I was going to make fun of the whole Mount Vernon nonsense, in which all the same frauds who brought you the last eight years got together and wrapped themselves up in the Constitution then went out for filets and drinks, but Daniel Larison seems to have it covered ok:
I cannot object to the statement that the “federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.” This is true. However, I have no idea why the organizers of this gathering think that anyone will believe their professions of constitutionalism after enabling or acquiescing in some of the most grotesque violations of constitutional republican government in the last forty years. If constitutional conservatism means anything, it has to mean that the executive branch does not have wide, sweeping, inherent powers derived from the President’s (temporary) military role. It has to mean that all these conservatives will start arguing that the President cannot wage wars on his own authority, and they will have to argue this no matter who occupies the Oval Office. It has to mean unwavering conservative hostility to the mistreatment of detainees, and it has to mean that conservatives cannot accept the detention of suspects without charge, access to counsel or recourse to some form of judicial oversight. Obviously, constitutional conservatives could in no way tolerate or overlook policies of indefinite detention or the abuse of detainees. They would have to drive out the authoritarians among them, and rediscover a long-lost, healthy suspicion of concentrated power, especially power concentrated in the hands of the executive.
Until we see these basic demonstrations of fidelity to constitutional principle from the would-be constitutional conservatives of this Mount Vernon meeting, we should assume that this is little more than a new ruse designed to rile up activists and donors during a Democratic administration in order to breathe new life into a moribund and bankrupt movement.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess there is not an autographed copy of Going Rogue on Daniel’s nightstand.
Redshirt
Its all DoubleSpeak at its finest. Say one thing, mean the opposite, change the meaning, still mean the opposite. I laugh, but it is a bitter laugh, but these so-called NeoCons are the greatest collection of PostModernists this poor world has ever witnessed.
Bhall35
I know it’s been said before, but Larison really is one of the few conservatives worth reading out there (except when it comes to sexuality and religion; then he seems as out of touch as Douthat).
Mark S.
This is what drove me away from conservatism (yes, embarrassingly, I used to be Republican). The Iraq War showed me that these guys don’t actually have any principles.
Steve V
I’m still not clear on what Obama’s big assault on the constitution is supposed to be. Bailing out GM?
General Winfield Stuck
Silly Larison. That is so pre Obama thinking. Bush who?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Wake me up when the Republicans release their (new) Contract With America.
General Winfield Stuck
Nope. It’s the peeps rental agreement where the White House is in a restricted “hood.
FormerSwingVoter
@Steve V:
You’re giving conservatives waaaay too much credit. Something they don’t like is unconstitutional because they don’t like it. Most of them clearly haven’t read the damn thing.
flounder
@Steve V
My wingnut cousin told me that Obama’s assault on the Constitution is that he wants to get rid of the 1st Amendment. He could never offer proof of this, but that is what he said (FWIW he also doesn’t like Obama because he claimed he “cut the National Security Budget by 50% –TRUTH!!”)
I was accused of being condescending when I called him a sucker and a conspiracy theorist.
I think I am starting to get annoyed with these wingers constant attempts to wrap their nuttiness up in all sorts of Founding Fathers symbolism.
geg6
Please don’t call this a Mount Vernon gathering or document. The Mount Vernon people refused to host them. It’s at some wedding reception place nearby. We can call it the Wedding Reception Facility Agreement or something. Please. Poor George.
Bubblegum Tate
@General Winfield Stuck:
Exactly. People will believe it because this group of yahoos has spent years denying reality, and nobody has ever said point-blank to them, “You’re full of shit. Shut up and go away until you can get something–anything–right.” All that hypocrisy? That’s just the past, and we shouldn’t get caught up in the blame game, we shouldn’t be worrying about who did what, we shouldn’t be looking backward, we should be looking forward and TAKING BACK OUR COUNTRY!
Naturally, teabaggers will lap it up and beg for more.
The Moar You Know
Larison makes me grind my teeth. I do not understand how someone who consistently makes as much sense as he does can be an unabashed secessionist and worshiper of the myth of the Southern Lost Cause.
Mike Kay
@Steve V:
He’s black, of course.
