Who Would You Have Supported In the American Civil War

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Me encanta como Benito Juárez y quien lo apoya,

Ya lo creo que debe ser y quien lo apoyaba

(Juárez está muerto, ¿no?)

I don't actually speak Spanish. Lo siento, mama.

[Leftbehind]

I am a modern man. I like [...]flexible labor markets

Nowt screams modernity like recreating poverty wages and making workers utterly at the mercy of business.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I am a modern man. I like [...]flexible labor markets

Nowt screams modernity like recreating poverty wages and making workers utterly at the mercy of business.

Shut up and eat your big mac, prole.

(I'm clearly being somewhat facetious, this is an internet forum and I am an avid leftist raised by a blue collar father. I am willing to throw stones at management even though I attend a liberal arts college overpopulated with the cosmopolitan, upper class/upper middle class elite)

[angus]

Me encanta como Benito Juárez y quien lo apoya,

Ya lo creo que debe ser y quien lo apoyaba

(Juárez está muerto, ¿no?)

I don't actually speak Spanish. Lo siento, mama.

vale.  arurú mi amor 

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Me encanta como Benito Juárez y quien lo apoya,

Ya lo creo que debe ser y quien lo apoyaba

(Juárez está muerto, ¿no?)

I don't actually speak Spanish. Lo siento, mama.

vale.  arurú mi amor 

Stop mom, we're in public!!! *yells english expletive loudly to prove identification with america*

[Marokai Backbeat]

[Mopsus]

I'd easily side with my fellow Pole.

There's something ironic about a former aristocrat becoming an activist in the Republican Party

[politicallefty]

I would've supported the Union, but in a more limited war. The Confederacy attacked the Union. As despicable and disgusting as its motives were and the regime was, I do believe the Confederacy had a right to secede. It did not, however, have a right to attack the remaining United States of America. The Union had every right to defend its sovereign territory.

Insofar as the post-war aftermath goes, I would have been firmly in the Radical Republican camp.

[TNF]

I would've supported the Union, but in a more limited war. The Confederacy attacked the Union. As despicable and disgusting as its motives were and the regime was, I do believe the Confederacy had a right to secede. It did not, however, have a right to attack the remaining United States of America. The Union had every right to defend its sovereign territory.

Insofar as the post-war aftermath goes, I would have been firmly in the Radical Republican camp.

Why? Why do people believe that a bunch of butthurt aristocrats had the right to try and quit the country?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I would've supported the Union, but in a more limited war. The Confederacy attacked the Union. As despicable and disgusting as its motives were and the regime was, I do believe the Confederacy had a right to secede. It did not, however, have a right to attack the remaining United States of America. The Union had every right to defend its sovereign territory.

Insofar as the post-war aftermath goes, I would have been firmly in the Radical Republican camp.

Why? Why do people believe that a bunch of butthurt aristocrats had the right to try and quit the country?

Why do people believe that they did not?  The Constitution is silent on the issue and trying to claim support from the Articles on the idea of a perpetual union is preposterous given that the method of ratification of the Constitution was totally illegal under the Articles.

If only Governor Pickens hadn't been such a penny-pinching idiot there would have been no Fort Sumter.  (The Union garrison in Charleston had originally been located in the indefensible Fort Moultrie.  Pickens could have had South Carolina troops occupy the unfinished Fort Sumter before Major Anderson moved his troops, but he declined because he wanted the workmen there to stay on the Federal payroll for the moment.)

[Antonio the Sixth]

Truth is, I don't really care about whether States have a right to secede (they clearly don't have it, anyway, since any nation is founded on the basic premise that its parts can't split whenever they want to). A State that attempts to secede in order to perpetuate the existence of slavery shouldn't be let to secede, EVEN if it juridically had the right to. If the constitution had said otherwise, then f**k the constitution.

[TNF]

Truth is, I don't really care about whether States have a right to secede (they clearly don't have it, anyway, since any nation is founded on the basic premise that its parts can't split whenever they want to). A State that attempts to secede in order to perpetuate the existence of slavery shouldn't be let to secede, EVEN if it juridically had the right to. If the constitution had said otherwise, then f**k the constitution.

This kind of goes without saying. The American Constitution is terrible and needs to be re-done.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Truth is, I don't really care about whether States have a right to secede (they clearly don't have it, anyway, since any nation is founded on the basic premise that its parts can't split whenever they want to). A State that attempts to secede in order to perpetuate the existence of slavery shouldn't be let to secede, EVEN if it juridically had the right to. If the constitution had said otherwise, then f**k the constitution.

Even though our country was founded on the idea that it could split itself from Britain because we wanted to?........

