The really awful part of Nikki Haley's slavery answer

It was already bad. She made it worse.

(Nikki Haley)

On Wednesday night, a voter in New Hampshire asked Nikki Haley what caused the Civil War.

It should have been a simple answer. It wasn’t.

“Well, don’t come with an easy question or anything,” Haley said, joking. “I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

She then asked the voter how he would answer his own question. To which he, smartly, noted that he wasn’t the one running for president.

Haley then went on to say this:

“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom. We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.”

Which, just on its own, doesn’t make any sense. The Civil War was about government not telling you how to live your life? Really?