Amen to Joe and E Archer. I think that if we could kick government out of education our country might actually become free in the future. As a matter of fact, I'll go so far as to say that getting government out of education should probably be the most important goal of anyone who loves freedom.

Awful! Didn't Lincoln know that when you create money out of nothing you don't create spending power, you just steal spending power from everybody else's dollars. It's a stinky lie to try to steal money from the taxpayers by the hidden tax of inflation, so that Lincoln could fight his war to preserve the (Oh so holy) union, to end state's rights in favor of consolidated federal government, and to retain the southern economic resources. Also, "the servant of humanity"? Try the servant of the bankers...to the disadvantage of humanity!

This quote leaves out just exactly Lincoln was willing to do "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, etc." He was willing to unilaterally instigate and fight the War Between the States, which killed more Americans than any other war. He was willing to shut down newspapers that opposed him, to throw people who opposed him into jail without granting the writ of habeas corpus, to conscript many Americans to fight what was a fairly unpopular war, and to put a virtual end to state's rights. For being devoted to "a new birth of freedom" he sure destroyed a lot of our most basic rights. For being devoted to "the people" he sure killed a lot of them. It's also worth noting that the Confederate were not trying to destroy "that government [supposedly] of the people, etc." they were just trying to make sure that their own country didn't get conquered, and their own freedom destroyed.

So true! So obvious! And yet so needed to be said! Public Education is the foundation of all lasting tyrannies. Does anyone wonder why Marx identified public education as one of the ten necessary attributes of Communism? Because without it people might get smart and throw off their Communist oppressors. By the same token, why has our government taken over the education system? Because otherwise people would throw off their oppressors in their supposedly free governments.

The US Tax Code is probably the best example of laws that are so complicated that they can't be correctly obeyed without the IRS getting mad at you for doing something wrong. Doesn't government realize that when the laws are impossible to obey people get tired of trying to obey them and will eventually lose all their respect of any law.

FDR didn't believe in Communism? That's news to me.

Anonymous - just in case you don't know, the Utopia of selfless government and boundless wealth that you are advocating does exist. All you need to do to find it is immigrate to North Korea, and please don't come back until you figure out where the poor are better off: in the greedy capitalist America, or in the compassionate, egalitarian, people's republic of North Korea... Hope you don't starve to death or upset their madman/dictator.

A perfect description of both the government, and most of the electorate.

Democracy, by definition, is where two wolves and a sheep are voting on what to have for dinner. What we need is a republic with a constitution that leaves deciding what we have for dinner out of the realm of election, and a government that doesn't allow anybody to eat anybody else.

It's true that many Americans think that democracy is right because it's democracy.

It is worth noting that our government has done away with our militia, and we are currently under the power of the standing army.

I agree 100%. But I think it's worth mentioning that politicians and bankers and probably the worst choice to govern.

That may have been the case in the Napoleonic Era, but now history is the version of the past that the government collectivist schools have decided to agree upon.

Maybe Bill wasn't lying (if that's possible). There's no reason to believe that reining in the rights of the people wasn't the purpose of his administration.

ALL POWERS are delegated directly to the citizens. Those citizens then delegated a few of those rights, carefully limited and enumerated, to the government by means of the constitution. Whenever government exercises any power not thus delegated, or specifically prohibited, by the constitution, they are stealing that power from the people against the people's will.

The industrial north was using its majority in Congress to take advantage of the southern economy. So the southern states withdrew their consent to be governed. But Lincoln decided that the government no longer needed the consent of the governed, it only needed the power of the army. From that moment, the army and not the people ruled America. Sure we had free speach and we could disagree with the government, but if we carried our disagreement to such a level that we removed our pocketbooks from out of the reach of the taxpayers, then, according to Lincoln's theory, the army would change our minds. We no longer had inalienable rights from our Creator, we had rights granted to us from an all-powerful government, to be swallowed back whenever the government saw fit by means of the military. In other words, by the invasion and occupation of the Confederate States, Lincoln established military dictatorship.

Public Assistance to the "needy" is plunder regarless of whether or not they truly are needy. It is plunder whether or not we have a responsiblity to see to the needy's basic needs. It is plunder because the government is using the police force to take money from those who spent blood, sweat and tears getting it, and giving that money to the needy who did nothing more than vote the right person into office. Or, in other words, it is plunder because the governmnet is taking money from those who need it and earned it, and giving it to those who also need it but didn't earn it. If the government passed a law giving the needy the right to collect money from the rich by threat of force, i.e., by theft, I don't think many people would have trouble identifying that as plunder. So why can't they see plunder when the government hires an IRS agent to do the stealing, and charges the taxpayers the agent's wages to boot?