-Caveat Lector- .............................................................. >From the New Paradigms Project [Not Necessarily Endorsed] Note: We store 100's of related "New Paradigms Posts" at: http://www.msen.com/~lloyd/oldprojects/recentmail.html From: "M.A. Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <Recipient list suppressed> Subject: Deconstructing the War Street Journal Date: Tuesday, February 13, 2001 9:50 PM ~~for educational purposes only~~ [Title 17 U.S.C. section 107] Deconstructing the War Street Journal by Thomas J. DiLorenzo The Wall Street Journal recently criticized "the denizens of LewRockwell.com" for some of their allegedly "intemperate" criticisms of Lincoln (William McGurn, "House Divided: Did Abe Have the Right Stuff?", Feb. 9, 2001). As one of those "denizens" who has authored several such critiques I am flattered by the attention to my work given by the Deep Thinkers at the Journal, which used to be the premier literary defender of free-market capitalism. I say "used to be" because today its main priority seems to be promotion of the Republican party, which is only occasionally the same as promoting the free market. McGurn performs a series of literary backflips in his attempt to criticize those of us who dare to criticize the sainted founder of Republican party politics. Yes, he admits, Lincoln made crude jokes about blacks, believed the white and black races could never live together, suspended habeas corpus, was a protectionist, and greatly expanded the central government. But in Mr. McGurn's view it is "intemperate" to publicize such facts. At the risk of sounding extra-intemperate, I would point out a few things missing from McGurn's list: Lincoln also conducted a war without the consent of Congress; declared martial law; confiscated private property; ordered the arrest of Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Roger B. Taney after Taney ruled that only Congress could suspend Habeas Corpus; conscripted railroads and censored telegraph lines; threw some 30,000 Northern civilians into military prison without trial for voicing opposition to his policies; deported a member of Congress, Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, for voicing opposition to Lincoln's income tax; shut down hundreds of newspapers for questioning his judgment; intentionally waged war on innocent civilians; and created three new states -- Kansas, West Virginia, and Nevada -- to help rig the 1864 election. In arguing that all this history should be ignored, the Journal is implicitly arguing that the ends should justify the means, even if the means are the abolition of constitutional liberties and the ends are the construction of a mercantilist state (Henry Clay's "American System"), which is what Lincoln spent his 32-year political career promoting. McGurn approvingly recalls the story of how the late Mel Bradford was bumped out of being appointed chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1981 by neo-conservatives in the Reagan administration. Bradford's death knell was apparently a statement he made to the New York Times that if he were alive in 1860 he would have been "a Stephen Douglas Democrat." This was too much for the neo-cons, who got rid of Bradford and put William Bennett in his place. But as Lincoln biographer Robert Johannsen has pointed out, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were essentially a rehashing of the old debate between the defenders of the decentralized, limited constitutional government favored by the Jeffersonians (the Douglas forces) and the political heirs of Alexander Hamilton (the Lincoln side of the debate) who favored overthrowing that system in favor of a highly-centralized and activist state. The neoconservatives, who all claim to be "former" welfare state liberals who have no special aversion to big government, knew what they were doing. McGurn speaks nonsense at points, but it is nonsense spoken with a fine rhetorical flourish. The "denizens of LewRockwell.com," he says, "believe with all their hearts that the last, best hope for earth was in fact the Stars and Bars." Well, not exactly. Lincoln's statement that his administration was "the last best hope on Earth" for republican government was pure unmitigated nonsense. Democracy would have continued to flourish around the world (including North America) had the south seceded peacefully -- as was the wish, by the way, of the overwhelming majority of northern opinion makers in 1861. Neither the Lincoln government nor the Confederacy were the "last best hope" for world democracy. For years, Southern Partisan magazine has defended the Jeffersonian principles of limited constitutional government, which is what most confederate soldiers believed they were fighting for in the War for Southern Independence. But to McGurn it is just plain "silly" for a politician like John Ashcroft to grant the magazine an interview. But Ashcroft presumably granted the interview because, unlike Wall Street Journal writers, he actually knew what was in it. In the Journal's view, conservatives should avoid granting interviews to publications that promote conservative values in an unapologetic way. Ronald Reagan mentioned Lincoln favorably in his First Inaugural Address in a line that was likely inserted by one of the neo-conservative clique members within his administration. This, according to McGurn, should be all the more reason to never, ever, criticize Lincoln. Huh? McGurn next constructs a straw-man argument by ascribing to us "denizens" the view that slavery would have "solved itself." I, for one, have never said this, but as a matter of fact, slavery was on the wane in the upper South; the Virginia legislature originally voted against secession but reversed itself only after Lincoln began invading a sister state. Dozens of countries throughout the world in the first 60 years of the nineteenth century ended slavery peacefully through compensated emancipation. The United States was the only country in the world during this period that waged war ostensibly to end slavery. Lincoln could have ended slavery peacefully by using the powers of the federal government to enforce a compensated emancipated program. McGurn calls the Emancipation Proclamation a "measured response" that showed great "prudence." But as soon as the Proclamation, which never freed a single slave anyway, was issued, there were draft riots in New York City. Fifteen thousand federal troops were called in from the recently concluded Battle of Gettysburg and shot and killed hundreds of civilians in the city. Some 200,000 federal soldiers deserted and many thousand more fled to Canada or hid out in the mountains of Pennsylvania to avoid conscription. The apparent purpose for the Proclamation was to persuade England to quit trading with the Confederacy, but it did not work. Some measurement. McGurn's final mistake is to assert that the cause of the secession was not that southerners believed the federal government had become tyrannical, but that they simply did not like Lincoln (who got 34 percent of the popular vote in a four-man race). Wrong again. In his book, What They Fought For: 1861-1865, historian William McPherson, the "dean" of "Civil War" historians, concluded that most Confederate soldiers, very few of whom owned slaves, believed in their hearts that they "fought for liberty and independence from what they regarded as a tyrannical government." They believed that their cause was the same cause of the Revolution of 1776. Since McGurn spends so much of his time giving others advice on how to best promote the causes they wish to promote (liberty, in the case of we denizens of LewRockwell.com), it is only fitting that he be offered some advice back: Stick to defending free-market capitalism, avoid being a Republican party propaganda organ, and the Wall Street Journal will have much more credibility. 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