Free Republic

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....

...Did he exert features of moral grandeur and heroism necessary to steer the country through its deepest political crisis? Or was he an aspiring tyrant, especially in his use of executive power? A recent example of how not to think about Lincoln’s leadership comes from the historian and television commentator Doris Goodwin. Goodwin wrote a book called “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” showing how Lincoln drew his cabinet from his personal and political competitors. In a subsequent discussion of Lincoln’s leadership titled “The 10 Qualities That Made Lincoln Great... If all of these sound a little...

That's right -- not just Nixon ... Nixon and Bush. Can vilification from the left get much worse than that? Cornel West continues to demonstrate why parents might want to think better of sending their children to Princeton, where West purportedly teaches when he isn't gushing over hip-hop and engaging in arcane rants over the airwaves. (audio clip after page break) On his most recent radio show with co-host Tavis Smiley, West condemned President Obama's legal justification for drone killings of Americans suspected of involvement with al Qaeda, saying Obama had become no different than George W. Bush and Richard...

In January 1863, Abraham Lincoln made a remarkable confession. He was, he told a senator, more worried about “the fire in the rear” than he was about the Confederates to his front... Disgusted Republicans termed them “Copperheads,” after the poisonous snake... By January 1863, their assaults on Lincoln, combined with the poor performance of the armies, were taking a toll on civilian morale. Midwesterners spoke openly about seceding and establishing another new country or aligning with the Confederate States of America. Lincoln’s critics were harsh, uncompromising and relentless. They said Lincoln was a tyrant, bent on amassing power and ruining...

Senate confirms Kerry for State in 94-3 vote By Julian Pecquet and Ramsey Cox - 01/29/13 04:32 PM ET The Senate approved one of its own to become President Obama's second secretary of State in a near-unanimous vote on Tuesday. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) sailed through the chamber in a 94-to-3 vote, with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Texas Sens. Ted Cruz (R) and John Cornyn (R) casting the only “no” votes. Kerry's approval to replace Hillary Clinton was a foregone conclusion after Republicans urged Obama to nominate him in lieu of his ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice....

President Barack Obama has chosen Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to be the next secretary of state, a source has told Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed. His replacement as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Sneed source said.

With only a limited theatrical release last week, Steven Spielberg’s latest work of imaginative fiction is scheduled for wide release today. I know Hollywood plays fast and loose with history, but when they go out of their way to get the wallpaper in Lincoln’s office exactly right, and use a recording of his actual watch as the sound effect for his movie watch, but pay little deference to his actual statements or opinions… something must be said. People are seriously calling the Lincoln movie a “much needed civics lesson.” In reality it’s essentially a 2.5 hour courtroom drama about slavery...

Have any fellow FReepers seen this movie yet? If so, what did you think and would you recommend it?

New Movie Propagates Lincoln Historical Myths If you are planning to see the new, Steven Spielberg directed, Lincoln movie you might want to invest in an accurate history book instead. While it is successfully dramatic, the movie rehashes several 150 year old myths about the Lincoln presidency and America’s most horrible war. First, to the movie’s credit, the script avoids a key, blatant lie that is currently being taught throughout American public schools today. The script focuses correctly on explaining how slaves were freed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, not the Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation did...

Clinton-era Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, confronted by pro-Serbian protesters who called her a war criminal during a recent book signing in her native Prague, pushed them aside as "disgusting Serbs" in a confrontation going viral on the internet. Displaying her trademark feistiness, Albright is seen in the video as sternly shouting "get out, get out," to the protesters who arrived with a film crew. As they closed in on her, she stood up and said, "That's it! Get out," and soon walked away with an aide after saying, "they are disgusting Serbs." Albright, on a book tour to tout...

