What on earth does this have to do with the JFK assassination? I would never use the argument "Well, he's an Obama defender and/or a Biden defender" to try to make a point in a JFK discussion, because such a comment would be irrelevant. People who make such comments are only showing their own blind, rabid partisan bias.
If you bother to read the comments I have made about Trump in this forum, you will see that my position on him is mixed. I defend most of his policies, but I do not like the way he often conducts himself and I do not think much of him as a person. He was my fourth pick among the GOP candidates in the 2016 GOP primary.
I didn’t talk about Trump. I talked about your views on the Civil War.
CTers are free to bring up subjects that have nothing to do with the JFK assassination.
Like Gerald Posner plagiarism on articles he wrote that had nothing to do with the assassination. These charges were true. Easy enough for a professional reporter to do. Reporters get their information from what other reporters write. There is simply not enough time for each reporter to conduct their own interviews and write the number of articles demanded of them. And what person who makes the news would be willing or able to give an interview to all the thousands of reporters who want to write about them. But a report is supposed to reword everything, so that everything is in his own worlds. In this ‘Cut and Paste’ world, I would guess Posner ran out of time and published the words of others. This is a technical violation of reporter ethics and he was fired. In any case, CTers make a big deal of this, which has nothing to do with the JFK assassination, and that’s all right.
Or John McAdams being fired for reasons that had nothing to do with his statements on the JFK assassination. But, again, it was alright for CTers to talk about this a lot. Unlike Posner, there was no justified reason for him being fired. The courts ruled that he was fired for political reasons, not because he had done anything unethical.
But, if a LNer talks about the beliefs or actions of CTers, that somehow is off topic. My views on that subject have undergone a substantial shift over the last four years. I still believe that under the original understanding of the Constitution, the South had the right to secede, but I no longer believe that the South had sufficient justification for exercising that right. This is why you will notice that my Civil War site has many articles that defend Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan. In fact, I have devoted an entire website to a defense of McClellan (there are links to it on my Civil War site). People who have been following my Civil War site for some time have noticed that I took down my harshly critical anti-Lincoln article, because my views on Lincoln have undergone a dramatic shift.
George McClellan believed that slavery should be allowed to continue. So did Lincoln’s. But by January 1863, Lincoln believed it should not, where McClelland believed slavery should continue, as late as November 1964 and probably until the end of the war. So, I’m not impressed by a defense of McClellan.
But you still believe, as far as I can tell, that the South went to war over the high tariff, and not to protect slavery. This is quite false. These are not the reasons the South was giving in 1861, where they made it clear it was to protect slavery. I don’t know why anyone would ever believe they seceded because of the tariff.
In a nutshell, I believe secession is wrong for two reasons:
1. It would tend to cause Democracies to split up. Making them more vulnerable to non-Democracies. As Lincoln made clear in his Gettysburg address, the ultimate Union cause was to ensure that the government of the people will not perish from the Earth.
2. If Secession is a right, then it can be used by the Minority to get what it wants. It turns Democracy on its ear. In the 1850’s Democracy was turned topsy-turvy.
The South got what it wanted against the wishes of the majority on:
a. No railway to the west coast, uniting the country – too advantageous to the North.
b. No Homestead Act – too advantageous to the North
c. A Low Tariff – wanted by the South
d. Prevent the establishment of the “Land Grant Colleges” – not wanted by the South.
The South, the minority, was getting all sorts of things they wanted, all through the threat of Secession. Many of which had seemingly nothing to do with slavery.
Once the South seceded, and secession was no longer a threat, in 1862, the majority finally got what it wanted. The building of the Transcontinental railroad. The college land grands, which started colleges, like the University of California, among others. These colleges were the key to allowing America to becoming a real-world leader in Science in the twentieth century. It has been argued that the high tariffs were the key to getting industry established in America, because, initially, they could not compete with Europe. But once allowed to get established, they could more than compete against Europe, even on a level playing field.
In any case, right or wrong, the majority should get what it wants, not the minority. The threat of secession turns this on its head.
By the way, in 1861, Congress did raise the tariffs. But this happened after the 7 states seceded. And the other 4 seceded not because of the high tariff but because of the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln’s call on them to supply troops, and the likely necessary for Union armies to pass through them, as they did through Pennsylvania, and indeed all northern states. High tariffs did not cause secession. Secession caused the high tariffs.
