by Agence France-Presse, Raw Story

The world needs a treaty to prevent cyber attacks becoming an all-out war, the head of the main UN communications and technology agency warned Saturday.

International Telcommunications Union secretary general Hamadoun Toure gave his warning at a World Economic Forum debate where experts said nations must now consider when a cyber attack becomes a declaration of war.

With attacks on Google from China a major talking point in Davos, Toure said the risk of a cyber conflict between two nations grows every year.

He proposed a treaty in which countries would engage not to make the first cyber strike against another nation.

“A cyber war would be worse than a tsunami — a catastrophe,” the UN official said, highlighting examples such as attacks on Estonia last year.

He proposed an international accord, adding: “The framework would look like a peace treaty before a war.”

Countries should guarantee to protect their citizens and their right to access to information, promise not to harbour cyber terrorists and “should commit themselves not to attack another.”

John Negroponte, former director of US intelligence, said intelligence agencies in the major powers would be the first to “express reservations” about such an accord.

Susan Collins, a US Republican senator who sits on several Senate military and home affairs committees, said the prospect of a cyber attack sparking a war is now being considered in the United States.

“If someone bombed the electric grid in our country and we saw the bombers coming in it would clearly be an act of war.

“If that same country uses sophisticated computers to knock out our electricity grid, I definitely think we are getting closer to saying it is an act of war,” Collins said.

Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, said “there are at least 10 countries in the world whose internet capability is sophisticated enough to carry out cyber attacks … and they can make it appear to come from anywhere.”

“The Internet is the biggest command and control center for every bad guy out there,” he said.

The head of online security company McAfee told another Davos debate Friday that China, the United States, Russia, Israel and France are among 20 countries locked in a cyberspace arms race and gearing up for possible Internet hostilities.

Mundie and other experts have said there is a growing need to police the internet to clampdown on fraud, espionage and the spread of viruses.

“People don’t understand the scale of criminal activity on the internet. Whether criminal, individual or nation states, the community is growing more sophisticated,” the Microsoft executive said.

“We need a kind of World Health Organization for the Internet,” he said.

“When there is a pandemic, it organizes the quarantine of cases. We are not allowed to organize the systematic quarantine of machines that are compromised.”

He also called for a “driver’s license” for internet users.

“If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance.”

Andre Kudelski, chairman of Kudelski Group, said that a new internet might have to be created forcing people to have two computers that cannot connect and pass on viruses. “One internet for secure operations and one internet for freedom.”

by Robert J. Avrech

An Ethiopian Jewish woman soldier takes aim. Both men and women serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. Thus, there is a weapon in almost every Israeli home.

Before our son Ariel Chaim ZT”L passed away, age twenty-two, in 2003, we spent a good deal of time discussing the Second Amendment, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Ariel was amazed that so many American Jews—overwhelmingly liberal and secular—aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens.

Trapped and Defenseless
During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, my wife Karen and I, Ariel and Offspring #2, were inside a film theater. Abruptly, an angry mob congregated outside; soon they were trying to break down the doors. Trapped inside, we were all terrified. I held Offspring#2 in my arms; she shivered like a frightened rabbit. Karen gripped Ariel’s hand.

“Don’t worry,” we were assured, “the police will be here soon.”

But the police did not arrive that night, nor did they protect the city from arson, looting and murder. In fact, we watched in disbelief as news cameras captured images of police officers standing idly by while looters gleefully committed their crimes.

A few days later, I purchased a pistol, a 1911 .45 ACP.

I bought a gun because I realized that the day will most certainly again arrive when civil order breaks down and we are flung into a cruel Hobbesian landscape.

Here’s my three part series on the LA Riots, Hollywood is Burning:

Part I

Part II

Part III

As Ariel’s conservative political opinions took form, he logically and ethically fell on the side of legal gun ownership. But because he was first and foremost a Torah Jew, first and foremost a Talmudicscholar, Ariel placed gun ownership into the framework of Jewish law, halacha.

Ariel wanted to put down his ideas on paper. Unfortunately, he never had the opportunity to write an article on halacha and gun ownership.