Countless school children have been taught that Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator. Others have been taught — and many have concluded — that the Emancipation Proclamation, which Abraham Lincoln announced on Sept. 22, 1862, has been overemphasized, that it was inefficacious, a sham, that Lincoln’s motivations were somehow unworthy, that slavery was ended by other ways and means, and that slavery was on the way out in any case. The truth is that Lincoln’s proclamation was an exercise in risk, a huge gamble by a leader who sought to be — and who became — America’s great liberator. Since...

DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox this afternoon premiered the trailer for Lincoln, which opens November 9:

On this day in 1861, Lincoln imposes the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act. Strapped for cash with which to pursue the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.

Was UFO a Russian ballistic missile? Russian Defense Ministry says it successfully test-fired intercontinental ballistic missile Thursday; earlier, unidentified flying object reported in Israel, Lebanon, other states in region and Reports from the Syrian cities of Daraa, Hama and Dir al-Zur are claiming that Assad's forces are using unknown gas shells against civilians. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4239820,00.htm

Timeless words...written 149 years ago but could have been penned yesterday, but not by the current Imposter-in-Chief: "Insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and...

RON REAGAN: "You see, Clarence, he never backs off of that sort of thing. I guess, we don't expect him to. But the fact of the matter is, and people know my feelings about this pretty surely, he's a war criminal.

In an effort to satisfy those arguing he needs to seek congressional authorization to continue US military activity in accordance with the War Powers Resolution, President Obama wrote a letter to congressional leaders this afternoon suggesting that the role is now so “limited” he does not need to seek congressional approval. “Since April 4,” the president wrote, “U.S. participation has consisted of: (1) non-kinetic support to the NATO-led operation, including intelligence, logistical support, and search and rescue assistance; (2) aircraft that have assisted in the suppression and destruction of air defenses in support of the no-fly zone; and (3) since...

It seems like it was just yesterday when we had an "imperialist warmonger" in the White House who was going to be replaced by a peace-loving Democrat who promised "hope" and "change" instead. It's funny how that worked out, isn't it? We still have troops in Iraq, we've escalated the war in Afghanistan, and now we're bombing everything that moves in Libya. Yet, the same liberals who were protesting in the streets and calling George Bush a war criminal have mostly been meek and quiet about the fact that the President they supported has been following in George Bush's footsteps....

McLEAN, Va. – Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has inspired Americans for generations, but consider his jarring remarks in 1862 to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the U.S. and settle in Central America. "For the sake of your race, you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people," Lincoln said, promoting his idea of colonization: resettling blacks in foreign countries on the belief that whites and blacks could not coexist in the same nation.

Abraham Lincoln’s greatest love was politics, but his intellectual passion was for what the 19th century called “political economy” — the way economics and politics intersected in society and government. According to his law partner William Herndon, Lincoln “liked political economy, the study of it,” and Shelby Cullom, who practiced law beside Lincoln in Springfield, Ill. (and later crafted the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887), thought that “theoretically . . . on political economy he was great.” Although Lincoln’s angular, shambling appearance gave him the look of anything but a student of economics — one contemporary said he resembled “a...

A suspected war criminal who allegedly played a key role in the slaughter of 40,000 civilians in Sri Lanka has landed a cushy job at the United Nations - with full diplomatic immunity. Shavendra Silva arrived in New York after his troops defied international pleas and shelled a no-fire zone packed with women, children and elderly refugees, according to observers. [This is no shock to anyone. The Oil-for-Food scam was the biggest financial swindle of the century; U.N. agents molested children in Africa; the U.N. is an anti-Semitic and anti-American organization run by Third World thugs which is completely dysfunctional....

Do young people know the truth about Henry Wirz?

Hi FRiends, I have two brothers who I love very much, they’re young and libertarian Ron Paul supporters, sigh. We get along and I’m hoping that one day they’ll come back to conservatism, but they have bought into a theory that I don’t think makes much sense: Abe Lincoln was a dictator. There are many websites dedicated to this nonsense you can Google "Abe Lincoln dictator" and get some weird stuff, if you want to check it out. I need your help in busting this myth are there any books I can read on this subject to dispel this stuff?...

