posted on Feb, 13 2009 @ 08:38 AM
Yes, I know that it is the time of the year for President's Day, but there is more to it than that.
And, yes, I know he freed the slaves in the hostile states during the Civil War, and President Obama has African ancestry, but there is more to is
than that.
Why has President Obama, aided by the media, leaned so heavily on the images and words of Lincoln?
The key to this is understanding what Lincoln did, what he stood for, and what the Civil War was all about. Prior to the Civil War, this country was,
quite literally, a collection of states united. The Civil War was fundamentally about settling the issue of whether we should continue to be "united
states" or instead a single state known as a "Nation." To fight and win this war and make us a Nation, Lincoln had to, in essence, abrogate the
U.S. Constitution. He did so by using force against U.S. citizens in violation of their constitutional rights, and he underlined his intentions by
repeatedly violating the constitution in other ways during the war (like suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus, for example).
Since the time of the Civil War the U.S. Constitution has only existed insofar as it has never been officially declared dead, and the American
people tend to believe it still exists. From the time that Lincoln "united" this Nation and forever magnified the power of the executive branch, it
has not.
So, why Lincoln now? Because the government has the opportunity, created by crises of its making, to take the next step in educating the people about
the sort of country in which they live - fundamentally centralized and fascist. Lincoln is the key symbol who portrays this in subtle ways, whether
most people realize it or not, and he is beloved enough by many to significantly help in pro-government propaganda. What they are signaling is that
we should be prepared for a major ratcheting up of the power of the State, in more obvious ways than have been seen before. Like the poor souls who
fought for the flags of Virginia and Georgia and Mississippi, we the people will be dragged into this collective dead or alive.
By the way, I am a Northerner. For all of my life I have looked down on the South and in particular have been unable to imagine how they could have
supported slavery while fighting for their freedoms. For that reason I have been sympathetic toward the Union cause. But it is time for all of us to
accept that it was, and is, not about regional cultural and institutional differences, no matter how important. The evil we face today is about an
overwhelmingly powerful centralized state making all of its citizens slaves. As our country goes about celebrating Abraham Lincoln, I hope that more
of us than ever realize the evil he now represents.
[edit on 13-2-2009 by Grumble]