By this retarded logic, Thomas Jefferson could have simply paid the Barbary pirates a “modest” tribute rather than spend all that $$ on warships.
Isn’t it ironic that an (alleged) fiscal conservative is touting a government bailout?
Ron Paul should invest in some stationery with that heading.
Larry, the situation you bring up is not at all the same. Lincoln said repeatedly until 1863 that his goal in fighting the Civil War was not to end slavery but to “preserve the union,” i.e. he fought a war that killed 600,000 people so that the federal government could have control over people and states that desperately did not want to be under Washington D.C.’s thumb. His own speeches make it clear that this was the one and only reason that he initially pursued the war. Your comparison would only be correct if Jefferson wanted to take over North Africa and impose American federal control over the area, ending slavery there in that manner.
By the way, if, let’s say, Texas wanted to secede today, would you support the death of 2% of the population in order to force Texas to stay in the Union against its will? 2% of the national population in the 1860s was a mere 600,000 people; today that number would be 6 million. Would you think it would be worth 6 million lives to keep any state in the Union? If so, why? (And remember, as I mentioned, it is Lincoln’s own words that show the war was fought to keep states from seceding, not to end slavery.)