And why did hundreds of thousands of lower class non slave owning farmers volunteer to fight? They sure as shit weren't getting a steady paycheck, paid room board, healthcare, job training, and paid college in exchange. They were marching hundreds of miles on hard bread with no shoes in the snow with no medical care of any kind in order to fight, for years and years. Now why do you think they were willing to do that?

Whatever the reason why certain states decided to leave the Union, the fact is that these United States as founded should have allowed them to do so. It was supposed to be a voluntary union between several semi-autonomous nations. That's why they were called states in the first place. State is a synonym for nation.

And it still should be. In fact, if states were still able to leave if they felt they were getting a raw deal, we likely wouldn't have as many problems with the Federal government as we do now. There's no threat to them if they keep doing things wrong. If a portion of the population could decide to leave and go it on their own, and keep all of their tax money, the Federal government would have an actual incentive to make sure the Union was still a functioning body that was a more attractive option than leaving.

EDIT: I'll go further.

Did the UK have the right to leave the EU? Why or why not?

A group of sovereign peoples/nations agree to come together and form a pact for mutual defense and benefit. They retain their identities and internal governments and their own way of doing things, but they establish an organization above each of them that runs the affairs of mutual interest to all of them. They each send some of their people to represent them, vote in their name, they all pay some money to fund that organization, and delegate a small list of tasks to that organization that are better handled as a unified group than individually, but state that other than those things, they want to be left alone. Over time that organization grows and grows, takes more and more money, makes more and more rules that tell the members what to do, and after a while, one or more decide that it's not worth it anymore and want to call it quits and go back to being on their own. Are they and should they be allowed to do so? Why or why not?

One thing I've noticed is that the extreme majority of people don't seem to be capable of differentiating between high-level abstract concepts and low level examples of those concepts. For instance, why is communism evil? Most would say that it's because it doesn't work and it results in failure every time it's tried. While that is true, it's not the reason it's evil. It's evil because the ideology itself requires the subjugation of individual rights and liberties for the benefit of the collective. The fact that is also doesn't work is a byproduct of that. Communism isn't evil because it fails every time, it's evil because it violate basic natural law, which in turn is the reason why it keeps failing. The examples of communism failing aren't why it's evil. They're examples of it being evil, but the why is in the abstract ideology itself.

So when looking at the Civil War, people who can't differentiate between high-level abstract concepts and low level examples of those concepts say "Secession is wrong because the South wanted to keep slavery". No, that is an example of a group of people trying it and doing it for the wrong reason. That doesn't mean the idea itself is inherently bad, just that we happen to have a sample size of 1 for when it's been tried, and 100% of that sample size happened to be people doing it for bad reasons.

If Bob, Jim, Roger, and Dale decide to terminate their membership at a local range because of Fudd rules, come together to buy an acre or two of land they can shoot on, that's their choice. Maybe Bob has a riding mower and can mow the lawn, Dale is a carpenter so he can make some lanes. Roger has an earthmover so he can make a berm. They all contribute something and make something great for all of them. But at what point did any of them lose the right to leave if they want? What if Jim gets a job 2000 miles away? Can he leave? That's a good reason. But what if Roger fucked Dale's wife and now Dale wants to leave so that the rest can't afford the land anymore in order to screw over Roger? That also harms the other two dudes who didn't do anything, likely a shitty reason. But what does any of that have to do with them losing the right to leave if they want? It doesn't. The reason can be good or bad, but it has nothing to do with the fact that they still each have the right to choose to leave if they want. So did the UK when they left the EU for good reasons. And yes, so did the South when they left the Union for bad reasons.

The United States was founded as a voluntary union of free and independent states. They literally said that on day 1. And that means that a state has the right to leave if it wants. The Civil War may have done a lot of good in ending slavery a couple of decades before it would have ended anyways, but it also destroyed the United States as it was founded and replaced it with a one-size-fits-all mega-nation that all previously free and independent states have been trapped in ever since. And looking back, that is likely a more grievous result than if slavery had been allowed to continue for another couple of decades. The Industrial Revolution was going to kill off slavery anyways, and it was right around the corner. We're still dealing with the damage of losing our independence.

And why did hundreds of thousands of lower class non slave owning farmers volunteer to fight? They sure as shit weren't getting a steady paycheck, paid room board, healthcare, job training, and paid college in exchange. They were marching hundreds of miles on hard bread with no shoes in the snow with no medical care of any kind in order to fight, for years and years. Now why do you think they were willing to do that?

Whatever the reason why certain states decided to leave the Union, the fact is that these United States as founded should have allowed them to do so. It was supposed to be a voluntary union between several semi-autonomous nations. That's why they were called states in the first place. State is a synonym for nation.

