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

>>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.