blog of bile » Abraham Lincoln

Teaching children to worship Obama in Burlington, NJ

bile — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:38:55 +0000

I’m sure it happened with Bush and we know it happens with Lincoln, FDR and some of the Founders… doesn’t make it acceptable. Especially for a government school.

More info here.

Free Talk Live and Free Keene gets some free advertisement

bile — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:16:35 +0000

http://www.keenesentinel.com/…

Some dollar bills circulating around here these days have two extra messages on them. Yes, there’s the traditional “In God we trust,” and the often puzzling “Annuit coeptis” and “Novus ordo seclorum.” But increasingly, on the front and back of dollar bills, we’ve been seeing advertising messages in blue ink reading: “Pro-Liberty Talk Radio www.FreeTalkLive.com” and “Keene’s #1 Blog for News, Opinion, & Activism www.FreeKeene.com.”

Now there’s an original method of self-promotion.

From time to time people do find stray messages written on the currency. There’s an outfit on the Web called “Where’s George” that attempts to follow dollar bills as they travel about. But, for some reason, currency advertising is unusual. When’s the last time you found “Drink Diet Pepsi” or “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” on the money in your wallet? Such promotions would probably seem a little tacky.

Not that it’s against the law to write on money, although the government doesn’t encourage the practice. The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing says only that it’s better to leave bank notes pristine. The U.S. Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the currency, cites Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code, which prohibits defacements that “render such item(s) unfit to be reissued.”

That wouldn’t apply to advertising on currency, the whole point of which must be to spread a message, not stifle it.

Incidentally, the Secret Service was established in 1865, just three years after the first U.S. dollar bill was issued by Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase. For want of a better idea, Chase put his own face on it.

In 1869, his portrait was replaced by George Washington’s. By that time, Chase had gone on to become chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Chase was born in Cornish, and moved to Keene with his mother when he was about 10 years old. He briefly went to school in Keene, moved to Ohio, and, it is said, later taught school in Roxbury at about the time he attended Dartmouth College. According to one account, he also used to sit in a tavern in his spare time, maybe on Roxbury Street in Keene, and teach other children to read. Today, the E. F. Lane Hotel, on Main Street just around the corner from Roxbury Street, honors his memory with the Chase Tavern.

An earlier posthumous honor for Chase came in 1877, when the Chase National Bank was named after him. It later became the Chase Manhattan Bank and more recently evolved into JPMorganChase, whose consumer banking division is called simply Chase. And that’s where some of those “Free Keene” bills will no doubt end up. Small world.

What does liberty have to do with taxation?!

bile — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:03:23 +0000

The guy is way way off about Lincoln but the rest wasn’t bad. That reporter is so out of it she can’t put together how liberty and forced extraction of wealth are related. Sad state of affairs.

Update: What didn’t make to CNN

The Anthony Gregory Song

bosco — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:14:25 +0000

Inspired by Liberty Forum and Dave Ridley saying that people should create their own media, I decided to write a song about Anthony Gregory. You can learn more about Anthony Gregory at his website. Here you go, lyrics follow after the break:

Anthony Gregory (mp3|ogg)

An-tho-ny
Greg-or-ry
Lib-er-tar-ri-an
Phil-os-o-phy

Anthony Gregory
Campaign for Liberty
Fighting all this tyranny
Frettin’ about history

Spewing from the podium
Long attack of volume
Figures make your brain fume
Vomit when you leave the room

Speaking against prohibition
Advocating competition
Editing the RP mission
Peaceful fella with conditions

Lincoln’s surely not the man
Nor Obama, “Yes we can”
FDR, he’s not a fan
He really hates that New Deal plan

Fascist Delano Roosevelt
A period we could do without
At least that’s how Anthony felt
Of it to Lew he wrote about

F-D-R
would not get far
if he be
where Anthony are

Rocking stats from CATO
Railing against NATO
I think that I’ll just lay low
Stand back and let him go

Don’t think you can compete
With depth and breadth that’s so complete
As to annihilate those who speak
against the libertarian leet

Interpreting the constitution
Showing classical solutions
Property rights to fix pollution
Logic from the revolution

