Death of a Republic: Stinkin Lincoln, Statism and the Articles of Confederation

Before I begin, I would like to thank Mr. Stephan Molyneux for his diligence in coalescing the material in the video and elucidating in such detail the efforts Lincoln made in turning America into a virtual statist dictatorial oligarchy. I don't know if anyone is familiar with Mr. Molyneux's work, but if not, I heartily suggest you watch his videos on Youtube. He possesses a remarkable intellect and presents his material in an interesting manner on a multitude of subjects and although we disagree on a few issues, I always appreciate his point of view.

History portrays Lincoln as a hero, a champion of African-American rights who selflessly fought the evils of slavery and reunited our blessed Union. As the video and any accurate portrayal of history show, he was anything but. He was, in fact, a war criminal, a vicious racist who believed that blacks and whites could never live in harmony and perhaps most importantly, a corporate shill that believed in a powerful central bank (the precursor to the Federal Reserve). Lincoln did more to cause disunity in our nation than any other president except perhaps Obama. He was, like Obama, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and almost every president since 1860- with the possible exceptions of Coolidge and JFK, a statist who has increased the size and scope of the federal government. I purposely left Reagan out because he talked about smaller govt. but did little to downsize it (unless you want to include relaxing regulations on his corporate donors).

Because the War of Northern Aggression (known in history books as the American Civil War) was fought for the illusion of ending slavery let's begin there. In fact, by 1861 the institution of slavery was practically finished. Slavery was an economic issue not a racial one- people did not own slaves because they were black. They owned them because it was the most cost-effective way to get work done, particularly farming. After 1808 it was no longer legal to import slaves so the slave population diminished proportionally. The law of supply and demand states that when supply decreases, demand increases and with it price. Simply put, by 1861 the cost of a slave was roughly $2500- in those days a lot of money. After the Potato Famine of the 1840's there were a flood of Irish immigrants who were willing to work for pennies a day and pay for their own upkeep. Slavery was becoming economically unfeasible.

However, Lincoln, being the good politician that he was, would never let a great emotional issue go to waste- so he used the issue of slavery to start a war that cost America over 600,000 lives and set out to demolish the Constitution and strip the sovereign states of their precious rights. During the war, Lincoln canceled Habeas Corpus holding citizens against their will without charging them with a crime- for indefinite lengths of time. As the video points out, many newspaper editors (400 if my memory serves me) were detained if they printed articles critical of the administration: any of this sound familiar? (Hint- NDAA). These are but a few of Lincoln's transgressions. What is important is that after the war, the 10th Amendment became virtually meaningless. The reason for the war and ensuing policies was to strip the states of their rights and consolidate power in a centralized locus to benefit his corporate sponsors- in short, corporate statism, or in more modern terms National Socialism.

The drive toward statism didn't begin with Lincoln, however. If one thinks back to Andrew Jackson and his fight against central banking- the powerful banking elites and their allies in government fought tooth and nail to discredit Jackson. The newspapers were full of "yellow journalism," articles and political cartoons depicting Jackson as a would be king when, in fact he was attempting to maintain state rather than federal banking laws. Here is one example:

Andrew Jackson was one of the first- and hopefully not the last- anti-statists. He was the Ron Paul of the 1830's. I could go president by president to show how our power as citizens has been stripped away and given to powerful interests that can afford to buy influence but, this is a blog and not a book. Suffice to say, unfortunately, we have the best government money can buy! There are a couple of examples that bear looking at, however.

In 1913 Congress passed and President Woodrow Wilson signed The Federal Reserve Act. This stripped Congress of it's obligation to oversee the Treasury and the printing of currency, putting it instead in the hands of a private bank (the Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express). I'm not going to go into detail, Youtube is full of videos about the evils of the Fed. I will make this one comment about monetary policy: When the government needs money they have to borrow it from the Fed- with interest!

FDR and his "New Deal" under the guise of curing the depression (caused by the Fed, by the way) Roosevelt increased the size and scope of government power enormously with ambitious federal programs aimed at putting Americans back to work. He did succeed in expanding employment in the public sector, but the private sector showed almost no growth until after WWII. Most economists agree that without the New Deal, the economy would have recovered much faster on its own.

The "Great Society" programs of Lyndon Johnson, while purporting to eradicate income disparities between whites and blacks, did more to harm black families than slavery. While given a pittance to live on and food stamps with which to eat, American blacks were shoved into ghettos where crime became rampant and hope for a better life all but disappeared. We are witnessing the outcome of this government largesse today with soaring crime rates, a breakdown of the black family (the out of wedlock birth-rate is astronomical) and young black men making up the overwhelming percentage of prison populations. Thank you LBJ! To fund this disaster, Johnson raided the Social Security Trust Fund (another FDR invention) and made it a part of the General Fund. The purpose was not to help black people (who I believe would rather have had meaningful employment) but to increase the size of government and create a perpetual voter base from the black underclass. Johnson has been quoted to have said: "I'll have those Niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years."

Whether 9/11 was a "false flag" or not is a matter of conjecture. What we do know for sure is that it, George W Bush gave us The Patriot Act. This was supposed to be a temporary stop-gap to stem the tide of terrorism. The true by-product of the Patriot Act is a huge blow to the rights of everyday Americans. We all know the results. We can't get on an airplane without getting groped by the TSA. Our electronic communications are constantly monitored- basically all the bad parts of Orwell's 1984. With Obama it is the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) which, similar to Lincoln, takes away habeas corpus and gives us "extreme rendition" under which, if you are suspected of virtually anything you can be whisked away to a foreign prison for as long as they want and tortured...Democracy be damned!

And now the good part. After the Revolutionary War we implemented a system of government with the Articles of Confederation as our governing paradigm. Simply stated: we were to be a loose confederation of sovereign states bound together by a common belief and purpose. In other words, if some emergency should occur such as war, natural disaster or something else, we would come to the aid of our sister states. However, a problem arose almost immediately. The war, like all wars, cost an enormous amount of money and the states had amassed a huge debt. The Southern states, having a primarily agrarian economy was able to recover rapidly, within a growing season or two. The Northern states, which depended on manufacturing, shipping and ship-building, were not as fortunate. They were unable to repay their debtors. So they did what everybody else seems to do in a similar situation- they printed a lot of currency (with nothing to back it up, we didn't have the gold standard yet).

Northern textile manufacturers depended on Southern cotton to keep their mills open and employees working. Similar to Germany after WWI the exchange rate was so disparate that Southern farmers refused to accept the worthless Northern money. To make matters worse, European creditors were breathing down the necks of the Northern states for payment. Something had to be done. Like most governments they took the most drastic and unnecessary steps. The Articles were scrapped. The Southern states assumed all debts that the North could not repay (the North paid them back about 75 years later by declaring war). A new Constitution was ratified and in 1792 the Currency Act provided us with a universal currency.

Looking back, the Articles of Confederation have enormous appeal given the monstrosity we have in Washington D.C. today. (At least to me) As a side note, I would like to point out how honorable men do honorable things in the face of adversity: Our first president (not good ol' George Washington) Henry Laurens took the failure of the Articles upon himself and assumed total responsibility for the failure- although clearly it wasn't his fault. He was putting the good of his nation ahead of himself. We could surely use someone of that caliber today. Winston Churchill wrote that (and I paraphrase) "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." (Hope I got that right) We can all hope that Donald Trump will be our next Henry Laurens, or even Andrew Jackson. One thing we can depend on...Hillary Clinton most definitely will not!