It's too bad you can't separate the two in the case of the south then, huh?
Your pulling this from where? Oh thats right, your ass. Not only are secession and slavery substancially different issues, but Lincoln himself said that the purpose of the war was not to free the slaves and that he would gladly leave them in chains to perserve the Union.
You can turn all the legal backflips you care to (and despite your assurances, the matter of the legality of seccession is in NO WAY settled by Constitutional scholars
Appeal to authority. I've stated why the States and the People retain the right of secession and provided evidence to support that position. Either state why the Union is indissovlable, and provide evidence that this is the case, or shut the fuck up.
but you can't dodge the fact the people you're defending would have kept millions of people in bondage for decades to come, at least.
A fact, which if happened, would have been irrelevant to the fact that Lincoln violated the Constitution and the Rights of Citizens, in the NORTH as well as the South. Regardless, secession and slavery are different issues; that the South kept blacks enslaved is irrelevant when one considers the Right of secession; more so when you factor in that slavery was still instituted in the North during the entire course of the war. I'm not stating that slavery is right, I'm merely defedning the right of secession.
You're falling all over yourself trying to defend the right to throw a temper tantrum and leave the country when your side loses an election and utterly ignoring the basic human rights of the slaves.
I've never maintained that the South was right to leave the Union, I'm merely defending the position that they had the right to do so. Nor have I defended the South on the issue of slavery. Now how about coming forth with some well supported arguments instead of continuously misrepresenting my position?
Having two popular democracies, instead of one, does not mean that popular democracy is a failure.
It does when the democracy splits in two over the results of an election.
Can you say victory by defination? The splitting of a democracy does not mean that democracy itself is a failure. If anything, the use of force by the North would indicate that popular democracy was a failure; the North was unwilling to stand by and let the South take the course dictated by its "popular democracy". The North forced the South to stay at the point of a bayonet.
And since the right to secede WAS specifically included in the Confederate constitution, perhaps you'd like to explain to me why it shouldn't be assumed the Confederacy would simply fragment later as it tried to industrialize
Once again, your stating that the division of a Democracy means that its a failure; a position that you have not provided any evidence for.
So why is it that seccession conventions were being called DAYS after Lincoln won?
Probably because Lincoln was part of a party that was in the pocket of Northern Industrialists and ran on a platform of higher tariffs with benefits towards special interests in the North? Lincoln himself was a lifelong Whig and a supporter of the "American system" which called for exactly that.
I've read the literature from the time, as apparently you have not, and the seccessionists weren't having cool, rational discussions about tariff policy or the extention of slavery into the territories. They went into a full, uncontrolled panic on Lincoln's election and refused to hear any compromise, including one (signed by Lincoln) which would have amended the Constitution to protect slavery in the United States forever.
All of which is irrelevant to whether or not the South actually had the Right to seceed.
They were convinced Lincoln would be nominated in March and their wives and daughters would be submitting to huge black bucks by April.
Such a widespread mentality obviously explains why the "border States" (including North Carolina) did not seceed until May of 1861.
Yeah, there were lots of issues why they left, but you can't seriously suggest they would have had Breckenridge, Douglass, or even Bell been elected in 1860. The catalyst for the Confederacy, and the entire civil war, was the election of Lincoln and the South's refusal to accept the results of a system which they'd been perfectly satisfied with when it had given them near-total control over the Federal government despite the demographic gap between them and the North. For ten years the South dominated national politics, and when they lost ONE branch of the Federal government, they ran away screaming Lincoln was going to incite a slave revolt. Deal with it.
All of which is irrelevant to whether or not they actually had the right to seceed. Furthermore, your've once again misrepresented my position; I've not once claimed that the South actually had a good motivation to seceed.
Go fuck yourself in the ass with a rake. You've already demonstrated you have no comprehension of political science outside of what you read on militia websites, or else you would have recognized that when a democracy disintegrates because one side refuses to accept the results of a national election, it repudiates democracy and places its survival in jeopardy.
Blah, blah, blah, misrepresent my position, blah, blah, blah. I've never said that the South was right to leave because it lost an election, I've merely defended the right of secession. Since your obviously haven't grasped it, my position is that best justification for seceesion is a long chain of abuses, such as the ones listed in the Declaration of Independece. That the South thought that such a chain of abuses was present; they had the right to seceed.
I'm one of the most vocal libertarians on this board, but I understand that the Constitution is worthless if it's not a binding pact.
The Constitution is even more worthless if the Chief executive can violate it at his own whim.
You're so worried about black helicopters that you'll merrily construct a wank fantasy about the noble Confederacy, bastion of civil rights
I've never done any such thing. Please provide proof that I think that the Confederacy was a "bastion of civil rights". Hell, provide proof that I'm even "worried" about black helicoptors. Thats right, you can't because you good at nothing but distorting my position and smearing me in your bullshit.
evil dictator Lincoln
I've never said he was "evil". I do maintain that he was a dicatator that violated the Constitution.
pretend Constitutional freedoms would survive for more than a few decades if states could leave anytime they felt like it.
Constitutional freedoms survived for nearly 100 years before any States actually seceeded. During this entire time period secession was considered a right of the States and the People.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
-H.L. Mencken