Gregory’s got Thomas Paine
All up in his giant brain
Some common sense for those who claim
The nanny state is not insane

This empire is bullshit
Anthony wants no part in it
Invade a country he’ll pitch a fit
He’s not about to just sit

Stacks-and-stacks
of stats-and-stats
with facts-and-facts
in red-black-hats

Wants a right to self defense
Guns for all with no attempts
To limit language too intense
Won’t waste time on compliments

My bad I was confused
Positive right will surely lose
Leaving with my ego bruised
Negative right he’d probably choose

He’ll mix it up in all the fights
Property could take all night
Guns, drugs and children’s rights
No end in distant sight

Writing he’s done a lot
But articles aren’t all he’s got
His poetry tops this rot
His lectures get a prominent spot

And when he’s done proving you wrong
He’ll stand up and play a song
Keys or strings they all belong
His repertoire is quite long

An-tho-ny
Greg-or-ry
Lib-er-tar-ri-an
Phil-os-o-phy

Apologies in advance for poor spelling and errors in ideology.

The Lincoln worship is frustrating even in small doses

bile — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:29:24 +0000

I have purposely stayed away from the TV today for fear I’d have to hear some of the Lincoln worship which is going on today which I’m sure is abundant.

Unfortunately CNN just had a segment on while I went to get tea about Lincoln’s economic beliefs and the panic of 1837. They had two people, neither economists (not that generally matters), speaking about the above topics. They made the connection that cheap credit through inflation leading to over consumption of land and that the money wasn’t backed by specie. They fail however to truly connect the dots. They also talked about how Lincoln was a road, railroad and canal socialist (implying it was a good thing in a Keynesian sort of way) yet ignore the fact he personally profited big when the government setup that a railroad would pass through land he had purchased prior to his time in office.

At one point the main host mentions that Lincoln was more concerned with slavery in that it undermined working poor whites rather than feeling it was morally wrong to enslave a fellow human being. Not only do they ignore the fact that slavery was economically less efficient compared to free market labor but the person being interviewed ho and hummed away Lincolns bigotry and claimed that’s where he started but ended up believing in full equality. Given Lincoln late in his life supported the Corwin Amendment, said outright he didn’t think that whites and blacks could or should live amongst each other and tried to have the ex-slaves sent to Africa… I don’t buy it.

It’s so easy to make someone out to be amazing when you ignore all that made them not.

On this, the day of our savior’s birth…

bile — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:19:00 +0000

Oh… I’m sorry. Obama is the savior now. Either way I recommend taking some time and reading up on the real Abraham Lincoln, the man we didn’t read about in grade school.

LewRockwell.com’s King Lincoln Archive

In no particular order of importance a select few.

Lord Acton Writes to Robert E. Lee
The great classical liberal was, of course, pro-Confederacy. And see Lee’s prediction of the course of the US government after Lincoln’s conquest.
The Great Centralizer
George Crispin on Abe’s real legacy.
Happy Birthday, Abe
You son of a b____. Card from Karen De Coster.
Six Myths About Lincoln
Thomas DiLorenzo explodes them.
Abeolony
Thomas DiLorenzo on fake Lincoln quotes.
Happy Dictator Day
Thomas DiLorenzo on Lincoln.
Lincoln Libertarians
Further tales of what Murray Rothbard called “big-government libertarians.” Article by Stephan Kinsella. And see Thomas DiLorenzo on The Real Lincoln.
The Truth About the ‘Civil War’
The worst disaster for liberty in our history.

SEC chief claims regret over short-selling ban

bile — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:56:41 +0000

http://www.reuters.com/…

Under fire for regulatory missteps, top U.S. securities regulator Christopher Cox defended his agency’s record but acknowledged some regrets over how he handled the worst financial crisis in decades.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has been lambasted by lawmakers and others for not doing enough to prevent the 2008 collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, interfering with markets and failing to detect the alleged $50 billion fraud at Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff’s firm.

Cox, a Republican and former California congressman, said the SEC’s focus has been customer protection and broker dealer regulation and that the agency “performed that traditional role superbly.”

