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A purely subjective right is no right at all. If you own a house you have a right to move in. If you only think you own a house, you don't. What you are entitled to doesn't depend on your subjective feelings. One has to take facts and objective standards into account.

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.

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.

At a time when the only non-monarchy in the world was in Switzerland, what possible argument could persuade monarchists that overthrow of the King is justified?

Their response would have been "The King abused you? So? "

My choice is to work in Congress to change things. If that doesn't work, we'll negotiate a separation.

And Congress than tells you, "No. Just die already." Then what?

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?

Since the purpose of the "federal property" was the protection of the geographical areas around it, the function for which it was ceded was no longer valid. As a matter of fact I recall reading a discussion among Lincoln's cabinet of what to do with Anderson's men if the South allowed fort Sumter to be provisioned. One of them was actually afraid of the possibility their resupply mission would succeed.

The point being that they would have a bunch of men in a fort serving no useful purpose whatsoever, and it would become embarrassing.

They weren't hypocrites because they weren't flaunting any kind of moral superiority.

To the contrary. I've read plenty of letters/editorials, not necessarily from New Jersey, but from Northern "free" states, roundly condemning and criticizing anyone who hadn't seen the moral enlightenment that they themselves have grasped.

It was as if they were preaching about Gay wedding cakes or some such.

No, the arrogant smug morality protruding from the "morally superior" states was probably a very large part of why the South simply didn't want to be connected with them anymore.

And Lo and Behold, the North East is still morally preaching at us about how wicked we are as human beings for not embracing gay marriage, Muslim savages, and abortion.

Same sh*t, different century.