Palmer on the Civil War

I post here my reply to Palmer on hnn's Liberty & Power blog, in case the pinheads there delete it:

Of course, it is usually the Randroids who will defend smoking to the hilt, and deny that it "causes" cancer, because it "man's holding a piece of tamed fire at the fingertips is symbolic of his mastery of nature," or other such hokum.

Palmer's libel of Lew Rockwell et al. notwithstanding, there is not "fetish" over the "Confederacy" at LewRockwell.com. Palmer insists on labeling those who oppose Lincoln's war as neo-Confederate apologists for slavery. As everyone knows, resort to such hysterical, personal attacks is a sign one is out of ammo. I, for example, have condemned this ridiculous Confederacy-worship, rebel-flag waving yahoo nonsense many times, and have never "defended" the South; it would be hard to "defend" a nation that permits slavery, conscripts and taxes, and after all is a criminal state. But one does not need to defend the South to oppose Lincoln's blatant violation of the Constitution (including outrageous violations of rights, suspension of habeus corpus, assumption of constitutional powers not granted, including denial of the right to exit, or secede), imposition of a new central government, illegal coercion of the civil war amendments, and the deaths of over 600,000 people. It's a sad day when opposition to unlawful, tyrannical executive action and mass murder is equated--by supposed libertarians, no less--with advocacy of slavery. Very sad.