The defense of Little Round Top
Link here.
As this weekend is the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the article at the link is very much worth reading, as it details quite vividly the events at the Union left flank that made the Union victory possible.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Link here.
As this weekend is the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the article at the link is very much worth reading, as it details quite vividly the events at the Union left flank that made the Union victory possible.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“We can’t run away and if we stay here, we can’t shoot, so let’s fix bayonet’s”
“20th Maine bayonet charge at Little Round Top”
https://youtu.be/ZL-5uyp44WA
Wayne: This scene from the movie Gettysburg, is wonderful and one of the best scenes in a good but not great film (the second half of the movie left me cold). It is especially wonderful because it is remarkable accurate, for a movie.
However, I do not consider it the movie’s best scene. Go to this 2010 evening pause to see what I consider the movie’s best and most profound moment:
Chamberlain’s speech from movie Gettysburg
As I wrote then:
Thanks Mr. Z.
Yar–Looks like that clip has been blocked on copyright grounds, but I did locate this version:
“Colonel Joshua Chamberlain Speech”
https://youtu.be/2d2_zeJTJcw
As a European, excuse me, the US civil war seems anachronistically stuck between Napoleon and the Great world war. And pretty amateurish in a time when war had become a careful science. And bloody for nothing. England and Russia abolished slavery at that time without any bloodshed. If anything, two US would have been twice as good.
Btw, propaganda always says that the EU is a guarantee for peace because it is a union of democratic states. Well, what was the US when the civil war broke out? All democratic states in the world at the time (only the US was a democracy ten) went out in a continental world war against each other! Democracy does not prevent war, majorities want to kill too.
LocalFluff,
We Americans have England — and its royalty — to thank for the depth of the economic dependence on slavery. Was there another place on Earth so economically dependent on slavery?
Thank you, England.
Due to this depth, it was especially difficult to negotiate a new nation out of the colonies that England had so badly mistreated, forcing slavery as an economic necessity. The necessary trade-offs and compromises made it especially difficult to end slavery, in the US, but not only were we able to declare that all men are created equal, we also managed to outlaw the slave trade in our Constitution, although one of those compromises delayed this end by a couple of decades.
Had these compromises not been made, and the North let the South form their own nation (say, a confederacy), would the slaves be free today? Even after England ended her own slavery, she continued to buy slave-grown cotton from the South until the US (un)Civil war came along. Without this war, would an independent South still be a slave country?
England should not get all high and mighty about ending slavery before the US, as she hardly had any slavery to end. Instead, she had made her colonies in The New World the major victims of slavery. Slavery in England was not outlawed prior to America pointing out just how evil the system was. Indeed, when the northern colonies wanted to outlaw slavery in their own colonies, the King said no to *any* colony ending slavery. The timing of England’s laws outlawing slavery make it look like she only did so to beat out the US’s ending of the slave trade.
England’s dedication to freedom, back then, was not what you may think, LocalFluff.
Many whites fought with their lives to free people who had only the tool of passive aggression — performing as poorly as possible without getting whipped — to fight and discourage their enslavement. Thus, most of America, even those who died to free them, believed that those of the black race were not smart and were not capable, yet they believed that they deserved freedom, anyway. Believed it enough to fight to the death for their freedom, but now (this part of the whole thing *really* angers me), thanks to socialist philosophy imported from Europe, those same people who fought *for* freedom through the law and those who fought with their lives are the ones now seen as the racists, and racists who favored slavery, rather than favoring freedom for the slaves.
Thank you, Europe.
I am glad that the UK recently won its revolt for freedom from European socialist rule. Hopefully, the socialists will be prevented from further ruining the UK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBpWRRKXuhI (5 minutes)
Constitutional clauses that were intended to make it easier to end slavery are now declared, by those socialists, as proof positive that the Founding Fathers were evil slave-drivers. Laws also came from England to discourage or prevent slave owners from freeing their slaves, allowing modern socialists to say, “See? Those old, dead, white men had slaves, so they were evil.”
You asked: “Well, what was the US when the civil war broke out? ”
A nation divided, thanks to England.
So, if a democratic state goes to war with itself, how is that the same as different democratic states going to war with each other? Was the United States really democratic, with so many who could not vote, or was it a republic, with free men (mis)representing slaves?
And, do you really think that liberty, even the liberty of others, is *not* worth going to war for?
