For years I have admired Congressman Ron Paul’s principled stance on spending and the Constitution. That said, he really damaged himself with his remarks on “Meet the Press” this last Sunday when he blamed President Lincoln for the Civil War, saying, “Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war… [President Abraham Lincoln] did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic.”This is historical revisionism of the worst order and it must be addressed.

For Congressman Paul’s benefit – and for his supporters who may not know – seven states illegally declared their “independence” from the United States before Lincoln was sworn in as President. After South Carolina fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, four additional states declared independence.

President Lincoln wanted very much to preserve the Union. The chief issue surrounding slavery at the time was whether or not the Federal government could have a say as to slavery’s disposition in the territories. Lincoln thought the Federal government could determine whether slavery was to be allowed in a territory and hence, whether or not that territory would become a slave state or a free state when it made the transition to statehood. Leading Democrats of the day, such as Sen. Stephen Douglas of Illinois argued for popular sovereignty – letting the people of the territories decide whether or not they should be slave or free.

Lincoln thought that if the Federal government could prevent slavery in the territories that eventually the U.S. Senate would swing over to having a sufficient majority of pro-emancipation Senators that slavery would be put on the path of extinction (as most of our Founding Fathers intended – hence the end of the African slave trade in 1808 as mandated in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution). Pro-slavery interests in the South saw this strategy as dooming slavery to a slow, but inevitable death, moving them to act. South Carolina voted secession on December 20, 1860 – two-and-a-half months before Lincoln was to be sworn in on March 4, 1861.

President Buchanan had attempted to resupply Fort Sumter by sending sea but the Confederates fired upon the ship, the Star of the West, and drove it away. Does this mean that Buchanan started the war? Or did the rebels in South Carolina who fired on the ship start it?

As for states not having the right to seceed, that is obvious, as the United States was created with the ratification of the Constitution hence only a legal dissolving of the same could allow a state to become independent. The states that voted for secession in 1860-61 could have followed the legal route in calling for a Constitutional convention or for an amendment to the Constitution allowing them to seceed, but they chose the route of rebellion and war instead.

The historical record and timeline is clear: pro-slavery politicians started the Civil War; President Lincoln fought it to its successful conclusion. As such, freedom was extended to slaves far earlier and yes, with far more blood spilled than Lincoln intended, fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This promise of liberty for all, by the way, was explicitly denied by the Confederacy as outlined the “Cornerstone Speech” on March 21, 1861 by the Vice President of the Confederacy when he said, “The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution… The prevailing ideas entertained by (Thomas Jefferson) and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically… Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races… Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.”

So, Abraham Lincoln was right when he said at Gettysburg that the Civil War’s, “…dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

In rejecting this Congressman Ron Paul has rejected the most fundamental aspect of liberty which he and all libertarian-minded Americans profess: that the most important role of any government is to first secure the blessings of liberty for its people, that “…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” Given that slaves never gave their consent to be governed, the very existence of slavery would be at fundamental odds with everything in which Mr. Paul claims to believe.

The following appeared as an Op-Ed in the Orange County Register on December 18, 2007.

The Orange Grove: Health Plan pushes state to the brink 

With a $14 billion deficit, we can’t afford another huge social welfare program

By CHUCK DEVORE

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) is the Vice Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation.

“It’s an incredible plan,” said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, D-Los Angeles.

The speaker’s quote about the just-approved government health care he agreed to with Gov. Schwarzenegger unintentionally speaks volumes.

Incredible, as in farfetched, preposterous, hard to believe – call it what you will, the plan will cost far more than advertised and will drive businesses out of state, reducing state tax revenue and throwing people out of work.

Beginning with a low-ball $14 billion price tag, the plan to increase taxes on business, hospitals, and tobacco to provide health insurance to 3.6 million people will devastate an already unsteady economy. California’s budget already has a $14 billion hole in it, thanks to a complete lack of spending discipline and a housing boom gone bust. Adding massive new taxes and a massive new social welfare program will compound the problem and push California over the brink of financial disaster.

The Assembly approved the plan, 45-31, Monday afternoon. It needed only a simple majority to pass. The higher hurdle will be the tax increases to pay for the plan, which would have required a two-thirds approval and will force the Democrats and the governor to punt the tax hike to the people as a ballot initiative on next November’s ballot.

Gov. Schwarzenegger and Speaker Nuñez intend to pay for this big increase in government with three new taxes: a $2.3 billion tax on hospitals, a $1.50-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes and a new payroll tax on business. Many hospitals say they want the new tax as they expect to get more than that back in insurance reimbursements. The latter two taxes are more problematic.

Taxing tobacco is always popular in health-conscious California. The (happy) problem is that fewer and fewer Californians smoke every year. Some analysts are already expecting that the new tax would have to be set at $2 per pack to make up for a declining base of smokers and a higher loss of tax revenue because of increased tobacco smuggling.

The tobacco tax would be a mere annoyance compared with the havoc the payroll tax would wreak on business. The plan calls for small businesses with payrolls of up to $250,000, or under 10 employees for most California businesses, to spend at least 1 percent of payroll costs on worker health care or get hit with a payroll tax to fund a state-run health insurance pool. Firms with payrolls of up to $1 million would have to pay 4 percent, those with payrolls up to $15 million would have to pay 6 percent, and bigger companies would have to pay 6.5 percent.

Such a payroll tax and health care cost mandate will severely distort market forces. Small-business owners who already provide coverage will be encouraged to drop it in favor of the state-subsidized system. It will also cap business growth since an employer could see a large increase in payroll costs, with a commensurate drop in profit, as their labor costs crossed a key threshold at $250,000, $1 million or $15 million.

Thankfully, in addition to legislative Republicans, who have been left out of the dealing between Schwarzenegger and Nuñez, a voice of reason has emerged from an unlikely source: Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who has said he will delay a Senate vote on the plan until the governor explains how he will close the ballooning $14 billion deficit without hurting the poor and disabled with cuts to existing welfare programs.

Our challenge is not with access to health care, but rather with how to pay for it. Organizations on the left favor a total government takeover of health. At the other end of the political spectrum, legislative Republicans have repeatedly called for applying free-market principles to an over-regulated industry. Republican proposals include allowing out-of-state health insurers to compete in California, promoting health savings accounts (California is one of four states that taxes health savings accounts), and encouraging low-cost health clinics at retail chains as has been successful in other states.

California’s budget is collapsing under the twin pressures of unrestrained spending and a tax code that punishes the productive with the highest income tax rates in America. This cannot continue. We need to cut tax rates, not increase them. Government must live within our means to pay for it. To do anything else would be incredible.