Neal complains about the fact that Americans are forced to pay into a retirement system because they are deemed too stupid to invest and save on their own. He complains that nanny government wants to take over and nationalize health care in order to centralize planning and take the burden of freedom off the shoulders of the dummies who will one day constitute a majority in America.

These are valid concerns for any American who values liberty and dislikes government treating them like children. All this centralization and nationalization was made possible, of course, by Lincoln's war to prevent secession. He crushed states' rights and thereby opened the door to all manner of centralization, corruption and demagoguery to promote more of the same.

Yes, there have always been the Hamiltonians and the Whigs who wanted to centralize everything from the start and to create an American version of England's government. Thomas DiLorenzo, in his book The Real Lincoln, puts forth that Lincoln's agenda was always to implement his "American system" of highly centralized power where his party could hold power by distributing political patronage and by plundering the taxpayer to fund corporate subsidies euphemistically called "internal improvements." In Lincoln's day, Southern states paid three fourths (72%) of the federal taxes collected and it was Southerners who obstructed all efforts to further centralize power in the federal government.

Everything in Lincoln's political career illustrates his devotion to the cause of centralization. DiLorenzo correctly sizes up Lincoln as "the Great Centralizer." Of course, the prevailing myth of Lincoln is that of "the Great Emancipator."

Thomas Jefferson was always an advocate for decentralized government and states' rights (these are fundamental American principles). Jefferson predicted exactly what Lincoln used military force to establish... "a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and moneyed incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry."

General Lee, in an 1866 letter to Lord Acton, predicted what would result from Lincoln's victory. "The consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it."

Boortz is not alone in this blindspot for lost American liberties...many Americans absorb their indoctrination in Lincoln mythology so completely that they cannot acccept contrary facts that are easily available. Boortz, as a professed Libertarian, should know better.

Flaggers protest the fact that the Confederate battle flag was removed from the Georgia state flag under a barrage of lies and distortions. The reasons put forth for removing the 1956 flag are all based on lies. The claim that the Confederate battle flag itself is offensive is, of course, based on historical ignorance of the war and what it was really about----it was about taxation, exploitation and coercion, not slavery. It's based on the often-repeated specious claim that the flag change in 1956 was motivated by racial malice and defiance to U.S. Supreme court rulings on desegregation. [ The Date Argument Rebutted ]

Many Georgia citizens will not now or ever accept these lies and accordingly, we will continue to keep the issue before the public eye. I do not purport to speak for most flaggers---I do not---but I think I can say that many will support the will of the people of Georgia as expressed in a Fair Vote. For many, many folks, this issue will never be resolved until the people get a chance to choose. Even among the folks who don't prefer the 1956 flag, the fair-minded ones believe that the matter should be put to a Fair Vote rather than a backroom deal among politicians ala Barnes and Perdue.