The Second Vermont Republic's Rob Williams Has Another Reason to Hate Lincoln - The Jews

I first learned of the Second Vermont Republic's Rob Williams when I heard him prattle on about the Lincoln historical revisionism of a neo-Confederate by the name of Thomas DiLorenzo on a local radio program back in 2007. Williams, an adjunct staff member at Burlington's Champlain College, was challenged for presenting "academic nonsense" on the program, and nonsense it was. Rob is a longtime sufferer of Lincoln derangement syndrome.

Lincoln Derangement Syndrome (n): "A deeply-embedded psychosis held by some Lost Causers and defenders of Southern Heritage™, indicated by the reflexive, knee-jerk response to any criticism of the Confederacy, by pointing out that (1) Abraham Lincoln held personal views about African Americans that were racist, (2) the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free any slaves, or (3) that Lincoln’s public policy position toward the institution of slavery changed over time. There is no known cure."

But now Williams has a new reason for his hatred; Lincoln's relationship with Jews. Followers of this blog know that I have exposed repeated instances of anti-Semitic posts at Williams' SVR hateblog by his stable of anti-Semitic hatebloggers Carol Moore, Dennis "Hit List" Morrisseau and Jacqueline Brook, to name only a few (and, no, I don't link to his hatesite any longer). In a post this past week at the Lincoln Institute we learn:

New Exhibit on Lincoln and Jewish Americans

The New-York Historical Society’s newest exhibit, “Lincoln and the Jews,” is an exploration of Lincoln’s personal relationships with his Jewish contemporaries and his impact on nineteenth-century Jewish life in America. The New York Times covered the exhibit in a recent article:

"Lincoln played an important role in turning Jews from outsiders in America to insiders,” said Jonathan D. Sarna, a historian at Brandeis University and the author, with Mr. Shapell, of the new, separately published book “Lincoln and the Jews,” which inspired the show. “It’s a subject that has really been overlooked.” "Lincoln’s lifetime coincided with a dramatic increase in America’s Jewish population, which grew from about 3,000 in 1809, the year of his birth, to roughly 150,000 in 1860. Growing up in the Midwest, he probably encountered few or no Jews in person until he became a young man. But at a time when anti-Semitism and nativism ran high, the show notes, there is no evidence of Lincoln harboring any animus toward Jews."

The Times story continues:

"Lincoln’s lifetime coincided with a dramatic increase in America’s Jewish population, which grew from about 3,000 in 1809, the year of his birth, to roughly 150,000 in 1860. Growing up in the Midwest, he probably encountered few or no Jews in person until he became a young man. But at a time when anti-Semitism and nativism ran high, the show notes, there is no evidence of Lincoln harboring any animus toward Jews."

“When it came to personal interactions with Jews or issues that had an impact on Jews, Lincoln did the right thing on every occasion,” Harold Holzer, a prominent Lincoln scholar and the exhibition’s chief historian, said in an interview."


"Lincoln, the exhibition shows, did much for Jews, individually and as a group. But just how affected was Lincoln by his encounters with them?"

"Deeply, Mr. Sarna argues. The encounters, he writes in the book, helped push Lincoln past a “parochially Christian” understanding of American identity. In what he called his “most controversial claim,” not made by the show, Mr. Sarna writes that the ecumenical phrase “this nation, under God” in the Gettysburg Address may have been meant as a “silent homage” to Jews who fell on the battlefield, one that “reimagined America in language that embraced Jews as equals.”

So much to hate with so little time, eh, Rob?

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Texas' Sam Houston on Secession

Andy Hall over at the Dead Confederates blog has posted an address made by then governor of Texas, Sam Houston, in 1860 on the topic of Texas' seceding - he wasn't for it. The observations that Houston made then have relevance for our time. Tiny, nearly non-existent groups like the anti-Semitic Second Vermont Republic and the white supremacist League of the South have been making a mighty noise for more than ten years, far out of proportion to their actual importance to the body politic. In Houston's time the discussion was of much more urgency then but, as I said, his remarks still hold true today, particularly when you factor in the absurd Lincoln historical revisionism of SVR's Rob Williams and the racist, would be goons at LoS. Just substitute the then empires of Great Britain and Spanish America for today's expansionist Greater Russian Empire and the growing Chinese Empire, and Houston's words become prescient for our time and argue just as convincingly against secession today.

