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Former Bush administration speechwriter Michael Gerson,
who is now a columnist for the company newspaper of the company town known as
Washington, D.C., recently authored yet another hysterical neocon rant over
the Ron Paul candidacy. Ron Paul is on a "quest to undo the Party of
Lincoln," blared Gerson’s headline.
Every freedom-loving, patriotic American can only hope and pray that Ron Paul
succeeds.
Gerson’s tone is
dripping with venomous hatred when he accuses Ron Paul of being some kind of
nut by calling the Civil War "senseless" and of saying that Lincoln
ruled with an iron fist. Generations of historians have also called the Civil
War "senseless" or something similar. "The bumbling
generation" is how some historians describe the Civil War-era
politicians who plunged the nation into war, the most preeminent of whom was
Lincoln himself. But when Ron Paul refers to the war in that way what he has
in mind is the true historical fact that all other countries of the world
that ended slavery in the nineteenth century – including most of the
Northern states in the U.S – did so peacefully. The
British, French, Spaniards, Dutch, Swedes, Danes, and others ended slavery in
Argentina, Colombia, Chile, all of Central America, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay,
the French and Danish colonies, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela without
resorting to the mass murder and destruction of war. (See Jim Powell. Greatest Emancipations: How the
West Ended Slavery; Robert Fogel
and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics
of American Negro Slavery; and
Slavery in New York, published
by the New York Historical Society).
Only Gerson’s beloved "Party of
Lincoln" used slaves as political pawns in a war that all of them
– Lincoln as well as the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress of
1861-1865 – stated over and over again was commenced to "save the
union" (and consolidate political power in Washington, D.C.), and not to
disturb Southern slavery. As Lincoln said in his famous 1862 letter to
newspaper editor Horace Greeley, "My paramount object in this struggle
is to save the Union, and it not either to save or destroy slavery. If
I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I
could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it
helps to save the Union." On July 22, 1861 the U.S. Congress announced
to the world that the purpose of the war it had commenced was NOT
"interference with the rights or established institutions of those
states" [i.e., slavery], but to preserve the Union with the rights of
the several states unimpaired." Gerson is
obviously unaware of all of this.
Of course, Lincoln’s "save the Union" rhetoric was
always outrageous nonsense. The original American union of the founding
fathers was a voluntary union based on the Jeffersonian notion in the
Declaration of Independence that the just powers of government result only
from the consent of the governed, and whenever that consent was withdrawn, it
was the duty of the governed to abolish that government. It was
nothing more than a practical political arrangement and not some magical,
mystical, sacred union that "justified" the mass murder of more
than 350,000 Southerners to "save" it. Indeed, the founding fathers
would probably have thought such a thing to be perhaps the biggest atrocity
in world history.
Lincoln’s war destroyed the union of the founding fathers
by forcing all states, North and South, to obey without question the
dictates of Washington, D.C. – or else. Michael Gerson
seems completely ignorant of all of this history when he mocks Ron Paul by
saying "Paul is the most anti-Lincoln public official since Jefferson
Davis . . . . According to Paul, Lincoln caused 600,000 Americans to die in
order to ‘get rid of the original intent of the republic.’" Exactly.
Even if it was not Lincoln’s intent – which it most certainly was
since he was the political heir to the Hamiltonian/consolidationist
wing of the American political tradition – it was undeniably the effect
of Lincoln’s war. It is what would lead to such absurdities as someone
like Michael Gerson becoming a propaganda
mouthpiece for our rulers in Washington, D.C.
In his first inaugural address Lincoln threatened "invasion"
and "bloodshed" in any state that refused to collect the
newly-doubled tariff on imports, which at the time constituted more than 90
percent of all federal tax revenues. Two years later the Republican Party
apparently decided that the murder of hundreds of thousands and the
destruction of entire cities in the South could not be justified before world
opinion if it was motivated by the greed for money and power – which of
course it was, as is almost always the case with all wars. So the slaves were
used as political pawns to cover up the true intentions of the Party of
Lincoln, which from that time on has described itself as the "Grand Old
Party" or the party of great moral ideas! (When you hear that rhetoric,
think of the party’s great moral leaders, such as Bob Dole, George W.
Bush, John McCain, or Newt Gingrich, all of whom have employed speechwriters
like Michael Gerson to compose such nonsense for
them).
Gerson also mocks the
notion that Lincoln ruled "with an iron fist," which also
demonstrates his complete ignorance of this aspect of American history. It is
well known by anyone who bothers to learn about it that Lincoln illegally
suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus (even his own attorney general said so)
since only Congress can legally do so. He ordered the military to mass arrest
thousands of Northern critics of his administration, without due
process, and imprison them indefinitely. These
included many opposition newspaper editors, and even the Mayor of Baltimore,
Congressman Henry May of Maryland, and the grandson of Francis Scott Key, who
had editorialized against Lincoln’s tyranny.
Lincoln issued an arrest warrant for Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
after Judge Taney issued his opinion that Lincoln’s suspension of
Habeas Corpus was unconstitutional. He deported the most outspoken member of
the opposition party, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham
of Ohio; confiscated firearms in the border states; instituted the first
federal military conscription law; oversaw the daily shooting of hundreds of
deserters to his army; and even announced that merely remaining silent when
his administration’s policies were being discussed constituted
"treason." Most importantly, the Republican Party’s invasion
of the Southern states was the very definition of Treason under the
Constitution. All of this – and worse – is why generations of
historians have referred to the Lincoln presidency as the "Lincoln
dictatorship," another historical fact that Gerson
is oblivious to.
