Ron Paul’s “South Was Right” Civil War Speech With Confederate Flag

[TheLibertarianNationalist]

Nothing you say here changes that it is idiotic to say that an act of violence settles the law. Again, with that argument, punching you in the face and knocking you out would mean that I legally settled that you have no right to self defense.

It does settle it, otherwise the southern states would've seceded immediately after the war.

Every one saying that Europe would have re colonize America. can you tell me which country was helping us during the civil war to prevent europe from doing this during the civil war?

Again that was the problem, you had European nations that were sympathetic to the north, some to the south. The divide was already occurring. I would imagine with a divided America you would've had Russians, Germans, Japanese, Italians, and other various enemies of the Western world attempting colonization in the Americas during the 20th century. If you think the Soviet interference in Latin America was bad, just imagine these scenarios. Personally I'm glad things turned out the way they did and America was united and powerful enough to fend for itself.

 

[low preference guy]

It does settle it, otherwise the southern states would've seceded immediately after the war.

If the government decides to violate the first amendment consistently, would that settle that freedom of speech is illegal?

 

[MaxPower]

Nothing you say here changes that it is idiotic to say that an act of violence settles the law. Again, with that argument, punching you in the face and knocking you out would mean that I legally settled that you have no right to self defense.

Or a man could prove that his wife has no right to leave him by beating her up and tying her to the bed.

 

[low preference guy]

Or a man could prove that his wife has no right to leave him by beating her up and tying her to the bed.

and if he bribes government officials to not put him in jail, it's settled that the man's actions are legal!

 

[erowe1]

It does settle it, otherwise the southern states would've seceded immediately after the war.

I take it you're an atheist?

 

[low preference guy]

I take it you're an atheist?

i don't get that. i think to determine what is legal one has to look to the meaning of the text at the time the law was written and approved. how does atheism affect that?

 

[erowe1]

i don't get that. i think to determine what is legal one has to look to the meaning of the text at the time the law was written and approved. how does atheism affect that?

He believes that the only law is whatever happens to obtain. There is no ought, there is only is. That's atheism. If you're an atheist, it would be logically consistent of you to agree with him.

 

[low preference guy]

He believes that the only law is whatever happens to obtain. There is no ought, there is only is. That's atheism. If you're an atheist, it would be logically consistent of you to agree with him.

that has nothing to do with that is legal. you're talking about what is right. things that are wrong could be formally legal. at least according to Clarence Thomas (he is not an atheist), with whom i agree. i don't think that not having a religion necessarily implies that one doesn't believe that the meaning of the text when the law was written and approved determines what is legal.

 

[TheNcredibleEgg]

Questions?

Where/when was this speech given?

Was the Confederate flag really the backdrop or was it photoshopped in? (If so - is there any video without the flag?)


I'm having trouble on another site defending this video - because the people there won't look past the flag. I've seen mentions that the flag was photoshopped in - but cannot find any proof.

 

[southernsontn]

The bottom line of this issue is that Ron Paul is a strict construction constitutionalist, the same as me. The constitutional issue is is whether or not the Southern States had a constitutional right to secede. under the tenth amendment,
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

now, a quick look at article 1 section 8 of the constitution doesn't delegate the power to congress to force a state to stay in the Union.

now, a quick look at article 1 section 10 of the constitution does not prohibit a state from seceding from the union.
The prohibition from entering into a confederacy doesn't apply, since the states did that post secession, so you can't use that , as some have tried,
and the requirement for the US to provide a Republican form of government likewise doesn't apply, considering that those state were no longer in "this union".

you can "interpret" the constitution any way you please, but the fact remains that the North WAS wrong to invade the Southern States in an attempt to subjugate them.
Ron Paul, as a constitutionalist understands this.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

This is one of the issues where Ron Paul is simply wrong. Slavery and states rights were both major issues factoring up in the Civil War. One cannot say it was exclusively about states rights, because it ignores why some states, such as Mississippi seceded.

