[Sherman Logan]

Your historical basis for blaming Lincoln for the present overweaning federal government is weak.

You are absolutely correct that the federal government grew enormously during the War. That’s what governments do during Wars. Those governments that don’t grow during wartime lose their War and go out of business.

The federal government deflated greatly after the Civil War. Although it never got as small as before the War, it was minimally intrusive on American society up to 1900, when TR started an expansion that was continued by Wilson, and which once again became explosive during WWI.

After WWI, we had a return to “normalcy” during the 20s, with a federal government bigger than ever before but still miniscule by today’s standards. It was the New Deal that started the continuous expansion of the government that has now apparently achieved critical mass and is independent of outside factors.

Blaming Lincoln for today’s federal government makes no sense. There is nothing even vaguely resembling evidence that he planned to continue his invasions of civil rights after the war ended and they were no longer necessary.

[cowboyway]

Your historical basis for blaming Lincoln for the present overweaning federal government is weak.

The Quixote-like libertarian constitutionalists are wasting their time because they fail to acknowledge the essential truth about Abraham Lincoln’s war: It overthrew the Constitution of 1789 by destroying the system of dual sovereignty and, in so doing, ended any hope that the citizens would remain sovereign over their own government. Indeed, early twentieth century statists and imperialists like Woodrow Wilson celebrated this fact. As Wilson approvingly wrote in his book, Constitutional Government in the United States (Transactions Publishers Reprint, p. 178), "The War between the States established . . . this principle, that the federal government is, through its courts, the final judge of its own powers." Of course, Thomas Jefferson and other founders always understood that if the day were ever to come when the federal government would become the final judge of the limits of its own powers, then it would eventually decide that there were, in fact, no limits to its powers. That day has long since arrived.

Wake up and smell the tyranny, Sherman.

It ain't just the size of the government, dude. It's the control they exert.

"One man with a gun can control 100 without one."---Vladimir Lenin

Right now, we're controlled by 545 people in the little town of Washington, DC thanks to disHonest Abe and people like you and NS and the rest of the damnyankee coven.