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Lincoln Defended: The Case Against the Critics of Our 16th President
National Review ^ | 06/05/2013 | Rich Lowry

Posted on 06/05/2013 7:52:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

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1 posted on 06/05/2013 7:52:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

A long-winded advetorial for Lowry’s new book, IMO.


2 posted on 06/05/2013 7:58:33 AM PDT by nhwingut (This tagline is for lease)
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To: nhwingut

Well, do you agree with him? Or did you just see the length of the article and pass?


3 posted on 06/05/2013 8:03:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Awaiting the arrival of the "South Shall Rise Again" anti-Lincoln flying monkeys in...


4 posted on 06/05/2013 8:08:46 AM PDT by Old Sarge (My "KMA List" is growing daily...)
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To: SeekAndFind
the worshiper of the Founding Fathers,

Stopped there, had to gag a little.

It's my opinion that the founding fathers would rate Lincoln right up(down) there with King George III.

5 posted on 06/05/2013 8:10:30 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: SeekAndFind
I saw this article and considered posting. I didn't because,at this time, I prefer threads where we fight liberty's common enemy, 0bama and his corrupt administration, rather than each other.

A Lincoln thread ... IBT 200+ replies ...

p.s. Lowry describes the libertarians pretty well...

6 posted on 06/05/2013 8:11:02 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free)
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To: Old Sarge
Nuts, my .gif didn't work, here's another:


7 posted on 06/05/2013 8:12:29 AM PDT by Old Sarge (My "KMA List" is growing daily...)
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To: SeekAndFind
Thanks!

We might wish to re-read Lincoln's letter to Henry L. Pierce and Others:

Springfield, Ills, April 6, 1859

Messrs. Henry L. Pierce, & others.

Gentlemen

Your kind note inviting me to attend a Festival in Boston, on the 13th. Inst. in honor of the birth-day of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I can not attend.

Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago, two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, and Boston the head-quarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.

Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.

I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have perfomed the same feat as the two drunken men.

But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.

One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success.

One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior races."

These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard--the miners, and sappers--of returning despotism.

We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.

All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.

Your obedient Servant
A. Lincoln--


Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler.

Source for this reproduction of the letter is

Now, lest we forget those "principles of Jefferson" praised by Lincoln, perhaps Jefferson's own words might serve as a reminder:

"I am not among those who fear the people. They...are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people...must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they (the British) now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers....This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public, as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from the principle in one instance, becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the 'bellum omnium in omnia,' which some philosophers...have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive, state of man. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." - Thomas Jefferson

"These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." - Thomas Jefferson- Concluding sentence of First Inaugural Statement of Principles of Good Government


8 posted on 06/05/2013 8:14:14 AM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: SeekAndFind
Interesting article. One interesting feature being that the Civil War apparently did not suppress “Nullification” and “Succession” sentiments. I'm a Unionist and believe Lincoln was motivated in his actions by the iron law of necessity.
9 posted on 06/05/2013 8:18:14 AM PDT by AEMILIUS PAULUS (It is a shame that when these people give a riot)
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To: AEMILIUS PAULUS
iron law of necessity

Wow. Where have I heard that before?

10 posted on 06/05/2013 8:19:36 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: central_va

Of course Rich just happened to forget to mention that good old Abe arrested and jailed sitting members of Congress and ordered the arrest of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court but the top law enforcement just refused to do it.

I would certainly agree that Lincoln was operating at the limits of his authority and waaaay beyond.


11 posted on 06/05/2013 8:25:47 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped.)
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To: central_va

Probably when the State authorities after the 1906 earthquake dynamited and burned a large portion of San Francisco real property without compensation. They saved all by burning out some. There is a real world. Because of such great power that is why we need good men with solid judgement and that is what Lincoln had as well as the California State authorities. We have lost the capacity to produce good men with solid judgement.


12 posted on 06/05/2013 8:28:27 AM PDT by AEMILIUS PAULUS (It is a shame that when these people give a riot)
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To: Georgia Girl 2
Why don't we ever focus on FDR? Let's see..

Confined tens of thousands of CITIZENS to concentration camps, confiscated their property..without any due process..

Had the German sabateurs tried and executed secretly...no Guantanamo for them...

refused to allow thousands of Jews who had fled Nazi Germany to land in America...sendiong them back to die in the camps...

and of course the continuing belief that he knew about the Jap raid on Pearly Harbor in advance..but did nothind because he wanted the US in the war..

13 posted on 06/05/2013 8:31:19 AM PDT by ken5050 (Due to all the WH scandals, MSNBC is changing its slogan from "Lean Forward" to "BOHICA")
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To: SeekAndFind
Apparently, Lowry's particular conservative impulse is to conserve all verbiage regarding the inseverable connection between Lincoln and communism. Hilariously, the piece reads almost exactly like one of Marx's own editorials on the same subject.
14 posted on 06/05/2013 8:31:35 AM PDT by Brass Lamp
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To: AEMILIUS PAULUS
Federal boot lickers deserve the tyranny we now live under. I don't however, and will work at ending this tyranny through any means possible. Thru the state houses and up to including secession.

PS: the iron will thing, I am sure Hitler used that phrase often....

15 posted on 06/05/2013 8:33:22 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: Georgia Girl 2

Lincoln incarcerated the entire MD assembly.


16 posted on 06/05/2013 8:34:32 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: central_va
It's my opinion that the founding fathers would rate Lincoln right up(down) there with King George III.

Well you know what they say about opinions and anal orifices.

17 posted on 06/05/2013 8:40:51 AM PDT by 0.E.O
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To: central_va
Lincoln incarcerated the entire MD assembly.

No he didn't.

18 posted on 06/05/2013 8:41:18 AM PDT by 0.E.O
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To: Georgia Girl 2
Of course Rich just happened to forget to mention that good old Abe arrested and jailed sitting members of Congress and ordered the arrest of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court but the top law enforcement just refused to do it.

A day without Southron Mythology is like a day with sunshine.

19 posted on 06/05/2013 8:42:11 AM PDT by 0.E.O
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To: SeekAndFind

I’ve not generally been a fan of Mr. Lowry, but this piece accurately depicts the historical reality of our time and Lincoln’s time.


20 posted on 06/05/2013 8:45:36 AM PDT by EternalVigilance ('He frustrates the devices of the crafty, so that they cannot carry out their plans.' -- Job 5:12)
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