The Confederates freed more slaves than Lincoln ever did, and they also had the legal right to do it, which Lincoln did not.

What did free some slaves was the entry of West Virginia into the “Union” as a new and separate state from Virginia.

Some phrase this as “secession” from a Confederate State.

That is not what happened. At any rate the whole process by which West Virginia itself became a “state of the union” was illegal and unconstitutional in every particular. If secession is unconstitutional, Virginia was a state, and no part could secede and become a new state according to the Yankees’ own doctrines.

It is seldom noted what a mess the War between North and South was, not because of secession, but because of Lincoln and the North.

Craig Ferguson had a bit on his show last night recreating his American citizenship test. One of the questions asked about the Emancipation Proclamation. His answer was:”It freed the slaves.” Most textbooks claim the same thing.

This is not correct. If the EP freed ALL slaves, Lincoln and the Republicans would have lost the support of the border states. The EP freed the slaves in the states currently “in rebellion.” The Lincoln people thought the EP would add former slaves to the military forces fighting against the South.

Somehow the EP has been interpreted with modern eyes and has been transformed into some fictionalized document giving freedom to all slaves.

Americans need to read the actual documents of history and not listen to political spinning and textbook interpretations.

Less than 18 months earlier, however, Lincoln’s name was “Mud” in much of the North. (An extremely graphic portrayal of that fact can be seen in the film Gangs of New York.) Had the war gone the other way (as it very nearly did), he likely would have been hanged as a war criminal.

Lincoln was not afraid to stand up for what he believed in (saving the Union at all costs)

Licoln suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus, and locked up anyone that was seditious, treasonous, or impeded the war effort. He was not interested in political correctness but in doing what was right.

If only he were around today. He would have told us the truth. He would have told us that we are not fighting a “war on terror” but a war on Islam, yes Islam. He would not be going around saying that Islam is a peaceful relgion. He would not have worried about the Multi-cultural nuts and the moral relativists. He would have told it like it is. He would have defeated the Islamic terrorists and used all the necessary means to do so. Bush is a kindly, mild-mannered kindergarten teacher compared to Abraham Lincoln.

Class exploitation was not diagnosed first by Marx. Class exploitation used to be an in-your-face fact of everyday life. The parasitic classes simply were the privileged classes–the classes for whom the rules were different. Liberalism (in the classic sense, a.k.a. libertarianism) arose in response to exactly this institutionalized inequity. The response of the parasitic classes to this onslaught of rationality was–and is–argument by obfuscation. Thus the parasitic classes employ the professional intellectuals like Marx.

While Marx might acknowledge class conflict in the form of “free man and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman,” Marx conspicuously circumvents any suggestion that differences in rules regarding property were exactly what distinguished oppressor and oppressed in these class conflicts. Instead, we are supposed to concern ourselves with a newer and much more etherial notion of exploitation, but one that deliberately resonates with what one might call our instinctual propensity to impose and submit to tribal consensus.

But by no coincidence, Marx’s diagnosis is that it is exactly the establishment of (mutually-binding rules of) property rights and free trade by which the bourgeois exploit the proletarian. By no coincidence, his pre-
scriptions are that the means of production belong in the hands of ‘society,’ which, by no coincidence, in practice, puts the means of production into the hands of the State, and thus back into the hands of the parasitic classes.

Capitalism is nothing more than the private ownership of the means of production. Marx ‘invented’ capitalism in the sense that he had to turn freedom and property rights into an ‘ism’ so that he could turn the notion of class conflict on its head.

After Lincoln, first the tragedy of meddlesome interventionism: Woodrow Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles.

And then the black comedy: GW Bush Jr and his “doctrine” of shooting first and asking questions later, if ever.

The Gettysburg Address was pure propaganda.

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” — Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune.

http://tinyurl.com/23xese

The truth is that most federal revenue was collected from the southern states in the form of tariffs, and it was spent mostly by the northern states on what they called ‘internal improvements,’ and what we would call ‘corporate welfare.’ That’s what the war was really about. Abraham Lincoln’s true goal was the same as those of the neocons who lionize him: to accumulate and centralize political power. That’s why “These United States” became “The United States.”

I would very much appreciate if you would expound on the statement you made that Marx invented Capitalism. I am rather perplexed. It would seem to me that Marx was more of an observer than inventor that tried to elaborate a mechanism to describe a reality. He certainly can not be held responsible for that reality. Perhaps one can argue that his perception of it was flawed and therefore his remedy equally flawed. After all one can not prescribe an effective cure if the malady is mis-diagnosed.

And I think therein lies the problem with Marxism, capitalism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism and various other isms. Systems do not predicate human nature. Human nature predicates systems. Communism would have been possible only if Rousseau was right, i.e that man is fundamentally good but corrupted by society. On the other hand if Hobbes was right and the opposite holds true, no utopia can ever be achieved. Communal good was never established in our genetic cell line. Natural selection never selected such a gene. As Blaise Pascal once remarked, the woes of the world began when the first man said “this is mine”.

I think of all people, Che Guevara recognized this natural truth when he insisted that before the revolution could build socialism, it had to create the Socialist Man as a new species to replace Homo Sapiens. At least that is my understanding of what he meant.