Dr. Paul second guesses President Lincoln

I am a registered Libertarian. If Ron Paul gets his name on the Presidential ballot, I will vote for him - despite two stunningly ill-informed statements on Meet the Press.

Mr. Paul had the temerity to second-guess Abraham Lincoln's inability to head off the Civil War - the irrepressible conflict. Dr. Paul criticized President Lincoln's failure to compromise with the secessionists. The truth is, of course, that President Lincoln was willing to compromise on every issue, save one. He would not budge on the extension of slavery into the Federal Territories. His party had pledged itself on that issue. The Southern political elite insisted they must have the right to take "this species of property" wherever they wanted. They insisted on this despite the fact that the plantation system could never pay west of the 97th Parallel. Essentially, they insisted that the Northern people bless Slavery as a positive good, not just tolerate it as a necessary evil.

Dr. Paul went on to say that slavery would have withered away. Perhaps. But, I doubt it. Slavery had already reached the point where it made scant sense economically. Yet, Southerners grew more attached to the peculiar institution as the 19th Century wore on. Perhaps this was due to its peculiarites? The Northern male, feeling a bit randy, had to comfort himself with self-abuse - or go out on the open market to purchase relief. The slavemaster, prompted by the same urge, could instruct his property to spread her legs and submit. And nine months later, of course, his net worth might increase with the birth of a slave child - a child which he could sell at the most opportune moment. A child he could exploit for himself - economically or sexually. A system like that, so riddled with the deepest, darkest vices, is hard to give up. Especially when the local divines bless it all as virtuous Christianity. Such peculiarities might not conveniently wither away.

In fact, Slavery was replaced with a pseudo-slavery - Jim Crow and the sharecropper system. Dr. Paul blandly asserts that the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 were not necessary. He correctly points out that Barry Goldwater, hardly a racist, opposed it because it imposed on property rights. This, of course, is true. But the Civil Rights Acts, relying upon the commerce clause, were constitutional. And such construction of the commerce clause was no expedient innovation of the Johnson Administration. The precedent was set in an 1821 decision by a South Carolina judge in Elkison v. Deliesseline.

As wrong as Dr. Paul is on these historical questions of Civil Rights, he is dead right on the biggest issue before us today - the state of the Empire. We have created a monster which is consuming us. The question Dr. Paul asks, we should all ask ourselves. Why wait for a financial crisis to take the necessary actions to tame the Imperial Beast?