He thinks we shouldn't have fought the Civil War; I guess having a bunch of state secede was fine. And he says it's just fine to have whites-only lunch counters. What a f-in nutcase! http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/ron-paul-very-gradual-emancipationist/
How many other countries fought a civil war to end slavery? Plus, where has he said that government cafeterias should have whites only lunch counters? Nice try.
No more so than we have been steadily fucked for decades. Even when you have the exception of a really good president, the machine rolls on. Even the worst of the current candidates is not going to do anything but "lead" the natural progression of the course that is already set. And don't fool yourself, if Paul gets elected it won't make any lasting change....at most he'll gum up the gears for a few years but in the long run, the outcome is the same.
BTW, in the quoted excerpt from the interview, Paul is dead on correct. Not only was the war a bad idea, but people on both sides of the issue had been badly mishandling the issue for 40 years previously. Russert's reply "we'd still have slavery" is the perfect illustration of how the sort of clear reasoning people like Paul exhibit is so totally foreign to the public discourse in this country today. How big a moron do you have to be (and i don't generally consider Russert lacking in intelligence) to suppose that 150 years after the fact we'd still have slavery? The blogger said "Lincoln went to war to preserve the union" - yes, of course he did, and I will concede I don't know what Paul is trying to say at that point but I don't believe that he doesn't know that. Perhaps he's saying that Lincoln did not share the view Paul likely holds that the Union is a contract among equals, but rather that Lincoln thought the Union was a whole. That is a point of contention not as easily dismissed as some would like to suppose. In any case, acknowledging the truth that Lincoln, in his view, acted to preserve the Union does NOT defeat the point that the Union might well have been preserved without bloodshed, even if perhaps it went through a decade or more of disunion to get there. From the blog: so, one ineffectual shelling of a post that killed nothing but a government mule was enough to justify the bloodiest war in our history? Would the writer, or those who take that position with him, agree that such violence MUST mean war? Then such folks would, no doubt, have agreed that we should have went to war with Mexico when they crossed our southern border in the 20's and that the Carter Administration failed in not declaring War on Iran in 1979, and the Ronald Reagan failed when he did not declare war on various and sundry middle eastern nations after the Marine barracks bombing in 1982, and that Bill Clinton failed in not declaring war on SOMEBODY in 1993, among many other possible examples? No, I think we would all agree that a singular ineffective attack is hardly grounds by itself for all out war. You have to have a philosophical reason that goes beyond that one act. On the civil Rights conversation, Paul has a valid point about the government compelling action on private property that is contrary to the interest of the property holder. I confess that I'm not sure I would extend that philosophy so far as to say that a reseraunt owner could refuse to serve blacks - I'm caught betwenn two equally strong beliefs there - but it is certainly true that the precedent that the FedGov can make such an invasion has been an unhealthy trend in American government on the whole.
Exactly! Thomas Jefferson said that we should not just dismiss government for "light and transient causes", but when a government ceases to act in the best interests of its people, it should be overthrown and a new government formed. Emancipation might not have been accomplished without sacrifice, but it could have been accomplished without bloodshed and economic ruination.
I kinda agree, but think about it this way... On one hand you have war and bloodshed. But on the other you have the forced enslavement (and rape, and beating, and sometimes murder) of an entire peoples, justified in the name of "states rights", state's freedom and economic expediency. Can you really say either option was any more moral or just? You mentioned the government ceasing "to act in the best interest of it's people". What about the best interests of the people it enslaves? Though in the article Paul suggest another option of the government buying up and then freeing the slaves (sounds like a kind of corporate welfare, but okay...) I wonder...if in the long run, that might have been, even as expensive as it would have been, less costly than a long expensive war?
^ But there was a way that was so much better. It wasn't like peaceful emancipation hadn't been happening around the world already.
I'm no expert, but it seems from my limited reading on the subject that slavery wasn't the real issue at all in the American Civil War. It was just a convenient propaganda tool for the north. So that argument shouldn't really apply.
Maybe. In fact, possibly very true. I've heard so many historians and amateur historians spin the civil war to tell their perceived version of "what really happened" I really have no idea what the ultimate "Truth" is. Anyway, it happened, and it's over. Been so for a long time.
Propaganda? Eh... not really. I doubt anyone gave enough of a crap about blacks to respond to propaganda of that nature. No, what it did was it made it so that the European nations would have looked like hypocrites, aiding the preservation of slavery in the US, having abolished it at home. They were thus prevented from aiding the CSA.
