Posted on 11/11/2002 1:23:27 PM PST by l8pilot
Evidence Builds for DiLorenzo’s Lincoln by Paul Craig Roberts
In an excellent piece of historical research and economic exposition, two economics professors, Robert A. McGuire of the University of Akron and T. Norman Van Cott of Ball State University, have provided independent evidence for Thomas J. Dilorenzo’s thesis that tariffs played a bigger role in causing the Civil War than slavery.
In The Real Lincoln, DiLorenzo argues that President Lincoln invaded the secessionist South in order to hold on to the tariff revenues with which to subsidize Northern industry and build an American Empire. In "The Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship" (Economic Inquiry, Vol. 40, No. 3, July 2002), McGuire and Van Cott show that the Confederate Constitution explicitly prohibits tariff revenues from being used "to promote or foster any branch of industry." By prohibiting subsidies to industries and tariffs high enough to be protective, the Confederates located their tax on the lower end of the "Laffer curve."
The Confederate Constitution reflected the argument of John C. Calhoun against the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun argued that the U.S. Constitution granted the tariff "as a tax power for the sole purpose of revenue – a power in its nature essentially different from that of imposing protective or prohibitory duties."
McGuire and Van Cott conclude that the tariff issue was a major factor in North-South tensions. Higher tariffs were "a key plank in the August 1860 Republican party platform. . . . northern politicians overall wanted dramatically higher tariff rates; Southern politicians did not."
"The handwriting was on the wall for the South," which clearly understood that remaining in the union meant certain tax exploitation for the benefit of the north.
October 16, 2002
Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions Evidence Builds for DiLorenzo’s Lincoln by Paul Craig Roberts
In an excellent piece of historical research and economic exposition, two economics professors, Robert A. McGuire of the University of Akron and T. Norman Van Cott of Ball State University, have provided independent evidence for Thomas J. Dilorenzo’s thesis that tariffs played a bigger role in causing the Civil War than slavery.
In The Real Lincoln, DiLorenzo argues that President Lincoln invaded the secessionist South in order to hold on to the tariff revenues with which to subsidize Northern industry and build an American Empire. In "The Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship" (Economic Inquiry, Vol. 40, No. 3, July 2002), McGuire and Van Cott show that the Confederate Constitution explicitly prohibits tariff revenues from being used "to promote or foster any branch of industry." By prohibiting subsidies to industries and tariffs high enough to be protective, the Confederates located their tax on the lower end of the "Laffer curve."
The Confederate Constitution reflected the argument of John C. Calhoun against the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun argued that the U.S. Constitution granted the tariff "as a tax power for the sole purpose of revenue – a power in its nature essentially different from that of imposing protective or prohibitory duties."
McGuire and Van Cott conclude that the tariff issue was a major factor in North-South tensions. Higher tariffs were "a key plank in the August 1860 Republican party platform. . . . northern politicians overall wanted dramatically higher tariff rates; Southern politicians did not."
"The handwriting was on the wall for the South," which clearly understood that remaining in the union meant certain tax exploitation for the benefit of the north.
October 16, 2002
Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions
free dixie,sw
as i've said before, the BEST ESTIMATE of those POWs MURDERED is about 15,000.
Now you just quoted someone who said that the death count at Point Lookout was twice that of Andersonville. Around 13,000 prisoners died at Andersonville. 13,000 x 2 = 26,000, so so I was taught in my Yankee schools. So which was it?
Yes. And your analogy of Johnny Jihad is idiotic at best.
One would expect every good leftist to have one, though the liklihood of any of them understanding it is much smaller.
The Reagan administration acted in secret to pervert the Constitution.
Non-public conduct of national security policy does not in itself pervert the Constitution. It's a regular and legitimate function of presidential foreign policy. The real issue here is with the constitutionality of legislative attempts to control executive policy for the executive in addition to its own policy making. See Chadha if you have further interest in this subject.
Interesting choice of words BTW from a guy who regularly defends The Lincoln's rampant and unilateral abuses of the U.S. Constitution, not to mention from the same guy who said only a few days ago that the Constitution was a "pact with the devil."
As you doubtless know, the separation of powers in that Pact with the Devil we call our Constitution
There you go again...
gives only Congress the right to raise and spend money.
Actually, it gives Congress the power to raise government revenue by taxation and appropriate the revenue that it raises.
The executive branch can't get the grass cut at the White House unless Congress approriates the funds.
Sure they could. The President could theoretically hire somebody himself to do it, get somebody to do it for free, get somebody to donate it, offer to cut somebody else's lawn in exchange for it, or cut it himself.
