A couple of emailers have sent me some more lies about this Web site and the people associated with it that are still apparently being dumped on the internet by the hapless Cato smearbund. One of the lies, which is attributable to an anonymous but “prominent” Washington libertarian, is that students are attracted to the Mises Institute by Mises’ great books, and then are told that to be a libertarian means defending the Confederate government. (I’ve read the same accusation on Cato V.P. Tom Palmer’s blog).
No one associated with the Mises Insitute has ever said or written any such thing. This is a lie. I’ve written more on the subject of Lincoln and his war than anyone associated with this site, and have never associated my critiques of Lincoln with a defense of the Confederate government. That would be like saying that critics of FDR, such as John T. Flynn, Ralph Raico, Jim Powell, and others, are necessarily defenders of Hitler and Hirohito. I devote less than one page of The Real Lincoln to a discussion of the Confederate govenment, and that is to briefly compare the Confederate and U.S. Constitutions. I do defend the right of secession, as have many other Americans, from Thomas Jefferson to William Lloyd Garrison. And I do condemn the Lincoln regime for mass murdering some 350,000 fellow citizens only to force their state governments back into the glorious union.
The Cato Smearbund obviously wants people to equate “defending the Confederacy” with “defending slavery.” They are deceitful liars, for I write on p. 122 of The Real Lincoln that “A crusade aainst slavery would have offered a compelling case for Lincoln’s war, but he never made that case.” On page 275 I write that “the one unequivocal good that came of Lincoln’s war was the abolition of slavery . . .” The smearbund never makes use of these actual quotes from my book, for it is only interested in slandering us and not pursuing the truth.
8:31 pm on February 4, 2008 Email Thomas DiLorenzo