And so I humbly jot down a few of Ariel’s ideas. Any mistakes in this article are mine and mine alone. I write from an imperfect memory, from conversations with my beloved son held years ago, and from the few notes he managed to scribble while sick and undergoing chemotherapy and radiation.

The Sword is Not the Cause
Ariel pointed out that in his commentary on Genesis 4:23, Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, the towering medieval scholar, writes with refreshing clarity:

“The sword is not the cause of murder, and there is no sin upon him who made it.”

In other words, a weapon, be it a sword or a gun, is neutral. It can be used for good or evil. Thus to label a gun as “bad” makes no sense, for a gun can be used in self-defense which the Torah sees as an obligation.

The Torah (Exodus 22.2) teaches that, when necessary a householder may kill a burglar to save his own life.

The Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin (72A) says:

“He who rises to kill you, you must kill first.”

It seems odd to have to defend the most basic notion of self-defense, but in America today, the shrill and self-righteous voices of pacifism and appeasement have become alarmingly prominent.

Ariel and I agreed that if gun control advocates had their way, the only people with access to guns would be the police, who cannot be counted on for security, and criminals, who can be counted on to be, well, criminals, with no respect for the hundreds of firearm laws already on the books.

Jew with gun. An Israeli soldier of the elite Nahal Brigade, during the Second Lebanon War.

Tyrants Ban Gun Ownership to Secure Their Power Base

Ariel also pointed out that in the story of Purim the Jews were granted royal permission to defend their lives. The King’s edict did not order the army to protect the Jews. Instead, the Jews were permitted to purchase arms in order to defend themselves.

Obviously, as a minority in the Persian Empire, Jews were forbidden weapon ownership.

This is not unique in Jewish history. During the Roman occupation of Judea, Jews were forbidden to own swords, spears or any implements of war. What better way for a ruling empire to control an unruly and rebellious population?

And of course, in Europe, one of the first laws that Hitler imposed was an all-encompassing weapons ban. Imagine how different Jewish history would be if every Jewish family in Europe owned at least one gun that had six bullets in the chamber.

Surprise Folks, Evil Exists

One of the hallmarks of modern Liberalism is an astonishing inability to recognize, much less confront, evil. Therefore it becomes psychologically necessary for the liberal to place the blame on an inanimate object—the gun—rather than on the person who pulls the trigger. It is easier to fault the gun manufacturer for the horror at Columbine, rather than admit that two sixteen-year-old boys are evil.

The Jewish attitude, Ariel maintained, is to place the blame where it squarely belongs: on the two young men; to declare their evil, and never again utter their names. For just as goodness is a reality, so is evil.

Try and imagine, said Ariel, if one or two Columbine teachers had guns with them. Imagine if these armed teachers had been able to protect the students who were massacred.

There was another aspect to these stories that Ariel detected and deeply troubled him. The media invariably referred to Columbine and 9-11 as “tragedies.”

“They are not tragedies,” Ariel insisted. “They are atrocities.”

A tragedy is when people are killed in a flood, a fire or an earthquake. But when people are murdered in cold blood, it is an atrocity. Again, Ariel pointed out, the media—overwhelmingly liberal and marinated in moral equivalence—is unable to distinguish malevolent acts from natural disasters because their moral compass is broken.

Ariel concluded that Jews in America should be at the forefront of the right to keep and bear arms. For Jews to rely on the power of the state for protection is sheer foolishness. Time and again, Jewish history reveals governments cruelly betraying their Jewish citizens.

And though Ariel felt that America was “different,” he maintained that allowing the state to make ownership of weapons illegal is a dangerous policy that opens the door to tyranny in the name of social justice.

But like so much else in American Jewish life, liberal/progressive Jews have signed on to aggressively utopian ideologies that go against their self-interest. Instead, countless Jews espouse principles that feed their need to feel virtuous. But in the end, these beliefs defy common sense and display an appalling ignorance of Jewish history, halacha, and human nature.

