LibertySouth

What Do Southerners From Those Different Political Groups Agree On?

More than you might expect. There are distinct lines of legal, political, and economic thought from Southern writers which are appealing to many paleo-libertarians, classical liberals, and principled conservatives.

Frederic Bastiat, the great French economist whose pamphlet THE LAW is so popular in libertarian and conservative circles, was first brought to the attention of Americans in 1848, when Charleston writer Louisa Cheves McCord translated his work, ECONOMIC SOPHISMS. And consider the following excerpts from an essay of Mrs. McCord, "The Right to Labor," published in 1849:

"Charity can only go hand-in-hand with justice, and he who robs to give, is scarcely less culpable than he who robs to enjoy."

"Buying and selling -- service and compensation -- are at the basis of the world's law of action, its great foundation stone. We must possess before we can give. Property must precede charity and individual superiority exists before the very idea of benevolence can have birth."

"Let us always remember that in proportion as governmental power increases, the individual is necessarily effaced from the direction of affairs."

"The 'right to labor,' then, guaranteed by the State, throws all power into the hands of the government. The individual becomes only the bold beggar, the claimant of governmental protection. No longer dependent upon himself, his 'right' is to demand from government what, enfeebled by this individual imbecility, it is more than ever incapacitated from giving -- and neither small nor limited are the demands thus entailed upon it."

"In all questions between free trade and protection, socialism of course sides with the latter, whose every principle is based upon its favorite system of crippling the individual to increase governmental power."

"Not only tools and machines, but earth, air, water, steam, when once called into requisition, and, by man's mind and power turned to man's benefit, -- all valueless, but by his exertion, -- are, as soon as used, capital. . . The head that thinks and the hand that acts, both are capital; both having value, as capable of contributing their share in man's service; both laboring in his cause -- for surely labor is not, as socialism interprets it, mere manual exertion."

"If my life belongs to me, so also must the result, the proceeds of that life. To give an hour, to give a day, these are common expressions, and no one denies the right existing in me of thus disposing of my time. On what principle then can I be denied the right of disposing of the labor or the proceeds of the labor of that hour? . . . I may give to the needy, I may share with the suffering, but still it is mine which I give; MY LIFE thus freely distributed -- law and justice can have nothing to do in such a question."

**************************************************

Thomas Cooper, born in London, was the second president of what is now the University of South Carolina, from 1820-1834; the main library on campus is named after him. That you might know, if you're a Gamecock. But what you might not know:

For advocating Jeffersonian views, when living up North in his early 40s, Cooper was one of the few Americans convicted of violating the horrid Sedition Act, and served six months in jail as the young American Congress ignored the First Amendment. Cooper became a strong advocate of free speech rights, endorsing "untrammeled discussion, in its utmost latitude," and opposing the common law doctrines of libel and blasphemy.

Probably the first economics textbook written in America was by Cooper, LECTURES ON THE ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, while he was president of South Carolina College. Cooper warned of the "dreadful evil of all government is the evil of governing too much," and opined that of incorrectly interpreted general welfare clause in the constitution, "There is no tyranny that it will not authorize." Of government-provided welfare, he wrote that "All relief to persons in this country able to work is absolutely indefensible and wrong. Even cases of disability should be left to private charity." And unlike leftist economists of modern times, he realized that demand, not cost of production, determined the value of an item. "No purchaser cares a cent what the prime cost of an article is; that is not his lookout. His only enquiry can be, is it worth to me the price asked for it?"

**************************************************
"I have always been made sad when I have heard members of any race claiming rights and privileges, or certain badges of distinction, on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race, regardless of their own individual worth or merits."

Booker T. Washington, UP FROM SLAVERY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1900), p. 40.

Interesting how Washington's remarks apply so well both to proponents of "affirmative discrimination" and to contemporary "white pride" racial supremacists and separatists.

**************************************************

The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, which put forward the "compact" theory of constitutional government, were adopted and declared due to the anti-First Amendment Federal laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts -- not because of slavery. The South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification in 1832 was adopted because Congress attempted to increase tariffs not for revenue but for protectionist reasons -- again, the motivating issue was not slavery. The compact theory of government, nullification and interposition, even secession, these are political mechanisms which can be and at times were invoked for reasons other than defending slavery. If knee-jerk opponents of the compact theory of government, nullification, and secession deride those mechanisms because of the slavery issue, for sake of consistency they might as well embrace repeal of the First Amendment and endorse anti-consumer-choice, increased-consumer-cost tariff policies, too.

