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I agree with this 100%. The squeaky wheel has always gotten the grease, and the "media" today is so hungry for anything that will set off an "internet firestorm" of controversy that it will end up getting waaaaay more coverage than it actually deserves. You and I could get a few of our best friends together and go march on city hall with picket signs demanding that the city paint the grass in city park orange, and I guarentee it will find it's way onto many Facebook walls and en d of being tweeted and retweeted, and before long it gets reported on in an opinioin piece on Yahoo news by some of these so called media blog sites like the Huffington Post or The Blaze or Shine. It's just a shame that so many young people actually think of this crap as news. HEAVY SIGH.
As for the secession idiots, well, their states won't be seceeding, but I say if they don't like living in the US, revoke their citizenship and deport them all to some wonderful oasis of paradise like Somalia for a few years and then see what they think of the good ols US of A.
I agree with much of the news being hype. And they run the same story over and over while having nothing new to say.
The civil war was fought for many reasons. The main ones being that the South felt it was being used as a cash cow to fund industry in the North. They felt they were paying an unfair proportion of taxes compared to what they used. They felt the North was continually trying to marginalize their political power. They felt very different culturally than the North. The Souths economy was built on slavery while a large portion of the North was fighting to ban it.
Slavery was the issue that many in the North felt gave them the moral superiority and justification for their actions. For some it was a moral and just cause. For some it was a vehicle to use to disguise their true agenda. For example there were many Northern politicians who were more concerned about concentrating political and financial power in the North and joined the anti-slavery movement to get there. Like politicians do today with modern causes.
Was the Civil War about slavery...Yes. It wasn't the main cause but it tainted every argument the South had for justification in succession.
Lincoln had a singular focus. To keep the Union intact at any cost. The man didn't care whether or not he freed a single slave, just so long as the Union was preserved. He accomplished it, but he trashed the constitution to do it. He arrested politicians to stop them from voting to ensure the passage or defeat of bills. He used the government to force newspapers that printed dissenting opinions out of business. He arrested judges if they ruled against his policies. He was a true tyrant, and possibly one of the worst presidents we have ever elected. Was a peaceful reconciliation possible? I dunno but he refused to even consider that option and immediately turned to the iron fist.
The winner writes the history, therefore we now have this grand tale of the North being the white knights that road down to defeat the immoral South and free the the slaves. A tale where Lincoln is the great emancipator that freed the slaves and with a heavy heart elected to go to war to save the country.
All that said, I think the whole reconstruction would have went a lot better for the South if Lincoln was still alive for it.
FYI, Prior to the civil war there were more free blacks living in the South than in the North. There is this huge misconception that there was this imaginary line splitting the country where any black below it was a slave and escape meant a harrowing flight north being hunted every step by hillbilly, redneck racists. With the help of the occasional white family sympathetic to their plight, who were subsequently killed by the hunters, they finally manage to cross the line into the North where everyone was waiting with open arms to welcome them into a heavenly utopia of freedom and equality.
Dallas itself yes but certainly not DFW metroplex as a whole.
In many cases, the "Union" re-enactors are southerners dressed in Union uniforms just so the Confederate units have someone to fight. I once saw a Mississippi unit at the National Civil War Museum demonstrating by themselves with no corresponding Union re-enactors. Kind of pathetic looking actually.
Federally recognized tribes are domestic dependent nations so technically they are sovereign. As such their actions aren't regarded as secession. As per the image below, it is pretty clear where California would be split (San Luis Obispo - San Bernardino). California was never intended to be one state, it was supposed to be Alta California Norte and Alta California Sur. Admitting it as one state in 1850 prevented the formation of a slaveholding state with an outlet to (or at least coastline on) the Pacific. All of this was part of the Compromise of 1850.
Are you saying the Indian tribal lands have an undisputed right to sucede if they want to ?
Last edited by vanguardisle; 04-19-2014 at 05:07 PM..
Isn't California having a lot of financial and unemployment problems currently ?
The north is doing quite well. The south's got some of the worst unemployment in the US. That's why I had to laugh about nightbird47's claim about Northern California needing Southern California's money, because Southern California has no money,
Real easy. The South could have argued the right to secede through the federal courts (but I deeply suspect that wasn't going to go anywhere), they could have proposed a constitutional amendment, or they could have issued a call for a constitutional convention and then the nation could have voted to keep or dismantle the union. Frankly, I have a sneaking suspicion that at the time most of the north would have said goodbye and good riddance.
they could have issued a call for a constitutional convention and then the nation could have voted to keep or dismantle the union. .
I think that the above would have been the closest thing to a proper legal process. The compact among the states was created by a convention followed by a ratification vote of all the involved states. To undo the compact, reversing that process makes sense. You would not need a convention, Congress could have authored a proposed amendment spelling out the right of secession and submitted it to all the states for ratification. If two thirds of the states embraced it, the states that wished to depart the union would be free to follow whatever process was spelled out in the amendment.
Legal exit, no war.
Of course the odds of such an amendment getting through Congress, much less passing two thirds ratification, were not good. Which is why the South never contemplated taking that route. Instead they invented their own unilateral process, called it legal and wound up suffering the consequences.
The splits in California have largely been over regional culture. Historically its been north south. The first was just a few years after becoming a state. The people in norcal don't like the taxes for supporting socal and the ones in socal don't like paying for the whole state. They really do feel like two states, but are interdependent. The water in norcal supports socal. The money in socal supports norcal.
The most recent was a pick of counties sort of east west. The eastern side which was where the proposal came from, did not include Los Angeles, San Diego or most of Orarnge. They left the poorest counties on the east to join together. I have a feeling some losangelenos would say fine, DO it already.
Most of the time there are differing parts, either or both socially and politically, and the residents long to get their full way and don't consider that they are not going to reap any real benefit from it.
Very true. It seems that more and more it's the poor areas that want to bolt from the rich ones. This is always the divide in NYS, too. Idiot pols from the Upstate area, which would be an economic basket case at least rivalling West Virginia and Mississippi regularly rant about how Upstate is "supporting NYC" ... like really.
Periodically, western Nebraskan pols agitate for bolting from Lincoln and Omaha because they resent that their cows can vote any more.
Most recently some crackpots from several dirt poor rural counties in Colorado tried to get a referendum going to secede from Denver and the rest of the Front Range area. They couldn't even muster a majority among their own residents.
Are you saying the Indian tribal lands have an undisputed right to sucede if they want to ?
Not from the US any more than any state has. That's already been settled when the various tribes surrendered back in the 1870s and 1880s.
What Native Americans argue is that they are "sovereign nations" when dealing with the states that their reservations are located in, so state laws generally don't apply to them, only federal law and treaty law. Consequently, states can't prevent Indian casinos nor can they restrict Native Americans from traditional fishing rights etc. This is complicated in some eastern states like NY because the states themselves made treaties with some tribes, which soured relations between the various Iroquois tribes and NYS. This has been especially a problem with the Senecas in NYS as one of the state's treaties with the Senecas exempted them from taxation.
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