That will be if and when President Trump and his underlings begin quoting Lincoln in their foreign policy pronouncements.  For more than a century, aggressive military interventionism has been “justified” by the argument that America emerged from its “Civil War” with “a treasury of virtue,” as Robert Penn Warren wrote in his book, The Legacy of the Civil War.  Consequently, the argument goes, whatever the U.S. government does is, by definition, virtuous.  Some call it “American exceptionalism.”  The cornerstone of this charade has always been the myth of the “sainted” Lincoln.  Even foreign dictators have invoked the phony Lincolnian rhetoric to “justify” tyranny in their countries.

The Best of Thomas DiLorenzo