Wasn’t the “free the slaves” things an add on to punish and weaken the enemies in the South, rather than a real motivation for the war? Slavery, of a different kind, was central in the Russian society, but peacfully abolished in the 1860s. Not that much changed overnight, most kept on living as they had always done. The UK allowed slavery in West Africa until at least the 1930s. Slavery is an ancient tradition there and the Brits did not want to offend their culture unnecessarily. It isn’t easy to be politically correct.
The civil war was horrible, extra bloody because of improved rifles and lagging tactics. The republic could certainly have solved the conflict peacefully. The tsar could do it. Slavery was doomed anyway, enginges were replacing muscle power. The US today pays the worlds highest subsidise to cotton picker, it is very destructive to the economy and it outcompetes poor West African cotton farmers who actually are profitable. The US would be better off burning the cotton fields. Slavery was on the way out for economic and technological reasons, not only moral and political.
Edward and LocalFluff: I learned that the US civil war was in reality not about slavery at first (which seems to be propaganda lie, which last until present time), but about freedom form economic dictations forced by the North/Union to the South. I have to admit that I would like to see/prefer a victory of the South, if I could turn time back. The world would be a better place, not dominated by single imperial power and we could see probably a state in North America with a self-developed, reach culture, much superior to that what present USA displays.
Edward: Great comments!
Some of the other comments are obviously not from American’s or people that know anything about American history.
Lincoln’s 2nd inaugural address:
Fellow-Countrymen:
AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Fellow countrymen mass killing fellow countrymen were not patriots, they were destructive maniacs.
LocalFluff:
That’s what your boy Stalin did while he was building his twisted utopia.
Matt: One of the lies told by modern Marxist leftwing academia about the Civil War is that it had nothing to do with freeing the slaves. Instead it was all about economics and a desire by northerns to to make more money.
Economics of course played a part for some, but it is looking at the history with a very narrow and close-minded vision – something Marxists do routinely in their obsession with money — to see it entirely that way. The abolitionist movement, the moral desire to end slavery, was central to the causes of the Civil War, and to make believe that movement did not exist is to put blinders on to knowledge.
In fact, as Wayne noted, there have been many comments on this thread about American history that strongly suggest a willingness to wear those blinders about American history. And I speak as a historian who has specifically studied the history of the origins of slavery in the American colonies, having written a 350 page thesis on the subject. I have no intention of rewritting that thesis here, but trust me, the Civil War was not fought only about economics.
I will note that it did have the bad consequence of centralizing power to the federal government, a process that over the next century and a half has eventually led to the problems we face today. Worse, because the South decided to make slavery the issue on which they would defend the concept of states’ rights, they ended up discrediting states’ rights’ for the next century and a half, thus allowing that power centralizing to go on unopposed. Anyone who dared argue in favor of states’ rights was routinely been accused of being a racist and in favor of slavery.
Meanwhile, the abolitionist movement, a new idea in human history, began in the U.S. among the Quakers in the late 1700s By the early 1800s it had grown enough in the English-speaking world that it had convinced the UK to use its sizable navy, which had no task after defeating Napoleon but as pork could not be cut back, to blockade and end the slave trade in Aftrica in the early 1800s. By the 1850s it had grown strong enough in the U.S. that it led to the formation of a new political party, dubbed the Republican Party. That party’s victory in 1860, mostly because of its opposition to slavery, resulted in the South’s decision to secede, and resulted in the Civil War.
Anyone is free to debate this history, but it benefits your argument to recognize this history and the facts, before you do so.
Mr. Z, well stated.
I’ll remain polite & just opine,
“You folks in Europe, have been killing each other & redrawing your border’s, for thousands of years, for truly devious reasoning.”
Robert, Edward, and Wayne, great posts, Edward, what I got from your post was that the oppression of England on the new colony’s caused or required slavery because of undue burdens by England? Am I reading this correctly?
One of the main arguments for the war of 1812 was the fact the England was impressing (enslaving) American sailors at sea so it could man its ships against France. Black or white they didn’t care. They never stopped slavery in Africa. England was not clean.
Without the rise of Communism Russia would have kept indentured servitude, a form of slavery. They were not clean either.
One of the political arguments just before the Civil War was the expansion of new slave states into the western territories. It could not be allowed to happen. If it was allowed civil war would have been an almost continuous action restarted every few years. It would have been used as an excuse by outside nations to breakup the US.
A divided America would never have been able to assist in WWI or WWII. The soviet Union and Communism may never have risen to power and Russia might now be a vassal state of the German Empire.
