The following is excerpted from my latest WND.COM column, “Lincoln Lied, People Died”:

“Tomorrow is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Familiar Lincoln idolaters will gather to celebrate the birth, on Feb. 12, 1809, of the 16th president of the United States and finesse his role in “the butchering business” – to use professor J. R. Pole’s turn-of-phrase. Court historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is sure to make a media appearance to extol the virtues of the president who shed the blood of brothers in great quantities and urged into existence the “American System” of taxpayer-sponsored grants of government privilege to politically connected corporations.

On publication, in 2002, of the book “The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War,” the “Church of Lincoln” gave battle. The enemy was the author, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, who had exposed Lincoln lore for the lie it was – still is. DiLorenzo had dared to examine the Great Centralizer’s role in sundering the soul of the American federal system: the sovereignty of the states and the citizenry.

Steeped as they were in the Lockean tradition of natural rights and individual liberty, the constitutional framers held that the unalienable rights to life, liberty and property were best preserved within a federal system of divided sovereignty, in which the central government was weak and most powers devolved to the states, or to the people, respectively, as stated in the 10th Amendment. If a state grew tyrannical, competition from other states – and the individual’s ability to switch allegiances by exiting the political arrangement – would create something of an agora in government. This was the framers’ genius.

The concentrated powers Lincoln sought were inimical to the founders’ loose constitutional dispensation.” …

The complete column is “Lincoln Lied, People Died,” now on WND.COM.