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Lincoln Unmasked Other products by DiLorenzo, Thomas J. reviews

Description Another book by Thomas DiLorenzo? Yes indeed, but this one goes far more into depth than his first blockbuster on the subject. Recall that DiLorenzo single-handedly dragged serious Lincoln scholarship into the mainstream to show that he was not the great liberator but a classic despot in every way. This book explores the network of academics, gatekeepers, historicans, and politicians who invented the myth and keep it alive. You just can't believe what incredible fibs the hagiographers have told about Lincoln--all documented with extreme precision herein. Walter Berns, leading member of the Lincoln cult, said that though Lincoln micromanaged a war that killed hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens, Lincoln himself "purged his heart and mind from hatred or even anger towards his fellow-countrymen of the South." If you think that's nuts, wait until you see what DiLorenzo quotes from Harry Jaffa! Further, the Lincoln apologists have consistently defended his totalitarian methods of wartime governance. DiLorenzo discusses how the Lincoln cult came into being and came to dominate national politics--and how completely far from the truth they have strayed. They have buried the reality of who he was and what he did in the service of a mythical civic ethos that celebrates devotion to the central state above all else. Warning: This book is super hot, written with the passion of a researcher who knows his subject better than all his critics, past, present, and future.

They say that Lincoln struck a blow for liberty but this book is what strikes the real blow for liberty and truth. DiLorenzo is a brave man who doesn't shy away from busting every myth Americans have come to believe about the man on the penny--and he shows that the conventional story isn't worth as much. Paperback, pages 224 978-0-307-33842-6

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by Marilyn Ghiotti on 3/17/20 09 Lincol n Unmas ked What an eye opener ! I have contin ued to resear ch Lincol n and have come to the conclu sion that to have sent 75,000 men into the state of Virgin ia and war agains t citize ns of our countr y -in my estima tion was totall y uncall ed for. He could have made a

Joe Jussac, Jr. (a.k.a. Yusuf Nugroho/Yusuf bin Jussac)

Below u will, insha Allah (if The Almighty Will), read the below-mentioned piece that SURELY will OPEN everyone’s eyes, and minds (IF u still have them) re the US presidency. THIS IS NOT, and I repeat, NOT a part of the so-called CONSPIRACY THEORY (an extremely UGLY epithet created by ‘the Cabals’ to DENY every MISCONDUCT they have been perpetrating – to this very moment – when their WRONGDOINGS were DISCOVERED or EXPOSED!). Recall what I said, in one of my ‘NetStory-telling’ opinions down far below (can be found at the For Indonesian Only Folder), WHEN SATAN et al RULE, namely, GIGO, Garbage in - Garbage Out? We r dealing, till we DIE, with piles of stinky GARBAGE, folks. Yang Terhormat mas jenderal (Purn., Let.Jen.) PRABOWO SUBIANTO dan mas Hashim, DOES THIS (below subject issue) RING A BELL??? SEMUA, and kuULANGI, SELURUH TATANAN yang tidak berkesesuaian dengan SHARI’AT ALLAH SWT dan UtusanNya (s.a.w.), merupakan bentuk NYATA dari MAKAR terhadap-Nya, dan, PASTI AMBYAR alias berakhir DYFUNCTIONING! BarjiBarbeh, orang Yogya berucap. Amati, SISTEM RIBA-RIBA-RIBA yang membelit HIDUP kita semua, dan ‘makhluk’ yang mengklaim diri sebagai PEMERINTAH, MENYEPONSORINYA! Lihat, kini, EKONOMI Amerika, Eropa dll – AMBYAR!

Presidential Power Mises Daily by Mises.org | Posted on 1/1/1998 12:00:00 AM

Reassessing the U.S. Presidency October 16-17, 1998 Callaway Gardens and Warm Springs, Georgia The worst of the allegations against the president are alarming. But American history is littered with examples of abuses of executive power that go well beyond personal corruption. Where can you go in the library to find the truth about the havoc U.S. presidents have wrecked on the promise of American freedom? Virtually nowhere. The official history of the presidency reads like the lives of saints. The Mises Institute is doing something about this. On October 16-17, 1998, at Callaway Gardens and Warm Springs, Georgia, we're holding a major academic conference on the

