“One such collective mental operation unrestrained by reason was the manic idea embraced by the South in November 1860 that President-elect Lincoln planned imminently to invade the Southern states and free the slaves—a belief that drove the Southern people to the violent secession that brought on the very invasion and conquest they feared.”

First, Southern secession was not “violent.”

And second, I don’t think this fear can be fairly described as paranoid. As Delmore Schwarz noted, even paranoids have real enemies. Lincoln had issued a statement saying he wasn’t going to invade, provided the South ponied up the outrageously increased new tariffs. Which were a big increase over the previous ones, already patently unfair and an attempt to bleed the South white to support northern industrialists.

You don’t have to be paranoid to hear Lincoln’s words as a threat to invade with military force, and not very veiled at that.

Lawbreaking is rarely violent taken in itself. That is the beauty of libertarian anarchism — it can always claim moral superiority. Some sorts of crime are violent in themselves, of course, but most crime only becomes violent when the law is enforced. So classical liberals get to sleep snugly in their beds, secure in their moral superiority over others; at least until someone walks onto “their property” or otherwise violates “their rights.” Then, let the violence begin, for the definition of violence is not actually violence, it is the violation of the libertarian’s “rights”. The federales aren’t entitled to that tax, it is “mine” by “right,” and anyone who says otherwise is being unfair. Everyone else is morally inferior by definition, and by controlling the definition of “rights” libertatians can claim that it is everyone else who is violent and coercive. He who writes the rules is automatically morally superior.

First, the violence I referred to was the attack on Fort Sumter, ordered by the Confederate leaders specifically to create a violent break with the North which would help rally the South.

Second, the idea that Lincoln would or could have launched an invasion of the South, absent the actual events that did, in actual fact, lead to the invasion of the South, is impossible to credit. It was the bombardment of Ft. Sumter that created a wave of patriotic indignation in the North and led to the raising of an initial Union army of 75,000. Does Mr. Williamson suggest that such an army—let alone the much bigger Army of the Potomac that was created later and that actually did invade the South—could or would have been raised over the tariff issue?

On the question of paranoia, any impartial person who reads numerous statements by Southerners in 1860-61 can see that many Southerners were in the grip of an irrational frenzy. That frenzy led to the South’s ruin.

It is not only not true that a Yankee invasion over the tariff was “impossible,” but Lincoln virtually promised the same in his first inaugural address. The Morrill tariff in effect tripled the tax burden on the South—and it was already outrageously high and fell disproportionately on the South to begin with.

And on the matter of paranoia, it would seem that the North’s actual course of action justified to the last jot and tittle the suspicions of the South. It was not only not an “irrational frenzy,” it was sober appreciation of the intentions of the newly elected president, who intended to impose by force if necessary the “American system,” the whole mercantilist agenda of high tariffs, cheap federal land for mining and timber interests, a central bank, and pork in the form of subsidies to railroad companies and other internal improvements.

Ooooooh, my rights have been violated. As a wealthy person I pay 50 times more taxes than any of you. People like me, about 1/10 of 1% of the population, cover 50% of the tax burden. I think I’ll go kill somebody.

Your rights probably have been violated. Although I don’t think it’s correct that one-tenth of one percent of the population shoulders 50% of the tax burden. If my old professor in macro and in money and banking was correct, the middle class pays by far the biggest part of the tax bill, and I can’t believe that things have changed that much in 25 years.

Well, I personally paid for about 1/1,000,000 of the federal budget one year. With a population of 250 million that means that I personally paid as much as 250 other average individuals put together, assuming no deficits. The precise numbers aren’t all that important to me, though. The basic point is that I don’t need any of you custodial liberals to look after my interests for me, especially when it comes to trying to justify killing in my name.

What? Unless you’re using the word differently than most people, you’re not likely to find many liberals around here. And how do we get from a discussion on the causes of the War Between the States to “killing in [your] name”?

Simple. You claimed that the southern secession was not violent. Mr. Auster refuted your claim, and you replied that the south was justified in initiating violence because levels of taxation were unfair. Perhaps they were, but to claim that unfair taxation is the initiation of violence is a nonsequiter.

As to whether there are or are not liberals around here, there most certainly are. The grounds upon which southern secession was supposedly based are classical liberal grounds, just as the original American rebellion was explicitly justified on classical liberal grounds. The Boston Tea Party was a symbolic rebellion against a 2% tax on tea, which led to a great deal of unnecessary bloodshed. America is fortunate that people like myself are more sober than those self-important adolescent rebels.

There is much in America that is truly great. We would be blind fools to deny, however, that America was founded on explicit liberalism. The things about America which are great are (and always have been) implicit and fundamentally incompatible with that explicit liberalism. So in order to preserve and restore what is great about America, the explicit liberalism that was a major part of its founding must be repudiated. This business about killing people because taxes are too high is one of those things.

It’s clear that, despite taking over the garrison at Ft. Sumter, the South did not intend a violent revolution. They wanted to leave peacefully. Thanks to Lincoln, there was unprecedented bloodshed and mountains of dead bodies.

Despite the fact that the North initiated the real violence, if you believe that violence is not at least a last resort to the tyrannical seizure of property and funds, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree. The relevant point is that Father Abraham pointedly threatened to initiate violence himself, and solely for the purpose of extracting more funds from the South. That’s really all we need to know about the matter of who was willing to spill blood and for what purposes.

If you’re using liberal in the older sense of classical liberalism, I disagree that it contributed nothing worthwhile to the polity. I don’t know what you value yourself, but I remain attached to much of what the Founders created that was explicitly liberal in that sense.

Nevertheless, you concede then Mr. Auster’s basic point that the secession was violent?

No, I don’t. Because the scuffle at Ft. Sumter was a trivial matter compared to the violence initiated by the blood-thirsty Lincoln, who was undoubtedly delighted at being able to maneuver South Carolina into firing the first shot. And who had previously made it clear he was willing to use military violence to extract treasure from the South.

It was obvious to all that—if the Southern states had been permitted to leave the Union, which was clearly their right—there would have been no real violence. Indeed, the small action at Sumter would not have happened had the garrison not resisted.

Mr. Williamson’s attack on the “bloodthirsty Lincoln” is of a piece with Pat Buchanan’s attack last spring on Ariel Sharon for “rampaging like a bull” through the West Bank following the Passover terrorist attacks. In both cases, the critic falsely singles out a national leader as the sole, demonic agent of a particular policy, because the critic knows that that leader’s policy was in fact supported by most of the people of his country. It would not do for Mr. Williamson to speak of the “bloodthirsty United States of America” (any more than it would have done for Buchanan to have spoken of the Israeli people as “rampaging bulls”), because then the reality of his position, which is the denial of the legitimacy of the United States, would be plain for all to see.

Somehow he expects the people of the United States to have behaved like potted plants as they saw their country being dismembered. The fallacy common to many neo-Confederates today is that they cannot see that there were TWO sides to the issue. There was only one side: that the North should have let the Union be destroyed, and that anyone who had a different view was a bloodthirsty aggressor.

If rational discussion is to be held about the Civil War, the Southern partisans are going to have to stop using the language of vilification and recognize that the North also had its reasons.

No, I did not single out Lincoln as the “sole, demonic agent” of the war. I merely said he was bloodthirsty, which seems a fair assessment in light of the facts.

And you are wrong about public opinion prior to the war and early on, as Thomas DiLorenzo documents in his new book—it was taken for granted by large majorities that the South had the right to leave the Union.

But that, of course, begs the more important question of whether public opinion in the North had a bearing on the rightness of the South’s decision in the first place. If the South had a right to leave the Union, as it indeed did, public opinion in the North made no difference whatever.

Of course the North “had its reasons.” It wanted to continue to bleed the South white with tariffs, and mercantilists and jobbers like Lincoln wanted to impose the American System by force. I just don’t happen to think those reasons are sufficient.

So I guess the secession was bloody and violent, its just that the blood and violence was insignificant in Mr. Williamson’s opinion?

Nonsense. It was the biggest catastrophe in American history, and the violence wouldn’t have happened had Lincoln let the seceding states go peacefully.

Yes, if only the federales would allow me and my little plot of dirt to secede peacefully there would be no trouble. Obviously any police action to enforce IRS rules against me can be legitimately repelled with deadly force. What is more, the mere threat of such police action justifies me in making a preemptive strike on Fresno.

If I were to buy into Mr. Williamson’s rhetoric I would be in the moral right to, for example, start bombing federal buildings because of the undue tax burden I bear. That would not constitute an initiation of violence on my part, but rather guilt would fall on those who levy taxes against me in the first place.

Really, one is left wondering just what sort of actual authority, short of some _imago dei_ he carries in his head, that Mr. Williamson would accept at all without breaking out musket and cannon to repel the police.

Well, you said you’re a wealthy man, and the wealthy not only usually work out a comfortable modus vivendi with the ruling class, they usually ARE the ruling class, so I guess all the talk about tyranny remains strictly a theoretical construct for you.

For the rest of us, I suspect that there comes some point—doubtless different for all of us but a real point nonetheles—at which rebellion against tyranny makes sense.

The relevant point in the present case is that the South had the right to withdraw from the Union peacefully, and that right was denied by our ambitious and bloodthirsty American Caesar, at the expense of mountains of corpses and rivers of blood. He went to his Maker with a terrible reckoning ahead of him.

I think Mr. Williamson does hit on the right point. He seems to think that the South had the right to initiate a bloody rebellion rather than submit to the established rightful police authority. Certainly in principle such a circumstance is possible, if the women are being raped and the children sold into slavery by the police, for example. Now and then there comes a time to do some killing. A case might conceivably be made for the South, although it seems dubious to say the least — but I care neither here nor there. What I objected to was not this in principle possibility but Mr. Williamson’s baseless claim (contra Mr. Auster) that the secession was not violent. That statement was the only thing that made me enter the discussion at all. It is the usual tiresome liberal game of attempting to shift responsibility. If you are going to go out and start killing people because of the tyranny of the established order then take responsibility for starting the killing. When the cops come and you wave your gun at them, the ensuing violence is more your fault than theirs. Civilization depends upon this principle, and if you are going to break it then accept responsibility for doing so and do so only under the gravest imaginable circumstances.

The notion that I am a member of “the ruling class” is so beyond laughable that I am practically speechless. Having been both poor as dirt and rich as a prince I can tell you that if you haven’t been there, it is not at all even remotely in the same universe as what you expect. I only indulge in that bit of personal disclosure because I brought it up, but that will be the end of it.

