Give Thanks for John Wilkes Booth

I received an email expressing Thanksgiving greetings from a business contact of mine. J.R (I’ll not use his name as to avoid him embarrassment) appears to be a Lincoln cultist, diligently promoting the myth of the “honorable Lincoln.” He offers in his greeting several quotes from Abraham Lincoln, including Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation on Oct. 3, 1863. Says J.R., “I am a fan of Abraham Lincoln and I’ve read several books about this great man. Each time I’m humbled and learn more about myself. I’m also, like many of you, a big fan of Thanksgiving.”

J.R.’s message contains the text of Lincoln’s proclamation in its entirety. I’ll not waste space and bore you with it here. You can look it up if you’ve never read it. Suffice to say that Lincoln, admittedly an excellent wordsmith, rarely believed anything he wrote that could be considered truthful or accurate. Nor did his actions confirm these stated beliefs. Any time studying these actions will prove his statements disingenuous, deceptive, and even outright lies. Personally, I’m as likely to be motivated and inspired by a message from A. Lincoln as I am from the blabbering nonsense of Kim Jong Il.

If J.R. or anyone else enjoys reading books about Lincoln, I highly recommend two by Thomas DiLorenzo, “The Real Lincoln” and “Lincoln Unmasked.” These well researched books (often using Lincoln’s own words) shatter the long standing myth of “Honest Abe,” often proclaimed the most heroic American “leader” in its history.

J.R.’s message concludes, “If only we had Lincoln’s leadership and greatness to help us through our challenges of today.” Yikes! I always cringe when I read or hear that horrid sounding, collective “we.” Yes, “we” should all think of ourselves not as sovereign individuals born with inalienable liberty, but as a homogenous collection of helpless, clueless cattle to be “led” by all-knowing leaders to national collective greatness- or to collective slaughter, whichever comes first.

Lincoln was such a “great leader” that he was willing to sacrifice over 600,000 of his subjects to preserve an abstract, meaningless, political union. I’ll refer to Mr. DiLorenzo to elaborate in more detail;

“…..Lincoln established a French Revolutionary/Stalinist-style regime that imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political dissenters, employed an army of spies and informers (on Northern citizens), shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, illegally suspended habeas corpus, deported an outspoken member of the opposition party, confiscated firearms, illegally created the state of West Virginia, censored all telegraph communication, and myriad other assaults on the Constitution, including waging war on his own country after promising to defend the lives and liberties of the very people he was waging war on.”

And this is just a smattering of the crimes initiated and executed by one of the worst political tyrants in world history. Lincoln’s tyrannical rein set the foundation for the centralized, fascist, thieving, police state that we now suffer under. And for this I should be “thankful?”

Not bloody likely!