Substitute Coal in a Coal producing region, and ask yourself the same question. If the Federal government decided to ban coal, and if coal is essential to the economics of your society, your choices are to obey and become impoverished, or to defy them in an effort to maintain your economic system.
As I've said many times, abuse and tyranny is in the eye of the beholder, not in the eye of people who have no stake in the society that feels it is being abused.
The Declaration of Independence says, "To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world," and goes on to give a list of reasons why their feeling of oppression was based on facts that unbiased observers would recognize as justifying revolution and independence.
Substitute Coal in a Coal producing region, and ask yourself the same question. If the Federal government decided to ban coal, and if coal is essential to the economics of your society, your choices are to obey and become impoverished, or to defy them in an effort to maintain your economic system.
My choice is to work in Congress to change things. If that doesn't work, we'll negotiate a separation. But simply declaring that my state is out of the country and entitled to all federal property in our borders isn't the way to go. Why is that so hard to understand?
I merely pointed out that New Jersey was being a hypocrite, while South Carolina was not. New Jersey saw it as wrong, yet did not end it completely, while South Carolina didn't see it as wrong.
You see hypocrisy because it's what you're always looking for. Few New Jerseyans made a display of their moral rectitude. They saw a problem and took steps to fix it. South Carolinians found ways to love and defend and extol the problem -- and they did make a display of that. New Jerseyans were quiet, low-key, and unemotional about fixing something that they didn't like. They weren't hypocrites because they weren't flaunting any kind of moral superiority.