Cause of Civil War

Well, sure. However, since the "right" that was the center of the dispute was the alleged right of states to continue slavery, this seems to be a distinction without a difference.

But what if "state's rights" was just the poster child for the larger issue of slavery? Well, no, they don't. For example, I don't see them defending the tradition of outhouses - they much prefer the modern flush toilet. Sure. However, Christianity is not under attack.

The point is that if slavery was the only right that they were concerned enough about to consider secession. So it sure looks as if the issue was slavery, and the states rights bit was just an attempt to make it look more principled than it ever was. Well, sure. And my reference to outhouses was intended as a metaphor.The point is that conservatives are consistently unrealistic. The point, again, is that they are being unrealistic. The are offended by the use of the first amendment establishment clause. But the first amendment free exercise clause is what protects them from being under attack. The first amendment is a package. It can't be that they can have complete free exercise of their religion, but that they can deny others the equivalent free exercise.Evangelical Christianity has done very well in the the USA, compared to how it has fared in other parts of the world. And it is because of the first amendment, that it has done so well. Yet they see the first amendment as a threat. There's some seriously unrealistic thinking going on somewhere.

That's from the declaration of independence, not from the constitution.I see the gay rights people making a grass roots campaign to persuade the population, rather than a legal campaign based on the constitution. Yes, there are also court cases, though I haven't closely followed the arguments used there. But I also view the court cases as skirmishes the grass roots campaign. It is all about winning the hearts and minds of the population.If you want to compare that to what happened around the time of the civil war, then at that time there was also a grass roots campaign to win the hearts and minds of the population. The abolitionist's won that campaign. Incidentally, the gay rights advocates seem to be winning their grass roots campaign. Their states right issue was a fair principle to use in the grass roots campaign. They lost that campaign. The only principle I can see behind secession, was the "sore loser" principle.

If the South had been able to generate more support in the North, even if less than a majority, there probably wouldn't have been a civil war. In your examples, the groups managed to garner a lot of support from outside their own regions, and that is how they gained legitimacy.

I don't think that is an objective issue. We can at best express our opinions. If you want to put it that way, then I think "inevitable failures" would be more accurate than "practical failures." They were on the wrong side of a moral argument. There was no way that they could win that argument, which had started in Britain (I think), and spread to USA.I am describing it in terms of politics for two reasons. Firstly, I don't want to impose 21st century moral views on their thinking, and secondly you compared it to the gay rights issue which is currently being argued as a grass roots campaign to capture the moral sensitivities of people.When a group is on the wrong side of a major moral issue, and they argue that is a matter of defending some principle rather than their position on that moral issue, that is bound to ring hollow.

---

Jesus was a liberal hippie

Okay. But weren't you just expressing an opinion? It doesn't seem comparable to secession.

Well, sure, they would argue that. But it doesn't follow that we have to accept that argument.Humans have this remarkable ability, called rationalizing, whereby we invent explanation that put us in a good light. At the time of apartheid in South Africa, there was a lot of rationalization of that, too. The current Israeli government rationalizes its program of settlements in the Palestinian territories.To really settle the issue, you would have to be able to read minds. But I cannot not even trust my reading of my own mind about what I thought yesterday. So we have to accept that this not really a factual issue at all. It is an issue about which we have to make our own judgments, and those judgments are unavoidably subjective. You should take what I have posted in this thread as an indication of how I judge the issues - but with no guarantee that I won't have a different opinion next year. As I see it, they are disgruntled because they lost. And they rationalized as a way of dealing with their disgruntlement, then they chose to believe their own rationalizations.For myself, I was born and raised in Australia, so I am not part of this dispute. That is, I do not have any sense of belonging to either side. I did find the abolitionist case to be persuasive. The "States Rights" case rings hollow, particularly when I see it mainly being used to support racist attitudes (recently by Rand Paul, for example).

I notice that Theodoric is somewhat summing up in recent posts such as Message 109. Since I haven't yet commented on the above point by Blue Jay, perhaps now is the time to do so.It has been my impression that, from the union perspective, preserving the union was a major motivation.We have, I think, been mainly talking about the reasons behind those who chose to secede and those who decided to commit to opposing the secession - that is, the leadership on both sides. What motivated the rank and file could be significantly different. During political seasons, we see all kinds of propaganda, and I expect it was the same at the time of the civil war. So we might expect a wider variety of motivations for the rank and file, than from the leadership.Although most of the discussion here has been contrary to the view that Artemis Entreri was expressing, it is quite possible that he got that view passed down through several generations, and it might reflect what his ancestors believed that they were fighting for.

You must live in some alternate reality.I have seen the government legislate policy. I have never seen it legislate morality.Perhaps you do not understand the difference. Nor did mine. So what? I agree. But what does that have to do with reparations?Are you saying that if the city make a mistake and accidentally bulldozes your house, then the city would not have to pay you for repairs because the taxpayers were not the ones who made the mistake? That sure seems to be foolish reasoning.

Isn't that what legislative bodies are for? Then maybe you should stop imagining it that way.

Absolutely agree. And this is Christianity.It is sad that so many of the people who claim to be Christian are failing at Christianity 101.

As best I can tell, the "they" that LamarkNewAge is talking about in this thread is identical to the ether that Michael MD is talking about in An Ether-Based Creation Model. It is just vaporware.