Yossarian
If if Obama HAD cut the “national security budget” (whatever the hell that is), by 50 percent, I can’t think of a more direct way to limit the power of the presidency and demonstrate a commitment to old-school republican government. These would-be “constitutionalist” conservatives are so stupid they make my face hurt.
The Moar You Know
@Steve V: Presidenting while black.
Republicans can’t accept that a member of the race that Darryl Gates was having beaten half to death on live TV not fifteen years ago is now running the nation. Really. End of story.
Mike Kay
@flounder:
So your cousin is Jane Hamsher?
Really, this guy doesn’t sound any different than Greenwald or the WackPack
Dr.BDH
Reviewing their manifesto I see they believe the Constitution promotes free enterprise, religion and marriage. And something called “individual liberty” (unless the President thinks you’re a terrorist, I guess). And most importantly, defeating “tyranny” anywhere in the world by any means they support.
So it’s God, war and oligarchy. I think that’s in the Constitution of the United States of Freedonia.
Tonal Crow
This gathering of Constitution-hating fifth-columnists bemoaning teh left’s “assault on the Constitution” is The Big Lie at its very drippiest.
Ya know what really makes ’em froth? Donating to the A.C.L.U.
dmsilev
@Steve V: Taking advantage of the 13th and 14th amendments?
-dms
earlofscruggs
@The Moar You Know: “I do not understand how someone who consistently makes as much sense as he does can be an unabashed secessionist and worshiper of the myth of the Southern Lost Cause”
H.L. Mencken was the same way, and I even find shades of it in William Styron. mysterious, and upsetting.
jenniebee
Just read the statement. It’s about half and half attacks on the opposition for enacting policies not explicitly mandated in the Constitution, and the other half endorsing policy goals not explicitly mandated in the constitution.
Also see another quote from Brent Bozell saying that the constitution does not require that every American should have access to health care. It also doesn’t make any provisions for the USDA, regulation and inspection of nuclear power plants, or the Louisiana Purchase. Until the tea partiers call for a return to French control of everything west of the Mississippi, I think we can conclude that their “principles” have less to do with strict adherence to the constitution than with general misfocused griping.
slag
@Dr.BDH:
Or unless the government thinks you’re a homosexual, a woman, or pretty much anyone other than a straight, WASPY male.
FormerSwingVoter
@jenniebee:
This really pisses me off to no end. Do people really not know that the first enumerated power in the Constitution is the ability to tax and spend? Like, it’s right there. You can read it at any time. It clearly says that the government can spend money on stuff, so why the fuck do people insist that government spending is unconstitutional?
Robin G.
You’ve all read this Onion article, right?
It should be noted, I suppose, that the Founding Fathers wouldn’t have liked the idea of a black President or a female Secretary of State, either. So, in that sense…
Waynski
@Mark S. — Your’e right. The Conservatives/Republicans don’t have any principles (plural). They have only one — gain power by any means neccessary. They’re nothing but a bunch of modern day fascists. Oh, wait a minute. I forgot. That’s Obama. Or is he a communist this week? Hard to keep up with their never ending shitstorm of lies.
Bostondreams
As a history teacher, what I love is their ignorance of history. Washington as President was not exactly a Constitutional minimalist. His action in giving free reign to the semi-monarchist Alexander Hamiliton to suspend civil liberties, imprison individuals without trial, and use military force against American citizens who in many cases did nothing wrong during the Whiskey Rebellion shows a somewhat obvious desire for a, um, ‘vigorous’ executive branch.
cat48
A good republican friend of mine passed away last yr so I read Larison and a couple other conservatives in memory of her. Like her, they are not hysterical and different points of view help me balance sometimes as I was raised around reasonable republicans in the Eisenhower mold. I can’t relate to most of today’s republicans with all the wingnuttery though. It is depressing. The ones who work for Obama seem reasonable but that is not the norm.