And it still should be. In fact, if states were still able to leave if they felt they were getting a raw deal, we likely wouldn't have as many problems with the Federal government as we do now. There's no threat to them if they keep doing things wrong. If a portion of the population could decide to leave and go it on their own, and keep all of their tax money, the Federal government would have an actual incentive to make sure the Union was still a functioning body that was a more attractive option than leaving.

EDIT: I'll go further.

Did the UK have the right to leave the EU? Why or why not?

A group of sovereign peoples/nations agree to come together and form a pact for mutual defense and benefit. They retain their identities and internal governments and their own way of doing things, but they establish an organization above each of them that runs the affairs of mutual interest to all of them. They each send some of their people to represent them, vote in their name, they all pay some money to fund that organization, and delegate a small list of tasks to that organization that are better handled as a unified group than individually, but state that other than those things, they want to be left alone. Over time that organization grows and grows, takes more and more money, makes more and more rules that tell the members what to do, and after a while, one or more decide that it's not worth it anymore and want to call it quits and go back to being on their own. Are they and should they be allowed to do so? Why or why not?

One thing I've noticed is that the extreme majority of people don't seem to be capable of differentiating between high-level abstract concepts and low level examples of those concepts. For instance, why is communism evil? Most would say that it's because it doesn't work and it results in failure every time it's tried. While that is true, it's not the reason it's evil. It's evil because the ideology itself requires the subjugation of individual rights and liberties for the benefit of the collective. The fact that is also doesn't work is a byproduct of that. Communism isn't evil because it fails every time, it's evil because it violate basic natural law, which in turn is the reason why it keeps failing. The examples of communism failing aren't why it's evil. They're examples of it being evil, but the why is in the abstract ideology itself.

So when looking at the Civil War, people who can't differentiate between high-level abstract concepts and low level examples of those concepts say "Secession is wrong because the South wanted to keep slavery". No, that is an example of a group of people trying it and doing it for the wrong reason. That doesn't mean the idea itself is inherently bad, just that we happen to have a sample size of 1 for when it's been tried, and 100% of that sample size happened to be people doing it for bad reasons.

If Bob, Jim, Roger, and Dale decide to terminate their membership at a local range because of Fudd rules, come together to buy an acre or two of land they can shoot on, that's their choice. Maybe Bob has a riding mower and can mow the lawn, Dale is a carpenter so he can make some lanes. Roger has an earthmover so he can make a berm. They all contribute something and make something great for all of them. But at what point did any of them lose the right to leave if they want? What if Jim gets a job 2000 miles away? Can he leave? That's a good reason. But what if Roger fucked Dale's wife and now Dale wants to leave so that the rest can't afford the land anymore in order to screw over Roger? That also harms the other two dudes who didn't do anything, likely a shitty reason. But what does any of that have to do with them losing the right to leave if they want? It doesn't. The reason can be good or bad, but it has nothing to do with the fact that they still each have the right to choose to leave if they want. So did the UK when they left the EU for good reason. And yes, so did the South when they left the Union for bad reasons.

And why did hundreds of thousands of lower class non slave owning farmers volunteer to fight? They sure as shit weren't getting a steady paycheck, paid room board, healthcare, job training, and paid college in exchange. They were marching hundreds of miles on hard bread with no shoes in the snow with no medical care of any kind in order to fight, for years and years. Now why do you think they were willing to do that?

Whatever the reason why certain states decided to leave the Union, the fact is that these United States as founded should have allowed them to do so. It was supposed to be a voluntary union between several semi-autonomous nations. That's why they were called states in the first place. State is a synonym for nation.

And it still should be. In fact, if states were still able to leave if they felt they were getting a raw deal, we likely wouldn't have as many problems with the Federal government as we do now. There's no threat to them if they keep doing things wrong. If a portion of the population could decide to leave and go it on their own, and keep all of their tax money, the Federal government would have an actual incentive to make sure the Union was still a functioning body that was a more attractive option than leaving.

And why did hundreds of thousands of lower class non slave owning farmers volunteer to fight?

Whatever the reason why certain states decided to leave the Union, the fact is that these United States as founded should have allowed them to do so. It was supposed to be a voluntary union between several semi-autonomous nations. That's why they were called states in the first place. State is a synonym for nation.

And it still should be. In fact, if states were still able to leave if they felt they were getting a raw deal, we likely wouldn't have as many problems with the Federal government as we do now. There's no threat to them if they keep doing things wrong. If a portion of the population could decide to leave and go it on their own, and keep all of their tax money, the Federal government would have an actual incentive to make sure the Union was still a functioning body that was a more attractive option than leaving.

And why did hundreds of thousands of lower class non slave owning farmers volunteer to fight?

Whatever the reason why certain states decided to leave the Union, the fact is that these United States as founded should have allowed them to do so. It was supposed to be a voluntary union between several semi-autonomous nations. That's why they were called states in the first place. State is a synonym for nation.