National Treasure 2

Last night I saw this film - again because the wife wanted to. It was what I expected; filled with odes to the Lincoln mythology. The villain of the film is a Southerner, a descendant of General Albert Pike. (creative huh).

It is not worth discussing the film other than to comment on a couple of points. First, there are several points where the characters state something to the effect, "imagine if the Confederates had got their hands on all that gold".

Imagine what? Would it really have been so terrible for a new nation to gain its freedom because that is what the people of that nation wanted? I failed to get it each time one of the characters in the movie made such a silly statement. I guess secession got in the way of manifest destiny and all that.

The plot of the film revolves around the fabled city of gold. It ends up being located in the Black Hills, almost under Mt. Rushmore (Six Grandfathers before the Federal Government took it over). Apparently the entire Rushmore project was conceived (according to the story) to hide the city of gold. At one point the dialogue in the movie talks about finding this piece of Indian culture (the use the non-preferred "native american" term).

It is interesting to note that once they find it I did not notice one single Indian there cataloguing and collecting all of the treasure. I suppose it was all headed off to the Smithsonian for "safe-keeping". All of that gold sure would set up the Lakotah Nation up nicely don't you think?

Which of course brings us to sic semper tyranus, the idea that tyrants always should get the (knife, gun, bomb etc.) the only problem with that is that killing a tyrant only allows a worse tyrant to replace them. Killing Lincoln (clearly a tyrant by any real definition) simply allowed the most radical Republicans to implement their policies. Killing tyrant did not even work in Rome, they tried it, over and over and simply kept finding new tyrants ready and wiling to fill the job.

*Lincoln deserved to die, he should have been impeached, tied and hanged for prosecuting unjust war, suppressing Constitutional rights and subverting due process - that is the fate tyrants should face; not to be revered on coins and monuments.

The real problem in the acceptance of the precepts of tyranny. It is those concepts that must be killed to actually "kill" tyrants, i.e. keep them in their place.

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A Majority in 32 States Agree

With Ron Paul that Lincoln was wrong to start and prosecute a war against the southern states when they seceded from the union. An act not prohibited to them by the Constitution - the act of going to war against states exercising their reserved rights is not a power delegated to the executive branch or the federal government in general. I challenge anyone to provide evidence to the contrary. Apparently the majority of folks in the less metropolitan states understand this concept.

Take a gander at the map of the poll results - everywhere that people still live with some degree of that quality that has been considered historically "American" the majority agree that Lincoln was wrong.

Samuel Chase (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) and Justice of the Suprime Court stated in Ware v. Hylton (3 Dallas 199 at 224 U.S. 1798)

In June, 1776, the convention on Virginia formaly declared that Virginia was a free, soveriegn and independent state and on the 4th of July 1776, following, the United States in Congress assembled declared the thirteen colonies free and independent States; and that as such they had full power to levy war, conclude peace etc. I consider this as a declaration, not that the United States jointly in a collective capacity were independent States etc. but that each of them was a soverign and independent State, that is each of them had a right to govern itself by its own authority and its own law, without any control from any other power on earth. [emphasis mine]

The Treaty of Paris 1783, concluding the American War of Independence, supports this conclusion:

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

Notice that Great Britian acknowledhes the independence of thirteen individual states as free and independent nations - not simply one joint government. The United States as a government was born from a contract between free and independent States and it was given only limited power to do specific things. As the 10th Amendment clearly states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The president did not and still does not have the power the use force against a state or states exercising their reserved rights - i.e. all rights of free and independent nations not specifically delegated to the Federal Government under the terms of the Constitution. Free and independent states are by definition free to enter into contracts and agreements and when they believe those agreements are no longer in their best interests they are free to leave those agreements. That is the meaning of being free and independent - any other definiton would inply that the states were captive and not free at all.

Alexis de Tocqueville the foremost observer of the creation of the American Republic, in Democracy in America, said:

The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States choose to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right.

President James Buchanan stated succinctly in a speech before Congress, December 1860 that the Constitution does not delegate to the Federal government the power to use force against a state:

The question fairly stated is, Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and to make war against a State. After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the Federal Government. It is manifest upon an inspection of the Constitution that this is not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress, and it is equally apparent that its exercise is not " necessary and proper for carrying into execution " any one of these powers. So far from this power having been delegated to Congress, it was expressly refused by the Convention which framed the Constitution.

Lincoln himself spoke highly of secession at one point in his career (when it was pragmatic and met his own ideological objectives)

Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one which suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right-a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit.

This excerpt is taken from Lincoln's "If You Can Secede You May" (Mexico) speech, cited in Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 450.

Clearly Mr. Lincoln was wrong to wage war against the South - he did not do it to free slaves for he never freed a single slave under his actual sphere of influence. Furthermore, slaver ended in every other Western nation without war, it was an intsitution destined to end in America as well without warfare. He invaded the South outside of his constitutional mandate and beyond his delegagted power to act. His actions caused the death of 400,000 Americans and in the minds of the uneducated and more nefariously those that wish to use the Federal Government for purposes that is was never created for changed our Republic into an empire.

