How would you change history?

1- The hypothetical Independent Republic of Google would not (in modern times) have rasied an army, economy, and government and for practical purposes taken over lawmaking functions.

Oh, so Ft. Sumter belonged to the Confederates because they were strong enough to bully the U.S. out of it? I see.

2- The Union had tresspassed on what was by that point Confederate territory (and come to think of it, which under Tenth Amendment rights the states could have confiscated anyway), thus starting the war.

Even if secession was valid, it was only valid for territory belonging to the state itself -- not for federal property on the land. That would be ridiculous if otherwise. If South Vietnam secedes from Vietnam, does that mean all of the American embassies there now belong to the government of South Vietnam? Or would that be utterly ridiculous because seceding cannot possibly grant you territory that you had no claimant on before the split?

3- If they had stood for freedom, they would have seen the large amount of popular support for secession and accepted it where it was the will of the people. (As long as they did not keep slaves, of course)

Your argument is a paradox paradoxing™ a paradox. Large amounts of people stood for secession, so the Union is infringing upon freedom by denying them this (despite the fact that they'd also be sacrificing the freedom of their own peoples arrested and attacked by the Confederates), but you add the exception clause, "as long as they did not keep slaves," which was what essentially every Confederate was fighting for.
 
1- Public opinion was used to demonstrate that secession was not a novelty- it was something which was believed to be perfectly valid.
2- Theoretically, the most freedom-compatible course (which I was originally debating about) would be to cede the property.
3- I was pointing out that the minority existed, as it was worth mentioning.
But the existence of such a minority and this business of "freedom compatibility" is irrelevant when the original point that I was making is that the traitor states basically had to amass a substantial armed force, because it would be outrageously unlikely for the federal government to simply acknowledge Confederate independence. The existence of a minority of Americans in the northern states who did consider a Southern secession to be legally and morally valid does not by any stretch mean that the rebels could pretend as though immediate military preparations were unnecessary.
TheWesley said:
Sources? I'm slightly doubtful about this, as it seems a foolish course of action given Lincoln's rhethoric until post-Fort Sumter.
I'm sure even Wikipedia has an article on the sparring between Stonewall Jackson's raiders and Federal forces in West Virginia in May 1861. There were very few significant combat actions before the attack on Ft. Sumter, if any - I don't mean to imply that fighting broke out before the rebels attacked the fort.
TheWesley said:
This is starting to get off the point (that the United States does not stand for freedom),
I never was on that point.
TheWesley said:
but as a soverign state the C.S.A had the right, if not of compulsory acquisition (which they were reasonable about), then of forcing United States troops off their land.
Sovereign nation? Says who? And since when is armed rebellion a "reasonable" course of acquisition?
TheWesley said:
1- As they must have known, an army can live off the land.
2- Command&control is not absolutely necessary when attacking a weaker force.
3- This was several years after the war begun, so whilst it may demonstrate the reasons against a surpise attack it isn't a point in favor of your claims.
Oh, come off it. You seriously think that the rebels sending small packets of ill-trained, ill-led, unsupplied men piecemeal into a virtual desert, a territory furthermore bristling with federally manned forts and staffed with small detachments of well-trained soldiers, veterans of fighting Native Americans in those parts, was a viable military option? Most armies in history can't support themselves logistically on the territory they immediately control, especially after firearms and artillery went into wide use. Even then, those armies that did were doing so by operating in relatively fertile territory with good infrastructure, and they were supported by an adequate system of command-and-control so as to keep the army relatively intact (especially since it would have to disperse in order to forage). But this is New Mexico we're talking about here, not northern Italy or southern Germany; and you're proposing little to no attempt to organize the army at all, a recipe for disaster in a region where march security takes on extremely great importance, where Native Americans are as likely to pop up to ambush disorganized columns as the federals are, and where the desert can claim whole squads overnight, vanished without a trace. I feel justified in saying that such an effort, if made, would have invariably failed, and been a pointless waste of lives for a Confederacy that needed manpower in far greater numbers further east. The only way a rebel military force would have succeeded in establishing a semblance of control in the New Mexico Territory would have been as a relatively large, organized detachment, adequately supplied and with a clear mission in mind, as the Confederacy nearly managed. Indiscriminately dispatching penny-packets of soldiers west as they arrived in Texan depots doesn't fit the bill.
 
All right, let me be clearer. Yes, all governments are maintained by force in the sense that they will meet any attempt to remove them by force with force of their own. However, most governments, at least most in vaguely enlightened countries, are not such that they will meet all attempts to remove them (whether by force of not) with force of their own. If Labour lose the next election they are unlikely to respond by calling out the army and putting David Cameron under house arrest. That is what distinguishes a democratic government from one like Robert Mugabe's, which is maintained by force alone since it meets all opposition with force.

So if you're trying to show that all governments are equally culpable when it comes to the use or threat of force, you haven't done so. If you're not trying to show that then I'm not sure what the relevance is of whatever it is that you're trying to show.

