Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Rand Paul (Fishing For Votes) Calls Lincoln "The Great Emancipator"

By, Chris Rossini


Rand Paul was doing some outreach work today. You know, as part of the GOP's "Growth & Opportunity Project". He gave a speech at the traditionally all-black Howard University.

Rand's Dad, Ron Paul, was known as a Congressman who did not pander to an audience. He spoke about the ideas of liberty with the same persistence and passion no matter where he was, and it mattered not what ethnic group was in the audience.

There were even times that Ron was booed, like back in 2007 at a Univision debate where he called for the U.S. to talk and trade with Cuba.

That's not what Rand's speech from today was.

Rand's speech was tailor-made for African-Americans in order to get them to switch teams and support Republicans. And boy do the Republicans need Rand.

Just today, Neocon Jennifer Rubin pointed out how the most unpopular Senator in the U.S., Mitch McConnell:
formed a powerful bond with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), which will diffuse serious challenge from his right flank.
And that's what it's all about - "diffusing" the opposition. Rand has many libertarians living in a fog and gung ho that they're going to "takeover"....why not see if he can have the same appeal with African-Americans?

Boy did Rand do a disservice to African-Americans in his speech with the following line:
How did the Republican Party, the party of the great Emancipator, lose the trust and faith of an entire race?
The "Great Emancipator" that he's referring to is Abraham Lincoln.

The Abraham Lincoln who said the following in a famous debate with Stephan Douglas:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
Yeah...that Lincoln.

Thomas DiLorenzo, the great scholar on Lincolnian history, wrote:
In fact, he [Lincoln] was a much more extreme white supremacist than most, for he advocated "colonization" or the deportation of black people from America for his entire adult life. As soon as he entered politics in the early 1830s he became a "manager" of the Illinois Colonization Society which sought to use state tax funds to deport the small number of free blacks living in Illinois out of the state (the state amended its constitution in 1848 to prohibit the immigration of black people into the state, an amendment that Lincoln supported).

Lincoln followed in the footsteps of his idol, Henry Clay, who was the president of the American Colonization Society, and quoted Clay often on the subject. During his presidency he established a colonization office in the Department of Interior and funded it with $600,000, while working diligently to plan on deporting black people to Liberia, Haiti, Jamaica, Central America, the West Indies – anywhere but the U.S...
DiLorenzo then points to a book entitled Colonization after Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement, by Phillip W. Magness of American University and Sebastian N. Page of Oxford University, and says:
Based on newly-rediscovered documents in the American and British National Archives, including letters signed by Lincoln himself, these researchers have established that Lincoln continued to pursue colonization right up to the days before his assassination, when he discussed plans with General Benjamin Butler to deport the freed slaves.

Magness and Page meticulously document how, during the last two years of Lincoln’s presidency, work on various colonization plans "progressed . . . often aided by the president’s direct encouragement and approval" (p. 10). Lengthy discussions took place with the British and Dutch governments, which were negotiating on behalf of business interests in their own countries that were experiencing labor shortages in such places as British Honduras, Guiana, and elsewhere.

After the Emancipation Proclamation (which only "freed" slaves where the government could not do so – in "rebel territory") was issued, Lincoln was hard at work on his various colonization projects. Magness and Page cite British Foreign Minister Lord Lyons as saying in a dispatch to London that "The President of the United States sent for me yesterday, and upon my presenting myself, told me that he had been for some time anxious to speak to me in an informal and unofficial manner on the subject of promoting the emigration of colored people from this country to British colonies" (p. 26).
What a shame Thomas DiLorenzo did not have the opportunity to speak at Howard University today. He would have told it straight, without worry of offending McConnell, Priebus, and the entire Neocon establishment.



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2 comments:

  1. He also said during the filibuster that he's "a big fan of Henry Clay."

    ReplyDelete