During the American Civil War France occupied invaded Mexico and eventually took over Mexico City. A victory by Mexican forces against the French early in the war brought about the Cinco De Mayo holiday in Mexico.
Very shortly after the Norths victory in the US Civil War France left Mexico.
France would have loved a Southern victory and would have accepted slavery there as just an evil to be overlooked in order to keep Mexico and trade with the Confederate states.
No America is not clean by any standards but we are one of the less dirty nations.
The huge loss of life in the Civil War can be attributed to tactics always lagging behind technology. You must first build the machine and use it before you can fully form new tactics around it.
The tactics of the First World War show that even Europe after seeing the new technology and its effects still couldn’t come up with better tactics after 40 years.
pzatchok, Russia aboloshed slavery in the 1860s. Not that it changed mich over night, what would the serfs do differently? The Russian governement was very modern before communism, St Petersburg was a center for European civilization for centuries. Russia was quickly being industrialized around the year of 1900. But the uneducated masses of serfs made communism possible, much like the huge analphabetic majority n arabic countries today is food for radical islamic movements. Slavery leaves deep scars with consequences.
Slavery was not invented by the Brittish, it was actually abolished by them! Britain freed the world from slavery. When the Portugese came to West Africa in the 13th century to trade, the locals only had slaves to sell. Slavery has always been a way of life in Africa. It took colonization to free Africa from slavery. Colonization was the best thing which could happen to Africa, a great European project of the 19th-20th century. It endowed Africa with freedom, education, infrastructure and peace. Colonization replaced the slave trade of the local chiefs. They actually fought the Europeans for similar reasons as the South did, to protect their slave economy.
The confederate leaders should have realized that slavery was history, it was already going away all over the world as a result of industrialism, and should have negotiated for some reasonable transition from it. It is anyway not as if all slaves would run away overnight if they were set free legally. They need work, what to do but to stay? There was a gradual transition anyway. The confederation might have remained a political force, but that was what really bothered Washington and caused the war. The civil war was a disaster with no good causes and no good results. And European generals took no warning from how bad war with modern rifles had become. Their stupid minds still lived in Napoleonic times.
“Fellow countrymen mass killing fellow countrymen were not patriots, they were destructive maniacs.”
This would assume such behavior was not normal. In fact, representative government requires a deference to fellow citizens that was actually dropping during the US portion of the aristocratic reaction against the industrial revolution. The South’s oligarchs after 1825, in contrast to the slave-owners among the Founding Fathers, made clear their “haughty” disdain for interdependence. As the industrial revolution became more evident in North America, the South’s economic domination declined.
By 1860 we were getting screeds published in the South against democracy even more extreme than what we see today after Brexit, with surprisingly similar reasoning structures. The landed slaver oligarchs were calling themselves a new aristocracy, and condemning even their own non-slave owners’ abilities as electors. In the decades before the Civil War, for instance, South Carolina revised its property requirements for voting upwards twice, to keep non-slave-owners from undoing their oligarchy’s control of the legislature. Their anticipation of new slave-states in the territories won from Mexico was forthright and demanding.
The Free-soil West was put on guard in the first state-hood elections of the Kansas/Nebraska territory, when an audit found that of 5,600 registered voters, there were 8,350+ votes cast, to get a slave-state in Kansas. The second closely watched election resulted in a close victory for a Free-Soil Kansas. The response of most slave-state oligarchs was that the territories must *not* be able to vote on the decision, which should be decided by Congress, where they had far more power. When that did not work, southern calls for secession multiplied, with hints that a new confederate State would have the ability to raise an Army to compel “fair” division of “the territories”.
Not being fools, Western Free-Soilers became the core of the new Republican Party. Even after winning the Presidency, it was these Westerners that nearly had to drag states like New York kicking and screaming into a defense of the Republic. The idea of the Marxists, that our Civil War was simply a battle between 2 opposing oligarchies, was fatuously self-serving in their thirst for denigrating people and classes of people they had selected as targets on their road to power.
In fact, the infection after 1825, of self-serving democrats justifying their coercion of an entire group of people defined by race, for that oligarchy’s own benefit, was what the US Civil War was about. Its perpetuation required an ideology that pushed oligarchs to spread it in the face of a competing industrial culture.
LocalFluff:
The only thing I can do, is refer you to Lincoln’s own words. His best stuff is amazingly short & concise, but all encompassing.
