A ridiculous comment that caught me off-guard recently piqued my curiosity about Civil War pseudohistory, a central tenet of which is that the South rebelled for noble reasons, rather than to protect the institution of slavery.

There are entire books by proponents of and sympathizers to the "Lost Cause." There are also libraries of them on the same subject by actual historians, who sometimes take the trouble to pick apart the arguments of the quack academics. (I recommended a good one defending Abraham Lincoln (!) here some time ago.)

This is all well and good. I am not a historian, and, although my academic background makes me more comfortable than many judging the limits of my knowledge, there is sometimes no substitute for engaging in primary sources.

I have too much to do and too little time to become an expert on the Civil War, and frankly, I have about zero interest in doing so.

But I can read English, and the full text of documents, such as the Mississippi Secession Ordinance are available online.

It's surprisingly short and clear, to the point that I wonder how many rank-and-file fans of these authors -- some of whom have academic degrees, but pitch their arguments exclusively to non-academics -- have ever seen, let alone read them.

Please take some time to read it and come back. I wouldn't want to be rude by interrupting, or worse, stop someone from doing such a good job of telling us about themselves.

After the title is a curious paragraph whose stated purpose is to "declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course." (Its unstated purpose is to play the victim and deny responsibility, as revealed by the passive voice and, later, by a false alternative.)

The 700-odd word document cuts right to the chase:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. [my bold]

It continues, but I want to note that the study of history is about both fact and interpretation. (Pseudohistory deals with excuses, which it pawns off as interpretation.)

An excuse I have heard for the above disgraceful sentence is something along the lines of They fought the war for economic reasons, often followed up with They eventually wanted to abolish slavery. The rest of the paragraph lends some superficial plausibility to those ideas, if you squint hard enough:

Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Its labor? The correct pronoun is whose, as in whose labor.

None but the black race can take the sun and the heat ... and, apparently a lack of freedom.

No choice. Abolitionists, informed by the founding principles of the protection of individual rights, struggled since before America's founding with how to end slavery. I am not going to pretend that that was an easy question. But even then, as Confederate apologists admit when they try to whitewash this, there were not only two choices before the free people of the South.

Subverted to our ruin. There is talk of property rights -- which are inalienably of the individual. Property rights are indeed a principle of the American founding. But as derived from the right to one's own life and person, they aren't what is being subverted by the prospect of the end of slavery.

There is no such thing as the right to own another person. It is the Confederates' attempt to subvert that more fundamental right that indeed led to their ruination.

Let's take a quick look at a few more points on the danger to "our institution" -- wording that conveniently forgets the millions of human lives the authors were ruining or had ended by placing them in a danger they did not even acknowledge.

The thin excuse that the Confederates needed slavery -- as if one man's need is a claim on the life of another -- because they depended on farming in a tropical climate -- dies a quick death when the authors complain in rapid succession about the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise, which excluded further expansion of slavery north of Arkansas. Oh, and that idea that they were fighting a war to abolish slavery later looks a bit suspect, too.

This is interesting:

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It is especially interesting when considering this passage, from some time later:

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

Does this accusation also apply to runaway slaves? I have heard of people claiming blacks were generally better off under slavery. The slaves themselves didn't seem to agree, and chose uncertainty and danger over that lot.

And not thinking of a graceful way to end slavery is a virtue compared to whining about being unable to expand it.

Much of the rest consists in what Ayn Rand might have called "the Big Projection:"

[The Union (considered as a collective --ed)] has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

Excited and inflamed with prejudice! Schemes!

What really takes the cake they save for near the end:

... We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

So much for the quote from the Declaration of Independence -- which was every signer's death warrant -- that "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Sure. Money built on treating others like cattle and the honor of not admitting that mistake are way nobler than throwing off the chains of tyranny in the process of winning one's freedom.

-- CAV

"The congressional budget bill [which was passed in the US Senate today] has become the most bloated bill to ever waddle and slide through congress.

"[Trump's ill-named] 'Big Beautiful Bill' just can’t stop growing. This pile of pork that required two pallet boards and a forklift in order to move him from the House side of the Capitol building to the Senate, is getting fatter with each passing day. It may not even be possible, at this point, to move him from congress to the President’s desk for signing.

"It seems Trumpublicans, who once masqueraded as budget hawks, just cannot spend enough money these days. Having already packed in more pork than the entire nation of China could eat in a decade at a time when the US is drowning in its own debt according to every credit agency that typically matters, Senate Republicans saw the need to fit a lot more fat into the flesh folds of this cut-taxes-and-spend-more, fantasy monster.

"Having loaded Bill’s crevices up with lard, we read today that this big butt-full of bills is now sprinting like a morbidly obese walrus for the finish line, but is likely to die of a heart attack before it arrives ...

"Meanwhile, the bill’s tab [has] ballooned like a post-tax-cut deficit, possibly adding trillions more than the already eye-popping $3.3 trillion House version. But hey, what’s a few trillion among friends? ...

