When Chris Matthews asked Pat Buchanan who was right in the Civil War, Buchanan responded:
“I think in a way both sides were right. Lincoln had a right to save the Union. I think they [the South] had a right to go free.”
It’s awfully generous of Buchanan to acknowledge Lincoln’s right to preserve the Union. But it seems a tad problematic to have a Union from which each state has the right to secede.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Now, I know the preamble has no force of law, but you can’t insure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense by taking up arms against the federal government.
But, however you look at secession as a Constitutional matter, it should be possible in the 21st-Century to declare the Confederates in the wrong during the Civil War. They left the Union not to preserve the institution of slavery in their own states, but to establish it in the new western territories. Lincoln had no intention of abolishing slavery in the states in which it already existed. I’d also remind you that South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas all seceded from the Union before Lincoln could even be inaugurated. It was almost the same as how these folks are treating President Obama. It’s irrational.
But you can say anything on teevee if you’re a Republican and it won’t cost you your job.
and this surprises you from MSNBC’S Resident Racist, BECAUSE…..
The two mints in one approach doesn’t seem to work here .
Isn’t it stated in the Constitution or in an ammendment that a state specifically does not have the right to secede?
Is it? I don’t think so, although I confess I don’t know for sure. A quick search through an online version of the Constitution did not turn up any matches of secede or secession. However, according to wikipedia:
I would say that is the key issue. If it’s not in the Constitution, but established by USSC precedent, then it is the law of the land until and unless another SC precedent reverses that decision.
That said, I’m gonna talk some progressive heresy here. I want to make something clear up front:
The issue of secession and the issue of slavery are two totally different issues, although almost any discussion of the Confederacy and the Civil War automatically conflate the two. I do not condone, defend or accept the concept of slavery in any form anywhere at any time.
The issue of secession, on the other hand, I would say is at least debatable. If a state — any state, Alaska let’s say, or Hawaii, or Michigan or California — having voluntarily joined the United States, presumably by a legal process initiated by its citizens, might also choose, again voluntarily by a legal process initiated by its citizens, to secede. Whether a particular state might or might not have such a legal procedure in its state constitution, or might create such a procedure by amendment, would be a matter for each state to decide. I understand that Texas specifically wrote that into their constitution when they joined the Union. Hence I would say that is a legal matter which might legitimately be brought before the United States Supreme Court and, if the arguments were persuasive, might overturn Texas v. White for instance. Whether that is even possible I would say is a matter for constitutional scholars.
Now maybe Texas is a special case. Rick Perry and the Teabaggers would probably say so. But what about the general case. I’ve read comments suggesting that at least some citizens of the northern tier of states like Michigan would voluntarily leave the United States and join Canada if they could, for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with slavery. Texas v. White aside, shouldn’t that at least be a debatable proposition? And if it is, then is it not at least debatable that the states of the Confederacy, prior to Texas v. White in 1869, might have had a right to secede? And again I stress, I am talking about the issue of secession, not the issue of slavery or any other issue which might have led them to secede.
I’d say no.
I’d say the country as a whole has the right to protect its own sovereignty against any effort by another nation to incorporate some of our territory, even if that move is supported by a plurality or majority of the citizens of that territory. Likewise, they cannot set up their own autonomous state, even if they agree to sell all federal property back to us. Such efforts are essentially treasonous and seditious.
Having said that, while it could never be considered ‘legal,’ our founding principles, as contained in the Declaration of Independence, do allow for the moral choice of seeking to overthrow the government. It’s not legal. But it can be justified morally under certain circumstances. But, even if can be morally justified, the federal government is legally entitled to resist such efforts.
budr, you beat me to it and said it much better. I think it’s very unfortunate that slavery and the concept of secession are inevitably conflated and confused. Secession is a tool that was used to try and maintain and expand an unarguably and deeply evil institution.