Slavery had a long/complex history in North America before & after our American Revolution. Our Constitution however, inherently set the stage for the eventual destruction of slavery. Our Union could never continue 1/2 free & 1/2 slave & we fought a bitter Civil War.
A uniquely ‘American Civil War’ I would venture to say, totally unlike in Goals or Results, what you Europeans have done & do to each other, on a fairly regular & consistent basis, ‘fighting over the same old ground, year after year.’
The weirdest discussion I can recall on BTB.
Mr. Zimmerman: The following tow pages/links be of interest for you and your readers in context with discussion above:
Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, 2nd ed. by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/libertarian-historians-masterpiece-civil-war/
Murray Rothbard Speech on the Civil War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDC2wITrWE8
http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/why-libertarian-defenses-confederacy-states-rights-are-incoherent
LocalFluff wrote: “Wasn’t the “free the slaves” things an add on to punish and weaken the enemies in the South, rather than a real motivation for the war?”
No. The Southern States seceded before Lincoln took office, and *only* because they thought that he would have ended slavery. Slavery was the issue at hand, and keeping the union as one nation was the only other issue — which would not have been a consideration if the South had not seceded due to the slavery issue. This is how strong and powerful the abolitionist movement was, powerful enough to make the South believe that Lincoln would abolish slavery.
LocalFluff wrote: “The republic could certainly have solved the conflict peacefully.”
Only if the solution was to keep slavery. The cotton gin sealed the fate of the peaceful solution that the North had been working on for decades. That sole invention made the waning slavery very profitable again, as slaves no longer needed to pick the seeds out of the cotton. Thus cotton became less expensive and much more popular, requiring many more slaves in the fields. Slavery went from on the way out to the new boom industry, in the South.
Joe,
Slavery grew out of Britain’s indentured servitude, which was a form of temporary slavery of someone who owed more money than he had at the time that he was to repay. It was a way to make restitution. Eventually a more permanent slavery was created, a rationale being that it was to help those who were from a “backward” society.
pzatchok wrote: “No America is not clean by any standards but we are one of the less dirty nations.”
I think that this is true due to the democratic nature of the nation. Without a monarch determining everything, the abolitionist movement had a hope of ending slavery peacefully, through Congress and various laws. We the People had a say in how we all were to live, and that included the say of the abolitionists against the say of the South.
Because the people of a nation are moral by nature, they tend to make decisions for moral reasons. Leaders who are unchecked can make decisions that are expedient for the moment, and morality need not be a consideration. This is one of the major reasons for having checks and balances in American government, and losing this morality is one of the consequences of the loss of checks and balances in American government.
LocalFluff,
you wrote: “The civil war was a disaster with no good causes and no good results.”
I will take this to mean that your answer to my question is that you really think that liberty, even the liberty of others, is *not* worth going to war for.
I believe that freeing the slaves is a good cause. One of the good results is that American doctors became obsessed with finding anesthetics. They did not like performing amputations on conscious patients or patients who could feel the pain, but the large number of these types of operations was one of the bloody parts of the (un)Civil war.
Wars have always been bloody and nasty, it is just that the size of each army in a battle changed one-hundred-fold or more. It went from 300 in ancient times to 30,000 (more for the battle of Gettysburg, but the concept is the same). The carnage was on a huge scale, and the doctors were expected to do something about it.
That the South should have seen that slavery was ending everywhere else does not really factor into their calculation. Their system worked for them, and freed slaves, as they saw it, would not be able to fend for themselves. The passive aggressive nature of their work ensured that the southerners were convinced that they could not work hard or smart. The slaveowners were convinced, from first-hand experience, that their slaves would starve to death, if left on their own. For them, slavery was not just an economic system, but a kindness for the slaves.
I see a similar parallel with socialists. Socialists work on the hypothesis that people need the intelligentsia to run their lives for them, as most people are not smart enough to do it for themselves. This would also explain why communist and socialist countries tend to treat their people like paid slaves.
By the way, in the American South, slaves could also work for money and buy their freedom. There were quite a few who earned money working for people other than their owners, but few earned enough to buy their freedom.
wayne,
I think you summed us up pretty well. America was in a bad situation and discovered that the hoped-for peaceful/political solution was lost to them when the South seceded and attacked the North.
Edward:
Great wordsmithing, once again.
Alex:
-I’ll speak to the Murray Rothbard reference, but otherwise just not up for a rehashing of the Civil War.
[as an aside, everything anyone wants to know about Rothbard is archived at http://www.mises.org]
[Rothbard was a student of Mises if I have that correct & the whole Hayekian free market school of thinking.]