The Mount Vernon BS is being pushed by “Sen. Waterloo Deminted” as a requirement for all wingnut legislators.
eemom
these people would not know a Constitutional provision if it bit them on the ass and introduced itself.
slag
Let’s get down to it. Everything is mythology to these people. It’s all about invoking some pure, otherworldly rational to support their corrupt collection of inane, idiosyncratic personal beliefs. The only Constitution they care about is a figment of their imagination. Same goes for Jesus. And the Free Market.
scudbucket
Suggested fix.
jenniebee
@FormerSwingVoter: What gets me every time is that they enumerate “lower taxes” as a principle. There is no such thing as an asymptotic principle. There just isn’t.
If they would only just for once annouce that they’ve identified the magic Correct Tax Level That Will Make Everything Just Spiffy, shoot, I’d vote for them just to let them try it. But they don’t. Whatever the tax level is, it should be Lower. Whatever our defensive capabilities are, they should be Stronger. Wherever American spirits are, they should be Lifted. Wherever my gag reflex is, it should be Triggered. And so on.
Also, too.
Cheryl from Maryland
They say George but they mean John Adams. Cuz they really want the Alien and Sedition Acts back.
slag
@jenniebee:
This is funny. Now I’m trying to come up with something that could be construed as an asymptotic principle. Got nothing.
jenniebee
Not really OT: Palin tells Tea Partiers to “pick a party“
Dino
The powdered wig fetish is trite and the manifesto manifests it.
I love the Founding Fathers for incorporating concepts such as individual dignity and the social contract into a workable government, but does it follow that they dictate every aspect of our contemporary society?
And if they should, does Grover Norquist speak for them?. What did Cotton Mather think about the public option? I call for a referendum via seance. Only the white property owing males can participate.
Morbo
If they’re celebrating the Constitution, shouldn’t they be having a Montpelier conference? I know it’s asking a lot for them to name a founding father who isn’t Washington, but come on.
danimal
@Steve V:
I’ll take a crack at it using wingnut logic. The Constitution requires that the president must be an American-born citizen at least 35 years of age.
Not 3/5th of a supposedly American-born citizen.
Yep, preznitin’ while black.
jenniebee
@Dino:
Only the white property owing males can participate.
Three-fifths of black males can be in the room, but they aren’t allowed to talk.
clonecone
I don’t see any mention of the FAA in their document. If the founding fathers wanted government control of our airspace they would have included it in the Constitution. I say the free market is the best air traffic control system in the world.
carlos the dwarf
@Dr.BDH:
I think you’re actually talking about Elbonia. Sorry to nitpick.
[Please don’t eat me, spam filter!]
joes527
@Cheryl from Maryland: Nah … If they got John Adams, he might defend folks accused of doing bad stuff to the US of f’in A in a court of law. Might even get the innocent ones off. Can’t have that.
Bulworth
@Dr.BDH:
Article 6
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or
Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Do our very godly conservatives know about Article 6?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t.
Mike Kay
Too funny.
Palin is fighting with a cartoon. No.Really.A.Cartoon.
cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/16/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6212912.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBo…
She’s fighting a Rupert Murdoch funded cartoon, flip flopping on her recent position that joking about “retards” is okay, because satire should never be taken seriously.
Stefan
ok, I’ve read the Constitution front to back, and while it plainly says we can have an Army and a Navy, it says nothing whatsoever about an Air Force. Until they all demand we abolish the Air Force, I’m not listening to another word those hypocrites say…..
Amanda in the South Bay
@The Moar You Know:
Meh, Larison is a full throated paleo con, so sometimes he comes across as reasonable, sometimes he comes across as the reactionary religious nut job that he is. I never fail to point out he’s a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy (as was I at one point, so I have some cred here). Which means he’s not at all sympathetic to…modern ideas of sexuality, for starters, and embraces all sorts of fucked up lost causes (the south, the obligatory Eastern European ethnic bullshit i.e. Serbia, Russia, etc.).
JK
Jim DeMint Tweet: “If our leaders can’t agree to Mt Vernon statement, they’re part of the problem and should be replaced”
The Mount Vernon Statement: ‘Pablum’ That Richard Viguerie Will Sign Anyway
washingtonindependent.com/76820/the-mount-vernon-statement-pablum-that-richard-viguerie-will-sign-an…
Remember November
@slag:
And Xenu and Space Jesus who visited the American Indians!
jrg
It’s about tribalism to these monkeys. Thuh libruls got to bitch about Bush when he was in charge, now they get to bitch about Obama. The fact that people hated Bush because he trampled the constitution and lied to start an expensive war does not fit into the equation with these folks.