Ron Paul was brave to answer Tim Russert correctly but it is more encouraging to see that many of my fellow Americans still understand history and the Constitution.

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AOL on Lincoln and Paul

Not that this is scientific at all but the results of this "poll" have been interesting to watch. Nationally, 57% disagree with the following "Ron Paul says Lincoln was wrong to fight the Civil War."

What is encouraging is that in the South (ten states), Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Alaska the numbers run in the majority in agreement with Dr. Paul. These are the states where the League of The South, the Second Vermont Republic, the Alaska Independence Party, and the Lakota Nation live and operate.

Perhaps, despite an egregious education system that does not teach the truth there is indeed hope for devolution and independence. If one can see how wrong that Lincoln was then it is not a great step forward toward seeing what is wrong with all that resulted from his actions.

My question - what is wrong with Texas, Missouri and Hawaii? (Places where people ought to vote differently) Do y'all like living under the yoke of an illegitimate empire?

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That Lincoln Fellow

Anthony Gregory has penned a fabulous piece on the backlash from Russert's attempt to trip Ron Paul up with a question about Lincoln's War.

George W. Bush and the Republican establishment are, if nothing else, Lincolnian,
regardless of what anyone might say. The party of corporatism, imperialism,
centralism, economic fascism, dictatorship, aggressive war, militaristic duplicity, conscription, direct taxation, cronyism and police statism has never strayed much from its 1860s roots. And it has always advanced despotism in the name of liberty and national honor, from Lincoln to Teddy, from Nixon to Reagan, from the Bushes to Benito.

The fact that "conservatives" have flocked to and supported the GOP over the last half century is really more a result of the Democrat parties abandonment of its roots than any real redeeming conservative principles in the GOP itself. I have voted Republican in with the only excpetions a couple of votes for Libertarian and Constitution Party candidates when I had an option. The legacy of Lincoln is written all over the GOP and if it does not shake that legacy, renouncing it outright it deserves to fall and crumble.

But Ron Paul has done something that no presidential candidate of any prominence has done in many, many years — he has challenged the cult of Lincoln, the ideological godhead of the modern American regime. The Federal Reserve, the Income Tax, the Wilsonian empire and now the Lincolnian central state have all
become national issues of discourse again. Thanks, Ron Paul. Once again, you
have told the American people what they need to hear. If we want America to become a free country, we must go further than overturning the legacy of George
W. Bush. We must overturn much more, and replace it with liberty itself. We are
closer to that goal than ever, as the ideological basis for the modern American
system is crumbling at every moment of exposure to Dr. Paul's truth serum.

Indeed he has, but who really wants to listen? To listen to such truth requires a fundemental change in the way one sees the world. It is too comfortable to accept the status quo, not to ask the hard questions and not to hear real truth. No real conservative, no real lover of liberty could look at Lincoln as anything more than a murderous tyrant - a man that simply ignored the law off the land to force his idea of a perfect union upon the people via force.

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Paul on Lincoln's War

Tim Russert asked Ron Paul last Sunday on Meet the Press about Mr. Lincoln's War to which Paul said: "No, [Lincoln] shouldn't have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic."

Anyone that is honest in their study of history knows that Lincoln did not declare war on the Confederate States to end slavery and that he himself never freed a single slave while president. These are facts. What he did do is redefine (by force) the original republic and to do so inaugurated slavery of another sort (the draft). He started the war and invaded the South for the same reasons nations have always invaded other nations - power, control and economics.

What an asinine thing of Russert to attempt, what a brave and noble answer from Paul.

AOL wants you to speak on the issue, go here to express your opinion (vote) on the issue. They ask a simple question "Ron Paul says Lincoln was wrong to fight the Civil War. Do you agree?"

I am amazed at the results - the failure of our civics education is obvious. I am more disturbed at the numbers coming in from the South. Obviously a lot of morons have voted in this poll thus far.

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Enemies of Liberty Love Lincoln

Caution: May be offensive & not recommended viewing by neo-cons, GOP Party hacks, government teachers, intolerants, rent-seekers, or numb-numbs of any persuasion.

Fence sitters welcome.

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Enemies of Liberty Love Lincoln
Thomas DiLorenzo explains why (video).

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On Lincoln Again

Daniel Larison has a few true things to say about Lincoln

A modern conservative appropriation of Lincoln seems mistaken to me since, obviously, I think Lincoln’s politics are the antithesis of the decentralist, distributist-cum-populist tradition that properly makes up what best approximates a native conservative tradition in America. If judged according to Burkean hostility to Jacobinism and “armed doctrines” generally, Lincoln would have to be classified as an enemy of the permanent things....Lincoln represents the tendency to uproot, level or destroy pretty much everything that a great many traditional conservatives believe that we should be conserving.

