Opinions That Matter pg. 2

The HumanClick button, just a way of contacting us direct, live and in person (well, almost !). There's nothing to download, it just opens a little pop up browser window running a Java Script, then "we'" will be in our own little private chat room. If we are online, you can contact a human, either BJ or me (AJ). If we are offline, you can contact us by email. You don't have to give your email address, but it does mean we can't reply.

The historical event that looms largest in American public consciousness is the Civil War. One-hundred thirty-nine years after the first shot was fired, its genesis is still fiercely debated and its symbols heralded and protested. And no wonder: the event transformed the American regime from a federalist system based on freedom to a centralized state that circumscribed liberty in the name of public order. The cataclysmic event massacred a generation of young men, burned and looted the Southern states, set a precedent for executive dictatorship, and transformed the American military from a citizen-based defense corps into a global military power that can't resist intervention.

And yet, if you listen to the media on the subject, you might think that the entire issue of the Civil War comes down to race and slavery. If you favor Confederate symbols, it means you are a white person unsympathetic to the plight of blacks in America. If you favor abolishing Confederate History Month and taking down the flag, you are an enlightened thinker willing to bury the past so we can look forward to a bright future under progressive leadership. The debate rarely goes beyond these simplistic slogans.

And yet this take on the event is wildly ahistorical. It takes Northern war propaganda at face value without considering that the South had solid legal, moral, and economic reasons for secession which had nothing to do with slavery. Even the name "Civil War" is misleading, since the war wasn't about two sides fighting to run the central government as in the English or Roman civil wars. The South attempted a peaceful secession from federal control, an ambition no different from the original American plea for independence from Britain.

But why would the South want to secede? If the original American ideal of federalism and constitutionalism had survived to 1860, the South would not have needed to. But one issue loomed larger than any other in that year as in the previous three decades: the Northern tariff. It was imposed to benefit Northern industrial interests by subsidizing their production through high prices and public works. But it had the effect of forcing the South to pay more for manufactured goods and disproportionately taxing it to support the central government. It also injured the South's trading relations with other parts of the world.

In effect, the South was being looted to pay for the North's early version of industrial policy. The battle over the tariff began in 1828, with the "tariff of abomination." Thirty year later, with the South paying 87 percent of federal tariff revenue while having their livelihoods threatened by protectionist legislation, it become impossible for the two regions to be governed under the same regime. The South as a region was being reduced to a slave status, with the federal government as its master.

But why 1860? Lincoln promised not to interfere with slavery, but he did pledge to "collect the duties and imposts": he was the leading advocate of the tariff and public works policy, which is why his election prompted the South to secede. In pro-Lincoln newspapers, the phrase "free trade" was invoked as the equivalent of industrial suicide. Why fire on Ft. Sumter? It was a customs house, and when the North attempted to strengthen it, the South knew that its purpose was to collect taxes, as newspapers and politicians said at the time.

To gain an understanding of the Southern mission, look no further than the Confederate Constitution. It is a duplicate of the original Constitution, with several improvements. It guarantees free trade, restricts legislative power in crucial ways, abolishes public works, and attempts to rein in the executive. No, it didn't abolish slavery but neither did the original Constitution (in fact, the original protected property rights in slaves).

Before the war, Lincoln himself had pledged to leave slavery intact, to enforce the fugitive slave laws, and to support an amendment that would forever guarantee slavery where it then existed. Neither did he lift a finger to repeal the anti-Negro laws that besotted all Northern states, Illinois in particular. Recall that the underground railroad ended, not in New York or Boston -- since dropping off blacks in those states would have been restricted -- but in Canada! The Confederate Constitution did, however, make possible the gradual elimination of slavery, a process that would have been made easier had the North not so severely restricted the movements of former slaves.

Now, you won't read this version of events in any conventional history text, particularly not those approved for use in public high schools. You are not likely to hear about it in the college classroom either, where the single issue of slavery overwhelms any critical thinking. Again and again we are told what Polybius called "an idle, unprofitable tale" instead of the truth, and we are expected to swallow it uncritically. So where can you go to discover that the conventional story is sheer nonsense?

The last ten years have brought us a flurry of great books that look beneath the surface. There is John Denson's "The Costs of War" (1998), Jeffrey Rodgers Hummel's "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men" (1996), David Gordon's "Secession, State, and Liberty" (1998), Marshall de Rosa's "The Confederate Constitution" (1991), or, from a more popular standpoint, James and Walter Kennedy's "Was Jefferson Davis Right?" (1998).