"Despite the outrage, insiders predict the holdouts will do what they always do—complain loudly, wave a flag of fiscal doom, then wither like spineless tarts. After all, nothing unites Republicans like a giant tax cut and a promise from Trump that “this time, it’s gonna be beautiful. Really.” ...

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “Big Beautiful Blob” has gone up from adding $3.3-trillion to the budget ... to adding $3.9-trillion. ...

Even the CBO notes,

… these numbers understate the potential costs of the bill, since the legislation relies on a number of arbitrary expirations. Borrowing could rise by another $1 trillion – to $5 trillion or more – if temporary provisions were made permanent.

Not only that: The CBO’s numbers also likely underestimate where interest costs will be after 'Big Beautiful Blob' throws its monstrous weight behind the damage tariffs will do to the dollar and simultaneously to the Treasury market because right now investors are still, as I wrote in my last Deeper Dive, hanging onto fantasies that more time for negotiation means more chance of tariffs coming down. That includes bond investors who have bought the bull. ...

"[T]ariffs will drive interest rates on the government debt up by diminishing the need for central banks all around the world to hold Treasuries as their primary vehicle for reconciling their member banks’ foreign exchanges on trade with the US. Less trade equals less utility for those Treasury holdings, which means less demand, so higher interest. A falling dollar also means less foreign demand for Treasuries because foreign investors lose money on the exchange rate when they sell the treasuries and go back to their own currency.

"That will all happen because Treasuries are effectively the money bags that exchange currency typically travels in via the click of a computer key reassigning ownership. There is still no one that I read who is paying attention to that likely trigger for the United States’ ultimate debt death spiral. Because no one is seeing it, there is all the more likelihood it will take us down.

"And, of course, the rise in Treasury interest means a rise in all commercial interest that is pegged off of benchmark Treasuries. 'Big Beautiful Blob,' throwing its weight onto the Treasury heap, only makes the problem worse. It also increases the risk that no one sees tariffs as causing the spike in interest rates because they have the Blob to blame as a scapegoat. ...

"This budget bomb is likely to be more obliterating to the US future than those bombs the US just dropped in Iran, which multiple reports are now saying were not all that Trump boasted them up to be."

Tweet

Here’s a letter to a new correspondent.

Mr. D__:

Thanks for sending along Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX)’s tweet that “Free trade must ALWAYS mean fair trade.” Endorsing this tweet, you say that “fairness in trade should always be our guide.”

I respectfully disagree.

My disagreement comes from no opposition to fairness; be assured that I endorse fairness just as fervently as do you and Ms. Van Duyne. Instead, my opposition comes from the fact that “fairness” is too inexact and open-ended a concept to serve as a practical guide to the making of public policy – evidence of which is that I can very easily make a credible case that the tariffs that you and Ms. Van Duyne think to be fair are quite unfair.

Is it fair that the U.S. government imposes protective tariffs (that is, punitive taxes) on key inputs used by American manufacturers of machine tools and farm equipment in order to increase the sales of American manufacturers of steel and aluminum? Is it fair for Trump to use part of your income as a bargaining chip to raise the incomes of American farmers? Is it fair for Trump – president of a country in which services are nearly 80 percent of its output – to ignore U.S. exports of services when complaining that we Americans import more goods than we export? Is it fair for Trump and other protectionists, in order to increase public tolerance for higher tariffs, to repeatedly falsely assert that America’s industrial economy has been “hollowed out”?

Is it fair for the government to decrease the purchasing power of your income in order to increase the purchasing power of some other American’s income for no reason other than that other American happens to produce outputs that compete with outputs offered for sale in America by non-Americans?

If you answer ‘no’ to the above questions, then you should intensify your skepticism of Trump’s tariffs.

One enormous advantage of free trade over fair trade is that the concept of free trade, compared to that of fair trade, is far more objective. Either the U.S. government does or doesn’t impose artificial obstructions on your ability to purchase from foreigners goods and services that are perfectly lawful for you to purchase from Americans. If the standard is free trade, public debate and litigation over how well this standard is being met will be much less frequent, intense, and inconclusive than if the standard is fair trade.

Moreover, because we Americans boast that ours is the land of the free, it’s only fair that our government should leave us free to trade.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

The post Fair Trade Is Unfree – and Unfair appeared first on Cafe Hayek.

AUSTIN, TX — Tension between President Donald Trump his wealthiest and most well-known supporter reached a new level today, as Elon Musk sent a Tesla Optimus robot back in time to terminate Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill."

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In his latest move to fight against the looming passage of President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," Congressman Thomas Massie unveiled his very own "Small, Ugly Budget Bill with a Great Personality."

In a free society, legitimate economic success does not fall from the sky or come by force. Behind every fortune lies effort, risk, savings, time, discovery, validation, and social coordination.