It's a real laffer for you to jump on Abraham Lincoln over something that has never been authoritatively decided
BZZZT! Wrong. Habeas Corpus has been authoritatively decided by the U.S. Supreme Court and affirmed by the U.S. Circuit Court. Legislative veto and the separation of powers have also been authoritatively decided by the Court in ways that show Congress to have been in violation during Iran Contra.
At least Lincoln did everything openly.
Really? Then why did he mark all his letters plotting the capture of Fort Sumter starting back in December 1860 as "confidential" and "secret"? This little tendency of his continued throughout his term and is evidenced by almost every government correspondence the guy ever wrote. Doesn't sound very open to me...
I feel that admiration for Reagan has rightly diminished over time, and rightly so.
The last polls I saw on the greatest presidents indicated Reagan was moving up the latter. As a Mondale voter, I have no doubt you wish this were not so, but to your dissappointment it indisputably is. If anything, Reagan's admiration has increased despite media and leftist attempts to drag him through the mud by turning a foreign policy dispute into a "scandal."
Bush denied any knowledge of these illegal activities in the 1988 campaign, but in his first term, it all came out. That is another reason he lost in 1992.
Aside from the far left who thought it was a "big deal" and who would have never voted for Bush anyway this is simply not true. Wish as you may otherwise, the issue never resonated because it was a non-issue. Bush lost for two reasons in 1992. (1) Bill Clinton was able to manufacture the perception that the economy was still bad and blame it on Bush even though it had been on the rise for a year, and (2) Ross Perot.
Again, Walt, you are simply wrong. First, your hypothesis that Osama would not be incited to terror absent US presence there is nonsense. That region engaged in terror long Bush Sr. was there and long before he was even a congressman back in the 60's...
There are things we can reasonbly infer, and things we cannot. How many active attempts did foreign heads of state make on the lives of U.S. presidents (or former presidents) before 1990? Zero.
How many after Desert Storm? One, that we know of, and that one pretty closely following. Desert Storm winds down in the summer of 1991. Two years later, Saddam Hussein is attempting to blow up George Bush I. There was a reason for that. You're not being fair or objective, but that is only to be expected.
When Bush was a congressman back in the '60's there had been few acts of terrorism as we know it today. And many of those were done by the Jews. Menachem Begin had a price on his head from the British for blowing up the King David hotel in 1945. In the late 1940's, Ariel Sharon used to hump explosives into the West Bank and blow up Arab houses in retaliation for attacks on Jewish farmers.
Where does the U.S. fit in with that? Nowhere.
Name a famous terror incident. Okay, I'll name one -- the 1972 (almost typed 1792) murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympics. How was the U.S. involved? Not a lick. Name another -- put your hand down -- The Entebbe raid in July, 1976. Now even a clever boy like yourself will note that neither of those were in the 1960's and neither of these involved the death of U.S. citizens.
I don't believe, and if I am wrong, I welcome a correction, but I don't believe a single U.S. citizen lost his life in a terrorist incident perpetrated by arabs prior to Desert Storm in the United States (I'm not forgetting Pan Am flt. 103). What's the count now? I think the total dead at the WTC has been set at 2,801. Two-three hundred in the other three planes/on the ground. Maybe, if you lean this way, 187 in the Edward Murrah building.
You're going to get quite a reputation for spouting nonsense on a number of subjects here.
All these deaths of U.S. citizens --the death of EVERY U.S. citizen killed by Arab terror in the United States, can be laid directly at the feet of George Bush I.
If Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been handled competently by the Bush I administration, there would be no war on terror, no homeland defense, no terrorist cells in Buffalo -- none of that.
Walt
Yes, and all indications are from the 1992 and 1996 numbers that he would have lost Dixie by significant margins. Hillary on the other hand won it on her own in the yankeeland state of New York. We would have probably defeated him in his presidential bid, but you would probably have her in your Senate.
Non-public conduct of national security policy does not in itself pervert the Constitution.
No, certainly the government needs to keep secrets.
But the --Congress-- had passed legislation that the executive branch was bound to obey -- the Congress makes law, not the executive branch. But the Reagan administration -- none of this is at all controversial or new-- conducted affairs in secret, went outside the letter and spirit of the Constitution and secretly funded an army with proceeds from the sales of U.S. government property.
Secretary of State George Schultz is well on the record as having opposed these activities. He was overruled.
None of this is at issue, but I do welcome your comments, because it certainly puts your condemnation of President Lincoln in a different light.