It’s no different than pulling for a football team. Policy and political reality has nothing to do with it. If this was about principles, these fools would have become Democrats years ago.
jenniebee
@Bostondreams: The historical misunderstanding is great, but the philosophical contradictions are staggering. These people will invoke Edmund Burke as they draw breath and then call for strict construction of the Constitution on the exhale. People who do that should be laughed out of the room.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Stefan:
Now that’s a strict Constitutionalist stance though I am sure they will find some way to get around that. For some reason it seems that setting yourself up as the one who gets to define what the Constitution means ‘in its strictest sense’ allows you to always say you are right and everyone else is wrong.
Funny how that works, eh? Talk about a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ political argument.
jeffreyw
OT, but YAY!
gwangung
It’s all the same to these folks. Criticizing Bush because he was an incompetent manager is still criticism; it’s all tribalism to them (and the only people who can criticize republicans are other republicans–and they observe the 11th commandment).
geg6
@Mike Kay:
Which was super brilliant of Seth McFarland to do. He called her out on her bullshit.
It’s a cartoon, Sarah! It’s a funny! And way funnier than Rush!
Glidwrith
Completely O/T, but just caught over at Crooks & Liars that a push inside the Senate is going around to get an up-or-down vote for public option through reconciliation. Four Senators have signed the petition to put before Reid. I just called both Boxer and Feinstein. TimF needs to rally the troops!
Mike Kay
@geg6:
The best part is Family Guy is owned by Murdoch, so she pussed out and didn’t call for a boycott or cancellation, like she would have if it was owned by any other hollywood entity.
geg6
@Glidwrith:
I thought I’d read there were 10.
Okay, went and looked it up rather quickly and here’s what I found:
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/dem-senators-call-on-reid-to-use-reconciliation-to-pass-hcr-with…
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/four-more-senators-sign-call-for-public-option-reconciliation.ph…
Looks like 8 so far. It’s Franken, Leahy, Kerry, Whitehouse, Bennett, Gillibrand, Brown, and Merkley.
Redshirt
McFarland did what anyone looking for attention should do right now: Bait Palin. She’ll take it everytime.
And there’s great fun to be had in getting Palin to attack Fox Entertainment – a useful example of dissonance in action (Fox news and Fox Entertainment run by the same wingnuts?!?!?!)
JK
The Mount Vernon Statement, a steaming pile of excrement, is modeled on William F. Buckley’s Sharon Statement, an older steaming pile of excrement, issued on Sept. 11, 1960
themountvernonstatement.com/about
Sharon Statement
fiu.edu/~yaf/sharon.html
FlipYrWhig
@Steve V: If there really is anything to the complaint on an ideological level rather than as an all-encompassing “Fuck you, pal” I think it looks like this:
1. They believe that Teh Consatution prescribes “limited government.”
2. But Obama wants unlimited and intrusive government. (To do things like help poor, black, and brown people to pay for medical care, force you to use a different dish soap, confiscate your guns, and require partisan balance on the radio, which all merge into one big Takeover Plan.)
3. Which is tyranny.
4. Which demands a revolution. (Ergo, the tea party/American Revolution stylings.)
Again, if there’s any ideological content at all, basically what they believe is that the saying “the government governs best that governs least” is in fact the principle upon which the nation was founded. “Unconstitutional” doesn’t have anything to do with the, like, actual Constitution; it’s a fancy way to say “un-American.”
jenniebee
@Mike Kay: Yes, it’s wrong to suggest that Palin has a daughter with Down Syndrome. Family Guy claims that they weren’t suggesting that any of her daughters have Downs Syndrome, but Palin rejects this, saying “yeah sure, they meant some other one of my kids.”
Watched the show. It didn’t make fun of the character for having Downs Syndrome, or of Chris for liking her. It treated her as a normal person who didn’t need to be shut away and with whom other normal people might want to spend time. If the Palin clan weren’t so deeply ashamed of their own baby, maybe they’d see that.
licensed to kill time
I finally read that “Mt. Vernon” statement and an emptier word salad of platitudes and wishful thinking would be hard to find outside of a Palin Palmprompter.
