Guantanamo, the Panama Canal Zone, Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, West Berlin? Gibraltar, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Falklands?
And of course, for the men in the fort and millions more back home, Charleston was still a part of our country.
But beyond that, you're defending stupidity and viciousness.
Someone who ever truly thought of himself as an American, as a citizen of the United States, wouldn't be such a bastard towards what was or his own country.
Someone who still had pleasant memories of what it meant to be an American wouldn't back what was or had been one's own country into a corner.
I'm not talking about you here or anybody else alive today. When I say "somebody," I'm referring to the rebel leaders of the 1860s.
But of course, those were crazy times and they brought out the craziness, and the sheer cussedness in people. To have acted thoughtfully and with restraint would have been difficult for those in power. But to make that kind of savage stupidity the norm would be a mistake.
None of these forts you mention represents a comparable analogy. Name a fort occupied by Americans in Canada or Mexico. That would be a lot closer to the same circumstance.
And of course, for the men in the fort and millions more back home, Charleston was still a part of our country.
Just as the Colonies were still part of Britain.
But beyond that, you're defending stupidity and viciousness.
So are you, you just don't realize it. What's more, it's the stupidity and viciousness which YOU are defending that is causing us problems today. Don't think the precedent which Lincoln set has not come back to bite us.
Suspension of Habeas Corpus? Arresting the legislature of Maryland? Forced Impressment of Immigrants into the army? Suppression of protesters with military force in New York and Chicago? The Establishment of the Federal Uber alles philosophy of Government? Lincoln was even going to let them keep slavery if they would simply quit fighting! How's that for a principled stance?
Lincoln was a very closer flirtation with a dictatorship. Many people simply do not recognize how close we came, and how his actions set the stage for future abuses.
Someone who still had pleasant memories of what it meant to be an American wouldn't back what was or had been one's own country into a corner.
I'm not talking about you here or anybody else alive today. When I say "somebody," I'm referring to the rebel leaders of the 1860s.
Or the Founders of 1776. I think they answered with this.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Somehow those Confederates got the notion that they were entitled to independence from a government in which they no longer believed. They must have been reading seditious literature from about four score years in the past.
But of course, those were crazy times and they brought out the craziness, and the sheer cussedness in people. To have acted thoughtfully and with restraint would have been difficult for those in power. But to make that kind of savage stupidity the norm would be a mistake.
The Civil war was a great Tragedy. We are not shed of it's consequences yet. A lot of people felt that the bloodshed was the just wages of slavery. Perhaps it could not have been eradicated in any other way, but it seems such a loss to have had it play out the way it did. The Federal legacy from it is now oppressing us today.