Lincoln's Drones

Dance into the fire
To fatal sounds of broken dreams
--Duran Duran

Tom DiLorenzo suggests that the recent debate over whether government has the authority to assassinate American citizens on US soil was settled years ago by Lincoln.

Because Lincoln never recognized the secession of Southern states, Southern civilians constituted non-combatant citizens of the US. Using the drones of his day, the generals in command of the Union Army, Lincoln presided over the killing of hundreds of thousands of non-combatant US citizens in the South, not to mention the destruction of hundreds of billions (in today's dollars) of property of non-combatants.

These actions violated the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.

After Lincoln's death, many of those same drones went on to murder tens of thousands of Indians during the country's thrust west.

When push comes to shove (or kill), presidents, thru their armed agents, will want to throw off rule of law in favor of rule by gun.