This is of course a nice way of saying what most of us already know - Lincoln was a murderous, lying, tyrant; he was certainly not a conservative however the neocon's probably find him and his actions as something to be admired. That of course is more a commentary on their own flaws than anything remarkable about Lincoln himself.

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The Defenders of States' Rights - the Good Ole GOP

I seems that even folks in California actually "get it" when it comes to the topic of states' rights. Here is an except from a fellow in Folsom, CA -

I'm no genius when it comes to studying our constitution, but "States Rights" looms large on my list of "must have." If my state votes to allow people to wear bikini suits to work, then so be it. The constitution protects the right for us to elect our own officials and they have the obligation to do what we want.

"Must have" indeed, here is one reason why as he puts it -

I now hear seniors are voicing the concern that voting no longer matters. "There is no one to vote for, and besides, they don't even listen anymore."

Now this is alarming. The young voters have always been reluctant to believe their "vote counts" and the middle-agers are frantically trying to keep their heads above water, but now the oldsters are upset with our system? Now that's trouble.

As Johnny pointed out a month or so ago, for many voting is stupid - if they don't listen, you are merely giving tacit validity to a system that has lost its mandate. Voting or not voting does not matter - in either event ours is a system of taxation without representation. The scale is too big, influences other than the individual hold too much sway - our politicians only speak to our issues at election time, and then proceed with the hubris of Roman Senators to go back to the Federal District and do what they think is best for us (or for their future/wallet/etc).

We are foolish enough to believe asinine comments like this found in stateline -

[T]he Republican Party traditionally was known as a supporter of states’ rights.

Wait a darn minute, how can anyone wishing to be taken seriously make such a statement? What could they possibly base this assumption on? The GOP's promises or their actions?

The GOP is the party of Lincoln - you know those guys that killed 600,000 Americans in order to crush states' rights under foot as the grapes of wrath. What in the world has this party done in the last 40 years to redeem that record? Have they supported or passed one piece of legislation that supports and defends states' rights?

Perhaps the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110) was a GOP attempt to bolster states' rights and all of us yokels are too stupid to realize it.

Perhaps their attack, in 2005, on New York state's attempt to regulate trade within her borders was a defense of states' rights. And certainly we foolish plebes misunderstood the intent behind the Federal Government's attack on the right of states to prefer local businesses to say, Panamanian ones. (We can't have states ignoring something as important as the Central American Free Trade Agreement.) The list could go on and on.

The point is the GOP is absolutely no supporter of states' rights - they have proven themselves to be the greatest enemy of these rights. It is a travesty that this party sells a bill of goods to otherwise good people with no intention of meaning what they say.

Don't get me wrong here, the socialist Democrats would do no better - at least they lack the hypocrisy of proclaiming to stand for the rights of states. With a democrat you know what you are getting (with a few curious exceptions - such as James Webb).

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The Party of Lincoln

Daniel Larison posts an excellent piece on the Party of Lincoln

Serious conservatives of old (and some still around today) frequently disparaged Father Abraham and rejected the politics that he represented; to the extent that the GOP really was always the Party of Lincoln, conservatives are hard-pressed to ever find a real place in it, since our tradition via the Agrarians and Bradford ties us to the Antifederalists, Jeffersonian Republicans, Southern Democrats and Populists.  At each stage of our history, the revolutionary forces of consolidation wanted to transform and do violence to the settled order of American life and sought to damage the constitutional order as well.  At each stage serious conservatives opposed them and their works, whether it was the Bank, the American System, internal improvements, Yankee imperialism or post-War overseas empire and the corrupt rule of the moneyed interest. 

It is amazing that so few folks actually realize these facts, particularly the Reagan Republicans in the South that still to this day so fervently support the GOP.

The Red Republicans of today could only dream of the sort of dominance the real ”Lincoln Republicans” had after the War of Secession.  To say that those people had no “ideology” or ideas is untrue–their idea was an energetic central government working in tandem with corporations towards a nationalist goal of consolidated, quasi-democratic, quasi-oligarchic government in a united, integrated nation-state.

Of course I have discussed before that two key elements in the rise of fascism are; a strong central government, corporatism. If you add nationalism, socialism and militarism to the mix you have all the ingredients required to bake up tyranny - wait we do have all of that all we need now is a Reichstag fire (real or contrived).

It was only ten years ago that Bob Dole lectured us about how the GOP was the Party of Lincoln and anybody who didn’t like it could get out right now....Lincoln was certainly no conservative or, if he was a conservative, I would not want to have anything to do with such a conservatism. 

Amen to that, amazing how folks that talk about the numerous failings of Lincoln and how he and his ideology was distinctly un-American are labeled all sorts of nefarious things.

Those areas in the South and West dominated by more conservative, “Reagan Republicans” are more likely to remain loyal to the GOP because these people remain convinced that there is some basic harmony between the party and conservatism, when the party’s history and its interests tell a very different story. 

Sad but true, and thus there is much truth to Johnnie's statement that Voting is Stupid, perhaps only People are Stupid.

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