But if we were to recommend one work -- based on originality, brevity, depth, and sheer rhetorical power -- it would be Charles Adams' time bomb of a book, "When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). In a mere 242 pages, he shows that almost everything we thought we knew about the war between the states is wrong.

Adams believes that both Northern and Southern leaders were lying when they invoked slavery as a reason for secession and for the war. Northerners were seeking a moral pretext for an aggressive war, while Southern leaders were seeking a threat more concrete than the Northern tariff to justify a drive to political independence. This was rhetoric designed for mass consumption . Adams amasses an amazing amount of evidence -- including remarkable editorial cartoons and political speeches -- to support his thesis that the war was really about government revenue.

"That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.

"What, then, is left for our government? Shall we let the seceding states repeal the revenue laws for the whole Union in this manner? Or will the government choose to consider all foreign commerce destined for those ports where we have no custom-houses and no collectors as contraband, and stop it, when offering to enter the collection districts from which our authorities have been expelled?"

This is not an isolated case. British newspapers, whether favoring the North or South, said the same thing: the feds invaded the South to collect revenue. Indeed, when Karl Marx said the following, he was merely stating what everyone who followed events closely knew: "The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty."

Marx was only wrong on one point: the war was about principle at one level. It was about the principle of self-determination and the right not to be taxed to support an alien regime. Another way of putting this is that the war was about freedom, and the South was on the same side as the original American revolutionaries.

Interesting, isn't it, that today, those who favor banning Confederate symbols and continue to demonize an entire people's history also tend to be partisans of the federal government in all its present political struggles? Not much has changed in 139 years. Adams's book goes a long way toward telling the truth about this event, for anyone who cares to look at the facts.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. He also edits a daily news site, LewRockwell.com.

As the Confederate Battle flag is soon to be flown over millions of homes across the South in Honor of Confederate Veterans, Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) called for the National Park Service to make slavery a part of museum displays and educational programs at all 28 national Civil War historic sites. In his words, "For too long, Americans have been shown only military aspects of the battles with scant attention given to the major issues of the conflict--race and slavery." Jackson would also like the matter discussed openly.

In this same Chicago Tribune article, Jackson admits that he "was not a historian or an academic." So the media should have followed up with a question like:

Saying that the War between the States was about race and slavery is like saying the Second World War was only about Jews and the Holocaust. Both are blatant lies being promulgated by today's revisionists. These lies started with an attack on the Confederate Flag. Now they're after every symbol of the Confederacy, none of which have bothered anyone until a handful of "selected" black folks (as compared to the entire black population) decided there was really nothing else left to do.

And it's not that they have the power (or the votes) to do anything about it, but with the AP and the media in Dixie giving them a free ride, some in the so-called black leadership have decided to push the envelope as much as they can until every person capitulates or is forced to defend themselves against charges of racism and bigotry.

What cause are you promoting? Ever bother to ask yourself how the descendants of Confederate soldiers feel about flags being burned, memorials being desecrated, and insults being thrown at them without reason?

Here's something for the black audience - from someone I know and respect as a friend that I would gladly stand next to in the heat of battle...

You have shown the courage to stand up for yourself, and that takes a lot in today's society. You have eschewed the Government Teat, and shown others what it is like to be free.

3. I would be much happier loving black people than hating them. You get back 10 fold what you sew, and I would rather love folks for who they are, than hate them for being different.

4. The forces aligned against the Southern people, and our cultural heritage WANT ME TO HATE THEM, and damn it, they are pushing enough buttons, that I am starting to think Jim Crow might make a comeback.

In all my life, I have seldom seen black southerners act out against their white neighbors, at least not without severe provocation. Who is behind the force encouraging them to do this now?

What would happen to me, as a white man, if I took matters into my own hands, and took a sledge-hammer to the civil rights monument in Montgomery? Which of these two crimes would generate an arrest? One guess...., and it isn't the torching of a 3 x 5 flag (protected under the law in Florida...yeah right).

I thought all this civil rights stuff was about trying to get whites to respect and honor black folks. How come now that I have been properly re-educated, I can't practice my new-found love? How come, that isn't enough? Why am I now being encouraged (by the actions of the NAACP) to hate black people?

When the pain of having one's heritage and family trashed becomes greater than the pain one feels when he hates, watch out African-Americans.....you thought segregation was the pits...you better grab a life preserver, cause it's gonna be a long swim to where you are going!

One day, whites (and Hispanics) are going to have enough of this crap, and the tide will reverse...it is time to stop this NOW...we called you brother....we extended our hand in friendship....what more do they want?

