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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 701, December 16, 2012 "There have been just too many repetitions, too many elements in common, too many coincidences. As a consequence, I believe that Americans have obeyed their last gun law."w3
Review of ''Lincoln'' a picture by Steven Spielberg
Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise Lea and I mumped to the Sunset Theater in Bellingham Friday afternoon to see "Lincoln" the movie by Steven Spielberg. Spielberg has a magical ability to take almost every movie he makes and turn it into cinematic gold. His awards are many and profound and in the main, honestly deserved. So despite the fact that I had done revisionist reading on Lincoln and found incontrovertible proof that he was a liar, a mass murderer, and masterminded the bloodiest war in US history that was unnecessary, that killed over 660,00 young men, I still wanted to see how Spielberg would handle him. So we watched for two and a half hours, a magnificent performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln,  A very believable Sally Field as his wife, a suave David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward and almost stealing the whole show, an old and rubber faced Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens.  These principals were magnificent. Many minor roles were done well too. It starts out with a very bloody battle fought in rain in a large, muddy bog; men are fighting hand to hand, stabbing, bayoneting, screaming, blood flowing, one soldier gets his head stomped underwater to death. It was a really violent start to what was a dark, political movie. What was so gruesomely portrayed was all an unnecessary waste. The lies began right there and continued all through the show. Lincoln has been built up as the Great Unifier and freer of slaves. In fact slavery had been peacefully deleted by over 20 other nations between 1800 and 1840 and Lincoln knew it.  Thus for two and a half hours we wallow in Lincoln as charming, story teller, Lincoln as loving father to Tad and Robert, Lincoln as master politician trying to save the nation. And most of all we wallow in Lincoln as the hater of chattel slavery, the Great Emancipator, the Great Unifier. Current scholarship shows all of these to be major lies. Why couldn't Spielberg know this and make a REAL Lincoln story? Why not have Tad Lincoln ask his father why a war to "free the slaves" was necessary when many European and S. American states had peacefully terminated chattel slavery a decade earlier? Why didn't he expose Lincoln's incredibly wasteful government subsidies to railroads and canals in Illinois? Why couldn't we have a debate among the Republicans and have Lincoln voice his actual attitude toward blacks. He thought them inferior and wanted to deport them all to Africa, The Indies and S. America. Why didn't Spielberg show how Lincoln goaded the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter? Why did Spielberg not show through newspaper headlines and debate that secession was an accepted, proud American notion in the North as well as the South in 1860? No, many of us are unaware of these facts even to this day. Thus for me, the picture was one long, major lie. It was dark, tedious, totally misleading propaganda. This among many really good actors giving very dramatic roles. I was hoping for much better. It was indeed fiction not fact.  Was that worth reading?
TLE AFFILIATE
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