Let’s say Lincoln was really that bad. Let’s agree that the Confederacy was justified. What does that matter today?

Had the South won the Civil War, I’m not sure life would be different. In fact, the Empire could have sprung from the Confederacy.

After all, the Solid South has given us one liberal president after another. It voted in the Welfare-Warfare State by block-voting FDR into the White House FOUR TIMES.

EVERY Southern state has a fully-functioning welfare apparatus.

EVERY Southern state has public schools teaching the standard self-esteem-inducing mush.

EVERY Southern state leaves abortion virtually unregulated.

Not to mention one great Southern distinctive: militarism. The backbone of the military might that goes into Kosovo, Somalia, ad nauseum. coms from Dixie.

Right. For the most part I couldn’t care less. I only care to the extent these historical icons are invoked as a way of advancing and legitimizing liberal principles, and this neo-confederate libertarianism is just another foaming-at-the-mouth rabid form of liberalism as far as I am concerned.

Mr. Williamson continues to ignore my point that it wasn’t just Lincoln, but the majority of the people of the United States, who wanted to preserve the Union and who supported doing what was necessary to preserve it, as much as they regretted that necessity. His condemnation of Lincoln is really a masked condemnation of the United States itself.

He’s also ignored my point that whether or not you agree with what the North did in preserving the Union, the North certainly had good reasons for wanting to do so. Thus one cannot have a rational discussion with the neo-Confederates because—much like the Arabs in their dealings with Israel—they see themselves as the absolutely innocent victims of a malignant force. So there’s nothing to discuss. The South had an absolute right to dissolve the Union without seeking the consent of the other states; the national government had absolutely no right or duty to keep the Union from being dissolved. The South was completely innocent; Lincoln was a bloodthirsty tyrant. End of story. The neo-Confederates never consider the possibility that there was some blame on their side and some good arguments—and sincere devotion to noble ideals—on the other side. Instead of seeing the Civil War as a tragedy, they see it as a melodrama of innocence being destroyed by perfidy.

It is very regrettable that the post-Civil War settlement, in which the people of the South accepted the results of the Civil War and made a national reconciliation possible, has been abrogated by the neo-Confederates. They are the old fire-eaters reincarnated, indulging in the same sort of incompromising hateful rhetoric against the United States that led to the Civil War and the ruin of the South in the first place. Furthermore, the interesting fact that it is self-described LIBERTARIANS who have brought the old fire-eater mentality back to life in recent years proves the point David Donald made in the 1950s: that the Civil War was made possible by an excess of freedom, a breakdown of moral and rational restraints which, as I suggested in my original article, is similar to the breakdown we are experiencing today.

Traditionalists need to work together to preserve and restore the essential elements of our civilization, an enterprise that requires, among other things, principled resistance against the forces of liberalism that have ruined that civilization. The Llewelyn Rockwell approach of continually invoking hatred against Lincoln and the Union does not produce anything positive in that direction. It just produces hatred.

As supporting evidence both for the David Donald thesis that it was a sense of moral unrestraint that made the Civil War possible, and for my follow-up suggestion that the same lack of control is at work in today’s neo-Confederates, here is part of an e-mail exchange I had in March 2001 with a columnist at a certain well-known paleo-libertarian web site. In order to set the stage for his e-mail, I need to quote parts of my own e-mail that he was responding to, some of which will be unavoidably similar to things I’ve already said in this thread.

Mr. ________,

… While I’m critical of Lincoln on some crucial points (for one thing he was the prime spokesman of the view that ultimately led to the neocon ideology described above), I agree with him that the issue that brought on the war was the South’s demand that slavery be spread to all the new states. Indeed, many Southerners were declaring as early as 1846 that any opposition to slavery being spread everywhere in the new territories and states was an unbearable insult to Southern pride and a cause for secession. This was a radical change from the older dispensation that looked at slavery as a necessary evil, something the South had inherited from the past, and that they had no safe way of getting rid of. In the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, they abandoned that more modest—and morally defensible—position and began promoting slavery as a positive good, indeed, as the basis for an expanding empire. So the election of Lincoln, who obviously (at least to any rational mind) posed no threat to slavery where it existed but only to its expansion into the territories, was seen by the South as totally unacceptable and they tried to destroy the Union over it.

I am astounded when Southern partisans say the secession was as justified as American independence. The American colonies declared independence after King George had declared the colonists outside the protection of the law, and after Great Britain had been at war with the colonies for 14 months. The South seceded—and attacked a U.S. fort—over the lawful election of a U.S. president. I’ve never understood how anyone in good conscience could maintain a moral equivalency between these two events.

What disturbs me in the more recent Southern partisan journalism is the loss of balance, the assumption of total Southern innocency and victimhood on one side, and the indictment of this monster, this war criminal, this mass murderer Lincoln (as he’s routinely described at lewrockwell.com) on the other. … While this Southern attitude may be an understandable reaction to the dominant culture’s attack on the South in recent decades, it is still very regrettable. Reading lewrockwell.com, I get the eerie feeling I’m back in the Civil War era, with some of the same kinds of scorching passions being indulged in that brought on the Civil War in the first place.

Yet I can’t help wondering how the South, which cares most deeply about honor, expected the North to respond when the South bombarded a U.S. fort for 33 hours. Did they think the North had no sense of honor?….

Sincerely yours,
Lawrence Auster

Now here is the columist’s reply. Notice how, even after I criticized the excessive rhetoric about Lincoln and the North, he simply repeats it (“war criminal,” “fought like Nazis”). Notice his flippant explanation for the Confederates’ firing on Fort Sumter. And notice most of all his justification—his LIBERTARIAN justification—for the secession which makes the United States of America the equivalent of an at-will contract, dissoluble on the mere whim of one of the parties. It should be obvious that his radical (not to say childish) notion of freedom would make it impossible to sustain any organized society.

Mr. Auster:

I could never resist a good argument:

The Yankees hated the spread of slavery because we had this pernicious habit of freeing our slaves and then living next them as neighbors. This was of course, illegal, in Illinois, home of the great emancipator (and war criminal).

I have no love the southern radicals any more than the northern, but in their defense, it was constant yankee carping that brought on those in your face comments about slavery.

As to Fort Sumter? It was a customs house. The war was about taxes. We were paying for the industrial revolution up north and had enough. We said no more. Lincoln decided to reinforce his tax collectors and we said enough. Up to that point, the yankee soldiers had been buying their provisions in the market in Charleston. No body bothered them. But that was too much. So we blasted ‘em. They were trespassing in our harbor, and intercepting our commerce. That’s brigandage under international law.

While the south was not blameless, the north turned it from a war of words into a ruthless and murderous invasion of private property. They fought like Nazis, we fought, for the most part, like gentlemen. One, exactly one, northern town was burned. Whole states were turned into wasteland down here. So yeah, we view them as monsters. And ourselves as victims. Why wouldn’t we?

It must not be forgotten that Sherman and Sheridan were acting under orders when they carried torch and sword to the civilians of the south. They were promoted because other northern generals were Christians and would not fight that way. But Lincoln found his pyromaniacs…

And why do we need provocation to secede? In a voluntary union, we should be able to secede because we wake up in the morning and just plain feel like it! If you can’t do that, you are not free. We have gone from chattel slavery to social slavery.

Just one man’s opinion…
God bless
M_________

Auster: “the neo-Confederates … much like the Arabs” Say what?

I don’t think the Confederates compare to the Arabs. Most of their current defenders dislike slavery, for example. And comparing Jeff Davis to Arafat (or Lincoln to Sharon, for that matter) does no good.

Personally I didn’t take it as a blanket comparison. I thought the comparison was with respect to how neoconfederates and Arabs both view themselves as absolute victims of absolute tyrants. I would agree that a more comprehensive comparison would quickly start to lose its legs, but in terms of self-proclaimed victimhood it waddles and quacks.

That LewRockwell.com columnist is right about one thing at least: Southerners DID fight like gentlemen. Was Lincoln a war criminal? That’s putting it mildly. At any rate, the South’s passing is a black day for the West and Christendom. May she rise again, God willing.

I note too how the neo-Unionists continue to mischaracterize the arguments of Southerners in absolutist terms. It’s an attempt to portray Southern patriots as extremists. Which, as we all know, is not the case. The real extremists are the neo-Unionist warmongers who are still pushing an agenda of totalitarianism and empire. They did it in 1861 and they’re STILL doing it in 2002.

I also can’t but notice that those neo-Unionists who are so quick to deny the South’s right to defend herself from tyranny are so quick to defend Israel’s war for survival in the Middle East. I guess loyalty to the Jews trumps loyalty to white Christian Southerners. Another sign that the neoconservative hold on the debate — not to mention their hold on our foreign policy — needs to be broken, and broken hard.

Well, I’m not much on Dixie or the Jack as helpful icons for the here and now. What I know is that “defending from tyranny” has become a blanket justification for the largest string of murders in human history. Everyone is a victim, so lets go kill some more oppressors. Usually on closer inspection the tyranny wasn’t as bad as that which replaced it, nor the oppressors so oppressive: witness the nostalgia in this forum and elsewhere about states of affairs preceding all of these “defenses from tyranny.” I’m also not much of a zionist; but on the other hand there wasn’t a continual string of Union suicide bombers blowing up women and children in Charleston either.

Actually, I would argue that the “largest string of murders in human history” is the result of the revolutionary state imposing authoritarian rule on subject peoples: Revolutionary France, Lincoln-era Washington, Soviet Russia, Socialist Germany, Red China, etc. No, the Union did not use suicide bombers against innocent Southerners. Instead the Union employed violent abolitionists and agents in order to ignite an anti-white race war in the South.

After I had talked at length about the lack of restraint among the neo-Confederates and the tone of belligerence and hatred that results from it, after I talked about the need for a language of reason that recognizes that there were two sides in the Civil War, William enters the fray using that very same tone of belligerence and hatred, denying any status to the preservers of the United States of America except as illegitimate oppressors, and apparently including me among “extremists .. . warmongers pushing an agenda of totalitarianism and empire,” as though to demonstrate that that’s the only way the new Southern partisans know how to speak. It seems to be a kind of syndrome, a package deal. Once a person signs on to the paleo-libertarian, neo-Confederate view of things, the tone of vilification against the United States automatically comes with it.

