Your post reminds me of the flack Ron Paul took in the media during the pre-primary campaigning when he said that the civil war was unnecessary.

Paul claimed that slavery could have been abolished through peaceful means, as it had been done in every other country to that point. He claimed that Lincoln could have bought off all the slaves for far less that the monetary cost of the war, not to mention the costs in human lives.

The media had a field day with that. But only a few weeks later it was revealed that Lincoln was seriously considering that very option. Not a peep from the media about that.

You’re right, and so was Paul. The civil war was about centralizing federal power and had very little to do with the issue of slavery.

And what do we have a hundred and seventy years later? Americans competing against slave labor again. Only this time it’s low cost labor imported via Mexico and the visa system or off-shored to China and other points abroad.

Applying todays mores & ethics to explosive situations that occured 150 years ago is both assinine & small-minded….not to mention absurdly ridiculous.

The truth of the matter is that we lost freedoms during war and gained them again after the war was over except for World War II immediately was followed by the Cold War, so our freedoms remained suspended since, but we began to slowing get them back under Carter, but now we suddenly have to deal with al Qaeda before our liberties had a chance to fully return.

During World War II, the Teamsters Union was turned over to the Mafia which was part of the alliance against Hitler. The Teamsters had been dominated by the Socialist Workers Party that didn’t support the war and was going to have a wartime strike.

Communists on the other hand were slow to join the war effort, but after the Hitler-Stalin Pack ended, they were the most gung-ho war supporters and made great salesman for the idea that now everyone hates Hitler and given prominent position in the media to do so. But then the Cold War started so the entertainment union was turned over to the Maffia to chase the Commies out and criminals used for all kinds of anti-Communist efforts during the Cold War.

Routinely when a drug runner was busted, he’d try to whisper, I’m on your side, and cultivate some kind of credential to try to prove it or bluff it.

There during World War II was the senseless firebombing of Dresden, plus a lot of grim necessities to keep the fact the German secret code was broken, and a whole lot of horrors in between.

Here’s a link on the typical diatribe about evil US repression throughout the years by Stephen Lendman with my much more detailed than the above response following his diatribe, http://www.phillyimc.org/en/obamas-war-terror
http://www.phillyimc.org/en/obamas-war-terror#comment-32408

Google RichardKanePA

1. Lincoln (Worst for America)
2. George “Dubya” Bush (come to think of it… I was there! Total idiot)
3. Woodrow W. Wilson (Worst for the world)
4. Franklin D. Roosevelt (WWW II or Woodrow W. Wilson the second)
5. McKinley (Father of American Imperialism)

They should be referred to as the “Ameri-Monsters”!

Lincoln was definitely the worst. W Bush probably does come in number two. I have this difficulty in attributing evil to nitwits, but I’m working at overcoming this obvious flaw in my reasoning. G W Bush is both evil, and a nitwit. In fact, his being a nitwit is probably what makes him as evil as he is.

Wilson–no argument there.

FDR–no argument there.

McKinley. You’re probably right, although his successor, the psychotic masculine over-compensator T R Roosevelt may have been worse.

Good post!

I limited my list to five but if I had added a sixth “Teddy” would have been it. McKinley, the “Yellow Press” and whatever other powers behind the scenes precipitated the Spanish-American War, subjugated the Philipinos, annexed (conquered) the sovereign nation of Hawaii, and a lot of other sins. A good read on these subjects can be found on Google Books called “American Imperialism”, a paper written by Carl Schurz in 1899. More good reads from the time are by Mark Twain when he became a member of the Anti-Imperialist League. Teddy couldn’t quite beat McKinley’s record but I’m sure he wanted to.

When I say “whatever other powers behind the scenes” I’m toying with the theory these awful presidents are just tools of those behind (or leading) them. Wilson’s words and actions are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Possibly he wanted to do the right thing and was “ordered” to do the bidding of others. I suggest anyone interested in Wilson’s role involving America in WW1 read the book; “Shall it be again?”, by John Kenneth Turner, 1922. Very eye-opening. If you read it take note this was written a decade before Hitler came to power or before anybody had even heard of nazis or Hitler.

Which brings us to “Dubya”. I think his record and the National Debt speaks for itself. I cannot fathom how Congress could have bought into those lies to involve us in Iraq. Maybe it was they who were “bought”. The current fiscal crisis was precipitated to provide a smoke screen to cover the Republican retreat from power. I don’t know if anybody could hear him or not but “Dubya”, while he was getting into the Presidential Copter for the last time, turned back to the crowd and said; “SO LONG SUCKERS!!!!”. I fully support Senator Patrick Leahy’s proposal to bring these scoundrels to light.