On 2012-01-23, at 1:47 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
> There's hardly any question that the Lincoln presidency marked a substantial increase in central government power and a corresponding diminution of liberty - war is the health of the state.
>
> And the apparently great counter-example - that the Civil War freed the slaves - turns out to be a good deal more ambiguous that it seems. See now Douglas A. Blackmon, "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" (Doubleday 2008).
>
> The war, a great evil in itself, led to the "loss of liberty" (and life) of more than a half million Americans, plus those injured and immiserated.
>
> It was a contest between two ruling classes with incompatible methods of exploiting labor - chattel slavery and wage slavery. The latter won, but it's not at all clear that liberty did.
Well, formal democratic rights are better than none, even when they don't end inequality and injustice, which is mostly the case. From Frederick Douglas on, black slaves and their descendants have fought for democratic rights - not the least being the right to organize against oppression - and wouldn't share your interpretation that there was no change in the brutal level of subjugation and the opportunity for further resistance resulting from the abolition of slavery. On the other hand, many white Americans, especially in the old slave states, would endorse your view that this watershed event represented a "diminution of liberty" - in this case, for the slaveholders.
> On Jan 23, 2012, at 12:13 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 23, 2012, at 1:04 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>>> In fact, far from being a racist, Ron Paul is the only major party candidate who has attacked the single most racist program of the federal government, the "war on drugs."
>>
>> You really have to wonder how much a man values black people when he says that the Civil War marked a loss of liberty. I've spent a lot of time following the right and I still find that remark shocking.
>>
>> Doug
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