However, Cox said he had some regrets over a drastic action the agency took as markets were hurtling downward in September. For a few weeks, the SEC stopped investors from making bearish bets on financial stocks like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.

The SEC’s office of economic analysis is still evaluating data from the temporary ban on short-selling. Preliminary findings point to several unintended market consequences and side effects caused by the ban, he said.

“While the actual effects of this temporary action will not be fully understood for many more months, if not years, knowing what we know now, I believe on balance the commission would not do it again,” Cox told Reuters in a telephone interview from the SEC’s Los Angeles office late on Tuesday. “The costs appear to outweigh the benefits.”

The SEC imposed the temporary ban under intense pressure from the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department which insisted it was crucial to the short-term survival of these institutions, Cox said.

A few weeks after the temporary ban was lifted, global markets were again dropping precipitously, U.S. banks were begging the SEC to reinstate its short-sale ban and there was talk of shutting the markets down.

Cox said the chief executive of one major U.S. investment bank even urged suspension of normal trading rules across the entire U.S. market, likening the situation to how Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and Franklin Roosevelt sent Japanese-Americans to internment camps during World War Two.

The chief executive said, “that is how America made it through such crises, and we couldn’t be too focused on maintaining the rule of law,” Cox said. “That was advice we rejected.”

Wonderful. Comparing his their actions to that of outright tyrants. In one respect I agree. What was done was but a difference of degrees and not kind. But the level of degrees is so great it’s a bit of an insult to those who suffered as a result of Lincoln’s and FDR’s actions.

This was completely predicted by anyone with half an economic brain. The ban was obviously pushed for by John Mack of Morgan Stanley, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs along with other major bank players. No net good can occur due to government interference. Only relative to the bad they caused prior.

The Original Liberal on a “Second Lincoln”

bile — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 15:23:54 +0000

This comes from this weeks USNews in a Q&A with George McGovern:

Why do you consider Obama another Lincoln?

I think he is a healing figure and yet hasn’t surrendered his convictions. I think he is very careful not to come across as a radical. He tries to appeal to common sense, and he is willing to make compromises. I also think that both Lincoln and Barack have a deep and abiding faith in our founding ideals.

It’s clear in your book that you admire Lincoln not just for his speeches but for his ability to play political hardball. Do you see that in Obama?
Yes, I do. I think he had the best organized, most brilliantly conceived presidential campaign we may ever have had. If I do say it, mine was in that same category. I don’t think we made a mistake in the year and a half leading up to winning that nomination. After that, we ran into all kinds of difficulty.

What do you make of Obama’s “team of rivals”‘ approach to creating his cabinet?
I think it’s wise. Franklin Roosevelt did that, too. His secretary of war and his secretary of the Navy in World War II were both Republicans. George Washington kept both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his cabinet. Lincoln didn’t invent the team of rivals, but he probably did it as well as any president we’ve had.

Antiwar liberals haven’t had much success running for president since you lost in 1972. Does the election of Obama, who opposed the Iraq war, feel like vindication?
Yes, people who opposed these unnecessary wars do feel somewhat vindicated. Of course, I opposed the Iraq war, too. I was on television two or three times warning against it. I’ve seen one poll as high as 80 percent of Americans think we made a mistake going into Iraq. I suppose we’d get similar poll results on whether Vietnam was a sound policy.

Do you believe Obama will keep his campaign promise to pull American troops out of Iraq ?
Bush thinks it’s a big concession that we’ll have them out by 2012. I don’t think any president can keep those troops in there until 2012. Obama has said we’ve got to get out of Iraq, but the real problem is Afghanistan. Well, you go from Iraq into Afghanistan, you’re moving from the frying pan into the fire.

Does he really believe Obama is antiwar? Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel were the only antiwar candidates. Obama has shown no desire to stop the MIC, end the occupation of Iraq and Afganistatian or bring home troops stationed in the over 130 countries around the world. And then to compare him Lincoln? Lincoln was in charge of the war which killed what would now be over 6 million. The largest percentage of any war the US has engadged in. That’s hardly peaceful or antiwar.

