[vcg3rd]

The first right enumerated in the Declaration of Independence (not declaration of liberty or equality or rights) is the first sentence: the right to dissolve political bonds. And the US actually did it again after the Revolution when the Articles of Confederate were replaced by the Constitution.

Please explain to me how the states which dissolved their bonds with the United States and declared their independence from it (many of which had done so during the Revolution and had ratified both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution while slavery was legal, and several of which did not secede until after the U.S. fired on Ft. Sumpter) were different in exercising the right to dissolve political bonds?

Bonus points if you can do it without saying but but muh racist. If you don't accept the first sentence of the Declaration the rest of it is null and void.

(While you're at the explain how the three-fifths compromise actually strengthened slave states (who wanted to count each slave as 1 person) because it actually weakened them and also, most importantly, enshrined slaves as persons and not property in the Constitution with the consentand ratification of those states where slavery was still legal.)

[int_19h]

That right belongs to the people, not the states. Which in slave states included the slaves. In two Confederate states, slaves were an outright majority, and in most of the rest, they were a large plurality. Do you seriously believe that Confederate politicians could be meaningfully described as representing "the people" dissolving political bonds, given that those politicians did not in any way represent all the slaves by design? It's about as meaningful as claiming that Spartan aristocracy represented helots or Messenians.

Not that it matters much. Even if it is democratic, there's no moral right to self-determination if that self-determination is explicitly for the purposes of brutal oppression of some minority.

[CBarkleyU]

>Please explain to me how the states which dissolved their bonds with the United States and declared their independence from it were different in exercising the right to dissolve political bonds?

Non American here. Honestly, I'm perplexed by the question? Are you being genuine?

The difference is that they're the traitors from your perspective. You're American. They seceded from America. Thus they're traitors.

The same way that Americans are traitors from the perspective of an Englishman.

How is this even a question? There is no absolute right or wrong. There's not even an absolute right. Nothing says you can or cannot secede. It all depends on your perspective. If you're American than the South were the traitors.

[JPws_Prntr_Fngr]

> You're American. They seceded from America. Thus they're traitors. ... Nothing says you can or cannot secede. ...

GP's entire point was that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence establishes the basic right to secede. Here it is:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..."

His point is that Americans are broadly wrong when we condemn secessionists as traitors. According to our own founding document.

[FrustratedMonky]

It becomes turtles all the way down.

The south secedes. Then a few states don't dig the confederacy and secede from that, to form "The States of Northern Florida". Then some counties secede, then some cities secede, then a few individuals secede.

This actually happened, (not the Florida part). Once seceding was an option on the table, individual states started considering it and individual counties. And the whole thing was going to break apart.

Once you start down the path of anybody can 'dissolve the political bands' then the whole enterprise dissolves into anarchy.

You can interpret the Declaration of Independence literally all you want. But I'm pretty sure it was just a big middle finger to England. Once the US consolidated, those in power did what all people in power did, and it was more 'Can't have anymore of that'.

[nobody9999]

>His point is that Americans are broadly wrong when we condemn secessionists as traitors. According to our own founding document.

And he'd be wrong. They betrayed their nation, the United States of America. What's more, the Declaration of Independence didn't found anything.

It was a declaration of rebellion with broad, well understood at the time, political arguments designed to rile folks up against George III.

The U.S.'s first "founding document" was the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union[0], approved by the Second Continental Congress in 1777 and ratified by all 13 colonies (cum states) by 1781, followed by its replacement in 1789 by the US Constitution.

While the Declaration does lay out political arguments for secession, it has no legal force. Rather, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land[1]. What clause in that document grants the several states the right to secede? I'll save you the effort. It ain't there.

You can absolutely make the philosophical argument that a society can, and in some cases, should, create a separate political entity. As was elucidated in Robert Heinlein's lunar retelling of the American Revolution in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress[2].

But that's a philosophical argument, not a legal one. That said, there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from advocating/organizing secession from the Unites States (or the relevant political entity wherever you might be), but governments tend to frown on that sort of thing.

As such, no matter the malicious motives and/or provocations of said government, if you attempt to overthrow its authority, you are a traitor (or a 'freedom fighter', I'm not picky about labels). But you are perfectly able to do so. But things might not end so well. Governments tend to be less pleasant to those who take up arms against them than they might be.

As the Confederacy[3] found out, during the American Civil War.

Relatedly, Kermit Roosevelt[4] persuasively argues[5] that the members of the Confederacy were the true inheritors of the political arguments embodied by the Declaration of Independence, not the Union. His point being that our nation as it exists is the product of the evolution of our constitutional order, and not simply the natural rights arguments laid out in the Declaration.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation

[1] https://constitutionus.com/constitution/the-supreme-law-of-t...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Roosevelt_III

[5] https://www.c-span.org/video/?469938-1/rethinking-americas-f...