history of the American presidency. Our purpose is to set the record straight by debunking the conventional view that the more power the president has usurped, the better off the American people have been. We'll discuss the biased methods used to rate presidents; the abandonment of the Constitution (it didn't take long); the chief executive who turned a blind eye to the Gulag; why bad presidents hated sound money; the supposed Republican good guys on Mt. Rushmore; presidential uses of anti-trust power; black-robed accomplices in presidential despotism; the bloodiest tax collector of them all; how the framers thought they tamed the executive, and how the limits can be restored. We'll examine executive lies that foment wars; the origins of the federal robber state; the atom-bomb lobber in the White House; our third-world empire (thanks a lot, McKinley and Taft); racial agitation as a tool of executive power; falsehoods told about the framers; an actual good president; and what JFK's assassination tells us about the real nature of the executive state. And that's only part of the program. The price for this two-day, 23-speaker extravaganza is $150 per person ($275 per couple), including a visit to FDR's nearby "Little White House." The luncheons are $20 (Friday) and $15 (Saturday) per person. The two dinners are $29 (lakeside cookout) and $45 (a black-tie gala at the elegant Sibley Horticultural Center). We'll meet at America's greatest private park, the 14,000-acre Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia, convenient to the Atlanta airport. Callaway Gardens, home to some of the rarest and most spectacular horticultural displays in the world, is also well-known for its restaurants, accommodations, butterfly habitat, 63 holes of golf, tennis center, lakes, skeet and trap shooting, horseback riding, biking and walking trails, and many other attractions. The charming small town of Pine Mountain is a famous antiquing center. We'll begin at 8:00am Friday morning with registration, and end Saturday evening after dinner. (A detailed schedule and travel information will be sent to all participants, as well as the shuttle schedule to and from the Atlanta airport at $29 roundtrip.) To make your hotel reservations, phone Callaway Gardens at 1-800-225-5292 (or 706-6632281). Mention the Mises Institute for the special rate of $96 single or double. Or phone Pat Barnett at 334-844-3145 ([email protected]) to make your conference reservations, and she will make your hotel reservation as well. Speakers include: George Bittlingmayer, University of California, Davis "Presidential Use and Abuse of the Sherman Act: Cleveland to Clinton" Gregory Bresiger, Ludwig von Mises Institute "FDR's Bad Deal" John V. Denson, ed. The Costs of War "Tricking Us Into War: The Cases of Lincoln and Roosevelt"

Marshall DeRosa, Florida Atlantic University "The Supreme Court as Accomplice: Judicial Backing for Executive Power" Thomas DiLorenzo, Loyola College "Lincoln and the Triumph of Mercantilism" James A. Dunlap, III, Limestone College "The Warren Commission: A Rothbardian Analysis" Lowell Gallaway and Richard Vedder, Ohio University "From Bad to Worse: The Interventionist Bias in Conventional Presidential Rankings" Richard Gamble, Palm Beach Atlantic College "Woodrow Wilson's Revolution Within the Form" David Gordon, The Mises Review "The Use of George Washington in the Statist Offensive" Paul Gottfried, Elizabethtown College "Unimagined Power: The Presidency in the History of Political Philosophy" Randall G. Holcombe, Florida State University "The Electoral College as a Brake on Presidential Power: Its Evolution from Washington to Jackson" Hans-Hermann Hoppe, University of Nevada, Las Vegas "How Democracy Leads to Tyranny" Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Golden Gate University "Martin Van Buren: What Greatness Really Means" Michael Levin, City University of New York "The President as Social Engineer" Yuri N. Maltsev, Carthage College "Despotism Loves Company: The Story of Roosevelt and Stalin" William Marina, Florida Atlantic University "Reluctant Imperialist? William Howard Taft and the Evolution of the Colonial Empire" Ralph Raico, State University College at Buffalo "Harry Truman and the Imperial Presidency" JoAnn Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises Institute "The Real Lincoln" Joseph T. Salerno, Pace University "Presidential Money Mismanagement from FDR to Nixon"

Joseph R. Stromberg, Center for Libertarian Studies "William McKinley: Architect of the American Empire" Thomas Woods, Columbia University "Teddy Roosevelt and the Origins of the Modern Welfare-Warfare State" You can receive the Mises Dailies in your inbox. Go here to subscribe or unsubscribe.

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The Mises Institute monthly, free with membership February 2000, Volume 18, Number 2

A Webb of Lies Wendy McElroy In The Foundations of Leninism, Stalin declared "For the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, we must have the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries." What he secured instead was the slavish devotion of Western intellectuals who claimed to represent the proletariat: left intellectuals. With some exceptions, these apologists either ignored or adamantly denied the atrocities of Stalinism. In doing so, they became accomplices to the bloodbath that was Soviet communism; that is, Marxism as popularized by Lenin. The carnage was inevitable. Soviet communism openly advocated using violence in order to create the "new Soviet man"-an evolved human being whose nature would conform to a collectivist ideal. This man, multiplied by millions, would constitute a brave new society