I didn't realise your original point. Given that most governments are undemocratic, your point presumably applies to all undemocratic governments.

Given that, I will point out that prior to English invasion and the East India company takeover, Ireland and India were indeed ruled by undemocratic governments.

I don't see an argument to this effect. At any rate you haven't addressed what I said about the degrees of self-determination.

Explained by the fact that "societies" are arbitrary.

The use of vagueness of borders to assert the non-existence or arbitrariness of categories is an invalid move, although people often make it. The fact that the border between one category and another is fuzzy and hard to define does not mean that the category is a purely arbitrary or fictional one. For example, it is an absolutely objective fact that my father has grey hair and that I do not. There is nothing arbitrary about saying that someone whose hair is entirely grey has grey hair, and there is nothing arbitrary about saying that someone whose hair is not grey at all (as I fondly imagine to be my case) does not have grey hair. And yet the border between the two states is notoriously hard to pin down. There is no obvious point at which a person who is going grey can be said to start being grey-haired, because the transition is gradual. And we can think of many similar cases (a 20-year-old is young, and an 80-year-old is old, but where is the point of transition? a four-foot-tall person is short, and a seven-foot-tall person is tall, but where is the point of transition? etc.).

Now there are all kinds of paradoxes one can construct as a result of this, including many versions of the famous sorites paradox (a single grain of sand is not a heap; a pile of 1,000 grains of sand is a heap; adding a single grain to a pile that is not a heap will not turn it into a heap; it follows that if you add grains one by one to a single grain of sand it will not be a heap, but this is paradoxical). But these problems are caused by the difficulty of defining liminal cases and determining which categories they fall into. They do not disprove the existence of those categories, any more than the difficulty of saying whether partially grey person counts as being grey-haired or not disproves the existence of grey-haired people.

Similarly, the fact that one cannot clearly draw the borders of a society doesn't disprove the existence of that society. Indeed it's an obvious fact of life that societies exist from the experiential point of view. When I moved from London to Singapore I found many differences beyond the purely geographical and physical: linguistic, cultural, and practical. That is a different society. Whether or not there is an objectively existing entity to which the word "society" refers is an entirely different matter, a metaphysical one which is irrelevant to political discussions; even the most thoroughgoing nominalist can use the word "society" with meaning. The whole point of nominalism is to explain how terms of this kind can have meaning even in the absence of objectively existing abstracta. It seems to me that you're constructing nominalist-type arguments to disprove the objective existence of such abstracta, and then interpreting the conclusions in the way that a realist about such things would, with the result that you're denying the validity of such terms at all.

There are "real" cultural differences, but they are on a spectrum rather than divided into clear categories- one can distinguish between "Asian" and "Western" culture ("Islamic" or "Arab" are different alltogether) and notice substantial differences. On the other hand, differences between the Spanish and Portugese are hard to find. (Even their languages are similiar)

As for the validity of nominalism, it can easily be proved by the maxim that one should not believe in the existence of something without evidence. Is there any evidence for the existence of a "real" thing, as opposed to an abstraction made from several parts? Additionally, you have not managed to explain away the evidence against it- the spectrums I talked about.

Finally, I should point out that language constantly changes and the understanding of words does also. There was a time when, for example, "cyan" would be seen as "blue".

I don't see how an observation about the governments that existed in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries demonstrates anything of the kind. Still, I think what I've already said addresses your main point here.

I have also pointed out that constitutions in modern times are not amendable without a percentage of the vote larger than a majority. I will also add that politicians can make unpopular decisions and avoid deposal, that due to the media and pressure groups influence in practice is disproportinate, and that most people are indoctrinated to believe a large number of doctrines (e.g.- racism is morally wrong) thus rendering them immune to challenge.

Maybe so, but I think you're overlooking the fact that even social constructs are important and powerful. To put it bluntly, the mere fact that something is invented by people doesn't mean it's not real, as is demonstrated by the fact that I am managing to sit on this chair. Social constructs may not have the same kind of reality that physical artefacts do, but that doesn't stop them being real at some level, even if it is only the experiential one. If Blair is English and Bush is American, then that is a fact, even though it is a fact that depends upon human society. One does not distinguish between them in that way purely arbitrarily; one cannot with equal legitimacy say that Blair is American and Bush is English (unless one is trying to make some kind of satirical comment about the Special Relationship, but even then it is the fact that what you're saying is in the literal sense false that draws attention to its intent).

Even on that level, large parts of it are arbitrary. For example, of my grandparents- on one side they are considered Chinese with a background in Singapore, one grandparent is Bristol, and one from "Australia" but was ancestors that orginally migrated from England and with French ancestors. I am considered Australian, but I can't exactly consider myself "pure-blood"...

Additionally, you will have to at least concede that such constructs only describe a limited part of human history (e.g.- Native American tribes did not have nationality) and can be arbtrarily changed by society (e.g.- if a politician is sufficently effective with their P.R and sufficently poorly known, they can change their percieved nationality).

