You might remember me as I spoke briefly at your conference in London, Ontario, Canada last year about the dangers to individual liberty posed by the European Union. Well having heard the news reports about the proposed free-trade zone to cover the whole of the Americas, that was "discussed" in Quebec recently, I think you had better wake up to the danger that you now face.
The European Union was set up in exactly the same way – as a "Free Trade Zone". What it was always intended to be, and has turned out to be, is a dictatorship. It is intended that the EU will eventually cover the whole of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.
It is well on the way to becoming a state. It has already its own flag, anthem, parliament, passport, and cabinet (i.e. the Commission), [and currency – Ed.] and now it is seeking to have its own army, under the guise of a rapid reaction force.
You will eventually get the argument that "the world's problems are too large and complex to be handled by the nation state", just as we in Britain have been told ad nauseam for the last decade or so.
To administer your free trade, eventually a body similar to the EU commission will be set up for your part of the world. Its purpose will be to centralize ever more power in the hands of the Commissioners. They are never elected, but somehow get the job because of their political connections.
Britain is in the process of being broken up into twelve regions, under the EU policy known as "Europe of the Regions". Scotland is to be one region, Wales is to be another, while Northern Ireland is to be absorbed into the Irish Republic which is to be run by the Irish Republican Army.
England of course will disappear. It is to be broken up into 9 separate regions. While the English taxpayers are expected to finance their country's demise.
The EU will also have its own legal system called Corpus Juris. This means the abolition of our rights under Magna Carta, and the Bill of Rights of 1689. The presumption of innocence will be abolished along with Trial By Jury, and imprisonment without trial will be brought back.
All this will happen to you in the Americas unless you do something to stop it.
If you value your liberty please start the fight now, before it is too late.
David Ellams, Beckenham, Kent, England
Commentary on Slavery
in the American South
I read with interest your article on the Confederate flag being "banned" in the South. While it was certainly true the North did not fight in order to end slavery, it is certainly true that the South seceded in order to protect and perpetuate slavery.
Let me use Hummel's book, which you recommended, to bolster this claim:
"As an excuse for civil war, maintaining the (Union's) territorial integrity is bankrupt and morally reprehensible. Slavery's elimination is the only morally worthy justification . . . Secession was a gamble of pure desperation for slaveholders, only attempted because the institution clearly had no political future within the Union."
As Libertarians, we should not parrot the Southern line that they seceded in order to avoid growing federal control, particularly in trade and tariffs. Absent the issue of slavery, yes, Libertarians would support the right of the Confederacy to secede. The right of secession is morally neutral until one knows what principles are being invoked by the secessionists! The right to be left alone is fine - until it is shown to be the "right to be left alone to continue enslaving other human beings."
I think we Libertarians should say "a pox on both your sides" and give no moral cover to the South. (While it is certainly true that only a minority of Southerners owned slaves, it is certainly true that the ruling class in the South was principally slave owners. Nearly 80% of the members of the Virginia secessionist convention were slaveholders, while slavery was much less prevalent there than in the deep South. It is also true that most non-slaveowning Southerners – especially farmers at crop time – would rent slaves to help with their work, so these people also had a strong stake in the slave-holding institution. Lastly, the ordinary citizens in any country are vastly influenced by the opinion makers who, in the South were slaveholders and the clergy who depended on the contributions of wealthy slaveholders. To draw an analogy, most Americans were against communism without, themselves, being stockholders in capitalist enterprises.
David K. Walter – Pennsylvania, USA
David Walter is a member of ISIL's Board of Directors and one of the founders of the
original SIL (founded in 1969). He is also a American History buff (particularly of the
Civil War period).
International Society for Individual Liberty
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