Offsite Post: ‘School Board Protests and Southern Autonomy’

 

The latest act to provoke the outrage of the faux conservative punditry is the National School Board Association’s letter to President Biden, requesting that he use the massive weight of the federal security apparatus – DOJ, FBI, Dept. of Homeland Security, Secret Service, and others – to squash the frightening terror that threatens the well-being of Americans everywhere:  informed, caring parents who want a proper, moral education for their children.

On one hand, this is a serious matter.  Any moves in this direction by the federal government would be yet more evidence of the brazen totalitarianism it has embraced as its guiding philosophy in recent months.

On the other hand, this shouldn’t be shock to anyone.  During the misnamed Civil War, President Lincoln set the precedent for just this sort of unrestrained, unlawful federal activity.  Professor Thomas DiLorenzo gives a helpful summary of Honest Abe’s virtuous acts while in the office of president (‘The Great Centralizer: Abraham Lincoln and the War between the States’, p. 263):

 

Among the unconstitutional and dictatorial acts performed by Lincoln were initiating and conducting a war by decree for months without the consent or advice of Congress; declaring martial law; confiscating private property; suspending habeas corpus; conscripting the railroads and censoring telegraph lines; imprisoning as many as 30,000 Northern citizens without trial; deporting a member of Congress, Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, after Vallandigham—a fierce opponent of the Morrill tariff— protested the imposition of an income tax at a Democratic Party meeting in Ohio; and shutting down hundreds of Northern newspapers (Randall 1951). Lincoln’s Republican Party associates in Congress created three new states—Kansas, West Virginia, and Nevada—which helped them rig the 1864 election (Donald 1956, 79).

 

Voters were routinely intimidated and compelled to vote Republican by federal soldiers. “Under the protection of Federal bayonets, New York went Republican by seven thousand votes” in 1864 (Donald 1961, 81).

 

In Maryland, federal troops arrested and imprisoned without trial thirty-one state legislators, the mayor of Baltimore, a congressman, and dozens of newspaper editors who opposed the war. Even the grandson of Francis Scott Key was thrown into prison at Fort McHenry (Talbert 1995; Hummel 1996). All these actions were taken in the name of preserving constitutional government.

The problem for many of the professional conservative commentator class is that they revere Pres Lincoln and honor him as one of the greatest leaders of the united States.  They have trapped themselves in a contradiction:  They laud one dictator (Pres Lincoln), but then turn right around and decry another (Pres Biden). 

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The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/school-board-protests-and-southern-autonomy.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!