Here's Andy's post in its entirety:

Houston: The Union Is Worth More Than Mr. Lincoln
Andy Hall, December 22, 2014

Everyone knows that Sam Houston, governor of Texas during the secession crisis of 1860-61, opposed secession and opposed Texas joining the Confederacy. He famously predicted a long and bloody war would follow, with disastrous consequences for the South regardless of the outcome.

But I recently came across this address he made in Austin, sometime during the 1860 presidential campaign, in which Houston laid out the pro-slavery argument against secession. It’s a very different take on an old dispute:

"[The seceded states] will soon whip themselves, and will not be worth whipping back [into the Union]. Deprived of the protection of the Union, of the aegis of the Constitution, they would soon dwindle into petty States, to be again rent in twain by dissensions or through the ambition of selfish chieftains, and would become a prey to foreign powers. They gravely talk of holding treaties with Great Britain and other foreign powers, and the great advantages which would arise to the South from separation are discussed. Treaties with Great Britain! Alliance with foreign powers! Have these men forgotten history? Look at Spanish America! Look at the condition of every petty State, which by alliance with Great Britain is subject to continual aggression."

[edit]

"When [the Union is] rent in twain, British Abolition, which in fanaticism and sacrificial spirit, far exceeds that of the North (for it has been willing to pay for its fanaticism, a thing the North never will do), will have none of the impediments in its path, now to be found. England will no longer fear the power of the mighty nation which twice has humbled her, and whose giant arm would, so long as we are united, be stretched forth to protect the weakest State, or the most obscure citizen. The State that secedes, when pressed by insidious arts of abolition emissaries, supported by foreign powers, when cursed by internal disorders and insurrections, can lay no claim to that national flag, which when now unfurled, ensures the respect of all nations and strikes terror to the hearts of those who would invade our rights."

[edit]

"But if, through division in the ranks of those opposed to Mr. Lincoln, he should be elected, we have no excuse for dissolving the Union. The Union is worth more than Mr. Lincoln, and if the battle is to be fought for the Constitution, let us fight it in the Union and for the sake of the Union. With a majority of the people in favor of the Constitution, shall we desert the Government and leave it in the hands of the minority? A new obligation will be imposed upon us, to guard the Constitution and to see that no infraction of it is attempted or permitted. If Mr. Lincoln administers the Government in accordance with the Constitution, our rights must be respected. If he does not, the Constitution has provided a remedy."

"No tyrant or usurper can ever invade our rights so long as we are united. Let Mr. Lincoln attempt it, and his party will scatter like chaff before the storm of popular indignation which will burst forth from one end of the country to the other. Secession or revolution will not be justified until legal and constitutional means of redress have been tried, and I can not believe that the time will ever come when these will prove inadequate.​"

It’s interesting to see a prominent figure as that arguing against secession for the protection of the peculiar institution. But then again, Big Sam was never entirely conventional.

(h/t Andy Hall)

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"Loathing Lincoln"

For years the Vermont secessionist movement has been a proponent of Abraham Lincoln historical revisionism. Lincoln bashing by the Second Vermont Republic leadership has been a staple of the local seceshers, along with promotion of the scribblings of Lincoln hating "writers" such as avowed neo-Confederates like Thomas DiLorenzo and Donald Livingston; both served as advisory board members of the then nascent SVR.

Next week the Louisiana State University Press will be releasing John Barr's Loathing Lincoln which examines both 19th century and modern day Lincoln bashers and historical revisionists. Today's Lincoln haters permeate the present day neo-Confederate and secessionist movements. Imagine my utter lack of surprise when I found in the book's bibliography a notation about the neo-Confederate Livington's contribution to then SVR co-chairman Rob Williams' hate journal.

One of the very first times that I heard Williams, a Vermont secesher leader and an adjunct faculty member at Champlain College in Burlington, VT, speak about Lincoln was on a local radio program. Williams railed:

"We have to get over our hero worship of Abraham Lincoln. He really was instead of the "Great Emancipator", we like to call him the "Great Centralizer." (sic) He essentially invented a new and novel unconstitutional interpretation and then foisted it upon half the country that was trying to leave..."

"Lincoln was very clever and maneuvered the South into firing the first shots..."

