ashistory_

ashistory_ t1_je8buqw wrote

The Real Lincoln: Thomas DiLorenzo

DiLorenzo criticizes Lincoln for the suspension of habeas corpus, violations of the First Amendment, war crimes committed by generals in the American Civil War, and the expansion of government power. He argues that Lincoln's views on race exhibited forms of bigotry that are commonly overlooked today, such as belief in white racial superiority, against miscegenation, and even against black men being jurors. He says that Lincoln instigated the American Civil War not over slavery but rather to centralize power and to enforce the strongly protectionist Morrill Tariff; similarly, he criticizes Lincoln for his strong support of Henry Clay's American System economic plan. DiLorenzo regards Lincoln as the political and ideological heir of Alexander Hamilton, and contends that Lincoln achieved by the use of armed force the centralized state which Hamilton failed to create in the early years of the United States. DiLorenzo's negative view of Lincoln is explicitly derived from his anarcho-capitalist views. He considers Lincoln to have opened the way to later instances of government involvement in the American economy, for example Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, of which DiLorenzo strongly disapproves. DiLorenzo objects to historians who described Lincoln as having carried out "a capitalist revolution", since in DiLorenzo's view protectionist policies such as Lincoln strongly advocated and implemented "are not true Capitalism." In DiLorenzo's explicitly expressed view, only free trade policies are truly capitalist –a distinction not shared by most economists and political scientists. DiLorenzo declares protectionism and mercantilism to be one the same, using the two as interchangeable and frequently talking of "Lincoln's Mercantilist policies". In general, academics do not regard protectionism and mercantilism as being identical, at most regarding the two as having some common features. In the foreword to DiLorenzo's book, Walter E. Williams, a professor of economics at George Mason University, says that "Abraham Lincoln's direct statements indicated his support for slavery," and adds that he "defended slave owners' right to own their property" by supporting the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Blacklisted by History: M. Stanton Evans The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies is a 2007 book by author M. Stanton Evans, who argues that Joseph McCarthy was proper in making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason within the US State Department and the US Army, showing proper regard for evidence.

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