| | Ryan I guess you didn't really pay attention to my post at all, because when you say here:
I agree that the southern states never had legitimacy to own slaves. My point is that the original union of states was formed at a time when this wrong was a common practice, and rectifying it was specifically retained by the involved states as within their own sovereignty.
You should've realized I said in response to this idea what I said here:
When you say the constitution bounded this country to certain rules over secession and state's having their say over slavery, and that the federal government had to follow them, you are elevating the constitution as a moral ideal over moral ideals themselves. The issue of what is a moral government, and what would constitute a moral legitimate claim to sovereignty is not bound by written law, it is rather a moral principle, guided by reason, and only so far as that written law respects the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can one call it a moral law. It is possible for written law to be immoral, as laws themselves are not intrinsically moral, but rather depend on the context of how they correspond to reality and whether they are consonant with man's right to life. The constitution is not holy writ. The Southern states never had the moral legitimacy to have slaves, and a sanction of it from a written document doesn't make it moral. A government does not deserve sovereignty if it doesn't hold the individuals that it governs to the same standard. And if a law is immoral, it is moral to break it, amend it, to something that respects the right to life.
It doesn't matter what the document said. It was an immoral condition to that agreement. No one had the right to enter into a written agreement to enslave another man. It was therefore perfectly moral to break that original agreement, and alter the document to be more consonant with man's right to life, as was done after the civil war with the passage of the 13th amendment. A moral wrong had occurred, and it was the North's right to correct the moral wrong. The fact that it had been a moral wrong for so long does not make the immorality go away either. Traditionalism does not trump morality, and there is no expiration date to correcting a moral wrong.
I have no wish to engage in any kind of circular argumentation. You are appealing your argument for the morality of the South's secession based on traditionalism and an appeal to a written document, rather instead an appeal to morality and man's right to life.
Ryan you write here:
To my thinking, given the original context of the practice, the only proper way to have gone about it would have been to reevaluate the founding document, and attempt to introduce amendment or create a new one.
This argument is dubious since The North didn't just attack the South before the South declared its independence. The civil war started after the South seceded. The South clearly was not interested in entertaining the idea of allowing or introducing a new amendment to free the slaves. It seceded for the sole purpose of guaranteeing its existence as slave states.
"This is philosophically corrupt. Basically you are saying others do not have the right to interfere when someone else initiates force against another. A surprisingly anarchist argument, surprising because I didn't think you were an anarchist. But you do have a right to correct a wrong, even if you weren't the one that made the wrong. A criminal cannot claim sovereignty to his own criminal actions. "
We aren't discussing criminality, we're discussing immoral practices of an entire society.
We are discussing moral principles, and how those principles apply man qua man, or groups of men qua groups of men should be the same principle. A nation, at least a free one, is representative of the interests of those individuals within it. And as such that nation can act in retaliation to an initiation of force by another.
I asked this before and you dodged the question. If a state cannot make a moral error internal to its own workings when would you suggest we begin the carpet bombing and subjugation of Africa, the middle east, south america, and china? You merely state that you could flip this around. Should we be attacking these countries, John?
I did answer your question, why didn't you answer mine? And my intent is to argue the philosophical premises here, how we apply them specifically to a thousand concrete examples depends on the context of each of those situations. Perhaps I should just repost my answer for you since you seem to be ignoring me:
This is purely question begging. Would the correct response be passivity and letting millions of people die in communist concentration camps? You act as if the only possible response to an initiation of force is to indiscriminately kill civilians. If that's the case, then you can't make any moral argument for stopping any initiation of force. You wouldn't be able to make a moral case for any war for any reason. Was liberating the Jews from their concentration camps immoral because German citizens were killed in the process? Suppose you could ask a black slave before the Civil War if he thinks war would be worth it if it meant he could be a free man? What do you think his answer would be? The fact that Southern civilians were targeted by some Union soldiers does not sanction the South's right to secede in order to keep slaves. You are a military man yourself so I'm surprised you'd make that kind of appeal. Two moral wrongs do not cancel each other out, they are instead two moral wrongs that both need to be corrected, or stopped.
Let me further elaborate, taking an action to interfere on someone's else behalf who is a victim of the initiation of force is a moral option, not a moral obligation. That means if a nation wishes to interfere in the internal matters of a foreign state that is initiating force against its citizens or the citizens of another state, it is not immoral to intervene and stop it. Again, a violation of one's man right to life is a violation on the very concept of the right to life. There is no such thing as an oppressive government enjoying the right to sovereignty, because it has no such right.