I don't think you've answered the question whether you think that the disenfranchisement of children is morally indistinguishable from the disenfranchisement of the other groups. Do you think that the fact that children eventually get the vote makes a moral difference to their disenfranchisement?

This of course overlooks the fact that there are obviously other salient differences too, such as the fact that children lack the ability to exercise the vote in an informed and responsible way. Give them the vote and you pave the way for the Chocolate Party to take permanent power. That seems to me a powerful moral, and not merely expedient, reason for denying them the vote, which does not apply to the other groups mentioned. So that's a significant difference quite distinct from the fact that children eventually get the vote.

People with low IQs and/or poor knowledge of politics cannot exercise the vote in an informed and reasonable way- yet they're still given the vote. The only moral difference following from the premise is that children eventually recieve the vote.

Anyway, parents in practice would have enough influence over their children to prevent the Chocolate Party or similiar coming to power- in two-party systems at least, it would favor the two major parties.

Oh, so Ft. Sumter belonged to the Confederates because they were strong enough to bully the U.S. out of it? I see.

The United States was originally established by force, but once they took over became legitimate. Would you question their legitimacy to this day?

Even if secession was valid, it was only valid for territory belonging to the state itself -- not for federal property on the land. That would be ridiculous if otherwise. If South Vietnam secedes from Vietnam, does that mean all of the American embassies there now belong to the government of South Vietnam? Or would that be utterly ridiculous because seceding cannot possibly grant you territory that you had no claimant on before the split?

Prior to secession, the property was legally part of the state. Once secession occurs, it remains legally part of the state.

Your argument is a paradox paradoxing™ a paradox. Large amounts of people stood for secession, so the Union is infringing upon freedom by denying them this (despite the fact that they'd also be sacrificing the freedom of their own peoples arrested and attacked by the Confederates), but you add the exception clause, "as long as they did not keep slaves," which was what essentially every Confederate was fighting for.

They can fight to ensure their own people are returned to them and to abolish slavery, but once they have achieved those goals they should give the Confederates the clear option of secession. Otherwise, they are impinging on freedom in a way that is clearly not necessary.

But the existence of such a minority and this business of "freedom compatibility" is irrelevant when the original point that I was making is that the traitor states basically had to amass a substantial armed force, because it would be outrageously unlikely for the federal government to simply acknowledge Confederate independence. The existence of a minority of Americans in the northern states who did consider a Southern secession to be legally and morally valid does not by any stretch mean that the rebels could pretend as though immediate military preparations were unnecessary.

The buisness of freedom compatibility was my original point. To point more arguments against yours:
1- The tradition of nullification started with Jefferson himself (he was hypocritical about it, but the fact it had long roots worked to its' advantage).
2- Buchanan would not, had he been the one to make the ultimate decision, supressed the Confederates- he believed that whilst secession was illegal supressing it was also illegal.
3- Without the Fort Sumter incident (understandable on the Confederate's parts but arguably a political blunder), Lincoln would have a difficult time securing popular support for the war.

Sovereign nation? Says who? And since when is armed rebellion a "reasonable" course of acquisition?

Arguably at least, says the Tenth Amendment. Anyway, they were already established and thus had the rights accorded to soverignity.

Oh, come off it. You seriously think that the rebels sending small packets of ill-trained, ill-led, unsupplied men piecemeal into a virtual desert, a territory furthermore bristling with federally manned forts and staffed with small detachments of well-trained soldiers, veterans of fighting Native Americans in those parts, was a viable military option? Most armies in history can't support themselves logistically on the territory they immediately control, especially after firearms and artillery went into wide use. Even then, those armies that did were doing so by operating in relatively fertile territory with good infrastructure, and they were supported by an adequate system of command-and-control so as to keep the army relatively intact (especially since it would have to disperse in order to forage). But this is New Mexico we're talking about here, not northern Italy or southern Germany; and you're proposing little to no attempt to organize the army at all, a recipe for disaster in a region where march security takes on extremely great importance, where Native Americans are as likely to pop up to ambush disorganized columns as the federals are, and where the desert can claim whole squads overnight, vanished without a trace. I feel justified in saying that such an effort, if made, would have invariably failed, and been a pointless waste of lives for a Confederacy that needed manpower in far greater numbers further east. The only way a rebel military force would have succeeded in establishing a semblance of control in the New Mexico Territory would have been as a relatively large, organized detachment, adequately supplied and with a clear mission in mind, as the Confederacy nearly managed. Indiscriminately dispatching penny-packets of soldiers west as they arrived in Texan depots doesn't fit the bill.

Conceded, but couldn't they have tried to negotiate alliances with the Native Americans in exchange for giving them (the Natives) independence? Combined efforts could have opened up a second front.
 
Everyone's always so fond of quoting that amendment that they ignore the body of the Constitution which states rather clearly:

Article I Section 10 regarding powers prohibited to the states.
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Article VI regarding Supremacy of the Constitution:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.


