The Program on International Policy Attitudes polls the world to get a sense of how people think about today’s major issues.

They recently put out a report that pulls together polls of Bush supporters, Kerry supporters, and people in other countries, which asked questions specifically about the war on terror, and just a few other subjects.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it shows that Bush supporters and Kerry supporters have profoundly different views about what the facts are … it is not that people see the same thing when they look at the war on terror and judge the candidates based on a shared set of facts, but that they see entirely different facts.

It also finds that Bush supporters hold more beliefs about these facts that do not accord with the results presented by the 9/11 commission and the Duefler report, or even with much of what Bush is actually saying.

It also tries to explain why this is so.

I hope you look at this — especially at the analysis that begins on page 12, which attempts to explain the results.

She’ll probably vote for Bush, but she might vote for Kerry if the attack she expects doesn’t occur.

10 days to go.

“Well, you sure dug up a dead rat”

Actually, I didn’t bring it up, initially. WichitaBoy did. I just picked up the ball after he moved on.

“You have some obviously well researched and interesting points.”

Thank you. I’m still researching, it is something that has really interested me since I moved from Tx on to La and now Ga. I’m now much closer to “the action”, the places where all of this actually happened, I can see the evidence here. Ok, so there was activity in Tx, but not nearly to the scale that there was around here. It has enticed me to dig a whole lot deeper than I ever would have back home in Tx.

“The right of the people to do what they will vs. the right of the government to keep the peace.”

Huh? The government keeps the peace by invading a peaceful neighboring country? I don’t think so, you are 180 degrees off base here.

“…though even if the south had won, slavery would not have lasted, it is a despicable, vile and evil thing of course.”

You are correct here, it was doomed anyway.

“But then to think of the fractionalisms that would have been possible using your points, well, that is a scary thought. It is only because we are a United States that we are/have been able to have faced and still face the forces of evil that have confronted us in the last century and the century to come.”

That does not necesarily follow. For instance, the U.S. seceeded from G.B., right? Did that mean that the U.S. and G.B. would perpetually be at odds? No, it didn’t. Did that mean that the U.S. and G.B. would never cooperate to put down global evil? Of course not. Why is there this insistence that with the South seceeded, they would not have turned right around and made trade agreements and mutual defense agreements with the North, as eventually happened between the U.S. and G.B.? I think that a people that were as closely related as the North and the South would have become amicable neighbors in short order, had the South been given the chance. It happened between the U.S. and Canada. It happened between the U.S. and G.B. Why not between the U.S. and the C.S.A.? Given, for instance, Jefferson Davis’s farewell speech in the Senate, I get the impression that the barrier to that would have been on the Northern side, not the Southern.

“…but I think we are a stronger nation today due to the result of that horrible civil war.”

Well, the North may have been greatly strengthened, but the South certainly was not. Previously prosperous areas became depressed due to the effects of the war and subsequent reconstruction, and are still depressed to this day. The economy of the South was ruined, and still hasn’t completely recovered. And what about the dammage done to the Constitution itself, particuarly to the Bill or Rights? Mr. Lincoln and his Supreme Court established numerous erroneous precedents in Constitutional Law, let’s just say that he stomped all over the Constitution and got away with it, establishing precedent that continues to this day. There’s no way that one can say that strengthens the Nation. There’s no way that one can say that bringing in unwilling ex-citizens kicking and screaming at the point of a bayonet and then taxing them into starvation stengthens the Nation, unless one is willing to consent that the Nation is no longer truly free, for that act of violent coercion was anything but that of a free nation on it’s willing citizens.

In matter of fact, it was a war of conquest — and in all wars of conquest the conquerers became stronger, and the vanquished became weaker.

No, I suppose that had the CSA been allowed to go it’s way in peace, that it would have become a viable, prosperous nation and valuable trading partner with the US, and the sum total strengths of the 2 nations would have become stronger than what the US became instead. The agrarian society would have been left alone to do what it did best, and the industrial society would have been able to do what it did best, and commerce between the 2 would have strengthened and enriched them both. But we’ll never know, will we? Unless, of course, there is a second secession. Fat chance, the precedent has already been set, and we all know who has the nukes. Nothing like a nuclear bayonet at one’s throat, no? Well, a guy can dream, anyway.

Well, you sure dug up a dead rat. You have some obviously well researched and interesting points. Frankly, as a semi southerner (born in Jacksonville, FL ) I have always been somewhat conflicted. I’m trying to remember what I was exposed to in elementary/secondary school (the fifties of course), you know, the formative years.