Obama Is An Evil Deceiver is in there though:
Culture War and Liberal Universities, check:
What We Really Need is Jebus, check:
Then a statement of 5 Vague Things We Must Believe In, followed by militaristic language:
Which will be implemented by:
??????
We Make Revolution! No More Blackity-O-President! WIN!!
Erik Vanderhoff
‘Nuff said.
Comrade Dread
Well, if you follow some of the influences and philosophies of the founders, then you can make a rational argument that secession is not that far out of a position to take.
And let’s be honest, most of the stigma attached to the idea of secession stems more from the lunacy and stupidity of the South’s embrace of slavery and enduring racism.
I would like to remind them that morality is also essential in free enterprise, as in, not lying about bond ratings, not packaging crap into derivative form and calling it pancakes, and not arrogantly demanding that you be bailed out of your mistakes and a 2 million dollar bonus.
Joy
The amazing thing about these turds is they are the very first ones to complain when the social security check isn’t in the mail, their doctor’s bill hasn’t been paid, their roads are crappy or their child/grandchild has to sit in a hot classroom (seriously, I worked for a doctor who wanted to buy an air conditioner for his daughter’s classroom – just hers, not the others). The days of something for nothing are over. The military industrial complex they are so fond of is a very high ticket item as is their retirement and medical care, the USDA, FAA, somehow they don’t seem to make the connection. My new definition of conservatism is “whatever works for the moment to achieve political power”. These angry white people are being duped by the Republican party. For the life of me I do not understand how they can “relate” to Sarah Palin. It’s not the first time they’ve been duped, just ask the evangelicals how that worked out for them. “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me – you can’t get fooled again”.
And Jenniebee, I love the Louisiana Purchase reference. I suppose we could also extend that to Seward’s folly.
Sentient Puddle
So wait, is this the New and Improved Contract with America that Republicans were touting so heavily while it was in the works? Because this document reads sort of like Rudy Giuliani saying “9/11” in every sentence and assuming it worked as policy. Only here, the buzzword is “limited government.”
chopper
it’s been true since the ink was dry.
Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich
Just read something that got Palin a standing ovation:
It’s the kind of thing I’ve grown accustomed to ignoring. Much to my own disappointment because my store of outrage has been totally expended. It takes a seriously warped mentality to twist our Constitution into its exact opposite.
I’m sure the Vernon meeting will be quite successful. We’re watching a most fascinating time in our history. I’m beginning to think that I will actually be present when our society finally fractures.
Stefan
Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down?
Or perhaps always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!?
RareSanity
@Joy:
Oh man…I love that quote…good times…
jenniebee
OK, so far on the List of Things Which Are Exactly As Constitutional As Guaranteed Access to a Health Care Delivery Mechanism we have:
The Louisiana Purchase
Alaska
West Virginia as a separate state (actually, this one was pretty close to flat out unconstitutional, but whatchagonnado?)
the Air Force
the Marines
the Coast Guard
the Center for Disease Control (free the hepatitis four!)
All anti-drug legislation
classification of ketchup as a vegetable
all permanent overseas military bases
digital watches
Comrade Dread
For what it’s worth, I’d be okay with getting rid of the DEA, permanent overseas bases, and West Virginia.
And Alaska, consider yourself on notice. Any more Palin-types coming out the woodwork and you’re going back to Russia.
tomvox1
Ike is also spinning like a gyroscopic top. He would be be so surprised to wake up and find out that the Birchers had taken over his party and excommunicated his brand of Republican. Even Goldwater would be on the purity hit list, for chrissakes!
Luthe
@jenniebee:
To add to the list:
The TSA
Medicare
Social Security
the Federal Reserve
Puerto Rico and the other US territories
NASA
the FBI
the CIA
the Pledge of Allegiance (especially with ‘under God’ added)
corporate personhood
…shall I go on?
Luthe
@Comrade Dread:
You can’t get rid of West Virginia, it’s where our host (and Tunch) reside.
