[Robert_Paulson2]

Slavery was the MORAL agent used by lincoln to justify an immoral level of federalism... and the cost of tens of thousands of American lives.

Today has dozens of such MORAL agents, being used to raise the level of federalism to God status... the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on guns, the war on deadbeats, even the war on terror...

We have to learn to live with it. In this day in age a single state could not stand against the concentrated efforts of groups like Al Queda or radical Islamism...

The technology of assymetrical war has necessitated a rather unpleasant form of Big Brotherism that can only get worse... if we are to survive. The genie it seems is clearly out of the bottle.

In the final analysis we have Lincoln to thank that THIS day in historical context has not taken us unawares or unprepared...
Survival of the species, in some ways may be dependent on our ability to let our governmental structures evolve to meet the instantaneous threats of the emerging moments...

Technology and our cultural context have made a degree of federal socialism a matter of life and death. I don't like it. It is reality... we must adapt to what was set in motion and then in concrete, in our own civil war. In which I lost family members on both sides, at missionary ridge...

[muir_redwoods]

It's possibly true that we need to band together to see to our common defense (My state of Connecticut does, however, have it's own nuclear submarine factory, two helicopter factories. Pratt & Whitney Jet engines and Colt firearms and half dozen other firearm mfgs. so we could put up a respectable struggle)but we don't need a federal government telling us what to serve in the school cafeterias, where and how to build our roads and how we can sell the tobacco we grow here. Lincoln's refusal to allow the legitimate right every state has to secession was a giant step toward the present state where the feds seek to control more and more of our lives.