The right of the people to do what they will vs. the right of the government to keep the peace. I’m glad it turned out the way it did, though even if the south had won, slavery would not have lasted, it is a despicable, vile and evil thing of course. Though mostly brought to us via the muslim folks in Africa or maybe the Greeks in Greece.

But then to think of the fractionalisms that would have been possible using your points, well, that is a scary thought. It is only because we are a United States that we are/have been able to have faced and still face the forces of evil that have confronted us in the last century and the century to come.

So I may concede your points of law and constitutionalism, but I think we are a stronger nation today due to the result of that horrible civil war.

What you are saying is nonsensical. And not only that, it is just downright insulting. You say that a northerner can state the south’s case better than a southerner? Hah!

The real issue of the war wasn’t slavery. The real issue of the war was that the South had the unmitigated audacity to split away from the North, and the North just couldn’t abide that. Whether the South then started a squabble-fest and further broke up should not have ever been a concern for the North. It was the chosen path of the people of the South, a whole ‘nother country. If that were the position of those people, that would have been right, for them, and their business and nobody else’s. Especially not the North’s.

And what somebody said in some debate in an ILLINIOS senate race is really immaterial to what was going on in the South at the time. In other words, I really don’t care what some yankee said the south really meant, I’ll just ask a southerner. Yes, there was a case made for secession based on slavery, but that must be tempered by the fact that it was being expounded by those from outside of the South, hence was biased.

Besides that, it makes not one bit of difference WHY the southern states chose to seceed, as long as it was done legally and peacefully. And it was. And that fact trumps any argument that the Northern Apologists may make. The people of the South chose to seceed, and did. Case closed, as it was entirely their perrogative to do so, as it is for any nominally free people to do so. Denial of that denies that they were a free people, incapable of charting their own destiny.

That the North chose to pursue war on the South after secession merely damns them — it demonstrates that the North was the aggressor and in the wrong.

Pertaining to the secession of West Va from the rest of Va, that is an interesting point you bring up. It is interesting that it happened AFTER the commencement of hostilities. Had it happened BEFORE the commencement of hostilities, military action would not have been warranted, W.Va should have been allowed to go their merry way. But since that portion of Va had chosen to break off and join with the enemy in time of war, it became an act of mass treason, and as such the military action was warranted. That the military action was not successful is not material.

As usual Confederates can’t seem to really state their case properly. It takes a northerner to do it for them. I suggest you review the debates of an 1858 Senate race in Illinois. Stephen Douglas presented a much more coherent argument for the South then any Southerner. Douglas said it was about slavery.

In any given the Southern view of states rights the Confederacy never would have survived. Once the threat from the North was finished they would set about squabbling among themselves. If you could secede from the big Union then why couldn’t you secede from the Confederacy? When West Virginia seceded from Virginia, the state said they couldn’t and sent Lee to supress the rebellion. He lost, just like he did all his other northern invasions.

I continue:

“If they had succeeded there would be no United States, at least not with a big “U”. The Constitution would have been rendered a wothless contract between Kentucky and New York State.”

In a word: Bunk! It was already rendered a worthless “contract” by the very actions of one Abraham Lincoln, who stomped all over it. And to this day it is still a largely worthless contract, in that the actions of the government are governed by those passages that the government wishes to follow, and not those passages that the government wishes not to. You can thank Mr. Lincoln for that.

Moving on, the peoples who chose to remain under that Constitution were quite within their rights to do so. And there were many who chose to do just that. Nowhere in that document does it state just which states were required to be parties for it to remain in force, it was just a framework. There appeared to be no further breakup of the Union threatened, other than that of those people in the North who were so appalled by the war and the atrocious behavior of Mr. Lincoln that they actively chose to counter that effort — those commonly referred to as “Copperheads”. While they were the sensible ones, they were not the cause for any serious threat for further secession, their aim was to hem in and defeat Mr. Lincoln by conventional means. So, no, the Union was in no danger of dissolving. Even if it did, that is not in itself a bad thing, as long as the resulting government(s) governed by the consent of those governed. There’s nothing sacred about the United States, in other words. It is quite possible to create liberal Democracies & Republics seperate and apart from the U.S. Constitution.

“The Revolution would have been lost and the British through their ties with the aristocratic South would have won in all but name.”

No, the Revolution was already lost, in that government had progressed from the rule of law, respecting the rights of the ruled, to the rule of the hegemony, where the force of might imposed it’s will upon whole peoples who wished otherwise If the principles of the Revolution were still in place (the Revolution won), then the Union would have let the South seceed peacefully, as that is exactly what the South wished to do and did, completely within the bounds of the established law of the day. As far as the British were concerned — what business was that of the Union? It wasn’t their country any more. The Union had made peace with Britian at the time — the British weren’t at war with the U.S., and the border with Canada was stable, proving that peaceful coexistence with the British and their interests was quite doable. Not to mention the proximity of British interests in the Carribean.

