California is the state closest to the breakeven point, the one that gets about as much from the federal government as it puts in. But by your logic, US bases and the weapons in them would belong to California if it seceded.
Even if that is true, that was 159 years ago, and I am more concerned about what people are doing right now.
Then stop posting about things that you neither care about or know about.
When I was growing up, I thought the Confederates were the monsters. It has taken me quite a long while to realize that perhaps they were beaten by the real monsters.
Doubtful. People who claim to have "discovered" that the Confederacy was terrible usually were more amenable to such thinking before their supposed conversions. I'm not inclined to find monsters in American history, but if there were monsters, not seeing the slaveowners as monsters is certainly troubling.
I know the ones threatening us today emerged from that war. The Fedzilla is way more powerful as a consequence of that war than it ever would have been had that war not been fought.
No. If you hadn't tried to secede over slavery, you might be able to play that card over some other issue. The government would be weaker if there hadn't been that secession attempt.
The federal government would also be weaker if the Confederacy had won the war or if they had left without a war, but the whole country would be so much weaker that people would be complaining here about the spinelessness of Lincoln for not putting up a fight.
That is a very simplistic and inaccurate way to judge California's debt responsibility.
California representatives and Senators voted to keep the Federal spending at ridiculously high levels. Their costs are commensurate with their support in running up the debt.
The nation currently owes something like 20 trillion in acknowledged debt, and about 150 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Again, mostly thanks to liberal states like New York and California. (Though California was not so Liberal in the past.)
Then stop posting about things that you neither care about or know about.
In order to solve a problem, one must know how one came to arrive at this condition.
I'm not inclined to find monsters in American history, but if there were monsters, not seeing the slaveowners as monsters is certainly troubling.
The difference here is that the North had slaveowners too, but did not care to do anything about the beam in their own eye. Therefore I don't give much credibility to their protestations of immorality on the part of others.
The immorality was a post hoc excuse to justify what they did, and what they did was to invade other people because they wanted to protect their money streams. And this is a significant point.
They didn't do what they did because of slavery. Indeed, they were bending over backwards to protect slavery just to keep control of that money engine and to protect their own markets.
Therefore they have no moral high ground from which to lecture the same Southern slaveholders they would have kept in business had they kept control of the money stream.
No. If you hadn't tried to secede over slavery, you might be able to play that card over some other issue.
Here we go again with this "slavery" business as if that had a f***ing thing to do with why the Federal government invaded these people.
Because you constantly focus on "slavery" as some significant point, you inherently assert that some other reason would have been justifiable.
Your only moral position is this: Disunion is illegal for any reason.
By making it only about slavery, you are instead arguing, "Disunion is only wrong when we don't like the reason."
The federal government would also be weaker if the Confederacy had won the war or if they had left without a war, but the whole country would be so much weaker that people would be complaining here about the spinelessness of Lincoln for not putting up a fight.
Weaker how? Unable to defend itself from foreign encroachment? I don't think it would have made any difference at all. When it comes to defense, the nation would have been as strong as it ever needed to be. The only difference is that the gargantuan federal government would serve only those purposes for which it was created rather than become some vast piggy bank for crony capitalists to raid, and for the rest of us to pay for.