And then, to top it off, William brings in the Jews, suggesting that if one supports the right of the Jews of today’s Israel to exist in their own land without being physically exterminated, but if one questions the right of the Southerners of 1860-61 to dissolve the Union without having had their rights or lives threatened in any way by the Union, and without the consent of the other members of the Union, then that is a contradiction proving that one’s “loyalty to the Jews trumps loyalty to white Christian Southerners.” Once again, belligerence has trumped reason.

I repeat what I said before, and I implore William to think about it: “Traditionalists need to work together to preserve and restore the essential elements of our civilization…. Continually invoking hatred against Lincoln and the Union does not produce anything positive in that direction. It just produces hatred.”

I admit it, I like direct language. Nothing personal. It doesn’t do any of us any good to beat around the bush about these issues. I mean, how can one characterize “totalitarianism” and “empire” except by calling it totalitarianism and empire? I think you can draw a direct line from the actions of the central government under Bloody Abe in the 1860s to the present internationalist/interventionist regime in Washington. And I do realize there were two sides to the War Between the States (or, as I like to call it, the First Southern War for Independence). I just happen to believe that one side was wrong. The point about the Jews in Israel is a good one. I simply think it is interesting that those who reject the Confederacy’s right to exist are so quick to defend Israel’s right to exist. Why the double standard? I agree that traditionalists need to work together. I’m all for it. But it’s counterproductive to insist that others need to conform to the Northeastern model of how things are done. Because let’s face it: the Northeast hasn’t been a hotbed of traditionalism for many, many years. If anything it’s the home of Puritanism, abolition, political radicalism, Political Correctness, women’s rights movement, etc. There is nothing much left of Western civilization to restore in the North, which is solidly liberal, atheistic and consumerist, apart from some great Catholic (Italian, Irish) urban areas, though these too are being swept away by Washington’s third world immigrant resettlement scheme. In the South and parts of the West (and, I concede, in some of the rural areas in the Midwest), Western civilization still exists. But maybe not for long. Just as Southern blacks were sent to Northern cities to break up urban Catholic communities, Washington is importing millions of third world settlers to the South and West to destroy the remnants of American civilization in those regions.

Yeah. High taxes justify starting a killing spree. High taxes are morally equivalent to genocide and blowing up children with suicide bombers. High taxes are the moral equivalent of denying a whole people their existence. Like I said before.

I’m no fan of high taxes. Quite the contrary. In all likelihood we’ve each paid more tax as a percentage than any southerner in the 1800s. But this notion that high taxes are morally equivalent to the murder of children, and that therefore the South was right to initiate wholesale murder in response to them, is not worth the dignity of any further discussion: direct, civil, or possibly even both. Just having this discussion is the moral equivalent of discussing in all seriousness whether or not we should start executing children until the federales reduce our taxes. You guys enjoy yourselves.

“Let’s say Lincoln was really that bad. Let’s agree that the Confederacy was justified. What does that matter today?

“Had the South won the Civil War, I’m not sure life would be different. In fact, the Empire could have sprung from the Confederacy.”

It’s not impossible that the South too would have thrown away its constitution for rule by a New Class elite centered in some imperial capital. It may be in the long run that the rule of law counts for nothing. I don’t think so, but I may be wrong.

However, I think it is more likely that, had secession been vindicated as the last and best protection against tyranny—the ruling class of the North would have been less eager to engage in unjust measures that outraged the citizens of some states. And that something nearer to Constitutional, decentralized governance would obtain today. Which would mean, among other things, that it would have been much harder to pervert the First Amendment, standing it on its head and driving religion from the public square. That legalized abortion could not have been forced on the citizens of states which didn’t want it. And that we would have been somewhat less likely to get involved in foreign military adventures of the type that have characterized our history in the 20th century.

Even if you discount the mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, things such as these count for much, and they’re worth striving for.

William remains obtuse to all my points. First, he says he’s not being personal. In fact, he wasn’t speaking in the abstract about “totalitarianism and empire,” he was lumping me personally with such an agenda.

Second, he refuses to refer to Lincoln simply as Lincoln, but calls him “bloody Abe.” That is not merely direct or honest language, as William would have it; that is the emotion-laden language of vilification. It’s like the Communist China of former years that never referred to the United States as the “United States,” but would always use some term like “running dogs of imperialism.”

Third, he says that he does acknowledge that there were two sides in the Civil War, but that he happens to think the North was wrong. Obviously, that was not my point. My point was, whether or not you agree with what the North did, that it did have reasons and arguments and principles on its side, that it was not merely acting out of bloodthirsty imperialistic motives, and that anyone debating the Civil War needs to acknowledge these facts if there is to be any kind of rational discussion of the subject and any hope of a common American loyalty.

Fourth, he professes not to see that the case of Israel and the case of the Confederacy are entirely unrelated. For him to accuse me of a “double standard” exemplifies the problem of group-think replacing reason. As an illustration of such group-think, the blacks during the Crown Heights riots in 1991 claimed that it was a “double standard” for the authorities to be more concerned about the pogrom-like murder of a Jew by a gang of blacks than about the accidental death of a black boy run over by a car driven by a Jew. The blacks’ thinking went like this: A black on one side, a Jew on the other; the two situations must be treated as having exactly equal moral weight, or else there is a “double standard.” Group-think defines fairness by the formulaic balancing of one group with another group, regardless of the substance of the respective cases. Thus if a person opposes what Hitler did to the Jews, but also opposes (say) the black demand for more diversity in higher education, then that person would be practicing a “double standard” in favor of Jews and against blacks. A society that embraces such thinking ceases to be governed by common standards of reason; politics becomes a matter of ethnic proportionality in every area of life, including moral judgment and punishment. By seeming to embrace such an approach himself, William lends support to the (usually incorrect and wrongheaded) charge by neoconservatives that the white right is nothing more than a subspecies of multiculturalism. Apparently some parts of the white right really do deserve that criticism.

“Mr. Williamson continues to ignore my point that it wasn’t just Lincoln, but the majority of the people of the United States, who wanted to preserve the Union and who supported doing what was necessary to preserve it…”

No. You don’t have a point in the first place, because you’re wrong. Before Lincoln decided to invade the South, large majorities in the North believed that the South had the right to secede.

“He’s also ignored my point that whether or not you agree with what the North did in preserving the Union, the North certainly had good reasons for wanting to do so.”

No. They did NOT have good reasons, unless you believe that bleeding the South with unjust tariffs is a good reason.

“Thus one cannot have a rational discussion with the neo-Confederates because—much like the Arabs in their dealings with Israel—they see themselves as the absolutely innocent victims of a malignant force.”

Nonsense. I’ve said no such thing.

“The South had an absolute right to dissolve the Union without seeking the consent of the other states; the national government had absolutely no right or duty to keep the Union from being dissolved.”

This is correct.

“…the neo-Confederates. They are the old fire-eaters reincarnated, indulging in the same sort of incompromising hateful rhetoric against the United States that led to the Civil War and the ruin of the South in the first place.”

This is nonsense. Certainly I’ve done nothing like this myself. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

“The Llewelyn Rockwell approach of continually invoking hatred against Lincoln and the Union does not produce anything positive in that direction. It just produces hatred.”

He merely adverts to a pretty much irrefutable historical situation that has led directly to the point where, as Joe Sobran so tellingly remarked, “The Constitution is no longer a threat to our form of government.” Forgive me if I bear just a wee bit of animus against those who have destroyed the Republic.

It is also possible that without more coherent unity than that vision allows everyone in America would be saying “sig heil”. That sort of speculation is pointless moral utilitarianism. We all live in the actual world that we all actually live in; and in any case if Mr. Williamson’s scenario had played out none of us would have been born to see it.

We should be more concerned about what sorts of moral values we are propogating; and propogating the moral value that high taxes are equivalent to genocide and that therefore high taxes deserve the same response as genocide is clearly a problem. What is more, this treatment of any violation of “rights” as tantamount to genocide is clearly part of the core of liberalism itself. Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.

“That vision” in my previous comment being Mr. Williamson’s comment:

“It’s not impossible that the South too would have thrown away its constitution for rule by a New Class elite centered in some imperial capital. It may be in the long run that the rule of law counts for nothing. I don’t think so, but I may be wrong.”

“I agree with him that the issue that brought on the war was the South’s demand that slavery be spread to all the new states.”

This is undoubtedly an important factor in bringing on war. But it’s not the ONLY factor, and possibly not even the most important one.

“I am astounded when Southern partisans say the secession was as justified as American independence. The American colonies declared independence after King George had declared the colonists outside the protection of the law, and after Great Britain had been at war with the colonies for 14 months. The South seceded-—and attacked a U.S. fort-—over the lawful election of a U.S. president. I’ve never understood how anyone in good conscience could maintain a moral equivalency between these two events.”

Again, this is gross over-simplification. There were other huge issues, including a crushing and one-sided tariff, and (for, what? five states?) Lincoln’s threatened invasion itself.

But that is to skirt the essential point that the states had the right to leave the Union WITHOUT the permission of the others. At least three states refused to ratify the Constitution unless this principle was guaranteed. We may take it as given that there has never been a tyrant who would agree with those he persecutes that their grievances are well founded.

“What disturbs me in the more recent Southern partisan journalism is the loss of balance, the assumption of total Southern innocency and victimhood on one side…”

If you actually believe this, then you don’t know any “neo-Confederates.” I suppose I would qualify as such myself, but I don’t know anybody with like sentiments who does not bewail the fact of slavery.

“And notice most of all his justification—his LIBERTARIAN justification—-for the secession which makes the United States of America the equivalent of an at-will contract, dissoluble on the mere whim of one of the parties.”

The inconvenient fact for your side of the question is that it WAS an “at-will contract.”

“I have no love the southern radicals any more than the northern, but in their defense, it was constant yankee carping that brought on those in your face comments about slavery.”

This too is over-simplification, this time from the other side. It was the entrenched financial interests of rich slave-owners that prompted the increasingly more insane-sounding defenses of slavery. I think we may take this for granted.

“As to Fort Sumter? It was a customs house. The war was about taxes. We were paying for the industrial revolution up north and had enough. We said no more. Lincoln decided to reinforce his tax collectors and we said enough.”

This is plainly the truth. In his first inaugural, Lincoln threatened to invade precisely over the issue of taxes. NOT over slavery, NB—a crucial point for those who see the war a caused by slavery and nothing else.

“While the south was not blameless, the north turned it from a war of words into a ruthless and murderous invasion of private property. They fought like Nazis, we fought, for the most part, like gentlemen.”

Again, simple truth. The Yankees were vicious, murdering bastards who waged total war on civilians.