“The experiment of a state born of a document and held together by the rule of law and representative government would have failed.”

Again: BUNK! The fact that the North instigated that war proved that the rule of law had already been done away with, and the representative government of the day actually responded quite admirably, in that representatives of the people, in their state assemblies, exercised their inherent rights to chose the form of goverment that best suited them — even to the extent of breaking away from a previously existing representitive government which did not suit them. All done legally, all well within their rights. The rule of law and representative government didn’t break down with the secessions, it broke down with the North’s subsequent invasions and coersions by military force. It was the North that killed the rule of law and representative government, not the South.

Ok, back from lunch, so I continue:

More about Lincoln and his position pertaining to the indivisibility of the so called Union. His position on that calls into question one fundemental principle that liberal democracy is based on: and that is that government is enabled and enacted by the consent of the people governed. This principle is critical, and trumps any written law, even the Constitution. Meaning, his position of the unitary nature of the Union was, in so many words, bunk. Any people, at any time, may seceed from any government, no matter what that government may stipulate in law. This is because it is the inherent right for any people to be governed by that government of their own choosing. This was the underlying principle that made it right and just for the American colonies to seceed from Britian. This was the underlying principle that made it right and just for Texas to seceed from Mexico. It is the right and perrogative for any people, at any time, for government exists at the behest of the people being governed. Lincoln publicly affirmed that very principle in his speech before Congress in 1847 pertaining to Texas’s secession from Mexico. Now, somewhere between then and the war he changed his mind. But his changing his mind on the matter did not make his new platform correct. It merely (and correctly) identified him as being a tyrant, willfully flaunting this fundamental right of a free people.

“I had relatives in both sides of the war and it was the South that fired the first shots.”

You are correct here, but you are wrong as well. You are correct in that the South indeed did fire the first shots at Ft. Sumter. You are incorrect in that this was not the incident that started the war, as war was already defacto under way, at the North’s instigation. The Federal garrison at Ft. Sumter had already been requested to stand down, and was offered safe passage back to U.S. territory before shots were fired. That offer was turned down, instead a request was made to allow a Federal naval pickup be done instead. All was OK until Confederate Intel found out that the Federal Naval force being dispatched to Ft. Sumter (and to Ft. Pickens, at Pensacola, where a similar scenario was being played out) was not ordered to evacuate the Federal garrison, but was ordered instead to reinforce the garrison. Now, since Ft. Sumter was indeed Confederate as well as S. Carolina soveriegn territory, that ammounted to an act of war by the North. And was correctly taken as such. The South was quite right to fire on the position, in other words, as the North had already started the war, even though no shots had yet been fired. That the positions were being maintained and reinforced in order to force either closure of the ports in question, or the forced taxation and levies (illegally, I might add), under gunpoint, on the commerce passing through those ports is immaterial from the point of view of the rightness of the war shots, but it was vitally important strategically both from the North’s and South’s points of view.

An analogy can be made to the comparatively recent situation of the U.S. Airbase — Clark Field/AFB — in the Phillipines. The U.S. built that air base. No doubt about that. But it was on Phillipine soveriegn soil. As long as the Phillipines allowed the U.S. to remain, all was well. But then the Phillipines requested that the U.S. abandon the base. That was their perrogative, as it was their soil. The U.S. was obligated to abandon that base, and did. Failure to do so would have been an act of war, just as failure of the Federal Garrisons to evacuate Ft. Sumter and Ft. Pickens were likewise acts of war.

Did you read the whole thing? Apparently not. Go read the part about Lincoln’t speech before Congress in 1847. If it applied to Texas/Mexico, it applied elsewhere.

“Lincoln said we must decide if we are one great nation or merely petty principalities. When there was talk that NYC might leave the Union he said that would be like having the front door set up housekeeping by itself.”

The implication of what Lincoln says here is that the Constitution is only a tool to be used when it suites MY purposes in the manner that I deem right. He claims that the Union always was always indivisible, and that is patently false. Just because Lincoln claimed that something is so doesn’t mean he was right in that claim. His claim was that the Federal Government was the only soveriegn entity and that the States were subservient to it. That view is not supported by the Consititution itself. And that view by itself is a contributory factor in the eventual split, as it demonstrated Lincoln’s lack of constitutional knowledge and commitment.

Again, go back and read the whole thing. It is pretty condensed, just a few pages and not at all comprehensive.