Unlike many people I have discuss/argued this topic with who, when you scratch the surface, it really boils down to racism on the part of the person arguing for the lost cause.
I know it is hard to judge people from just their writings but I have never gotten the feeling/sense/vibe from your postings that racism has anything to do with that."
DiogenesLamp: "I don't think many, if any, who argue that Southern secession was legal are motivated by racism.
I think most argue from other perspectives."
Nobody on Free Republic defends slavery or racism, period.
But neither do we condemn people who, in all good faith, followed the law as they understood it and tried to live good lives according to moral values they learned in church.
The debates here -- even when heated & personal -- are always on a higher plain: what did those old laws say, what did our Founders' really intend?
And the fact that we focus here on our different understandings should never obscure the much larger fact that we are in nearly unanimous agreement on today's politics, beginning with our deep appreciation for President Trump.
DiogenesLamp: "Speaking for myself, I never used to think about this issue until I saw California and New York getting crazier and crazier, and this has led me to feel like a member of a chain gang that is chained to a batsh*t crazy psychopath.
California frightens me.
New York frightens me.
They have great economic power coupled with batsh*t crazy ideas, not the least of which is unapologetic support for socialism."
First, see my post #1,415 showing the US largest megalopolis regions -- number one is the Great Lakes region.
Today I live in central Pennsylvania, but I largely grew up in California, one of my daughters lives there now, and I lived many years in upstate New York -- Jack Kemp was my congressman.
Some of my daughters lived for years in New York City, were there on 9/11, helped with the recovery.
I've also lived near Washington, DC, as a young man I worked as a guard at the Library of Congress, and one of my daughters worked near the Pentagon on 9/11.
All of those places are full of many good people -- for example the California I remember elected Ronald Reagan governor and helped elect him president.
Of course, things are different now, but not that different, and most Americans can still respond to good leadership, which thankfully we do seem to have.
DiogenesLamp: "On what basis is the claim made that states don't have a right to secede?
Did not the Declaration of Independence guarantee exactly this right?
So my thinking has gone.
I know not how many others argue for secession on the basis of crazy states motivating them to want free, but I would say a lot of people might be motivated by being descendant from the States or people being discussed.
I think others, such as Ohioan, are deep natural law thinkers, and see the conflict from a more objective perspective."
DiogenesLamp's problem here, as elsewhere, is that pure wishful thinking has convinced him of a Big Lie -- that our Founders were not just champions of liberty, but also of libertarianism and were libertines on the subject of "secession".
They were nothing of the sort.
And one proof of it is that whenever any Founder (i.e., Aaron Burr) tried to apply DiogenesLamp's "unlimited right of secession", the others came together to defeat him.
Some of our thought-leaders (i.e., Mark Levin) have advocated a new Constitutional Convention to address many issues, but most people shy away on the solid grounds that such a convention is only likely to unleash the political forces of national & international socialistic totalitarianism -- no thanks!
Better to fight it out day by day in the political trenches, WWI style, rather than seek out a grand end-run Constitutional maneuver which could just as well leave us, like (to pick one example) 1914 Germans -- just short of their goal (Paris) and so doomed to ultimate defeat.
DiogenesLamp: "With the slave states remaining part of England, England would most assuredly not have abolished slavery in 1833."
This hypothetical assumes slave-states with representation and votes in Britain's Parliament, but if so they would be a small minority, much smaller than in the US Congress and so allied with other parties.
Such alliances may have delayed abolition, or cut it up into small steps over time, but abolition would not have destroyed the US economy any more in 1833 than it did after 1865.
People would adjust and go on with life.