Antiwar libertarians have been accused of being “pro-terrorist,” or “pro-Iran,” or whatever, because they are critical of the U.S. government. I’ve been accused of being “pro-German,” absurdly enough, because I’m so hard on Woodrow Wilson.
Speaking for myself, my choice of emphasis is simply a function of the special moral responsibility I feel to uncover the crimes of governments that speak and act in my name, and that loot me in order to carry out their designs. It isn’t that I “sympathize with” or “support” the states the U.S. government starves and attacks (although I do sympathize with the innocents in those places).
The Confederate issue is no different. Of course the Confederacy was a rotten government, but since the whole world knows that, and since the whole world obviously doesn’t know about Lincoln’s sins, and since the righteousness of that war is part of the official mythology of the current U.S. regime, it should be more than understandable why the bulk of our emphasis is on Lincoln and the Union. That’s just common sense.
Oh, and one correspondent asked for a label to replace the propagandistic “pro-Confederate” (as if the smear artists would ever be honest and give that one up). I suggested Spoonerite. As in, “Woods takes a Spoonerite view of the war.” That way, it is obvious that you are holding a legitimate libertarian view — who would question Lysander Spooner’s credentials?
3:30 pm on February 5, 2008 Email Tom Woods