Walt
Really? Then why did he mark all his letters plotting the capture of Fort Sumter starting back in December 1860 as "confidential" and "secret"?
You don't mind if I quote you?
Non-public conduct of national security policy does not in itself pervert the Constitution.
Walt
BZZZT! Wrong. Habeas Corpus has been authoritatively decided by the U.S. Supreme Court...
In what case?
Walt
And how many opportunities did they have to do so? Most likely not very many. On the other hand, how many terrorist states made attacks on the United States and its persons before 1990? Countless, not to mention on our ally Israel. Palestinians have been blowing up Jews since the 1920's, if not before that.
I don't believe, and if I am wrong, I welcome a correction, but I don't believe a single U.S. citizen lost his life in a terrorist incident perpetrated by arabs prior to Desert Storm in the United States (I'm not forgetting Pan Am flt. 103).
Yet hundreds of Americans lost their lives and found themselves terrorized long before Desert Storm due to terror. Do you not remember Lebanon, Carter's iranian hostage crisis, or the hijackings of the late 60's, 70's and 80's? Americans were victims and often targets of attack after attack after attack. Yes, they brought it to our soil on 9/11 but terror has been going on for the better part of a century and terror against Americans has been going on for decades.
You're going to get quite a reputation for spouting nonsense on a number of subjects here.
Surely it could not compare to the reputation earned by an individual who voted straight Democrat for every president since 1984, regularly practices defense of Bill Clinton, trashes Bush Sr. and Reagan, and claims the 9/11 attacks were a result of the US successes in the Gulf War. That person would be you, Walt, and yes - you have a reputation.
Ex Parte Bollman & Swartwout, by Marshall. Affirmed by U.S. Circuit Court in Ex Parte Merryman, by Taney. Live with it.
Read my lips.
Those are two of the reasons.
It bears repeating that Bush I was a foreign policy "expert". He had been ambassador to China and head of the CIA. His major expertise was in foreign policy. He was in way over his head and uncomfortable with the economy. I'm one of those who thinks the president can't control the economy that much any way. There was a big expansion under Reagan (another guy shot full of luck), it was only natural that there be a slow down. It didn't much help Bush I to look so clueless though.
But on foreign policy -- he'd been immersed in that, and the president DOES have a lot of power and leeway to conduct foreign policy -- and he blew it, plain and simple when it comes to Iraq.
Walt
"All these deaths of U.S. citizens --the death of EVERY U.S. citizen killed by Arab terror in the United States, can be laid directly at the feet of George Bush I." - Walt, 11/15/02
Source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?page=452#448
Yes Walt. And practically everybody out there save a few left wing wackos and YOU believes that foreign policy was the strength of the Bush administration.
There was a big expansion under Reagan (another guy shot full of luck), it was only natural that there be a slow down.
Not really. Methinks it had more to do with a combination of the capital gains rollback two sessions earlier, the failure to abide by Gramm-Rudman, and various economic price factors elsewhere. Either way it was a very mild recession that was long over before Bill Clinton came along. Clinton simply pretended it was still there a year after the fact and lied his way into office on the false claim that it was.
Go for it. If all national security policy was conducted out in the open and in public, we'd be living under Soviet Union right now. Not that you'd have any objections to that...
Yet hundreds of Americans lost their lives and found themselves terrorized long before Desert Storm due to terror. Do you not remember Lebanon, Carter's iranian hostage crisis, or the hijackings of the late 60's, 70's and 80's?
And yet they weren't killed by the thousands --in--the--United--States--. I was careful to make that distinction, which you have no excuse for ignoring.
Let me clarify:
My point regarding Bush I's blame centers directly on whether or not Saddam Hussein is involved in supporting Al Qaeda.
We can reasonably infer that if he is supporting Al Qaeda, he is doing it from humiliation because of Desert Storm. On the other hand, if Hussein is NOT helping Al Qaeda, it is nuts for us to be planning to invade. My -perception- is that most people in this country feel that A) he is helping, and/or B) taking him off the playing field will at least snuff out a refuge for Al Qaeda operatives.
With all that posited -- George Bush I has no right to show his face on commercials memorializing the dead of 9/11.
Walt
Yes Walt. And practically everybody out there save a few left wing wackos and YOU believes that foreign policy was the strength of the Bush administration.
Well, gag a maggot.
What were some of the Bush administration foreign policy triumphs?
Maybe you mean compared to his domestic policy, which was a dismal failure in comparison?
Walt
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