My Plea - PLEASE SUPPORT GODS AND GENERALS!

[Joe]

Perhaps, if I could remember them...

Well, you outdid me in 'em, I just never formally conceded.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I know all about the Civil War, you dink.

I just don't want to watch something that puts the fucking Confederacy in a sacred light.

[Darth Wong]

Not to intercede here, but why does that fact serve as an indictment of federalizing crime and punishment, as opposed an indictment of those particular statutes? If the same statutes had been passed at the state level, the effect would be the same.

Because while one state may choose to pass the most draconian drug laws conceivable, 49 may choose more moderate or even liberal drug laws as well as prosecutorial and judicial guidelines for trying and sentencing cases. Federalising the drug laws has removed that lattitude nationwide.

Why would one state have any need for more or less strict drug laws than the next? If the law is bad, then it's bad for the whole nation and it should be repealed. If not, then it's OK for the entire nation and it should be kept. What's the problem?

If another historical example might suffice, there is Prohibition. Alcohol control and criminalisation was largely a state and county affair from 1880 through to 1916. Such laws were effective mainly in rural areas and Bible Belt states until the passage of the Volstead Act and the ratification of the 18th Amendment. The results were bathtub gin, wood alcohol, the rise of the Capone Mob and its rivals in organised crime, the greatest wholesale civil disobedience to ever occur in American history streatching for two and a half decades, and the transformation of Chicago into a virtual battleground with a thoroughly corrupted city government. It was, in short, a disaster. Congress finally repealed Prohibition in 1933 and kicked the whole issue back to the states. There are still "dry" counties to this day, but I doubt that a single state still has state prohibition laws anymore.

True, but this is merely an example of a bad federal law; if no state has prohibition laws today, that merely underscores the fact that it was bad at either the state or federal level, so what difference does it make? Why would one state want to have totally different laws than the next? What purpose would it serve, and why would a law that's bad in one state be good in the next?

[Joe]

Why would one state have any need for more or less strict drug laws than the next? If the law is bad, then it's bad for the whole nation and it should be repealed. If not, then it's OK for the entire nation and it should be kept. What's the problem?

I wouldn't think they would. However, given the popular support of drug prohibition, it's going to be much more feasible to experiment with drug legalization from the local and state level.

[Patrick Degan]

Well, Mike, let's see if I can try to satisfy your question.

As with everything, it's down to politics and community standards in a democracy. Particularly in one where we don't have ideological homogenity. It also has to do with the pattern of this country's development over the course of its history. The character of many of America's communities was shaped in times when communication was not immediate, and travel a proposition of days/weeks and, before railroads, sometimes months. The influence of that time persists to this day.

In practical terms, what works in Chicago would not necessarily work in Treestump. States with large urbanised populations within relatively close proximity to one another would not have the same political character, or scale of priorities, as a state with a scattered collection of small towns and (maybe) one medium-sized city. In the latter, for instance, it would be a waste of manpower and resources to carry out the same sort of anticrime and antidrug programmes as in the former. Also, the central government has enough to deal with in trying to efficently manage a large social welfare machine, an even larger war machine, and effectively referee the balance of powers between the states and itself. The more responsibilities it attempts to assume, the less able it is to deal with them in an effective manner. The more control it is forced to assume and, hence, the more that constitutional liberties are weakened and compromised.

The ideal for the balance between state soverignty and Federal supremacy, besides preventing the central government from becoming a tyranny, is also to distribute responsibility over a wide administrative and legislative spectrum. It is also for the purpose, theoretically, of testing various permutations to law and legislature to derive the most effective model to base future decisionmaking and governmental models on.

[Typhonis 1]

I am southern but still .Don`t those idiots realise that every soldier who fought for the Confederate States of Amerioca commited an act of treason???The enlisted soldiers were given a blanket pardon I believe while the officers had to write the President for a pardon. Heres a few fun facts

1 Black people did fight ,of there won free will ,in the Confederate army

2 Every confederte state ,but South Carolina ,fielded regiments of Union volunteeers.

[Joe]

I am southern but still .Don`t those idiots realise that every soldier who fought for the Confederate States of Amerioca commited an act of treason???The enlisted soldiers were given a blanket pardon I believe while the officers had to write the President for a pardon. Heres a few fun facts

1 Black people did fight ,of there won free will ,in the Confederate army

2 Every confederte state ,but South Carolina ,fielded regiments of Union volunteeers.

There were SOME blacks that voluntarily chose to fight for the Confederacy. But they were rare; the exception, not the norm.