**************************************************

Professor David N. Meyer teaches law and history at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, and is author of the book, "The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson." Meyer also is an advocate of objectivism, the philosophical system of Ayn Rand. In an interview published in "Navigator" magazine (Vol. 1, No. 8, 1998) by the Objectivist Center, Meyer said: "I'd like to add to the [U.S.] Constitution some of the features found, interestingly enough, in the Confederate Constitution of 1861; a single six-year term for the President, deletion of the 'general welfare' clause, a provision requiring all bills to be limited to a single subject(to discourage omnibus appropriations bills), and other provisions restricting special-interest spending. As I point out to my students, the Social Security Act would have been impossible under the Confederate Constitution."

**************************************************

The legacy of Abraham Lincoln, particularly in recent years, has come under severe reassessment in certain conservative and libertarian quarters, though popular mythology and certain otherwise well-intentioned conservative leaders and think-tanks do their utmost to overlook the blows to liberty caused by Lincoln and his Republican contemporaries, while the South continues to portrayed in the worst light possible.

Consider the remarks of J. G. Randall, emeritus professor of the University of Illinois, a fan of Lincoln, and author of Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln (1963 reprint, 1926 original): "Probably no president has carried the power of proclamation and executive order (independently of Congress) so far as Lincoln . . . He carried his executive authority to the extent of freeing the slaves by proclamation, setting up a whole scheme of state-making for the purpose of reconstruction, suspending the doctrine of habeas corpus, proclaiming martial law, enlarging the army and navy beyond the limits fixed by existing law, and spending public money without congressional appropriation. . . . the President, while greatly enlarging his executive powers, seized also legislative and judicial functions as well." (pp. 513-514)

More recently, consider the comments in the Naval Law Review in a book review of William Rehnquist's "All the Laws But One: Civil Liberties in Wartime":

"President Lincoln said in 1838: 'Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap -- let it be taught in schools, in seminiaries, and in colleges -- let it be written in primers, spelling books, and almanacs -- let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.' Lincoln omitted that reverence for the law should also echo through the land from the example set by the Chief Executive. He would have done well to have taken his own advice when ordering the suppression of valued civil rights in the name of prosecuting the war, for no respect for law is engendered when people sense that the government's denial of civil liberties is arbitrary and heavy-handed. Freedom is denied, and justice suffers." 27 Naval Law Review 208, 219 (2000). The reviewer also points out, "Two days after the President announced the Emancipation Proclamation, he issued another declaration which stated that citizens 'discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to rebels should be subject to marital law and liable to trial and punishment by courts-martial or military commissions . . . ." Two days after allegedly "freeing the slaves," Lincoln did the incredible act of extending military legal jurisdiction to cover non-combatant civilians. Such is hardly the act of someone with a consistent, principled understanding of liberty, separation of powers, and civilian control of the military.

The anti-freedom acts of Lincoln and his ilk certainly do not by some moral alchemy render the Confederacy free of stain. However, perhaps by forcing supporters of the popular pro-north mythology to see the failings of a figure such as Lincoln, they might come to extend some grace regarding the human shortcomings of those who fought for the Confederacy, and acknowledge that at least some of the things fought for by Confederates were entirely legitimate, just as some of the things for which the North fought were illegitimate.

**************************************************

Under the administration of Lincoln, the first Federal income tax was imposed (and later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court). Also introducted under Lincoln's administration was an inheritance (estate) tax. Ironically, the Union government also imposed a revenue stamp tax very similar to the Stamp Act which fueled the cause for American secession from Great Britain.

**************************************************

In 1860, 87 per cent of Federal Treasury tax revenues came from a source in a future state of the C.S.A., from excise taxes and tariffs on imported goods, the people of the Southern states importing most goods (and this was long after importing of slaves was prohibited, by the way). Concerning expenditures of Federal revenues on "internal improvements" such as canals and roads, most of such projects were done in northern states, that being a longstanding complaint of the South for decades. It is unreasonable to ignore or give short shrift to the non-slavery-related causes of the War Between the States.


	LibertySouth

	Who We Are, What This Is About This is a very young, new, and ever-under-construction site for (and eventually a loose alliance of) classical liberals, paleo-libertarians, paleo-conservatives, and assorted iconoclastic lovers of liberty and the South. Drop by, know you've got friends and allies, perhaps learn something, and celebrate that which is best from Southern heritage. [If you are a race-obsessed bigot, please move on. We aren't interested in "whites-only" national socialism with a drawl, bed-linen clothes, and dunce-cap hooded cowards whose idea of being a Southerner is simple-minded and hate-filled coercive communitarianism based on skin color or religious belief. And please, quit abusing noble Southern symbols such as CSA flags. Do you really think Francis Marion, George Mason, or Robert E. Lee would march down main street in a white sheet and shout racial epithets? Of course not.]