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Truth is, I don't really care about whether States have a right to secede (they clearly don't have it, anyway, since any nation is founded on the basic premise that its parts can't split whenever they want to). A State that attempts to secede in order to perpetuate the existence of slavery shouldn't be let to secede, EVEN if it juridically had the right to. If the constitution had said otherwise, then f**k the constitution.

Even though our country was founded on the idea that it could split itself from Britain because we wanted to?........

Read Rousseau and get back to me:

"AS long as several men assembled together consider themselves as a single body, they have only one will which is directed towards their common preservation and general well-being. Then, all the animating forces of the state are vigorous and simple, and its principles are clear and luminous; it has no incompatible or conflicting interests; the common good makes itself so manifestly evident that only common sense is needed to discern it...
However, when the social tie begins to slacken and the state to weaken, when particular interests begin to make themselves felt and sectional societies begin to exert an influence over the greater society, the common interest then becomes corrupted and meets opposition, voting is no longer unanimous; the general will is no longer the will of all; contradictions and disputes arises, and even the best opinion is not allowed to prevail unchallenged"

[angus]

Read Rousseau and get back to me:

Lisez-vous français aussi?  Français et espagnol!  Un homme du monde, n'est-ce pas?

Yeah, there's deep irony in saying "fcuk the constitution" in the same breath as defending the Republicans' successful attempt to squelch the rebellion.  I'd agree with that.

You gotta wonder, WTF are they teaching the kids in school, nowadays?  I'm no traditionalist--yes, I admire Lincoln and his big dick, and even though I think he was a tyrant who suspended habeus corpus, I still think the Republicans were in the right; however, I generally appreciate the irreverent--okay, I'm no traditionalist, per se, if one is going to debate, then one should at least act like he knows what he is talking about.  

As for you, I think you're probably more of a progressive at heart.  Sadly, I'm the same way.  Of course, you want to be a radical revolutionary.  Your level of commitment to both liberty and equality is tantamount to that of the revolutionary, but your recognition of other principles makes you hesitate.  Your lifestyle simply cannot accommodate the commitments of a full-time insurrectionist, even though you're pretty keen to lend your spare time to all kinds of subversive behavior.  You may try to model alternative ways of living, but in the end you have neither the time nor the inclination to put your efforts and fortune into the cause.  For this reason, you're really not a radical, but rather a progressive.  I can appreciate that.  It's nothing to be ashamed of, but it's really nothing to brag about either.

So go on quoting Rousseau, or the English translations thereof, but admit to yourself that you enjoy your three-car garage with remote-control openers and the quiet suburban neighborhood and the weekly private piano lessons for your child and the fact that you don't support Obamacare and the whole PPACA fiasco precisely because you're better off without it.  You can still support same-sex marriage and gay rights and abortion rights.  It's okay.  That's what I do.  But let's be honest with ourselves.  All things considered, we got it pretty good.  I won't tell you not to rock the boat too much, because I know that deep in your heart you know that you won't.  Good for you.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

random old man on the internet has a much deeper understanding of my value system than people i know in real life, weird.

keep in mind they don't teach kids about europe in public school, the more coherent parts of my political philosophy are products of the canon promoted by the liberal arts tradition.

I think our constitution is a deeply flawed product that reflects the classical liberal tradition of disregarding republican ideals in favor of accumulating power under the visage of upholding "god-given liberties" or whatever. That doesn't mean you can just stop existing within its framework and throw a reactionary temper tantrum when the deliberate impediments to popular change cease to be sufficient.

Part of the reason I like the Union has to do with my fetish for a particular period of American history from 1850 to 1920: the time when America was a rapidly developing, multifaceted nation of many tongues and with no coherent culture. The Union's obvious trajectory and the program of Lincoln's Party presaged this nation so I'm inclined to identify with it. I think my love of this era is more of an aesthetic appreciation than anything else but I suppose embedded within that is a love of developing radical labor movements and the like.

[angus]

keep in mind they don't teach kids about europe in public school, the more coherent parts of my political philosophy are products of the canon promoted by the liberal arts tradition.

sure they do.  It's a collection of islands and peninsulas hanging off the Asian continent, and it gets to be called a continent for historical reasons or whatever.  For all its faults, I think our school system gives the average gringo that much information.

What it probably doesn't teach is that that the majority of slaves brought here were brought by the dutch and the portuguese, and not by the English.  We beat ourselves up over it all the time.  So do the English.  Do you think the Netherlanders or the Portuguese do?  Bet again.  I worked in Amsterdam for a semester and had this conversation with many a Dutch nationalist.  (yes, there are some fairly nationalistic Dutchmen, believe it or not.)  They don't apologize.  In the end, they gave Surinam, Aruba, and all the rest full Dutch citizenship (which is why you see so many long-haired black men in Amsterdam trying to sell you coke on the streets.  Be careful, for all you stereotypes, their penalities for cocaine possession are actually stricter than ours.  I don't tell you how to run you life, mind you, but I do caution you to use a little common sense.)  The Dutch found practical solutions, not Lockean ones.  A nation of only 16 million people needs to leave that navel-gazing sort of stuff to others.  The Portuguese, of course, have bigger economic problems and don't really have time to bask in the warm glow of White Man's Guilt.  Good for them.

