Black Conservatives in the TEA Party Movement, and the Stupidity of the Race Card

[Unreadphilosophy]

deny it but the Tea Party movement obviously comes out of the Republican Party

The TEA Party movement was not started by the Republicans, Falcon. It was started by the Ron Paul movement--an organization that supports libertarian principles. The main function of the TEA Party movement when it first started was to advocate an end to the Federal Reserve, the war, and the Police State. After some time, neo con Republicans like Palin were able to hijack the movement and bring their people in. If the TEA Party movement does have racists, I can assure you that Palin's people are responsible for it. I'm part of the movement that started the TEA Party, and I can assure you that the people in Campaign for Liberty movement are not racist.

I mean, just look at the recent scandal in Virginia over "Confederate History Month", and how the governor (a Republican) somehow forgot to mention slavery, the only actual cause of the war, the statement announcing it. He was criticized for that and did a few days later add that in, but that they'd have something like that in the first place, a month celebrating the legacy of a country founded on the principle of wanting to continue to hold slaves... we shouldn't forget the Civil War, but we also shouldn't forget why the South was actually fighting.

The Civil War was not fought over slavery, Falcon. I can't believe that myth is still around. Even if slavery did have something to do with it, it was not the main reason. First off, the idea that Lincoln supported racial equality is something that needs to end. It's been proven that Lincoln thought that blacks were inferior to whites in terms of physical and mental abilities. In a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858, Lincoln said that he believed that black people could not equal themselves to whites (Woods, 2007, pg. 75). In his mind, whites and blacks could not live together in terms of "social and political equality" (Woods, 2007, pg. 75). To add more fuel to the fire, Lincoln did nothing in Illinois to "challenge the state's treatment of blacks, who could not vote, testify in court against whites, serve on juries, or attend a public school funded in part by their own tax dollars" (Woods, 2007, pg. 76).

Many of the southern generals who fought for the south supported slavery. General like Jackson and Lee were against slavery. They both went on record as describing it as a "moral and political evil" (Woods, 2007, pg. 76). James Thronwell, a well-known theologian in the south, stated that he had hoped for the power of emancipation to take place at the time of the war (Woods, 2007, pg. 76).

Another interesting thing about the Civil War is that soldiers who fought for the war were against it. Many of the letters that soldiers in the south sent home to their families stated that they were fighting for the principles of self-government and self-determination (Woods, 2007, pg. 76).

What's more is that slavery--no matter who advocated it--would have disappeared without the Civil War. In Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, Jeff Hummel makes the following observation regarding the economics of the plantations in Cuba and Brazil:

"Slavery was doomed politically even if Lincoln had permitted the small Gulf Coast Confederacy to depart in peace. The Republican controlled Congress would have been able to work toward emancipation within the border states, where slavery was already declining. In due course the Radicals could have repealed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. With chattels fleeing across the border and raising slavery's enforcement costs, and peculiar institution's destruction within an independent cotton South was inevitable" (Woods, pg. 76, 2007).

What's interesting about all this is that defenders of Lincoln have stated that they acknowledge these facts. What's more is that they admit that when Lincoln sent the first 75,000 men into the South for war, his intentions had nothing to do with slavery (Woods, pg. 77, 2007). They have stated that the idea of ending slavery evolved in Lincoln's mind (Woods, pg. 77, 2007).

The main reason that the South fought in the Civil War was the issue of sovereignty. Around the time that the war began, many Europeans began to understand that the war was about turning "the decentralized America system into a unitary modern state" (Woods, pg. 79, 2007). In other words, the "Union's constituent parts, actively resisted the central government on a great many occasions in defense of their liberties would become a unitary modern state in which any such resistance would henceforth by demonized as treasonous" (Woods, pg. 79, 2007).

Many great thinkers of the South understood the importance of stopping centralization. Consider the words of Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America:

"If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity" (Woods, 2007, pg. 80).

Robert E. Lee wrote a similar message to the British Libertarian Lord Action:

"I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only are essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it" (Woods, 2007, pg. 80).

It has been stated that if the Confederate States of America had won, they would have helped America keep its name as a country where the sovereign states and its people were the most powerful check on a government that was always subject to going out-of-control (Woods, 2007, pg. 81).

In short, even if slaves did exist in the South, they were not the main reason for the war. Furthermore, the North was not the great system that our Marxist history professors love to paint it as. If we are to learn anything from "real" history, it's that the South was fighting for its freedom. It was not fighting for the immoral practice of slavery.

A little bit of advice, Falcon: stop quoting everything that comes out of your government indoctrinated text books. If there's one thing of learned from people like Professor Tom Woods, it's that most of the stuff that I learned in my public history classes was a load of shit.

Reference:

Woods, T. (2007). 33 Questions about American History that you're not Supposed to Ask. New York, NY: Random House.