The Cost of Maintaining a Union

When a Union is beneficial to all parties involved, it is applauded by members - old and new alike. When the Union becomes toxic to certain portions, is it not justifiable to cast off allegiance to that Union and develop a form of self-governing that is healthier for those individuals?

You may be thinking to yourself - is this another anti-Federal Government rant? Or perhaps that I am playing to the Civil War topics springing up due to Lincoln's 200th birthday.

In this case, I know what many of you may be saying - Lincoln did what was necessary to preserve the Union at all costs... the war was justified, as the Union is a perpetual necessity for our way of life...

What if we applied, as was my original intent, the logic to the Soviet Union - whose demise in 1990/1991 was applauded across the United States.

Specifically, let's look at Georgia and Ukraine - two areas that are under threat of "reabsorbtion" by the Russian federation. The invasion of Georgia last summer drew criticism and outrage from Americans... and the threat of Russia to reclaim Ukraine is drawing further cries of a renewed Cold War with the Imperial Bear that is Russia...

...but with what double standard do we look at Russia that we fail to see the resemblance to our own situation during the American Rebel War, the Southern War for Independence, often referred to as the Civil War.

Lincoln was given a free pass to break law after law, conduct campaigns of genocide, and plague the South with other forms of Crimes Against Humanity... all in the name of preserving the Union. Honest Abe suspended many of the rights protected by the constitution - and the average citizen forgets that those rights are NOT granted by the government, rather listed as protected FROM the government.

Applying the logic of Lincoln, we should applaud and encourage Russia in a quest to re-unify the Soviet Republics... especially the Ukraine, who was one of the founding Republics of that Union.

Lincoln's war changed the face of the nation - where it was once seen as the collective "these United States", it became the unified "The United States" under one infinitely strong central government. It replaced the humble Constitutional Republic with an Imperial Superpower, locking the future of the nation into continued foreign entanglements - something which Washington warned against in his farewell address to the nation.

Is it prudent to do whatever it takes to maintain a union?

If so, would you argue for the invasion of Ukraine and Georgia so passionately as you defend the invasion of the seceded states of the Confederation?

At what point is a perpetual union of independent states overshadowed by a union of vassal states to a central government, and thus subject to the terms of Independence as outlined by our forefathers who declared a broken union between the colonies and the British Empire?

Is there ever a case to defend both sides of the argument? Dare you try?