As I've said before, even though he gets some things wrong, I appreciate Glenn Beck. He does a terrific job exposing the left for who they really are, and more importantly, he's helping millions of Americans rediscover the truth about our history, and the importance of freedom, independence, and natural rights.
Beck's been on a roll lately too, explaining the perversion of Christianity invoked often by President Barack Obama, which is that of liberation theology and "Collective Salvation."
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy, you can choose to narrow your concerns and live life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America's, but I hope you don't ... Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: And recognizing that my fate remain tied up with their fates, that my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country.
GLENN: Understand what that means, that the sacrifice, the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ doesn't do it. It's a collective salvation ...
GLENN: That talks about liberation theology, that it's not enough, that white people cannot be Christian without giving up their power and all of their money, giving back that which they stole, and quoting him, and white people have stolen a lot from black people. So if you believe in collective salvation, God is telling you that you must take wealth away from people to be able to save people. You can have the purest intent, but it is wrapped in evil.
Okay. But what does this have to do with the War of Northern Aggression?
As important as history is, ours is filled with myths, lies, and legends. First, we spend 12 years in school learning a superficial version of history, posing the worst of our leaders as heroes, and the most irresponsible of government actions as grand. Then once we get out of school, history turns partisan, with the left promoting a history of oppression, and the right defending our school day myths.
... the truth
will set you free. -- John 8:32
We'd all be better off though, if we just accepted the the truth instead. The United States has an amazing and proud history indeed, but it has its ugly periods too. For example, the truth is that Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were absolute tyrants, while FDR and his New Deal greatly prolonged a Great Depression, caused by the Federal Reserve.
Same as it ever was ...
It's easy to why they don't teach you this in the public schools too, because the truth is that the government is at fault for every major calamity in our history. Politicians would no longer be able to parade as saviors - passing bailouts, stimulus, and creating stricter laws - if too many people knew, and the last thing any politician wants is to lose his power.
One of the most horrifying events in our history was the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War). This is a war in which fellow Americans took up arms against each other, eventually killing over 620,000 people (out of a 30 million national population). And if you actually believe this is something to be proud of, may I suggest you put down the crack pipe and pick up a Bible instead.
Contrary to popular mythology, President Abraham Lincoln's War of Northern Aggression was not fought to end slavery. It was a war to exercise central power and "collect the duties and imposts." As Professor Walter Williams says:
Even if it were, a natural question arises: Why was a costly war fought to end it? African slavery existed in many parts of the Western world, but it did not take warfare to end it.
Collective Salvation
Yes. Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant. But more important to this post is that Lincoln's biggest backers, were also true believers in "collective salvation." As Thomas J. DiLorenzo writes:
Indeed, it defined their very existence. As explained by Murray Rothbard in "America’s Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861" (in John Denson, ed., The Costs of War, Transaction Publishers, 1997, p. 128):
The North, in particular the North’s driving force, the "Yankees" – that ethnocultural group who either lived in New England or migrated from there to upstate New York, northern and eastern Ohio, northern Indiana, and northern Illinois – had been swept by a new form of Protestantism. This was a fanatical and emotional neo-Puritanism driven by a fervent "postmillennialism" which held that, as a precondition for the Second Advent of Jesus Christ, man must set up a thousand-year Kingdom of God on Earth.
To the Yankees, their "kingdom" was to be a "perfect society" cleansed of sin, the principal causes of which were slavery, alcohol, and Catholicism. Furthermore, "government is God’s major instrument of salvation," Rothbard wrote. This is why the Yankees never seriously considered ending Southern slavery how THEY had ended it in their own states – peacefully through some kind of compensated emancipation. They were not so concerned about the welfare of the poor slaves. Indeed, even Tocqueville noticed that "the problem of race," as he phrased it, was worse in the North than it was in the South. Instead, as Rothbard continues:
The Northern war against slavery partook of fanatical millennialist fervor, of a cheerful willingness to uproot institutions, to commit mayhem and mass murder, to plunder and loot and destroy, all in the name of high moral principle and the birth of a perfect world. The Yankee fanatics were veritable Pattersonian humanitarians with the guillotine: the Anabaptists, the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, of their era.
"Collective salvation," as opposed to the individualistic salvation that the Bible teaches, was what motivated the Yankees and their war on the South. This of course is exactly what Glenn Beck has been ranting and raving about recently when it is practiced by opponents of the neocon establishment – the exact same establishment that embraces the Lincolnite, Yankee millennialist fervor as one of its defining characteristics. That’s why the neocons constantly invoke Lincoln’s "all men are created equal" words from the Gettysburg Address (via Jefferson’s Declaration of Secession) to "justify" their endless military meddling in over 100 countries of the world.
America was founded with the George Washington/Thomas Jefferson foreign policy of commercial relationships with all nations, entangling alliances with none. The neocon establishment, which is influential in both major political parties, believes in just the opposite: "entangling alliances" and endless military interventionism with as many nations as possible, all in the name of some undefinable Great Moral Cause ...
Can you see why it's important to understand history for what it was, rather than what we wish it to be?
As Americans, we lost our classical liberal traditions by idolizing tyrants and fools. Yet we still can't figure out why, each "crisis" only gets worse. We traded tradition for partisanship, liberty for security, and independence for the State. Now, "collective salvation" ... the belief which drove our fellow countrymen to murder each other en masse ... is back.
The Civil War was, like most other things in human history, and somewhat more so in the case of the US, a matter of competing economic interests. The South was strongly bound to an agricultural economy and the North, a more industrial and banking economy. There was aggression on both sides, so don't kid yourself.
