As Dr. Paul pointed out, which keeps being omitted by people referring to the interview, every other civilized nation of the 19th century managed to abolish slavery without a civil war. So it's not at all unreasonable to think that the US just -might- have been able to pull it off....

Unfortunately, unlike most countries, we had an entire region of the country that was subsidized based on the free labor provided by slavery and had a racist philosophy that blacks were significantly inferior. Most civilized countries didn't have a region willing to go to war over slavery and quite frankly didn't treat their black slaves as non-humans. For gods sake, the South still won't let go of the Confederate Flag, so to think that they would have let go of slavery at that time without a fight is pure fantasy.

Strangely enough, he's also probably quite correct about the Civil War. Had anyone but Lincoln been elected in 1860, the slavery issue might have been resolved peacefully within the succeeding two decades. As Dr. Paul pointed out, which keeps being omitted by people referring to the interview, every other civilized nation of the 19th century managed to abolish slavery without a civil war. So it's not at all unreasonable to think that the US just -might- have been able to pull it off....

I just want to keep his hands off of, well, everything back here.

The reason the economy is more of a hot topic than Iraq is because people's pocketbooks are at home, our soldiers are in another country.

People are starting to feel the pinch. We don't have the home equity to refinance our troubles and many are losing their home. Some experts including Greenspan are predicting a recession, some are predicting worse.

However, Iraq goes hand in hand with the economic thing. We have borrowed silly to finance the war. We are going to spend at least 4 trillion on it. That is trillion with a T. If we didn't put this on our national credit card with interest each family in the US would have been sent a bill for the war. It simply would have said:

Dear US family,

Even though we didn't find any WMDs in Iraq we are going to change it into a war on terrorism thing. Even though you don't support this activity now you did when we started so we are going to send you a bill for your portion.

$100,000.00 (actual figure)

Please send in a check or money order with your tax return.

If you can't pay it please forward the bill to your 8 year old or 10 year and do the interest calculation because they are going to have to pay a lot more.

There is a host of supporting economic indicators, historical foreign policy positions, historical Republican Party positions, Bush administration distortions that I could write a 300 page novel about which would support Paul's ideas. The only thing required is a non closed mind.

James Joyner says...

No actually JJ didn't say that. There's a reason there was a blockquote. Kind of like how I put the words *you* said in a blockquote to indicate someone else besides me said them.

I realize the concept of a quote is extremely new, having originated a mere ten millenia ago.

he Special interest politics - "my group versus your group" - has destroyed the historically great melting pot experiment called America.

The left has successfully divided and fractionalized AAmerica and eventually will conquer. Linda has become, in my book, just another Huffington turncoat.

xtrabiggg
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After considering Joyner's critical analysis of Dr.Paul's opinions I venture to guess that James Joyner swims without touching the water.