“
“Announce this among the nations:prepare for war; arouse the mighty; let all the soldiers approach and ascend. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning forks into spears; the weak shall say, I am strong.” Joel 3:9

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

by Chuck Baldwin

By now, most readers are familiar with the story of how a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, crashed the White House State Dinner last Tuesday evening. President and Mrs. Obama were entertaining Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the first official State Dinner of the new administration. The Salahis were not on the invited guest list, but were still allowed to walk right into the White House. They even had face-to-face conversations with both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Photographs of the Salahis with the President and Vice President have been published in numerous newspapers and on hundreds of web sites.

I wonder if the American people are thinking this episode through? Think of it: in the post-9/11 world, a world that has invented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), body scanners, retina readers, the Patriot Act, hundreds of laws and regulations restricting the freedoms and liberties of the American people, thousands of cameras photographing our public movements, and satellite spy devices, a couple can walk right into the White House and meet the President and Vice President without being invited!

Is there something wrong with this picture, or what?

I well remember what I had to go through when I was an invited guest of then-Vice President George H. W. Bush at the White House. My wife and I joined several others for a luncheon with Vice President Bush and his wife, Barbara. Later that day, we were in a crowd of several hundred who got to meet President Ronald Reagan. Needless to say, security was tight.

Upon arriving, we had to show the proper credentials to White House security, along with a photo ID and the personal invitation that had been sent to us ahead of time. I remember how some of the folks who had actually received invitations were denied entrance due to bureaucratic mix-ups or unintentional lapses in proper protocols. And these were people who really did have an invitation to be there. I can tell you this: there was absolutely no way that an uninvited person could have gained access to the White House that day. And remember: that was nearly two decades BEFORE 9/11!

That an uninvited couple could be granted access to the President and Vice President in this day and time is more than a “fluke.” It betrays something much deeper.

For the last 8 years, the American people have been told they must sacrifice certain liberties in order that the federal government might protect them. And for the most part, the American people have been happy to accommodate this incessant intrusion into their personal liberties. They know the feds are monitoring their emails, personal phone conversations, and even their personal letters when received from overseas. They have sat silently as their banking institutions have monitored and reported virtually any and all financial transactions to the federal government. In today’s super-security world, one cannot even cash a check without showing the bank teller his or her driver’s license, which is recorded and made available to the feds. Sometimes, we are even required to provide our thumbprints. Beyond that, even certain service personnel that must come into our homes to provide in-home repair services, home inspections, or general services are often required to report what they see to various law enforcement authorities. All of this is done in the name of “national security.”

All the while, America’s federal buildings today more resemble castles of ancient Europe than they do buildings that house the people’s servants. Concrete barriers along with super-reinforced, “bomb proof” structures remind one of castles of old, with their guard towers and crocodile-filled moats. Today, people must walk through metal-detectors and surrender their pocketknives to even visit their local supervisor of elections office (or just about any other public office, for that matter). Again, this is all done under the rubric of “homeland security.”

In the name of “national security,” veterans who have been accused of some kind of domestic disturbance or who have affirmatively answered an ambiguous question on a VA form regarding whether they have feelings of “anger” or “depression” are having their right to keep and bear arms stripped away. That’s right, in the name of “homeland security,” some of the very men who were entrusted with lethal weapons to fight America’s wars are now being told they are not fit to purchase or possess their own firearms.

Yet, in spite of all of the above, an uninvited couple is allowed to calmly walk right past Secret Service personnel and have personal audiences with the President and Vice President of the United States in what is ostensibly the most heavily-guarded, tightly secured building in the country: the White House.

Furthermore, this story comes on the heels of the mass shooting on what one would think would be a rather secure location: the US Army base at Fort Hood, Texas. And, have we forgotten the fellow who brought a gun into the Capitol Building (the home of the US Congress) in Washington, D.C., a few years ago and killed two police officers?

Dear Reader, ask yourself this question, Do you really think those schmucks in Washington, D.C., actually believe that protecting you and me is more important than protecting American soldiers, US congressmen, and especially the President of the United States? “Are you serious?” (To quote Nancy Pelosi.) The truth is, to the elites in DC, you and I are expendable commodities. In fact, to some of the soulless creatures running things, you and I are worth more dead than alive (but that’s a topic better discussed at a later date).

