LOL
Now using the Paulistinian logic when they attack and smear Palin, I think we now have indisputible evidence that Ron Paul supports slavery!
Sure I’ll sell you my slaves then go buy me some new younger stronger ones.
Is he really this stupid?
Maybe Ron Paul should suggest that the US buy the world’s supply of cocaine, heroine, and marijuana and disband the drug enforcement agencies?
Call it fiscally conservative and put an end to the “drug war” and the “war on drugs.”
Ron Paul can’t think beyond the end of his nose. Slavery would have still been legal. We would have been buying the same men & women 25 times over. It took a war to end slavery.
Buying the slaves is not very practical, but there is a lot that most conservatives need to learn about Lincoln.
See, e.g., The Real Lincoln, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo.
From one review of the book:
Description This is the book that made it happen: the nationwide revision concerning the man who they tried to tell us was a great liberator. Dictator and slayer of liberty is more like it. Lincoln was not the godlike figure of myth and legend but an unusually cruel political operator who exploited the moment for personal gain, just as we’ve come to expect of modern politicians.
In this blockbuster, Thomas DiLorenzo calls for a complete rethinking of a central icon of American historiography. He looks at the actions and legacy of Abe Lincoln from an economics point of view to show that Lincoln’s main interest was not in opposing slavery but in advancing mercantilism, inflationism, and government spending: the “American system” of Henry Clay.
Through extensive historical investigation, DiLorenzo shows that the high tariff pushed by Northern industries, at the expense of Southern agriculture, was the main cause of the sectional conflict. Further, Lincoln’s goal in preventing Southern secession was the consolidation of federal power and the collection of revenue, not the elimination of slavery. Introduction by Walter Williams.
Barron’s says: “More than 16,000 books have already been written about Abraham Lincoln. But it took an economist to get the story right. The Real Lincoln, by Loyola College economics prof Thomas J. DiLorenzo, is this year’s top pick in [Gene Epstein’s] sixth annual review of Holiday Gifts that Keep on Giving, When It’s the Thought that Counts.”
ISBN 0761526463
The North thought the war would be over in 3 months, IIRC.
Neither side forsaw the length and bloodiness.
Ron obviously knows little about the period. I just finished my second reading of Shelby Foote’s 3000+ page opus.
Lincoln made repeated attempts to get the South, or the border states, to free their slaves with compensation.
He couldn’t get traction for it, not even in his own cabinet. It’s highly unlikely northern people would have been willing to tax themselves to compensate slaveholders. For some obscure reason people are always more willing to fund a war than an effort to prevent one. Sort of along the same line there’s never time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over.
BTW, his numbers are wildly off. Official US government estimate in 1879 is that the war cost a little over $6B. 1% of that, per Ron, would be $60M.
There were 4M+ slaves in 1860. I doubt the owners would have been willing to sell at $15 each. Average price, if I remember correctly, was somewhere between $500 and $1000, which would add up to somewhere around 50% of the cost of the war, not <1%.
Seriously, make a quick buck, but then you need someone to tend those fields and keep the house, so then you go again.
What good would that have done? Buy up all the slave and the democrats would have just gone out and taken more people into slavery. It would have been a never ending buy out.
Look at the democrats today! Look at how they see nothing wrong with forcing people to buy a product of the democrats choice. How they all share the elitist attitude toward the American people and how they think our freedoms should be limited.
No! Buying those enslaved would have been a never ending purchase. Because democrats never stop trying to enslave others.
Ron Paul and the Paulettes are playing solitaire with 51 cards.
So the south could get new slaves from Africa to sell to the North at a premium?
It is only the matter of settling on the right price which will solve all human conflicts. Single-track individuals quite good in some narrow field of interest, but have the unfortunate tendency to apply it to every field as a panacea.
“Why didn’t the north just buy the south’s slaves and free them that way?”
And then what?
“...he was determined to fight a bloody civil war...”
First, I don’t recall that there were that many who thought it would be all that bloody or all that long—on either side.
Second, it was the War Between the States and Lincoln couldn’t have done much of anything without the support of the the non-seceding States and the volunteers from those States who bore the brunt of the war.
s
Have you stopped molesting barnyard animals yet?
Don’t be assinine.
You know darn well that you are lying by implying that Ron Paul supports slavery. Somehow I don’t think that bothers you, does it?
But he is right. If Lincoln really wanted to free the slaves, which he didn’t, he could have championed buying them and then freeing them.
But he didn’t.
While I don't agree with Ron Paul on most things, he is right about Lincoln. Abe started the war against people who seceded peacefully and did not take arms up against the North until the precipitated the fight at fort Sumpter. Lincoln did not want secession so he pressured the south until they fought back. Hence a war. Lincoln was a blood thirsty tyrant, regardless of how history paints him.
Obama compared himself to Lincoln.
From the Paul interview: "...the Civil War was to prove that we had a very, very strong centralized federal government and that's what it did. It rejected the notion that states were a sovereign nation.
The people who disagree want to turn around and say, "Oh, yes, those guys just wanted to protect slavery." But that's just a cop-out if you look at this whole idea of what happened in our country because Lincoln really believed in the centralized state. He was a Hamiltonian type and objected to everything Jefferson wanted....."
In those ways Obama is Lincolnisn / Hamiltonian.
Not saying we are headed for Civil War, just noting the interesting perspective given the recent events and underlying agendas.
Lest there be any doubt: the CAPITAL value of slaves in 1860 was more than all the RRs and textile mills in the north PUT TOGETHER; and more than half of all value in VA. The top richest 11 states? 10 were slave states because of the property value in slaves. The CW was all about slaves, property rights in slaves, and the expansion of those rights. Because once you established that a black person was a person and not property ANYWHERE, it threatened slavery EVERYWHERE, and that was not tolerable in the South.
That’s ridiculous and completely illogical. They didn’t just buy the slaves and free them (like the genie from Aladdin, I presume), for the same reason the government doesn’t just buy up all the drugs and destroy them.
(1) A single buyer wanting to clear the market will cause an immedate price-hike, and (2) if you don’t outlaw it, people can just buy more slaves ... and you’re stuck with the same problem, and a precedent of the government buying up illegal goods (which would make the practice profitable).
The war was (partially) about making slavery illegal from then forward ... not just about freeing those slaves that existed at that time. The South would still have objected to the legal change.
SnakeDoc
Nutjob.