Comment · Fri, November 9, 2012
DEA Says It Will Ignore Marijuana Legalization
What they were answering
ulysses_lives · 1 points
"The right side of history"? Had the Confederacy won that war I have a feeling you'd say they were on the right side of history. ;) In fact, the Confederate states were the ones being screwed by the federal government in this case. Legally, slaves were property, not people, and freeing slaves was the federal government stealing from states. Sure, your current culture tells you slavery is wrong, but at the time it was just a fact. "Freedom for all" is just as much a cultural institution as slavery, and making claims about a "right side of history" is a huge historical bias.
Besides, the Union could have given a shit about human rights. Abolition was a means to an end, not a benevolent act of a white messiah.
I guess what I'm getting at is yeah, slavery is inhumane, but the Civil War wasn't about human rights. It's easy to look back at it now, at a time where there is (supposedly) more social equality, and say "Wow that's so great that the Union fought against slavery" but that's only because our textbooks and cultural consciousness are going to make the victor of the war look as righteous as possible. Historical actions were not motivated by our society's current values.
(Wow, sorry for that--admittedly off-topic--wall of text. Apparently this is something I'm pretty passionate about. And please don't take any of this personally. I've found that I've been able to learn a…
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb
Right side of history in that slavery is wrong, and humanity has unequivocally decided that to be the case. Not that their case about federal intervention was wrong. I agree with their stance about states having the rights to govern themselves, just not on issues of restricting human rights. If it had been about moonshine, or tobacco sales, or any other thing, I would be a confederate supporter.