The Civil War

[Thorne]

Yes I agree but most of that was due to greed and also in fighting between Kings, Queens and in-laws. I don’t think there is a lot of chance of that taking place now.

Yeah? Look at what happened when Yugoslavia broke up. I realize it was a somewhat forced union of small countries/peoples, but it didn't take them long at all to go back to the old ways of genocide and war.

I would think most probably that most of the states would form their own government, but they would stay a United States of America.

I'm sure there would be a group that would stay together, though I couldn't begin to guess how many states would be in that group. And they would still call themselves the United States. But they wouldn't be as large or as powerful as a nation of 50 states has become. And they would likely be very preoccupied by economic conflicts with other states/nations on the continent.

the USA whether you like to say it or not are frightened of a United Europe because it poses a threat to your security if too big. I expect there are those in Washington that are pleased to see what is taking place in the near breaking up of Euro countries now.

I suspect those in Washington are more concerned about the economic impact of a united Europe than the security impact.

Yes that was a bit of a home goal,

What a great phrase! I don't think I've ever heard it, but I instantly understood the meaning behind it.

but I never meant it the way I wrote it, and here this morning i am not sure what i did mean. lol

Ah, yes, the cold light of morning casting glaring shadows on the semi-inebriated maundering of the night. Been there, done that.

[thir]

Yeah? Look at what happened when Yugoslavia broke up. I realize it was a somewhat forced union of small countries/peoples, but it didn't take them long at all to go back to the old ways of genocide and war.

The point that I see here is that you should not force people to become a country if they do not want to.

[leo9]

I'm sure there would be a group that would stay together, though I couldn't begin to guess how many states would be in that group. And they would still call themselves the United States. But they wouldn't be as large or as powerful as a nation of 50 states has become. And they would likely be very preoccupied by economic conflicts with other states/nations on the continent.

On the subject of counterfactual histories, there's a novel, "Bring the Jubilee,"
http://www.amazon.com/Bring-Jubilee-...3813819&sr=1-1
in which the rump of the USA, lacking Southern natural resources, is a backward rural nation overshadowed by the prosperous Confederacy. I'm not convinced, because it was the North's already emerging industrial supremacy that won the war, and I see no reason to assume that would have gone into reverse. More likely, like the Germans after WW1, they would have thrown themselves into economic progress to repair their pride after the military defeat; and eventually have undermined slavery, and the South's basis for superiority, by mechanising it into obsolescence. It's the backward corners of the Third World that still have slavery as an economic institution: places that can see the benefits of factory industry but can't afford the machines, so replace them with rooms and fields full of labourers who are only an economical alternative because they're not paid.

But that's not to say the War wasn't necessary. It would have taken generations before Northern-made machines were so profitable that slave plantations were no longer economically viable, and one can well imagine the Confederate government subsidising the slave farms as a part of their social heritage. Even if a combination of international pressure and economic obsolescence had led the Confederacy to outlaw actual slavery, it would certainly have remained an apartheid state like the old South Africa, probably to this day.

The other significant counter-history source is the stomach-turning Draka series,
http://www.amazon.com/Domination-S-M...3815110&sr=1-2
which makes the connection beween Confederates and Boers explicit and assumes - even though the author is supposed to be against them - that just by being white supremacists they would be so powerful they could conquer most of the world.