The point is, all this talk about “national security” is simply a ruse for Big Government elitists to steal our liberties and make slaves out of us. They don’t care about security; all they care about is POWER.

So, the next time you are required to be strip-searched by an airport screener, or to surrender your pocketknife at your local county commissioner’s office, or to show your driver’s license to your bank teller, or to submit to a random police checkpoint; the next time you make a phone call that you know is monitored by a federal agent (and they all are), or drive under a video camera, or visit these castle-esque federal buildings, remember Michaele and Tareq Salahi. And, if you are old enough, remember the time in America when we really were the “land of the free.” And also remember that it’s not security they seek – it’s the abolition of our liberty.

by Michael S. Rozeff

Wednesday morning the 25^th at 9:45 a.m. meant a visit to Dr. Nick, the ophthalmologist. The office was peopled predominantly by seniors who looked near 80. Two in conversation admitted to being 78 and 79. I felt young. Still, that’s your future and not too far off. Make the most of your remaining time, I thought.

A sign was placed prominently on the desk in front of the receptionist:

“Red Flag Identity Theft Rule. We are now required by law to ask for a Photo ID at the time of each visit. Please have your Photo ID ready for the receptionist to scan.”

Minimizing the intersection of government with one’s life is not always possible. Here was a new and unwelcome intrusion.

“What’s your name?” the receptionist asked.

I handed over my driver’s license and said “Rozeff.” She scanned it. There was a beeping sound.

“Do you have your insurance cards?”

Another reminder of the unwelcome intersection.

“No, I don’t carry the Medicare card. It’s paper and it will shred up. I need to get it plasticized.”

This is true. Medicare doesn’t even provide a plastic card. I never carry it. Carrying the thing around irks me. Do we need collars like dogs? Do we need dog tags like soldiers in the army?

Why is presenting that card necessary at every visit, I wondered? Am I not already on the computer?

As parent to child: “You really need to have it. Medicare’s your primary provider, you know.”

Somehow the receptionist became a syrupy and maternal stand-in for the government. She couldn’t earn her pay without becoming a parrot even if she herself didn’t want to be. She took the card from my private insurer.

“Is this a federal rule or a state rule?”

“Federal,” she replied.

“They can go jump in the lake.”

How much static must this cheerful woman endure from old codgers like me? There is no other frontline between the government and us. We may as well be talking to the wall.

“We have to go along with it,” she said.

“No we don’t,” I shot back. I sounded like my feisty mother. “There’s going to be a revolution, some day.”

Revolution was on my mind because of a bit of e-mail correspondence earlier that morning in which revolution came up. She was finishing up her paperwork. I took the opportunity to conduct a survey.

“Has anyone else ever said that to you? Has anyone used the word ‘revolution’?”

“Not that direct,” she replied, smiling. “I hear rumblings, though, grumbling.”

“Discontent?”

“Yes.”

Why is there discontent? Too many stupid and dysfunctional rules and regulations. Too many taxes. Too many subsidies. Too many obstacles to getting ahead. Too many intrusions. Too much interference. Too many injustices. Too many forced inequities. Too many people getting fat on the work of others. Too many people taking unfair advantage. Too little headway against problems. Too much control by others. Too much compulsion. Too much government. Too much bureaucratization. Too much compulsory centralization. Do this, do that. Don’t do this, don’t do that.

My newspaper subscription has expired, and I won’t renew it for a while. More than ever, theWall Street Journal is a daily compendium of the latest socialist news, or call it what you will. President Barack Obama has something called “Race to the Top.” It’s part of $100 billion for “education,” which in turn is part of the near-trillion dollar legislation pushed through in his early days. The idea is to reverse the embarrassing decline in public school education. Its sponsors say that one-third of public school children fail to graduate.

Obama’s spending includes billions upon billions for “science.” After a bill like this has passed, the newspapers dutifully report each drip of the money faucet into each rivulet of “stimulus.” The politicians get the maximum voter mileage from each such announcement. The stimulus provides continual socialist propaganda.

