|
|
Dear Glenn,
First of all,
congratulations on deciding to become a community organizer for the cause of liberty
and prosperity, as reported all over the media recently. You will be a stark
contrast to the Marxist in the White House who boasts of his “community
organizing”
efforts for the exact opposite cause, ACORN-style socialism as defined by its
“People’s
Platform.” (His
nationalization of banks, General Motors, and possibly health care, and his
administration’s bombastic, anti-capitalist rhetoric,
reminds me a lot of Lenin’s first months in
power.)
Glenn, I’m
writing to offer a few suggestions with regard to your upcoming community
organizing efforts, which I’m sure will attract huge media attention
and could potentially be very influential. First, you really need to “man up” those
“Five
Pledges” of
yours, especially Pledges 1 and 2. There you say you are in favor of a
balanced budget, and that government should not increase the financial burden
on taxpayers “during difficult economic times.”
I certainly agree
with the last part of this statement. Raising taxes during a depression is
exactly the opposite of what even a central-planning Keynesian would
advocate. This only highlights the fact that Obama is not a Keynesian central
planner, as Democratic presidents usually are (and most Republicans as well),
but a central planner of the Marxian variety. Marxists want to destroy the
existing economic system, creating a social catastrophe that they hope will
allow them to foment a revolution and consolidate their political power.
Keynesians are merely neo-mercantilists who use Keynesian ideology to pull
the wool over the public’s eyes with
regard to their policy of perpetual political plunder under the guise of a
perpetual quest for prosperity.
But come on,
Glenn, don’t fall
for that Big Government propaganda line about the alleged virtues of a
balanced budget. What the government establishment means by budgetary balance
is a devotion to endless tax increases to fund all of their
pie-in-the-sky special-interest spending programs. According to this
propaganda line a doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of government spending,
and the consequent shrinking of private-sector prosperity, is perfectly fine
as long as taxes are also doubled, tripled, or quadrupled at the same time.
Americans already pay more in taxes than medieval serfs did, so what’s so
good about waiting for “good economic
times” to be
plundered and robbed even more?
I notice that you
frequently display a picture of Thomas Jefferson on the television screen
during your Fox News Channel program. You would do well to dump those first
two pledges and, in their place, adopt what Mr. Jefferson said in his first
inaugural address:
[A] wise and
frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall
leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and
improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has
earned. This is the sum of good government . . .
Saying that
government “shall
not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned” means
there should be no taxes on earnings. If you’re
serious about calling yourself a Jeffersonian, Glenn, you would advocate the
total elimination of income taxation (for starters), and not potentially
endless increases of it “during good
times.” You
should also abandon that Pledge #3 about “energy
independence.” Such rhetoric is just another
protectionist smokescreen, no different from those who insist that we must
free ourselves of foreign beef, tomatoes, cars, etc. Isolating ourselves from
the international division of labor is a good recipe for economic disaster.
Your pledge #5 is
also highly problematic. You say, “I believe the
United States of America is the greatest country on earth and therefore will
not apologize for policies or actions which have served to free more and feed
more people around the world than any other nation on the planet.” The
problem with this is that you equate “the
United States of America” with the federal
government. I think your confusion stems for a misunderstanding of the
difference between nationalism and patriotism. A nationalist, as my old
friend Clyde Wilson has said, is someone who promotes the aggrandizement of
the state in all its “glory.” A
patriot, in sharp contrast, is someone who simply loves his country and its
people.
Your statement is
way too nationalistic. It seems to be a version of the neocon propaganda line
that “We
saved Europe from the Nazis in World War II, therefore, every successive
military intervention, no matter how misguided, and no matter how many
innocent foreigners are murdered, is justified. The rest of the world should
just shut up.” This is what the neocons at the
Claremont Institute and the American Enterprise Institute would call “statesmanship,” but “arrogant,
imperialistic propaganda” would be more
accurate.