It is so convenient to try to forget that the economic base of the south was built upon the ownership of black slaves and the denial of their person-hood by the U.S. constitution (our "Founding Fathers" saw these same "Negroes" as only 3/5's of a human being). The "War of Northern Aggression", as this deluded author calls it begun to right this wrong that our "Founding Fathers" created.
There is no way you can whitewash slavery and the injustice the United States committed against non-white people. Glen Beck's faux-history seems to be working it's magic in a Joseph Goebbels kind of way.
Well, I should have made it more clear in the post that Beck sees it the way you do. He loves Lincoln. And nobody is defending or white-washing the atrocities of slavery here either.
The north was as much (if not more) racist than was the south. Yet slavery ended peacefully in the north, not through bloodshed. Same for countless countries all across the globe ... The so-called "civil" war started over tariffs, not slavery. Lincoln used the slaves as pawns to gain support his war.
The "3/5's" you're referring to was designed to limit the power of slave-holding states, not to denigrate anyone.
“The so-called “civil” war started over tariffs, not slavery. ”
-Not so!
Read South Carolina’s Article of Secession…….
“The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States.”
“The right of property in slaves….”
“Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution”
Sounds like South Carolina is piss’d off that they can’t have slaves any longer! So much for revisionist history.
To David:
You really should read more about what your precious Abe Lincoln really thought about the horrors of slavery as well as blacks themselves. Remember - history is written by those that win.
[...] The Classic Liberal has a post about ‘Collective Salvation.” This is what happens when Marxism and Religion combine. [...]
The 3/5's rule was instituted to give the slave states more voice in the House of Representatives.
“The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
"The so-called “civil” war started over tariffs, not slavery. "
-Not so!
From South Carolina's Article of Secession.......
"The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States."
"The right of property in slaves...."
"Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution"
So much for revisionist history.
All wars are about economics. The Civil War was no exception. There were three main causes for the Civil War: slavery, sectionalism, and states's rights. Slavery was not the primary issue BEFORE the Civil War, but it has become that today. The war was promoted as saving the Union, which was essentially a states rights issue. Most of those fighting for the Confederacy were fighting to conserve their Southern culture. Why was important to save the Union? The Nothern industries need Southern resources. Again, we are back to economics.
I think too many gross generalizations have been made in the article and by subsequent posts. "Post-millennialism" beliefs did not cause the civil, er War of Northern Aggression, any more than neo-conservatism caused the Iraq war. To say that all "Yankees" were post-millennial believers is to show a gross lack of understanding of the Christians inhabiting our dear country. Christians can't all agree on most anything, let alone what the bible says will happen in the end days. There are at least four different basic understandings about what will occur. Most church buildings contain some people holding some or all of the different views. That said, Christian worldviews did lead directly to the push to end slavery, just as Christian thought leads to opposition to abortion today.
The typical southern male did not fight to retain the right to own slaves--most did not own slaves. They fought to defend their homes. The south then (and now) does not like northern know-it-alls to dictate how they run their lives. Southerners were fiercely independent. I happen to agree with their view that the North had no right to stop them from seceding if that was their desire. The union was a voluntary agreement of individual states, and thus as with any other voluntary agreement can be annulled.
Both ClL and Mr. Walters glom on to a particular writer or a particular quotation from a state constitution and jump to the conclusion that they know what motivated all persons involved on both sides of the conflict.
I've gone back and actually read some of the newspapers written in the time leading up to the election of Lincoln, and the swift rush to secession from the union thereafter. The southerners, at least those writing in the Richmond Times, hated Lincoln for what he stood for, his ideas. He had not done anything yet. It took days and weeks to learn who won. Shortly after learning who won, and before he could do anything to justify their anger, they seceeded.
The war ultimately was fought over the right to decide--does the federal government have the right to dictate how the individual states run their lives. Unfortunately, the answer was decided in the affirmative. I say that not because I support slavery--I wish that issue had been decided peacefully before this issue had arisen, as it clouds the issue. Let's say instead that it was fought over the issue of abortion, or prohibition, or even the federal income taxes. I for one would come down vehemently on the side of the individual states having the power to run their own affairs without having outside interference from know it alls from other states being involved. Often, the federal government stands up to individual states for the right "reasons" (slavery, racial biggotry, discrimination) and forces them to back down. But that begs the issue: do other states have the right (not the power--we already decided they have the power) to tell other states what they can and cannot do? Or OUGHT the other states--through the federal government--exercise the power to tell other states what they can and cannot do? No, a million times no. Butt out. MYOB. Classic Lib, that's the libertarian streak in me talking. Or at least the limited government part of me talking.
[...] did all this lead? Libertarian author Murray Rothbard described the evolution of what might be called the Yankee ethos, based in large part on their view of collective salvation and the importance of “good [...]
One can argue that the primary reason SC seceded was the slavery issue (though without the tariff issue I seriously doubt SC would have left the Union). However, that is not to say that the War started over slavery. Secession and war are two entirely different things. Southern Sudan just voted to secede from Sudan. They have US support in this and the secession is expected to be largely peaceful. When SC seceded, she became an independent republic and resumed total sovereignty over all her lands (including the small island in Charleston harbour where the Feds based a military force for the purposes of collecting the tariff tax their regime so dependend upon). Once the Feds military was removed (without death) from SC lands, there was no reason that SC and the Union couldn't have traded and prospered in peace. But Old Abe called up a huge invasion force and sent it into Virgina, prompting the Upper South states to leave the Union and starting the war. The war was started by Lincoln then and fought over the issue of invasion and independence (just like the Revolutionary War) - not slavery.