But the choice to go to war to intervene must also be weighed from a cost/benefit analysis. It would not be moral to intervene if it assuredly meant your own demise. For example if you were being attacked, and I knew if I helped you try to repel your attacker I would die, it would not be prudent for me to intervene. Ultimately my highest value is my own rational self-interests which includes my interest to live. If however I surmise I can help you with a reasonable measure of escaping harm to myself, I can choose to help you, and especially ought to help you if I felt in the long-term I would become victim myself by becoming the attacker's next target if I choose passivity.
So no, we shouldn't carpet bomb China, it would be stupid to do so for many reasons including it would most assuredly mean our own destruction both militarily and would cripple us economically. There are many principles at work here, and how we apply them depends on the reality we face.
"Yes it is a violation of human rights, and it would have no right to secede for that purpose."
There is no such thing as a conditional right. This is the beginning of leftist thinking. The meta-state determines when the rights of the client-states apply. This is a radical departure from the original concept of the federal gov't as the client of sovereign states.
All rights are conditional, (nor is it leftist, unless you think Objectivism is a leftist ideology now?) they exist only so far as those who are willing to respect their fellow man's right to life do they get to enjoy a right to their own life. Rights as Ayn Rand defines them to be are moral principles in a social context. They exist man qua man, and as such if one man does not recognize the validity of rights and seeks to destroy another man's life, he gets no right to retain a right to his own life. Therefore, no government has the right to deny the rights of its own citizens. It ceases to be a legitimate moral government and has no right to exist, and therefore man has the right to overthrow that government and establish a new one its place that respects man's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
"The fact that Southern civilians were targeted by some Union soldiers does not sanction the South's right to secede in order to keep slaves."
I'm not referring to accidental engagement or mistakes. Sherman's march was a deliberate strategy to target civilians, and he did it to the population of his OWN country.
I know exactly what you meant, and the argument I made still stands as valid. Just because Sherman willfully targeted civilians, doesn't mean the Confederacy had any legitimate right to its existence. Two wrongs do not cancel each other out. They are rather two wrongs, that both need to be corrected, or stopped.
The time in between doesn't matter, John. Failure to free all slaves within the entirety of the territories involved implies that something else was going on there. If merely righting a wrong was the goal, it seems that another method would have been used.
What do you mean the time doesn't matter? You're the own that is making it an issue! Now all of a sudden the time is not important?
I would think the president involved would have clearly run on a platform of abolition. I would think that legislative changes would have begun the conflict, not been used as a strategy IN the conflict. I would think human rights would be respected during the conflict.
All of that is irrelevant to the question of the Confederacy's moral right to exist, which it did not have for the very reason it had slaves. The North however, did not have slaves. Lincoln's constituents included abolitionists, and ran on a platform of only admitting new territories into the Union as free states. This horrified the South since it knew its days as slave states were numbered since it would then have only minority control in Congress. The push to outlaw slavery started from the beginning of this Republic's birth, and it was a slow political process filled with compromises and steps forward with some failures in between. Lincoln's election was just the next step in that process to trickle in more freedom to the slaves, and the South responded to his election despite reassurances from him he wouldn't touch the issue of Slave states in the South, just the new territories, the Southern slave states responded by completely withdrawing from the Union. The fact is the South did not respect the human rights of blacks at all, the North didn't respect some rights during a temporary war. Which do you think was worse? Institutionalized slave labor camps? Or a temporary suspension of liberties during a time of war? Tell me which you think is worse?
It didn't happen because maintaining american freedom and ending a grave injustice wasn't the point for the union.
Another dubious claim considering almost immediately after the war ended habaes corpus was no longer suspended, the 13 amendment was passed and all the slaves were freed. Clearly the outcome of the war was one of justice. We can argue all day as to whether the outcome of the war was the motive of the North or not, but clearly the outcome of the war was a positive one. As the abolitionist movements in the North successfully elected a President that was at least sympathetic to their cause, and Lincoln sought to preserve the Union at first through compromise, but not on the issue of new territories, then when the South refused to compromise at all, Lincoln's last option was to use outright force to end the issue of slavery once and for all.
I feel like you're being blinded by the fact that the trial ballon for destroying the entire base of american freedom used correcting the most horrendous wrong ever perpetrated by america. Nearly everything wrong today in america is based on the changes made then, so you see where "The constitution is not holy writ" and "It doesn't matter what the document said." thinking goes.
All of the problems today are a result of the changes that took place then? Are you serious? Could you concretize that for me because I don't believe you. Was the 13th amendment a wrong thing? Clearly that was one of the changes that took place then so I guess you're making the argument we should still let states decide if they want to enslave black people or not? I don't think you mean that but your vague argument can certainly be interpreted that way. So what other changes that happened back then is responsible for what is wrong today? Inquiring minds would like to know.
(Edited by John Armaos on 3/10, 1:12pm)
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