The establishment keeps scooping up the nation’s wealth which it then pumps out to its favorites. It keeps borrowing more wealth and dispersing that. It keeps printing dollars on top of all that.

Obama is the establishment’s attempt to put a new face on its old, tired, and worn out nostrums. Fewer and fewer people are buying, but the compulsion machine just keeps on centralizing the money flows. It knows no better. Top-down government centralization doesn’t work, but the machine keeps running. Obama’s cachet is evaporating after less than one year. He’s now under 50 percent approval.

Americans need to turn the tables. Instead of being identified so that they can be taxed, controlled, and herded about, they need to identify the source of their discontent. Iris scanners, whole body imagers, pat downs, photo IDs, social security numbers, tax forms, and Medicare cards all issue from the machinery of compulsion arranged by top-down methods of control. They don’t work. Discomfort and discontent are the emotional reactions that herald this truth. Compulsory centralization is a loser.

In 1978, Howard Beale’s voice symbolized the discontent rising in the land. Dough takes time to rise, and revolutions take time to brew. Years. Decades. Recognition of the source of discontent is necessary. Conversation about it is necessary.

Widespread government compulsion in all matters great and small is the order of the day. It is accepted, with growing grumbling. Compulsion as a general rule and way of life is something that has to be seen and rejected asunacceptable. When that happens, the revolution will be upon us.

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Dear Glenn,

First of all, congratulations on deciding to become a community organizer for the cause of liberty and prosperity, as reported all over the media recently. You will be a stark contrast to the Marxist in the White House who boasts of his “community organizing” efforts for the exact opposite cause, ACORN-style socialism as defined by its “People’s Platform.” (His nationalization of banks, General Motors, and possibly health care, and his administration’s bombastic, anti-capitalist rhetoric, reminds me a lot of Lenin’s first months in power.)

Glenn, I’m writing to offer a few suggestions with regard to your upcoming community organizing efforts, which I’m sure will attract huge media attention and could potentially be very influential. First, you really need to “man up” those “Five Pledges” of yours, especially Pledges 1 and 2. There you say you are in favor of a balanced budget, and that government should not increase the financial burden on taxpayers “during difficult economic times.”

I certainly agree with the last part of this statement. Raising taxes during a depression is exactly the opposite of what even a central-planning Keynesian would advocate. This only highlights the fact that Obama is not a Keynesian central planner, as Democratic presidents usually are (and most Republicans as well), but a central planner of the Marxian variety. Marxists want to destroy the existing economic system, creating a social catastrophe that they hope will allow them to foment a revolution and consolidate their political power. Keynesians are merely neo-mercantilists who use Keynesian ideology to pull the wool over the public’s eyes with regard to their policy of perpetual political plunder under the guise of a perpetual quest for prosperity.

But come on, Glenn, don’t fall for that Big Government propaganda line about the alleged virtues of a balanced budget. What the government establishment means by budgetary balance is a devotion to endless tax increases to fund all of their pie-in-the-sky special-interest spending programs. According to this propaganda line a doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of government spending, and the consequent shrinking of private-sector prosperity, is perfectly fine as long as taxes are also doubled, tripled, or quadrupled at the same time. Americans already pay more in taxes than medieval serfs did, so what’s so good about waiting for “good economic times” to be plundered and robbed even more?

I notice that you frequently display a picture of Thomas Jefferson on the television screen during your Fox News Channel program. You would do well to dump those first two pledges and, in their place, adopt what Mr. Jefferson said in his first inaugural address:

[A] wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government . . .

Saying that government “shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned” means there should be no taxes on earnings. If you’re serious about calling yourself a Jeffersonian, Glenn, you would advocate the total elimination of income taxation (for starters), and not potentially endless increases of it “during good times.” You should also abandon that Pledge #3 about “energy independence.” Such rhetoric is just another protectionist smokescreen, no different from those who insist that we must free ourselves of foreign beef, tomatoes, cars, etc. Isolating ourselves from the international division of labor is a good recipe for economic disaster.

