Amen to Stephen Carson’s lucid explanation below of why the advocates of a free society should criticize Lincoln. As he writes: “To be critical of Lincoln and what he wrought is to be critical of the current centralized, militaristic, mercantilist U.S. federal government.

This is the “new birth” of government that Lincoln cultists widely proclaim and celebrate. Interestingly, I cannot think of a single criticism of Lincoln, however mild, that has ever been made by any of the so-called liberventionists associated with Cato, IHS, or other establishment-wannabe institutions. None. Ever. Their approach recently has been the juvenile one of waging petty smear campains against those of us who have actually researched and written on the topic while accusing us of being “defenders of the Confederacy,” i.e., of slavery. This of course makes as much sense as saying that critics of FDR are defenders of Nazis, or critics of George W. Bush are defenders of Osama bin Laden.

There are four possible reasons for this childish behavior: 1) They are intellectual cowards who fear criticism from those whose opinions count the most to them — the left/liberals in the media, academe, and thinktankland; 2) They are Lincolnites themselves who believe in the bizarre fantasy that the central government will some day fill the U.S. Supreme Court with Randy Barnetts and Roger Pilons; 3) They are grossly miseducated about American history, especially the Jeffersonian, states’ rights tradtion; or 4) All three of these reasons.

P.S. Come to think of it, Doug Bandow authored a thorough denunciation of Lincoln in a Washington Times column sometime around 1996 but as far as I know, he never wrote another word on the subject in any of his columns. I suspect he must have been told that his financial connection with Cato would be ended if he did, but this is just speculation.

The Best of Thomas DiLorenzo

Stephen, exactly right. To criticize the founder of the Second Republic is to criticize the current regime (though we might argue that FDR inaugurated the Third Republic) and its militarism, corporatism, centralism, and suppression of civil liberties, all of which were prefigured by Lincoln. No wonder Adolf Hitler praises him in Mein Kampf, especially for Lincoln’s abolition of what Jefferson called states rights.

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.