	What Do Southerners From Those Different Political Groups Agree On? More than you might expect. There are distinct lines of legal, political, and economic thought from Southern writers which are appealing to many paleo-libertarians, classical liberals, and principled conservatives. Frederic Bastiat, the great French economist whose pamphlet THE LAW is so popular in libertarian and conservative circles, was first brought to the attention of Americans in 1848, when Charleston writer Louisa Cheves McCord translated his work, ECONOMIC SOPHISMS. And consider the following excerpts from an essay of Mrs. McCord, "The Right to Labor," published in 1849: "Charity can only go hand-in-hand with justice, and he who robs to give, is scarcely less culpable than he who robs to enjoy." "Buying and selling -- service and compensation -- are at the basis of the world's law of action, its great foundation stone. We must possess before we can give. Property must precede charity and individual superiority exists before the very idea of benevolence can have birth." "Let us always remember that in proportion as governmental power increases, the individual is necessarily effaced from the direction of affairs." "The 'right to labor,' then, guaranteed by the State, throws all power into the hands of the government. The individual becomes only the bold beggar, the claimant of governmental protection. No longer dependent upon himself, his 'right' is to demand from government what, enfeebled by this individual imbecility, it is more than ever incapacitated from giving -- and neither small nor limited are the demands thus entailed upon it." "In all questions between free trade and protection, socialism of course sides with the latter, whose every principle is based upon its favorite system of crippling the individual to increase governmental power." "Not only tools and machines, but earth, air, water, steam, when once called into requisition, and, by man's mind and power turned to man's benefit, -- all valueless, but by his exertion, -- are, as soon as used, capital. . . The head that thinks and the hand that acts, both are capital; both having value, as capable of contributing their share in man's service; both laboring in his cause -- for surely labor is not, as socialism interprets it, mere manual exertion." "If my life belongs to me, so also must the result, the proceeds of that life. To give an hour, to give a day, these are common expressions, and no one denies the right existing in me of thus disposing of my time. On what principle then can I be denied the right of disposing of the labor or the proceeds of the labor of that hour? . . . I may give to the needy, I may share with the suffering, but still it is mine which I give; MY LIFE thus freely distributed -- law and justice can have nothing to do in such a question." ************************************************ Thomas Cooper, born in London, was the second president of what is now the University of South Carolina, from 1820-1834; the main library on campus is named after him. That you might know, if you're a Gamecock. But what you might not know: For advocating Jeffersonian views, when living up North in his early 40s, Cooper was one of the few Americans convicted of violating the horrid Sedition Act, and served six months in jail as the young American Congress ignored the First Amendment. Cooper became a strong advocate of free speech rights, endorsing "untrammeled discussion, in its utmost latitude," and opposing the common law doctrines of libel and blasphemy. Probably the first economics textbook written in America was by Cooper, LECTURES ON THE ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, while he was president of South Carolina College. Cooper warned of the "dreadful evil of all government is the evil of governing too much," and opined that of incorrectly interpreted general welfare clause in the constitution, "There is no tyranny that it will not authorize." Of government-provided welfare, he wrote that "All relief to persons in this country able to work is absolutely indefensible and wrong. Even cases of disability should be left to private charity." And unlike leftist economists of modern times, he realized that demand, not cost of production, determined the value of an item. "No purchaser cares a cent what the prime cost of an article is; that is not his lookout. His only enquiry can be, is it worth to me the price asked for it?" ********************************************** "I have always been made sad when I have heard members of any race claiming rights and privileges, or certain badges of distinction, on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race, regardless of their own individual worth or merits." Booker T. Washington, UP FROM SLAVERY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1900), p. 40. Interesting how Washington's remarks apply so well both to proponents of "affirmative discrimination" and to contemporary "white pride" racial supremacists and separatists. ********************************************** The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, which put forward the "compact" theory of constitutional government, were adopted and declared due to the anti-First Amendment Federal laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts -- not because of slavery. The South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification in 1832 was adopted because Congress attempted to increase tariffs not for revenue but for protectionist reasons -- again, the motivating issue was not slavery. The compact theory of government, nullification and interposition, even secession, these are political mechanisms which can be and at times were invoked for reasons other than defending slavery. If knee-jerk opponents of the compact theory of government, nullification, and