There's a similiar de-facto "seccession" movement targeted at one of the smaller northeastern states -- Rhode Island or New Hampshire -- where libertarians are encouraging the like-minded to move there with the hope of reaching critical mass & establishing some sort of libertarian polity.

I can actually see the libertarian scheme working far sooner than the disgruntled Christian one.

I see it coming too, but I don't think that even States Rights explains it all (just like the first time). To me, the factor that will make it happen will be the geographic feasability of isolating the blue states from the red states. Frankly, the red states can survive without the blue states, but the opposite is not true. Compound this with there being almost no military might in the blue states except air power in CA, and the left is in a very precarious position.

And just like in the first Civil War, rather than addressing the real divisions, 50 years later kids will be learning tha the war was "over gay marriage."

Why South Carolina and not, say, Texas, from which many of these gay-bashers operate? Is Texas too liberal? Too much diversity? Too many dark-skinned immigrants?

Because we are busy being Texans in Texas. We seceeded in spirit a LONG time ago.

I disagree that the Civil War could have been averted through compromise. Lincoln tried to compromise by allowing slavery to continue in the Southern states while preventing its extension to the territories, but the South would have none of that. Harry Jaffa's "Crisis of the House Divided" is the best analysis of that that I have seen.

Another problem with the "states' rights" argument with regard to slavery, and where the analogy to same-sex marriage (or even segregation) breaks down, is that slaves were, by definition, not permitted to move to free states. They were slaves, prisoners. They had no choice in the matter.

That, by the way, is also the case with "sodomy" laws where the state has the power to imprison people for it. I would have much less objection to such laws if exile was the punishment instead. If Rhea County wants to ban all known homosexuals from living there, I'd let them. Stay out of that cesspool. Let the homo-haters stew in their own juices. Let Atlas shrug.

Leaving same-sex marriage (or most other issues) to the states, by contrast, allows people to "vote with their feet". If you find same-sex marriage repugnant, you can go to a state where it's not recognized. If you find a ban on same-sex marriage repugnant, you can go to a state where it is recognized. You're free to choose.

The libertarian movement in new hampshire isn't secessionist. It's just to try to get the libertarian point of view onto the national stage, and make someplace in this country where we're actually free.

South carolina was chosen because of (I'm paraphrasing) the religous background of its populace and its low population. If 50,000 or 100,000 hard core christians move there, they can start to swing state elections and pack their candidates into the state legislatures. I beleive that's the plan.

These comments are all great!

Steven, your disagreement is quite justifiable and I think I should explain further. The fact of the Civil War does not prove that compromise was impossible; only that no acceptable compromise was found acceptable to the hotheads of the time. Slavery was in my view ultimately a doomed venture in the West, and I doubt it would have survived until the 20th Century.

The reason I posed the compromise question is that the way slavery was phased out in this country has caused problems at least as vexing as slavery itself. British slavery was abolished in 1833, with payment given to slave owners and an apprenticeship period for slaves, and as a result the problem of racism in former British colonies never became as vexing as in the United States.

Paying slave owners would have been a good way to do it – but a key demand of the abolitionists was that no compensation should be paid.

The war stands not as a lesson that compromise was impossible, but that hotheads prevented it. I wonder whether they’d have compromised had they truly seen what was coming, and thus, I offer the Civil War (and its legacy of ongoing racial and cultural tension, and loss of American freedom) as a reminder of human stupidity, and as a lesson in why compromise is preferable, if not to war, at least to civil war.

Here’s an intriguing opinion:

I would rather that the slaves had risen up and cast off the yokes of their oppressors than that the States had been subjugated by Federal rule. The war may have freed the slaves from their masters rule, but its legacy has enslaved us all. No longer can we say we we govern ourselves, but we have inherited a government that requires more and more of our liberties.

By the way, the Lincoln scholar you cite (much as I respect him) is on record as saying that "there is no argument by which one can condemn slavery, that does not at the same time condemn homosexuality." I find that worrisome.

I totally -- violently if I may say so -- disagree with Jaffa on homosexuality, and I must say I was very disappointed when I read that in one of his books, though I will also say that I prefer his natural law argument based on absolute moral values over the nihilistic majoritarianism of Bork and his ilk.

Another able defender of Lincoln is Timothy Sandefur, whose blog Freespace I read regularly, a consistent libertarian. He is the opposite of Jaffa on homosexuality. He is, like me, passionately against "sodomy" laws, the FMA, and the like. I say that there is no argument for "sodomy" laws that is not also an argument for slavery, since those laws are based on the premise that we are the property of the state or "society".

"The right to privacy reflects the moral fact that the individidual belongs to himself, and not to others or to society as a whole."
-Justice Harry Blackmun in his dissent in Bowers vs. Hardwick (1986)

"I would rather that the slaves had risen up and cast off the yokes of their oppressors..." Indeed. But I don't hear that sentiment often enough from the neo-Confederates who love to posture as heroic "Johnny Rebs" against the Big Bad federal government. They praise Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest as rebels, but not Nat Turner, John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, or Harriet Tubman.

Sorry, I don't have too much sympathy for the South's "Lost Cause". Some days more than others. Some days I don't think General Sherman went far enough. I'm not happy to see so much of this Lincoln-bashing and neo-Confederatism pervading the libertarian quadrant. It goes well with the World War II revisionism and Holocaust denial that I have also seen there. If a war to free Iraqis from Saddam was justified, then a war to free Americans from slavery just has got to be just as justified.

I admire the aristocratic, agrarian, and poetic traditions of the South. I can identify with their regional pride, as I feel the same way about the West Coast. "Here I'll take my stand...."

But I despise the bad "S's" of the South: ssslavery, sssegregation, and "sssodomy" laws -- and, therefore, their invocation of "sssecession" and "ssstates' rights" to preserve those sssacrileges.

I don't mean to be argumentative here, and I'm certainly not accusing _you_ of any of those things. You are a hero, a defender of freedom, and independent thinker, and a true rebel. I'm just venting my spleen again. When I'm able to get back to my own blogging, I'm going to write a screed against the dishonesty of the anti-homosexual movement, and maybe something about abortion. I hope that will be my last screed for a while and then I can do some spectrumological writing there.

Anyway, I love Classical Values. You are my favorite blogger in the whole blogosphere, and I admire your disagreements with me as much as your agreements. You think for yourself. Good!

I must add that Political Correctness has done more than anything else to give racists, neo-Confederates, and neo-Nazis their "Bad Boy" image. We (which most definitely includes myself) like what's forbidden.