I'm not sure it's quite them not knowing what being a Republican may have meant 150 years ago. That doesn't seem very relevant to me. I would certainly not describe them as Libertarians. If we are talking political party alignment, they were generally either former Democrats, or disillusioned Republicans.
If we are talking about people's motivations, that really doesn't matter.
I don't think that works. The Democrats who had gone across certainly weren't conservatives in any significant sense. If I understand Constitutionalist Libertarianism, it's a conservative movement and is big on laissez faire economics. Sure, there was some of that, but I don't think that was a uniting principle.
That's an assertion. It may be true, and it may not be true. In a conversation about motivation, I'm not sure that that matters.
Maybe. Generally I think these kinds of labels are either nuanced enough to allow for disagreement on this kind of question, or so stripped down that they have lost much of their real world meaning.
There is certainly some similarity with the Confederate notion of states rights. Still, prior to the 1870s, I thought a lot of people were under the impression they were in favour of the Republic while also believing the Union was voluntary. It's pretty clear that some Territories were under this impression when they joined the Union.
Perhaps. Again, this is a thread about people's motivations.
More like, in a discussion about motives, you have to go on the basis of the facts as perceived by the people whose motives are under discussion. There are already other threads covering the argument you seem to want to have.
I assumed we were talking about the Constitution as it operates today, which includes the 17th Amendment, which eliminated appointment of Senators.
If I may re-iterate, there is a purpose of the anti-democratic sections of the Constitution. The purpose is not to be anti-democratic; being anti-democratic is the means, not the end. The purpose is to dilute power through the separation of powers. The anti-democratic Senate checks the power of the democratically/popularly elected House (and vice versa, too).
Well, I think you would get a lot of agreement from the folks who turned up on Jan 6th for the first part of this.
Sure. I am talking about what people believed. The practicality is that States can't leave and it would take a collapse in Federal power for them to be able to. Justifications for that can always be found, but it's hardly like the objection to a bunch of States leaving would be a dry technical matter. It would be a huge threat to the power of the Federal government and the entrenched interests that feed off it. Whether or not in some Platonic idea of Constitutional Law such a thing should be legal is irrelevant. Texas can't leave the Union any more than Cisalpine Gaul could opt out of the Roman Empire.
In that case, I agree that they were anti-Federalist and I disagree that they were anti-Republican.
Well, that's a swamp I'm not walking in to. My posts were in response to claims about the motivation of the people who turned up on January 6th. I'd talked to some of them, and thought I would share that.
Many thanks for the positive conversation.
This is a very narrow definition of "democratic". The first amendment prevents, at least in theory, the majority from exercising it's will to enact laws that restrain some types of speech. Anything that seeks to prevent the majority will from getting it's way is in some sense anti-democratic. Of course, we choose the meaning of "democratic" that suits our purpose and prejudices. For the constitution to be democratic it should take no more than a bare majority to change it.
