Hacker News Reader

Comment by carsongross | Hacker News Reader

Politeness comes from social solidarity: it is a consequence of social harmony, not a precursor. What if the polarization represents actual, fundamental disagreements on politics and, at root, moral axioms? Being polite hasn't done much for the respectable right for the last fifty years.

I would rather focus on solutions like secession or federalism that allow groups of people with different and irreconcilable moral axioms to simply leave one another alone to build the social/political structures they would prefer.

View on HN

Please do not confuse what you see on TV with face to face political party functions.

I've been invited to speak to a fair variety of Green, Socialist, Democratic, Republican, Libertarian and non-partisan events. There are definitely cultural differences.

My Republican hosts have always run polite, organized, on time meetings. If you have the mic, everyone is listening to you.

Whereas my own peeps, the Democrats, run meetings quite a bit more loosely. People interrupt, there's a lot of shushing, arguing over the rules, people chatting in the aisles, etc. Mostly good natured, but it sometimes drives people like me nuts.

I can't speak to the Tea Party, Occupy, BLM efforts, since those are after my time. But I imagine they're not so different from their precursors, because people are people.

Secession and federalism are fairly naive. We already tried those solutions. In the US context it led to slavery and ultimately to a massive armed conflict.

And at what unit do we consider secession acceptable? The Confederacy believed states had the right to secede but not individuals of African descent. Indeed, it was the American South that originally wanted to interfere in the business of the North in order to crack down on fugitive slaves.

As for people with different moral axioms leaving one another alone, good luck with that.

The US and ISIS have different moral axioms but they're both in one another's business.

The world is interdependent, there's just no way around that simple fact.

I don't mean to silence discussions of federalism/secession, it just seems like this is well-trod territory that some people keep bringing up again and again as if it will solve anything. It hasn't and it won't.

In the US context it led to slavery and ultimately to a massive armed conflict.

Secession and federalism lead to neither. Slavery was a pre-existing institution. War is politics by other means and pre-existed both. It being associated with secessionism in one case is no more an argument against secessionism than war being associated with democratic revolutions is an argument against democracy.

Naive: showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment.

Heal thyself.

I don't mean to get into a civil war discussion, because studying it is a hobby of mine (it's just a very interesting subject)...but at the very least I'd urge you to consider that there are a lot of very important details being left out in order for you to view it that way.

There was almost a century of political back and forth build up that compounded to lead to secession.

Just to highlight one detail to give the counterpoint on your example:

> Indeed, it was the American South that originally wanted to interfere in the business of the North in order to crack down on fugitive slaves.

For that, you should read up on the Tariff of Abominations in 1828 that nearly triggered secession when it was passed. This presented a huge problem to the Port of Charleston and trade with Europe, so much so that South Carolina tried to have it nullified and the Supreme Court said that it could not. When documents of secession reference fugitive slave laws, they're doing so because some northern states were allowed to selectively nullify while the south was not. This came to a head with the Morrill Tariff which was a part of Lincoln's campaign. Indeed, in his first inaugural address preceding the war he even stated that fugitive slave laws would be enforced and that federal force would only be used for collection of duties and imposts. That's the reason Fort Sumter was such a big deal in the first place because whoever held it had the power to enforce port taxes on Charleston harbor. To be clear, I'm not saying that was the cause of the war I'm just highlighting a detail. There were a lot of factors.

The whole thing is a sincerely fascinating subject and is even more interesting when, through studying it, you compare it to the relatively few details we're actually taught about it in school.

You realise millions of us happily and peacefully live in smaller countries that are the successful result of secession?

While I think secession should probably be a last resort, it would indeed be an intriguing thought experiment to separate the two ideological groups and see what happens. Each side thinks a society run under the opposing side's view would fall apart; wouldn't it be interesting if you could actually see which group does better after a century on their own?

wouldn't it be interesting if you could actually see which group does better after a century on their own

It very much would be. This is another argument for federalism/secessionism: a laboratory of governments/social structures will provide better feedback as to what works and what does not for various populations.

I think it is also worth bearing in mind that "does better" is inherently subjective, since value is subjective. Some political units may be fine trading GDP for a better environment, while others may be fine trading sexual freedom for stability. The irreconcilability of values/moral axioms dictates that we either agree to allow sufficiently differentiated groups to develop their own political units, or we impose our axioms on them (or they, us.)

It would be interesting if we had "virtual countries" where you could choose among the tradeoffs for yourself. I suppose the difficulty would be handling the interactions between each person's virtual country, but the idea that everyone signs up for a different set of laws and freedoms has interesting implications.

Although that's a very long shot, life in most parts of Europe was kinda similar before industrial revolution. Nobility had their own laws. Church had theirs. Jews were living in pretty much a "virtual country", both culturally and legally. Peasants were living in another totally different world with different rules. IMO French revolution and Holocaust were the ultimate endings of "virtual countries".

On the other hand, I totally support independent communities who could live on their own terms, as long as their rules don't conflict with other communities.

Sounds a bit like the game Civilization!

Only if you could keep them from interfering with each other as nation states.

After you secede based on one set of disagreements, inevitably your new sovereignty would start another set of disagreements and you would have to secede again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com