[presidio9]

You know what? I am not going to fight this fight with you, because it is irrelevant and it is exactly what someone else on this thread intended when he brought up the subject and his crappy favorite movie. Nobody denies that the Irish had a tough time in Europe and when they first got to this country. Does that change the fact that abolishing slavery was one of the best most important things that this country has ever done?

I sure that you are aware that I am one of the strongest advocates of Catholicism and Irish Catholics in particular on this list. But this whole issue is for another day.

[Alberta's Child]

Does that change the fact that abolishing slavery was one of the best most important things that this country has ever done?

That's a loaded question, because it presents the result without examining the process that was needed to reach it. Curing cancer would be a good thing, too. But if curing cancer requires us to do massive medical experiments on the population and in the process kill several million people who had no cancer to begin with, I would contend that the "cost" of the process far outweighed the "benefit" of the result.

Was a civil war the most effective means of ending slavery in the United States? I'm not taking a position one way or another -- I simply present it to illustrate that sometimes things aren't as clearly obvious as they might seem.