“What I know is that ‘defending from tyranny’ has become a blanket justification for the largest string of murders in human history. Everyone is a victim, so lets go kill some more oppressors.”

If you refer to the relevant points of comparison—the secession of the United States from the British Empire and the secession of the Confederacy from the Union—you know no such thing, because it’s wrong.

“After I had talked at length about the lack of restraint among the neo-Confederates and the tone of belligerence and hatred that results from it, after I talked about the need for a language of reason that recognizes that there were two sides in the Civil War, William enters the fray using that very same tone of belligerence and hatred…”

This is simply untrue, and grossly unfair to William. The only belligerent language in this discussion has so far come from you and the wealthy Mr. Matt.

“…denying any status to the preservers of the United States of America except as illegitimate oppressors…”

OK. What status would you prefer they be assigned?

“And then, to top it off, William brings in the Jews, suggesting that if one supports the right of the Jews of today’s Israel to exist in their own land without being physically exterminated…”

It is clear that the one trait that animates the anti-Southerners on this board is a tendency to wild oversimplification. I hate to raise another subject in the midst of this one, but I submit to you that there is not another people on earth—and CERTAINLY not Americans—who would sit still for what the Zionists did to the indigenous population of non-Jews in Palestine. I hope you are not another of those who starts flinging around phrases like “anti-Semite” toward those who believe that the matter admits of a little more nuance.

“The point about the Jews in Israel is a good one. I simply think it is interesting that those who reject the Confederacy’s right to exist are so quick to defend Israel’s right to exist.”

It’s not just a good point, it’s an excellent one.

“Yeah. High taxes justify starting a killing spree.”

Needless to say, this was Lincoln’s position, not that of the South.

Mr. Williamson:
“If you refer to the relevant points of comparison—the secession of the United States from the British Empire and the secession of the Confederacy from the Union—you know no such thing, because it’s wrong.”

In my current state of knowledge, which of course can always be improved upon, I do not think that either rebellion was morally justified. I’ve consistently said that the initiation of civil war because of high taxes is (all other substantive considerations aside) completely unjustifiable. So none of Mr. Williamson’s verbose comparisons apply to me.

Of course I don’t see the moral status of those events as such as all that relevant. Today’s circumstance is what it is, and I wouldn’t be here without it. As I’ve said, it is the moral lessons we purport to take from these events and apply to future action that concern me.

I don’t really have a problem with Lawrence’s critique of my words. I stand by my understanding of the liberal/neoconservative agenda as one of totalitarianism and empire. I stand by my use of the epithet “Bloody Abe” (and I thought I was being polite!). What is this about a “…common American loyalty”? Hmmm. Is that your real objective here? Is that what has got you and the other neo-Unionists so worried? If so, let’s talk about it. Please explain to a young(ish), well travelled, educated, white Catholic profesional what exactly there is about “America” in 2002 he should be loyal to. There is still plenty about the West one should be loyal to. But “America”? I’m not so sure. And my point about the Jews in Israel still stands. But I’m not surprised. The neoconservative love for Israel and disdain for the South is well documented. Speaking of the latter, the worst case I’ve seen was in a piece in National Review several years ago (in its halycon pre-Goldberg days) in which the writer argued that the problem with black culture is not that it is black culture, but that it is Southern culture. Is the white right a subspecies of multiculturalism? Well, given that we now live in a multiracial, multicultural empire (thanks to the scheming of the global power elites and the spinelessness of the mainstream Right), it was only a matter of time before white nationalism appeared in response.

“Second, he refuses to refer to Lincoln simply as Lincoln, but calls him “bloody Abe.” That is not merely direct or honest language, as William would have it; that is the emotion-laden language of vilification.”

It also happens to be sober fact, so in fact it IS “direct and honest language.” You just don’t like to see one of the household gods of the centralized state treated with disrepect. Tough. He deserves a lot worse than this.

Me:
>> Yeah. High taxes justify starting a killing spree.

Williamson:
> Needless to say, this was Lincoln’s position, not that of the South.

Williamson needs to once again ignore a basic premise of any civilization, ever, in order to avoid taking responsibility for his position. It is possible in principle for waving a gun at the cops to be justified. But even when it is justified, it is the gun-waver, not the cops, who is responsible for the initiation of violence. The burden of justification is always with the gun-waver, or else civilization is not possible.

Of course liberalism, parasite that it is, has ignored the basic requirements for civilization since inception.

“It is also possible that without more coherent unity than that vision allows everyone in America would be saying ‘sig heil’. That sort of speculation is pointless moral utilitarianism. We all live in the actual world that we all actually live in; and in any case if Mr. Williamson’s scenario had played out none of us would have been born to see it.”

Possibly. And yet, I suspect that everyone on this board believes that this is not really the case. If whether or not we remain a nation of laws makes no difference in the end, if how we live together now makes no difference to future generations, then none of us would bother to contest any of these issues.

“…I do not think that either rebellion was morally justified. I’ve consistently said that the initiation of civil war because of high taxes is (all other substantive considerations aside) completely unjustifiable…”

I think it’s at least defensible position. But the power to tax being, finally, the power to destroy, I suspect that even you would discover there was some point past which you’d fight to keep what worked for. That point is likely different for all of us, but I also suspect that it’s a real point, nonetheless, for most of us.

Me:
“Yeah. High taxes justify starting a killing spree.”

Williamson:
“Needless to say, this was Lincoln’s position, not that of the South.”

“Williamson needs to once again ignore a basic premise of any civilization, ever, in order to avoid taking responsibility for his position…”

To describe facts as they are is not to “avoid taking responsibility” for anything. Undoubtedly there were some in the South who had much to answer for. To concede this obvious point is NOT to abdicate the right to speak plain truth. Lincoln was ready to invade over the issue of taxes. Fact. Should the South have waited longer? Maybe. I don’t know for sure. But they had the right to leave the Union peacefully, and they chose to exercise that right. The violence was forced on them by the North. Again, simple fact.

It is possible in principle for waving a gun at the cops to be justified. But even when it is justified, it is the gun-waver, not the cops, who is responsible for the initiation of violence. The burden of justification is always with the gun-waver, or else civilization is not possible.

Of course liberalism, parasite that it is, has ignored the basic requirements for civilization since inception.

Williamson:
> And yet, I suspect that everyone on this board believes that this is not really the case.

It doesn’t matter what everyone believes. It only matters what is true. Anyone even remotely familiar with the butterfly effect knows that such “what would have been” scenarios are quite literally meaningless. The one thing I can guarantee is that if you tweak initial conditions by a hair it is literally impossible to predict the macro scale outcome. So all that matters — whether you WANT to believe it or not — is what you decide morally right now.

This by the way is part of why tradition is so important for continuity and a good life. The technologically rational approach to civilization building literally cannot work as a matter of mathematical fact.

Cleaning up text I had missed to make clear what I was and wasn’t saying myself:

Me:
“Yeah. High taxes justify starting a killing spree.”

Williamson:
“Needless to say, this was Lincoln’s position, not that of the South.”

“Williamson needs to once again ignore a basic premise of any civilization, ever, in order to avoid taking responsibility for his position…”

To describe facts as they are is not to “avoid taking responsibility” for anything. Undoubtedly there were some in the South who had much to answer for. To concede this obvious point is NOT to abdicate the right to speak plain truth. Lincoln was ready to invade over the issue of taxes. Fact. Should the South have waited longer? Maybe. I don’t know for sure. But they had the right to leave the Union peacefully, and they chose to exercise that right. The violence was forced on them by the North. Again, simple fact.

Williamson:
> Lincoln was ready to invade over the issue of taxes. Fact.

Right. And the police stand ready to invade over taxes right now at this very moment. Fact. So if the South had a right to violent rebellion then SO DO I. RIGHT NOW. Is that the moral lesson that I should take from the Williamson School of History and apply to my life right now? How about Mr. Williamson himself? If he is paying high taxes doesn’t he have the right to start killing people over it RIGHT NOW? After all, we are a polity under “consent of the governed” so it is an at-will contract.

“Williamson:
> Lincoln was ready to invade over the issue of taxes. Fact.

Right. And the police stand ready to invade over taxes right now at this very moment. Fact. So if the South had a right to violent rebellion then SO DO I. RIGHT NOW. Is that the moral lesson that I should take from the Williamson School of History and apply to my life right now? How about Mr. Williamson himself? If he is paying high taxes doesn’t he have the right to start killing people over it RIGHT NOW? After all, we are a polity under “consent of the governed” so it is an at-will contract.”

Be consistent. Is it the moral lesson of the Mr. Matt School of History that tyranny is never to be resisted? If a tyrant demands more and more of your substance, aren’t you obligated to give it to him? If he wants what you have, doesn’t he have the right to take it all RIGHT NOW? And after you’ve handed over everything you own, isn’t it incumbent upon you to surrender your freedoms as well, your freedom to worship, your right to associate with whomever you choose, your right to teach your children right and wrong as you see it? Because, after all, the tyrant represents authority, doesn’t he, and all authority comes from God, right? Hmm?

Williamson:
> Is it the moral lesson of the Mr. Matt School of History that tyranny is never to be resisted?

I will leave it to Mr. Williamson to re-read my statement on this earlier in the thread. “Matt thinks there is never a justification for a violent response to tyranny” is a straw man and has already been addressed. The burden is on Mr. Williamson to argue that a certain percentage of taxation by the government justifies the initiation of killing. Once he gives me that percentage I will know when my assault on Fresno is to begin (since he has also said that I am entitled to make a preemptive strike).

Implicitly, of course, I am entitled by Mr. Williamson’s reasoning to attack the federales with guns, bombs, and other weapons of war right now. Because of course no southerner in the 1800’s paid as much tax, in either absolute or percentage terms, as me.

“Williamson:
> Is it the moral lesson of the Mr. Matt School of History that tyranny is never to be resisted?

I will leave it to Mr. Williamson to re-read my statement on this earlier in the thread. “Matt thinks there is never a justification for a violent response to tyranny” is a straw man and has already been addressed. The burden is on Mr. Williamson to argue that a certain percentage of taxation by the government justifies the initiation of killing. Once he gives me that percentage I will know when my assault on Fresno is to begin (since he has also said that I am entitled to make a preemptive strike).”

I just did a search with some of those words and came up with nothing.

But I will leave it to Mr. Matt to re-read my earlier comments on the matter. The “initiation of killing” matter is a straw man and has already been addressed. The burden is on Mr. Matt to justify Lincoln’s bloody course of action. The South quite correctly believed it had the right to secede peacefully. The decision to initiate violence came from Lincoln and the North. Fact. If you want an answer to your question, consult with some of your fellow Yankees.