Good luck with
the Washington, D.C. rally that you’re planning for
next August at the Lincoln Memorial. One more suggestion: Hold the rally at
the Jefferson Memorial instead. Lincoln was a tyrant who waged total war on
his own citizens, orchestrating the murder of some 350,000 of them, including
50,000 Southern civilians. Jefferson was the founding generation’s
champion of liberty. In his first inaugural address Lincoln first made an
ironclad defense of slavery, including a promise to support its enshrinement
in the U.S. Constitution, while threatening “bloodshed” and “invasion” over
tax collection. He said it was his “duty to collect
the duties and imposts,” and “beyond
that there will not be an invasion of any state.” The
tariff on imports had just been doubled two days earlier. “Pay Up
or Die” was
his message.
Contrast this,
Glenn, with what Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural address:
“If
there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its
republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with
which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat
it.” This
could not possibly be more different from Lincoln’s “Do As
I Say Or Die” commandment.
After all, secession or “separation” from
the British Empire is how America was created. Secession was “the”
principle of the American Revolution according to George Washington’s
Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering. Since the theme of your television
program on the Fox News Channel is “Refounding
America,” I
think you should highlight and discuss the right of secession and its virtues
on your program every single day. It is probably the only real hope that we
have to escape Obammunism.
If you’re not
convinced, consider this: In a January 29, 1804 letter to Dr. Joseph
Priestly, Jefferson wrote that “Whether we remain
in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I
believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the
western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those
of the eastern . . . and did I now foresee a separation [i.e., secession] at
some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the
western interests as zealously as the eastern . . .” In an
August 12, 1803 letter to his friend John Breckenridge on the subject of the
New England Federalists, who were at that time threatening to secede from the
union, Jefferson said that if there were a “separation” then “God
bless them both [North and South] & keep them in the union if it be for
their good, but separate them, if it be better.”
As you can see,
Glenn, Lincoln was in many ways the anti-Jefferson, which is to say, an enemy
of liberty. Consider Mr. Jefferson’s most famous
publication, The Declaration of Independence. In that document the states are
said to be “free
and independent.” Lincoln disagreed and waged total war on
the Southern states to “prove”
himself right. They were not free and independent, he insisted, despite the
clear language of the Declaration and of all the other founding documents on
this matter.
In his “Train
of Abuses”
condemnation of the King of Great Britain Jefferson said “He has
dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly...” Lincoln
imprisoned members of the Maryland legislature, deported a Democratic
congressman, and imposed military rule on parts of the South that became
conquered territory during the war. This is no different from what King
George III did.
“He has
made Judges dependent on his Will alone,”
Jefferson wrote. By suspending habeas corpus and imprisoning tens of
thousands of Northern citizens without any due process, Lincoln made his
will the law of the land, just as King George III had done.
“He has
erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to
harass our people, and eat out their substance,” said
Jefferson in the Declaration. Myriad new bureaucracies, including an internal
revenue bureaucracy, were created to run the occupied states during the war,
and all states after the war.
“He has
affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil
Power.” This
is exactly what Lincoln did by suspending the writ of habeas corpus and
ordering the mass arrest of thousands of political dissenters in the North
during the war.
“He has
kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our
legislatures.” The legislatures of the Southern states
did not invite a federal invasion, as required by the “insurrection
clause” of
the U.S. Constitution in cases of insurrections, which did not exist anyway
in 1861. The Party of Lincoln kept standing armies in the South for a decade
after the war while the states were ruled as military dictatorships under the
direction of the Republican Party.
“He has
combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our
constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws . . .”
Lincoln ignored the Constitution completely. Nowhere is a president given the
constitutional authority to invade his own country, suspend habeas corpus,
wage war without consent of Congress, deport congressmen, shut down hundreds
of opposition newspapers, etc., etc.
“For
cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.”
Lincoln blockaded Southern ports during the war, and was a lifelong
protectionist of the worst kind. His party imposed average tariffs in the 50
percent range for almost half a century after the war.
“For
imposing taxes on us without consent.” The
South did not consent to paying a doubled import tariff. Lincoln kept the
promise that he made in his first inaugural address and launched a military
invasion of the entire South to force them to pay “his”
duties and imposts.
