OK, this is very late, but that's what Christmas vacation can do to you. A couple weeks ago Ron Paul was on Meet The Press when he was asked about comments he had made about the Civil War and the end of slavery. I can't seem to get the You Tube video to load. Go here to see it. Here is the transcript:
MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. "According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery."
REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn't have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was the--that iron, iron fist..
MR. RUSSERT: We'd still have slavery.
REP. PAUL: Oh, come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I'm advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn't sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.
Paul seems to be drinking from the Thomas Dilorenzo Kool-Aid. Dilorenzo is a neo-Confederate who teaches economic history at George Mason. His book The Real Lincoln is a fairly popular screed against Lincoln that makes the same arguments, and more, as does Ron Paul. For a strong rebuttal to Dilorenzo see this review from the Claremont Review of Books. Read the review if only for the pure joy of seeing a skillful reviewer destroy what is a poorly researched and poorly written book, which is what The Real Lincoln is. Given their ideological sympathies, I wouldn't be surprised if Paul has read Dilorenzo and is parroting the book.
Let's look at Paul's arguments point by point.
1. Lincoln fought the war to destroy the original intent of the Republic. The original intent of the Republic is best summed up, I think, in the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Lincoln was fighting to uphold this proposition, the Confederacy to undermine it.
2. Slavery was phased out all over the world and every other country ended slavery without civil war. Not true, and to the extent it is true this ignores the fact that unlike with the British, to use Paul's example, slavery had become an intrinsic part of Southern society. Paul imagines a South that would give up slavery only if asked nicely. To say this least, the evidence is against this.
3. The US government should have bought the slaves and then released them. That's called "compensated emancipation" and that's what Lincoln was for. The South went to war to combat any attempt to end slavery.
Overall, Paul suggests that the Civil War was unnecessary and a waste of life and treasure. True enough. But Paul betrays a profound ignorance of the depth of the antebellum South's commitment to slavery. He also shows that he is part of the neo-Confederate libertarian fringe and by virtue of that fact alone not fit for the presidency.
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