The Civil War And Objectivism


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I had never thought of it that way, you make an interesting argument. However, I do have a question shouldn't we then stop the violation of human rights around the world or was it just because the southern states were a part of the United States that we had the right to stop them? And yes I agree I don't want to be compared to Southern Ideology during the civil war.

Good question. What I would say is that a free (at least in principle) nation is PERMITTED to go to war against a non-free nation. Not that it necessarily has the OBLIGATION to do so, but that it is PERMITTED to do so.

I would also like to apologize for the slowness of my reply.

Also, for all of my rejection of the antebellum South, the Southern US contains many cultural treasures (do not get me started over the food because my descriptions of the lusciousness will quickly transgress this websites parameters for civilized dialogue). Southern culture has a lot to like! Hell, I'm a f**king Goth... Southern Culture gave us Anne Rice, who (when she wasn't religionist) gave us some great literature (although frankly she's kind of cuckoo in general).

The overall point I am making is that the CSA's sovereignty was not valid. The North didn't have an OBLIGATION to go to war, but I wouldn't classify its war as an act of aggression against a valid state.

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I had never thought of it that way, you make an interesting argument. However, I do have a question shouldn't we then stop the violation of human rights around the world or was it just because the southern states were a part of the United States that we had the right to stop them? And yes I agree I don't want to be compared to Southern Ideology during the civil war.

Good question. What I would say is that a free (at least in principle) nation is PERMITTED to go to war against a non-free nation. Not that it necessarily has the OBLIGATION to do so, but that it is PERMITTED to do so.

I would also like to apologize for the slowness of my reply.

Also, for all of my rejection of the antebellum South, the Southern US contains many cultural treasures (do not get me started over the food because my descriptions of the lusciousness will quickly transgress this websites parameters for civilized dialogue). Southern culture has a lot to like! Hell, I'm a f**king Goth... Southern Culture gave us Anne Rice, who (when she wasn't religionist) gave us some great literature (although frankly she's kind of cuckoo in general).

The overall point I am making is that the CSA's sovereignty was not valid. The North didn't have an OBLIGATION to go to war, but I wouldn't classify its war as an act of aggression against a valid state.

The deontic trinity is this: There are things forbidden, things required and things permitted. When we reckon our ethical/moral obligations and liberties this is the basic division. Deontic "logic" is inherently three valued, as opposed to categorical logic where a meaningful assertion (aka a proposition) is either true or not-true and no meaningful assertion is -both- true and not-true at the same time under the same condition.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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There are several points in this thread that I wish to respond to:

1. In sending military forces against the South, was Lincoln acting defensively and properly because Southern forces had fired upon Fort Sumter?

If Fort Sumter were indeed federal property, then certainly the U.S. President would have been performing his Constitutional authority to defend it with force. But Fort Sumter sits on an island in Charleston Bay and is universally recognized as within the boundaries of South Carolina, which had seceded from the Union four months before shots were fired on the island.

If secession were illegitimate, then so would be the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Yet nothing in the U.S. Constitution prohibits a state from withdrawing from the Union. Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali ("[There exists] no crime [and] no punishment without a pre-existing penal law [appertaining]") has long been regarded as a vital principle of both English and American law. To declare, as Lincoln did, that secession is prohibited is to make up law on the spot.

But wasn't the South's firing of cannons an act of violence? Certainly, but is it not within the prerogative of a government to remove unwanted military forces from within its borders? Should Great Britain have been permitted to keep and staff its forts in the 13 colonies after those colonies had declared their independence? Furthermore, the Confederacy had sent emissaries to Washington to discuss the peaceful evacuation of U.S. forts in Confederate territory, but Lincoln refused to negotiate. See http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/lessons/view_lesson.php?id=13

2. What about Southern slaveholders who sent "agents northward to capture Negroes who were not slaves"?

Make no mistake: those were criminal acts. But if North and South were separate countries, it is hard to imagine that kidnapping Northern black men and women would have become easier.

3. What about the expansion of slavery into the Western territories?

Since the Union's population of free citizens was more than three times that of the South, it is not hard to guess which section of the country would have won the race to capture the West.

4. Wasn't secession an attempt to preserve slavery?

The foundation for the United States government is the Constitution. That document gives official recognition to the institution of slavery through the Enumeration Clause which treats slaves as three-fifths of a person. There is also the Fugitive Slave Clause which requires that a slave be returned to the owner in the state from which he escaped.

The fact is, Northern states were a part of a union governed by a constitution which institutionalized slavery. Southerners were not engaging in any activity that was not permitted by the founding compact.

5. A war to get rid of slavery is a good thing, right?

If the war had been about slavery, then the United States is the only major country to wage a war to end it. Brazil, another country in this hemisphere with a large slave population, ended the institution without bloodshed.

Technology and a tidal wave of European immigrants in the late 19th century would soon have made slavery unviable. Ending slavery by invasion was not worth the loss of three quarters of a million lives.

Nor the loss of the balance of power provided by states rights.

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