A second history class last evening, with the discussion focusing on the Missouri Compromise, the role slavery played in the crisis and how these were perhaps the first tears in the national fabric that would lead to civil war.

It’s fascinating stuff for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that when we’re in school, we certainly learn that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, but the general assumption is that the moral aspects of slavery made war inevitable. But of course that’s not really the way it was; or rather, it was only a part of how slavery prompted the war - and a relatively small part at that.

What was at the bottom of the disagreement over slavery, rather, was power and economics. Slave power and the degree to which the north felt aced out by it, and pushed to end a system that by that time, with the skyrocketing price of cotton, was earning fortunes for the southern planter class beyond anything they’d known.

Then as now, political power flowed from economic power. The people with the money ran the show. And it struck me, in the course of discussion last night, that the northern interests who sought to curtail the south’s political power and perhaps in doing so increase their own political and economic clout used moral objections to slavery - much in the same way the modern-day Republican Party uses objections to abortion to buttress its own power.

Likewise, the southern political elite used arguments about attacks on the “southern way of life” to stir up the vast majority of ordinary southerners who didn’t own slaves and might not have been inclined to fight on behalf of those who did.

I’ve a paper to write this semester and it may be on this topic; how the political elite used the soaring rhetoric of patriotism and morality to convince everyday people to don a uniform and fight the Civil War. Because having watched the process in action during the run-up to the Iraq war, I’ve been fascinated by it. Still, now, right-wingers like to pretend this war was about spreading freedom or stopping the spread of WMDs, blah blah blah. But all along, that was the political cover; all along, that was the feel-good story concocted with the specific purpose of convincing people to support the war.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m certain right-wingers fervently believe in these concocted causes; I’m absolutely sure many of our troops in Iraq are, in their own minds, fighting for freedom. But I do not believe that this was the real reason they were sent to fight. And I’m beginning to think such noble causes never really are.

How many would have supported this war if they were told the real reasons the economic and political elite in this country wanted to fight it? And wingers, don’t kid yourselves - this war would have never happened had the elite not been in favor of it. They knew that America’s energy future must be secured; that is not to say we were merely going to “steal” Iraq’s oil; but that Iraq had to be brought into the economic community of nations; that given how integral oil is to the American and global economy we absolutely needed to at least attempt political stabilization of the region where the bulk of it remains.

You and I, though, would not send our children to fight for such crass things. But we would send them to fight for freedom - wouldn’t we? And we would send them to prevent “another Hitler” from getting his hands on nuclear weapons - wouldn’t we?

And so what you get, in effect, is a marketing campaign: A marketing campaign for war. There’s absolutely truth behind it; but various aspects are puffed up, some glossed over. It’s designed to inspire, or at least inspire fear; you touch the emotional bases and then the people who you need to support it - or fight it - hop on the bandwagon.

That was then, this is now; but the manner in which the elite marshall their arguments remains the same, I am convinced. We’ve got better tools now - I’m sure the southern planters would have made good use of Fox News - but we need them to pull people away from the comforts of modern life.