Taxes are the price one pays to live in a civilized society. However the power to tax is also the power to destroy. And you Rebs just don’t see what a Southern victory would have done to this nation.
Taxes within some reasonable constraint are necessary and acceptable, but we are way beyond what ought to be considered reasonable and acceptable.
My position is that the government should never need more than 10% of your income, because God doesn't even ask for more than that.
And you Rebs just don’t see what a Southern victory would have done to this nation.
Letting them go in peace would have possibly been the greater good. It would have saved the lives of nearly a million people, though I can see how it might have turned out worse too.
It's possible the wealthy elite of New York would have simply been replaced by the wealthy elite of Richmond, or Montgomery, or wherever. They may have ruled over us with just as much arrogance as New York and Washington DC do today.
But I think we would have avoided WWI, and probably millions of other people would have not died as a result of all the calamity WWI caused.