# Confederate sympathizers **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 10, 2012, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confederate-sympathizers/609010 "2012-01-10T02:56:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confederate-sympathizers/609010/161 "2012-01-13T06:56:34Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > > > It was the principle of **national** self-determination. You know, that idea from the 19th Century, that every ethnocultural “nation” should have its own state, united and independent. The standard by which the Russian Empire (and later the USSR) used to be called “the prison-house of nations.” Ethnoculturally, Lithuanians are not Russians. Ethnoculturally, South Carolinians **are** Americans. Even Indians and Native Hawaiians are, nowadays. > > Even the Soviets thought this - remember some of the SSRs had their own UN seats. The Baltic republics even had governments in exile. > > However, this ideal was not widely practiced in the 19th centuries. The boundaries of African states were devised with no thought of tribal boundaries, which has caused all sorts of problems ever since. Interestingly enough, each of the three Constitutions of the USSR–[1924](http://www.answers.com/topic/1924-constitution-of-the-ussr), [1936](http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.html), and [1977](http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1977toc.html)–explicitly guaranteed the right of the constituent Union Republics (SSRs) to secede from the Soviet Union. Even the '36 “Stalin Constitution”. Of course I think they were about as sincere about this as they were about guaranteeing the rights of Soviet citizens to “freedom of religious worship”, “freedom of speech”, “freedom of the press”, “freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings” and “freedom of street processions and demonstrations”. ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confederate-sympathizers/609010/162 "2012-01-13T12:48:02Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Am currently searching for references of slaves in the in the cheese-making trade. 😃 And I’m trying to recall what the Official SDMB definition of “government cheese” is. I’ll wipe and move on …😃 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confederate-sympathizers/609010/163 "2012-01-13T14:41:00Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > A country, no. A political order, yes. America may be a country. The USA is a political order. Exactly. And America will be around **longer.** Nations are not, perhaps, immortal, but they can be very long-lived; regimes and constitutions and political systems are mayflies in comparison. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confederate-sympathizers/609010/164 "2012-01-13T14:43:56Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > By “imbalance in power”, are you referring to the over-representation of the slave-holding states in the House of Representatives and Electoral College by the 3/5 rule which included non-voting slaves in the population of the slave-holding states? Nitpick: Representation was never meant to be based on a state’s population of **voters.** Many **white** men could not vote at the time the Constitution was ratified; and women and children, who could not vote, were included in the population estimates. Also – a point often forgotten whenever anybody spouts the phrase “three-fifths human” – that clause draws a distinction between the slave and the free, not between the black and the white. There were free blacks (not voters, but free) in every slave state (at first) and each was counted as one full person for representative purposes. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confederate-sympathizers/609010/165 "2012-01-13T17:46:01Z")
Sure, but my point is that those non-voting slaves inflated the strength of the voters in those slave-holding states, in a way that the voters in non-slave holding states did not have. People in the non-slaveholding states who didn’t have the franchise (e.g. - because they didn’t meet a property qualification) could always hope someday to obtain the franchise; that wasn’t the case for the slaves. Perversely, the way slaves were counted strengthened the voting powers of their masters, to help their masters maintain the slavery system. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confederate-sympathizers/609010.md?page=8)