Ron Paul: Why didn’t the north just buy the south’s slaves and free them that way? Getting down to the last two questions here…. Most people consider Abe Lincoln to be one of our greatest presidents, if not the greatest president we’ve ever had. Would you agree with that sentiment and why or why not? No, I don’t think he was one of our greatest presidents. I mean, he was determined to fight a bloody civil war, which many have argued could have been avoided. For 1/100 the cost of the war, plus 600 thousand lives, enough money would have...

This week Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas once again honored the memory of the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi - this time by sponsoring a ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of her birth. Mughrabi led the worst terror attack in Israel's history in 1978, when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and killed 37 civilians. Present at the ceremony were Palestinian dignitaries and a children's marching band. Earlier this year, Abbas sponsored a computer center named after Mughrabi.

What I think about secession basically is that it is a consummation devoutly to be wished, but a dangerous pursuit to advocate publicly. Janet Napolitano and the alphabet soup guys do not take kindly to the notion of freedom in any way, and for the precise reason that Abraham Lincoln did not. When asked why he didn’t just let the South go, Lincoln exploded in a rage, “Let the South go? LET THE SOUTH GO? How, then, should I fill my coffers?” Documented historical fact. Look it up for yourselves. Winners write history and the North/Leftists have had nearly 160...

Today is the 146th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Gettysburg. A few months later, as the National Cemetery there was being organized, an invitation was extended to President Lincoln to give "a few appropriate remarks" for the dedication in November, 1863. Lincoln would not be the main speaker, that honor would go to Edward Everett, one of the foremost orators of the day. Everett spoke for almost two hours and, for the most part, his remarks are lost to the ages. Lincoln's "few appropriate remarks" however, are some of the most familiar wods in American History. To...

One of the greatest misconceptions of American history is that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Those who subscribe to this belief see President Abraham Lincoln as the benevolent leader who made unimaginable sacrifices in human blood to wipe out America’s greatest sin. While the human sacrifice is indisputable and the sin was monumental, the war’s purpose was not to free blacks from the shackles of bondage. Rather, the Civil War was fought with one purpose in mind: To preserve the Union at all costs. And, to put it in Lincoln’s terms, with no ifs, ands, or buts. You’d...

A US federal court has denied former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk's latest attempt to block extradition to Germany to face charges of aiding in the wartime murder of thousands of Jews. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on when Mr Demjanjuk would be deported but said the government would continue to seek his removal to Germany. His son said the family is considering an appeal to the US Supreme Court and has also filed a lawsuit in Germany seeking an emergency stay. The decision is the latest development in a decades-long saga over the elder...

For nearly 150 years, Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch has been rumored to carry a secret message, supposedly written by an Irish immigrant and watchmaker named Jonathan Dillon. Dillon, working in a D.C. watch repair shop in 1861, told family members that he -- by incredible happenstance -- had been repairing Lincoln's watch when news came that Fort Sumter had been attacked in South Carolina. It was the opening salvo of what became the Civil War. Dillon told his children (and, half a century later, a reporter for the New York Times) that he opened the watch's inner workings and scrawled...

Though Lincoln has already been canonized by those who settle for partial histories, in the words of John Adams, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." In our steadfast adherence to The Patriot Post's motto, Veritas Vos Liberabit ("the truth shall set you free"), and our mission to advocate for the restoration of constitutional limits on government, I am compelled to challenge our 16th president's iconic standing. Lincoln is credited with being the greatest constitutional leader in history, having "preserved...

I don't know what they teach in U.S. history classes today. But back in the middle of the last century, when I was in elementary school, there was absolutely no question about how we were to regard Abraham Lincoln. We were taught to feel a reverence bordering on awe for Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator, the eloquent martyr who saved the Republic. We were required to memorize the Gettysburg Address. And if we were lucky enough to join a field trip to our nation's capitol, one of the most significant events was our visit to the Lincoln Memorial. (A few...

