So if a majority vote to abuse a minority, the minority should have absolutely no recourse to protect its rights? Say, if half the country were involved in agriculture, and half were engaged in industry, and the industrial half outvoted the agricultural half - and voted that a stiff tariff should be placed, so that they could charge more for finished goods without fearing international competition…
So, I suppose your father would have supported the “right” of Nazi Germany to kill Jewish citizens, since the Nazis were elected with a clear majority, right?
Your dad is avoiding the question. There was and is no national election process to determine if a state may secede. Each state individually elected to join the union and each state could individually decide to leave it. And yes, they could do it just because they didn’t like the way a presidential election went, though there was a great deal more to it than that.
another thing he wrote: Furthermore-part of the impetus for the American Revolution was England’s
imposition of taxes on the colonies where the colonies had NO vote or right to
vote or be heard on the taxes. - The South did vote and participate in a fair
election and were simply sore losers.
And the sheep did get to vote on what the wolves would have for dinner. It just turned out that there were more wolves than sheep, so they have no cause for complaint.
Not to leave you hanging, but why not buy him a copy of Tom Dilorenzo’s Lincoln Unmasked? He probably makes better points in that book than any of us could come up with.
If that doesn’t work, try explaining how Hitler and Lenin rose to power only after previous leaders eroded the right of secession.
Better tell him Hitler won the election.
The old man seems AWFULLY touchy about this subject. What’s his dog in the fight if a group of states decides to leave the Union, other than the fact that he realizes all those federal bonds his generation has been floating represent real debts that creditors expect to be paid?
I can’t add to what’s already been said. The Constitutional scheme of sovereign states ceding limited powers to a federal government is pretty clear. If he doesn’t see it it’s because he doesn’t want to.
My favorite analogy! “Sure, I imprisoned my wife in the cellar and beat her until she lost all hope of escape. But don’t you see I had to do it? I saved our marriage!”
–Len.
My recommendation is harsh: give up on discussing this with your dad. I do not think your father has any hope.
I mean that seriously because his point of view (chaos = anarchy ???) is wilfully ignorant and he seems to embrace coercion.
Anarchy and chaos may as well be synonyms in our state-worshipping society. People just can’t fathom the idea that people can live without a strong central government.
It’s creepy. Most people haven’t even heard of Hobbes, yet they believe in the Hobbesian idea of the man’s natural state. Thus the wierd notion that if the government does something, it is then impossible for that thing to be done through voluntary cooperation. Like Rothbard’s saying that if the government made shoes, people would assume that the private sector would be incapable of making shoes. Insane.