Posted under Lincoln & Political Correctness & Sovereignty and Secession & The South
Here is a Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo’s article debunking the latest nonsense from the Lincoln Cult.
The article is factually correct, of course, but I don’t like the way DiLorenzo often calls people in the North (including Lincoln) “racists,” “bigots” and “white supremacists.” This is a way of basically saying, “See it wasn’t just the South that was racist, the North was racist too.” But what DiLorenzo is condemning are racial beliefs that were ubiquitous to almost all white men in America at the time. It amounts to hindsight finger wagging. If he wants to hindsight condemn the past attitudes of people that’s fine, but he should acknowledge that is what he is doing, and not do it by expropriating the modern language of past hating Cultural Marxists. Does empowering the past haters by adopting their language and hindsight moralizing help advance the cause of returning to the Constitution as originally intended?
Old Rebel on 17 Dec 2010 at 3:21 am #
I think this is an important point. You’re’ right, it’s possible to agree with a writer’s main argument yet have problems with other aspects of the piece, and I agree with your objections.
Of course, I think just using the word “racism” validates the entire leftist-globalist argument that the “ideal” is a rootless cosmopolitanism that imposes an impossible universal standard. Worse, to insist men of the past must live up to our “advanced” ways of thinking is the worst form of “presentism,” the notion that whatever is, is best, because it exists today.
Nate on 17 Dec 2010 at 5:09 am #
Abraham Lincoln is one of our nations greatest founding fathers and arguably the best president in American history. Anyone who would put that honorable gentleman down is a crackpot and isn’t worth even 2 seconds of my time and has no right to claim to be a conservative, much less an American.
Weaver on 17 Dec 2010 at 3:22 pm #
Old Rebel,
“Presentism”, I like that.
Bruce on 18 Dec 2010 at 7:55 pm #
Nate,
You have a great sense of humor.
Lincoln came along much too late to be a founding father but he did end the American Republic, the small , decentralized ,voluntary union established by our fore fathers.
His dictatorial usurpations of power were unconstitutional.
I understand why Lincoln was a White Supremecist and wanted the US constitution to make slavery irrevocable. I know why he sought to deport all free Blacks from the country. I believe if most northern soldiers could see how America has turned out now they would have gladly fought for the Confederacy.
What bothers me most about Abraham Lincoln was that he deliberately managed the events that caused the bloodiest war in our history. He could have compensated the slaveholders and set all slaves free and avoided the war. He should have never had his generals wage war on innocent civilians.