At least McGovern isn’t so starry eyed to act as if Obama’s supposed “team of rivals” is unique. As if any two individuals in Obama’s cabinet are as ideologically different as Hamilton and Jefferson were.

How appropriate: Obama to use same Bible as Lincoln to be sworn into office

bile — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:09:00 +0000

http://www.pic2009.org/…

Facing a nation divided, teetering toward civil war, President Lincoln used his first inaugural address to call for national unity, arguing that our Constitution was created “to form a more perfect Union.“ Now, 147 years later, President-elect Barack Obama is echoing President Lincoln’s call in words and in symbolism. He will be placing his hand upon the same burgundy velvet-bound Bible that was used by President Lincoln at his first inauguration as he is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.

Presidential Inaugural Committee Executive Director Emmett Beliveau:

President-elect Obama is deeply honored that the Library of Congress has made the Lincoln Bible available for use during his swearing-in. The President-elect is committed to holding an inauguration that celebrates the unity of America, and the use of this historic Bible will provide a powerful connection to our common past and common heritage.

Since Lincoln’s family Bible was still en route from Springfield, IL, at the time of his inauguration, Supreme Court Clerk William Thomas Carroll purchased a Bible for the swearing-in ceremony in 1861. President-elect Obama will be the first president to be sworn in using this Bible since Abraham Lincoln.

Hopefully Obama is a better follower of Christ then Lincoln was. I’d rather not see 6 million+ people die and liberty decimated on his watch. He’s got a good start unfortunately. Wanting to expand the Afghanistan war and no plans to take US troops out of all the overseas bases and being pro-wiretapping, pro-bailout, pro-Patriot Act, etc.

The fact there is so much pomp and circumstance around the swearing in of the president is disturbing too.

Glorifying a tyrant: US penny to be redone, commemorative silver dollar to be released

bile — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:10:25 +0000

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Starting next year, there will be four new pennies to collect, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

The obverse (or heads) part of the coin will stay the same, showing the 16th president facing to the right.

But the reverse (tails) part of the coin will show different times in the life of Lincoln, who is widely considered to be one of the country’s greatest leaders for freeing the slaves and saving the Union during the Civil War.

The designs for the new pennies were shown for the first time yesterday near the Lincoln Memorial.

The first new penny will be available Feb. 12, Lincoln’s 200th birthday. It will show a log cabin to honor his birth and childhood in Kentucky.

The others will show his life as a young man in Indiana, his professional life in Illinois and his presidential years in Washington (when the U.S. Capitol was being built).

The other side of the penny will continue to show the likeness of Lincoln designed by Victor David Brennan. It was introduced on the Lincoln penny 100 years ago.

A Lincoln commemorative silver dollar also will be issued next year.

Abraham Lincoln did not really free the slaves. The 13th Amendment did. The Emancipation Proclamation said “all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Only those slaves captured by the North by that point were set free. Maryland and Delaware were both slave states and not on of the supposed rebel states. While not recognized by any other government the Confederate States of America was a separate nation with it’s own government defined by their own (though heavily borrowed from the USA) constitution. Therefore from their perspective the Emancipation Proclamation meant as much as if it had come from England. Lincoln also said this of the Corwin Amendment, “[H]olding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” which read:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

As for saving the Union… a highly questionable action. Even if ruled unconstitutional there is plenty of evidence that such a claim is incorrect from a legal standpoint. For example: When ratifying the new constitution, Virginia (1788), New York (1788), and Rhode Island (1790) included clauses indicating they were free to leave the new federal government confederation should it become oppressive. It seems obvious that they would not have joined if they believed it was a one way trip. From a moral standpoint its reprehensible. The Declaration of Independence clearly says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Lincoln was in no way a great leader but a statist who put his beliefs in keeping together a union of people who did not wish to be under the same government umbrella above the lives of over 600,000 individuals.

For more information read Thomas DiLorenzo’s books Lincoln Unmasked and The Real Lincoln. Many complain his views are one sided but given the works written in excess of Lincoln’s greatness I think that’s excusable. You can also find a decent interview with DiLorenzo on CSPAN’s Q&A at Google video.