No one is saying that those who are defending the confederacy are defending slavery, what we are saying is that the confederacy is not the model for American ideals and should not be put forth as such.
What thread have you been reading?
a. Like Gianni said, what thread have you been reading?!
b. Moral inculpation of the South is justification of the South's coercion, which is the central issue here -- coercion of a State is coercion of the People. If you say the Confederacy was wrong and deserved to be bitch-slapped into line, then you are really saying the same thing about the People, under cover of an argument about moral right and wrong.
Either the People of the Southern States were free to be wrong in holding slaves, or they weren't free at all. THAT was the issue, capiche?
It could not be more blazingly obvious, that Abraham Lincoln employed military power to put the People down, in the vindication of his vision of an America without chattel slavery. He threw the baby out with the bath water. He created a society in which it has mattered less and less, from generation to generation, what the People think.
Point.