Mr. Williamson is being disingenuous. He has already conceded that southerners fired the first shots, and specifically at the tax man. As for his reading comprehension difficulties, there isn’t much I can do to help there.

“Implicitly, of course, I am entitled by Mr. Williamson’s reasoning to attack the federales with guns, bombs, and other weapons of war right now. Because of course no southerner in the 1800’s paid as much tax, in either absolute or percentage terms, as me.”

Maybe.

Then again, the free market and technology in the intervening years have vastly increased the distance between the average worker’s income and penury and starvation. Which also partly explains the psychological disparity between the reactions of individuals then—and in the colonies—and now.

Oh, and just to clear something up: I have not argued, and have no intention of arguing, whether Lincoln’s course of action was justified. As I have mentioned repeatedly, my only concern is with the neoconfederate assertion that taxes were so high that they were justified in initiating a bloody rebellion. Lincoln will no doubt get his due, whatever that is, at the seat of the Lord also.

But that is completely independent of a determination of whether or not “high” taxes (specifically the exact level of taxes and tarriffs levied against southerners in the 1800’s) justify starting a killing spree.

So is psychology then the basis of morality?

“Williamson:
> And yet, I suspect that everyone on this board believes that this is not really the case.

It doesn’t matter what everyone believes. It only matters what is true…”

And I said what I said because I firmly believe that YOU believe it’s the case, and is true. I was repeating my assertion that whether or not we take action to ensure that we remain a nation of laws is important, and one huge reason we believe it to be important is that we have a care for the world our children will inhabit.

“So all that matters — whether you WANT to believe it or not — is what you decide morally right now.”

By all means. Lincoln and the North had made it abundantly clear that we were no longer to be a nation of laws. The right of peaceful secession from the Union—taken for granted by nearly everyone before—was now to be abrogated on the say-so of a man whose knowledge of our own history, as illustrated in his speech at Gettysburg, was bizarrely incorrect.

It is worth fighting to maintain the rule of law. And it is morally correct as well.

That is one danger of adhering to explicit liberalism. My “right to secede” now is surely no less than that of a southerner then. Your love of explicit liberalism will always lead you to justify killing people over money, or buggery, or other venial things.

“Mr. Williamson is being disingenuous. He has already conceded that southerners fired the first shots, and specifically at the tax man. As for his reading comprehension difficulties, there isn’t much I can do to help there.”

These were the actions of individuals, on the spot and under high pressure, taken BEFORE there was a coherent government to address the issue.

Mr. Matt is being disingenuous when he attempts to protray this minor scuffle as announcing a settled policy of war on the North. It is abundantly clear that the South wanted to secede peacefully. It is similarly abundantly clear that massive and well-planned violence on a large scale was initiated by the North and not the South, and specifically to compel tribute from unwilling victims.

Before you worry about the dust-up at Sumter, better figure out how you can justify the most homicidal action ever undertaken by a government up til that time. If life and settled order is so precious to you, you will doubtless be able to explain why Lincoln had to resort to murder and chaos to preserve it.

“Oh, and just to clear something up: I have not argued, and have no intention of arguing, whether Lincoln’s course of action was justified. As I have mentioned repeatedly, my only concern is with the neoconfederate assertion that taxes were so high that they were justified in initiating a bloody rebellion. Lincoln will no doubt get his due, whatever that is, at the seat of the Lord also.

“But that is completely independent of a determination of whether or not ‘high’ taxes (specifically the exact level of taxes and tarriffs levied against southerners in the 1800’s) justify starting a killing spree.”

First, just to clear up your dishonest language, the South did not “start a killing spree.” That honor goes to Lincoln and the North.

But if you’ve now arrived at the point where you’re niggling about just WHAT level justifies secession, then you’ve pretty much conceded my point. I believe that peaceful secession was abundantly justified by the rates that obtained in 1861. But Lincoln would not permit peaceful secession, as we know.

“My ‘right to secede’ now is surely no less than that of a southerner then. Your love of explicit liberalism will always lead you to justify killing people over money, or buggery, or other venial things.”

And just to clear up another instance of dishonest language, the South and its partisans do NOT have to “justify killing people over money” or anything else. That distinction belongs to Lincoln and the North.

Actually, the burden of justification lies on both Lincoln and the confederates independently. Each of us must justify his own actions morally. The most likely proper moral interpretation of the Civil War is that neither side was morally justified in taking its actions. Clearly the South was not morally justified, if we take just what has been said in this thread as a basis. If the North was not justified either — possible and even likely — then that in no way exonerates the south for its own actions.

Liberalism attempts to justify its own horrors by setting itsself in opposition to the oppressor-tyrant. Liberalism is the freedom-fighters, struggling for equality, and it doesn’t need to justify its actions independently from pure opposition to the oppressor-tyrant. Opposition to the oppressor-tyrant is all that is needed to morally justify anything at all.

The point to bringing up the question of what percentage taxation is required to justify the initiation of murder was intended as a _reductio ad absurdam_. The fact that Mr. Williamson took it as a plain question says a great deal about how deeply committed he is to his version of liberalism.

“The most likely proper moral interpretation of the Civil War is that neither side was morally justified in taking its actions. Clearly the South was not morally justified, if we take just what has been said in this thread as a basis…”

Speaking sub specie aeternatatis you may be right, although I doubt it. Certainly individual Southerners, just like individual Northerners, owned slaves when they probably knew it was wrong. But remember that the South, unlike the North, does not have to justify war and violence. The South believed it had the right peacefully to secede, and anticipated that such a right would be respected, at least in the breach. The North initiated bloodshed on a massive scale for no other reason, that I can see, than to maintain the flow of tribute.

“Opposition to the oppressor-tyrant is all that is needed to morally justify anything at all.”

Perhaps, but not germane to this discussion. The South does not HAVE to justify bloodshed. That unenviable task is left to Northern politicians and generals.

“The point to bringing up the question of what percentage taxation is required to justify the initiation of murder was intended as a _reductio ad absurdam_. The fact that Mr. Williamson took it as a plain question says a great deal about how deeply committed he is to his version of liberalism.”

You may have intended it as a reduction ad absurdam, but if that is to be the case, it would have to be applicable to the South. And, as I have noted, it’s not germane in the first place, since it was the North that initiated a settled course of massive bloodshed.

Williamson:
“The South does not HAVE to justify bloodshed.”

Right. The liberals don’t have to justify their actions, because they represent the oppressed against the oppressor-tyrant. There are no moral constraints on liberals, nor can they do any wrong. QED.

“Williamson:
‘The South does not HAVE to justify bloodshed.’

“Right. The liberals don’t have to justify their actions, because they represent the oppressed against the oppressor-tyrant. There are no moral constraints on liberals, nor can they do any wrong. QED.”

Just to clear up some dishonest use of language again, we are not dealing with liberals here in any sense but the classical (and possibly not even that, since you don’t have to be a classical liberal to believe that rebellion against tyrants is sometimes justified).

And the question is not whether the South must justify its “actions,” but merely the charge of initiating massive bloodshed. There are of course moral constraints, but that question was not at issue when the South decided peacefully to leave the Union.

Well, from my personal perspective a neoconfederate is only distinguishable from other forms of liberals in the details. Deep down they are all the same. They all believe in an oppressor-tyrant (Germans call this the untermensch), an oppressed class that would be free and equal supermen if only the oppressor didn’t exist, and sympathizers on both sides. The most important thing is to put down the tyrant so that freedom and equal rights will reign in a world of the new supermen, and there are no traditional moral constraints on the liberals in their pursuit of this objective.

The rest is just string substitution:

(oppressor-tyrant) + (oppressed) = (form of liberalism)

yankee + southerners = neoconfederates

aristocracy + underclass = viva la guillotine

Jews + aryans = nazi

capitalists + workers = communism

foreigners + nationals = fascism

unborn children + women = feminism

Christians + perverts = Clintonism

I mean, I could go on; but all liberals start to look the same after a while. There is a reason for that: fundamentally, liberals are all the same. The differences are just details.

“Well, from my personal perspective a neoconfederate is only distinguishable from other forms of liberals in the details. Deep down they are all the same. They all believe in an oppressor-tyrant…”

You are now descending into fantasy.

First—news flash—human beings are fallen creatures. Man is a wolf to man, and will oppress his brother if given half a chance. This is something any mature Christian knows, and you don’t have to be a “liberal” to figure it out. All you need to do is read history.

“…an oppressed class that would be free and equal supermen if only the oppressor didn’t exist..”

Another bit of fantasy. You will find no such utopian fantasies among the Confederates, who were hard-headed realists about human nature. They wanted to escape confiscatory taxes, and they feared their peculiar institution was targetted by the Yankees. Period. They were wrong about the moral status of slavery—but then, the entire nation, North and South, was not only racist but for practical purposes white supremacist (most definitely including Lincoln himself), so the North cannot preen itself on this score.

“…The most important thing is to put down the tyrant so that freedom and equal rights will reign in a world of the new supermen, and there are no traditional moral constraints on the liberals in their pursuit of this objective…”

You are totally untethered from reality if you think this describes Confederates, paleo- or neo- either one.

“I mean, I could go on; but all liberals start to look the same after a while…”

Your problem has nothing to do with politics or political philosophy, liberals or conservatives. It’s not that you’re a conservative and I’m a liberal. It’s that apparently you go around boiling mad all day long, for reasons unknown to the rest of us. On the basis of what I’ve read here, your writing satisfies some obscure animus that has nothing to do with the actual ideas proposed here.

At any rate, your animadversions above are not merely wrong, they’re nuts. Paranoid fantasy. They have no relation to partisans of the old South or the new, but for some reason you are comforted by slandering such individuals. What an odd pastime.

Well, it could be that I am just plain nuts. Mr. Williamson wouldn’t be the first — especially the first liberal — to level the accusation. My real world acquiantances would be more than a little surprised, but that doesn’t make Mr. Williamson’s psychological assessment (those seem to be important to him) incorrect. All that is just ad hominem, though, and I don’t really care what liberals think about me and how I understand them.

Irrespective of the status of my sanity, Mr. Williamson has claimed:

“The South does not HAVE to justify bloodshed.”

And there you have the really salient point that Mr. Auster made lo those many posts ago: neoconfederates believe they can do no wrong because the south is/was “oppressed”. Not even a hint of taking responsibility. Just post after post after post about the untouchable pristine innocence of oppressed Dixie. I suppose that represents clear objective sanity, though. I’m not a psychologist; maybe Mr. Williamson can tell me.

