150 Years Later, Federal Bloodshed Continues

To preserve the Union, at all costs -

Americans on Tuesday mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the US Civil War, a bloody conflict that historians say still deeply influences the United States.

"The Civil War is one of the most significant events in American history in terms of the way the American nation was defined," said William Link, a historian at the University of Florida.

More than 500,000 people were killed in the deadliest war in US history when North and South battled over states rights and slavery. Fighting began April 12, 1861, with an attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

The Real Effect
To hold that the Civil War was about slavery is somewhat akin to claiming the attack on the USS Liberty was about the ships attraction to bullets. Ignoring the overarching context of an event is a great way to ensure that it happens again. Repeatedly.

Take for instance the economic crisis of 2008. Holding that it was about "toxic assets" ignores the reality of just how those assets became "toxic" in the first place. Namely the fraudulent actions of the banking class. Trillions of dollars in bailout money later and the banks are still just as underwater as they were before. They just "adjusted" the books to give us a "recovery".

150 long years later and America has still not learned her Liberty lessons. The engine that drives prosperity, the sword against poverty and the guarantor of life is liberty, not indentured servitude to an bureaucratic super class. If we do not learn our lessons soon, we are guaranteed to join the empires of the past in the dustbins of history.