Why spank has devoted whatever he posts about to molly coddle racists and not tackle the obvious disingenious posts like this I don't know. The slaves certainly could claim sovereignty over the majority of property and capital in the South. The entire economic and political system used to support the economic system was illegitimate. That the slaves should vote to stay or go is ignoring the economic recompensation due. Frankly any slave owners shouldn't have a vote for being so morally reprehensible.



Pretty sure the right to inalienable right to secession was damaged most by those who wanted to secede based on their belief of an inerrant right to own others. Which is why most of the people who call for secession in the US happen to turn out to be racists.

He said it exactly once, and it made perfect sense in the context. I understand that spank's use of language is odd, but he's way more coherent than you guys make him out to be. His thoughts and ideas are there and clear, and those are what matter.

It's a topic that has been debated so much that someone whose opinions appear to be on the losing side ought to face an uphill battle when it comes to combating the prevailing opinion. Holocaust deniers are in the same category as 9/11 truthers, Obama birthers, climate change skeptics, and Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists in that regard.

The entire point of democracy is that you can't just throw a hissy fit and leave if you don't end up in the majority.

Alex is this missing your point?

Are you saying that whatever injustice was the reason for war should be corrected in the same way whether they became part of the union or not.

AlexM wrong again. So what is this fallacy of emotional appeal of history? Do explain.

I did not say that the former slaves should vote on whether to stay or go. I said that individual former slaves should be offered the opportunity to go if they want to. Surely, you agree that people who were dragged to a place against there will and forced to live with people they detest should be offered the opportunity to go elsewhere if they wish?

You're right that my post was disingenuous though. I knew full well that you didn't understand what I was actually saying. Your recent posts have been so disingenuous that it seemed justifiable to respond in kind, but in retrospect, I disagree with my decision. My apologies.

As for disenfranchising the former slave owners, that's not as morally reprehensible as what they were guilty of, but it's pretty morally reprehensible as well. Furthermore, that is flat out planting seeds for extreme civil unrest, so it's a bad idea from both a moral and a practical stand point. The only thing it's good for is random vengeance, and pretty petty vengeance at that.


Do you also believe that racists saying racist things damages the right to free speech? If the government were to crack down on racists for saying the things they say, would you say that it was the racists who responsible for that assault on free speech?

There is a world of difference between supporting the right to secession and calling for secession. Why are you trying to twist this?

Invoking the pain, anger, and guilt involved with historic racism to support an accusation or argument. It is an argument method commonly used in the forums to assert an opinion of the presence of racism as fact. It is also often used to target and attack posters of various stripes. It turns out is a foolishly popular method with some posters, with all sorts of derpy justifications for using it.

Lol, now your cover story is totally falling apart --you just got done telling us that you *do* accept the conclusion of mainstream historians about the Holocaust! So you can presumably answer you own questions about why it is you trust Western scholarship over that of third-world dictatorships, no?

No, it hasn't been debated that much, it just seems that way to people who don't know what the discussion is about, because they're mistakenly equating it with other crap that has nothing to do with it. In fact, it specifically hasn't been debated that much because those people make that mistake.

Well, since that's also not 3-5 times, it looks like we're both wrong, eh?

Obviously, using emotional reactions to historical events to manipulate people's perception of history. Something like "the men who wrote the Constitution were racists, so the First Amendment is rooted in racism and anyone who supports it is racist" would be an example.

I wrote a whole rant calling Swissmiss stupid for expecting us to believe she had a perfect SAT and realized you guys just do it better. Moar dvaut1

Hey moran, I said I thought I saw it 3 or 4 times. You stated it as fact. JFC.

To your 2nd paragraph: lol

That example seems more like a genetic fallacy.

First, the freed slave vote isn't some vote independent of past and expectant future situations, a freed slave vote with the expectation of compensation for years of theft, degradation, and murder is far different than one in which they'll lose political and economic power to the white terrorists who just fought a war to keep them as property and now get to keep political and economic power. The whole 'we'll let the slaves vote to stay in a place that's rightfully theirs but they'll be terrorized vs vote to leave' is a misnomer. Besides that vote happened in real life anyways. It was the exodus of former slaves to the Midwest and North.