I personally like Rothbard’s economics quite a bit. And I agree with him that wars serve to concentrate governmental power. He has written extensively on the Monetary system of the Colonies through the Revolutionary War, & his series on the End of Laisse Faire is a fascinating interpretation of the American economic/historical experience.
He is (was, now deceased) by his own admission & proud to be called, an “Anarcho-Capitalist.”
He was highly critical of Lincoln, as are a lot of people at Mises dot org. (it doesn’t however diminish the correctness of the underlying economic-thinking they gravitate toward) Rothbard’s opinion of Lincoln was that he was a dictator. (A thought I do not share.)
Some people refer to some of the scholars at Mises of being Neo-Confederates. Which has a heavy element of discussion over States Right’s & Secession.
Rothbard’s revisionist history is very enlightening & serves a definite purpose. He his however mistaken to concentrate purely on economics & history through that one specific lens, although I can’t fault him for being an excellent Economist. Slavery was indeed a “peculiar institution,” and as I have noted above, my belief our Civil War & the circumstances before, during, & after, are purely “American Experiences,” although fully granted they contain Universal Themes.
Wayne: Thank you for your very interesting review of Rothbard, Lincoln and Mises institute. Only short to civil war topic: It seems to me that Southerner or Confederates, at most outnumbered in battle, were the much better and braver men/soldier in combat (compared to the Unionist) and they sacrificed themselves to a much higher degree, if you consider the numbers of death Southern soldiers in respect to total number of with men in South. That facts alone base my respect to them.
Alex:
Not up for totally rehashing the (American) Civil War, but will say–
“Plenty of good people were killed on both sides.”
>The casualty-rate was huge, especially in comparison to our population.
>The Union could never remain 1/2 free & 1/2 slave. Our Constitution set the stage for its eventual destruction, and it was wiped out at great expense in blood & treasure.
The Democrat Party however, worked instantly to start undoing the gains that were made by the Republican Party during & after the war, and largely as a result it took an additional 100 years to eliminate Institutional racism.
(It should be noted– huge portions of black people in America were Republicans during & after the Civil War, and up until mid last-century.)
If you like Murray Rothbard, highly recommend you explore his massive work;
“The American Economy and the End of Laissez Faire; 1870 to World War 2,”
>>The Mises dot org folks have a fascinating 9 part audio presentation of Rothbard lecturing in his own voice, in detail, on that entire subject. (They have a lot of his material with computer-generated audio, but nothing beats listening to Rothbard in his own voice. He’s a “normal guy,” and lacks the pretentious trappings of the intellectual-elite Mastermind’s we so often encounter today. )
As I mentioned previous, Rothbard was a self-avowed ‘Anarcho-Capitalist,’ & as others in his camp, he viewed Lincoln as morphing into a dictator during the Civil War— a belief not shared by a large fraction of American’s.
I would say however, a careful examination of Lincoln’s actions would go toward refuting that belief in large measure. (My opinion– Obama has been more of a dictator than Lincoln, and with infinitely less rationalization.)
Lincoln was no Saint, but he certainly wasn’t a Dictator.
For comments critical of Lincoln, this perhaps hits the top complaints that are made:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/lincoln-secession-slavery
Personally, I’m a Conservative with a heavy Libertarian bent. Although anarcho-capitalism is very appealing, personally I’m happy with our Republication form of Representative Democracy, as long as we maintain a heavy component of Free Market Economics, ala Hayek & Mises.
D K Rögnvald Williams:
Yow…. a strange Topic, indeed!
–I’m trying very hard not to personally attack our foreign friends!
Thankfully, Edward & others stepped up and maintained the intellectual arguments and kept the bar high.
It’s a complex Topic, & as I have stated previous, it’s my belief the entire subject is “uniquely American” in nature.
Alex:
Absolutely don’t want to rehash our American Civil War, but will pivot to Free Market Science, ‘cuz I know you follow “Space” quite a bit.
You might enjoy Rothbard’s monograph–“Science, Technology, and Government.”
>complete audio book is available, free, at:
https://mises.org/library/science-technology-and-government-2
(Unfortunately, not in Rothbard’s own voice & personally not my favorite narrator, but that does not negate the message.) There are PDF and E-Book formats available, also for free, if you want to read it yourself.)
>Where-in he makes great arguments for keeping the State largely out of ‘science & technology,’ & the inevitable bad results when they insist on sticking their noses into it all.