In Stephan Kinsella’s blog debate with Claremontisa “Lincoln Fellow” Timothy Sandfur, the young Lincoln idolater continues to play the sleazy Straussian game of picking a word or two from historical documents like the Declaration of Independence while ignoring the rest of the document. I guess you could say this practice is “Lincolnesque.” Sandfur says unilateral secession is always and everwhere illegal and unconstitutional. But this ignores such facts as that in the Declaration the states are continually referred to as “free and independent,” or sovereign. The same is true of the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. The word secession is not even in the Constitution, so Sandefur is simpy making this assertion up. In fact, the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers not delegated to the federal governemnt to the citizens and the states, allows for secession. As I document in The Real Lincoln, this was the view of the majority of Northern opinion makers in 1860. Sandefur and his fellow Straussian neocon Lincoln idolaters ignore all of this, however, since it doesn’t fit their fairy tale version of history. He also ignores the fact that Lincoln himself, as well as the U.S. Congress, declared to the world in 1861 that they had no intention of disturbing Southern slavery and that their purpose was “to save the union.” Lincoln idolaters like Sandefur even ignore Lincoln’s own words in order to fabricate endless excuses for the empire that Lincoln did more than anyone to create. Lincoln never said he invaded the South to free the slaves; this is all a part of the Straussian fantasy world that smartass Sandefur lives in.

The Best of Thomas DiLorenzo