Now read Amendment 10

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The power has already been expressly prohibited to the states to enter alliance, form confederation (confederation implies among each other), make war, engage in foreign relations, raise an army, coin money and so forth. All of this was violated by the CSA.
 
The counter to that is each state individually had the power to secede under the Federal constitution- once they had seceded, limitations under said Constitution no longer applied. Sorry to be insulting, but I refuted that argument in a history textbook when I was in high school.
 
The counter to that is each state individually had the power to secede under the Federal constitution- once they had seceded, limitations under said Constitution no longer applied. Sorry to be insulting, but I refuted that argument in a history textbook when I was in high school.

Congratulation you fail at reading.
 
Just because something is the Supreme Law of the Land does not mean it cannot have an anullment clause.
 
The United States was originally established by force, but once they took over became legitimate. Would you question their legitimacy to this day?
Ah, no, because the Kingdom of Great Britain signed a treaty with the United States of America acknowledging that it was an independent state.
TheWesley said:
Prior to secession, the property was legally part of the state. Once secession occurs, it remains legally part of the state.
Secession was and is illegal, conspiracy was and is illegal, and even if the government of South Carolina had attempted to claim that they were taking Fort Sumter under some sort of eminent-domain argument, it was not the government of South Carolina which attacked the fort, but instead a matter for the confederation of traitor states' "national" government.
TheWesley said:
The buisness of freedom compatibility was my original point.
And I don't give a s*** about it.
TheWesley said:
To point more arguments against yours:
1- The tradition of nullification started with Jefferson himself (he was hypocritical about it, but the fact it had long roots worked to its' advantage).
2- Buchanan would not, had he been the one to make the ultimate decision, supressed the Confederates- he believed that whilst secession was illegal supressing it was also illegal.
3- Without the Fort Sumter incident (understandable on the Confederate's parts but arguably a political blunder), Lincoln would have a difficult time securing popular support for the war.
Mhm. Except nullification was emphatically rejected by the nation at large three decades before the Civil War. (This is like saying that it's okay to segregate schools because they were doing it in the South back in the sixties and seventies.) Except the rebellion started because Lincoln was elected and the Confederacy could not count on the ineffective Buchanan remaining in office past April to allow them to get away with any more. Except the Sumter situation arguably had to have been resolved militarily by the traitor states, because since resupply of the fort was imminent the proposition of an indefinitely-held Federal presence at the mouth of one of the largest ports in the Confederacy would be a serious threat to the proposed nation's security.
TheWesley said:
Arguably at least, says the Tenth Amendment. Anyway, they were already established and thus had the rights accorded to soverignity.
No. They didn't. States are not sovereign entities in the United States of America, and they did not become sovereign entities by a series of illegal acts recognized by no other government in the entire world.
TheWesley said:
Conceded, but couldn't they have tried to negotiate alliances with the Native Americans in exchange for giving them (the Natives) independence? Combined efforts could have opened up a second front.
Negotiations take time, too. I don't see any effort realistically getting off the ground in 1861 under most circumstances. :dunno:
The counter to that is each state individually had the power to secede under the Federal constitution- once they had seceded, limitations under said Constitution no longer applied. Sorry to be insulting, but I refuted that argument in a history textbook when I was in high school.
The Articles of Confederation prohibited secession and the Constitution created what was expressly a "more perfect union" than the government under the Articles.
 
There are arguments for the illegality of secession, but the ones here don't work.

Ah, no, because the Kingdom of Great Britain signed a treaty with the United States of America acknowledging that it was an independent state.

You assume that international recognition is necessary for soverignity. Why do you assume so?

And I don't give a s*** about it.

The argument has switched to a new topic, but my original point explains some of the things I said.

Mhm. Except nullification was emphatically rejected by the nation at large three decades before the Civil War. (This is like saying that it's okay to segregate schools because they were doing it in the South back in the sixties and seventies.) Except the rebellion started because Lincoln was elected and the Confederacy could not count on the ineffective Buchanan remaining in office past April to allow them to get away with any more. Except the Sumter situation arguably had to have been resolved militarily by the traitor states, because since resupply of the fort was imminent the proposition of an indefinitely-held Federal presence at the mouth of one of the largest ports in the Confederacy would be a serious threat to the proposed nation's security.

1- Jackson did not have 100% support during the Nullification Crisis- he may have rejected it and won politically, but that does not mean "the nation" rejected it.
2- Just because something is "rejected by the nation" (if that is possible) does not mean that it changes the law.

The fact that Buchanan would not have supressed secession shows that such a supression was not inevitable- I don't know the facts well enough, but several of the other candidates against Lincoln presumably might not have. Your third argument depends on your second, and thus has the same refutation.

No. They didn't. States are not sovereign entities in the United States of America, and they did not become sovereign entities by a series of illegal acts recognized by no other government in the entire world.

If states were not sovereign entities at the time (they aren't now in practice, though there is a good case they should be), then why were they called states? The meaning of "state" at the time implied a sovereign entity.

