Mondays with Murray: Rothbard on America's Two "Just Wars"

May 27, 2013 Jason Grimley

Memorial Day marks one of the biggest government propaganda days of the year. News, movies, sporting events - it is nearly impossible to escape the reminders of the State's wars, and all of its countless victims. I've always felt the best way to "honor" those that have died in wars is to speak out against the concept of war - by and large a contest between the leaders of two rival states, in which both the soldiers used as pawns as well as even more innocent civilians are the victims.Murray Rothbard held an anti-war position as his highest ideal, even going as far as to support "big government" candidates like Lyndon Johnson over the issue of war. Were there any circumstances in which Rothbard did find war to be "just"? In a speech given in 1994 at the Mises Institute's Costs of War Conference, Murray described what the conditions under which a war could be considered "just":

My own view of war can be put simply: a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already existing coercive rule over them.

This definition would seem to be in line with the libertarian non-aggression principle. To put it simply, if a war is waged by a population to liberate itself from an oppressor, it may be considered just. If a war is waged in order to exert or maintain domination over a populace, then that war would be considered unjust.According to Rothbard's definition and his view of history, only two wars in American's history fit the definition of 'just' wars. The first is the American revolution against British control. The second, though certainly not for the same reason as modern historians justify it, is the American Civil War, or the War for Southern Independence, as Rothbard calls it.Rothbard views the south's attempt to secede from the Union as perfectly legitimate, and rightly separates it from the contentious issue of slavery. Anywhere we see a 'just war' on one side, we must rightly see an 'unjust war' on the opposing side. In the case of American Civil War, it is clear the North - as the aggressor over the South - was waging an 'unjust war' while the South - whose only act of "aggression" was their declaration of independence from the North- was engaged in a 'just war'. The North's waging of the war - in which the ordinary rules of war were thrown out the window with the targeting of civilian population - only proved to further drive this point home.

For in this War Between the States, the South may have fought for its sacred honor, but the Northern war was the very opposite of honorable. We remember the care with which the civilized nations had developed classical international law. Above all, civilians must not be targeted; wars must be limited. But the North insisted on creating a conscript army, a nation in arms, and broke the 19th-century rules of war by specifically plundering and slaughtering civilians, by destroying civilian life and institutions so as to reduce the South to submission. Sherman’s infamous March through Georgia was one of the great war crimes, and crimes against humanity, of the past century-and-a-half. Because by targeting and butchering civilians, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman paved the way for all the genocidal honors of the monstrous 20th century. There has been a lot of talk in recent years about memory, about never forgetting about history as retroactive punishment for crimes of war and mass murder. As Lord Acton, the great libertarian historian, put it, the historian, in the last analysis, must be a moral judge. The muse of the historian, he wrote, is not Clio, but Rhadamanthus, the legendary avenger of innocent blood. In that spirit, we must always remember, we must never forget, we must put in the dock and hang higher than Haman, those who, in modern times, opened the Pandora’s Box of genocide and the extermination of civilians: Sherman, Grant, and Lincoln.

Perhaps, some day, their statues, like Lenin’s in Russia, will be toppled and melted down; their insignias and battle flags will be desecrated, their war songs tossed into the fire. And then Davis and Lee and Jackson and Forrest, and all the heroes of the South, "Dixie" and the Stars and Bars, will once again be truly honored and remembered. The classic comment on that meretricious TV series The Civil War was made by that marvelous and feisty Southern writer Florence King. Asked her views on the series, she replied: "I didn’t have time to watch The Civil War. I’m too busy getting ready for the next one." In that spirit, I am sure that one day, aided and abetted by Northerners like myself in the glorious "copperhead" tradition, the South shall rise again.

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