[Durandal]

I am southern but still .Don`t those idiots realise that every soldier who fought for the Confederate States of Amerioca commited an act of treason???The enlisted soldiers were given a blanket pardon I believe while the officers had to write the President for a pardon. Heres a few fun facts

1 Black people did fight ,of there won free will ,in the Confederate army

2 Every confederte state ,but South Carolina ,fielded regiments of Union volunteeers.

There were SOME blacks that voluntarily chose to fight for the Confederacy. But they were rare; the exception, not the norm.

Lee was a big proponent of enlisting blacks to fight, and I also think that he was anti-slavery, if memory serves.

[Joe]

I am southern but still .Don`t those idiots realise that every soldier who fought for the Confederate States of Amerioca commited an act of treason???The enlisted soldiers were given a blanket pardon I believe while the officers had to write the President for a pardon. Heres a few fun facts

1 Black people did fight ,of there won free will ,in the Confederate army

2 Every confederte state ,but South Carolina ,fielded regiments of Union volunteeers.

There were SOME blacks that voluntarily chose to fight for the Confederacy. But they were rare; the exception, not the norm.

Lee was a big proponent of enlisting blacks to fight, and I also think that he was anti-slavery, if memory serves.

Yeah, he was...he would have been the general of the Union army had Virginia not seceded.

[Trytostaydead]

I am southern but still .Don`t those idiots realise that every soldier who fought for the Confederate States of Amerioca commited an act of treason???The enlisted soldiers were given a blanket pardon I believe while the officers had to write the President for a pardon. Heres a few fun facts

1 Black people did fight ,of there won free will ,in the Confederate army

2 Every confederte state ,but South Carolina ,fielded regiments of Union volunteeers.

General Chamberlain didn't see the Confederate forces as treasonous. He ordered the 5th Corps to salute them as they marched by after the surrender at the Appomattox. And if it wasn't for Abraham Lincoln's assassination, things might have gone a lot differently during reconstruction.

But you're right, while the common soldiers in the Confederacy were fighting probably for no better reason than their state had seceded, the commanding officers knew full well what they were doing and it tormented them and their friends on the other side. Such as Hancock and Armistead, Longstreet and Grant, Lee and Scott. They all individually chose which was more important, and honorable to them. Country or home? And it was no small things for these devoutly religious men to break an oath they swore to a country they spent the better years of their lives fighting for.

That's why some of "these idiots" are so enamored by the civil war. It was a conflict where each person did their best to do what they believed was the right choice, the only choice. Stay with the Union, or go back and defend your home at what they had thought was an army raised to attack its own people. But also the much more human side to the war. Where brothers marched up against the other in a bloody conflict. In the end, I don't think either side was more baser than the other, each side fought each other with stubborn nobility and pride.

[Typhonis 1]

It was also a war where technology had outstriped the tactics used and was the first taste of trench warfare.

[Trytostaydead]

It was also a war where technology had outstriped the tactics used and was the first taste of trench warfare.

Yes indeed. A brief taste of what awaited for the world in WWI. The Southerners were the first to realize the new potential, yet also walked into the same trap (Pickett's charge). Slamming Napoleonic tactics against fortified positions against rifles. You would have thought Lee out of all people would've not ordered that charge, especially since it was by NOT doing such things that a small US force routed the Mexicans in the previous war. I guess overconfidence in his troops at constantly humilating the Union forces.

[Darth Gojira]

I am southern but still .Don`t those idiots realise that every soldier who fought for the Confederate States of Amerioca commited an act of treason???The enlisted soldiers were given a blanket pardon I believe while the officers had to write the President for a pardon. Heres a few fun facts

1 Black people did fight ,of there won free will ,in the Confederate army

2 Every confederte state ,but South Carolina ,fielded regiments of Union volunteeers.

There were SOME blacks that voluntarily chose to fight for the Confederacy. But they were rare; the exception, not the norm.

Lee was a big proponent of enlisting blacks to fight, and I also think that he was anti-slavery, if memory serves.

Lee only joined the Confederacy when Virginia jumped ship.

[HemlockGrey]

Wasn't Hancock a Union general?

[Trytostaydead]

Wasn't Hancock a Union general?

Yes he was.

[Rob Wilson]

My apologies to anyone waiting for a reply to thier questions here, my computer died in the middle of writing a reply to Red Imperator on Tuesday night and I've only just replaced the PSU. I'm just heading out this morning, but I'll post up replies either this afternoon (depending on how things go at physio) or tomorrow (as I'm out this evening). I realise it's not as if people have been sitting here thinking "When will Rob reply? Will this torment of suspense never end?" , but I felt an explaination for suddenly vanishing mid-(fun)debate was called for.

Cheers.