Anyway, yeah, I'm with you on the issue of our government:  Our constitution is flawed.  Frankly, I don't think any reasonable person disagrees with that.  Have you ever noticed that governments are organized according to whatever principles were in fashion at the time they were founded?  Why do the USA, France, and Mexico have Republics, while Germany and Italy have democracies, and UK has a "constitutional monarchy" and others have different forms?  It's just what was in fashion at the time.  The US ratified its constitution in 1787, the French shortly thereafter, and the Mexicans won independence from Spain not long after that.  Those three came about at a time when the Republic, with its president and separation of powers was all the rage.  To be sure, those three republics are very different in many ways, and culturally the USA is probably more different than the other two, but governmentally they represent the pinnacle of state evolution at the time they were founded.  Then, later, Germany gets unified under Bismarck--who is, according to this forum, about half Freedom Fighter and half Horrible Person--and Italy gets unified, etc., then you get another form.  

Political fashions come and go.  We're probably stuck with ours, just the same way that everyone else is stuck with theirs.  Occasionally you get a big change--I'm not talking about the "Arab spring" because I don't think that will turn out to be the big change that our newsmedia is making it out to be--but you get some big change as a result of some bloodshed.  The French Revolution, the American Revolution, and World War II are examples, but the communist takeover of South Viet Nam by the North was not, since in the end the American Way endured and propagated in that nation, so we have to be careful how we judge these things.  I don't think any major internal rebellions in the US will happen within our lifetime and I'm not even sure that they are needed, and I think that you'd agree.  I would agree that big changes are in order:  we have discussed on this forum the US Senate and the Electoral College system, for example.  Those could be changed by amendment.  Amendments are uphill battles, but not impossible.  I think that it is highly probable that those two institutions will go away or change significantly, not within my lifetime, but within yours.  The deeper questions about how we go about living with each other in an increasingly pluralistic society will remain unsolved forever.  There is really no precedent for a nation such as ours, and that's okay too.

[Oak Hills]

Have you ever noticed that governments are organized according to whatever principles were in fashion at the time they were founded?  Why do the USA, France, and Mexico have Republics, while Germany and Italy have democracies, and UK has a "constitutional monarchy" and others have different forms?  It's just what was in fashion at the time.  The US ratified its constitution in 1787, the French shortly thereafter, and the Mexicans won independence from Spain not long after that.  Those three came about at a time when the Republic, with its president and separation of powers was all the rage.  To be sure, those three republics are very different in many ways, and culturally the USA is probably more different than the other two, but governmentally they represent the pinnacle of state evolution at the time they were founded.  Then, later, Germany gets unified under Bismarck--who is, according to this forum, about half Freedom Fighter and half Horrible Person--and Italy gets unified, etc., then you get another form. 

I think my brain is going to explode from all the inaccuracies and oversimplifications in this paragraph. First, the French constitution now in use dates back to 1958, and it was implemented because the parliamentary system, which you inaccurately call "democracy", they had been using since the 1870's was not working. The British unwritten constitution developed gradually, and stems from the fact that absolutism never took hold in Britain, whereas it did on the Continent. The U.S. Constitution is basically the British government of the time, except with a non-hereditary king and House of Lords. The German constitution dates to 1949, and has a powerless executive because the powerful President they had during the Weimar Republic was problematic, and of course the reason that had a powerful president is because that government was basically the Kaiserreich they had had since 1871, except with an elected kaiser, and a somewhat more powerful reichstag. The 1949 German constitution contains many features that are direct reactions to the problems of Weimar, such as the "constructive vote of no confidence", a reaction to instability which twice led to two elections in the same year during Weimar. The Mexican constitution dates back only to 1917. The forms of government in use today are basically a product of each country's history, with revisions to existing constitutions and new constitutions a result of each individual country's problems, as evidenced by the fact that France and West Germany went in opposite directions within ten years of each other.

Seriously angus, where do you get this stuff?

[MATTROSE94]

I would have supported the Union enthusiastically, although my grandfather on my mom's side had relatives that fought for the Confederate side.

[Dr. Cynic]

My family was still in England at the time, however, given that from letters as well as personal knowledge of the family, they were political leftists and also radically religious. I have no doubt that not only, if we had been in this country, we would they have been Unionists, but also abolitionists.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Union, duh.