Hotter, Badder, and Unpopularer Takes

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Most charities and ngos are completely ineffectual and only operate as a jobs creation device for the middle class.

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Anyone who argues "The Civil War was about state's rights" is just being a troll

You think this claim is hot? That's like the default position of 80% of Atlas.

Maybe 80% of Atlas Republicans, definitely not 80% of Atlas.  Besides, you forget we have quite a few posters here who don't automatically think of the Counterrevolutionary War for Slaveholders' Rights when they hear the phrase "Civil War". The British War for Divine Right and the World War II dress rehearsal come to mind.

80% of Atlas Republicans absolutely do not believe that.  49% of ACTUAL Republicans say slavery was the main cause (which, I guarantee implies that a very healthy majority of Republicans outside of the South agree with this ... no?), so I would imagine Atlas Republicans would be even higher.

http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/misc/usapolls/us150722/CivilWar/McClatchy-Marist%20Poll_National%20Release%20and%20Tables_The%20Confederate%20Flag_August%202015.pdf

You have a higher opinion of posters here than I do.  That said, I used 80% only because that was the figure given for Atlas as a whole in the post I quoted.

However, I must take objection to the idea that Northern whites are generally better on racial issues.  The reason Northern voters generally preferred the Republicans in 1860 was definitely not that they thought Blacks should be free, they were more interested in making certain they stayed in the South. For many Republican voters in 1860, the only good things about Blacks were that they weren't Catholics or Jews.

I take objection to your objection. Obviously the Northern whites were made up of multitudes and even the unionists had their various reasons for supporting the cause. But to argue the defense of the Union was merely a cynical enterprise of Know Nothings falls short. Are we supposed to believe the radical evangelicals who sprung up in their multitudes in the 1820's and 30's demanding immediate emancipation were merely nativist scum? As for the Union soldiers, a lot of them essentially became radicalized as the war approached and dragged on: what started as mere patriotic outrage at the South for attacking the flag broadened into moral denunciations of slavery as an institution (this is according to James McPherson's research).

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Last year, I both attacked Giulio Andreotti once in a discussion with my father about the former Christian Democrats, AND defended Giulio Andreotti once in my classroom because I felt my teacher to be punching him unfairly. (I'm normally no fan of Andreotti)

I think this is a fair stance on the man, especially when you compare him with explicit demons of postwar Italian politics like Craxi and Berlusconi. Whatever you may say about him - and you can rightly accuse him of an awful lot of crap - he was far more principled and serious a politician than the sort of politician who looted everything not bolted down and ran off.