"I'm not sure why so many libertarians seem to point to the CSA as an ideal. Government oppression is just as oppressive at the state level and the history of the Southern state governments both before their Civil War defeat and also after Reconstruction was none too good. And a federal bureaucracy is just as heavy when the federal HQ is at Richmond as it is in Washington. The tendencies of the Richmond regime during the war were not promising for libertarian ideals."
Two responses:
1) To some of us, the Lost Cause is admired as a representative of the last days before the 9th and 10th amendment were toothless. I'm not an admirer of the CSA because it was libertarian as much as I admire the CSA for exercising its right to secede and showing that "consent of the governed" no longer mattered to the Union...nor does it. Otherwise we would have no issues with pork or 'guest workers.' I admire the Confederates for fighting for their freedom to be left alone. Who knows what that principle would have led the Confederacy to be after the war had been won? We'll never know, the remaining States having determined that they had the power to force other States into Union. So much for consent of the governed, as I previously noted.
2) The CSA federal government was a war bureaucracy of some size, no doubt, and would not have been any dream come true for libertarians. But no doubt that it'd have been better than the current Union nightmare that has usurped it.
but since lincoln DID prosecute the UNnecessary war against the southland (in which EVERY citizen lost FREEDOM!), we'll never know for sure.
free dixie,sw