dedicated to a common goal and acting as though directed by a single will. In short, Soviet communists wanted to reprogram human nature. But how? Marx contended that a man who had grown up in isolation would not be a human being. By contrast, a man shipwrecked alone would be human because of his prior socialization. He would have already been exposed to language, reasoning, art...all the factors that create "humanity." In essence, Marx argued that human beings are social constructs. Ludwig von Mises described the Marxist view of individual man, "The notion of an individual, say the critics, is an empty abstraction." To fill this abstraction, to mold it into an ideal man, it was necessary to control absolutely the society that would define him. If he resisted redefinition, he could be eliminated. The attempt to speed up and direct evolution was doomed. To no avail, classical liberals explained that a man who developed in isolation would remain a human being with human characteristics. For example, he would have a scale of preferences and act to achieve the highest one first. True, without social interaction, much of his potential would never develop. For example, he was unlikely to develop language skills. If he were placed within a society, however, these potentials might emerge. But if they did, the development would be possible only because of his inherent nature as a human being. Not because a collective defined them into existence. Thus, instead of evolving a new man to fit a political ideal, classical liberals adopted a political approach (natural rights) that fit human nature. Their ideal society required few controls. As implausible as the new Soviet man might seem, left-wing radicals in the West applauded the Soviet Experiment. They clearly believed Trotsky's description in Literature and Revolution: the "average human type" under communism would be the equal of Aristotle and "above this ridge new peaks" of humanity would rise. Among the loudest voices cheering were the prominent British socialist utopians, Sidney and Beatrice Webb. In 1932, the Webbs traveled to Russia. This was the same year that Stalin directed a campaign of genocide against the kulaks-the millions of farmers, largely Ukrainian, who refused to be collectivized. When shooting them proved too slow, Stalin created a famine by sealing off roads and railway lines. Then the kulaks were stripped of all food, fuel, farm animals, and seed for planting. The death toll is estimated variously from six to ten million people. The Webbs toured the Ukraine during the height of the famine (1932-1933), interviewing Soviet officials as they went. They concluded that anti-communists had invented the famine. The Webbs' two-volume book Soviet Communism: A New Civilization (1935) repeated the claim: no famine had occurred, planned or otherwise. Malcolm Muggeridge, a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, also toured the Ukraine in 1932- 1933, but he strayed from the pre-packaged Soviet itinerary. He called the famine "the most terrible thing I have ever seen" and claimed that "all the correspondents in Moscow were distorting it." He described the Webbs' response to him. "The Webbs were furious. Mrs. Webb in her diary says, `Malcolm has come back with stories about a terrible famine in the USSR. I have been to see Mr. Maisky (the Soviet ambassador in Britain) about it, and I realize that he's got it absolutely wrong.' Who would suppose that Mr. Maisky would say, `No, no, of course he's right'?"

Muggeridge continued, "My wife's aunt was Beatrice Webb. And so one saw close at hand the degree to which they all knew about the regime, knew all about the Cheka (the secret police) and everything, but they liked it. I remember Mrs. Webb, who after all was a very cultivated upper-class liberal-minded person, an early member of the Fabian Society and so on, saying to me, `Yes, it's true, people disappear in Russia.' She said it with such great satisfaction that I couldn't help thinking that there were a lot of people in England whose disappearance she would have liked to organize." The Webbs staunchly supported Stalin through the Great Purge, the show trials and even the Hitler-Stalin Pact. If the former USSR has any lessons for the world, they are in danger of being lost. The objective histories that should have been written remain blank pages. The wall of denial from the left continues. For example, Walter Duranty-the New York Times correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reports on Russia-also dismissed the famine as propaganda. To this day, the Times has not issued a retraction. Meanwhile, a double standard is applied to Russia. As bombs devastate Chechnya, Clinton and much of the media look away. The chaos and collapse of Russia is ascribed to "failed capitalism" or to a drunken Yeltsin, not to the ruinous decades of totalitarianism. No wonder Soviet communism threatens to regain popularity among the Russian people. Left-wing radicals have betrayed working people by refusing to confront the failure of the "Soviet Experiment." Some of them do it with silence, others with words that lie. In both cases, they deny to the dead the right to be mourned. And to the living, the need to remember. -------------------------------------------Wendy McElroy is the author of The Reasonable Woman (Prometheus).

75 Years of Housing Fascism by Dale Steinreich by Dale Steinreich

On June 28, 1934, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the National Housing Act (NHA) of 1934. Hugh Potter, president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) called it "the most fundamental legislation … ever enacted affecting real estate and home ownership." While federal intervention in housing had begun in 1932 under the supposedly laissez-faire Hoover, Potter's assessment was correct in the sense that the act broke new ground in terms of the range of public-private collaboration – and the unintended destructive consequences of such.

