I think that what one must do is strive for the humility to recognize that good people can disagree.

Both here and overseas, I was taught to love my country. (I remember my 5th grade teacher with hurt in his eyes telling me, a mere kid, that he was disappointed Nixon hadn’t visited). I have learned since to respect opposing points of view whenever possible, and to look for points of agreement. Also to recognize people who have yet to learn that lesson.

You ask what would Jesus do if he were here today, I know he would not try to coerce me by flawed laws and the threat of taxes, to make me do the right thing.

And you also apparently “know” that Jesus would agree with you on which laws are flawed. As for the “threat” of taxes, every law is an implied threat.

You claim that half of your primary education was obtained overseas. I do not know how old you are, but given the anti-American attitudes of europe these days, I scruple not to consider that a strong point of defense in this debate. Educated in a private university, fantastic. Were you instructed correctly in passing along American exceptionalism to your off-spring, or did they educate you to hate the country? You studied the Civil War in the south under a southerner. So what? Just because he can whistle Dixie and eat grits doe not in any way mean he was immune from the political correctness in the educational system in regards to this point of time in history.

The simnple point is this. There was a time in America, that a corrupting cabal of rich mercantilists influenced and corrupted the federal government into unconstitutional activity. A group of honorable people chose to make a stand, in order to attempt to preserve for themselves and their posterity, the blessings of liberty that were promised by our founding fathers. They stood up against unfair taxation and the lack of real representation, in order to make a difference and try to save their country. They failed. The same sort of mixing bowl of issues are churning in the cement mixer today, causing another set of hard working honorable people to stand up and try to make a difference, for themselves and their posterity. Perhaps you can not or will not see the similarities. However, any person, who is unemployed, or underemployed, who sees the gapping hole in our national borders and understands the significance of the $11 Billion to $22 billion that is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments, who see the $2.2 Billion dollars a year that is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens; who see the $2.5 billion dollars a year that is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. Who feel the weight of the $12 billion dollars a year that is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!, and the subsequent classroom disruption that causes;who are sickened by the $17 Billion dollars a year that is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. Who work two and three jobs, if possible these days, to support the $3 million dollars a DAY that is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. Who can not understand why we spend $90 billion dollars a year on illegal aliens for Welfare & $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages reflected in our shrinking paychecks, caused by illegal aliens. We ask ourselves why the illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US, and I ask myself, what impact will that have on my sons and their children? I wonder if the legal aliens had not sent home some $45 BILLION in remittances to their countries of origin, would we maybe perhaps be better off, economically right now?

We all know that the failure to close the borders is an attempt to expand a particular party base. The illegal alien issue of today is the slavery issue of yesterday. The health care issue of today is the states rights issue of yesterday, etc.

You ask what would Jesus do if he were here today, I know he would not try to coerce me by flawed laws and the threat of taxes, to make me do the right thing. As long as we have houses of worship participating in such ridiculous government play alongs such as IMPACT, well, that is a whole other editorial.

when you talk about “myths that I have been brainwashed into beliving,” I’m afraid you’re being wildly presumptive. Half of my primary school education took place overseas in foreign schools, I graduated from a private university, and I studied the Civil War in the South under a Southerner. Also, you haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know, or at least hadn’t heard. I know conservatives hate government schools, and I share some of your reasons, but when you cry “government schools!” on cue when someone you know nothing about disagrees with you, you just make yourself out to be an ideologue.

Out of my entire presentation, you seemingly chose to ignore all of the points that are perscient to today.

I didn’t choose to rebut your entire editorial. I didn’t even choose to read your entire editorial. And having read it now, I see it doesn’t touch on what I took issue with.

As for Lincoln being a racist, you are correct inasmuch as he held the same views as most Americans at the time. The word “racist” in contemporary usage suggests fear and hatred and antagonism as well as presumed superiority, and there is no evidence Lincoln was guilty of the former sins. His friendship with Frederick Douglas and his actions in office even suggest the contrary. So calling him racist without qualifying the term is sloppy and misleading rhetoric. It is basically untrue.

As I said, I didn’t choose to rebut your whole piece, and so I don’t feel the need to defend everything Lincoln did, or debate the significance of it. I will say that Lincoln has hardly been the only president, Republican or Democratic, to suspend certain constitutional rights. And I honor him for the good he did, faults and mistakes notwithstanding.

Another myth is that the north went to war in order to save the constitutional union.

This is a debatable point, but I didn’t address it one way or another. Again, you sound like an ideologue so eager to press your case that you put words in people’s mouths.

The south fought the war to preserve slavery.

Again, like an ideologue, you didn’t read carefully; I didn’t say the war was fought to preserve slavery. But your guys knew preservation would follow victory, just as abolition in fact followed loss. As I said, they may have opposed slavery personally (I’d like to see your evidence for this), but by your own account they fought for states rights despite the fact that victory would preserve slavery. They were more concerned with what they saw as an injustice (I don’t think it was, but that’s another argument) towards themselves than with the horrific injustice of slavery. I’m not here to call them bad men, which would be as shortsighted as your knocking Lincoln is, but I don’t honor them for their selfish choice as you do.

Thanks to the various inventions of the industrial age and a changing mindset and philosolhy, slavery was already dying a slow death.

So the other 94% could honorably put their interests first because they believed slavery would die out eventually? That’s tortured and self-serving logic, and you present no evidence they thought that anyhow.

I can understand and empathize with your anger as a Southerner towards Sherman and Lincoln. I only wish you would choose to empathize with liberals who oppose, say, drone strikes in Pakistan because of the suffering they too impose on civilians. Whether the suffering of civilians in our overseas wars pales besides the suffering of Southerners is entirely beside the point. Injustice is injustice. Yes innocent Southern kids suffered. But the kids in Pakistan aren’t innocent? There were no war crimes committed in Vietnam? Iraq?

All of the hot button topics are just a piece of the central question, that being the one of State Soverignty of WE THE PEOPLE, over the tyranny of an ever encroaching federal government.

You’re a Christian, right? If Jesus lived in America today, would that be his central issue? Health care, to name just one issue where that argument is raised, is a moral issue, and you can fault liberals on their reasoning about it all you want, but they’re not at fault for not seeing it first of all as a states right issue.

The first war of Independence was America from England. The second, American mercantilists against in the north and the Demorcratic Republic Capitalists in the south. Today, it is the hard working, God fearing middle class, which is rapidly disappearing, against a tyranical elite of well funded secularists.

It’s the good guys versus the bad guys, right? The righteous versus the unrighteous swine who don’t deserve your pearls. I’m a Christian myself. I recite the creeds and mean every word. But Solzhenitsyn was correct that “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.”

I’m afraid you haven’t rebutted or even addressed the criticisms in my original post.

Hank Martin

Authors defend their work if they so choose.

So your ancestors were more concerned with being symbolically enslaved to the federal government (wild a stretch as that is) than with the literal enslavement of African-Americans and the enormous suffering that entailed? They really thought that the federal government winning a battle with the Southern states was a worse injustice than men, women and children literally being other men’s property? And you hold them up as examples and think it’s the liberals — all of us apparently — who “ignore moral values issues”?

And how is it that abolishing slavery threatened “their lives”?

You posted this attempt at moral reasoning, Rob. I dare you to try to defend it.