When the American Civil War began, president Abraham Lincoln was far less prepared for the task of commander in chief than his Southern adversary. Jefferson Davis had graduated from West Point (in the lowest third of his class, to be sure), commanded a regiment that fought intrepidly at Buena Vista in the Mexican War and served as secretary of war in the Franklin Pierce administration from 1853 to 1857.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan urged President Barack Obama to halt U.S. missile strikes on Al Qaeda strongholds near the Afghan border, saying Saturday that civilians were killed the previous day in the first attacks since Obama's inauguration. Pakistani security officials said eight suspected foreign militants, including an Egyptian Al Qaeda operative, were among 22 people killed in Friday's twin strikes in the Waziristan region. But the Foreign Ministry said the attacks by unmanned aircraft also killed an unspecified number of civilians and it had informed U.S. officials of its "great concern."

Because the Obama camp has announced the theme for Wednesday night will be "securing America's future," and that the VP nominee will speak on that night, many have openly pondered about the VP being General Wesley Clark. How would Clark rate as the VP nominee? A few days ago, I posted a column on the Obama campaign's choice to thematically tie the Vice Presidential nominee to their Wednesday night agenda on national security and foreign affairs. Obama's people have titled Wednesday night as "Securing America's Future." Coincidentally, or perhaps not, this slogan also happens to be the mantra of WesPac,...

BOSTIC - For a man with "Honest Abe" as his nickname, there are plenty of Abraham Lincoln stories that may be anything but. Lincoln did not compose the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. No one really knows whether the store clerk Lincoln walked six miles to return 3 cents he overcharged. And his wife wasn't a Confederate spy. Now this small town in Western North Carolina is pressing its own claim: Lincoln was a Tar Heel. According to a tale that locals swear is true: The 16th president of the United States wasn't born in Kentucky, as...

WASHINGTON - Heading toward the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, President Bush on Sunday celebrated the nation's 16th president as a man of steadfast convictions and honorable ideals. "It's fitting that we honor Abe Lincoln," Bush said in the ornate East Room of the White House. "Of all the successors to George Washington, none had a bigger impact on the presidency and the country." Bush spoke in early tribute to the 199th anniversary of Lincoln's birthday. Lincoln was born Feb 12, 1809. On Tuesday, first lady Laura Bush will speak at Lincoln's birthplace of Hodgenville, Ky., as part of the...

Sally Field wins an Emmy and suddenly everyone wants to 'really, really like her' again. Fresh off her controversial appearance on the Emmys, when she won for Brothers & Sisters, Sally Field has been cast as Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of Abraham Lincoln, in Steven Spielberg's long-awaited biopic of one of the most important leaders of all time. Liam Neeson has already been cast as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln bases on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln will center on the life of the leader in the time leading...

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago. President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions." "As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN. "...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more...

WASHINGTON—The National Archives on Thursday unveiled a handwritten note by Abraham Lincoln exhorting his generals to pursue Robert E. Lee's army after the battle of Gettysburg, underscoring one of the great missed opportunities for an early end to the Civil War. An archives Civil War specialist discovered the July 7, 1863, note three weeks ago in a batch of military papers stored among the billions of pages of historical documents at the mammoth building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The text of Lincoln's note has been publicly known because the general to whom Lincoln addressed it telegraphed the contents verbatim to the...

Historian James M. McPherson's magnificent collection of essays This Mighty Scourge; Perspectives on the Civil War contains an essay on General William Tecumseh Sherman's famous, or infamous, "march through Georgia " that sheds light on the success of his march in bringing victory, and peace, to the United States. ********************************************* Calling such counterterrorist strikes "war crimes," as many who are critical of both America (and Israel) do, is extremely unfair. In fighting an enemy who kills soldiers and civilians without distinction, it is not possible to fight a completely "clean" war, without losing it to the terrorist enemies. No country...