The Articles of Confederation prohibited secession and the Constitution created what was expressly a "more perfect union" than the government under the Articles.

Some have argued that it was a "more perfect union" because it allowed secession- thus making it better serving the function of a government by allowing the ceding of power under certain circumstances. Either way, the intent of a document is overriden by the actual words of it.
 
There are arguments for the illegality of secession, but the ones here don't work.
Karalysia's argument seemed to blow yours completely out of the water, and this coming from an Australian who knows jack about the US Constitution.

You assume that international recognition is necessary for soverignity. Why do you assume so?[/quote]
He assumed no such thing. As Great Britain ruled the territory that later became the US, the granting of independence to that territory by Great Britain was all that was required for the US to be considered an independent state. International recognition is not necessary for sovereignty, as Taiwan, Turkish Cyprus and other nations prove. It certainly helps though, and is necessary from a legal standpoint, but has no bearing on the actual exercise of sovereignty.

The fact that Buchanan would not have supressed secession shows that such a supression was not inevitable- I don't know the facts well enough, but several of the other candidates against Lincoln presumably might not have. Your third argument depends on your second, and thus has the same refutation.
Either Fort Sumter had to be relinquished by the Union or the Confederacy would be forced to attack it. I don't know much about Buchanan, maybe he'd have relinquished the Fort, or another candidate would have, but if not - and I doubt any Union President would relinquish Federal territory - then the Confederacy was obligated by the strategic situation to attempt to seize the territory itself.
 
Karalysia's argument seemed to blow yours completely out of the water, and this coming from an Australian who knows jack about the US Constitution.

Just because something is the supreme law of the land does not mean it cannot be anulled.

He assumed no such thing. As Great Britain ruled the territory that later became the US, the granting of independence to that territory by Great Britain was all that was required for the US to be considered an independent state. International recognition is not necessary for sovereignty, as Taiwan, Turkish Cyprus and other nations prove. It certainly helps though, and is necessary from a legal standpoint, but has no bearing on the actual exercise of sovereignty.

1- Such soverignity was granted under duress, as shown by the fact that there was real fear of Great Britain retaking the colonies.
2- International recognition may be necessary for soverignity under international law, but the relevant area of law is whether secession was legal under U.S law.

Either Fort Sumter had to be relinquished by the Union or the Confederacy would be forced to attack it. I don't know much about Buchanan, maybe he'd have relinquished the Fort, or another candidate would have, but if not - and I doubt any Union President would relinquish Federal territory - then the Confederacy was obligated by the strategic situation to attempt to seize the territory itself.

Not necessarily- had the situation remained for long enough and peace remained between the United States and Confederacy, it could have ended up like modern Gibraltar- a point of dispute, but one unlikely to lead to an actual war.
 
Just because something is the supreme law of the land does not mean it cannot be anulled.

By definition it does. The Constitution is supreme over the states, over all state laws, over all state actions. It cannot be annulled. Only amended. And it was not amended to allow the state to secede, form confederation, coin money, raise armies etc. Hence their actions were illegal. Thus they were dealt with in a fitting manner.
 
Saying something that "was granted under duress" is invalid is nonsense, because it totally invalidates...almost every single treaty in the history of human existence. Francois I tried that argument five hundred years ago and it was stupid then.
You assume that international recognition is necessary for soverignity. Why do you assume so?
That's an awfully strong statement of you to make about the way I think, especially considering that, if I actually did believe that, I would have chosen the French recognition of the Continental Congress as the starting point, not the Treaty of Paris, hmm? Try again, once more, with feeling!
TheWesley said:
1- Jackson did not have 100% support during the Nullification Crisis- he may have rejected it and won politically, but that does not mean "the nation" rejected it.
2- Just because something is "rejected by the nation" (if that is possible) does not mean that it changes the law.
Now, I might be mistaken, but I seem to recall some 'Force Bill' that authorized the executive to use military force to compel state governments to accept the decisions of the federal government (fully in line with the Sixth Article of the US Constitution) - a rather emphatic legal rejection of nullification, the "stick" that was added to the "carrot" of a slightly decreased tariff rate to force the South Carolinians back into line. After a precedent like that, it's hard to see how anyone might have taken nullification seriously as an internal legal argument.
TheWesley said:
The fact that Buchanan would not have supressed secession shows that such a supression was not inevitable- I don't know the facts well enough, but several of the other candidates against Lincoln presumably might not have.
This is nonsensical. If Lincoln isn't elected, there is no secession. Lincoln was elected. In December the secession ordinances started to pass. At that point, Buchanan was a lame duck and had been a poor President even when he wasn't a lame duck, and did nothing to respond. Short of murdering Lincoln, there was absolutely zero way for the Confederate States to not have to deal with Lincoln starting in April 1861. Lincoln was an avowed opponent of secession. It is virtually impossible to argue that the seceding states did not believe that their secession would be opposed by the Administration.
TheWesley said:
If states were not sovereign entities at the time (they aren't now in practice, though there is a good case they should be), then why were they called states? The meaning of "state" at the time implied a sovereign entity.
"State" didn't solely imply a fully sovereign entity even at the time - just ask the Dutch, for example. The Staten-Generaal provided one avenue of inspiration for the American republicans, after all.
TheWesley said:
Some have argued that it was a "more perfect union" because it allowed secession- thus making it better serving the function of a government by allowing the ceding of power under certain circumstances. Either way, the intent of a document is overriden by the actual words of it.
Since your precious Tenth Amendment never managed to get the word "expressly" added to it, I don't see the argument here.

