The intellectual bootlickers surrounding Bush have apparently persuaded him that he is the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln.  Fox News recently had unprecedented access to Bush to produce a documentary to air on Sunday night: ““George W. Bush: Fighting to the Finish.â€Â Fox reporter Bret Baier commented of his meetings with Bush: â€
We talked a lot about President Lincoln. And there’s going to be a lot of people out there who watch this hour and say, is he trying to equate himself with Lincoln?
I tell you what — he thinks about Lincoln and the tough times that he had during the Civil War. 600,000 dead. The country essentially hated him when he was leaving office.
Perhaps the cartoon history books Bush was given neglected to mention the fact that Lincoln was very popular in the North at the time he “left office†via John Wilkes Booth.  Lincoln was hated in the South, not surprisingly – given the Rules of Engagement that northern armies followed in the final years of the war.
Bush has followed in Lincoln’s footsteps when he gushes over freedom while trampling the Constitution. That Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, jailed 20,000 people without charges, forcibly shut down hundreds of newspapers that criticized him, and sent in federal troops to shut down state legislatures was irrelevant because he proclaimed “that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth,†as I noted in Attention Deficit Democracy.
Bush struts when he promises to â€bring to justice†people on his target list.
Hopefully Americans will see George Bush brought to justice for his crimes. That would be a rebirth of the Rule of Law in this land.
Naomi Klein's 'Disaster Captalism' is a good book to read.
I'm not a capitalist, but I really think that the best thing for the US (I'm a Canadian) right now is for Ron Paul to win the Republican candidacy. I dare to say he would even be the best president for the country. As an anarchist, I do have much sympathy for libertarians.. even though some libertarians may be capitalists, I do identify with them on many themes and thus can have some grace for Ron Paul on his free market views. Ron Paul has definately been stiring the pot in conversation here in Canada among fellow anarchists, and yes.. even many socialists – regarding the promotion of unions – having many UAW supporters and his comittment to get out of NAFTA, the WTO and dismantle the SPP.
Marx invented Capitalism.
Marx did not invent either Liberty or Free Enterprise.
There are so-called “Libertarian” theorists who call themselves “Capitalists”.
In my experience, if they are not being disingenuous or just plain lazy, they tend to know very little about the history of Liberty, or even economics for that matter.
I agree, sometimes the strategy of taking the pejorative term and turning it around into an emblem of pride has undesirable consequences. Ayn Rand with her “radicals for capitalism” (a term which I am sure Albert J. Nock or Garet Garrett would have eschewed) is largely responsible for this one, and her motive seems to have been to shock people. Well, it worked. But capitalization is just one function of a free society/economy, and using it in a typological way just plays into Marxian hands. What paleolibertarians want is a return to what might be described as “civil society” in the sense of a society composed of multiple autonomous and mutally counterballancing institutions.
Eugene,
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 mineâ€.
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.
Regarding Marxism inventing Capitalism:
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.
“Bush was given neglected to mention the fact that Lincoln was very popular in the North at the time he “left office†via John Wilkes Booth.” you are hilarious.
I think, and correct me James if I am wrong, but James Bovard was just repeating something Willard Romney said the other night – that Lincoln “left office”.
Or maybe it was Bush that said he left office: one of those two ‘useless-idiots’.
I am curious as to the evidence that Lincoln was popular when he was shot. Of course, the assassination did make him a martyr (much like JFK). History is already going to judge Bush very harshly. Unfortunately, this still hasn’t happened with Lincoln.
The statement was that he was popular IN THE NORTH. The evidence is that he had been re-elected 5 months before with 55% of the popular vote, carrying all states that had not committed state suicide except for Kentucky, New Jersey and Delaware. Results like that are typically described as “landslides”.
He was shot a few days after Appomattox.
I think if he had been shot a few years earlier – after the battle of Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville or Chickamagua – the response might have been different.
Lincoln was not that popular in 1864 – if not for the fall of Atlanta and Phil Sheridan’s ride, Lincoln could have lost his reelection. One issue that hurt him in that race was criticism of the ‘scorched Earth’ tactics Union armies were using in the South.
I always get incensed when people refer to how Bush tramples freedom.
Bush love freedom, he just defines it differently then the rest of us, the ones he thinks of as the hired help and/or the cannon fodder for his wars.
To Bush, freedom means the freedom to make profit. The freedom for multinationals to maximize a ROI.
When you realize this is what he means, his policies suddenly make a lot more sense.
Read Naomi Klein’s book “Disaster Capitalism”.
Mark,
Do you really get incensed? Is it wrong to expect that words have proper meaning, and that politicians will distort that meaning to suit their own agendas?
Don’t get angry that people apply a universal understanding to a term like “freedom,” and expect that it implies absence of coercion. What we’re getting is its polar opposite. How Bush and his neocon advisors define the term is (or at least ought to be) irrelevant.
