Just as in the Arab-Israeli debate, there those who want to know the truth and discuss it... unfortunately, the argument has been overrun by those who are agenda driven and the agenda (and not truth) is what it is at stake. It is the agenda that causes some to stalk these Civil War threads like junk yard dogs tearing away at anyone and anything that might besmirch the agenda.
There are Freepers on both sides who do not do this but there are Freepers on both sides who do.
Many Freepers have come to the thread believing that this would be a good place to discuss the war... only to be driven away by the antics of the few. I wonder why these Freepers are content to have the same argument countless times with the same Amen corner.
Your mini-opus was wonderful.
Just a thought, it seems like it's the best-equipped posters who fight the hardest, and it occurred to me to wonder if that observation correlates validly with something else I've observed, which is that with regards to old social issues and political differences with e.g. Mexico, it is the most comfortable and well-educated Mexicans who resent the U.S. and its culture the most, calling it "racist" and other things -- when Mexicans themselves used to inscribe people's exact admixture of blood in excimiating degree on their baptismal certificates, fixing their places in society forever. And they did this for centuries before the United States even existed. This charge of "racism" surfaces very often, and very hypocritically. But it subserves a further agenda which is driven by a smoldering resentment at the top, not the bottom, of Mexican society, toward gringos and their society.
Suggesting that it's educated people who are the most trouble and start the most fights.