Anyway, I'm done here, whether you're NWAG4 or not; I'm not interested in arguing with somebody who takes forever to acknowledge something easily looked up, who insists on relying on legal arguments that were at best marginally acceptable even at the time they were used, and who insists on fogging the issue.
 
Kraznaya said:
I would change history by deleting any mention of states' rights, Confederate "justifications" for succession or other lies from history textbooks.

I'd just delete the Confederacy from history and re-brand it as the Traitor States.

TheWesley said:
There are arguments for the illegality of secession, but the ones here don't work.

Why?

TheWesley said:
Some have argued that it was a "more perfect union" because it allowed secession

[Citations Required]

TheWesley said:
- thus making it better serving the function of a government by allowing the ceding of power under certain circumstances.

Glittering generalities do not an argument make. Under what specific circumstances and under what Constitutional authority could the United States government have allowed secession? I'd suggest it doesn't involving shooting up Fort Sumter, or disarming troops of the Traitor State's (see, it works so much better) lawfully constituted government.

TheWesley said:
Either way, the intent of a document is overriden by the actual words of it.

What actual words and under what process? Fort Sumter is not considering an answer.
 
Come to think of it, there is also the argument that several of the states which ratified the Constitution included a right to secede, thus demonstrating that from an intentionalist point of view they had the right to.

(http://www.endusmilitarism.org/secessionlegality.html)

Glittering generalities do not an argument make. Under what specific circumstances and under what Constitutional authority could the United States government have allowed secession? I'd suggest it doesn't involving shooting up Fort Sumter, or disarming troops of the Traitor State's (see, it works so much better) lawfully constituted government.

Taking the Tenth Amendment by it's actual literal meaning, it allows the states to secede unilaterally. Whilst it might not have been a good idea, that is what the words actually say.

[Citations Required]

Looking for them now- I remember I heard that somewhere. Anyway, I can postulate the argument without sources.

What actual words and under what process? Fort Sumter is not considering an answer.

Don't you know the wording of the Tenth Amendment?
 
I didn't realise your original point. Given that most governments are undemocratic, your point presumably applies to all undemocratic governments.

Right, good. (Bearing in mind that this is just about political freedom; I think that non-democratic governments can still be ranked in terms of morality or desirability on other criteria, as indeed can democratic ones.)

Given that, I will point out that prior to English invasion and the East India company takeover, Ireland and India were indeed ruled by undemocratic governments.

No doubt, but I don't see the relevance of that. If a bully supplants another bully, he is no less a bully for that. This rather pointless argument resulted from someone saying that he wished the British empire were still in existence today. I don't see what relevance the political state of its colonies before the empire existed has to this. Surely the relevant question is the political state of its colonies today, and whether they would be better or worse off if the empire still existed.

Explained by the fact that "societies" are arbitrary.

No doubt it would be if you had demonstrated that "societies" are arbitrary, but you have not demonstrated that.

There are "real" cultural differences, but they are on a spectrum rather than divided into clear categories- one can distinguish between "Asian" and "Western" culture ("Islamic" or "Arab" are different alltogether) and notice substantial differences. On the other hand, differences between the Spanish and Portugese are hard to find. (Even their languages are similiar)

Right, so it sounds like you agree with me. Societies are not arbitrary, because there are real cultural differences. The fact that they are on a spectrum may make it hard to define the boundaries but that does not make them any less real. It is hard to say at what point you count someone as "tall" rather than "medium height", but it's still the case that someone who's seven feet tall is "tall" and someone who is five foot nine is "medium height".

As for the validity of nominalism, it can easily be proved by the maxim that one should not believe in the existence of something without evidence. Is there any evidence for the existence of a "real" thing, as opposed to an abstraction made from several parts?