I agree the North was more concerned about the preservation of the union, which is actually a rather practical policy. America divided up into a million little nations would have paved way for Europeans or other foreign powers exerting their influence over the Americas. Very possibly we would have been colonized once more, whether it be directly or indirectly through puppet states. Do we have a right to secede? No. The Civil War settled that legally. Although we didn't have a right to secede from Britain, but we did. And of course it was for the better.

Ron Paul is sympathetic to the South, I can understand that. I have a certain respect for the Confederacy and southern heritage as well. But I absolutely detest historical revisionism.

You're right that the issue of where slavery would be legal was one of the conflicts leading up to the war, but it wasn't a major one. As previously mentioned, slavery was a side issue in the Civil War.

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." (1st Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861)

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." (Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862)

RP correctly pointed out in a debate once that Lincoln could have bought the slaves if abolition was his true interest.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

The bottom line of this issue is that Ron Paul is a strict construction constitutionalist, the same as me. The constitutional issue is is whether or not the Southern States had a constitutional right to secede. under the tenth amendment,
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

now, a quick look at article 1 section 8 of the constitution doesn't delegate the power to congress to force a state to stay in the Union.

now, a quick look at article 1 section 10 of the constitution does not prohibit a state from seceding from the union.
The prohibition from entering into a confederacy doesn't apply, since the states did that post secession, so you can't use that , as some have tried,
and the requirement for the US to provide a Republican form of government likewise doesn't apply, considering that those state were no longer in "this union".

you can "interpret" the constitution any way you please, but the fact remains that the North WAS wrong to invade the Southern States in an attempt to subjugate them.
Ron Paul, as a constitutionalist understands this.

FTW!!!

 

[erowe1]

that has nothing to do with that is legal. you're talking about what is right. things that are wrong could be formally legal. at least according to Clarence Thomas (he is not an atheist), with whom i agree. i don't think that not having a religion necessarily implies that one doesn't believe that the meaning of the text when the law was written and approved determines what is legal.

You're right that I'm talking about what is right, which is the only kind of "legal" that I think really counts.

But if you're talking about another man-made law that differs from natural law (i.e. the one that comes from God), which is what I was trying to get at earlier, then the LibertarianNationalist was correct. That man-made law, inasmuch as it doesn't conform to natural law, really conforms to what powerful people make it into, and the more powerful they are the more successful they are at subjugating others to their man-made laws. The subjugation of the South in the Civil War is a great example of that phenomenon. It is precisely the winning of the war that put the law (by which I mean the fake law) on the side of the North.

And yes, if those who have the most power decided to nullify the 1st amendment, the law would inherently be on their side, inasmuch as the law is whatever they say it is, inasmuch as they are the ones with power to make others submit to them.

Of course none of this can be said about the kind of law that isn't made up by people.

 

[Seraphim]

Beautiful example of a ridiculous rationalization.

"Oh, you have the right to sucede...but you have no reason to, so eat my boot."

Also, your name is a blatant contridiction...HJow can you be libertarian and believe in NATIONALISM. \

Liberty and collectivist group think are fundementally at odds with each other. Try again.

Where is there a constitutional amendment that says we have a right to secede? Or any law for that matter? Sorry but the argument in favor of secession goes in favor of natural laws. And there was really no reason for the South to secede during the 19th century. Again, secession would only lead to foreign powers taking advantage of the situation.

 

[Covertpenguin]

This is my first real post, I've been reading these forums for a very long time. The first topic I felt I should chim in on. Ron is right about these topics, it wasn't the North vs the South, it was the North vs America, sadly America lost. After the civil war the union wasn't a voluntary establishment anymore, it was a union by force which is contradictory to what America stood for.

Some facts about Lincoln you may have not known.

