Lincoln Did Nothing Wrong

Many, including Newt Gingrich,  have noted the similarities between the reception Donald Trump has received in Washington and that of the first Republican president. Abraham Lincoln was called the "Original Gorilla" and was ridiculed for his appearance, for his speech, for the way he ate...everything was maliciously scrutinized. Sound familiar? There was no slander or slur that was too low to be levied at the new president. If you visit the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, IL, as you wind through Lincoln's life there is a hallway dedicated to the insults he was subjected to. Many quotes are displayed on the walls as you pass, and some spoken over a speaker system. The intention is to convey some of the shock and disorientation Lincoln may have experienced at being exposed to such hateful lunacy.

It harkens back to yesterday's post, that although there seems to be plenty of cause for despair, none of this is a new problem. It seems to be the fundamental problem of humanity, one that ancient wise men well understood. To use their metaphor, there are a great many people who wish to regurgitate all the fruit they ever consumed from the Tree of Knowledge, and to return to a state of blissful ignorance in the walled garden. The desire to do so is understandable. Genesis lists just some of the costs man pays for the burden of knowledge. No one ever said being human was easy. If people wish to renounce the essence of their humanity and live in ignorance, I see no reason not to let them. But they can't then wield political influence. They can't be given a legitimate platform in the realm of rational debate, or to vote in elections. Their presence destroys those things, and we are all drug down into a pre-cognitive hell of pure emotion. We can't have rational spaces if we don't vigilantly exclude the deliberately irrational.

Lincoln is regarded as a national hero, but still there are many who despise him to this day, especially civil libertarians. There are two major issues people have with the man. First was his decision to preserve the union by force. Many feel the union should be a voluntary association of mutual benefit, not some Mafia-like enterprise where you're free to join, but you can't ever leave. We're told that America initially operated with the looming question hanging over it of whether states were free to leave, a question which Lincoln answered decisively in the negative. Because of Lincoln, his detractors tell us, we are forever to be subjected to federal tyranny.

I don't actually buy into this. I don't think Lincoln answered the question for all time. He answered the question in the context of his particular time and place. It probably made sense at that time to fight to preserve the unity of English colonies. That doesn't mean it would make sense to fight today to prevent, say, Calexit. California is white-minority, and increasingly so, and the populace and their elected leaders make every effort to refute America's people, her values, and her laws. (In the populous areas, anyway.) Why would we fight to keep that? It serves us no benefit to govern such a place. It would be more sensical, at this point, to invite them to leave, and to compel the rest of the ingrates within our borders to join them. I predict that, at the next tumultuous period of warfare that occurs, we won't see countries expanding to build vast empires, as in the last century, but consolidating to produce manageable ethnostates. It's hard to imagine the world would react any other way to a protracted era of multiculturalism, and there is plenty of historical precedent.

The other issue people have with Lincoln is his decision to imprison many journalists for war-time sedition. I agreed with this when I was younger. What is the point of defending American unity if you're going to discard all her ideals? Well, America is a nation, not an ideal, no matter what liberals like Lindsay Graham might tell you. And even then, the thing about ideals is that the devil is always in the details. It's easy to denounce Lincoln without understanding the context of the late 1860s. After watching the way our media has behaved these last couple years, I understand that they are completely seditious. I have not a doubt in my mind that Lincoln behaved properly in handling them, and probably with excessive undue restraint.

A lot of people won't ever be able to get past this. "The media has freedom of speech!" they shout. Thus the president can't shut them down for their words. The First Amendment really needs to be rewritten to state freedom of political expression, which is obviously the intended meaning. At no point ever was it taken to mean the freedom to say anything at all. There is all kinds of speech that is rightfully illegal. With the media, we give them license to print as they wish, under the assumption that they are making an attempt to disseminate the truth. There is a world of difference between a paper which tells truths that damage the government and a paper which tells lies that damage the government. The former is a vital process of exchanging truth in a political system where the free-flow of truthful information is absolutely critical. The latter is sedition. The major error made today is that so many falsely equate truthful media with lying media. It's sort of like comparing an investor who gets you a great return with one who takes all your life savings and flees the country. These are not comparable things.

Today's media do very little besides lie, and they lie to damage the elected government. They've done everything possible to bestow legitimacy upon a legal investigation against the president based on unsubstantiated "research" funded by his opponent. If that is not sedition, then the laws must be stricken from the books, because sedition does not exist. Check out this article, called 10 Of The Dumbest Questions Reporters Asked During Trump’s Health Press Conference. Look how desperate these reporters are to twist the medical report into something that will be damaging to the president. They accuse the doctor (appointed by Obama) of lying, by omitting details or providing a false body weight. This is exactly how we say they operate - they turn any reality into a negative against Trump - and here they are performing the act on camera in front of the American public! Realize that this is the process going on in every newsroom in America about every potential news story. "How can we contort the truth to damage the president?" That is sedition, not journalism.

If Trump followed Lincoln's lead and imprisoned the most egregious offenders, do you think that would be a net benefit to the country? I can't see how it wouldn't. These false slanderers are doing the devil's work. Who says the devil should be permitted to carry on his work unhindered? The moral dilemma that would arise is, if governments can imprison inconvenient lying journalists, what is to stop them in the future from imprisoning inconvenient truthful journalists, a favored tactic of dictators everywhere? Well, the difference is whether or not the journalist is truthful. Those who reject the fruit of knowledge can't possibly make the distinction. Only those who dedicate themselves to understanding the truth could possibly make the correct determination. In America, the brainwashed masses are the decision makers and, since they could not possibly come to a proper assessment, we just treat all journalists the same, no matter their degree of honesty. No one has the right to distinguish between truth and lies.

We can't continue like this forever. We all know that eventually someone will have to do something about the lying press. Trump won't use state power to suppress them, as much as they pretend he is already doing so. He is doing his best to destroy them in the court of public opinion. I hope it works, but I retain ample pessimism. He may, like Lincoln, find that the only way to preserve the union is to force shut the spigot of chaos.