Well, realists would say there is indeed evidence, namely the fact that abstract nouns have meaning, and for a word to have meaning it must have a referent. Also, the supposed maxim you cite has come under heavy fire from philosophers of epistemology and religion in recent years, some of whom have argued that in fact it can be quite rational to believe something without evidence (e.g. it is rational to believe that the world is more than five minutes old, even though all the evidence for its being more than five minutes old, such as our memories of earlier times, is also consistent with the alternative hypothesis that a capricious God created us all five minutes ago, complete with false memories; thus you have a case where the evidence is equally consistent with each hypothesis, yet we consider one of them rational and the other irrational). However, that is really neither here nor there, since you seem to have misunderstood me. I was not criticising you for being a nominalist. On the contrary, I think nominalism is eminently sensible. I was criticising you for misunderstanding nominalism. Nominalism states that supposed entities such as universals, sets, and other abstracta, and indeed anything other than concrete individuals, have no existence outside our minds. The task of nominalism is to explain how we can nevertheless talk meaningfully about such things. You seem to have accepted the nominalist premise but to have overlooked all of the work done since at least the time of Peter Abelard on the task, and to have concluded that we cannot talk meaningfully about such things.

Additionally, you have not managed to explain away the evidence against it- the spectrums I talked about.

Those are not evidence at all. As I have said, you can construct all sorts of sorites paradoxes from the existence of spectrums, and "prove" that no term with vague boundaries can be applied to anything, which is absurd. Uncertainty is no evidence of absence of fact. An astronomer may be uncertain whether there is a planet revolving around a particular distant star; the data may be unclear on the matter. But it doesn't follow from that there is no such planet, or that planets in general don't exist, or that there is no fact of the matter. There may, in fact, be such a planet (or perhaps in fact there is not). But you can't conclude any of these things from the difficulty of the astronomer in ascertaining the facts. Similarly, the fact that we find it difficult to classify people culturally or socially does not prove that there is no fact of the matter about their cultural or social status. So this difficulty is not only compatible with being able to talk meaningfully about such status, it is even compatible with a realist understanding of such status. (With the clarification, again, that I do not hold such an understanding.)

To make the same point differently, any given phenomenon is (definitionally) evidence for a given hypothesis if (and only if) that phenomenon would be more probable on the assumption of the truth of the hypothesis than it would be on the assumption of the falsity of the hypothesis. The greater the difference between its probability given the truth of the hypothesis and its probability given the falsity of the hypothesis, the better the evidence. Now you say that the difficulty of categorising liminal cultural or social cases is evidence that there are no cultural or social categories at all, and we cannot talk meaningfully of them. (I think this is what you're trying to say, at least.) For this to hold, you need to show that the difficulty we experience would be less probable on the assumption that these categories do exist (in some sense, even the nominalist one) than they would be on the assumption that these categories do not exist. But you haven't even begun to show that, and indeed I can't see how such a thing could be shown.

So the fact that we have difficulty specifying when a term should be applied is not evidence that the term has no meaning or that it can never be applied; to think it is is simply to make either a logical error or a category mistake (I'm not sure which).

Finally, I should point out that language constantly changes and the understanding of words does also. There was a time when, for example, "cyan" would be seen as "blue".

Certainly, but I don't see the relevance of that.

I have also pointed out that constitutions in modern times are not amendable without a percentage of the vote larger than a majority. I will also add that politicians can make unpopular decisions and avoid deposal, that due to the media and pressure groups influence in practice is disproportinate, and that most people are indoctrinated to believe a large number of doctrines (e.g.- racism is morally wrong) thus rendering them immune to challenge.

I don't see the relevance of any of this either. That seems to me simply to come down to the assertion that no democracy is perfect, and that democracy is flawed because people are easily-led idiots. I wouldn't disagree with either of those. But that doesn't stop me seeing a difference between a tyranny and a democracy, because I'm capable of distinguishing between darker and lighter shades of grey, not merely stark black and white.

It sounds to me like the whole tenor of your argument is supposed to be that it wouldn't make any difference if Ireland, India, and the rest were still under the heel of the British empire, because however terrible the imperial governments may have been, all governments are equally terrible, so there's no point preferring one over another. But no matter how much you snipe at the notion of democracy and point out the impossibility of realising it perfectly, that won't demonstrate this.

Even on that level, large parts of it are arbitrary. For example, of my grandparents- on one side they are considered Chinese with a background in Singapore, one grandparent is Bristol, and one from "Australia" but was ancestors that orginally migrated from England and with French ancestors. I am considered Australian, but I can't exactly consider myself "pure-blood"...

You're confusing nationality with ethnic background. You're not "pure-blood"? So what? That doesn't make you any less Australian if that is where you were born and brought up. "Australian" is a national category, not an ethnic or biological or indeed cultural one. Your parents could have come from Mars and you'd still be just as Australian as anyone else. And that wouldn't be arbitrary as long as you came from Australia.

Additionally, you will have to at least concede that such constructs only describe a limited part of human history (e.g.- Native American tribes did not have nationality) and can be arbtrarily changed by society (e.g.- if a politician is sufficently effective with their P.R and sufficently poorly known, they can change their percieved nationality).

I grant your first point, but you contradict yourself in the second. "Arbitrary" means a decision which is taken for no reason. The case you describe gives reasons for the change - reasons which are objective facts (the politician has good PR and is sufficiently poorly known). A truly arbitrary case would be one where everyone just decides, for no apparent reason, that a person now has X nationality instead of Y. But in fact this doesn't happen. This indicates that no matter how much nationality may be what the scholastics called an "ens rationis", that is a thing that exists only in the mind, the mind constructs and regulates it in ways that are not purely arbitrary but are based upon things outside the mind. This is the case with most abstract terms - if it weren't then there would be no linguistic regulations upon the way that we use them and they would be completely useless.