The reason for SECESSION WAS slavery. It's right in the declerations of most of the Southern states. The reason they were pushed to that were manifold and defy simple analysis. The reason for the WAR was preservation of the Union, and by extension from that the ultimate conflict between the competing ideas expressed simply thusly: A. the Union is a political whole which is divided into what amounts to administrative districts or B. The Union is a compact among various sovereign equals who choose to act corporately for their common good. Position A had been in ascendancy since at least the point where Andy Jackson was willing to use force to prevent South Carolina from seceding in the 1820's The issue was unresolved until Lincoln settled the question with blood. The later employment of the state of the slaves as a post-hoc rational for violence was just that. Revisionism. History is written by the victors.
Whatever the reason was, no matter how heinous, the right to secede was implicit in the ratification of the Constitution.
I agree. In order for major change to take effect, you also need the Congress and the Supreme Court on your side. Paul will just be fiddling with his pecker without the Congress and Supreme Court on his side. Plus, I'm not sure this country should elect Ron Paul. So far, he hasn't impressed me in the debates. And, the info on his website doesn't engender me to vote for the guy. -Tibbetts
It is furthermore all but explicit in the Tenth Amendment. Since the Constitution nowhere gives the federal government the power to determine if a state remains in the Union, that power is therefore left to the states themselves. QED.
Excellent. I feared that Liet's absence would hinder my decision on political candidates. Bobcat has filled the vacancy splendidly.
I would not go so far as to say I'm not interested in voting for him, but i would say that, for me, the big hangup is that when his views are challanged, he does not clearly articulate a response. I know that he knows what he believe, and that for the most part, he's right. but he is not a "quick on his feet" as he needs to be to carry that banner into a hostile political environment. That was always why I was so passionate about Alan Keyes....I did not agree with EVERY thing he said, but not only did he hold those views, but he could by-god defend them eloquently and articulately enough that you to at least consider them. If you had a candidate with Paul's views (at least on domestic matters) + Keyes' eloquence + and someone like Jack Kemp's charm and cool head in debate, you'd have the ideal candidate.
As I said, too competing views, equally strongly held: 1, That what I own is mine and I have an unfettered right to do with mine what I will so long as i do not bring harm to another. 2. that everyone ought to enjoy the equality in all walks of life that they are guaranteed by our laws and legal system. I hold each of these views in equal measure and yet in application, they come into conflict. To wit: the question at hand - do I "bring harm" to another by denying them access to what is mine (as opposed to allowing access to others) to a sufficient degree that the law must interfere? Neither answer to that question fully comforts me because each has unpleasant implications when extended to their logical conclusion.
Not only what Shep said in his rep commnt to this post, but go back and read some of the debates and writings of the Founding Fathers when all this was being put together. Many of the states would not have ratified it at all except for the fact that it was implied that secession was a right. On the slavery issue, even Jefferson wrote that it was a deal-breaker, and they were, in effect, 'putting it off' for a generation or so in order to make ratification of the Constitution possible. Of course, I doubt they'd have let it go had they seen the end result- the Civil War.
There's absolutely no doubt that the Founding Fathers intended the 13 colonies to be a perpetual union. Why do we know this? This is what they named the first Constitution. That constitution, popularly known as the Articles of Confederation, had a longer full name: The Articles of Confederation and Perepetual Union. The Federalists wanted a stronger federal state. The Continental Congress eventually granted the request to review the current constitution (the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union) with the following proviso: "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government and the preservation of the Union." So the first US constitution stated it in the very title of the document, and the second one was adopted specifically to preserve the Union as it's objective. I have no truck on allowing member to secede by vote. However, it would require a vote of the entire body at the very least. The South didn't do this, therefore their secession wasn't legal.
Several states came into the union with the express understanding that was agreed to among the other states that they reserved the right to leave the Union at any future time if circumstances forced them to do so. In those early years, a state's right to leave the union was understood and acknowledged by all. Early tests of that doctrine included the Whiskey Rebellion, the War of 1812 and the Hartford Convention of 1814. Even the Louisiana Purchase stirred talk of secession. It really wasn't until the rise of Lincoln and the Whigs in the 1850s that the idea of a state having no right to leave the Union really began to catch on, and that was mainly due to economic grounds and not on constitutional grounds.
From what I have seen so far, all the Rep contenders are the same breed of crazy. Except for Giuliani who doesn't seem to cater to the fundi Christian vote so much. I mean... Ron Paul? Not really, no. Ah, another rich white guy telling women what to do with their bodies. How 'libertarian'. Of course, given his stance on social services of any kind he'd condemn many mothers and their children to starve in the streets, so a healthy .
