Posted on 09/07/2010 12:43:35 PM PDT by gjmerits
The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination - that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at wolvesofliberty.com ...
“Pure libertarian garbage. You could of course then decide to ignore any laws at all. Prostitution on your land is ok, slavery ok, etc.....
Individual rights t oyou equates to anarchism. Pure libertarian garbage.”
I wasn’t the one that first proposed individual secession. But I don’t have a problem with it.
You ever see that episode of family guy where he secedes form the United States? He got cut off, but what really should have happen is his house should have been surrounded with a fence and people there to make sure he couldn’t reenter the united States.
We don’t grant Free entry to illegal aliens, or just any ambassador. They have to agree to our terms and the United States Federal Government has to first recognize them.
In short if an individual or family decided to seeded form their state and the United States, they would become prisoners in their own home.
Worse then that they would be subject to foreign assault or abuses.
And they couldn’t just rejoin the union any time thy want. remember to join our union we have to consent to your joining, and that consent can take a very long time. In the case of many States that can be 50 years or more.
Its a lot harder to get back in then it is to get out. And yet you will be completely cut off and under house arrest until you do..
So no i don’t think individual secession is a serous issue.
Why do you act as if you care at all about the Constitution when you want to secede from it?
Your argument is that the Constitution is false unless it allows you to disavow it. President Lincoln fought to uphold the Constitution. You side with those who opposed it. Plain and simple.
You claim that your right to trash the Consitution is inalienable and dosen’t need to be written but it is not. You have no right to disavow me or my rights. You have no rights to slaves.
Any outlaw of society could easily claim the same as you. In other words you believe in lawlessness. You have an Outlaw mentality of freedom. It is pathetic and has always failed but still persists due to the libertarian movement and the Marxists of America. That is the company you keep.
So your claim is that it is “my property’ then ‘my laws’. We the People have to accept your secession and let you live in your fenced off property according to any laws that you choose?
Like I said.... you have an Outlaw mentality and view of what freedom is that has always failed and will continue to fail.
Personally I would love to be the first to burst your bubble and bridge your world. I despise the Outlaw type who thinks that he has the right to overturn laws of the People.
And to put it a better way.... One who thinks that they can enslave people and ignore the laws of God.
The confederate democrats are todays libertarians. Still wrong in their attempts to trivialize freedom into being a faction of relative morals whereas they can do whatever they want on thier own land. Ignore the laws of human decency and ignore the laws of God. Slavery is ok, Prostitution is a right. etc.....
“Each of the original states voluntarily surrendered its authority to secede when it ratified the Articles of Confederation, and joined the Union. States formed under the Northwest Ordinance were created by the Federal government, and had authority to secede only under terms set by the Federal government. Which two cases cover all of the states, except for Texas and Vermont.”
How can the States voluntarily surrender their “authority to secede” when that authority was prohibited them by the British Empire who was still in 1777(the time of the verticals) waging war upon them to enforce their laws again secession?
Thats right according to the British secession from the British empire was illegal.
The 13 American Colonies all “ceded” that right in their original colonial compacts. I’m not even going to bother looking up all 13 compacts cause clearly according to you the same compact doesn’t need to specify such a secession.
Show me one example as to where the Founders claimed to fight to change British law? Never was the case. They revolted and did not fight to create a right to seceed under the rule of British law as you are claiming.
To form a more perfect Union.....
Not to amend British law as you claim.
No where was a right to majority rule within a state given the power to undermine the Union.
No, secession is not a right since it is not the same thing as revolution.
The States entered the union as States and agreed to the conditions in the Constitution.
What right was violated?
None.
Only that the Confederate States knew that their 'peculiar institution' was now being threatened by the growing anti-slavery movement in the North.
Madison did not think secession legal.
The ones who had a right to 'secede' were the millions of slaves being held against the tenets listed in the Declaration of Independence, tenets rejected by the Confederates in their own constitution.
So, what the Confederates were doing were revolting (which they won't admit) but with no just cause, as did the colonies had.
The Confederates had no just cause to secede or rebel.
And the cause of freedom was served when they were defeated.
The States joined a union, a more perfect union, that was to exist forever.
The Articles had that stated clearly.
The preamble and Article 1 established a perpetual union of the Thirteen Colonies under the style of the United States of America.
And the Constitution was to be a more perfect union, not less.
That is from the Articles of Confederation.
The Constitution was to be more more binding, not less.
