Argumentum ad populum. I think people have been misinformed about the war since 1861, and even more so 150 years later. I think most modern people lack the necessary cognitive capabilities to comprehend the zeitgeist of that time period, and always try to evaluate it based on what are the modern herd impression.
They are also unaware of how so many things that are a result of that war, and continue to negatively impact society today. Illegal Immigration, Abortion, Government's Anti-Religious policies, and Gay Marriage can all be traced back to the aftermath of that war.
In a sense, we might just as well be talking about the Battle of Culloden.
Funny you should mention that, because I have seen it argued in more than one place that the Civil war was really just a continuation of that and previous wars between the Scots and the English.
Nobody at FR was around in the 1860's and nobody at FR has ever even known anybody who was around in the 1860's. Surely, some of us have ancestors who were around, but we didn't know any of them.
I knew a man who's grandfather fought in the Civil war, but I have not seen him for awhile now. He was more than middle aged in the 1990s, and I suspect he is no longer around.
I really think that most of the people who speak favorably about secession do so in large part because they see in secession some sort of answer to their frustrations about life in America now.
Not just frustrations, but concern that the economic path we are on will only end in tragedy. When chained to a mob that cannot comprehend that you can't have an everlasting spending party, one becomes desperate to disassociate from such individuals who will obviously come to ruin at some point.
The problem is that when they make their pitch for secession they allow themselves to get all tangled up with the controversies surrounding the secessions of the 1860's
Allow? When it is the first thing out of the mouths of people to whom the subject is broached, what do you suggest can be used to steer the conversation back on track? It's not that people allow themselves to get tangled up in the slavery issue, it's that any discussion of secession cannot be considered rationally by the team cheerleaders for the Union. They have a religious fervor regarding the question of separating from the Union. To allow such a thing is tantamount to saying their "team" was in the wrong, and they simply love their team, and will admit no such thing under any circumstances.
They have bought in to the belief that Separation is impossible, and if you disagree, you must be a supporter of Slavery, and therefore your opinion need not be respected.
was irrelevant (despite what the secessionists back then claimed) and that the USA is just some sort of a joint venture of states, etc.
It was very relevant to the economics and financial assets of the South, but it was completely irrelevant to whether or not they had a right to leave; A distinction which is apparently too subtle for many people to grasp.
Again, if they had a right to leave, their reasons for doing so are irrelevant. If they did not have a right to leave, then no reason is sufficient, and is also therefore irrelevant.
The only relevant question is "Did they have a right to leave?"
The interesting question for me is why some of these folks find that life in the USA seems so intolerable.
It is not that it is currently intolerable, it is that we can see conditions approaching during which it will become increasingly intolerable. We can see the trends, and we very much fear where they are leading.
I have a very good track record for being accurate. My best Friend in High School is Black, and he and I used to argue about things all the time. He always said I was exaggerating the danger, and none of the stuff I worried about would ever happen. (This was decades ago.)
He called me up back around 2005, and told me I was absolutely right about everything I said would happen. He was astonished that so many things he thought impossible, turned out just the way I said they would.
I just look which direction things are going, and extrapolate while assuming the worst. People generally try to follow the easy path, and that always helps with predictions.
Obviously, we all have some good reasons to criticize this or that, but all in all this country seems to me a paradise compared to most places in the world.
Places in the World who's ideas and cultures we have been adopting, and with obvious and predictable consequences of becoming more like them.
Back in 2008 I joked that "African Prince Obama will do for the US what African leaders have been doing for African nations for quite awhile now." He is not American in culture, he is Marxist/African in his World View, and he cannot improve America, he can only make it look more like Kenya, or more accurately Rhodesia.
I feel very lucky to have been born here.
Amen. Still the best nation in the world, but working mightily to become like the others.
Some of us would rather jump ship before this happens.
Hmmmmm... now there's an interesting Latin term.
DiogenesLamp: "I think people have been misinformed about the war since 1861, and even more so 150 years later.
I think most modern people lack the necessary cognitive capabilities to comprehend the zeitgeist of that time period, and always try to evaluate it based on what are the modern herd impression."
But FRiend, you are amongst the most misinformed, and stubbornly resistant to truth of any poster on Free Republic.
You have a set of ideas that you will not be budged from, regardless of how false they are shown to be.
DiogenesLamp: "They are also unaware of how so many things that are a result of that war, and continue to negatively impact society today.
Illegal Immigration, Abortion, Government's Anti-Religious policies, and Gay Marriage can all be traced back to the aftermath of that war."
Now there is a logical fallacy with an official Latin name: Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Surely as somebody eager to toss out terms like "Argumentum ad populum" you are most familiar with the fallacy of Post hoc ergo propter hoc?
Your hand-waving aside, there there is no proof that the Civil War itself had anything to do with the events you so decry.
DiogenesLamp: "Not just frustrations, but concern that the economic path we are on will only end in tragedy.
When chained to a mob that cannot comprehend that you can't have an everlasting spending party, one becomes desperate to disassociate from such individuals who will obviously come to ruin at some point."
And yet virtually everyone posting on Free Republic agrees with those sentiments, at least up to a point.
Still, most of us feel no need to jump from there to calling "Ape" Lincoln and his "Black Republicans" the heart and soul of evil, indeed just the opposite.
We see Lincoln and the Republicans as a great example of how the greatest of crises can be met and brought eventually to a better end.
We blame Jefferson Davis for starting the war and credit Lincoln for winning it.
DiogenesLamp: "It's not that people allow themselves to get tangled up in the slavery issue, it's that any discussion of secession cannot be considered rationally by the team cheerleaders for the Union.
They have a religious fervor regarding the question of separating from the Union.
To allow such a thing is tantamount to saying their "team" was in the wrong, and they simply love their team, and will admit no such thing under any circumstances."
But not a word of that is true, as we have endlessly tried to point out, but you won't listen.
Indeed, you can't listen, because listening is not part our you psychological makeup, is it?
You are not here to listen, you are here to propagandize, so just ignore everything else.
The fact is that everyone here understands that slavery was the law of the land, in 1860 in the South.
We also know that slavery was the core reason for their secession, and nothing you claim can change that.
But nearly everyone here disputes your claim that we believe lawful, peaceful secession is constitutionally impossible.
We don't.
We think it's entirely possible if done correctly, as our Founders intended -- by mutual consent of Congress, or by material "breach of compact."
But there is no chance today that a majority of citizens of any state would vote for a lawful secession, much less a repeat of the unlawful secessions of 1860 and 1861.
DiogenesLamp: "They have bought in to the belief that Separation is impossible, and if you disagree, you must be a supporter of Slavery, and therefore your opinion need not be respected."
Not true, as explained above.
DiogenesLamp: "It was very relevant to the economics and financial assets of the South, but it was completely irrelevant to whether or not they had a right to leave;
A distinction which is apparently too subtle for many people to grasp."
Despite your exalted self-opinion, your own mind is in no way "subtle" or even supple -- you utterly fail to grasp what has been endlessly explained.
So here it is, as simple as simple can get: Civil War did not begin because of slavery or tariffs, Civil War did not begin because of secession, Civil War did not begin because of the new Confederacy.
Civil War only began after the new Confederacy first provoked, then started and formally declared war, while sending military aid to pro-Confederates in Union Missouri.
So how hard can that be to grasp?
Once you grasp that, your whole problem goes away, and you can reject the example of the Confederacy as being just stupidity in motion, while defending the possibility that a lawful secession could still be constitutional.
So what exactly is your problem with that?