There’s a well-known rule that one mustn’t criticize a politician or an influential person. If you haven’t heard that rule, then you must need for me to tell you the complete version of it: one mustn’t criticize a politician or an influential person if the rulers agree that you mustn’t. For instance, even many blacks had uncomplimentary things to say about Mike King before he was murdered in Memphis in 1968 under his assumed moniker Martin Luther; but once he was apotheosized, he became untouchable.
So it is with Abraham Lincoln. A number of books have appeared throughout the last 100 years which interpret his presidency in an accurate and unflattering way, the most devastating of which, despite some inexcusable errors of detail, is probably DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln. Lincoln, however, has been declared untouchable by our rulers to such a degree that, for instance, Mel Bradford could be borked from his nomination for chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities because he interpreted Lincoln unfavorably.
If I were in any way dependent upon the rulers, they would do the same to me for writing this blog post.
In one episode of the Beverly Hillbillies, Granny, explaining the Civil War, declared “That was when the Yankees invaded America.” Theres a little bit of truth in that. The South, for all of its faults, had the Constitution on its side and, as such, held the rightful title to the American tradition. Lincoln’s War was a revolution which, like all of Lincoln’s politics, had as its goal the fundamental transformation of the United States.
The Emancipation Proclamation now comes to mind. Lincoln declared that the slaves in Rebel-held territory were no longer slaves. Where did he get the authority to declare that a slave is not a slave? He made it up. If you pretend that he had authority from God, doesn’t that imply that everyone else had the same authority from God to declare federal laws and annul state laws in spite of the entirety of human history– pagan, Jew, and Christian alike? Wouldn’t that make for an interesting body politic, where each man went around speaking reality into existence and declaring as law whatever he thought desirable? Sorta sounds like a banana republic, doesn’t it?
Lincoln didn’t have the authority, but he did have lots and lots of guns; and, as Chairman Mao pointed out, “Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” In the Western Christian tradition, however, we believe that the natural rights of man dictate that constitutional laws are supreme over all government officials.
I’m writing, of course, because Obama made his own Mexification Proclamation tonight in defiance of Congress and the clear majority of Americans. Where did he get the authority? Why, from Lincoln, of course! And Lincoln won it through conquest.
What we’ve been enduring for the past century is the outworking of the principles set in place by the revolution of 1861. Clear-sighted men wrote about it, especially in the years 1830-1860. Many understood then, but they were outgunned. As Jefferson Davis observed later in his monumental Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, “When the cause was lost, what cause was it? Not that of the South only, but the cause of constitutional government, of the supremacy of law, of the natural rights of man” (2:763).
This alone explains the unbroken failure of conservative activism and the steady slide of the nation into Marxism. Blaspheme a god and you’ll be excommunicated; that is to say, criticize Lincoln and his heirs and “you’ll never work in this town again.” Theoreticians are therefore cowed, and their strategies can never strike at the root.