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Let's get the boring housekeeping facts out of the way first: NHA 1934 created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which insured private lenders against losses on loans; made

loans to lenders; "insured" lender mortgages meeting certain criteria (including much longer loans up to 20 years in length, periodic payments by a borrower "not in excess of his reasonable ability to pay," and interest ceilings); established national mortgage associations that purchased and sold mortgages and issued securities funding such activity; and created the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), which insured savings and loan (S&L) deposits. (Recall that FSLIC – pronounced Fizz'-lick in the industry – after repeated bailouts, fizzled into insolvency for the last time before being abolished in 1989.) The insuring of much longer mortgage loans is key here. In 1930, about 33% of American households owned their own homes and by 1990 that figure had risen to about 67%. The typical mortgage was 5 years in length ending in a balloon payment (principal plus interest). Even though these loans were usually renewed for another 5-year term and were a better reflection of natural scarcity, the system still drew accusations of favoring the upper middle class and the wealthy. The government solution, beginning with NHA 1934, was 20- and 30year fixed-interest-rate mortgages repaid in small amounts over time to greatly boost house affordability. This writer, who studied the private-interest dynamics of the time in graduate work, found little evidence, to his surprise, that the class-based criticism of the old mortgage system came predominately from progressives. All the evidence examined clearly revealed progressives desiring more state intervention in terms of housing for the poor, but none asserting that the only suitable dwellings for the poor and lower middle classes were detached houses and some sort of government-given right of affordability to such. (Of course today's progressives in the Obama administration and the Heather Booths of groups such as ACORN are a different matter. Some of them certainly do assert beliefs bearing some resemblance to the latter.) The most powerful interests pushing the bill were the usual selectively free-market Republican-leaning bankers, realtors, builders, building-materials manufacturers, and even some architects. One of the most powerful interests at the time was the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB). Leonard Freedman wrote that these antigovernmental crusades [waged by NAREB against public housing] were hypocritical. No industry has received more help from government than the business of housing. NAREB had advocated a federally chartered mortgage discount bank in the 1920s and early 1930s and was strongly supportive of the Federal Housing Administration and other agencies which employed the resources of the federal government to underwrite the credit structure of the housing industry. To the Home Builders, FHA was indispensable. They were also firm believers in the Federal National Mortgage Administration and the VA mortgage program. While the savings and loan leagues had no use for most of these programs, they had promoted and supported the Home Loan Bank in the 1930s, and it became one of their main props. While the S&L leagues may not have had much use for some federal programs, the S&L industry would eventually come to be destroyed by the replacement of the 5-year mortgage with the artificial 20-year amortized mortgage, plus regulatory and tax incentives that encouraged S&Ls to load over 80% of their asset portfolios with the new longer-term mortgages. It is amazing how long the system remained stable before calamity struck. In legend at least, from the end of World War II to about the mid-1960s, the sleepy and idyllic world of the S&L

executive conformed to the rule of 3-6-3: pay your depositors 3%, earn 6% on their home loans, and be on the golf course by 3:00 p.m. Even though it was released early during this period, the 1946 movie It's a Wonderful Life and its beloved protagonist George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), who operated an S&L in the fictional Bedford Falls, propagates this wholesome apple-pie, church-steeple, red-white-and-blue small-town narrative. While there could have been at least a little more than a grain of truth to this story, Martin Mayer reveals the part that resembles Shirley Jackson's The Lottery: [d]espite its lovely reputation … the old fashioned S&L was a nest of conflicting interests that squawked for sustenance from the customers' deals. On its board were the builder, the appraiser, the real estate broker, the lawyer, the title insurance company, and the casualty insurance company. (Also the accountant: One mutual S&L in Ohio that lost virtually all of its depositors' money was audited by an accountant who sat on the board, and nobody thought there was anything wrong with that.) Plus there was somebody from the dominant political party and from one of the churches. Many little mouths to feed. It is not unfair to say that nobody controlled what this board did. The beginning of the end came in about 1965. The rise in interest rates in the two decades after World War II posed little threat to S&Ls. The interest rate on 10-year T-bonds was 2.8% in 1953 and 4% by 1963. The yield curve remained normal throughout this period (i.e., shortterm rates were lower than long-term rates). The years between 1965 and 1982 were a different story. By 1982, the rate on 10-year T-bonds was 13.9% and, even worse for S&Ls, the rate on 1-year T-bills was 14%. Not only had rates risen dramatically; the yield curve had inverted as well. The Fed had struck again. For S&Ls, the rule of 3-6-3 had turned into 8-6-0, quickly sinking them into heavier and heavier losses. July 10, 2009 Dale Steinreich [send him mail] is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.