Are you trying to "win"?

With all of your respective ideologies flying around, I've had to ask myself if you're actually trying to "win". Do you have an understanding that we are one human race of people? Is competition really needed when we, as humans, have escaped such things as animalistic instnict with logic and justice?

Do you have ethics or morals that are absolute, or do they only apply to you and yours? I'm not talking about "Let's be one World"- I am merely questioning whether you all feel more fulfilled by treating others negatively for whatever reason or if you'd rather help everyone and anyone you can.

It's not a directive, but a question.

Aum Shantih Shantih Shantih

>>1
I don't have to try.  I just do.

Debate to win???  LOL

Debaters dont win; shooters win.

>>41
Fail for lack of proof. Fail for this instance of fail.

you only fail if you miss. try again.

>>26

Yeah, but you end up pissing someone else off. Give the Jews a homeland (which they deserve), and you make Palestinian Arabs refugees (which they do not deserve). Thats only a single example; there are too many overlaps- there are no winners without losers. If you hold that to be true, why place faith in ideals?

I'm not saying you can't do good things, just that trying to do so for ideological reasons is pointless, which is what the threads about.

>>37
So you put your faith in ONE website, a .com website (for profit), rather than an .edu (for knowledge), which is the usual ending for a credible historic site? Do you know who owns martinlutherking.org? White supremacists! So, I don't trust your source at all, until there is at least credible American Civil War historian or Lincoln historian who hypothesizes that President Lincoln was THE cause of the Civil War, your statement is completely bogus. And as it stands now, most Civil War historians put the cause on Constitutional issues, North/South differences, state rights, or some combination thereof.

>>39

This is >>37.

Do you have a source that can rebut the claims? Perhaps my source is incorrect but I've yet not seen evidence to the contrary, most seem silent on the issues brought up by the source I provided. Google "Lincoln Sumter" (don't use quotes in the search). The first relevant result is biased in the US's favor, and quite obviously so, as evidenced by the unnecessary negative adjectives in refrence to the south and unnecessary positive descriptions of the north. Wikipedia, silent on the issue, the third is the source provided, the fourth is a lesson plan for a History class which mentions the contention without rebutting it, the next discusses Lincoln influences in the decision. There's one about buying Lincoln cars in Sumter, that was excluded in the order.

Either way, at the time it was generally understood that the States could secede under the Constitution, and they did. Fort Sumter was a Federal fort in the CSA. It's similar to Iran having a military base in the US. It would not be tolerated today, and it was not tolerated in 1861. The Confederates gave those in Fort Sumter a chance to leave without violence, but they refused, and instead attempted to resupply it. If we told Iran to abandon a base in the US and Iran said "NO U" and tried to send ships to supply it's base, don't you think the US would fire upon the Irani base? Technically, it could be said that the US started the conflict because it fired the first shots at Iran, but it would be silly to believe it was not provoked by Iran. It was the same thing with the CSA and the USA back in 1861. History is written by the winner. The Union won, so obviously it's going to glorify it's victories and mask it's mistakes.

>>47
"Either way, at the time it was generally understood that the States could secede under the Constitution, and they did."

You're joking, right? Sorry, you've just lost all credibility, that statement is complete bullshit.

"It's similar to Iran having a military base in the US. It would not be tolerated today, and it was not tolerated in 1861."

No, it's not at all. Iran was never part of the US and never seceded from the US. That is a completely false analogy. It would be like part of Iran saying that it wasn't part of Iran anymore, including a strategic Iranian military base full of Iranian soldiers, and then the rebels expecting those soldiers to just hand it over because "Hey, they said it was theirs now!"

"I've yet not seen evidence to the contrary, most seem silent on the issues brought up by the source I provided. Google "Lincoln Sumter""

Yeah, everybody knows Google is the best source for historiographical interpretation. Pick up a book or two on the causes of the civil war. The causes of the Civil War is one of the most complicated topics in United States history. There have been books and books and essays and essays written about it. Just saying "Lincoln did it" is a gross oversimplification even if what you are saying is true, which I doubt it is.

>>47
Except thats an incongruent comparison, the Soldiers in the fort were loyal to the north, and they were actually there BEFORE south Carolina seceeded.  In a way, they had squatter sovereignty, and the south could fucking blow itself, the federal troops were there first.

And besides, you can bitch and moan about how unfair the north was to the south, and what a tyrant Lincoln was, but the facts stand, the south asserted itself too strongly against other states in the union, and upon leaving the union, they pretty much gave the north the go ahead to wage war on them, considering they were then a foreign nation.  Frankly, southerners were fucking stupid, they fought a war over the principle of slave ownership, when less than 10% of the population actually owned slaves, and they would bitch and moan about how much better off the north was compared to them.

>>48

If at the time nobody believed States could rightfully secede, why wasn't South Carolina promptly invaded upon secession? Why did South Carolina even attempt to secede, much less the rest of the States, if everybody knew they couldn't Consitutionally do so? If the people of the CSA thought the States couldn't rightfully secede, why did they go and fight for the CSA?

You didn't rebut the fact that it was a foreign fort in Confederate territory. The CSA was not part of the USA at the time. And IIRC most of the Federal money was coming from tariffs imposed on the south in the first place, the South effectively paid for their construction in the first place. You also misinterpeted the example. It's like Iran owning the US and the US seceding, and Iran trying to resupply an Irani fort in the US. I'd use an example like the UK in the revolutionary war, but the UK is friendly with the US now so the example seems rather absurd in that case. There was a lot of disagreement between the North and South, so an antagonistic other country seemed more fit for the example.