Your pledge #5 is also highly problematic. You say, “I believe the United States of America is the greatest country on earth and therefore will not apologize for policies or actions which have served to free more and feed more people around the world than any other nation on the planet.” The problem with this is that you equate “the United States of America” with the federal government. I think your confusion stems for a misunderstanding of the difference between nationalism and patriotism. A nationalist, as my old friend Clyde Wilson has said, is someone who promotes the aggrandizement of the state in all its “glory.” A patriot, in sharp contrast, is someone who simply loves his country and its people.

Your statement is way too nationalistic. It seems to be a version of the neocon propaganda line that “We saved Europe from the Nazis in World War II, therefore, every successive military intervention, no matter how misguided, and no matter how many innocent foreigners are murdered, is justified. The rest of the world should just shut up.” This is what the neocons at the Claremont Institute and the American Enterprise Institute would call “statesmanship,” but “arrogant, imperialistic propaganda” would be more accurate.

Good luck with the Washington, D.C. rally that you’re planning for next August at the Lincoln Memorial. One more suggestion: Hold the rally at the Jefferson Memorial instead. Lincoln was a tyrant who waged total war on his own citizens, orchestrating the murder of some 350,000 of them, including 50,000 Southern civilians. Jefferson was the founding generation’s champion of liberty. In his first inaugural address Lincoln first made an ironclad defense of slavery, including a promise to support its enshrinement in the U.S. Constitution, while threatening “bloodshed” and“invasion” over tax collection. He said it was his “duty to collect the duties and imposts,” and“beyond that there will not be an invasion of any state.” The tariff on imports had just been doubled two days earlier. “Pay Up or Die” was his message.

Contrast this, Glenn, with what Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural address: “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” This could not possibly be more different from Lincoln’s “Do As I Say Or Die”commandment. After all, secession or “separation” from the British Empire is how America was created. Secession was “the” principle of the American Revolution according to George Washington’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering. Since the theme of your television program on the Fox News Channel is “Refounding America,” I think you should highlight and discuss the right of secession and its virtues on your program every single day. It is probably the only real hope that we have to escape Obammunism.

If you’re not convinced, consider this: In a January 29, 1804 letter to Dr. Joseph Priestly, Jefferson wrote that“Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern . . . and did I now foresee a separation [i.e., secession] at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern . . .” In an August 12, 1803 letter to his friend John Breckenridge on the subject of the New England Federalists, who were at that time threatening to secede from the union, Jefferson said that if there were a “separation” then “God bless them both [North and South] & keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better.”

As you can see, Glenn, Lincoln was in many ways the anti-Jefferson, which is to say, an enemy of liberty. Consider Mr. Jefferson’s most famous publication, The Declaration of Independence. In that document the states are said to be “free and independent.” Lincoln disagreed and waged total war on the Southern states to “prove” himself right. They were not free and independent, he insisted, despite the clear language of the Declaration and of all the other founding documents on this matter.

In his “Train of Abuses” condemnation of the King of Great Britain Jefferson said “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly…” Lincoln imprisoned members of the Maryland legislature, deported a Democratic congressman, and imposed military rule on parts of the South that became conquered territory during the war. This is no different from what King George III did.

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone,” Jefferson wrote. By suspending habeas corpus and imprisoning tens of thousands of Northern citizens without any due process, Lincoln made his will the law of the land, just as King George III had done.

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” said Jefferson in the Declaration. Myriad new bureaucracies, including an internal revenue bureaucracy, were created to run the occupied states during the war, and all states after the war.

“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.” This is exactly what Lincoln did by suspending the writ of habeas corpus and ordering the mass arrest of thousands of political dissenters in the North during the war.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.” The legislatures of the Southern states did not invite a federal invasion, as required by the “insurrection clause” of the U.S. Constitution in cases of insurrections, which did not exist anyway in 1861. The Party of Lincoln kept standing armies in the South for a decade after the war while the states were ruled as military dictatorships under the direction of the Republican Party.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws . . .” Lincoln ignored the Constitution completely. Nowhere is a president given the constitutional authority to invade his own country, suspend habeas corpus, wage war without consent of Congress, deport congressmen, shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, etc., etc.