What should anger you is that many people are too intellectually lazy to understand that our government is lying to us and using American soldiers as cannon fodder and stealing from the rest of us to fund this criminal enterprise.
As for “Disaster Capitalism,” the lesson to be drawn is not to reject capitalism, but to embrace free markets. Absent the state and its standing armies, the wars that we are witnessing would not be possible.
“Unfortunately this still hasn’t happened with Lincoln.”
Are you still fighting the Civil War?
At the beginning of the Civil War this sentence was proper grammar: “The United States are led by Abraham Lincoln.”
Abraham Lincoln changed that verb to “is”.
(Read the Gettysburg Address. I mean really read it. That speech encapsulates this concept and the main reason that it is one of the greatest speeches in American or even world history.)
If I’m not mistaken, it was “These United States are…”
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.”
When did I finally officially leave the GOP, what set me over the edge? When a speaker(useful idiot) at my republican roundtable group in KS reminded me that we were the party of Heir Lincoln…
PS- thank you Mr. Rockwell, Raimondo, Woods, Shaffer and DiLorenzo.
Oh, and Mr. Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Nock, Chodorov…
I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.
[Julia Ward Howe]
Thank you for these lyrics. You had me singing. I’m going to read more about Julia Ward Howe.
“Just because Germany has turned to the right and has expelled us…it simply does not follow that the principles of the right are therefore to be rejected. To the contrary, only on the basis of principles of the right—fascist, authoritarian, imperial [emphasis in original]—is it possible in a dignified manner, without the ridiculous and pitiful appeal to ‘the inalienable rights of man’ to protest against the mean nonentity…â€
[Leo Strauss from a letter quoted by Nicholas Xenos]
“Norton herself points out that the Straussians’ almost cult-like admiration for Abraham Lincoln derives from the sixteenth president’s willingness to act outside the law: e.g., suspending habeas corpus, jailing dissidents, and suppressing free speech. ‘Lincoln,'” Norton writes, is for Straussians ‘the model of prudential leadership’ (p. 130) – a concept that, at least in its fundamentals, can be traced to Strauss himself….”
[Thomas E. Woods review of Norton]
I think the way that civics is, or rather is not, taught in public and most other US schools leaves the typical pupil with the following notion:
The American nation (sic) is grounded upon the following founding documents:
1) the Declaration of Independence
2) the Constituton
3) the Bill of Rights
4) the Gettysburg address
The politically correct hermenutic is to take the notional concepts of 1 & 4 as summarizing all the rest (which mearly flesh out the details).
On the contrary, only 2&3 are legal documents in any sense. #1 is a fait accompli and its rhetorical flourishes, however beautiful and true, are not legally binding. #4 is just a politician on the stump…but this is somehow considered sufficient to both “abrogate and fulfill” the law.
Of course this is rank nonsense, as anyone who has taken the time to read even one book on constitutional law will tell you. But as Mencken once said, nobody ever lost money betting on the stupidity of the American booboizee! All the poltically correct crowd, the neo-conservatives, the Bushees and anyone else with a vested interest in increasing the powers of the central government has to do is take the money to the bank.
Omigosh! We Indians (inhabitants of South Asia, for the uninitiated among you) always thought that Lincoln was half a saint.
Do you mean to say that Walt Whitman, author of ” o Captain, my captain” was actually that period’s equivalent of Fox news!
George Bush brought to justice? Oh be still my hopeful heart. George ‘the destroyer’ Bush MUST be brought to justice and Dick ‘heartless’ Cheney and Condo ‘the’ Rice and Donny ‘Dr. Death’ Rumsfeld and Powell and Ari ‘the dodger’ and Scotty ‘doughboy’ McClellan and the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House and whoosh, this list could get rather extensive.
George Bush has more in common with Tony Soprano than any past president.
As Karl Marx, the ultimate neocon godfather, remarked, history repeats itself twice: first as tragedy, then as farce.
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.
“Questions? Questions? We don’t need no stinking questions! We got the stinking badges.”
George Bush is no Abraham Lincoln.
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.
Lincoln was a railroad lawyer–a tall man who wore a stovepipe to make him look taller, thus the center of attention. He was also, as president, master manipulator of the new media, including photography.
“King Lincoln” won his landslide because by November 1864: 1) his war was all but won, and 2) all opposition had already been silenced, jailed or (as in the case of Rep. Clement Vallandigham) expelled. There’s a direct line from “wily agitator” to “enemy combatant.”
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.
Indeed.
Americans are ignorant about our own history. Bush can get away with saying any old thing.
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.
The Emancipation Proclamation thus freed no slaves at all, even behind enemy lines, as is sometimes argued. It also actually confirmed slavery in the Border States in effect.
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.
Lincoln would not have won his second election had he not sent the ballot boxes to the fighting front for the soldiers to vote….