- He did not believe in racial equality, and stated this publicly a number of times (such as when he pledged to uphold Illinois' law against interracial marriage).
- As a lawyer, he once defended a slave owner's right to keep his slaves, but never defended a runaway slave.
- Lincoln and Republicans opposed the extension of slavery because they wanted to keep the territories free for white settlement.
- He favored a constitutional amendment (the Corwin Amendment) that would have guaranteed the existence of American slavery in perpetuity and would have been irrevocable.
- He was willing to leave every slave in slavery if it would "help save the Union".
- He preferred that all American blacks be "colonized" outside of the United States, and actively worked for this - including during his time as president.
- The Emancipation Proclamation was strictly a military measure designed to "suppress said rebellion", not a humanitarian gesture; and it freed only those slaves in parts of the Confederacy that were not under Union occupation. Slaves in the border states and occupied areas were unaffected by it. As his own Secretary of State said, it applied to slaves where Lincoln could not reach them, but left them in bondage where he could have easily freed them.
- He ordered the arrest of the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Roger Taney, when Taney referred to Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus as an act of despotism.
- He and his military machine closed down anti-war newspapers; censored telegraphs, sermons and sheet music; unlawfully arrested thousands for expressing anti-Lincoln or anti-war sentiments (including in the Northern states); and made pitiless war against Southern civilians in an effort to win this "peoples' contest". Entire towns and cities, such as Meridian, Mississippi and Atlanta, Georgia, were laid waste, their inhabitants left destitute and starving.
- Secession is not forbidden by the Constitution, and is a more American ideal than that of Union by force. The United States of America came into existence as an act of secession, justified by the Declaration of Independence, which states that all people to have a right to a government of their consent.

Read this book if you want to know more.

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Lincoln-...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327195888&sr=1-1

Sadly though, Ron endorsing the south will make him look terrible. People don't simply understand what happened, the majority of people don't, he will appear a crazy man once again to the uninformed.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

This is my first real post, I've been reading these forums for a very long time. The first topic I felt I should chim in on. Ron is right about these topics, it wasn't the North vs the South, it was the North vs America, sadly America lost. After the civil war the union wasn't a voluntary establishment anymore, it was a union by force which is contradictory to what America stood for.

Some facts about Lincoln you may have not known.

- He did not believe in racial equality, and stated this publicly a number of times (such as when he pledged to uphold Illinois' law against interracial marriage).
- As a lawyer, he once defended a slave owner's right to keep his slaves, but never defended a runaway slave.
- Lincoln and Republicans opposed the extension of slavery because they wanted to keep the territories free for white settlement.
- He favored a constitutional amendment (the Corwin Amendment) that would have guaranteed the existence of American slavery in perpetuity and would have been irrevocable.
- He was willing to leave every slave in slavery if it would "help save the Union".
- He preferred that all American blacks be "colonized" outside of the United States, and actively worked for this - including during his time as president.
- The Emancipation Proclamation was strictly a military measure designed to "suppress said rebellion", not a humanitarian gesture; and it freed only those slaves in parts of the Confederacy that were not under Union occupation. Slaves in the border states and occupied areas were unaffected by it. As his own Secretary of State said, it applied to slaves where Lincoln could not reach them, but left them in bondage where he could have easily freed them.
- He ordered the arrest of the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Roger Taney, when Taney referred to Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus as an act of despotism.
- He and his military machine closed down anti-war newspapers; censored telegraphs, sermons and sheet music; unlawfully arrested thousands for expressing anti-Lincoln or anti-war sentiments (including in the Northern states); and made pitiless war against Southern civilians in an effort to win this "peoples' contest". Entire towns and cities, such as Meridian, Mississippi and Atlanta, Georgia, were laid waste, their inhabitants left destitute and starving.
- Secession is not forbidden by the Constitution, and is a more American ideal than that of Union by force. The United States of America came into existence as an act of secession, justified by the Declaration of Independence, which states that all people to have a right to a government of their consent.

Read this book if you want to know more.

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Lincoln-...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327195888&sr=1-1

Sadly though, Ron endorsing the south will make him look terrible. People don't simply understand what happened, the majority of people don't, he will appear a crazy man once again to the uninformed.

+rep...too bad real history isn't taught in schools

 

[Feeding the Abscess]

Hi peeps, Ron is pimping LYSANDER SPOONER in the video talked about, perhaps the most radical abolitionist in America's history.

