How many Jim Beam's deep are you?
Don't forget that the King of England also levied taxes without the opportunity for the countrymen to vote, that's was a pretty big reason for the shift to what the US made popular again (and what Greece invented), this thing call Democracy.
If you believe your religious freedoms are at risk, vote to change it. If you think your right to bear arms is at risk, vote to change it. Don't sit in front of your computer and bitch, anonymously to a bunch of strangers. Stand up, do something, act. Just do it peacefully.
Enjoy your Independence, mate.
Ah, but we can only vote for our rulers, not the rules themselves. Unlike Switzerland. And day by day the rules become worse, the rulers become fatter, and we more and more resemble the Weimar republic. And the shift to democracy hasn't worked so well, has it? I'm an anarchist, not a democrat. Democracy is at best a process, and at worst, the most oprressive governmental system ever devised. Taken to it's logical extreme, which they will eventually if let to be, if the majority decides a minority must die, then they will be legally killed.
As for the comment about only for whites, it was largely true, though even before the war between the states the ugly institution of slavery was fading. Lincoln had no intention of ending it, and in fact died before it was legally ended. His "justifications" for the war were on their face ridiculous and moreso the deeper you got. In fact, many of his ravings violate the causality and time. The states pre-existed the Union, therefore most assuredly COULD exist without it. So instead of fixing the problems and moving the dream forward, our "enlightened" rulers abandoned the dream. Following the 13th amendment, which made private slavery illegal, they then enslaved the entire populace with the 16th amendment. This was a great PR move, as it riled everyone up so they didn't really notice the 17th amendment, which effectively ended the sovereignty of the states, thus finishing what Lincoln started with guns.
The real reasons for the war were many, with Slavery being pretty much the "WMD" rallying cry. (though at least in Lincoln's war, the problem used as a rallying cry actually existed...). The primary reasons the south wanted to secede (which they had every right to do, and, yes, your vaunted Democracy was employed) were choking tariffs on southern goods going north and an increasingly dictatorial tone from Washington. That they were just as corrupt as the northern states does not change these facts. From the Northern side, Lincoln was determined to prove that it was a singular Empire, not a confederation of independent states, and since the North was far more industrialised than the admittedly backward south, His side won. Not because they were right, not even because of superior tactics, simply because of better guns and more resources.
It exacerbated the problem of slavery, and ended the ideation of sovereign states. You can see the shift in popular literature of the time immediately post war. People started to refer to "the" United States, rather than "These" United States.
Now, 150 years later, you cannot breathe without some bastard with a badge poking his nose into your business, the money has been stolen and replaced with paper, and our people are regularly sent to fight and die on foreign soil for no defensible reason. I wasn't drunk when I posted the first part, I was merely disgusted. It was incomplete, not incorrect.
May I remind you of H. L. Menken's quote regarding radicals...
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