The Confederacy’s secession attempt, whatever the apologists say, was about slavery and its expansion. As a result, the issue of the right to secede becomes exceedingly murky. There is a human rights aspect that can’t be ignored: do we just allow a slavery-based regime to condemn Americans under their power to indefinite torture, dehumanzation, and murder? Do we take away the fundamental rights that a certain class of Americans holds in the majority of the country? Seems to me it is adherence to the rights guaranteed by the Constitution that makes the argument about the rightness of the Civil War, not some theory about whether secession is ever justified or permitted.
In the present case, there is no clear certainty that basic human rights would be taken away in case some states seceded. I think in that circumstance there IS a right to try to secede by means of a democratic and orderly process. National borders and territories shift and change over time. Looking at the sweep of history it’s hard to find any justification for preventing the process from playing out as long as doing so is clearly the will of the citizens.
So to my mind Buchanan is correct in the bare statement he made, but deceptive in hiding his real passion: to justify slavery and its consequences. We make a mistake when we join him in arguing as if his point is really about some legalistic doctrine and not yet another attempt to peddle the image of the “glorious” Confederacy. I say let the secessionists give it a shot and see what happens.
Yep, the South’s conduct in the Civil War is exactly like what conservatives are doing to Obama today. Though Lincoln didn’t run on abolishing slavery immediately, Southern states seceded because they didn’t trust Lincoln and were afraid of what he might do. Some things never change.
I always lol @ the strict literal interpretation libertarians who claim the states have the right to secede. You ask where it gives this power, and it puts them in a huge bind.
THe South had a right to go free, but the slaves did not. Another brilliant statement from the token racist n my teevee.
Irony, it’s dead.
BooMan,
Thank you. I was not aware that those states seceded before Lincoln was inaugurated.
Seven states left the union before he was in office.
http://diversityinc.com/content/1757/article/1461/
If I googled further, I think I could find some political cartoons from the time that depicted Lincoln as being, um, ape-like…
Yes, conservatives can go on tv and say anything they want no matter how dishonest or offensive. But that’s only part of the problem. The other part is the refusal or inability for progressives and Democrats to furiously challenge them. They are still playing by old media standards when they still had standards. They typical response from progressives and Democrats is to partly agree with their Republican host, like Joe Scarborough, then give only the most tepid defense of the President. They are clearly grateful to have a few minutes in the limelight and fearful of not being invited back. There’s no doubt that if there were more Al Sharptons making appearances as the progressive voice rather than Eugene Robinson, Sam Stein or that guy from The Nation, Democrats and the progressive cause would be in a much better position in the court of public opinion. This applies to progressive bloggers as well. Your cause would be better served by not using 150 words to respond to Palin’s attacks on the President, including addressing whether he’s arrogant, which is some racist shit. Instead, only a few words will do which Bill Maher recently mastered…”How’s that hopey changey thing working for me? Fine, thank you. How’s that hooked on phonics thing working for you?” You don’t seriously adress this nonsense; you slap it down! And you don’t waste time joining the criticism of the President while your damn enemy is burning down your house!
What are the chances that someone like Joe Scarborough will actually have one of the people on his show who would sit across the table from the Buchanan’s and Bachmann’s and the like and “furiously challenge them”? I would say the chances are close to zero. Almost without fail, the opposing opinion to the farthest right Republican talking heads is some lukewarm Democrat or media constructed pseudo-liberal who really sits squarely in the center and fits the desired mold that allows the media to stay in that warm and comfortable fuzzy center-right land. A land where they report what both sides say, throw up their hands and shrug their shoulders and proclaim, “We can’t say who is right and who is wrong. But we gave both sides” a chance to talk”. They can then go home feeling good that they have met their mission statement.
Those “progressives” and “Democrats” that appear on shows like this are there for a reason. They perpetuate the Democratic stereotype that works so well for the media. In their view, that type of individual is representative of the non-Republican point of view. They couldn’t be more wrong. But I really don’t think they care.
