When you assert a general principle, people will apply it as a general principle. The Declaration speaks of "one people" dissolving "political bands which have connected them with another." It does not restrict that right to states, or provinces or politically organized colonies. It restricts it to a minimum size to which a reasonable person can recognize as "one people." The boundaries are fuzzy around the edges, but in the case of the Southern states, we are way past the area of fuzzy boundaries on this general principle. As they themselves pointed out, they represented four times the population of the original thirteen colonies.
And I am not going to discuss the bases in California in comparison to a pile of rocks in the middle of an estuary upon which someone put some cannons.
It restricts it to a minimum size to which a reasonable person can recognize as "one people." The boundaries are fuzzy around the edges, but in the case of the Southern states, we are way past the area of fuzzy boundaries on this general principle.
So it's only size that matters. Bad news for Kosovars, Bosnians, East Timorese, and Andorrans.
As they themselves pointed out, they represented four times the population of the original thirteen colonies.
Turn that around. Dissident parts of states in 1860 had the population of whole colonies in 1776. What about their rights.
And I am not going to discuss the bases in California in comparison to a pile of rocks in the middle of an estuary upon which someone put some cannons.
Well, we are all sorry Lincoln didn't have battleships, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, but the contradiction is glaring and impossible to ignore.
You put power before the principles you claim to believe?
Your friends would call that Lincolnesque.
But you did answer the question, even in a way that discredits what you have been writing for years.
I imagined you would be like a robot in a Sixties TV series that starts to spark and smoke when confronted with a logical contradiction.
In this case, it's you who have contradicted everything you have claimed to believe.