How to Distinguish Right from Wrong

From Lincoln idolater Herman Beltz’s foreword to the Liberty Fund edition of The Webster-Hayne Debate on the Nature of the Union (1998, p. xiii):

“Although the Civil War was fought over secession rather than nullification, both doctrines rested on the theory of state sovereignty. The North’s victory can therefore be seen as a practical judgment that Webster [advocate of a consolidated, monopolistic state] was right and that as a matter of constitutional law and theory his argument for federal sovereignty settled the issue of the nature of the Union.”

Rarely does an academic say in print that philosophical arguments can and should be settled by violence and mass killing. But Beltz is not just an academic; he’s a Lincolnite. To Beltz (and his hero Atheistic Abe), “practical judgments” are apparently determined not so much by peaceful debate, relying on logic and evidence, but by wars of extermination that kill one out of four men of military age (for starters).

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4:08 pm on September 29, 2005