"Nonsense on Stilts": The Rhetorical Cornerstone of the American Welfare/Warfare State expressed in the Gettysburg Address

Food for thought! I am not a fan of President Lincoln! The southern states had every right to secede. The American Civil War was not fought over slavery! The Gettysburg Address is a much overrated speech. Slavery would have been abolished without the American Civil War like it happened all over the world in the course of time!

The American Civil War probably destroyed much of what the Founding Fathers and Mothers originally created!

"... “Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves” ...

It is easy to come to the conclusion after reading Graham’s book that it is hard to imagine a larger collection of falsehoods ever packed into a single political speech anywhere at any time than the Gettysburg Address. In essence, the Address was a radically false rendition of the American founding designed to fool the public into believing that the founding fathers did after all create a highly centralized, monopolistic superstate with virtually unlimited powers. ...

Following Mencken’s example, Graham picks apart the Address by the old railroad industry trial lawyer/lobbyist, slick phrase by slick phrase. First of all, no “new nation” was brought forth “four score and seven years ago” as Lincoln absurdly asserted.  ...
Lincoln’s claim that America is a “nation” dedicated to the “proposition” that all men are created equal is a non-sequitur for several reasons, including the fact that it was never established as a “nation” but as a collection of sovereign states (with sovereign rights to raise taxes and wage war, as all sovereign states do, according to the Declaration). Besides, as Graham points out, a “proposition” is something that can be either true or false. This means that these words of the slick railroad trial lawyer from Illinois were, well, a meaningless jumble. Moreover, the founders would have been amused to learn that they created a “nation” predicated on a “proposition” that could be either true or false. ..."

"Nonsense on Stilts": The Rhetorical Cornerstone of the American Welfare/Warfare State | Mises Wire