Can the North secede from the Union?

[tylerdurden]

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Well, I think that slavery would have eventually died out here without the civil war, if for no other reason than that it didn't really make sense economically. However, at the time of the Civil War, the south was clearly willing to go to war to keep it. A lot of people forget that Lincoln did not run as an abolitionist; he actually only wanted to prohibit further expansion of slavery into the West. The states that seceded found even this to be unacceptable. The net result was that slavery was probably abolished earlier than it would have been had the southern states not seceded. Would it have been better had Lincoln not gone to war against the Confederacy? I don't know. It was a brutal, bloody war. Maybe it would have been better to let the U.S split, but there's no way of knowing what would have happened had we gone that route. Also, even though slavery ended after the war, the segregation of the post-reconstruction South wasn't all that much of an improvement. Would African-Americans have been better off if slavery had been allowed to die a natural death? Again, it's almost impossible to say.

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Lincoln didn't give a [censored] about slavery. His only goal was to preserve the union - even if that meant enslaving the southern states to do it, even if it meant killing untold numbers of people.

[DVaut1]

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Where does your food come from? Oh. You don't say.

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I didn't say 'where my food comes from' because it wasn't at all relevant to my point. I didn't mention where babies come from, either. Nor did I mention where my car comes from, or a whole host of other things that weren't particularly pertinent.

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Where does your food come from? Oh. You don't say.

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I didn't say 'where my food comes from' because it wasn't at all relevant to my point. I didn't mention where babies come from, either. Nor did I mention where my car comes from, or a whole host of other things that weren't particularly pertinent.

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I assume that you want the North to secede because you don't want the South to be part of the same country as yours. But you don't seem to mind using the South's resources.

[DVaut1]

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I assume that you want the North to secede because you don't want the South to be part of the same country as yours. But you don't seem to mind using the South's resources.

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No, I don't want the North to secede; I'm not the OP; and I called such ideas rather unreasonable in my original post in this thread.

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Where does your food come from? Oh. You don't say.

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I didn't say 'where my food comes from' because it wasn't at all relevant to my point. I didn't mention where babies come from, either. Nor did I mention where my car comes from, or a whole host of other things that weren't particularly pertinent.

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I assume that you want the North to secede because you don't want the South to be part of the same country as yours. But you don't seem to mind using the South's resources.

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What does "where the food comes from" have to do with it? I don't mind using Saudi Arabia's oil but I don't want them to be the 51st state.

[Manque]

I find in political dicussions people will read what they want to read regardless of what you actually have to say. I've have people call me the foulest names after I had essentially agreed with them.

[lehighguy]

The primary goal of the nation state is territorial stability. If it can't preserve that, it hass failed it primary purpose. If we allow people to break away as they please the nation state is doomed.

That isn't to say the ones that are seceeding are wrong. They are acting in accordance with thier desires and needs. Secession is a failure of governance on the national level. While the federal government should make efforts to correct those structural political problems, it can't allow states to secede formally.

[Manque]

A big reason is that red states have a cheaper standard of living, so a lot of retirees live there.

[lehighguy]

Every state gets two senators, despite population. As a result, people in low population red states are overepresented in the political process.

[tylerdurden]

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The primary goal of the nation state is territorial stability. If it can't preserve that, it hass failed it primary purpose. If we allow people to break away as they please the nation state is doomed.

That isn't to say the ones that are seceeding are wrong. They are acting in accordance with thier desires and needs. Secession is a failure of governance on the national level. While the federal government should make efforts to correct those structural political problems, it can't allow states to secede formally.

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So the nation state must supress freedom to exist? I'll accept that position, and conclude that therefore, the nation-state has no legitimate right to exist in the first place.