When I saw “Buchanan”, I thought you were talking about James Buchanan.
Actually, the apologists for secession at the time (such as John C. Calhoun) knew that their arguments were fundamentally specious — just as Pat Buchanan knows his are — but they still made them. And then in the 1850s, newpaper editors like William Rhett began beating the drums of war.
There was strong Unionist sentiment in the South in 1860. Indeed, many of the appointed Reconstruction governors, such as Benjamin F. Perry and James Orr in South Carolina, were Unionists before the war.
And here’s the irony. The areas of strongest Unioist sentiment then are today the strongholds of Republican racism. Benjamin F. Perry and Jim DeMint were from the same town in South Carolina.
In short, there never was a legitimate argument for the Confederacy. And after the War, folks like Longstreet and Mosby resisted efforts to romantically resuscitate the Lost Cause.
And the plantation owners did not lose everything. They became the capitalists of the early 20th Century “New South”. For example C. C. Cameron, who was the largest plantation owner in NC had investments in everything from railroads and textile mills to some of the first large-scale orange groves in Florida.
About the outrageousness of TV and radio Republicans. I think that the shock jocks are sensing that their popularity is about to take a nosedive. And the more desperate they are the more shrill they become.
From comments I’m hearing from folks who have been Republican, the old talking points method of communicating has lost its power by becoming robotic. People who had not before noticed are now seeing through Republican rhetoric.
The only thing that will put an end to the shrillness of the Republicans is if they lose elections. If they make some gains this fall as most people expect them to do, they will take this as a vindication for the shrillness, and they will “turn it up to 11”.
They have already purged the party of all of their moderates.
It is only a matter of time. Folks are getting tired of the shrillness.
The fall is not here yet. Most pundits are predicting based on the experience of the last ten years and current favorability/unfavorability polls in the wake of controversial legislation. Between now an November more folks might find out the extent to which Republicans have been lying to them. The anger is against incumbents and not just Democrats.
Well, if they want to revisit Confederate history then we might as well revisit Sherman’s March to the Sea – ah, the good ol’ days…
The Republicans success during the past 30 years since Reagan has been dependent on racism and religious extremism in the broadest sense.
Racism slightly diminished with the Bush focus on religious loonies, but now it is time for the racist snake to slither out and assert itself again.
May Ronnie rest in peace. His political agenda is alive and well. And the Confederacy still lives.
Hell no – may he suffer eternal torment…
These dudes were too lazy to pick their own damn cotton. Too shiftless to do the work in their own lucrative industry. They were more than willing to chase slaves to the end of the earth. Do the manual labor to maintain your plantation and provide for your family? Not so much. And they were willing to die for this right.
But it’s black people conservatives say who live in a culture of dependency.
Right.
Beyond the constitution, I consider it a natural right for people everywhere to rebel against their governments. Isn’t that what most here were encouraging Iranians to do? Does Chechnya have a right to rebel against Russia? Shouldn’t Ukraine be allowed to leave the USSR if it wants? No government has a ‘right’ to govern. They may have an acquiescent public.
As for the civil war, people prefer to argue against the straw man of slavery (is Buchanan really an advocate of slavery?) than to reflect upon when a state, or individual, has a right to take up arms against the government. Slavery is hardly the only issue. Do you support America’s rebellion against England? After all, there was slavery in the colonies but not in Great Britain. I believe it was Samuel Johnson who said “Why do I hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?” As opponents of slavery shouldn’t we take Britain’s side and lament her defeat?
Governments everywhere, including “democratic” ones, rule by force or the threat of it. (Don’t believe me? Ask yourself, if the government had no means to force people to pay taxes, who would pay?)
Now of course, they don’t like to openly say that. They prefer to cloth themselves in the language of popular consent and claiming to act in the public good. But when push come to shove, if you challenge the authority of the state, they will bring a hammer on your head.
Would it not be fair to refer to Old South sympathizers as Appomattox Surrender Monkeys?