Posted on 12/13/2002 8:10:28 AM PST by Wallace T.
May 11, 1949
370 Central Park West
New York 25, N.Y.
Headquarters,
States Rights Democrats
Jackson, Miss.
Gentlemen:
The New York Times this morning carried a report which, if true, is just about the best political news of the year. Indeed, it may be the most significant development since the advent of the New Deal.
Although a New Yorker born and bred, I was a staunch supporter of the Thurmond movement; a good friend of mine headed the Columbia Students for Thurmond, which I believe was the only such collegiate movement north of the Mason-Dixon line.
My support, however, was not extremely enthusiastic, because, although I agreed wholeheartedly with the platform and Thurmonds campaign speeches, I felt that it was keyed too much to purely Southern interests. Sure, the Civil Tyranny program must be combatted, but what about the myriad invasions of states rights in other fields by the power-hungry Washington bureaucracy? In other words, while you always claimed that yours was a national movement, by talking only of the Civil Tyranny program you threw away any attraction to Northern and Western voters.
I have always felt that it is imperative for the States Rights movement to establish itself on a nation-wide scale. Obviously, we are now living in a one-party system, a party of Socialists in fact if not in name, and only courageous Southern Democrats in Congress have so far blocked their program. But as far as Presidential elections go, the Republicans are through the Socialist Administration has too much power to bribe voters with wild promises. If things go on as they are, it is only a question of a few years for the socialist program to go through and destroy this land of liberty.
Therefore it is essential to form a new party, of States Righters, consisting of Southern Democrats and real Republicans (omitting the me-too Republicans) to launch a dynamic offensive against National Socialism in this country before it is too late. I am greatly elated over your new platform because I believe it points in that direction.
Would you please send me a copy of your new platform and constitution? Do you plan to start a newspaper of nation-wide circulation? This would be of great help in establishing a national States Rights movement.
I would like to add that, as an economist, I enthusiastically support your proposals on national debt and taxes in fact, taken all and all, from the news reports I would say that your new platform is one of the best in American history. Indeed, it is one of the finest political statements in America since Calhouns Exposition.
It could grow into a mighty movement if you have the will and vision. There are millions of Americans throughout the country, Republicans and Democrats, who would flock to your banner. They are weary of being led by the nose by New Deal politicians of both parties they are tired of being deprived of their votes because there is no anti-socialist and pro-liberty party to which they can turn.
You, gentlemen, can be a means of succor for these millions - and not only these, but America itself. National Socialism has always meant poverty, tyranny, and war. America is slipping down the road and has already gone far; it must be restored to the right path if the great dream of our forefathers of a nation dedicated to liberty is not to vanish from the earth. Yours can be that mission.
Sincerely yours,
Murray N. Rothbard
Murray N. Rothbard (19261995), the founder of modern libertarianism and the dean of the Austrian School of economics, was the author of The Ethics of Liberty and For a New Liberty and many other books and articles. He was also academic vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Center for Libertarian Studies, and the editor with Lew Rockwell of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report.
Copyright © 2002 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute
Says the dupe, unable to draw the obvious conclusion.
I'm confused, billbears. Here is the platform, where are the parts about taxes and national debt? Looks like they were concerned with one thing and one thing only, segregation.
There are several glitches in such an application. First, slavery was abolished in those parts of the South controlled by the Confederacy by the Emancipation Proclamation. As Sherman marched through Georgia, for example, slaves were freed. That proclamation did not free slaves in the four slaveholding states that could not join the Confederacy, nor in West Virginia, nor those portions of Southern states, like northern Virginia, east Tennessee, and south Louisiana, under Northern occupation as of January 1, 1863. By January 31, 1865, when the amendment was sent to the states, the areas still under Confederate control were greatly reduced. By August of that year, Union control was effectively established throughout all the South. By August 1865, Lincoln's proclamation had freed over 95% of American slaves. Slave labor was not a major economic element in the Border states by 1865, nor in the portions of Confederate territory occupied by the Union as of January 1, 1863. What the amendment did was to codify into America's fundamental law the concept that slavery was forever illegal.
That the Border states like Maryland and Missouri and the most conservative Northern states like Ohio, New Jersey, and Indiana ratified this amendment would indicate that the state legislatures believed that the amendment would merely formally abolish what was, by August 1865, a moribund institution.
If segregation was a "badge or incident of slavery" in the South, then what about its existence in Northern states? Keep in mind that the 1954 Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education was based not on a Southern, but a Kansas school district. Many Northern states had Jim Crow laws; if they did not, they certainly did not prohibit discrimination in the private sector. Also, both law and social custom discriminated against American Indians and Orientals, races that were never subject to mass chattel slavery in America, in many Northern and Western states. Hispanics, Irish, Germans, Italians, Mormons, and Jews, though never enslaved in this country(except for Irish and British indentured servants in colonial times), nor discriminated against by law, were subject to widespread economic and social discrimination.
Additionally, the 13th Amendment has had little penumbrance. It does not forbid a military draft, nor other compulsory duties of citizens that had existed, in the interpretation of the Supreme Court in 1918, from time immemorial. Its extension to the area of private sector discrimination would not appear warranted.
There is an old saying that two wrongs don't make a right. Both forcible segregation and forcible integration are wrong. Governments, Federal, state, and local, should be limited in their authority and be as impartial as humanly possible.
If segregation was an incident of slavery in South Carolina, it would be an incident of slavery in Kansas even if Kansas had been a free state. If black folks could not get accomodations or vote or purchase property they would be free in name only. Segregation would be something that perpetuated the institution and hence reachable by the 13th amendment. Second, because the 13th is not limited to state action, Congress could restrict private behavior or state action.
Heck, in the early stages of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King did not even demand integrated buses but equal treatment with the context of seperate but equal. Conservatives,didn't even have to necessarily endorse federal action. They could have simply expressed moral support for King's noble cause. They failed to do this and have been paying for it ever since.
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