Treason is defined in Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution as
follows: "Treason against the United States,
shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering
to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort" (emphasis
added). "United States" is always in the plural in all the founding
documents, signifying the free and independent states. Treason was defined as
"only" waging war against the free and independent states, which of
course is exactly what Lincoln and his party did. Again, Michael Gerson is ignorant of all of this.
Gerson’s ignorance of
the history that he pretends to pontificate about gets even worse. He claims
that Ron Paul’s "conception of liberty is not the same as
Lincoln’s." Yes, and thank God for Ron Paul. What advocate of
liberty would destroy the Constitution, imprison political dissenters, murder
hundreds of thousands of his own citizens over tax collection, and then claim
the moral high ground by including a few Biblical phrases in his political
speeches (even though he himself was an atheist)?
Gerson is also
unaware that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to "rebel
territory," where the U.S. Army had no ability to free anyone, and that
Lincoln called it a "war measure" that would have ended had the war
ended on the next day. In other words, it freed no one, and had the war
abruptly ended Lincoln was perfectly satisfied to allow the Southern states
to do whatever they wanted to do with the slaves as long as they continued to
pay federal tariff taxes. Indeed, in one speech he nonchalantly forecast that
slavery would probably fade away sometime in the early twentieth century.
In addition to his shocking ignorance of American history, Michael Gerson is just plain hysterical and nonsensical with some
of his other broadsides against Ron Paul. For example, any reasonable person
who spends a small amount of time educating himself about the actual effects
of the government’s "war on drugs" would have to conclude
that it has been a colossal failure: It has utterly failed to reduce drug
use; it has made the illicit drug trade more profitable by causing the
price of illegal drugs (and the profits from selling them) to increase
dramatically; it is the primary cause of violence in America, just as alcohol
prohibition was in the 1920s and early 1930s; it has corrupted police and
judges; it has lured untold numbers of children into the business because of
the money they can make; and it has led to the grossly disproportionate
imprisonment of young African-American men for victimless "crimes."
Gerson mentions none of these facts, but only
screams that Ron Paul has "proposed . . . legalization"!!!!!! This
is supposed to be a self-evident fact that proves Ron Paul to be
"disqualified" as a presidential candidate, says Gerson.
Unlike Ron Paul, who champions the constitutional dictum of equality
under the law for all Americans, Michael Gerson
parrots the Washington establishment’s view that inequality under
the law in the form of institutionalized discrimination against white males,
which is what "civil rights regulation" became immediately upon
passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is more appropriate. To Ron Paul,
government-sanctioned discrimination is discrimination, no matter what the
skin color of the victims. Two wrongs do not make a right, in other words. Michael Gerson apparently
never learned this elementary lesson.
Since David Duke is also known to have run for political office in
Louisiana several decades ago by protesting racial hiring quotas and reverse
discrimination, Gerson outrageously accuses Ron
Paul of "defending former Ku Klux Kan Grand
Wizard David Duke," proving that he is dishonest as well as ignorant of
the subjects he is writing about.
Gerson is also
outraged that Ron Paul has described American foreign policy as
"aggressive" and "expansionist." Has Michael Gerson ever stepped foot outside of Washington, D.C.? Does he really reside on Planet Earth?
In one final burst of stupidity, Gerson
concludes his essay be claiming that the U.S. entered World War II to save
the European Jews from the Holocaust. (Earth to Michael Gerson:
The Holocaust happened; the U.S. government did not save the 6 million
Jews murdered by the Nazis). He makes this remarkably stupefying statement so
that he can proclaim to his Washington Post audience that
"Paul’s conception of liberty . . . would have freed the occupants
of concentration camps from their dependency on liberating armies."
Michael Gerson pretends that Ron Paul has
invented out of thin air his own personal conceptions of "liberty."
Anyone who knows anything about Ron Paul – unlike the Michael Gersons of the world – understands why this is so
absurd. Ron Paul has for many decades been a serious student of the classical
liberal tradition of European and American thought. He is extraordinarily
well educated in the free-market economics tradition of the Austrian School
of Economics, associated with such scholars as Ludwig von Mises,
F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Henry Hazlitt. He
is well schooled in the natural rights philosophy that informed the American
founding fathers, and which is so beautifully articulated in such
publications as The Law by
Frederic Bastiat. He understands the logic of the
foreign policy ideas of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who I would
wager were far more thoughtful and educated on the subject than Michael Gerson is.
 One
thing that Gerson gets right is that Ron
Paul’s conception of liberty, based on the above-mentioned literature,
is indeed very different from those of Lincoln’s. Lincoln probably
never even read The Federalist Papers;
his personal library consisted almost entirely of books on rhetoric and
speech making and political strategy. He was a champion of central banking,
protectionist tariffs, and corporate welfare, all for the benefit of the
Northern business elite that financed his career and his party at the expense
of the rest of the public. He was willing to wage total war on his own
citizens for the benefit of his own political benefactors. He was a machine
politician who would make today’s Chicago politicians look like so many
Mother Teresas by comparison. He deplored
constitutional limitations on his own dictatorial powers, and waged war on
his own countrymen for refusing to have their federal taxes doubled. Read Lincoln’s
first inaugural address for yourself.
If Ron Paul succeeds in his "quest to undo the Party of
Lincoln" it would be the greatest advance in freedom for Americans since
the ending of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in
1866.
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