Hogwash! Or as one caller to the radio program directly challenged Williams, "Academic nonsense." Williams' media acumen was lauded by neo-Nazi and eventual member of Williams' exclusive Free Vermont listserv, James Duncan aka "Donnachaidh," at the hate forum of the Vanguard News Network ("No Jews, Just Right") here. Duncan so loved the Vermont secesher movement that he even minted an SVR coin in silver with his very own profile on the coin face. At the listserv he liked to swap wisecracks about lesbians, race mixing and rounding up Vermont law enforcement for some kind of trials when the seceshers took over. Duncan was the seceshers largest out of state contributor to its gubernatorial candidate, Dennis Steele, who when he learned of Duncan's background still publicly opted to keep the money. Duncan had more than 6,300 deeply anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and neo-Confederate posts on the neo-Nazi hate forum. What he never disclosed there or elsewhere was his predilection for salt and pepper porn. Go figure. Duncan/Donnachaidh disappeared from the Internet (at least using those identities) shortly after his hateful neo-Confederate activities were exposed by this blog.

A noted researcher of the modern neo-Confederate movement, Ed Sebesta, wrote of Barr's new work,

"What I think is going to be interesting is when the public realizes that there is this modern movement that hates Lincoln. Lincoln is the personification of the modern democratic egalitarian America. This is why he is hated so much by neo-Confederates who dream of a hierarchical society. The attacks on Lincoln are attacks on modern democratic egalitarian America."

"Some so-called "heritage" groups are going to seem much more ominous to the American public as the public realizes how hostile neo-Confederates are to Lincoln, that it isn't a few cranks, but a movement, and further realize that this movement is hostile to modern democratic egalitarian America. Also, it will be realized that indulging the Lost Cause view of the Civil War has consequences."

More details about Barr's Loathing Lincoln can be found at Sebesta's anti-Neo-Confederate blog here.

To preorder Barr's excellent work use this Amazon link.

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Looking for Lincoln

Longtime Second Vermont Republic advisory board member and fellow Lincoln hater of SVR's baas, the Magnolia Vermonter, Thomas Naylor, and secesher propagandist and publisher of the usually uninteresting "Vermont Commons", Rob Williams, Thomas DiLorenzo, who, like Naylor and Williams, dabbles in Abraham Lincoln historical revisionism as an elemental part of the neo-Confederate journey that they would impose upon Vermont's future, gets ably deconstructed by Michael Lynch at the Abraham Lincoln Institute for the Study of Leadership and Public Policy at Lincoln Memorial University here.

Essentially, it puts the whole DiLorenzo "scholarship" thing on a par with this recently discovered Lincoln sighting:



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Nobel Award Winner Calls the Economic Rhetoric of the Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member Thomas J. DiLorenzo "Bizarre"

In a scathing column on Thursday, Paul Krugman, New York Times Op-Ed columnist and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (2008), as well as recipient of the prestigious American Economic Association, John Bates Clark Medal (1991), and professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, ripped Second Vermont Republic advisory board member, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a new one while touching upon DiLorenzo's obsession with Lincoln historical revisionism and other myths of the Old South:

"Mr. (Ron) Paul’s (R-TX) subcommittee called three witnesses, one of whom was an odd choice: Thomas DiLorenzo, a professor at Loyola University and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute."

"What was odd about that choice? Well, Mr. DiLorenzo hasn’t actually written much about monetary policy, although he has described Fed policy — not just recently, but since the 1960s — as “legalized counterfeiting operations.” His main claim to fame, instead, is as a critic of Lincoln — he’s the author of “Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe” — and as a modern-day secessionist."

"No, really: calls for secession run through many of Mr. DiLorenzo’s writings — for example, in his declaration that “healthcare freedom” won’t be restored until “some states begin seceding from the new American fascialistic state.” Raise the rebel flag!"

"O.K., it’s going to be a while before the G.O.P. as a whole embraces neo-secessionism, and Mr. Paul, although highly visible, is, in fact, a somewhat marginal figure even within his own party. But Mr. (Paul) Ryan (R-WI), who led the other hearing — the one at which Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, testified — is a rising Republican star. So it’s worth noting that Mr. Ryan’s hard-money rhetoric was nearly as bizarre as Mr. DiLorenzo’s." (The entire NY Times column may be read here)

Dilorenzo, you may recall, is the Lincoln historical revisionist lauded by "Vermont Commons" publisher, Rob Williams and VTCommons' white supremacist contributor, Robert S. Griffin (See here).

