Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "PragerU"
channel.
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
As one northern abolitionist said in 1861: "It is constantly said... that if our government cannot prevent a State from seceding at will, it is no government at all. But it is forgotten, that the true glory of our government—the queen beauty of our system is, that it ceases with the will of the people. Its true strength lies not in navies and battalions, but in the affections of the people. Numbers in our midst... are vainly boasting that we propose to show the world that we have a government that is strong enough to meet the exigency and to suppress rebellion. But they fail entirely to apprehend and appreciate the true theory of the American system. Their is the old European, and not the American, idea of government...
"The true strength of a free government—and they are the strongest of all, is in the devoted attachment of its citizen sovereigns. Let this be forfeited, and the government falls.
"A government which is strong by the exercise of military power over its own citizens, is not a free government, but a despotism.
"Instead of the peaceful separation of these States being a disgrace to our government in the eyes of the world, it will constitute in all coming time its truest glory, and will demonstrate the infinite superiority of the voluntary system of self-government over the despotic usurpations of the past."
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@giuffre714 Your last comment brings to mind some quotes:
"...The majority are left with only their two poor values of personal peace and affluence.
With such values, will men stand for their liberties? Will they not give up their liberties step by step, inch by inch, as long as their personal peace and prosperity is sustained and not challenged, and as long as the goods are delivered?"
Francis Schaeffer
"You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government." -Patrick Henry
"...armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instrument for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”
James Madison
And the German-English economist, E. F. Schumacher wrote the following late in the age of English colonialism, but it's also very applicable to the supposed "generosity" of the US:
“Some people ask: 'What happens when a country, composed of one rich province and several poor ones, falls apart because the rich province secedes?' Most probably the answer is: 'Nothing very much happens.' The rich will continue to be rich and the poor will continue to be poor. 'But if, before secession, the rich province had subsidised the poor, what happens then?' Well then, of course, the subsidy might stop. But the rich rarely subsidise the poor; more often they exploit them. They may not do so directly so much as through the terms of trade. They may obscure the situation a little by a certain redistribution of tax revenue or small-scale charity, but the last thing they want to do is secede from the poor.
“The normal case is quite different, namely that the poor provinces wish to separate from the rich, and that the rich want to hold on because they know that exploitation of the poor within one's own frontiers is infinitely easier than exploitation of the poor beyond them.”
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@giuffre714 Yes, we know when the South seceded that the South was fine with slavery. We also know when the South seceded that the North was fine with letting the South practice slavery as long as they liked. Lincoln called for war against the South at the same time that he promised to faithfully uphold the fugitive slave clause.
You ask, since I recognize that slavery would've ended anyway, what's the difference? Legal abortion even in those states that didn't choose through the democratic process to legalize abortion is just one example of how government is now less democratic, less accountable to the people, unconstrained by any intelligible rule of law (but instead determined behind dark curtains by unelected, practically unimpeachable, appointed-for-life supreme rulers), no longer with any meaningful "consent of the governed," but instead more accountable to corporate elites (what were called robber barons after the Republicans ushered in their age with the war, but are now just taken for granted as a totally normal dominating part of our politics.) We can talk about lots of other examples of the consequences besides abortion.
1
-
1
-
1
-
@giuffre714 People are allowed to retire at any age they want in Russia, same as here, same as in almost any country in the world. Of course, whether a person can afford to retire (and whether working life is undesirable enough that they even want to retire) is another question, one for which the US doesn't necessarily compare very favorably to other countries, but your question was what I'm not allowed to do, and people are certainly allowed to retire at any age they want in Russia.
And Putin repeatedly getting re-elected has nothing to do with what Russians are "not allowed to do" either.
Quality of life, however you or I might want to measure it and important as it is, likewise isn't an answer to what Russians aren't allowed to do. That's a standard by which we could find lots of faults with the modern American lifestyle more or less attributable to the robber barons' military subjugation of agrarian society and meaningful democracy with it, though.
In any case, your question must not be very useful or insightful since you can't answer your own question with regards to Russia.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@TheStapleGunKid "When shown time and time again that the Southern leaders said constantly, repeatedly, and forcefully said they were seceding to preserve slavery, you still deny it."
Show me one time where any Southern leader said his state/the South was "seceding to preserve slavery" in the sense of seceding to protect against something (let alone something they considered constitutionally legitimate, like the Republicans winning the election, which fact they hated but recognized was in accordance with the constitution) that would have prevented them from continuing to practice slavery if they had remained in the union. They never used the word "preserve" as Righteous Cause Myth apologists "constantly, repeatedly, and forcefully" do, because it implies the lie that the southern states seceded to protect against some constitutionally legitimate threat that would have prevented them from continuing to practice slavery if they had remained in the union. The only sense in which they seceded "to preserve slavery" is the sense in which the seceded "to preserve water drinking," which is to say drinking water was one of the things they intended to continue doing after they seceded.
"All you have to do is read the relevant primary documents that show the South..., showing the Union was not only legally justified..., but morally justified as well."
Are you saying the North was morally justified because of what the South said (never mind your gross distortions of what they said), even though the North went to war denying any anti-slavery purposes? Can the US likewise be morally justified in invading Iraq on the basis of Saddam Hussein's evils irrespective of the USA's actual and stated reasons for invading Iraq? If not, how can the North be?
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1