And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said articles of confederation and perpetual union. Know Ye that we the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power and authority to us given for that purpose, do by these presents, in the name and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said articles of confederation and perpetual union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained: And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the united States in congress assembled, on all questions, which by the said confederation are submitted to them. And that the articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we respectively represent, and that the union shall be perpetual. (emphasis added)
“It’s when you move from holding conventions, voting on secession, and petitioning Congress for recognition of said secession, and begin shelling Federal troops and installations.
If the Confederacy had wanted a peaceful secession, they could have had one. They preferred war.”
You really need to brush up on your history, all the confederate states held specialized conventions to leave the union the same way they entered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_Secession
They then attempted to establish formal relations with the United States. The Lincoln Administration refused.
So If the majority should decide to ignore the limitations of the Constitution and conspire to oppress and exploit the minority. There can be no possible redress. We must surrender ourselfs as perpetually exploited and abused slaves to the greater majority thou the bonds of unending union.
If thats your idea of Life dangus? I’d rather die fighting to be free of it!
To live as one of your “minority” slaves is not a life, but a subjugation of man’s free spirit.
I am not one with the self-defined and self-restraining(or Not) collective. I am an Individual with certain inalienable rights, and when the collective chooses to disregard them rights I will no longer be bound to their authority. Nor will I cede to them the fruits of my labor or the inherits of my birth.
Instead should they attempt to enslave me with the oppressive chains of unconditional union i shall fight with every thing I have to retain or regain my freedom.
That is the American spirit!
We are not slaves to the collective, but individual free men.
Whats more prefect about the chains of unconditional union?
Is it perfection for the people or is it perfection for centralized politicians who now rule and exploit inseparably the people in their various states?
You know from first hand the great evils that result from the power of the majority to effectively impose whatever they want upon the minority.
You have seen Communism, class warfare, socialist exploitation of the productive for the lazy.
If what you say is true, that we must get the approval of the distant and abusive majority to withdraw from their control.(and thus ability to abuse us further) then we are royal and perpetually screwed!
The SLAVE MASTER WILL NOT RELINQUISH HIS SLAVES!
The abusers will not free the abused!
The majority will not stop exploiting the minority!
You should fear above all things the very possibility that you are right if only in practice. For your being right would necessarily the end of all FREE civilization to the absolute despotism of democracy.
There could not possibly be anything LESS prefect or more tyrannical then an unconditional union of any kind.
Did the USA cease to exist during the period 1861-1865? Quit the platitudes, you've been brainwashed.
That is just plain silly.
“There is nothing in the 10th amendement that allows secession.”
As you said yourself there is nothing in the Constitution that alows’s or prohibits the power of secession so if we are to simply read the 10th amendment:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Secession must be a reserved power of the States respectively, or to the people.
“Show me one example as to where the Founders claimed to fight to change British law? Never was the case.”
OMG did you even hear about the American Revolution when you were in school???
Ever hear of the Original Boston Tea party? Yes that was in protest of a British tax on Tea. Also known as a brittish LAW!
Specifically the law in question was known as the
* Tea Act 1773
What about the Boston Massacre in 1770?
That was a protest of the
* Townshend Act 1767.
But what really started to united the colinies against their centeral goverment was the
* Stamp Act 1765
That resulted in the Stamp Act congress which met on October 19, 1765.
If you want a larger list of acts protested this wikki page has a fairly extensive one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution#Controversial_British_legislation
Remember they didn’t leave secede from the British empire until 1776. Up until that point they were all Loyal British subjects.
“They revolted and did not fight to create a right to seceed under the rule of British law as you are claiming.”
LoL
Of course they didn’t fight to create the right to secede under British law. They were clearly in the minority in the British opinion. They just declared the right to be inalienable, and uncedeable despite British military objection.
Did you even read the American Deceleration of Independents?
“To form a more perfect Union.....”
To form a more prefect union, so your say the fact that they got away with their revolution made the British union less prefect?
Yes we need a stronger jail-master, you know someone who can REALLY shove his will down our throats! Not let us have a revolution to throw him off and make our own destiny independent of him, and those he serves.
*rolls eyes*
“No where was a right to majority rule within a state given the power to undermine the Union.”
Yet curiously they undermined the union of the British empire...
You see your problem here TheBigIf is that your thinking like a tyrant who automatically assumes power starts at the top and is distributed to the people.
Whereas we are thinking like republicans in believing that we the people INDIVIDUALLY are the ultimate sovereigns, and that our collective existents can only be a product of our individual constitutional consent to be governed.
You see god either gives the rights to us the individual or he gives it to some King to rule over us as a group of his ultimate defining. God does not define groups.
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