Posted under Lincoln & NeoCons & Political Philosophy
Christopher Hitchens, like many other Neocons, is a former Trotskyite, which means he came to realize that the ultimate goal of a global revolution could never be accomplished by socialism. Crony capitalism is a far better engine for revolution, and that revolution will be accomplished through transforming what’s left of traditional America into the embryo that will one day become the multicultural, one-world government Trotsky dreamed of.
As we’ve documented many times before, Lincoln is a mythical figure in the Neocon worldview. It only makes sense: Revolution and Reconstruction require the machinery of a centralized state, and it was Lincoln who strangled the Jeffersonian Republic and replaced it with a regime that Robert E. Lee characterized as “sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home” — in other words, exactly what the bankers and industrialists in the Northeast dreamed of. So in his review of Michael Burlingame’s new Lincoln biography, Hitchens embraces Lincoln as the essential forerunner of the Neocon ideology. Notice how Hitchens (like Lincoln!) perverts the language and meaning of our founding documents as justification for centralizing the Union into a unitary nation-state:
Before Gettysburg, people would say “the United States are …” After Gettysburg, they began to say “the United States is …” That they were able to employ the first three words at all was a tribute to the man who did more than anyone to make that hard transition himself, and then to secure it for others, and for posterity.
One thing you have to admit about the Neocons: They’re logically consistent. I have argued until I’m blue in the face with “patriotic” Southerners and conservatives who despise Lincoln but cannot grasp that supporting an aggressive, centralized, open-borders government endorses Lincoln’s agenda against the South. If we are to stop the slow bleeding of our liberty and our society, the first step is to understand the philosophy and agenda of our enemies.
The Western Confucian on 10 Aug 2009 at 4:10 am #
Very excellent post.
Interestingly, Howard Zinn, an anarcho-leftist, made the exact same point about the plural to singular transition in A People’s History of the United States, but to him it was nothing to celebrate.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 10 Aug 2009 at 3:03 pm #
Western Confucian,
Thanks! I’ll have to check out Zinn. He sounds interesting.
Drop by more often!
RedPhillips on 10 Aug 2009 at 4:48 pm #
Just what we need. ANOTHER Lincoln biography. What? There aren’t enough of them already?
It is a strange but true fact that by and large the only people who consistently tell the truth about American history are paleos and radical leftists like Zinn. Leftists like Zinn because they are self-loathing America bashers who want to emphasize how America was founded “on the backs of slaves,” on the “oppression of women,” by an “elite ruling class,” etc. And paleos because they want to debunk Americanist egalitarian myth making. American exceptionalism/greatness “conservatives” make up myths (see Jaffa) because they can’t bear the thought that America has not always been the liberal egalitarian paradise they imagine, as was no other nation ever. If and when they must concede certain obvious brute facts, we are simply told that America had not yet “perfected” its ideals.
I watched Noam Chomsky on C-Span Book TV recently, and he was going on about how the Founders had been very skeptical of democracy and had intentionally guarded against it in its pure form. I caught myself thinking “Darn right! You tell ‘em Noam.” Of course Noam thinks this is a horrible thing and points it out because he is a self-loathing America bashing lib. Paleos and other traditionalist minded conservatives think this is a good and necessary thing.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 10 Aug 2009 at 6:52 pm #
Red Phillips wrote, “Just what we need. ANOTHER Lincoln biography. What? There aren’t enough of them already?”
I see this as an act of desperation on the part of DC’s globalist elite. Yes, you’re right, library shelves groan under the weight of Lincoln idolatry. But as Lincoln’s empire starts to crumble, the parasites that feed off of it are resorting to trying to dazzle people with the Lincoln myth. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
BB on 10 Aug 2009 at 7:55 pm #
“Muslim Europe: the demographic time bomb transforming our continent”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/5994047/Muslim-Europe-the-demographic-time-bomb-transforming-our-continent.html
RedPhillips on 10 Aug 2009 at 8:01 pm #
What do we know about Michael Burlingame? Is he a neocon? A Straussian? A traditional lib?