46 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
DisUnited States, September 8, 2008
This review is from: Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists: Marxism in the Civil War (Paperback)
"The Union is Dissolved!" This was the Charleston Mercury headline for the evening of December 20, 1860. South Carolina had seceded from the Union. The United States were no longer united and would never be truly united again.
South Carolina and the 10 other Southern states who followed her in seceding from the Union were not traitors. Each state belonging to the Confederacy had left the old Union the same way it had joined - by majority vote of elected representatives. According to our founding fathers and authors Walter D. Kennedy and Al Benson, Jr., Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists, Southerners were simply exercising their Constitutional right to form a new government.
By the late 1850s, the heavily populated, mostly industrial Northern states were trying to expand the powers of the federal government in order to benefit their industrial benefactors. This they did at the expense of the less populated, mostly agricultural Southern states. After the 1860 election of a big government radical who promised numerous unconstitutional changes, 11 Southern states decided it was time to form a new nation, one whose federal government did not exceed the powers granted it by their constitution - which, by the way - was nearly identical to the old one.
There was one difference, as Kennedy and Benson point out. Northern banks and businesses profiting in slavery had refused to allow an end to their profitable African slave trade. The Confederacy put an end it. Those who claim Southerners left the Union because they feared Mr. Lincoln might end slavery argue a lie that has been propagated for 145 years. The so-called Civil War was never about slavery, and Mr. Lincoln's all-powerful federal government didn't free the slaves. It bought them.
Kennedy and Benson's research reveals some remarkable facts about Abe Lincoln, his political party and his genocidal army. Lincoln and his party, ironically called Republican, didn't interpret the Constitution the same way our founding fathers did and were willing to do whatever was necessary to put an end to "states' rights," even if it meant killing every Southern man, woman and child, white or black, free or slave.
A republic is a nation ruled by law, but the new Republican Party and its leaders would prove to be contemptuous of both state and federal law, especially the U.S. Constitution. And as Kennedy and Benson discovered, those who formed the basis of the Republican Party had a lot to do with its big government ideology.
In 1848 there were 18 socialist/communist uprisings throughout Europe, uprisings that had the sympathy of a young lawyer in Illinois. These revolutions all failed, so their leaders fled Europe for the refuge of the United States, settling primarily in the northeast and Midwest, taking occupations in journalism, education and politics - the same professions still dominated by leftwing radicals today. Google the names Friedrich Anneke, Carl Schurz, Franz Sigel or Joseph Weydemeyer, and see what information you get.
These socialists/communists had no love for the U.S. Constitution and only venomous loathing for the Holy Bible, but they made this country their home and the new Republican Party their party. Many of these "Forty-Eighters" were protégés of Fredrick Engels and Karl Marx himself, who wrote at least two letters to Comrade Lincoln and even wrote a eulogy for him upon his assassination.
I've read where three of every five Southern men who survived the war at all were missing an arm, leg, eye or some other body part. Many returned home to no home at all, finding it either burned or confiscated by carpetbaggers or scallywags. To add to this insult, what families could be re-united found their children being herded off to public schools where they could be re-educated, "cured" of the thought crimes of believing in states' rights or any other strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and especially the Holy Bible.
For all our losses though, Northerners actually lost more. That's right. I'm not talking about the fact that they suffered more battle casualties. The people in the supposedly victorious North to this day think they won something, when in fact they lost everything. Their precious Union died that December evening in 1860 and despite the best efforts of their bloody bayonets, there is still no unity! Oh, and they didn't free the slaves either. They joined them.
Did these socialists/communists really have an influence on the U.S. government? Consider these four major objectives of the communist party and think about where we are today:
1. An indivisible, all-powerful federal government. States' rights?
2. A heavy, progressive income tax. "From each according to his ability to each according to his need."
3. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. What happens when you don't pay your property tax? To whom then does "your" property really belong?
4. Free and compulsory public education. Google Legally STUPiD.
See what I mean! Buy a copy of Red Republicans and learn the truth you'll never read in a newspaper, hear on network news or learn about in public schools. I can't say enough to commend all the scholarship behind this book, and I encourage every freedom-loving American to read it.
RC Murray
author of Legally STUPiD: Why Johnny doesn't have to read
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24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Eye-Opening Look At Our Present from the Past, August 14, 2008
This review is from: Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists: Marxism in the Civil War (Paperback)
Bigger government. More social programs. Look to the government for help, aid, comfort, and direction. This is no doubt where we are in America today. No matter if the leadership is Republican or Democrats or independents, all want bigger government. In 2000 President Bush was elected President promoting smaller government but by his departure in 2009, the United States government is larger than ever before. Where does the idea of big government come from? Why do diseasters such as Hurricane Catrina and the city of New Orleans reveal that people are more dependent on government than ever before and with no hope of getting out from under its grasp?
In this eye-opening book, Walter Kennedy shows how red republicans influenced Abraham Lincoln and the American political system during the Civil War to bring about their hope for larger government based on the principles of Marxism with the State taking control of all property rights and restributing wealth. This was the rally cry for the North during the Civil War to liberate slaves and to bring about one republic without state's rights to interfere. For Southerners, the Civil War was an act of aggression against independent States with their own rights. The North rallied to fight this idea.
Kennedy does a good job of showing the history of the red republicans, their ideals, and how their influence is still felt today. He shows how Lincoln, whether he realised it or not, was heavily influenced by the red republicans. This effect is ongoing in both political parties today. Overall this is a great book and an enjoyment to read.
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