Side Bar: The Concept of a Perpetual Union

wausaubob

Colonel
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Joined
Apr 4, 2017
Location
Denver, CO
The union does not exist on paper. People in the various secessionist states can define what they believe to the United States using the words of the constitution, but what they are expressing is their belief that they are unhappy with the politics of 1860 and look to start a new experience.
The United States exists in the hearts and minds of the people, particularly men between the ages of 35 and 16, who are going to do the voting, fighting and dying.
To these men, the United States was based on having elections, winning or losing them, and handing off power peacefully.
The constitution was not the United States. The United States was the physical act of voting, which was a public act in those days.
The fundamental problem is using the constitution to hide that people are really talking about what they think and feel. Using a document from the past is useful type of rhetoric as the past is a valid source of knowledge.

Basically the secessionist formula was wrong. They altered the terms of the national election and then used the result to justify the non-democratic process of secession. If they would have run a national electoral campaign based on the proposition that the physical unity of the United States was too problematic to continue, they probably would have lost.

By participating in the election the secessionists validated the election, and offended the northern male population. It was as if the parties had agreed on a boxing match to settle who gets to date the prettiest girl in town, and the loser, being dissatisfied with the result, proposed a knife fight to settle the score. The winner pulls a gun, the loser pulls Parrott rifled cannon, and away we go.
 
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