People with low IQs and/or poor knowledge of politics cannot exercise the vote in an informed and reasonable way- yet they're still given the vote. The only moral difference following from the premise is that children eventually recieve the vote.

Anyway, parents in practice would have enough influence over their children to prevent the Chocolate Party or similiar coming to power- in two-party systems at least, it would favor the two major parties.

Maybe so, but I notice you've still avoided answering my question!
 
Just because something is the supreme law of the land does not mean it cannot be anulled.
Say what? Supreme means that it is by definition the highest law, you clod.

1- Such soverignity was granted under duress, as shown by the fact that there was real fear of Great Britain retaking the colonies.
Firstly, as Dachs said, pretty much every treaty in history was signed under duress. Secondly, what the hell are you talking about? The US was granted sovereignty by Great Britain. Due you mean Britain was under duress? If so, why would you mention American fear of Great Britain retaking the colonies?

2- International recognition may be necessary for soverignity under international law, but the relevant area of law is whether secession was legal under U.S law.
And it wasn't.

Not necessarily- had the situation remained for long enough and peace remained between the United States and Confederacy, it could have ended up like modern Gibraltar- a point of dispute, but one unlikely to lead to an actual war.
You've got to be kidding me, right? Spain is in no condition to retake Gibraltar, and never has been. Its best shot was WWII, and it didn't have a very good one then. A better example would be the Nationalist Chinese Islands just off the harbours of several Mainland cities during the Eisenhower Administration. China took them because it had the capability to take them, and their continued existence in Taiwanese hands was a threat to Chinese shipping and security. Fort Sumter's location made it just such a threat; therefore, the Confederacy had to at least try to take it, and had the capacity to do so. Gibraltrar, while a very strategic location, is not in the sort of position to disrupt Spanish shipping and security as Sumter or the Nationalist Islands.

Come to think of it, there is also the argument that several of the states which ratified the Constitution included a right to secede, thus demonstrating that from an intentionalist point of view they had the right to.

(http://www.endusmilitarism.org/secessionlegality.html)
Except that no such guarantee exists within the US Constitution.

Taking the Tenth Amendment by it's actual literal meaning, it allows the states to secede unilaterally. Whilst it might not have been a good idea, that is what the words actually say.
Isn't it overruled by the rest of the Constitution? I admit, I am far from an expert on US Constitutional law.

Looking for them now- I remember I heard that somewhere. Anyway, I can postulate the argument without sources.
You'd be summarily kicked out of university with that attitude. If you are making claims you need to support them. You are not doing so here.

Don't you know the wording of the Tenth Amendment?
Why don't you quote it, with the sections you believe pertain to this discussion highlighted? I for one don't know, as I only read the US Constitution once or twice.
 
TheWesley said:
Taking the Tenth Amendment by it's actual literal meaning, it allows the states to secede unilaterally. Whilst it might not have been a good idea, that is what the words actually say.

No they do not. It simply defaults to the states those powers that are not specifically enumerated in the constitution. It doesn't make provision for anything specific including secession. Until you can show that the states could exercise those powers, in practice, I don't see how you can make your case. That some powers were, in practice, exercised by the states within the framework of federation doesn't mean that some other power which wasn't exercised by the states in that same framework, could in-fact be exercised. Its also not the role of the states to interpret the Constitution, that's a role for the Supreme Court, no? The interpretation for which we never really got to see because of, you know, Fort Sumter and the non-unilateral declarations and all that.

Also, literalism isn't the sole means of interpreting the Constitution we've already seen one example where it quite emphatically doesn't apply -- despite being fairly express in its intention and wording.

TheWesley said:
Looking for them now- I remember I heard that somewhere. Anyway, I can postulate the argument without sources.

Your word doesn't count for much, we've already seen Dachs demolish the historical aspect and I'm not one for listening to vague arguments based on potentially faulty memories.

TheWesley said:
Don't you know the wording of the Tenth Amendment?

The wording isn't really all that important. That the possibility may have with hindsight, hypothetically, existed doesn't mean that it did, at that time exist. There's a difference between a twinkle in the eye and the potential for one, or to put it another way between the act of legally seceding and having a potential means of legally seceding subject to a raft of as yet unknown criteria like a Supreme Court ruling or an act passed by the Federal Government appending itself the power to block the move. If either barred the secession and was upheld would it have been legal?
 
Stopping the dark ages from happening would've meant much.
Stopping the original Semite groups from creating Judaism, meaning no Christianity and Islam.
Telling the men at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna to accept Hitler.
Finding Gavrilo Princip and keeping him busy so he wouldn't assassinate Franz Ferdinand.
 
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