Hi Tom,

Having read the links you posted...

I couldn't help but chuckle a bit.

The Libertarian take on this which boils down to it as 'liberty at all costs' - is noble at first glance but impractical in real life.

These folks are judging Lincoln by almost contemporary PC standards - or comparing him to Lenin who came into focus almost sixty years later.

If one has read the bloody, bloody, bloody history of the United States from the Indian wars, Spaniard/French conflicts and the Mass. Colony who would pierce quakers tongues with hot pokers and cut off their ears...or the bizarre practices of same who refused to say 'Good Morning' or 'Good day' to anyone they met because it implied some days were not good...or the peculiar habit of Quakers to shed all their clothes once or twice a week to be free in front of God...

..from the heads quartered and poled, scalped and smashed...and all the crimes against humanity by man against man...

...by these standards the civil war was almost wholesome.

My philosophy is that society is made up of various components - and are equal only in the sense that they are born of spirit and are growing and learning.

To govern a diverse group of peoples requires certain restrictions on freedom.

'Equality' and 'Freedom' in its purest manifestations creates anarchy in a world like ours. Murderers are free to kill. Those who don't kill or do not believe in it must live in constant fear.
Theft is rampant and personal protection becomes the sole responsibility of each individual.

No laws, no government and no policing forces seems like a noble goal - and in a way is one...but it could only be manifested in groups composed of supremely intelligent, almost angelic folks...to be truly workable.

Given that humanity is not comprised of these type folks in any great number - and evidence points out that the opposite is clearly true - that this world is filled with almost devilish, mental infants in great abundance....

...We see that 'Liberty for all' is an ideal which cannot and should not be fully realized. Equality is an illusion. The forced equality of socialism or communism encroaches upon personal and collective liberties...and yet liberties unchecked achieve the same undesirable result.

So the practical and most intelligent course of action - on this planet and at this time - is to create a government, create laws and police forces and yes...armies.

I have read extensively on Lincoln and his rather mannish wife and the various things he did which seem (at times) at odds with contemporary political thought.

The government, when threatened, has the reponsibility for the collective good to enact laws, prohibit rights and generally do 'bad' freedom-depriving things.

The charges levied against lincoln that he 'freed nobody' and that the war was not about slavery are correct.

The war was about secessionists and the increasingly disparate lifestyles of the northerners who lived in industrialized cities and the more rural lifestyle.

To let states of the union secede would prove a crippling blow to the United States - and would effectively create foreign states on your own soil. The food producing south was an integral provider of foodstuffs and raw materials for industry. Dividing the two would have weakened the US incredibly and set the stage for future conflict.

Buchanan was a Clinton...a fence sitter who achieved nothing and hee'd and haw'd about the conflicts but did nothing to avert it.

After the election, before Lincoln even took office the seceding states were almost like dominoes falling away - and his election was considered a blow to the interests of the south.

Industry was the answer.

Lincoln rightfully stood on the side of northern industrialists because any fool could see that farming was not the future of the US, but the past.

Industry and progress made America capable of competing against European powers. The lessons learned from the Revolution - that he with the better rifles bored with truer aim, in greater quantities...rules the land - was not lost on Lincoln or other Presidents and leaders of this era.

Industry would make (did make) America a superpower.

So the farmers were tee'd off - and rightfully so. Slave labor was necessary in their line of work. Heck today...migrant workers are still essentially slave laborers without the stigma. Farming requires lots of aching backs and lots of hands and arms.

Farm machinery was only beginning to be designed and come into usage and in Lincolns era was almost non-existent.

So when Lincoln came out 'anti-slavery' and said "A nation cannot endure 1/2 slave and 1/2 free" he was right.

Anti-slavery folks were very 'PC' for their time and were much like some of the liberal fanatics and greenpeacers we see today. Slavery became repugnant and a 'crusade' was formed.

Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was the 'It takes a Village' of its day - and it was far more widely read and had much deeper impact upon the everyday folks than Hillarys book ever did.

Lincoln could not fence sit like Buchanan - and expect to get elected. Lincoln courted these PC folks just the way the right courts anti-abortion folks today.

If Lincoln didn't - he would not have won.

However, this just insured state's secession.

This was the era in Congress where people beat each other up with hard cane's knocking their victim unconscious and had to be dragged away by surprised and horrified onlookers.

Printing more money worked. I would have done it if I were in Lincoln's shoes. Destroying opposition presses - works.

Freedom of speech is often just what propaganda hides behind to do its dirty work.

The horrible deaths of the civil war were due in large part to:

#1. Non-existent medical knowledge.

You could get a small gash in your leg and it would be fatal. Antiseptic conditions did not exist. Infections were rampant and millions died of injuries we would not even consider life threatening today. Only the very highest ranking folks even saw doctors and one nurse might treat 100's of patients in unsanitary envioronments.

#2 Unsanitary conditions.

Dysentry, Cholera and TB were rampant in the camps. Two of three deaths in the civil war were not combat related - but were due to camps full of s--t everywhere and disease lurking near every tree.

Lincoln had nothing to do with these things and these were the common plagues of war the people were accustomed to.

While the death tolls seem horrifying. They do not compare to Lenins 'worker' death squads which systematically assassinated the top half or aristocracy of Russia, or Stalin's gulags which killed the millions of the bottom half of Russia.

These folks may also claim to have been quelling dissent and maintaining the USSR - but the approach was far different. Assassination, treachery and deceit are not the same as outright war.

Yes, lincoln was not the saint he has been made out to be. But we all know that martyrs are far more powerful and revered dead than they ever were alive.

Kennedy did next to nothing during his three years as President but he is on our half dollar coin - in lickedy-split speed I might add.

I can handle seeing Lincolns face on the penny and fivers. He was certainly no saint - but he definitely was not the devil the libertarians are trying to make him out to be.

He made tough choices. He stood by them. He was not a fence-sitter and he was as pro-active as Nixon (or now Bush) in his use of Presidential powers.

As for non-living GOP Presidents I think I would have liked to know Theodore Roosevelt.

Take care Tom,

SDAI-Tech1