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Comment by icantdrive55 | Hacker News Reader

(It was more about states rights, over federal rights. I don't think they really cared about slavery--unfortunately.)

No. Not at all. Not even in the slightest. This states rights bullshit started in the South as a defensive move to toss a more palatable, quasi-theoretical veneer on what was an unmitigated Southern revolt against the United States because of overt distaste at losing federal support and protection for continuing the practice of slavery. This exposed Southern dependence upon it as a basis for its economy and entire way of preferred life and wealth accumulation. Theorists such as John C. Calhoun and other notable Southern politicians began doing that thing that all politicians do, whereby issues are clouded behind intentional euphemisms that detract people from the core issues. Oh, sure, the South was worried about and fought for states' rights—states' rights to continue the practice of slavery in open defiance to what had been decided at the federal level over 60+ years of negotiations that continued to threaten Southern dependence on slave labor. Post-Reconstruction, this nonsense persisted to attempt to save face as the South reintegrated with the Union and federal government, and to shore up defenses for the establishment of Jim Crow. Today, this states' rights shit continues to get thought time in those who wish to continue the practice of defending indisputable discriminatory practices, engaging in revisionist history that needs to go away, and in those who, for whatever reason, refuse to accept that the Civil War never would have happened if slavery did not exist, was not defended throughout the South, and if Southern whites and their social, political, and economic leaders had read the writing on the wall, and admitted to the grave injustice they'd perpetuated against a whole group of people based solely on the color of their skin—and then began working to change the firmly entrenched racism that to this day continues to remain embedded in Southern thought and culture.

States' rights is a sham of an argument for the Civil War, and, too often, many other abhorrent practices today.

I'm curious what you think of the "community rights" movement currently underway that is attempting to curtail hydraulic fracturing?

Instead of talking about setting safety and environmental impact boundaries (and allowing everything within them), people are screaming BAN FRACKING. But it gets worse. Instead of talking about banning specific resource extraction methods, people are talking about "community rights", which don't exist.

http://celdf.org/community-rights/

These people are ridiculous. Invoking the American revolution and then railing against "state and federal preemption" which was, in fact, very clearly set out by the Federalists who won most of what they wanted while writing the Constitution.

The states have all rights not explicitly given to the federal government in the constitution. Local communities are given all of their rights by the state. That's it. Trying to change that means burning down the constitution. Communities have no independent rights. They're clearly and deliberately misconstruing history to make woo woo "progressive" arguments.

The basic problem is that the activists are idiots who haven't taken the time or gotten the education to understand the problems they are trying to solve. National attention has no time for complex nuanced arguments, so the only arguments you hear are from fools. This applies to more or less every liberal cause in America, most of which I support in spirit.

> The basic problem is that the activists are idiots who haven't taken the time or gotten the education to understand the problems they are trying to solve. National attention has no time for complex nuanced arguments, so the only arguments you hear are from fools. This applies to more or less every liberal cause in America, most of which I support in spirit.

Too true. However, I'd say this actually applies to just about every social-political cause, period. Conservative and liberal. All nuance and depth of understanding is lost for emotional, myopic, black-and-white tribalism meant to divide the populace, fire up the troops, and get them firing at each other.

Absolutely, I was too specific. I do generally lean one way and wanted to say something along the lines with "these people are idiots but I agree with them" ... but I was in no way implying that conservatives or folks on whatever alignment axis were reasonable.

I'd like to rephrase: the defining societal problem of the 21st century is going to be the failure to recognize that we've solved all of the big black and white issues with blunt tools which fit into the Christian good vs. evil narrative but we will keep trying to solve the grey-area issues with those same dumb tools. The failure is one of lacking appreciation for subtlety and nuance in the definition and solution of our problems.

Good vs. evil, clear cut rights and wrongs are issues of the past.

I see what you're saying. I don't disagree that there have been actions taken by states under the guise of state's rights that could be considered horrible. However, the true concept of states rights is more than something randomly invented by southerners. This idea is based on the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.

The comment I was responding to, and the particular matter I was addressing, had little to do with the 10th Amendment. Nor did I suggest the concept of states' rights as separate and important from those enumerated by the Constitution to the federal government was a concept invented by Southerners. I was quite specifically responding to the revisionist nonsense that the Civil War was a fight over states' rights, and a war of Northern aggression, as Confederate apologists today continue to like to suggest.

People say this, but they're being pedantic. Plenty of people cared a whole lot about slavery both in the human-rights sense and the economic sense. The war was fought over secession, but the states suceded as a direct result of the federal level's intention (and actions) to constrain and eventually extinct slavery and the southern slave economy.

It's something like saying my house actually burned down because it's made of wood, not because I let a kid play with matches.

I should just let this be down voted but there needs to be overwhelming repeated rebuttals to this very misleading framing.

This whole thing tries to use the fact that no southern states voted for Lincoln to frame it like secession was actually just because they felt their voice wasn't being heard. What that ignores is that slavery was the main(almost only) economic driver in the south. The election was about slavery. The north was done with it. The vote was a signal to the wealthy and powerful of the south that the north was going to abolish slavery and there was nothing they could do about it. Sucession was their last attempt to keep the massive amount of money being made via slavery.

I don't think this is entirely accurate.

It's absolutely the case that the South was motivated to secede by the issue of slavery. It is not the case that the North was, they were motivated by the preservation of the Union. Lincoln said as much. Abolition was used by the Union as a weapon, not as a cause unto itself.

It's seen as revisionist to question the moral character of the US Civil War, but you have a President who said explicitly that he would preserve slavery if it would preserve the Union, and abolition that exempted Northern states.

Slavery was (partially[1]) abolished in the US not because there was some high-minded federal government that thought it was the right thing to do, but because abolitionists worked hard for generations to compel it. The fact that a war was fought over it only speaks to the fact that slavery was so entrenched in the Southern states that it considered the progression toward abolition an existential threat.

[1] Slavery was never fully abolished in the US, and we should be careful not to forget that. It's no mistake that the amendment to restrict slavery to punishment for crime also coincided with the beginning of a trend of criminalizing activities and lifestyles of former slaves and their descendants.

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