Glenn Beck’s Lincoln Contradictions

By Thomas Dilorenzo

When I debated one of the gurus of neocon Lincoln idolatry – Harry Jaffa – shortly after The Real Lincoln was published in 2002, he bellowed at one point that "9/11 proves more than ever that we need a strong central government." (In reality, it proved the failure and incapability of "the central government" to protect even its own D.C. headquarters from a few nuts armed with box cutters.) "We need big, totalitarian government to fight all the new Hitlers and potential Hitlers in the world" is the neocon mantra, in a nutshell.

To neocons, Lincoln is the poster boy of militaristic big government that runs roughshod over civil liberties while bankrupting the country with taxes and debt and murdering thousands of innocent foreigners (not that Southerners during the 1861–1865 war were foreigners; they were fellow American citizens). Doesn’t this sound like the Republican Party of today, as embodied in the recently dethroned Bush administration? FULL STORY

When Obama claims to be just like Lincoln, well, here's a sample of what Obama means.

"Lincoln's intentions, as well as those of many Northern politicians, were summarized by Stephen Duglas during the senatorial debates. Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to "impose on the nation a uniformity of local laws and institutions and a moral homogeneity dictated by the central government" that would "place at defiance the intentions of the republic's founders." Douglas was right, and Lincoln's vision for our nation has now been accomplished beyond anything he could have possibly dreamed."

CLICK HERE to read the first chapter and order the book