gold Lincoln and his greenbacks.
The Economics of Slavery Thomas DiLorenzo on Lincolnian distorters.
Bush Is Lincolnian This is not praise, says Thomas DiLorenzo.
No Justice, No Peace Thomas DiLorenzo on the other reparations movement.
John C. Calhoun, Free Trader America's greatest political thinker was also a free-market sage.
The Unknown Lincoln Not any longer, thanks to Thomas DiLorenzo.
Abeolony Thomas DiLorenzo on fake Lincoln quotes.
The Weirdest Defense of Lincoln Yet Thomas DiLorenzo refutes Jude Wanniski.
Whigged-Out Lincolnites Thomas DiLorenzo on their flipped-out and fibbing worship.
Confronting the Lincoln Cult An interview with Thomas DiLorenzo, the man who knocked Abraham-Zeus out of his state temple. Read his #1 LRC bestseller.
Is There a Libertarian Case for Lincoln? Of course not! Thomas DiLorenzo on Machan, secession, and slavery.
Constitutional Con Men Thomas DiLorenzo on Harry Jaffa and his Lincolnian cabal.
Lincoln's Tariff War The warmongering, centralizing protectionist invaded the South on a looting expedition.
Hitler Was a Lincolnite Some distortions of Harry Jaffa exposed.
Prevaricating Pentacrat Now Tom DiLorenzo, author of The Real Lincoln, really knows he's doing something right.
Lincoln's War on Northern Liberties The neocons, note, defend everything the Dictator did.
The Economic Causes of Lincoln's War The neocons lie about them, of course.
Was Lincoln a Tyrant? Only neocons would deny it.
Glory, Glory Hallelujah Abe's evil marches on.
Lying For Lincoln Thomas DiLorenzo on the neocon smears against his important new Lincoln book.
Stop Lying About Lincoln Thomas DiLorenzo has had it with official prevaricators.
Dislike Aggressive War and National Socialism? Then you must like slavery. Thomas DiLorenzo on the typical defense of Honest Abe.
Lincolnites Can't Stand the Truth But that's not stopping the truth teller, Thomas DiLorenzo. Read his new book, The Real Lincoln.
Happy Dictator Day Thomas DiLorenzo on Lincoln.
Cornel West, Marxist No wonder he's an academic "rock star." Article by Thomas DiLorenzo.
Osama Bin Sherman No wonder George Will likes him, and the feds named a tank in his honor. Letter by Thomas J. DiLorenzo.
US Military "Trials" Here's just one episode, courtesy of the murderous Lincoln.
Targeting Civilians In the modern era, it all started with Lincoln.
Lincoln's Culture of Death And those who pretend it's pro-life.
The Banner of Federal Oppression Thomas DiLorenzo puts Independence Day in perspective.
The Truth About the 14th Amendment And the Northern origins of Jim Crow.
Libertarians Should Love the Confederate Flag But the Beltway versions are allied with the NAACP and the SPLC in hating it. What gives?
Deconstructing the 'War Street Journal' Tom DiLorenzo, proud "denizen" of LRC, refutes the attack.
Tyranny Personified Tom DiLorenzo examines Teddy Kennedy (while wearing rubber gloves).
Secession and Liberty Thomas J. DiLorenzo on how to make concrete use of the election returns.
Loot Seekers Attack Microsoft Including the bought-and-paid-for Robert Bork, says Thomas DiLor by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/January2001/0101LivingstonPaleo.html
> From the January 2001 issue of Chronicles:
The Litmus Test for American Conservatism by Donald W. Livingston
Abraham Lincoln is thought of by many as not only the greatest American statesman but as a great conservative. He was neither. Understanding this is a necessary condition for any genuinely American conservatism. When Lincoln took office, the American polity was regarded as a compact between sovereign states which had created a central government as their agent, hedging it in by a doctrine of enumerated powers. Since the compact between the states was voluntary, secession was considered an option by public leaders in every section of the Union during the antebellum period. Given this tradition—deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence—a great statesman in 1860 would have negotiated a settlement with the disaffected states, even if it meant the withdrawal of some from the Union.