“For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.” Lincoln blockaded Southern ports during the war, and was a lifelong protectionist of the worst kind. His party imposed average tariffs in the 50 percent range for almost half a century after the war.

“For imposing taxes on us without consent.” The South did not consent to paying a doubled import tariff. Lincoln kept the promise that he made in his first inaugural address and launched a military invasion of the entire South to force them to pay “his” duties and imposts.

“For depriving us in many cases, of the right of Trial by jury.” How else could one describe Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus?

“He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coast, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies, of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny.” Well, Southerners certainly weren’t“protected” by Lincoln’s invasion of their country; Southern ports were blockaded and Southern ships were sunk; entire Southern towns were burned to the ground by the Union Army under Sherman and others; the lives of some 350,000 Southerners were snuffed out; hundreds of thousands of European mercenaries were paid to wage war on American citizens by the Lincoln regime. “Death, desolation and tyranny” is a perfect description of the Lincoln administration.

Glenn, I know that you have praised Lincoln for “persevering” in his mass murder of fellow citizens from the Southern states until he finally “prevailed.” This of course is an essential part of the neocon/Lincoln Cult party line. It has been repeated endlessly on your own Fox News Channel by all those neocons who keep telling us that we should never, ever, withdraw our military from the Middle East until “the job is finished” (which would probably be long after we are both dead, if ever). But did you know that all other countries of the world that ended slavery in the 19th century, the British, Dutch, Spaniards, French, Danes, Swedes – all did sopeacefully without a war? And did you know that slavery was also ended peacefully in all of the Northern states, including New York where slavery still existed in the early 1850s? (See the book, Slavery in New York.) I highly recommend that you read Jim Powell’s excellent book, Greatest Emancipations: How the West Ended Slavery,which describes in great detail how the rest of the world ended slavery peacefully instead of using slaves as political pawns in a war that was not about them but was a struggle for political power, as all wars are.

This calls into question the fairy tale about Lincoln and emancipation that all Lincoln Cultists repeat endlessly. The war was all a part of some grand strategy to free the slaves, they tell us. But what kind of “statesman” would ignore all of world history including the history of his own country (in the Northern states) with regard to how slavery was ended and plunge his country into the bloodiest war in human history up to that point? Is this “grand strategy” that caused the death of almost 700,000 Americans and maimed several times that number for life a praiseworthy one?

Glenn, if you are upset about the Fed and its showering of corporate welfare on Wall Street banksters and myriad other fat-cat corporations, you should also know that Lincoln spent his entire adult life championing the “American System” of Alexander Hamilton, which was the only policy plank of the Whig Party that Lincoln belonged to for more than twenty years before becoming a Republican. The “American System,” which was really the corrupt British mercantilist system designed for America, involved a central bank that would print money to finance corporate welfare for railroad corporations and others, along with high, protectionist tariffs which are also, of course, a form of corporate welfare. It was Lincoln’s National Currency Acts that resurrected central banking in America and led to the creation of the Fed. No member of the old Whig Party was a more forceful proponent of central banking – a bank run by politicians out of the nation’s capital – than Abraham Lincoln was.

What Lincoln’s Whig Party (which morphed into the Republican Party after the Whig Party imploded in the early 1850s) stood for was perfectly described by the famous playwright and law partner of Clarence Darrow, Edgar Lee Masters of Illinois, in his book, Lincoln the Man. It was a “political system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government. [It] offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises . . . [and] a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone . . . . Its principles were plunder and nothing else.”

In light of this, I think it would be an absurd farce to hold a rally protesting the Fed, corporate welfare, bailouts, Big Government, etc. at the Lincoln Memorial. Thomas Jefferson opposed every one of these policies, as did his political heirs, the big majority of whom were Democrats and neither Whigs nor Republicans. Hold the rally at the Jefferson Memorial. Best of luck to you.