[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

We can argue forever about what the law should be and endlessly revise and amend it. But we do need some surety about what the law is at any given time. Who owns the property?

"Who owns the property?" That is a perfect example!

Congress and state legislatures argued for decades whether slaves were property. Some legislatures went one way, some another. Congress changed its view from time to time, banning the importation of slaves in 1808, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Kansas-Nebraska and popular sovereignty.

Then the Supreme Court stepped in with Dred Scot (1857), invalidated the Missouri Compromise and confusing and contradictory state laws and said a slave bought in the South was property everywhere, thereby imposing slavery on the North. That radicalized the abolitionist movement throughout the North and led directly to turning the country into a failed state for four years. It is not debate and democracy that makes failed states, but the fear that one group's views are going to be overridden by another's by force rather than persuasion.

[Cboldt]

It is not debate and democracy that makes failed states, but the fear that one group's views are going to be overridden by another's by force rather than persuasion.

Failed states are an artifact of force.