Re: Help design the ideal Presidential candidate

On 2008-05-12, Nate Edel <archmage@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Alfred Montestruc <montestruc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> On May 7, 4:10 pm, archm...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Nate Edel) wrote:
>> > They never gave a peaceable and legal secession a chance; whether
they
>> > "should" have seceded at some prior justification is irrelevant to
the
>> > question of how secession was conducted in late 1860 and early 1861. 
The
>> > Southern states abandoned any pretense of conducting the secession
via legal
>> > means (act of congress, treaty, or the supreme court - any of which
could
>> > potentially have been viable) and instead proceeded unilaterally to
sieze
>> > federal property before Lincoln was even inaugurated.
>
>> You are missing a huge part of the argument.  Namely that states and
>> their people voted to enter the union by state elections and state
>> legal processes, and they had just as much right to vote their way
>> right back out again without the federal government getting to say boo
>> about it. 
>
> That doesn't fly; if you want to look at it purely from the states'
> perspective, the Constitution is a contract between the states. Like any
> contract, it need not be perpetual, but an individual state does not
> necessarily have the right to unilaterally decide the terms under which
the
> contract is terminated.

Thanks for this analysis.  I find it fairly compelling.

-- 
Aaron Denney
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