Have you seen a rebuttal to what I was saying about Lincoln starting it or not? I haven't yet, and admitted that my sources might be faulty. No need to be rude.

>>49

They weren't fighting over slavery. They were fighting over unfair taxation and redistribution and other things. They would have been stupid to fight over salve ownership. A constiutional amendment banning slave ownership would have to have 3/4 of the States to ratify it and half of the States would certainly not have ratified it.

>>50
"Have you seen a rebuttal to what I was saying about Lincoln starting it or not?"

No, which leads me to believe it is a crackpot theory that modern historians don't even bother with. I am not a scholar on this, but I did learn a lot about it in school, and Lincoln causing the war never came up in any of my reading, ever. Quite the opposite, most historians stated that Lincoln tried to avert war.

"If at the time nobody believed States could rightfully secede, why wasn't South Carolina promptly invaded upon secession? Why did South Carolina even attempt to secede, much less the rest of the States, if everybody knew they couldn't Consitutionally do so? If the people of the CSA thought the States couldn't rightfully secede, why did they go and fight for the CSA?"

South Carolina and the other states that seceded thought they could do so, the Union did not, they considered them rebels and never recognized their sovereignty. You said it was "generally understood" that they could secede, which is just not true. That was the whole basis of the constitutional crisis, whether or not states could secede. SC wasn't invaded because Lincoln didn't want war, he practically begged them to come back to avoid war in his inaugural address, also stating that he wouldn't touch existing slavery.

"The CSA was not part of the USA at the time."

The union didn't acknowledge the sovereignty of the CSA, as I just said, so it was not their territory in the opinion of the north.

>>51
After the emancipation proclamation it became a war over slavery, among other things.

>>52

Nowhere in the Constitution is there any mention of the union of the states being permanent. This was not an oversight by any means. When New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia ratified the Constitution, they specifically stated that they reserved the right to resume the governmental powers granted to the United States. Their claim to the right of secession was understood and agreed to by the other ratifiers, including George Washington.

If Lincoln wanted the States to stay in the Union, he could possibly have done so by solving the issues they had with him. In large part, the plan to use tariff money extracted from the south to subsidize industrial expansion in the north. Obviously he valued his will to use political power to meet his own personal desires over his will to prevent war. If one desires to involuntarily extract money from someone and still desires no violence, they must make a decision between them. Lincoln chose to extract money. In doing so, he chose not to stop a war.

That the Union didn't aknowledge the CSA means nothing, as the Union's perception of things does not change the actual state of things. I could ignorantly and arrogantly declare that I have a domesticated dingo, and release it into a flock of sheep to guard them like a domesticated sheepdog. That doesn't mean I have a domestic animal. But by your logic, if I simply don't acknowledge it, then it is a fact that I have a domesticated animal. After all, I said so. And I own that dingo.

The war was not started over slavery. From what I've heard, Lincoln only added the bit about ending slavery because the northerners were tired of the war and he needed something to motivate them.

>>53
"Nowhere in the Constitution is there any mention of the union of the states being permanent."

And nowhere does it mention that states have the right to secession. Why would the government put in a provision for it's own destruction? There was no understanding that states had the right to secede, this ambiguity is what caused all the debate over the Constitution.

"If Lincoln wanted the States to stay in the Union, he could possibly have done so by solving the issues they had with him. In large part, the plan to use tariff money extracted from the south to subsidize industrial expansion in the north."

It was a law passed by Congress before Lincoln was president, Lincoln couldn't really do anything about it.

"That the Union didn't aknowledge the CSA means nothing, as the Union's perception of things does not change the actual state of things. I could ignorantly and arrogantly declare that I have a domesticated dingo, and release it into a flock of sheep to guard them like a domesticated sheepdog. That doesn't mean I have a domestic animal. But by your logic, if I simply don't acknowledge it, then it is a fact that I have a domesticated animal. After all, I said so. And I own that dingo."

That logic can just as easily be reversed to say that just because the South declared secession did not mean that they did. And doing so surely did not give them the right to take Fort Sumter. That is childish nonsense. If they truly wanted a peaceful secession they should have brought it to the supreme court instead of attacking Sumter.

"The war was not started over slavery. From what I've heard, Lincoln only added the bit about ending slavery because the northerners were tired of the war and he needed something to motivate them."

I know, I said that it became a war over slavery. Lincoln did want an eventual end to slavery, but not by forcing it out of the south. But, desperate times, the Emancipation Proclamation helped the Union army significantly and probably made the war end sooner.

>>54
Amendment 10 says that ALL powers not delegated to the feds are rights granted to the States or the People. So if it wasn't mentioned, it's covered by the 10th Amendment.

The government had a provision for it's own destruction because when the Constution was written, they had just a few years ago finished fighting a war against a bad government, and they understood that this new government could become as bad as the British. Would you change a dirty diaper and replace it with a new kevlar diaper and superglue it in place? No. They thought that was stupid in the 1780s when they wrote the Constitution.

If the Union wanted to prevent the firing on Fort Sumter they could have left. They didn't, because war was preferable.

If the Union wanted the South to stay, they could have repealed the tarriffs. They didn't, because war was preferable.

Maybe the Union did want the south to stay. But it certainly wasn't their highest goal.

WIN

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!