Posted on 03/18/2013 8:35:17 AM PDT by chessplayer
In Stalin's Russia, genetics and cybernetics were treated as the cat's paw of imperialism and officially branded as "whores." But it was another branch of Soviet science, history, that was a far more deserving candidate to bear that not exactly honorific moniker. Russian historians loyally served the regime, meeting its propaganda needs in full compliance with a thesis propounded by the titular head of the Soviet school of history, Mikhail Pokrovsky: "History is the present telescoped into the past." Some American liberals have been faithfully following Pokrovsky's precept, reinventing the past in keeping with the progressive view of the world.
The Founding Fathers are being torn down by the progressives from their honorable place in the annals of America's history for one overriding reason: almost all of them were slave-owners. Their entire service to the country, their sacrifices, the enormous risks they consciously took for the sake of freedom -- all of this, in the progressive view, pales into insignificance next to the Founding Fathers' deadly sin of racism.
Granted, they might have treated their slaves well, and some of them even set them free. But what good was it, considering that they viewed blacks as inferior beings?
If rational arguments are incapable of persuading the implacable foes of racism on the Founders, maybe they might succumb to their own twisted logic. Why not use their racial yardstick on a hero from the progressive Pantheon -- say, the man who has gone down in history as the Great Emancipator? Let's put Abraham Lincoln under the progressive microscope.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Lincoln was no more racist than the average farmboy from the Midwest... He was however a remarkable tyrant, one of the select few who could successfully preside over a national genocide and come away canonized as a hero.
After all, he was a Republican. Nevertheless, Obama likes to pretend that he’s the ideological heir of Abraham Lincoln.
One thing the author fails to mention is that when Lincoln freed the slaves, he wanted them sent back to Africa after the war. The nation of Liberia in West Africa was founded by emancipated slaves. Their official language is English, the capital is Monrovia (named for James Monroe), and the people have American names for the most part. That’s where Lincoln wanted to send them.
“...Thats where Lincoln wanted to send them.”
Didn’t he get the idea from Henry Clay?
According to whom and when? Lincoln had many ideas of what to do after the war. Voluntary colonization of freedmen in Haiti or Central America were possibilities for him. But by no means the only possibilities. His plan for the extension of voting rights to some African-Americans, and his meetings with Black leaders suggest that he accepted the presence of Blacks in the US. At any event, he didn't want to ship them all off to Africa.
I didn't want to say anything about it before ...
... but that logo of Uncle Sam on a latrine is creepy and disturbing.
Naturally, the only way that anyone could ever regard Lincoln as a racist would be to measure him through a modern-day lens of politically correct hyper-sensitivity to racism. By that measure virtually EVERYONE living in 1860 was a racist (rendering the appellation meaningless).
From my reading of the article (and I only gave it a cursory glance since it isn't very well written and contains so many prevarications) the author would like to damn Lincoln with faint praise. His attempt fails, both in his faux praise, and in his true intent.
So were Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and just about every other person living at the time, North and South. Nobody alive then could pass muster under the modern definitions of racism.
“Huh? Lincoln is no hero to progressives. They loathe him.”
That’s right. In the progressive mind President Lincoln was racist tyrant who didn’t really want to emancipate the slaves. What an odd article.
How about something on Presidents Wilson or FDR? That might make more sense.
No, Thomas Jefferson.
Which is why Zero and co keep comparing him to Lincoln.
“aturally, the only way that anyone could ever regard Lincoln as a racist would be to measure him through a modern-day lens of politically correct hyper-sensitivity to racism.
That’s why Lew Rockwell posted an article on Lincoln’s racism?
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo241.html
and why this Conservative Christian blog about America’s Christian heritage posted about it?
http://ourfoundingtruth.blogspot.com/2009/02/abraham-lincoln-racist.html
What’s your point?
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