Capn America
“I is going to Mount Vernon, which don’t mean I’s finding a bloke named Vernon and taking him up the butty” – Ali G, who has more sense than any of the teabaggers.
drkrick
The Yardbirds Corollary – Over, Under, Sideways, Down, Backwards, Forwards, Square and Round
Cassidy
Basing your political beliefs off of Robot Chicken, while funny, is not good.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Comrade Dread:
Amanda in the South Bay
@Comrade Dread:
Its usually the most hardened paleo cons and Confederate wankers who insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the Civil War was about anything other than slavery.
Meanderthal
@jenniebee:
You are wonderful. Just so’s you know.
EIGRP
@jenniebee: A few more:
Car insurance
The fillibuster
Clean air
Clean water
“Christian Nation”
Life, Liberty, Freedom, and Pursuit of Happiness
Mike Furlan
Yes, a worshiper of the Old South, (and worship is the proper term for his attitude toward it) cannot seriously pretend to object to:
Strict constructionism will not find a right to secession in the US Constitution. (FWIW The constitution of the former USSR did state a right to secession. It isn’t like it would have been impossible to be clear about the issue.)
The CSA didn’t even get around to establishing its own Supreme Court. So much for concerns about lack of “judicial oversight.”
He is exactly right about the Iraq and Afghan wars, perhaps the way a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day. If he wanted a war for slavery, by what standard can he oppose any other war? Geography?
Mike Furlan
It wasn’t a mystery, the Mississippians started out this way:
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. . .”
sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html#Mississippi
Mike Furlan
So then, why does Larison keep getting quoted here?
Somebody who thinks Larison an expert on “Constitutionalism” is the same type of guy who would go to “Dr. Nick” for medical care.
Tax Analyst
@Capn America:
I hear that when the Pope went to Mount Olive Popeye punched him in his freakin’ eye.
Might be just a rumor, though.
Tax Analyst
@drkrick:
Further Yardbirds – “When will it end?/When will it end?”
Cain
@Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich:
“How dare sinners who hate God and his only Son be given the same chance of salvation that those who keep the faith!”
cain
John Thullen
Skipped the thread … sorry.
Here’s what the Mount Vernon conservatives want:
They don’t want to pay taxes to pay the gummint salaries of the thugs they hire to torture.
They want welfare torture. Volunteer torture.
Or private sector torture, which is more efficient because even though nothing is gained, at least the thug torturers don’t have gummint heath insurance.
FormerSwingVoter
@Luthe:
While we’re making a list, how about:
The Homestead Act
You know, the largest welfare bill in the history of our country, when the government gave land to anyone willing to go west and settle? The single reason that any flyover state has more than seven people in it and was so responsible for that “pioneer spirit” they think was so great? Yeah, that one.
Anne Laurie
@The Moar You Know:
Try reading Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, specifically the late chapters where he discusses Walter Scott’s pernicious influence on “Southern manhood”. It’s all high-faluting ‘chivalry’ and ‘romance’ until someone loses an argument — at which point it turns into the kind of tribal blood-feud we lament when it occurs at a safely Third-World distance. But the gauzy idea still appeals, even to those who should have learned better from reading history if not from experiencing it.
Mike G
and they will have to argue this no matter who occupies the Oval Office.
Fat chance. Repigs don’t have principles, they have tactics. They can cheerleader-fanboy all manner of Repig authoritarianism when Bush is in office, then without blinking scream ‘Nazi’ at a comparatively restrained and prudent Obama the next.
Kyle
Take out the bigots, the bullies, the war-whores and the greedy power-worshippers, and you’d have a Rethug party that could win maybe 10% of the vote on a good day.
Comrade Dread
Because slavery is the elephant in the room when you start discussing the validity or invalidity of secession with regards to American history.
It’s where the philosophy of secession meets reality.
Yes, people should be free to choose their own government and abolish it, but… man, the South was full of racist, slave owning douchebags, so… let’s play up some other causes of the Civil War so we’re not also thought of as racist, slaver supporting douchebags.
mds
So … a terrorist shouldn’t be given a military trial? I’m okay with that, Sarah.