“For
depriving us in many cases, of the right of Trial by jury.” How
else could one describe Lincoln’s suspension of
habeas corpus?
“He has
abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging
War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coast, burnt our
towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting
large Armies, of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death,
desolation and tyranny.” Well,
Southerners certainly weren’t “protected” by
Lincoln’s
invasion of their country; Southern ports were blockaded and Southern ships
were sunk; entire Southern towns were burned to the ground by the Union Army
under Sherman and others; the lives of some 350,000 Southerners were snuffed
out; hundreds of thousands of European mercenaries were paid to wage war on
American citizens by the Lincoln regime. “Death,
desolation and tyranny” is a perfect
description of the Lincoln administration.
Glenn, I know
that you have praised Lincoln for “persevering” in
his mass murder of fellow citizens from the Southern states until he finally “prevailed.” This
of course is an essential part of the neocon/Lincoln Cult party line. It has
been repeated endlessly on your own Fox News Channel by all those neocons who
keep telling us that we should never, ever, withdraw our military from the
Middle East until “the job is finished”
(which would probably be long after we are both dead, if ever). But did you
know that all other countries of the world that ended slavery in the 19th
century, the British, Dutch, Spaniards, French, Danes, Swedes – all did
so peacefully without a war? And did you know that slavery was also
ended peacefully in all of the Northern states, including New York where
slavery still existed in the early 1850s? (See the book, Slavery in New York.) I
highly recommend that you read Jim Powell’s
excellent book, Greatest Emancipations: How the West Ended
Slavery, which describes
in great detail how the rest of the world ended slavery peacefully instead of
using slaves as political pawns in a war that was not about them but was a
struggle for political power, as all wars are.
This calls into
question the fairy tale about Lincoln and emancipation that all Lincoln
Cultists repeat endlessly. The war was all a part of some grand strategy to
free the slaves, they tell us. But what kind of “statesman” would
ignore all of world history including the history of his own country (in the
Northern states) with regard to how slavery was ended and plunge his country
into the bloodiest war in human history up to that point? Is this
“grand strategy” that caused the death of almost 700,000
Americans and maimed several times that number for life a praiseworthy one?
Glenn, if you are
upset about the Fed and its showering of corporate welfare on Wall Street
banksters and myriad other fat-cat corporations, you should also know that
Lincoln spent his entire adult life championing the “American
System” of
Alexander Hamilton, which was the only policy plank of the Whig Party that
Lincoln belonged to for more than twenty years before becoming a Republican.
The “American
System,” which
was really the corrupt British mercantilist system designed for America,
involved a central bank that would print money to finance corporate welfare
for railroad corporations and others, along with high, protectionist tariffs
which are also, of course, a form of corporate welfare. It was Lincoln’s
National Currency Acts that resurrected central banking in America and led to
the creation of the Fed. No member of the old Whig Party was a more forceful
proponent of central banking – a bank run by politicians out of the
nation’s
capital – than Abraham Lincoln was.
What Lincoln’s Whig
Party (which morphed into the Republican Party after the Whig Party imploded
in the early 1850s) stood for was perfectly described by the famous
playwright and law partner of Clarence Darrow, Edgar Lee Masters of Illinois,
in his book, Lincoln the Man. It was a “political
system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and to keep their
adherence to the government. [It] offered shelter to devious schemes and
corrupt enterprises . . . [and] a people taxed to make profits for
enterprises that cannot stand alone . . . . Its principles were plunder and
nothing else.”
In light of this,
I think it would be an absurd farce to hold a rally protesting the Fed,
corporate welfare, bailouts, Big Government, etc. at the Lincoln Memorial.
Thomas Jefferson opposed every one of these policies, as did his political
heirs, the big majority of whom were Democrats and neither Whigs nor
Republicans. Hold the rally at the Jefferson Memorial. Best of luck to you.
Thomas DiLorenzo
Also
by Thomas DiLorenzo
Thomas
J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the
author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about
Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His
latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed
the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.
Article
originally published on www.Mises.org. By
authorization of the author
| |