Also, LibertarianNationalist, Ron mentions that slavery was an issue in the video; he simply disputes that it was the main issue, instead contending that Lincoln used the war to centralize power in the Hamiltonian tradition.

 

[Kregisen]

I have that 'Real Lincoln' book but haven't read it. There are quite a few reviews that say it's very inaccurate though...for example:

Southern apologists have long tried to deny the true motivation behind the Confederacy, and the true motivation behind Lincoln's desire to keep the Union intact. DiLorenzo offers them some interesting fodder for their cannons, but unfortunately for them, no balls.

There's no denying DiLorenzo's unbelievable distortion of Lincoln's own words when he says, "Eliminating every last black person from American soil, Lincoln proclaimed, would be 'a glorious consummation.'"

Here, for the record, are Lincoln's exact words, in full context:

"If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means, succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery; and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost father-land, with bright prospects for the future; and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation."

Hardly the inflammatory remarks DiLorenzo so desperately creates out of thin air.

Sure, Lincoln's deification at the hands of a mediocre history education is lamentable, but this in no way makes Lincoln less than a great man. Learning about his flaws humanizes him and makes him accessible. This is not worship at the altar of Lincoln, it is merely respect for his manhood.

The truth that you won't hear from the twisted and somewhat rabid form of libertarianism that pervades these reviews is that the strong central government had been long established by the time Lincoln moved to Washington in 1861. For good or ill, the anti-federalists lost. But their enduring legacy was the nagging cancer of slavery that they left unaddressed for a later generation to sort out.

As I said at the beginning, Southern apologists are always looking for new ways to deny the true motivation behind the secession of the Southern states. First, they say it's states' rights (that pro-slavery forces repeatedly and violently fought against popular sovreignty when it didn't work out in their favor is an irony somehow lost in these discussions), then it's "those industrialized yankees" trying to take over the Southern agricultural economy. Next, it will probably be that they wanted to secede so they could get back to nature and live like the Native Americans.

But why not go to the source - the Declarations of Secession by the states themselves, blasphemous and hideous caricatures of the Decalaration of Independence that they are.

SOUTH CAROLINA: "The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made."

SC claims that it would not have joined the Union in the first place if residents couldn't be secure in their, ahem, "property". SC even identifies its allies in this struggle as "the other slaveholding states" in the opening paragraph. Funny way for identifying the guys you're fighting alongside of for "states' rights".

MISSISSIPPI: "In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."

Gosh, no beating around the bush for them. This is the OPENING PARAGRAPH. Where's the part about states' rights?

ALABAMA: "Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama... "

You get the idea. "Domestic institutions" by the way, means slavery. I'm sure DiLorenzo's minions will find a way to distort that, but it's true. Later on, Alabama refers to its brothers-in-arms as "the slaveholding States". Again, if states' rights are mentioned at all, they are merely used as a smokescreen, just as they are today by politicos of all stripes, to justify a less honorable end.

Getting the picture?

Look, there's nothing wrong with a strong desire to go back to a less centralized government. Heck, you'd probably get a lot of people in this country to agree with you. But let's educate them in a more responsible way. Let's not lay the blame on Lincoln for something that was finished by the time Andrew Jackson was hosting public parties on the White House lawn (and arguably by the time the ink was dry on the Treaty of Paris). It's time for the apologist South to get over itself, lose that stupid god-awful flag, and humbly join the civilized world.

How do you guys answer that?

I feel like there's two completely opposite sides of this issue quoting things here and there out of context and perhaps I'll never know until we invent time machines.

 

[klamath]

Yeaw we get a view of SC tonight. They like to shoot first and ask questions later like they did at Ft Sumpter. Bomb Iran and the brown people first and ask questions later.

 

[klamath]

I have that 'Real Lincoln' book but haven't read it. There are quite a few reviews that say it's very inaccurate though...for example:



How do you guys answer that?

I feel like there's two completely opposite sides of this issue quoting things here and there out of context and perhaps I'll never know until we invent time machines.

The is is alway conveniently ignored by conferderate apologists. They wrote slavery into there declaration of seperation as the reason for leaving.