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Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member Endorses Violence Against The Government Officials

Not our government at this point - yet.

Second Vermont Republic advisory board member and assistant professor of political science, State University of New York, Buffalo, as well as founder of the floundering New Hampshire Free State Project, Jason Sorens, wrote in a piece he entitled Why Isn't Violence The Answer?:

"U.S. government officials continue to lecture the Egyptian demonstrators on how to go about their business."

"(President Obama) said he had told Mr Mubarak to respect the rights of the Egyptian people and refrain from using violence against peaceful protesters – but he said the protesters also had a responsibility to express themselves peacefully."

"But why?"

"...Surely many of us of feeling around the world recognize that if the protestors find it prudential or useful at some point to storm the presidential palace and dispense street justice to Mubarak and his minions, there is no conceivable ethical reason for them to shrink from the task. Isn’t it on one of our state flags?"

"Sic semper tyrannis."
Why Isn’t Violence the Answer?
January 28, 2011 by Jason Sorens

Whew! Where to start on this one? Probably right there at the end of his piece. While it's true that Sic Semper Tyrannis is on the Commonwealth of Virginia flag, he wasn't writing about flag heraldry, he was writing about "dispen(ing) street justice to Mubarak."

The last time I heard of the words Sic Semper Tyrannis being used
while dispensing "justice" was when an ardent secessionist, John Wilkes Booth, had leapt to the Ford Theatre stage and shouted them at the audience after having just shot President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head.

Lincoln hatred has a long and deep connection with the Vermont seceshers. Sorens fellow SVR advisory board member is Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a secesher scholar bullshitter with past ties to League of the South's Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History, and who has worked for Big Tobacco. DiLorenzo, in addition to his disdain for the bedrock of civil rights in America, the 14th Amendment, as well as organized labor, has made a business of pedaling Lincoln hatred for the secesher community.

Similarly, "Vermont Commons" publisher, Rob Williams, has repeatedly echoed the Lincoln hatred of these extremists. Eighteen months ago, in a Slate.com piece Williams was quoted as saying "Abraham Lincoln did a number on us". Since the seceshers Lincoln opposed were the ones who sought to preserve slavery by seceeding, one needs to ask just who Williams' "us" is?

Whatever the circumstances, assassinations and dispensing street justice are illegal acts. This isn't the first time that someone associated with the Vermont secession movement has advocated for or solicited lawbreaking. As recently as this past fall (12.09.10 - 5:21 AM), Vermont secesher and a leader of the Free Vermont group of misfits, Gary Flomenhoft, put out a call for "someone to... hack their websites," a direct violation of Vermont law. Such a solicitation is a felony.

The Free Vermont group, who Thomas Naylor calls his "twenty internet cowboys," have advocated for confiscation of private property, population caps, income and asset caps, making certain acts by legislators capital offenses; the complete list is quite long and equally shocking.

One has to wonder how this squares with Naylor's claim
to be leading a "Genteel Revolution." His repetitive, muddled, demagogic rants about Vermonters who fall short of his secesher ideal (meaning: Everyone in Vermont not named Thomas H. Naylor); his latching onto imagery of a self-proclaimed murderer (which Naylor and his candidate, Dennis Steele, dumped one day after it was revealed on this blog); his paranoid delusions about conspiracies aimed at his "revolution," also another quite long and equally shocking list that has been subject of many posts on this blog. Oddly, an earlier "genteel evolution," so-named nearly 70 years ago by Time magazine, was that of Fulgencio Batista, who was himself overthown in part by the man whose image Naylor co-opted onto the flag that he co-opted from the Vermont National Guard.

In one of Naylor's most recent rants, The Politics of Violence in America, Naylor wrote:

"Since violence is inextricably linked to the Empire, there may be no escape from violence in America... "

Nor, it would seem, will violence or the criminal mindset be escaped in the brave new world of the Second Vermont Republic - they'll just apply it more hubristically.

Yeah, I know, confusing rationales and coincidences from the mind, ravings and actions of the SVR baas, Thomas H. Naylor and his minions.

Will Naylor, Williams, Flomenhoft and the rest of the nutters that comprise the Free Vermont "movement" renounce their advisor Jason Sorens' call for violence?

The more I learn of and hear from these secesher clowns, the more concerned I grow for my fellow Vermonters should these people ever get close to the levers of power.

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