Pretty much the opposite. You lost this argument a couple of pages back. Now the rest of us are running victory laps around you.
Allowed by whom, Will? This is the real world, you don’t need anyone’s permission to go to war. If Japan attacked an American destroyer that was sitting in a Japanese harbor, Japan would be starting a war with the United States. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japan was starting a war with the United States. And when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in 1861, the Confederates were starting a war with the United States.
Let me repeat that point: the Confederates started the war.
I guess they shouldn’t have tried to pay with cannonballs.
I don’t think all libertarians are white supremacists or disrespectful to black Americans, but it’s disturbing how many seem to be. And at the time of the Civil War, the vast majority of those making libertarian arguments sided with the slavers. In the aftermath of the Civil War, those making libertarian arguments continued to tend to side with the brutalizers of black people. Why is this? And why, in the 60s, did most libertarian arguers fall on the side against black people once more? Why is there such a correlation between making libertarian arguments like ‘states rights’ and being against black people any time there’s a major dispute?
Anti-slavery white supremacy is infinitely less bad than pro-slavery white supremacy, and nothing Lincoln did comes close to the crimes of the Southern leaders. Lincoln was not perfect, but he was far, far better than the leaders of the Confederacy.
I can see why you would feel the need to ignore someone who argues based on historical fact, considering how many historical facts you’ve been ignoring or trying to dismiss via simple declaration.
I think that at best, libertarians have this idealistic view that racism will just fix itself in a liberal utopia because it’s supposedly bad business. This is probably motivated in part by a desire to pay less taxes.
At worst, libertarian is a retreat by conservatives who realize that their fetish of strict constitutionalism is contradicted by some of their social control agendas (see: war on drugs), and they are retreating to a more defensible intellectual position.
If you want to buy my car, and I say “No,” are you then justified in shooting me? Is it my fault that you shot me, because I didn’t want to sell my property to you?
On a related note, how do you feel about the nationalization of foreign holdings when Fidel Castro came to power? Theft? Or the lawful exercise of a sovereign nation over territory in its borders?
Out of curiosity, what course of action should Abraham Lincoln have taken after his inauguration? Can you explain a course of action that was politically and legally possible AND that would have resulted in a better result? Not just with regards to this silly Fort Sumter hijack, but in general.
I mean, from where I’m sitting, there was no such course of action. If he allows secession, then even assuming he isn’t impeached, he is breaking the law, probably eventually destroying the United States, allowing the enslavement and murder of countless people to continue for decades more, and possibly dooming North America to further wars down the line. And that’s the only realistic other thing he could have done, really. So… is there an option I’m missing?
Er… for one thing, it can’t possibly be “further wars” if he refrains from war at the time.
But without taking the time to unpack everything… how is it “breaking the law” to say, “we believe you are wrong, but it is not in my just power to constrain you; go in peace”?
The best course would have been to work for a phased abolition with compensated emancipation. Almost every other slaveholding country of the hemisphere and century abolished without war. Lincoln himself successfully applied compensated emancipation in DC.
There’s a big difference between government property and private property.
Government property is owned by the government only by virtue of them continuing to be the government. To the extent that another regime comes to power, then that new regime owns the government property.
It’s not at all like a new regime coming to power and then seizing private property from people.
What you’re describing sounds like a coup – one government replacing another, and the former government ceasing to exist. But that doesn’t apply here – the USA government obviously continued to exist.
I was responding to Miller, who was talking about a coup.
But in any event, I don’t see the difference there. The South effectively made a coup, and in their areas one government replaced another and the former government ceased to be the government.
It makes sense to me if this is the way it generally works when countries secede, though I don’t have any actual knowledge. (Do you?)