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Video: Ron Paul Gives Speech on Civil War in Front of Giant Confederate Flag

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mumbly-joe1/20/2012 6:59:58 pm PST

So, Spooner was an absolute loon, but it’s interesting to note that his view on the Civil War was every bit as unpopular in the South as it was in the North. Why? Because his position that there existed a constitutional “right to secede” was linked pretty closely to his view that slavery itself was unconstitutional.

What makes this so very… interesting is that the conclusion that non-lunatics might draw from that is that the South wasn’t actually seceding merely to prove that they could, and that in the eyes of Confederates, there was no point in seceding but for the perpetuation and propagation of slavery.

(Of course, one might draw the same conclusions from the Articles of Secession of pretty much every Confederate state, not to mention the Confederate constitution -which was mostly a copypasta of the US constitution, but explicitly prohibited member states from abolishing slavery - or speeches given by the Vice President of the Confederacy to the general effect that the Civil War was a civilizational clash between slave-holding and free labor. It’s what we’re taught in public school, but that’s because that’s what the actual primary sources say, too.)