The neocon
Lincoln idolaters in the Republican Party and its various appendages
have done such a good job of getting President Bush to ape the
rhetoric and practices of their hero, Dishonest Abe, that they
have done what, up until now, I thought was the unthinkable: They
have made Al Gore look like a wise, old statesman. Following an
age-old American tradition, former Vice President Gore sounds
much more sensible out of office than he did when he was in. In
a recent speech at the Georgetown University Law Center ("Democracy
Itself is in Grave Danger," June 24, 2004), Vice President
Gore sounded almost Ron Paul-like!
Gore’s
criticisms of the Bush administration are striking in that they
reveal that when it comes to waging war and dealing with civil
liberties issues, the party has not changed at all since it first
became The Republican Party of Lincoln. For example, he posed
the rhetorical question of what George Washington would think
of the fact that "our current president claims the unilateral
right to arrest and imprison American citizens indefinitely without
giving them the right to see a lawyer or inform their families
of their whereabouts, and without the necessity of even charging
them with any crime"?
These
were exactly the policies of the Lincoln administration. Habeas
corpus was unilaterally (and illegally) suspended by Lincoln and
the military, with the help of a secret police bureaucracy operated
by William Seward, imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political
opponents. They were thrown into gulags such as Fort Lafayette
in New York harbor where they were never charged, had no idea
how long they would be held, and their families often had no idea
of their whereabouts. (See James Randall, Constitutional
Problems Under Lincoln; and Dean Sprague, Freedom Under
Lincoln). The Virginia patriot George Washington would have
undoubtedly drawn his sword and fought another revolution over
such an outrage.
What
would Washington think, asked Gore, of our president’s contention
that he can "label any citizen an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’
and that will be sufficient to justify taking away that citizen’s
liberty – even for the rest of his life, if the president chooses.
And there is no appeal"? Again, the hyper-paranoid Lincoln
administration, which saw enemies everywhere, labeled virtually
anyone who disagreed with its policies as spies and traitors who
were therefore subject to military arrest and indefinite imprisonment
without due process.
"What
would Thomas Jefferson think," said Gore, "of the curious
and discredited argument from our Justice Department that the
president may authorize what plainly amounts to the torture of
prisoners. . .?" Not much, I suppose. The Lincoln administration
also tortured Northern prisoners, as documented by Mark
Neely, Jr. in his book, The
Fate of Liberty. In a chapter entitled "The Dark
Side of the Civil War" Neely includes a lengthy section entitled
"Torture" to describe some of the techniques used by
the Lincoln administration. He describes "the rise of torture
as a means of extracting confessions" not of Southerners
but of "Northerners suspected of deserting from the United
States Army" into which many of them had been conscripted
(p. 109). "Handcuffs and hanging by the wrists were rare,"
writes Neely, but "in the summer of 1863, the army had developed
a water torture that came to be used routinely." When this
practice became public knowledge, "there was no impulse to
correct the abuse; indeed, no one [in the administration] saw
it as an abuse. It had become a usual and customary way of handling
certain kinds of prisoners."
What
would Benjamin Franklin think, Vice President Gore rhetorically
asked, "of President Bush’s assertion that he has the inherent
power – even without a declaration of war by the Congress – to
launch an invasion of any nation on Earth, at any time he chooses,
for any reason he wishes . . ."? This, too, is "Lincolnesque,"
a word that the Claremontistas are especially fond of using in
their descriptions of President Bush. Lincoln launched a military
invasion and a naval blockade of the South without the consent
of Congress.
"How
long would it take James Madison to dispose of our current president’s
recent claim, in Department of Justice legal opinions, that he
is no longer subject to the rule of law so long as he is acting
in his role as Commander in Chief?" asked Gore. This of course
was Lincoln’s very claim for why he was entitled to become a dictator.
He discovered "war powers" in the Constitution that
even James Madison, the "father of the Constitution,"
never noticed when he was president and at war with England during
the War of 1812.
Under this
novel theory Lincoln essentially declared himself dictator and
proceeded to launch a war without the consent of Congress, suspend
habeas corpus, shut down over 300 opposition newspapers, imprison
tens of thousands of Northern political opponents, including numerous
newspaper editors and owners, deport an outspoken Democratic congressman,
Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, censor the telegraph, confiscate
private property, confiscate firearms in the border states, imprison
duly elected members of the Maryland legislature, the mayor of
Baltimore, and Congressman Henry May of Baltimore, instruct soldiers
to rig Northern elections, and generally ignore all constitutional
restrictions on executive powers. He was the ideal neocon president,
in other words.
As Vice
President Gore explained, "President Bush has been attempting
to conflate his commander-in-chief role and his head of government
role to maximize . . . power . . ." Exactly. This is what
makes him so "Lincolnesque," much to the delight of
the neocon establishment, no doubt. Father Abraham lives!
President
Bush has "declared that our nation is now in a permanent
state of war," Gore pointed out, "which he says justifies
his reinterpretation of the Constitution in ways that increase
his personal power at the expense of Congress, the courts, and
every individual citizen."
Father Abraham
lives, indeed. Lincoln intimidated the entire Congress by deporting
Vallandigham for merely protesting his unconstitutional suspension
of habeas corpus, thereby severely damaging, if not destroying,
the constitutional separation of powers. When Chief Justice of
the United States Roger B. Taney issued the opinion that only
Congress could constitutionally suspend habeas corpus, Lincoln
issued an arrest warrant for Taney. He clearly had no respect
for the judiciary or Congress if they disagreed with him. So disrespectful
of the Supreme Court was Lincoln that he never even answered Taney’s
opinion in court, as he could have – the opinion was a circuit
court opinion (Supreme Court justices also had circuit court duties
in that era).
And
of course Northern civilians were intimidated by the censorship
of the press, the intimidation by soldiers and Republican Party
mobs at voting booths, and by the violent response to the New
York City draft riots, where Lincoln sent some 15,000 soldiers
from the recently-concluded Battle of Gettysburg, who fired into
the mostly unarmed crowd, killing hundreds (see Iver Bernstein,
The
New York City Draft Riots).
The
president’s lawyers, Gore further noted, have "concluded
that the president, whenever he is acting in his role as commander
in chief, is above and immune from the rule of law." This
of course was also the opinion of Lincoln and his lawyers, an
opinion that Vice President Gore correctly characterizes as "this
bizarre and un-American theory." As for Lincoln, Dean Sprague
succinctly described how "the entire judicial system was
set aside" by Lincoln in his book, Freedom Under Lincoln
(p. 291):
June
26, 2004