[Ron] Paul blames Lincoln for the Civil War rather than blaming the South for starting a war to preserve slavery. Does he love liberty? Or does he merely loathe the federal government?
James Taranto: Opinion Journal.
Addendum: (Bit)
Heh… he doesn’t think Lincoln should have fought a war to save the Union… the one he wants to be President over. Work on that one for a while and explain to me why anyone takes Ron Paul seriously.
Addendum: (David L)
I will not bill myself as a student of the Civil War. However it is a subject of interest to me. Have read Shelby Foote’s trilogy and other books. I do feel I have better grasp of the war than does Ron Paul.
Paul is right that slavery was abolished without the need for a civil war in most countries and would have been abolished here as well. I’d say circa 1900 with the invention of the mechanical cotton picker.
However the alternative to the Civil War was not either a nation with slavery or without slavery, but rather whether we would continue to be one nation, or just a collection of separate countries inhabiting the same continent. One road led the the United States of America, and the other, Paul’s, a Balkanized States of America.
Paul also misses, or wishes to ignore, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments which made blacks citizens and established civil rights as a constitutional concept. Sure the slaves would have been emancipated without the need for a civil war, but there would been no movement to make former slaves, or descendants, citizens with, at least in theory, equal legal rights.
Tags: BitsBlog, BitsBlog, BO, books, civil rights, Civil war, liberty, Men, NY, Republicans, Ron Paul, snark, Snark of the day, South, UN