IN SEPTEMBER 1862, Union troops were soundly defeated by Confederate forces led by Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee at Manassas Junction, Virginia. The North called it the Second Battle of Bull Run. President Abraham Lincoln's somber mood afterward was recorded in a diary entry by Attorney General Edward Bates, who wrote that Lincoln "seemed wrung by the bitterest anguish--said he felt almost ready to hang himself." Soon afterward Lincoln wrote out a private musing on a small piece of lined paper. He sought to discern the will of God among the cacophony of voices all around him after news...

In the early years of the Civil War, prisoners from the North and South were rarely held in prison camps. In many cases, they were often exchanged with POWS from the opposing side. As the war dragged on, the North started holding Confederate prisoners in permanent prisons. The South started to do this too. A Confederate general recommended building a prison is rural Georgia in a location far from the front lines. A prison was established near the small village of Andersonville. It was called Camp Sumter. At its height, as many as 33000 Union prisoners were held on the...

Saddam Hussein may be hanged within hours, senior Iraqi officials and the ousted president's defence team said on Friday. One senior Iraqi source told Reuters key legal issues had been resolved and he could go to the gallows shortly. Another official said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was meeting key figures, including the Justice Minister, to agree the details.

The Iraqi government has told U.S. officials that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein could be executed within the next few days, a senior Bush administration official said on Thursday. "I've heard that it's going to be a couple more days, probably," the official said while Bush took a holiday break at his Texas ranch. He said he had heard from U.S. officials in Baghdad that the execution would not be Thursday U.S. time or Friday Baghdad time. "It's going to be maybe another day or so," the official said. He said the government of Iraq would most likely inform U.S....

Ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) leader and reluctant war crimes indictee Vojislav Seselj, "holds the key to his life and health," said a spokesman for the United Nations' Yugoslav war crimes tribunal at the Hague, where Seselj is in his fourth week of a hunger strike. Most of Seselj's demands have been met, Refik Hodzic on Wednesday told journalists. Tribunal president Fausto Pocar has called on Seselj to end his fast and to take an active part in the legal process which has been interrupted due to his health.

The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission was created by Congress to inform the public about the impact Abraham Lincoln had on the development of our nation, and to find the best possible ways to honor his accomplishments. The President, the Senate and the House of Representatives appointed a fifteen-member commission to commemorate the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln and to emphasize the contribution of his thoughts and ideals to America and the world. The official public Bicentennial Commemoration launches February 2008 and closes February 2010, with the climax of the Commemoration taking place on February 12, 2009, the 200th anniversary of...

A defiant Saddam Hussein shrugged off a possible death sentence, saying he would die without fear and the US occupiers of his country would leave humiliated like they did in Vietnam, his lawyers said on Saturday. They said a jovial and highly spirited Saddam chatted with them for more than three hours about the violence in Iraq and mounting US losses just hours before an expected death sentence on Sunday in his trial for crimes against humanity.

Saddam Hussein is to be denied his final wish of an "honourable" death by military firing squad after court officials ruled he should face the gallows as a common criminal if found guilty. The former Iraqi dictator, who is expected to be given the death sentence today when a verdict is delivered in his first war crimes trial, has been demanding execution by the gun rather than the rope, on the basis that he was head of the country's armed forces. But the Iraqi war crimes court in Baghdad has dismissed his request, noting that Saddam failed the entry exam...

A man convicted of atrocities in the Balkans has been living peacefully in Carshalton for years ::nobreak::TO HIS neighbours, Milan Spanovic was an unassuming father of three. Though he had lived among them for 15 years, the best description they could come up with was that he was “remarkably quiet”. Equally, the officers who arrested him for shoplifting found nothing untoward about him. After he protested his innocence, they set about completing the paperwork and prepared to release him with no more than a formal caution. So when a desk officer typed his name into a database as a matter...