Octopodial Chrome

We’ve all seen & heard musicians performing in the street, at subway stations, in the park and in other public places. Maybe we’ve even heard a particularly good one. What if that musician were one of the finest in the world? What if he were playing a $3½ million Stradivarius? Would we stop and notice? The Washington Post put Joshua Bell into a DC subway station to see what would happen…

142 years ago General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, and the South’s hopes for freedom were dashed.

Any state has a right to secede; the Constitution does not forbid it, and thus that right is retained, under the terms of the Tenth Amendment. The southern states had every right to leave the Union, and the Union had no right to maintain armed forces on their territory, or to use force of arms to conquer them.

That said, the South was wrong to secede. Its secession (like those of 1776 & 1835) was inspired primarily by a fear that slavery would be abolished; chattel slavery as it was practised in the American South being itself wrong, actions taken to safeguard it are themselves wrong.

That being said, the Union had no business stopping the South from leaving. The appropriate response would have been, good-bye, and good riddance!. Instead, the Yankees killed nearly 600,000 men, raped women, destroyed private property and subjugated 9.1 million citizens for over a century. It was, quite simply, the single most unjust war in American history; it wasn’t until the 1980s that the South truly recovered.

And yet I’m glad that it ended as it did. Had America been split permanently in twain, I don’t believe we would ever have achieved the prominence and power we now have. The United States have been the greatest, freest nation on earth, and I’m proud to be a citizen thereof. My heart swells when I see the flag and hear the Star Spangled Banner. The war was a long time ago, and we’re all Americans now.