lol wat

Do you have an argument to make somewhere in here? It's basically indecipherable. You could, you know, try actually stating your point. For once.

Great, so there's no need for them to secede from anything, right?

zomg semantical nitpickers? I now agree with dvaut, this is a ridiculous hijack.

moorobot? You didn't demonstrate any such thing. You asserted it.

There are plenty of examples of people who will argue that the war was because of slavery, and ending it was so high of a goal that any means used can be justified in achieving that end. They will gladly bend over backwards to explicitly say habeus corpus suspensions, total war, conscription, etc were all justified.

Now, please, using little words if necessary, explain how labeling such people as "pro war crime" requires that I also defend slavery.

Don't get mad at me because you asked a poorly-worded question.

yeah, I guess. Bookmark it. It's the same argument I just used above. There were no slaves.

I wouldn't, except that when I refine the question you just go back to the first iteration.

When I said that addressing the point and calling people racist were not mutually exclusive I meant that I could do both independently.

I started this whole thing because some guy on Balloon Juice put a clever derogatory tag on that article. I just happened to see in the comments that Mises was giving a platform to a racist kook(again), and that's terrible for an organization that otherwise tries to hold itself out as a serious academic institution.


This isn't very NC, but I'll cliffs it.

I am upset that the the "DER GUBMINT GONNA TAKE MAH GUNZ AND GIVE MAH MOBNEY TO DARKIES" crowd is coopting libertarianism and permanently coloring the public's impression of libertarian ideas with that ****.

Glenn Greenwald, not Glenn Beck.

You seem to be forgetting that the North is the one that invaded the South. The onus is on them (or rather its defenders) to justify said invasion and reasons thereof.

Those defending the Civil War ARE saddled with the North's less-than-altruistic motivations because that is what it means to defend the Civil War. Those saying that the Civil War was unjust (that is, the Northern military invasion of the South was unjust) are not privy to the same burden, DUCY? One can condemn the actions of the North (and therefore the Civil War) without conceding that slavery was ok. Secession doesn't require any inherent violence like invading somewhere with a military does.

I said it was unclear and gave a bifurcated answer in post 1398 (my original answer, paraphrased, was "they need the consent of the United States if Maine means the state; else, depends on whether they consented to the laws of Maine"). I assumed you would do the analytical work necessary to supply the assumption that they didn't consent, but even if you didn't, the entire analytical framework for answering the question is there. I don't know why that answer didn't satisfy you then, because it seems to satisfy you now.

Either way, what I'm getting at is that the Southern states qua states seceding was a legally illegitimate act, and, shifting the level of analysis to take away fictitious extra-social entities, individual people defending their "rights" to enslave other human beings is obviously monstrous. I am not claiming this justifies everything that happened in the Civil War, but isn't some amount of force legitimate as against one who enslaves others?

Secede from the power (or rather, claim to authority) the federal government exercises over them.

Yeah, that's not what "secede" means: v. intrans. withdraw formally from membership in a federal union, an alliance, or a political or religious organization.

But if that's what we're talking about, doing that act has precisely nothing to do with the Civil War, so can't we as libertarians PLEASE pick a better way to talk about it? You know, one that doesn't make us seem like racist, slavery-defending morons?

The answer to your question is yes, at least if your goal is to set the slaves free, the force is employed in proportion and you see no better way of achieving your goal, but your question is not very related to the Civil War.

The bolded is just circular nonsense, but whatever, as I've been saying, it just as easily applies to Confederate apologists:

Those that defending the South's secession ARE saddled with the South's less-than-altruistic motivations because that is what it means to defend the South's secession.

Montius, in this thread, on this page, you've described South Carolina's motivations for withdrawing from the Union as being founded on the idea that they no longer consented to federal government. Do you know why they no longer consented?

This sort of mischaracterization of events doesn't fly. People are smart enough to see through it.

If your some kind of pacifist, or just a cynic, and you think that habeus suspensions, total war, and conscription make the Civil War unjustifiable in isolation, then fine.

What I'm arguing is that if you defend the south's secession and you think that habeus suspensions, total war, and conscription make the Civil War unjustifiable, that any reasonable interrogation of that person's south secession apologetics will reveal that they are guilty of defending the same kinds of crimes against humanity, at worst. At best, it's embracing counter-factual and anti-historical positions; the same post-hoc propaganda and euphemism employment that you think civil war apologists are guilty of ("habeas suspensions and total war and conscription are bad but I don't support that, just ending slavery").

Like I said, if you think habeas suspensions and total war and conscription and mercantilism and tyranny are inseparable from the defending the Civil War, then by the exact same logic, slavery is inseparable from defending the South's secession.

What's total bull**** is to claim that those who think the Civil War is justifiable are all mercantalist war criminals with a fetish for centralized power because they can't rightly divorce A (goal: ending slavery in the South) from B (various motivations and Northern tactics: mercantilism, total war, forced conscription, etc.) while simultaneously claiming that you support A (goal: secession for the South) BUT NOT B (various motivations and Southern tactics: preserving chattel slavery, funding the war through theft, forced conscription, etc.)

Umm how does that not describe what is meant by secede? They are withdrawing from the membership of the federal union i.e. they are withdrawing their consent to be governed by them.

Can something your grandfather agreed to many years before you were born concerning you be said to have any legitimate authority over you?

No, it has very much to do with the Civil War. South Carolina didn't want to be subject to rule of the Federal authority, so they declared their independence. Simple as that. Shortly thereafter, others followed suit. Thus sparked the war for Southern Independence. The North didn't like that too much (that was an awful lot of potential tax revenue saying goodbye that could be spent on industry in the North).

The only thing that "makes "us" seem like racist, slavery-defending morons" are the endless strawmen, false dilemmas, packaged deals, and generic red herrings that "Northern apologists" tend to employ in such arguments.

Talk of the Civil War as a War of Northern Aggression could easily be seen as Confederate apologist bunk. Just sayin'...

In the midst of all the problems the world faces right now, there's something soothing about reading the never-ending debates here over the morality of the Civil War.

Newt Gingrich has made a fortune with books that relate the South winning the war.

It absolutely is not circular nonsense. There is not any way one can defend the actions of the Civil War without defending the actions of the North.

One can, however, condemn the actions of the North without supporting slavery.

Yes, look at the ridiculous taxes and tariffs levied during the time on agricultural exports. Northern industry was benefitting as such at the expense of southern agriculture. Southern cotton fields payed for northern railroads and other industry. The secession was over a balance of power, not slavery specifically.

If it was in fact due to slavery, why exactly was existing slavery not really abolished in Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware until the very end of the war?

And this sort of post lacks any sort of intellectual substance or valid rebuttal whatsoever.

Or, it could be in reference to the fact that it was the armies of the North that first invaded and occupied the South, and with very few exceptions, the entirety of the war took place in the South.

I like this. Can I try?

The North waged war to end slavery. Simple as that.

Cue: "NOT THAT SIMPLE"

Yeah, actually, it is circular nonsense. "Those defending the Civil War (whatever) is what it means to defend the Civil War" is circular. But whatever.

That's fine. Like I said:

My claim:

If you think that there is not any way one can defend the actions of the Civil War without defending the actions of the North, then similarly, there is not any way one can defend the secession of the South without defending the actions of the South, including the institution of slavery. The other alternative is just counter-factual and anti-historical bull****, self-sealing arguments like "South Carolina didn't want to listen to the feds anymore, SIMPLE AS THAT", where SIMPLE AS THAT magically ignores all the stuff that South Carolina didn't want federal interference over.

Except it is very clear that they didn't wage it for that purpose.

That is one of the crux of this whole argument.