Scaling new heights of moonbattery , Huffington Post columnist Manisha Sinha posits that arguments against Obamacare and other Federal intrusions on states’ rights have their roots in the pro-slavery movement, ca. 1840-60:

Long before Tea Party activists and other sundry conservatives detected the ghost of socialism in health care reform and financial regulation legislation, proslavery theorists argued that abolition was akin to socialism. Even though the Lincoln administration would preside over the largest uncompensated confiscation of property in American history, four million slaves valued at around three billion dollars, the Republican party of the Civil War era was as far from socialism as the Obama administration is today.

Not only do contemporary accusations of a drift towards socialism have historical roots in the debates over secession but the alleged rights of the states to nullify or veto federal laws and secede from the Union are also enjoying a newfound popularity. {Emphasis added.]

A few observations:

• Ms. Sinha makes me feel silly and delusional for accusing self-described socialists of having socialist tendencies.
• I really don’t feel like researching it, but I could swear that HuffPo’s position has generally been “Of Course Obamacare is Socialist; Get Over It!”
• How doubly silly of people to read the 10th Amendment, and then expect it to mean something: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
• It’s just a guess, but I’d bet that John C. Calhoun never once made reference to Marx and Engels in debating slavery.
• Detecting the “ghost of socialism” in HCR is a lot like detecting “the ghost of a football player” in DeSean Jackson.