Here is (I hope) my final comment in this thread on the Civil War and the neo-Confederates.

First, here is Seth Williamson commenting on two things I had said earlier:

Auster: “Thus one cannot have a rational discussion with the neo-Confederates because—much like the Arabs in their dealings with Israel—they see themselves as the absolutely innocent victims of a malignant force.”

Williamson: “Nonsense. I’ve said no such thing.”

Auster: “[According to the neo-Confederates], the South had an absolute right to dissolve the Union without seeking the consent of the other states; the national government had absolutely no right or duty to keep the Union from being dissolved.”

Williamson: “This is correct.”

In two beats, Mr. Williamson has stone-cold contradicted himself. In his first reply, he dismisses as nonsense my comment that the neo-Confederates “see themselves as the absolutely innocent victims of a malignant force.” But in his second reply, he agrees with my summary of the neo-Confederate position, that “The South had an absolute right to dissolve the Union without seeking the consent of the other states; the national government had absolutely no right or duty to keep the Union from being dissolved.” But that position implies that the South was absolutely innocent, because it was only doing what was within its rights to do, from which it follows that the Union was absolutely wrong, without even a pretence of coloring of legal or moral justification, to use force against it or to question its actions in any manner whatsoever. So he is indeed saying that the neo-Confederates, as the representatives of the old Confederates, “see themselves as the absolutely innocent victims of a malignant force.” Indeed, so totally without basis was the North in the South’s eyes that the Confederates felt they didn’t have to negotiate with it or take its statements and concerns seriously or even take into account what military steps the North might take in response to the secession and the firing on Fort Sumter. So, when the North did respond forcefully and decisively to the South’s actions, the Confederates and neo-Confederates, trapped in their own solipsism, could only see that response as pure tyranny.

Second, in another exchange, I said:

“[William] refuses to refer to Lincoln simply as Lincoln, but calls him ‘bloody Abe.’ That is not merely direct or honest language, as William would have it; that is the emotion-laden language of vilification.”

To which Seth Williamson replied:

“It also happens to be sober fact, so in fact it IS ‘direct and honest language.’ You just don’t like to see one of the household gods of the centralized state treated with disrespect. Tough. He deserves a lot worse than this.”

So, by Mr. Williamson’s own admission, he is unwilling to engage in civil, intellectual discussion about a historical issue free of vitriolic slurs. To give an idea of how silly this is, I’m sure (or at least I hope) that I have a much worse view of Adolf Hitler than Mr. Williamson has of Abraham Lincoln. Yet, when I’m conversing with people about the Second World War, I refer to Hitler as “Hitler,” I don’t call him “the murdering genocidal Adolf.” Mr. Williamson’s lack of embarrassment about his insistence on referring to an important historical figure (who happens to be one of our two most famous presidents, for whom most Americans have at least some respect) as “bloody Abe” raises the question: Does Mr. Williamson really expect anyone who does not share his particular passions even to want to talk with him? Indeed, he may have been somewhat taken aback that we have done so. He would probably be much happier confining his conversation to his fellow Llewelyn Rockwell types, who, apparently, every time they open their mouths, emit in unison such redolent phrases as “war criminal,” “blood-thirsty tyrant,” “Caesar,” “ruthless and murderous invasion,” “pyromaniacs,” “Union soldiers who fought like Nazis,” “household gods of the centralized state,” etc., etc., etc. The social gatherings of these people—does the John Randolph Society still exist?—must be something to behold.

All the above gives rise to the question, why do Llewelyn Rockwell and his acolytes engage in this non-stop demonization of Lincoln, who, after all, died 140 years ago? The answer, I suspect, is that it is a handy way to delegitimize the nation that Lincoln saved. By delegitimizing it, they help prepare the way for some kind of national breakup. Now, I am not blind to the tragic possibility of such a breakup at some time in the future. It may simply become a necessity, as ever-increasing ethnocultural divisions created by our suicidal immigration policies and the mounting power of the Left make it impossible for white Westerners to live decently in an increasingly anti-white, anti-Western, multicultural America. However, any such future re-creation of a New European America must still draw many of its inspirations and models from the virtues (by now largely destroyed) of the nation we have been, and through that nation, from the larger Western and Christian civilization of which it was a part. That will be impossible if the United States of America has become simply an object of contempt, which is the heart of the Rockwell program. Remember, the Rockwell program does not simply deny any transcendent value to the United States as it has existed since 1865; it denies any transcendent value to the original United States as well, since it regards that nation as having had less sacredness than a shot-gun wedding, and less permanence than a day-laborer’s job.

One can only assume, therefore, that the breakup the neo-Confederates seek is not aimed at creating a new polity that will have some filial tie with the ante-bellum United States of America. Rather, it is aimed at restoring the Confederacy itself, a project they now think they have more hope than ever of achieving given the increasing likelihood that the United States (thanks in part to their own relentless demonization of it) will continue to lose its moral authority and dissolve, leaving no unifying force to oppose a new Southern secession. And who knows? In the disintegrated and brutalized America of the future (a disintegration the neo-Confederates hope and pray for), an independent South may offer the best hope for some attenuated, pathetic survival of the white culture.

By the way, I am not opposed to the Southern culture. I like its people and admire its virtues. I am drawn by Richard Weaver’s description of the Old South as the last non-commercial society in the West. I regard its loss as an enormous tragedy. My problem is with the fanatical Confederate ideologists who sought to destroy the Union (and by doing so brought on the destruction of the Southern civilization itself), and who have returned today to try to destroy the United States once again.

In conclusion, having had several one-on-one exchanges with various neo-Confederates over the last couple of years, I have found it useful to hold this more public exchange. One thing that strikes me clearly is that the neo-Confederates have no desire or ability to engage in discourse about the Civil War except with people who belong to their own clique and who share their radically alienated view of the United States. By identifying with the Southern Cause in its most uncompromising aspect, they have taken on its anti-rationality as well. Their only principle, as Lincoln said in his message to Congress on July 4, 1861, is disintegration. It is unfortunate that so many young men on the right have subscribed to these destructive attitudes—and quite a victory for Llewelyn Rockwell who has succeeded in producing so many clones of himself. But I don’t see anything that can be done about it.

I see I missed this note when it first arrived somehow:

Irrespective of the status of my sanity, Mr. Williamson has claimed:

“The South does not HAVE to justify bloodshed.”

“And there you have the really salient point that Mr. Auster made lo those many posts ago: neoconfederates believe they can do no wrong because the south is/was ‘oppressed’…

Nonsense. As I noted on more than one occasion, this is a willful misreading of the facts, and it’s not worth wasting more time on. The relevant subject is not whether or not individual Southerners are free of the stain of sin; it’s whether or not they are responsible for the monstrous violence that ensued when they attempted to exercise their right to leave the Union. That, by contrast, is almost entirely the fault of Lincoln and the North.

By the way, this morning in his long-running public radio series on the Civil War, the eminent historian Dr. James Robertson of Virginia Tech noted that Southerners understandably could not imagine that the North would use violence to compel them to stay in the Union. The commonsense expectation, said Dr. Robertson, was that the North would let them go without bloodshed. Which is precisely my point.

Auster: “Thus one cannot have a rational discussion with the neo-Confederates because—much like the Arabs in their dealings with Israel—they see themselves as the absolutely innocent victims of a malignant force.”

Williamson: “Nonsense. I’ve said no such thing.”

Auster: “[According to the neo-Confederates], the South had an absolute right to dissolve the Union without seeking the consent of the other states; the national government had absolutely no right or duty to keep the Union from being dissolved.”

Williamson: “This is correct.”

“In two beats, Mr. Williamson has stone-cold contradicted himself…”

Nonsense. You are apparently incapable of making distinctions that are not even close to subtle.

No adult is absolutely innocent; there were undoubtedly many Southern slaveholders who were uncomfortably aware that slavery was wrong. This uncomfortable knowledge no doubt helped prompt some of the more baroque justifications of the peculiar institution, which seemed to get more bizarre and fantastic with the passage of time. To the extent that slavery caused the war—and it was certainly +a+ cause if not the only cause—they had much to answer for when they went to their Maker.

So OF COURSE they were not “absolutely innocent.” But as I said, the general state of their souls is not the relevant point. The point is whether or not they were directly responsible for the bloodshed of the War Between the States, as you falsely claim. As I suggested (as as Dr. Robertson confirmed this morning) almost nobody in the South believed that the North violently would compel them to remain in the Union. This was the result of the ambition of our American Caesar, Abraham Lincoln. On this point, they were guilty simply of believing they had the rights the Founders said they had.

Why you seem unable to grasp this simple distinction is beyond me, but ain’t exactly rocket science.

“Second, in another exchange, I said:

‘[William] refuses to refer to Lincoln simply as Lincoln, but calls him “bloody Abe.” That is not merely direct or honest language, as William would have it; that is the emotion-laden language of vilification.’

“To which Seth Williamson replied:

‘It also happens to be sober fact, so in fact it IS “direct and honest language.” You just don’t like to see one of the household gods of the centralized state treated with disrespect. Tough. He deserves a lot worse than this.’”

“So, by Mr. Williamson’s own admission, he is unwilling to engage in civil, intellectual discussion about a historical issue free of vitriolic slurs. To give an idea of how silly this is, I’m sure (or at least I hope) that I have a much worse view of Adolf Hitler than Mr. Williamson has of Abraham Lincoln. Yet, when I’m conversing with people about the Second World War, I refer to Hitler as ‘Hitler,’ I don’t call him ‘the murdering genocidal Adolf.’

If you did, it would be plain fact. Who cares whether or not you use the language of guilt with him? Not me. If you believe that the facts show him to be a murderer, then whether or not you label him that way is up to you.

“Mr. Williamson’s lack of embarrassment about his insistence on referring to an important historical figure (who happens to be one of our two most famous presidents, for whom most Americans have at least some respect)…”

Oh-oh. He’s “famous.” Why didn’t somebody TELL me he was immune to criticism?

“The social gatherings of these people—does the John Randolph Society still exist?—must be something to behold…”

It exists, so do others like it, and our social gatherings are indeed pleasant. We actually sing “Dixie,” all of us. Maybe you’d better call the Thought Police.

“All the above gives rise to the question, why do Llewelyn Rockwell and his acolytes engage in this non-stop demonization of Lincoln, who, after all, died 140 years ago? The answer, I suspect, is that it is a handy way to delegitimize the nation that Lincoln saved. By delegitimizing it, they help prepare the way for some kind of national breakup.”

