Jimmy Carter vs. Abraham Lincoln

Thomas DiLorenzo reports — Jimmy Carter Causes Neocon to Blow His Top. Mr. Carter did so by "suggesting that it was an extreme insult to Christians for Lincoln (who was not a Christian) to have pretended to have known what was in the mind of God," "reminding the Lincoln Cult that the rest of the planet ended slavery peacefully in the nineteenth century," and, worst of all, by "suggest[ing] that peaceful solutions to international disputes are preferable to war."

The neocon article to which Prof. DiLorenzo refers is well worth a read (and a read between the lines) — Jimmy Carter's crazy slavery theory: He thinks the Civil War was un-Christian. The author, one Ira Stoll, quotes Mr. Carter, "[Lincoln] ignores the fact that the tragic combat might have been avoided altogether, and that the leaders of both sides, overwhelmingly Christian, were violating a basic premise of their belief as followers of the Prince of Peace... A legitimate question for historians is how soon the blight of slavery would have been terminated peacefully in America, as in Great Britain and other civilized societies."

Mr. Stoll concludes with this chilling call for war on all fronts to immanentize the eschaton

The Obama administration is going to be faced with policy decisions on negotiating with Hamas, Iran, North Korea and others whose hands are stained with crimes akin to slavery. It may help President Obama structure the internal discussions if he considers whether he wants to perceive America's conflicts in the fashion of Lincoln, his fellow Illinois politician, or in the manner of Carter, waiting around for a peaceful termination while today's victims and slaves suffer beatings and are deprived of their freedoms.

Thomas DiLorenzo explains what it means to "perceive America's conflicts in the fashion of Lincoln" thus: "If Lincoln could micromanage the murder of 350,000 fellow citizens, what could possibly be wrong with the Obama administration murdering a few million Muslims and North Koreans?"