Come on man, that is the cleverest thing I've said so far on HN and thanks to having 0 votes nobody will ever see it. Being a Southerner, I think the view that

Come on man, that is the cleverest thing I've said so far on HN and thanks to having 0 votes nobody will ever see it. Being a Southerner, I think the view that the civil war was fought over states' rights is the romantic view. Anyway, the two really aren't mutually exclusive, it was both. And no, I don't define freedom in such a dumb way, why would I? P.S. Properly speaking, only individuals have rights. States do not have rights, neither does the federal government. Of course this was not understood fully by the Founding Fathers and it's also not true in a legal sense, only a moral one.