Second, excuse me while I don't give a sh*t about the terrorists of the South. They should have been strung up in trees, drawn and quartered, shot, separated from their families, and burned. Anything less is a miscarriage of justice as what actually happened in Reconstruction was a miscarriage of justice. The North didn't destroy the South enough. They should have burned it to the ground and killed every last plantation owner until they huddled in their caves terrified that any decent human being didn't kill them on the spot. The freed slaves then should have been alloted virtually all the land.






Well I don't think free speech is the same as the right to secession. I see it akin to the right of association and I don't think some exclusions of association are valid.

I've been mashing the PgDn key a whole lot for this thread, but is there some sort of point in spitballing hypothetical justification for secession? I have this kooky notion that if at some future point state(s) want to secede, the actual reasons for secession will be much more relevant than any tortured, abstract constitutional legal justifications for doing so.

You know, just like the last time it happened.

The weirdest(not weirdest) thing about this burgeoning spanky-Alex alliance is that while spank likes to cast his views as some sort of super-tolerant post-human seeker of knowledge...

Alex has spent the last like, idk, 5 or 6 years demanding that people be banned for disagreeing with them. Not just me, he accused Hue of trolling for disagreeing and he repeatedly complains that mods don't enforce the rules against "trolling", and before that he was a big part of the "nobody say mean stuff about Ron Paul" movement that demanded mods censor dissension and ban "trolls" who said the mean stuff about Grandpa Paul.

Again, we all pegged Alex pretty good in his last big attention seeking thread. Alex is a huge narcissist who thinks a debate is people agreeing with him and telling him that he's smart and good, and any deviation from that results in emotional outbursts and complete mental breakdowns.

But spank latching onto the forum's foremost censorship advocate is an odd turn.

You can have a political view like I do for the UK that its better to allow the bits to leave if they want to unless there's some overriding moral objection.

Its a model I'd like to see the EU follow even though I very much want to remain a member and I don't see any reason why it cant be considered for the USA.

Since most slave owners were absentee owners, how come the slaves on those plantations didn't have this same 'right' to secede on a plantation by plantation basis?

How come the sit-down strikers in the 1930s didn't have this 'right' to secede on a factory by factory basis?

How come we didn't have this 'right' to secede in Zuccotti Park in 2011?

How come we're only talking about ultra rich landowners and slaveholders 'right' to secede ??

Questions that need to be considered of course, not reasons not to consider the question.

One of the goals of any Union imo is to get reasonably close to a situation that any viable part has no big economic or social incentive to leave. If that's not true the union should be recognising it has a problem even if there's no right for viable bits to leave.

That's a political view backed up by actual, real world issues that can be debated, because they are relevant. The closest thing we've had over here recently is Puerto Rico, and if they ever decide they really want to leave, nobody's going to put up too much of a fuss because they have compelling reasons.

The WHY matters way more than the HOW. If there is a substantial 'why' that ever presents itself, we'll get around to dealing with the 'how' in an arbitrary post-hoc way, just like everything else. If people are pretending to be concerned about the 'how' while hiding the 'why', then I'm calling bull****.

Like, for example, casual speculation about the exact number of Jews killed during the Holocaust.

I agree the WHY matters more but it matters independently of whether bits have the right to leave.

Their should be no bits that could leave for such bad reasons as you seem to think exists (and you're right as far as I can see). Considering the right to leave causes a bit more focus on actually doing something about the problems, just like we've seen in a much more benign way in Scotland over the last few decades.

I don't think those are necessarily independent. A valid point of view is that you only have the right of unilateral secession if you suffer from unjust governance. The right of secession in other cases can be negotiated, such as the 2012 Edinburgh Agreement.

I should have irrespective not independent

Subjective determination of unjustness is subjective.