Forum Post: If Abraham Lincoln were here, he would be staying at OWS!
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 12, 2011, 6:54 a.m. EST by OurTimes2011
(377)
from Arlington, VA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe."
Abraham Lincoln
Wealth and Democracy was published in 2002. Hardly a "new" book:
Book Description ISBN-10: 0767905334 | ISBN-13: 978-0767905336 | Publication Date: May 14, 2002 | Edition: 1
For more than thirty years, Kevin Phillips' insight into American politics and economics has helped to make history as well as record it. His bestselling books, including The Emerging Republican Majority (1969) and The Politics of Rich and Poor (1990), have influenced presidential campaigns and changed the way America sees itself. Widely acknowledging Phillips as one of the nation's most perceptive thinkers, reviewers have called him a latter-day Nostradamus and our "modern Thomas Paine." Now, in the first major book of its kind since the 1930s, he turns his attention to the United States' history of great wealth and power, a sweeping cavalcade from the American Revolution to what he calls "the Second Gilded Age" at the turn of the twenty-first century.
The Second Gilded Age has been staggering enough in its concentration of wealth to dwarf the original Gilded Age a hundred years earlier. However, the tech crash and then the horrible events of September 11, 2001, pointed out that great riches are as vulnerable as they have ever been. In Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips charts the ongoing American saga of great wealth–how it has been accumulated, its shifting sources, and its ups and downs over more than two centuries. He explores how the rich and politically powerful have frequently worked together to create or perpetuate privilege, often at the expense of the national interest and usually at the expense of the middle and lower classes.
This is the type of fraudulent post one will get from time to time.
"In his new book Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the Rich, Kevin Phillips fell for one of the numerous bogus Lincoln quotes that fill the literature on The Great Emancipator. The historian Paul Kennedy fell for it, too, in his review of the Phillips book in the New York Times.
The bogus quotation is: "The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace, and it conspires against it in times of adversity. It's more despotic than monarchy. It's more insolent than autocracy. It's more selfish than bureaucracy.... Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow...."
Phillips thought he could attach the moral authority of Lincoln to the theme of his book, but as historian Matthew Pinkser wrote on the website, History News Network, on June 3, the quote is nowhere in Lincoln's collected works, and his official biographer called it "a bold, unblushing forgery."
That same statement is true of a great many other supposed Lincoln quotations in the literature. In his 1989 book, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (Oxford University Press), Paul F. Boller, Jr., devotes the better part of a chapter to fake Lincoln quotes." http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo25.html
Moving on, if Linc were alive today he'd be over at the private club smoking a stogie with the 1% that he worked for & definitely NOT at OWS. (Linc was the highest paid lawyer in Illinois. Bought & paid for by the railroads & other industrial elites.)
The Evil Lincoln
With Abraham Lincoln’s birthday just passed on February 12th the media was replete with praise for him. Unfortunately, this whitewashed view of him is misguided. Rather than being the honest and resolute knight in shining armor that he is made out to be, on closer inspection he turns out to be one of the worst politicians Illinois has produced. (snip)
http://theinternationallibertarian.blogspot.com/2011/02/evil-lincoln.html
With intriguing chapters on history and bold analysis of present-day America, Phillips illuminates the dangerous politics that go with excessive concentration of wealth. Profiling wealthy Americans–from Astor to Carnegie and Rockefeller to contemporary wealth holders–Phillips provides fascinating details about the peculiarly American ways of becoming and staying a multimillionaire. He exposes the subtle corruption spawned by a money culture and financial power, evident in economic philosophy, tax favoritism, and selective bailouts in the name of free enterprise, economic stimulus, and national security.
Finally, Wealth and Democracy turns to the history of Britain and other leading world economic powers to examine the symptoms that signaled their declines–speculative finance, mounting international debt, record wealth, income polarization, and disgruntled politics–signs that we recognize in America at the start of the twenty-first century. In a time of national crisis, Phillips worries that the growing parallels suggest the tide may already be turning for us all.
With intriguing chapters on history and bold analysis of present-day America, Phillips illuminates the dangerous politics that go with excessive concentration of wealth. Profiling wealthy Americans–from Astor to Carnegie and Rockefeller to contemporary wealth holders–Phillips provides fascinating details about the peculiarly American ways of becoming and staying a multimillionaire. He exposes the subtle corruption spawned by a money culture and financial power, evident in economic philosophy, tax favoritism, and selective bailouts in the name of free enterprise, economic stimulus, and national security.
Finally, Wealth and Democracy turns to the history of Britain and other leading world economic powers to examine the symptoms that signaled their declines–speculative finance, mounting international debt, record wealth, income polarization, and disgruntled politics–signs that we recognize in America at the start of the twenty-first century. In a time of national crisis, Phillips worries that the growing parallels suggest the tide may already be turning for us all.
Oh yea...I can see Abe now, tossing bricks at cops, smoking dope, shitting in a bucket.
Why would a brilliant man sit lazily on his ass doing nothing for months on end? He wouldn't. He might appreciate the idea, but being participatory wouldn't be happening. Good attempt at trying to justify support when there really is none.
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