- STAN:
- I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me 'Loretta'.
- REG:
- What?!
- LORETTA:
- It's my right as a man.
- JUDITH:
- Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
- LORETTA:
- I want to have babies.
- REG:
- You want to have babies?!
- LORETTA:
- It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
- REG:
- But... you can't have babies.
- LORETTA:
- Don't you oppress me.
- REG:
- I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
- LORETTA:
- [crying]
- JUDITH:
- Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
- FRANCIS:
- Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
- REG:
- What's the point?
- FRANCIS:
- What?
- REG:
- What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
- FRANCIS:
- It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
- REG:
- Symbolic of his struggle against reality.
FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?REG: He's over there.
P.F.J.: Splitter!
History shows that DiLorenzo is right. Lincoln and the Republican Party believed in big government the American System: national bank (inflation); high tariffs (protectionism) and internal improvement (corporate welfare). They believed in the majority imposing its will on the minority. They believed in martial force to achieve their goals.
The Confederates themselves believed in "the majority imposing its will on the minority." They also clearly "believed in martial force to achieve their goals." We don't know enough to decide how big government would be if they'd won, because they did not win. It's easy to postulate some Jeffersonian libertarian tradition, but in fact, "Jeffersonian Democrats" down through the years have supported some very repressive or statist measures.
This is "do it yourself" history that severs ideas, facts and myths from their historical context to combine them as the author sees fit. Ostrowski ignores what was possible at the time and what was at issue. He doesn't so much reach a conclusion logically as impose one arbitrarily. He flirts with pacifism and anarchism to attack the Union but doesn't ask the same questions or make the same reproaches where the Confederacy is concerned. Ostrowski excuses in the Confederates what he attacks in Unionists and what he would also attack in a slave rebellion.
Ostrowski does remind me more than a little of Monty Python's idiot, Mr Gumby. "My brain hurts"