Sunday, August 18, 2013
To Albert Gore, Love, John Stuart Mill
"Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which satisfies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right. Get out from underneath your desk and debate the people, Mr. Gore."......Alright, I added the last part.
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Ol J.S. Mill was a man for all seasons with a quotes to satisfy any and all-
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it."
Depending on how you describe "conservative" (the socons and the neocons were well before his time), I might actually agree with that (especially since Mr. Mill himself had major libertarian leanings). My suspicion is that by conservative, he probably meant closed minded, a category that definitely includes Mr. Al Gore.
I have yet to figure out Libertarians on the Civil War..
Mill determined that the north
was fighting a 'just war', while
Rothbard insisted the south was
fighting a 'just war'. Take your pick, I guess. Who knows where the
Randians stand...
Tom DiLorenzo (in his book, "The Real Lincoln") makes a pretty persuasive case that the Civil War could have been avoided by doing what essentially every other country in the hemisphere did; purchase the freedom of the slaves. Yeah, it would have been expensive but not as expensive as 650,000 plus dead people.
DiLorenzo grinds a thin ax compared to most Civil War scholars. I cannot find data on
'essentially every other country'
purchasing slaves and in any event, Beauregard began shelling
Ft. Sumter, forcing Lincoln's hand. I'll stick with Mill on the issue.
Can you names another western nation that had a civil war over slavery (and many of them in fact did have slavery)? And if the war was strictly about slavery then why did Lincoln wait to 1863 to emancipate them?
And one of those ad hominem criticisms of DiLorenzo comes from the Claremont Institute, the same people that gave some "prestigious" award to Donald Rumsfeld.
Ah, the Claremont Institute-
"2010 Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle received the Ronald Reagan Freedom Medallion from the Claremont Institute in 2004." heh
Most European countries just banned slavery-no civil war necessary. IMO, Lincoln's first
intent was to preserve the union.
He pocketed the Emancipation to
improve his chances of a 'negotiated settlement' to that end. After Antietam, to assure
England's support and appease the
Republican majority and perhaps from simple humanity, he issued it.
I am from the school that views
'We fight to be free so we can own slaves' is oxymoronic at best, sorry.
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