Perhaps the biggest falsehood ever pedaled about Abraham Lincoln is that he was devoted to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.  Exactly the opposite is true; he repudiated every one of the main principles of the Declaration with his words and, more importantly, his actions.  In our time the odd and ahistorical writings of Harry Jaffa and his “Straussian” cult followers have been the primary means of spreading this enormous falsehood.  (Jaffa was neither a historian nor a philosopher but a supposed expert in “rhetoric” who spent his career writing books instructing Americans about the allegedly “real meaning” of … Continue reading Lincoln’s Repudiation of the Declaration of Independence