Quote from james_bond_3rd:
So in your opinion, that footage Fox showed, where Ron Paul attacked Lincoln, and made the claim that the civil war was "unnecessary" to free the slaves, was not a smear, but reporting facts.
Ok. Based on these facts, one must conclude that Ron Paul is a racist and a bigot.
I don't see how reporting accurately what a candidate says is a smear. Same with reporting his record. Of course, candidates like to call that "negative campaigning" but what could be more important than his votes or positions on issues?
Paul's opinion on the Civil War illustrates the depth of his thinking and his understanding of economics. He is hardly justifying or defending slavery. He merely said fighting a war in which 600,000 Americans were killed in horrible slaughters and in which the US engaged in clear war crimes against the South that should have resulted in the hangings of Lincoln and General Sherman, among many others, was unnecessary. Slavery was quite common and was eradicated elsewhere without this kind of bloodshed. Any honest historian will tell you that slavery was an issue but not the issue that precipitated the Civil War. Rather it was a conflict of economic and governing philosophies that led to war.
Consider what Paul said about how the government could have eliminated slavery. He said the government could have bought the slaves. Wouldn't that have made far more sense? Slavery was every bit as legal as owning an SUV today. Would people be angry if a political party advocated confiscating every SUV with no payment to the owner? Such a policy would be seen as clearly unconstitutional. Yet that is exactly what the abolitionists wanted.
Slaveowners had a tremendous investment in slaves, as odious as that sounds today. To expect them to simply give them up without recompense was ludicrous. Of course, the New England-centered abolitionists did not own slaves themselves, so they could be moralists at no personal cost. It's always easy to take the high road if the other guy has to pay the cost. Some, like John Brown, wanted to start a race war. Lincoln himself was content to let the South retain slavery. The dispute was over whether it would be allowed in new territories that were being admitted to the Union. The South knew that if the new territories did not allow slavery, eventually the South would be isolated and the abolitionists would have a clear majority to ban slavery everywhere.
I admire Dr. Paul for being willing to discuss this issues in rational terms. Our society is so PC, no politician is willing to discuss it without hissing. Given the ridiculous response by Kristol, it's easy to understand why.
Consider Bill Kristol for a second. Son of one of the original neo-cons, Irving Kristol, Bill is editor of the Weekly Standard and one of the leading lights of the neo-con movement. He was a rabid cheerleader for the Iraq war. He is a fervent proponent of preemptive war and is all for putting our troops in harm's way all over the globe, or at least wherever Israel has an interest. Anyone who disagrees with him is "unamerican", a "crackpot", "anti-semitic" or one of the other labels he tosses about.
Given a choice between Kristol and Paul's foreign policy, I think I would take Paul. Do the Chinese find it necessary to intervene all over the world? The Brazilians? The Indians? The Russians? Ron Paul is no pacifist, but like Pat Buchanan, he sees no reason for us to stick our nose into every dispute in the world.
