What Would Lincoln Do?

As I read with shock and horror of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the reams of sympathetic and despairing outpourings regarding his death, two historical events involving civil wars come to mind, as if setting a framework for this political and human tragedy. The first involves Abraham Lincoln.

It is well-known that Abraham Lincoln launched the Civil War without first consulting Congress as the Constitution stipulated, but what is less well-known is his instructing his secret police to imprison thousands of dissident Northerners — lettres de cachet flying fast and furious; suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus; arresting critical newspaper editors and publishers and shutting down their telegraph communications; using troops to intimidate voters; remanding dissenting citizens or “copperheads" to Fort Lafayette, an institution earmarked for political prisoners; and compelling the judiciary to adjudicate on his behalf. For the most part, the judiciary complied. As Ray Basler shows in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln was even ready to imprison any citizen who had the temerity to remain silent and not support his war aims.

What is most interesting in this case is that Lincoln’s autocratic maneuvers have been greeted with approval by the vast majority of American politicians, historians, teachers, students, and lay citizens. They seem to have no problem with demagogic measures taken to preserve or promote what they consider to be right.  

The second is the comparatively recent Portuguese or Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, a military coup that ended a decades-long dictatorship. The coup became a popular uprising when citizens joined the troops, placing carnations in their guns and giving the revolution its name — an event that led to the overthrow of tyrant Marcello Caetano, the restoration of democracy, and major social improvements in the conduct of social and political affairs in the country, including a new Constitution and previously banned civil liberties. 

What is fascinating about the Carnation Revolution is that the cycle of revolutionary events does not follow the time-honored path charted by Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution, in which a regime succumbs to revolutionary fever, leading to a radical stage, a counter-revolutionary reaction, and finally, a return to a more stable state, often characterized by centralized power concluding in a new, authoritarian form of rule. Quite the contrary in this case, as the army retired and allowed a new, freely-chosen dispensation to take root.

These reflections lead to the question of what is to be done to prevent the recurrence of more Charlie Kirks, more assassinations, more incendiary violence in the streets, more incitement in the Academy, more virulent rhetoric in the media, for none of this is about to go away. The evidence is clear. BlueSky “erupts in calls for more violence against right-wingers like Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and more.” The New York Times obit is replete with lies and sanctimonious schadenfreude. Even in Canada, Juno News points out, “a disturbing number of academics, activists, and even educators openly mocked or celebrated Kirk's death online.” The list goes on and on.

Conservatives are outraged and appear ready for radical change, yet in column after article after editorial, all expressing the right sentiments, the hard truth is not spelled out with literal precision. “We’re not going to trash our Constitution,” writes Kurt Schlichter, we will take righteous, legal action. This is pretty much par for the course. The fact that Lincoln trashed the Constitution is waved aside or not even recognized.

Scott Pinsker believes that “to bring Americans back together again, we desperately need the help of the Democrats. We cannot reunite our nation unless the far-left influencers — their version(s) of Charlie Kirk — loudly and unapologetically.” But he feels as many do “the desire to smash the other side, shatter their dreams, and leave them a broken, bloody mess” and fears we are heading toward a new civil war — a development, we sense, it would be best to avoid. Regrettably, Pinsker’s hopes for reciprocity and collaboration are a dead letter. The Left, the Democrats, the Trans, Antifa, the Swamp, the feminists, Muslim organizations, and black activists are dedicated to disruption, to force, upheaval, and acts of pure savagery.

Jamie Wilson says “we must transform our emotions into action,” and presents us with 29 recommendations grouped under six categories entailing boycott, buycott, family, faith, community, courage, political engagement, etc. These are excellent suggestions and should be taken to heart. They may, possibly, have an effect in one or two generations — or, frankly, maybe not. 

More is required, or nothing is ever going to change. And this “more” would see, at the very least, the much maligned (even by conservatives) Joe McCarthy brought back into the cultural sensibility, for he was largely correct, fully confirmed by the Venona Archive (as much as we have been allowed to see) and the groundbreaking work of M. Stanton Evans, Ellen Schrecker and Diana West, despite the demonization to which McCarthy has been subject.

Is it not obvious that the Left cannot be reasoned with? Isn’t it obvious that they are committed to violence? Isn’t it obvious that they want conservatives, patriots, and decent, moral, Christian, and Jewish people eliminated and will proceed to pick them off like ducks in a shooting gallery? Isn’t it obvious that they will continue to spout hatred in K-12, universities, the media, and the Democratic Party without let or hindrance, creating an army of miseducated and often lowlife individuals bent on sadism and bloodshed? Isn’t it obvious? 

What would Lincoln have done in a corresponding circumstance, facing the sporadic but increasing violence of the poneric Left and the dissolution of the nation by those who hate it? This is not going to stop. We are dealing with nothing less than unadulterated evil or pure madness, as studied and defined by Andrew Lobaczewski in Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism, which defines the Left as consisting of a horde of actual psychopaths “paving a path to genocide, mass repression, and gulags.”

The war goes on, warns Diana West, “against an enemy who still controls vital territory—academic or mainstream media circles.” And they will not surrender it. The media will not stop vilifying the conservative right. The Academy will not end the practice of graduating mobs of programmed helots and releasing them like pathogens into society. The Democratic Party will remain true to its Luciferian ideology.

If, as West says, the venomous sting against McCarthy has rendered him “history’s Lost man,” so it may render us the lost members of a once-free democratic world. It seems plain that ways must be found, as Lincoln would have done, to effectively eliminate the pathocracy of the Left from the political tournament, for nothing less than our survival as a free and functional society is at stake. We are confronting civil turbulence. Are we ready to do more than mourn, utter platitudes, preach defiance—but to act, finally, in our own defense?

What would Lincoln do? 

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