secession deride those mechanisms because of the slavery issue, for sake of consistency they might as well embrace repeal of the First Amendment and endorse anti-consumer-choice, increased-consumer-cost tariff policies, too. ********************************************** Professor David N. Meyer teaches law and history at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, and is author of the book, "The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson." Meyer also is an advocate of objectivism, the philosophical system of Ayn Rand. In an interview published in "Navigator" magazine (Vol. 1, No. 8, 1998) by the Objectivist Center, Meyer said: "I'd like to add to the [U.S.] Constitution some of the features found, interestingly enough, in the Confederate Constitution of 1861; a single six-year term for the President, deletion of the 'general welfare' clause, a provision requiring all bills to be limited to a single subject(to discourage omnibus appropriations bills), and other provisions restricting special-interest spending. As I point out to my students, the Social Security Act would have been impossible under the Confederate Constitution." ********************************************** The legacy of Abraham Lincoln, particularly in recent years, has come under severe reassessment in certain conservative and libertarian quarters, though popular mythology and certain otherwise well-intentioned conservative leaders and think-tanks do their utmost to overlook the blows to liberty caused by Lincoln and his Republican contemporaries, while the South continues to portrayed in the worst light possible. Consider the remarks of J. G. Randall, emeritus professor of the University of Illinois, a fan of Lincoln, and author of Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln (1963 reprint, 1926 original): "Probably no president has carried the power of proclamation and executive order (independently of Congress) so far as Lincoln . . . He carried his executive authority to the extent of freeing the slaves by proclamation, setting up a whole scheme of state-making for the purpose of reconstruction, suspending the doctrine of habeas corpus, proclaiming martial law, enlarging the army and navy beyond the limits fixed by existing law, and spending public money without congressional appropriation. . . . the President, while greatly enlarging his executive powers, seized also legislative and judicial functions as well." (pp. 513-514) More recently, consider the comments in the Naval Law Review in a book review of William Rehnquist's "All the Laws But One: Civil Liberties in Wartime": "President Lincoln said in 1838: 'Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap -- let it be taught in schools, in seminiaries, and in colleges -- let it be written in primers, spelling books, and almanacs -- let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.' Lincoln omitted that reverence for the law should also echo through the land from the example set by the Chief Executive. He would have done well to have taken his own advice when ordering the suppression of valued civil rights in the name of prosecuting the war, for no respect for law is engendered when people sense that the government's denial of civil liberties is arbitrary and heavy-handed. Freedom is denied, and justice suffers." 27 Naval Law Review 208, 219 (2000). The reviewer also points out, "Two days after the President announced the Emancipation Proclamation, he issued another declaration which stated that citizens 'discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to rebels should be subject to marital law and liable to trial and punishment by courts-martial or military commissions . . . ." Two days after allegedly "freeing the slaves," Lincoln did the incredible act of extending military legal jurisdiction to cover non-combatant civilians. Such is hardly the act of someone with a consistent, principled understanding of liberty, separation of powers, and civilian control of the military. The anti-freedom acts of Lincoln and his ilk certainly do not by some moral alchemy render the Confederacy free of stain. However, perhaps by forcing supporters of the popular pro-north mythology to see the failings of a figure such as Lincoln, they might come to extend some grace regarding the human shortcomings of those who fought for the Confederacy, and acknowledge that at least some of the things fought for by Confederates were entirely legitimate, just as some of the things for which the North fought were illegitimate. ********************************************** Under the administration of Lincoln, the first Federal income tax was imposed (and later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court). Also introducted under Lincoln's administration was an inheritance (estate) tax. Ironically, the Union government also imposed a revenue stamp tax very similar to the Stamp Act which fueled the cause for American secession from Great Britain. ************************************************ In 1860, 87 per cent of Federal Treasury tax revenues came from a source in a future state of the C.S.A., from excise taxes and tariffs on imported goods, the people of the Southern states importing most goods (and this was long after importing of slaves was prohibited, by the way). Concerning expenditures of Federal revenues on "internal improvements" such as canals and roads, most of such projects were done in northern states, that being a longstanding complaint of the South for decades. It is unreasonable to ignore or give short shrift to the non-slavery-related causes of the War Between the States.

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LibertySouth

Who We Are, What This Is About

What Do Southerners From Those Different Political Groups Agree On?

MORE TO COME . . .

Interesting Links