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Great Murray Rothbard Quote
This post is so awesome, I had to copy it. Thanks Old Rebel!
Featured on the Proceeding Boldly Blog:
...we must always remember, we must never forget, we must put in the dock and hang higher than Haman, those who, in modern times, opened the Pandora’s Box of genocide and the extermination of civilians: Sherman, Grant, and Lincoln.
Perhaps, some day, their statues, like Lenin’s in Russia, will be toppled and melted down; their insignias and battle flags will be desecrated, their war songs tossed into the fire. And then Davis and Lee and Jackson and Forrest, and all the heroes of the South, "Dixie" and the Stars and Bars, will once again be truly honored and remembered. The classic comment on that meretricious TV series The Civil War was made by that marvelous and feisty Southern writer Florence King. Asked her views on the series, she replied: "I didn’t have time to watch The Civil War. I’m too busy getting ready for the next one." In that spirit, I am sure that one day, aided and abetted by Northerners like myself in the glorious "copperhead" tradition, the South shall rise again.I'll happily serve up the mint juleps when that day comes. Deo Vindici.
6 comments:
The Proceeding Boldly Blog gets all the credit for this quote. When I was a starry-eyed libertarian in grad school, Rothbard was revered as a guiding light - and he still is, now that he's a latter-day founding father of the Southern Cause!
If there's anything I've learned in life, it's that the truth nearly always lies somewhere in the no-man's-land between opposing sides.
Simpletons tell us that the Uncivil War was about slavery, and it was.....to a degree. It was also about a changing political landscape, with the South trying desperately to hold on to their one-time superior power in the legislative branch, and the North doing anything possible to destroy that power. The South had the horrible institution of slavery, while the North had sweat-shops and exploited the desperation of recent immigrants to pay starvation wages to factory workers. Slavery existed on both sides of the Mason-Dixon, and Negroes were beaten and killed in the North, as well as the South. The South was charged ridiculous prices by northern merchants for items needed in the South, then the North tried to force the South to do business with them by passing tariffs to penalize those who bought their goods overseas. The North was legally wrong to stop the South from seceding, but the South was morally wrong to perpetuate the institution of slavery.
The bottom line is that every sin known to man was found on BOTH sides of the divide. The North had no more moral right to win the war than the South does to "rise again". Perhaps that’s why our nation seems to be slipping slowly into oblivion. Maybe God is getting the last laugh.
Rothbard missed a few details of history... such as the fact that military genocide has been with us for tens of thousands of years. That the South's precious Constitution denied, in writing, the basic humanity of slaves. We want that attitude back? Methinks not.
Smythe, don't give us this "starvation wages" crap any longer, OK, pal? Your tired, limp, old 'progressive' lines don't sell. Those "sweat-shops" financially liberated people and launched the consumer revolution.
Bottom line... your moral equivalence sucks, pal.
Ran, I believe Rothbard's point, is that in Western Civilization, the concept of total war--war against unarmed civilians-- was unheard of until the war between the states.
As for the issue of slavery,don't be fooled in to thinking that the north was the good guys. A defense of the southern right to secede need not be seen as a defense of slavery. No other countries went to war when they emancipated their slaves. Remember, unlike Grant, Lee didn't own any. Neither did Jefferson Davis--he emancipated them all before the war.
I highly recommend the great libertarian and abolitionist writer, Lysander Spooner's No Treason. He wasn't fooled by the phony rhetoric of the Lincoln regime. Lincoln was not an abolitionist, btw, he was in favor of shipping all the slaves and freemen back to Africa. At least the southerners cared what happened to their slaves--can't say the same about northerners.
No Treason: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/spooner1.html
An Abolitionist Defends the South: http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo82.html
Gorges, I don't think you have a complete understanding of the history here, and are therefore making some sweeping generalizations.
That is the effect of propaganda. ie North = good; South = evil. Corporation = evil; Worker = exploited.
There is no question which side gets the most play in the media and with our current leaders. We bloggers need to pierce through that and speak the truth, otherwise, we're nothing more than sheeple.
ISG,
Rothbard knows nothing, for example, of the Greeks' civilization and their culture of total war. Victor Davis Hanson's works on warfare make for some chilling reads.
Look in the Bible, at the history of Amalek and the total destruction of that people right down to the burning of their artifacts - to the point where the only historical record of them is Biblical. There isn't an archaeological remnant of them anywhere. That sort of warfare - utter physical and cultural annihilation - was rather more common then.
Your points about the hypocrisy and misinformation from the North is well taken. Thanks. I'll look-up Spooner.
Great week-end!
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