You ask about personal motive, and I can speak only for myself. First, I believe it’s important to speak the truth about history, insofar as that is possible. I believe the facts show Lincoln to be a bad man, with the blood of millions of other men on his hands, who was responsible for the destruction of the decentralized state created by the Founders. He therefore laid the foundations for today’s massive and intrusive granny state. I think it’s important to speak truthfully about these things.

As for “some kind of national breakup,” it is doubtless the goal of many who read Lew Rockwell. Pesonally, I can visualize several kinds of “national breakup” that would be highly desirable. I am not wedded to the notion that the empire must be permanent.

“I am not blind to the tragic possibility of such a breakup at some time in the future…”

Why don’t you just explain to us why you think a break-up of the empire would be “tragic”?

“That will be impossible if the United States of America has become simply an object of contempt, which is the heart of the Rockwell program.”

An object of contempt by whom? Whose opinion are you afraid of here?

“Remember, the Rockwell program does not simply deny any transcendent value to the United States as it has existed since 1865; it denies any transcendent value to the original United States as well, since it regards that nation as having had less sacredness than a shot-gun wedding, and less permanence than a day-laborer’s job.”

“Transcendent value”? Or you nuts or do you not own a dictionary? There is nothing “transcendent” about a nation-state. It’s a mundane political creation with no trace of the divine about it. puh-LEEZ.

“One can only assume, therefore, that the breakup the neo-Confederates seek is not aimed at creating a new polity that will have some filial tie with the ante-bellum United States of America. Rather, it is aimed at restoring the Confederacy itself, a project they now think they have more hope than ever of achieving given the increasing likelihood that the United States (thanks in part to their own relentless demonization of it) will continue to lose its moral authority and dissolve, leaving no unifying force to oppose a new Southern secession. And who knows? In the disintegrated and brutalized America of the future (a disintegration the neo-Confederates hope and pray for), an independent South may offer the best hope for some attenuated, pathetic survival of the white culture.”

This is paranoid fantasy. To the extent that anyone has thought seriously about such a possibility—I personally think it’s close to fantasy, given the political realities of the day—we would merely like to see a return to the kind of government in which the principle of subsidiarity is respected, and wherein all important decisions are not made—as they are now—by a ruling elite in the distant Imperial Capital. In other words, federalism. (Look it up: it’s what Lincoln destroyed.)

“One thing that strikes me clearly is that the neo-Confederates have no desire or ability to engage in discourse about the Civil War except with people who belong to their own clique and who share their radically alienated view of the United States…”

This is nonsense. I and the other Southern partisans I know are ready and willing to discuss the issues with those on the other side. In fact, it’s useful to do so in order that the fantasies and illusions of the big government centralizers and the anti-Constitutionalists can be plainly exposed. Your own eccentric fantasies about who Southern partisans are and what they want, about who is reponsible for the massive bloodshed of the war, etc. etc.—it’s good to get these things out in the open so that other more rational individuals can see your mistakes and logical inconsistencies.

“Their only principle, as Lincoln said in his message to Congress on July 4, 1861, is disintegration…”

No. Our princile is self-government and the rule of law. What a concept. It would be nice if we’d give it a try once more.

So I guess we should forgive the South for its part in the Civil War because it is excused by its stupidity?

Mr. Williamson cannot have it both ways. If the bombardment of Fort Sumter was based on the South’s expectation that Lincoln would use police power to maintain the Union, then how is it possible to claim that the South did not expect force to be used to maintain the Union? Mr. Williamson’s position depends on an intellectual contempt for the actual people involved on all sides, whether he sees it or not; just as liberal analysis always depends on contempt for actual real people. Mr. Williamson’s southern apologetics bear a striking resemblance to Jesse jackson’s racial apologetics, whether he sees it or not.

Yawn…

“So I guess we should forgive the South for its part in the Civil War because it is excused by its stupidity?”

Again, the willful blindness we have come to expect from you. As Dr. Robertson noted (and he’s one of the nation’s most eminent Civil War scholars, head of the Virginia Tech Center for the Study of the Civil War), the South had every reason to expect they’d be allowed to leave peacefully. It wasn’t “stupidity,” it was common sense. They hadn’t taken into account Lincoln’s personal ambition and his taste for bloodshed.

“Mr. Williamson cannot have it both ways. If the bombardment of Fort Sumter was based on the South’s expectation that Lincoln would use police power to maintain the Union, then how is it possible to claim that the South did not expect force to be used to maintain the Union?”

Sloppy thinking. The scuffle at Ft. Sumter was the action of individuals under pressure and not the considered move of a national government, which had not been constituted yet.

The South reasonably expected that, once it began to assert its prerogative to behave as a separate nation, that right would be recognized by the North, with however much ill will there might be. It believed that what was required was a show of resistance to indicate that it was serious about asserting its right to withdraw from the Union. Once it made clear its resolve not to tolerate the collection of tax monies at the point of a gun, Lincoln’s bluster about invasion would fade away. This was the expectation, and with any other man than Lincoln, that’s probably the way it would have worked out.

“Mr. Williamson’s southern apologetics bear a striking resemblance to Jesse jackson’s racial apologetics, whether he sees it or not.”

The usual nonsense. Not worthy of response.

OK. So, under the Williamson Doctrine as long as I acquire myself some nuclear weapons so that I can expect the federales to ultimately back off, it is OK for me to first bomb Fresno to make sure they know I am serious, after which I can formally secede and refuse to pay my taxes? If I do this and the federales don’t back off, and all hell ensues, the hell that ensues is entirely the federales fault and none of mine, and in fact I pretty much HAVE to bomb Fresno first to make sure that they know I am serious.

Are we communicating yet?

“…If I do this and the federales don’t back off, and all hell ensues, the hell that ensues is entirely the federales fault and none of mine, and in fact I pretty much HAVE to bomb Fresno first to make sure that they know I am serious…”

“Are we communicating yet?”

The usual willful fantasy. As anyone with common sense can see, the situation today, with nuclear and weapons and the all-powerful centralized granny state which you apparently worship, can’t be compared to what obtained before Lincoln destroyed federalism. In that day and time, it was reasonable to expect that tyranny might be resisted with little or no loss of life, given the state the Founders had created.

You’re not serious, Mr. Matt. Why don’t you waste somebody else’s time?

But surely Mr. Williamson doesn’t suggest that the _moral_ question of my right to resist tyrannical tax rates and to be innocent of the fallout of that resistence depends on the Vegas odds of success?

Also, Mr. Williamson is wrong in the facts. I am deadly serious, and I despise the modern liberal nanny state. In fact I take Mr. Williamson’s doctrine more seriously than he takes it himself, clearly. He doesn’t see that any absurdity is in fact the result of taking his doctrine seriously. But perhaps as a last resort he hopes that these sorts of claims might help him change the subject.

Notice also that Mr. Williamson wrote this:

“The scuffle at Ft. Sumter was the action of individuals under pressure…”

This is also typical of liberals. Whenever something bad happens it is the fault of rogue individuals, it doesn’t have any systemic relation to their way of thinking.

“But surely Mr. Williamson doesn’t suggest that the _moral_ question of my right to resist tyrannical tax rates and to be innocent of the fallout of that resistence depends on the Vegas odds of success?”

What I’m flat-out saying, and not merely suggesting, is that politics is a matter of prudential action, in which real-world circumstances of a given time and place must be taken into account. You may be morally within your rights to resist a mugger; if the only weapon available to you is a tactical nuclear device which would take out a whole city, that must be considered. Clearly, this was not the case with the South.

“Also, Mr. Williamson is wrong in the facts…”

No. In every instance, I have been correct and you have been wrong. If you believe otherwise, please show us where.

“…and I despise the modern liberal nanny state….”

Nah. You’re quite comfortable with the status quo. You’ve won the biggest battle of all, Winston—you LOVE Big Brother.

“‘The scuffle at Ft. Sumter was the action of individuals under pressure…’”

“This is also typical of liberals. Whenever something bad happens it is the fault of rogue individuals, it doesn’t have any systemic relation to their way of thinking.”

Hokum. You tried to show a parallel between a) the actions of a few individuals improvising in a desperate situation BEFORE a national government had been constituted with b) the considered policy of an established national government. Only someone dead-set on shoehorning reality into a preconceived pattern would ignore the clear difference in the two situations.

…yawn…

Larry Auster reminds me that a provisional government, formed by some of the earlier states to secede, had been in operation for eight or ten weeks at the time of Sumter. This is entirely correct and I thank him for jogging my memory.

The complete Confederacy did not yet exist, of course, and it was Sumter itself and Lincoln’s response to it that prompted several other states to leave the Union. Speaking as a Virginian, I would say that the most important state of the Confederacy-to-be wasn’t in the game yet.

This affects my essential points regarding Mr. Matt’s slander not at all, however. That Sumter somehow reflected a policy of making war on the Northern states is laughable. The Confederacy—still incomplete, with a government only weeks old and still feeling its way—wanted to leave peacefully, period, and reasonably anticipated that it would be able to do so without bloodshed. The decision to compel them to remain in the Union with military force, and the responsibility for the consequent horrific bloodshed, was Lincoln’s.

Interesting way to begin a peaceful departure.

So now it is just that the new Southern government was so young and naive that the violence the South itself initiated was entirely the other party’s fault? Notice that none of us have said that there isn’t plenty of blame to go around. All that I claim, or have ever claimed in this thread (it is all there for the reading), is that the South bears some measure of moral responsibility for the Civil War. Does Mr. Williamson not have enough respect for southerners during the 1800’s to give them credit for being intelligent enough to suspect that secession might have violent repurcussions, especially when the South itself initiated the first violence of the war? How can he imagine that living south of the Mason-Dixon would automatically entail such a deep level of ignorance? The people who are really being slandered here are 1800’s southerners, and Mr. Williamson is doing the slandering.

Mr. Williamson’s characterization of what other people say as slander provides further proof of Mr. Auster’s premise that reasoned discussion is not on the agenda.

“So now it is just that the new Southern government was so young and naive that the violence the South itself initiated was entirely the other party’s fault?”

Another willful misreading of the facts. As I have said on a number of occasions, the South’s steadfast belief that Lincoln and the North would never seriously contemplate military violence to compel them to stay in the Union is the relevant point here, and it has nothing to do with the improvisational nature of the early days of the Confederate proto-government. Quite by chance, the public radio series on the Civil War by Dr. James Robertson, head of the Virginia Center for the Study of the Civil War, addressed precisely this topic in the program that aired Friday.