Mr. Johnson, as you well know, the SCV opposes hate groups, and their misuse of the Confederate Flag. What the NAACP is doing today is serving as the best recruiting tool the KKK ever had. They couldn't get better advertising even if they could afford it. Want to see the KKK with 5 million members again? Just keep pushing those buttons, and decent,

P.S. I never will, NEVER WILL, join any group that has hate as its focus. The KKK are a bunch of morons. What will happen, if this onslaught against my heritage doesn't abate, is I'll turn my back when a black man needs me....I won't act out against him, I just won't act at all. Is this what the NAACP wants?

To Jesse Jackson, Jr, et al, is this want you want in America? We have hundreds of letters just like these from people of all races from all over the country. This represents best what the black leadership is causing in this country.

3) Why weren't there anti-conscription riots in the South during the war? In fact, people of all races were volunteering for the Confederate Army even AFTER Lee surrendered. Bet Grant can't say that. No, his boss (Lincoln) had to send in troops to kill people who refused to voluntarily sign up. Gee, what a hero...

4) Would Mr. Jackson (and others) like to have the 97,000 black men who fought for the Confederacy honored as well? Or would he rather just have General Sherman honored - a man who went on a ruthless slaughter killing any southerner (black, white or Indian) in his path?

5) Would Mr. Jackson like to make a statement against the on-going black slave trade in the Sudan? Would he like to make a statement against the African Christians (both black and white) who are now being hunted down and slaughtered on the sub-African Continent?

6) Would Mr. Jackson like to make a statement about 25% of the black male population in this country now working for slave wages for violating laws that he and his cronies in Washington passed? (Note which flag flies over those prisons.)

7) Would Mr. Jackson like to explain why his father is pushing for a replica of a slave ship to be built on the South Carolina State House grounds, but wants to remove the flag because, after all, "It's a symbol of slavery"?

Yes, every black person should be insulted - that's the hypocrisy that is being foisted upon the American public. In my opinion, some of these black folks who can't seem to stay out of the media could all get starring roles in a black version of "Schindler's List."

And Mr. Jackson has been lobbying Interior Department Secretary Bruce Babbitt (The General Sherman of the West) to make sure that every black person who visits a National Park gets reminded of slavery. I ask again, who are the REAL racists?

What always bothers me is when people who give an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution fail to simply read it first. If Jackson had, he may have noticed that the tenth amendment was not about slavery, it was (and still is) about power that the States and the people never gave to the federal government. That's what it was about - the states not having to tolerate things like the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Interior, the EPA, the ATF, the FBI, the DEA, and the rest of the alphabet-soup tyranny that we're all enslaved by today. Chances are, if the South had won, considering the WELL-DOCUMENTED principles they were fighting for, I doubt many of these agencies would exist.

To Mr. Jackson, and all those others who are pushing this agenda: You are doing a disservice to all Americans. The lies, the threats, the ultimatums, the name calling, and the outright barbaric and criminal behavior being conducted right under the noses of law enforcement by many of your ilk (and I don't mean all black people by any means) are doing NOTHING to help race relations in this country. In fact, they're making them worse.

And before you call anyone racist, I can tell you, the biggest enemies of Southern Heritage are not black people. They are two white Southerners - one from Arkansas, and one from Tennessee.

So, Mr. Jesse Jackson, Jr., if you really want to discuss racism, have your NAACP comrades debate the flag supporters in public like gentleman, instead of hiding in plain sight. See if you can discuss these issues openly and honestly for 5 minutes without insulting those who disagree with you by resorting to racial slurs. Let's discuss how we're all slaves to the IRS. Let's discuss how we're all slaves to whatever Washington, D.C. thinks they can do to us - and the rest of the world. Let's discuss how the "black leadership," (I hate that term) is doing all they can to ENFORCE Jim Crow laws in the South - via news media promoted boycotts.

Let's talk racism. Let's talk about how such things as spray-painting "kill whitey" on Confederate monuments, burning murals of Confederate Generals, and cutting down Confederate flag poles are tolerated, while passing selective "hate crimes legislation" is somehow constitutional and the "right thing to do." Let's talk about suing gun manufacturers over "the pain they have caused the black community" and making every gun owner a criminal by fiat. Then let's talk about screaming "police brutality" whenever a black person is killed by police, but ignoring it when it happens to a white person. In short, let's talk about EVERYONE having rights - not just black people.

I, (and all my associates) do not want a race war in this country. But I'll be damned if someone out there is not trying to start one. However, if and when it ever comes to that dreadful moment, don't be surprised to see the same racial makeup on both sides of the fence - just like 135 years ago. Yes, there will be a More Perfect Union built from the ashes of a war we've waged and won before. But this time, our side will be doing more than just fighting for the Constitution, our Homeland or our Sovereignty...