(no subject)
Apr. 12th, 2011 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vixenmageToday marks the start of the Civil War, 150 years ago.
I don't know what else to say about that.
There's an anger inside of me, at people like my father, like Rand Paul, like plenty of others who believe that the United States government should have turned a blind eye to the atrocities of slavery, that the South had their states' rights to exist without anything approaching human rights, that they had a right to secede, demoting a huge portion of their population from 3/5 to 0.
"But Lincoln was wrong! The Emancipation Proclamation was illegal!"
"Slavery is wrong."
"Yeah, and it would've ended naturally, it was an unsustainable way of life."
What can you say to that? What can you say to someone who believes that such an atrocity should be allowed to exist until the excesses of the oppressors overtax themselves?
The Civil War marks one of the bloodiest times of our nation's history. It marks a war fought over the merit of a human life, the very essence of personhood. Would that today's people, today's presidents, this generation of mine - might have the same courage, faced with those choices. To rebel against Man's laws in favor of God's; to obey conscience, instead of tradition.
I don't know what else to say about that.
There's an anger inside of me, at people like my father, like Rand Paul, like plenty of others who believe that the United States government should have turned a blind eye to the atrocities of slavery, that the South had their states' rights to exist without anything approaching human rights, that they had a right to secede, demoting a huge portion of their population from 3/5 to 0.
"But Lincoln was wrong! The Emancipation Proclamation was illegal!"
"Slavery is wrong."
"Yeah, and it would've ended naturally, it was an unsustainable way of life."
What can you say to that? What can you say to someone who believes that such an atrocity should be allowed to exist until the excesses of the oppressors overtax themselves?
The Civil War marks one of the bloodiest times of our nation's history. It marks a war fought over the merit of a human life, the very essence of personhood. Would that today's people, today's presidents, this generation of mine - might have the same courage, faced with those choices. To rebel against Man's laws in favor of God's; to obey conscience, instead of tradition.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-12 07:23 pm (UTC)Is not war the natural beat following an untenable situation? Is not legislation the natural way by which we change law to match conscience, and violence the recourse of those who refuse the change?
I'm gonna get a little Endless Waltz here and say that war was the entirely-predictable next step in the cycle, because that is what it takes to get the oppressor to give the oppressed space to exist in.