The Southern states correctly believed that they had the legal right peacefully to leave a Union into which they had voluntarily entered. That they did not fully comprehend the goals of the bloodthirsty and ambitious ruler who had just been elected is not their fault.

“All that I claim, or have ever claimed in this thread (it is all there for the reading), is that the South bears some measure of moral responsibility for the Civil War…”

No. That is NOT what you’ve claimed. You’ve claimed that the Southern states willingly and with prior knowledge entered onto a course of massive bloodshed with the sole goal of preserving slavery. Your acknowledgement that the North is perhaps a bit culpable came late in the game.

“Does Mr. Williamson not have enough respect for southerners during the 1800’s to give them credit for being intelligent enough to suspect that secession might have violent repurcussions, especially when the South itself initiated the first violence of the war? How can he imagine that living south of the Mason-Dixon would automatically entail such a deep level of ignorance? The people who are really being slandered here are 1800’s southerners, and Mr. Williamson is doing the slandering.”

Nonsense. As Dr. Robertson and many other scholars have noted, the South had good reason to believe that there would either be no violence at all, or that it would be brief and of little consequence. (For what it’s worth, many in the North believed precisely the same thing, though that’s a different subject.)

“Mr. Williamson’s characterization of what other people say as slander provides further proof of Mr. Auster’s premise that reasoned discussion is not on the agenda.”

Not for you, it’s not. I.e.: “Well, from my personal perspective a neoconfederate is only distinguishable from other forms of liberals in the details. Deep down they are all the same. They all believe in an oppressor-tyrant…”

This is either slander or simple ignorance, take your pick. In your idiosyncratic personal taxonomy, any oppressed people in history which tries to escape the bootheel of a tyrant is “liberal.” This is ludicrous. The flipside is that “conservatives” are, what? Tyrants? Victims who cheerfully watch as tyrants loot their possessions?

Your problem is that you resent anyone who doesn’t love Big Brother, as you so clearly do. Your comfort level with the massive centralized Leviathan is your own concern, but when it leads you to fantasize about American history and slander those who hate Big Brother, then expect to get called on it.

Mr. Williamson is enjoying himself fighting with the straw-man Matt that he wishes was his interlocutor. For example, I have never once mentioned slavery in this thread, as merely one example within a post filled with them. The whopper of a lie he told about Sumter happening before there was any organized South is another example of the tactics he uses to hold on to his untenable position.

Too bad my point of view doesn’t match up with the canned responses Mr. Williamson has been taught.

His contempt for 1800’s Southerners in believing that they were too stupid to expect police violence in response to their violence is quite similar to Jesse Jackson’s contempt for blacks: Williamson thinks that Southerners were too stupid and victimized to act responsibly, and Jackson thinks that Blacks are too stupid and victimized to act responsibly. Williamson’s believes that tax rates far lower than what we pay right now morally justifies killing the police, but he makes an unprincipled exception for the here-and-now because if he didn’t the here-and-now would constitute a reductio-ad-absurdam. The list goes on.

This has been in interesting discussion for me. I’ve learned quite a bit from it: rather like performing a dissection. It can hardly be called an exchange since I am certain that Mr. Williamson hasn’t learned anything new. I have though, about Mr. Williamson in particular and, through their deafening silence in the face of his rabid foaming-at-the-mouth liberal view of Dixie as a nation of victims, other neoconfederates as well. So I thank Mr. Williamson for the discussion and Mr. Auster for starting it.

“The whopper of a lie he told about Sumter happening before there was any organized South is another example of the tactics he uses to hold on to his untenable position…”

Hokum. I missed a date to the tune of eight weeks or so on a matter that was a side issue in the first place (the improvisatory character of the action at Sumter), which is trivial compared to your paranoid fantasies about “neo-confederates” and the responsibility for bloodshed.

“Too bad my point of view doesn’t match up with the canned responses Mr. Williamson has been taught.”

Too bad, rather, that your love for the managerial Leviathan state compels you to resort to slander and fantasy in response to those who attempt to see facts as they are and not recycle Yankee statist myths.

“His contempt for 1800’s Southerners in believing that they were too stupid to expect police violence in response to their violence…”

A perfect example of what I mean. It is common knowledge, as the eminent historian Dr. Robertson noted a couple of days ago, that the South did not expect the North to use serious military force to compel it to remain in a Union it joined voluntarily. It’s old news. Your refusal to face the facts flows from your kneejerk need to attack anyone who loathes Big Brother.

“This has been in interesting discussion for me. I’ve learned quite a bit from it…”

No you haven’t. You continue mindlessly to parrot statist boilerplate that contradicts the historical record. Until you can break out of your love affair with Big Brother, you’ll never be able to understand American history or learn anything from it.

Mr. Williamson says to Matt:

“Too bad, rather, that your love for the managerial Leviathan state compels you to resort to slander and fantasy in response to those who attempt to see facts as they are and not recycle Yankee statist myths.”

Now, given Matt’s many statements in this thread and elsewhere, can Mr. Williamson actually believe that Matt favors “the managerial Leviathan state”? Well, in fact, Mr. Williamson does believe that, because from the point of view of a true-believing ideologue, any criticism of his ideology implies support for the OPPOSITE of that ideology. Since Mr. Williamson lives in a mental world populated on one hand by innocent, righteous, gentlemanly, liberty-loving Southerners, and on the other hand by deceptive, self-seeking, tyrannical, blood-thirsty, statist, managerial-Leviathan Northerners, Matt, as a critic of the former, must be a supporter of the latter.

“Now, given Matt’s many statements in this thread and elsewhere, can Mr. Williamson actually believe that Matt favors ‘the managerial Leviathan state?”…

OK. Let’s look at his record. He slanders Southern partisans and those who don’t buy the Lincoln mythos, he is scandalized by those who use plain language in describing Lincoln, he willfully misconstrues and mischaracterizes the statements and beliefs of those who see Lincoln as the progenitor of the managerial state, and he traffics in the most ignorant stereotypes and historical lies. Stereotypes and lies which we have come to recognize as the peculiar property in our time of apologists for the managerial state. His reason, such as it is, seems to be that anyone who resists tyranny is a de facto liberal.

Since this is on its face nonsense, there must be some other motivation at work here. For myself, I speculate that he’s the typical state-worshipping Yankee whose anti-Southern slanders we are all too familiar with in the elite media.

But perhaps there’s a better explanation. If you have one, by all means let’s hear it.

“Well, in fact, Mr. Williamson does believe that, because from the point of view of a true-believing ideologue…”

If you think you can demonstrate that I am an ideologue—as opposed to simply a reasonably skeptical individual who tries to see facts as they are—then please show us how. If you can’t, it’s just more of the same name-slinging.

To Mr. Auster:

Yeah, the notion that a canned response from supporters of the nanny state is to accuse Confederates of being too liberal was so hilarious I actually laughed out loud. Thanks again for instigating a discussion that was quite educational for me.

“…Thanks again for instigating a discussion that was quite educational for me.”

Again, it’s clear that you’ve learned nothing, since you continue knowingly to mischaracterize what others say and to ignore what for long years has been common knowledge among scholars of the era.

I am reminded of what I increasingly believe to be the most reliable field mark of the contemporary American liberal. Jim Kalb has suggested that it comes down to how an individual orders public and private goods—for the liberal, the final arbiter must be personal desire and nothing else. It seems to me that this holds true for liberals throughout the West.

Conservativism, of course, by its very nature looks somewhat different from place to place depending on local culture and history, and this is probably true to a certain extent of liberalism as well. But here in America, I believe I know of a quick test that separates the liberals from the conservatives about as efficiently and correctly as anything. It’s not as universally true as Jim Kalb’s notion, but it appears to be reliable here in America.

It is this: American conservatives are comfortable with letting local citizens make most of the important decisions about how to order community life (as was the rule in the early Republic). Liberals, by contrast, though they may talk a good game about “grass-roots democracy” and “self-government,” don’t trust individuals to manage their own lives and instead invariably opt for those same decisions to be made by a managerial elite in the faraway Imperial Capital.

The Lincoln cult is obviously useful to the apologists for the managerial state. Lincoln, after all, once and for all drove a stake through the heart of the Old Republic that was created by the Founders, destroyed federalism, and laid the foundation for the massive, meddling nanny state that was to come less than a century later. To those who believe that ordinary people simply can’t be trusted to order their own lives, Lincoln is untouchable and his critics must be destroyed, their homes burned and their lands sown with salt.

They cannot abide anyone who dares to contradict the Lincoln mythos in any particular, because this would explicitly threaten their own legitimacy. We saw their fury when the humane and learned Mel Bradford was put up for the NEH. A great scholar and an independent thinker had to be slandered and smeared with some of the most outrageously dishonest mud-slinging I had seen up until that point. Why? Because he dared to criticize Father Abraham, whom the statists knew to be their patron saint, even if most readers National Review were ignorant of his real significance.

We see the same mindset on this board with Mr. Auster and the wealthy Mr. Matt, neither of whom can abide honest words with respect to Lincoln. The language of Lincoln hagiography—and the language of vilification that’s reserved for skeptics who refuse to buy into the cult—are both the peculiar property of apologists for the massive centralized state.

When we read the ignorant baroque fantasies of Mr. Matt about “neo-confederates” and the citizens of the Old South, his silly claim that we must “respect” Lincoln because he’s “famous,” his claim that Lincoln skeptics must by definition be “liberals”—we know we’re in the hands of a fundamentally unserious person who furthermore has made his peace with Big Brother.

The irony is all the more piquant in that both Mr. Matt and Mr. Auster remain unable to score substantive points on the Lincoln skeptics, but proceed instead via the reliably liberal method of ad hominem attacks.

Tom DiLorenzo’s new book contains nothing novel, so far as I’m aware, but it’s a useful compendium of what’s wrong with Lincoln and the Lincoln cult and he at least has enough respect for his readers to explain how he has arrived at his conclusions by citing the evidence. I would suggest to Mr. Auster and Mr. Matt that they try a new approach: show us what’s wrong with the reasoning of the Lincoln skeptics, and try as much as they’re able to do so on the basis of facts and reasoning and not the tiresome name-calling they’ve employed thus far.

I am leaving for a five-day business trip in Cincinnati in the morning and will have no access to the Internet, but I will check in after I’ve returned this Saturday morning and see if either of them have managed to engage in any serious thinking. I’m not holding my breath.