But Lincoln refused even to accept Confederate commissioners, much less negotiate with them. Most of the Union could have been kept together. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to remain in the Union even after the Confederacy was formed; they reversed themselves only when Lincoln decided on a war of coercion. A great statesman does not seduce his people into a needless war; he keeps them out of it.
When the Soviet Union dissolved by peaceful secession, it was only 70 years old—the same age as the United States when it dissolved in 1860. Did Gorbachev fail as a statesman because he negotiated a peaceful dissolution of the U.S.S.R.? Likewise, if all states west of the Mississippi were to secede tomorrow, would we praise, as a great statesman, a president who refused to negotiate and launched total war against the civilian population merely to preserve the Union? The number of Southerners who died as a result of Lincoln’s invasion was greater than the total of all Americans killed by Hitler and Tojo. By the end of the war, nearly one half of the white male population of military age was either dead or mutilated. No country in World War II suffered casualties of that magnitude.
Not only would Lincoln not receive Confederate commissioners, he refused, for three crucial months, to call Congress. Alone, he illegally raised money, illegally raised troops, and started the war. To crush Northern opposition, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of the war and rounded up some 20,000 political prisoners. (Mussolini arrested some 12,000 but convicted only 1,624.) When the chief justice of the Supreme Court declared the suspension blatantly unconstitutional and ordered the prisoners released, Lincoln ordered his arrest. This American Caesar shut down over 300 newspapers, arrested editors, and smashed presses. He broke up state legislatures; arrested Democratic candidates who urged an armistice; and used the military to elect Republicans (including himself, in 1864, by a margin of around 38,000 popular votes). He illegally created a “state” in West Virginia and imported a large army of foreign mercenaries. B.H. Liddell Hart traces the origin of modern total war to Lincoln’s decision to direct war against the civilian population. Sherman acknowledged that, by the rules of war taught at West Point, he was guilty of war crimes punishable by death. But who was to enforce those rules?
These actions are justified by nationalist historians as the energetic and extraordinary efforts of a great helmsman rising to the painful duty of preserving an indivisible Union. But Lincoln had inherited no such Union from the Framers. Rather, like Bismarck, he created one with a policy of blood and iron. What we call the “Civil War” was in fact America’s French Revolution, and Lincoln was the first Jacobin president. He claimed legitimacy for his actions with a “conservative” rhetoric, rooted in an historically false theory of the Constitution which held that the states had never been sovereign. The Union created the states, he said, not the states the Union. In time, this corrupt and corrupting doctrine would suck nearly every reserved power of the states into the central government. Lincoln seared into the American mind an ideological style of politics which, through a sort of alchemy, transmuted a federative “union” of states into a French revolutionary “nation” launched on an unending global mission of achieving equality. Lincoln’s corrupt constitutionalism and his ideological style of politics have, over time, led to the hollowing out of traditional American society and the obscene concentration of power in the central government that the Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent.
A genuinely American conservatism, then, must adopt the project of preserving and restoring the decentralized federative polity of the Framers rooted in state and local sovereignty. The central government has no constitutional authority to do most of what it does today. The first question posed by an authentic American conservative politics is not whether a policy is good or bad, but what agency (the states or the central government—if either) has the authority to enact it. This is the principle of subsidiarity: that as much as possible should be done by the smallest political unit.
The Democratic and Republican parties are Lincolnian parties. Neither honestly questions the limits of federal authority to do this or that. In 1861, the central government broke free from what Jefferson called “the chains of the Constitution,” and we have, consequently, inherited a fractured historical memory. There are now two Americanisms: pre- Lincolnian and post-Lincolnian. The latter is Jacobinism by other means. Only the former can lay claim to being the primordial American conservatism.
David W. Livingston is a professor of philosophy at Emory University and the author of Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium (University of Chicago Press).