ApplesauceIrishCream
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User ID: 882
ApplesauceIrishCream
8mo ago
I think a related suggestion might be plausible, but there's a complication.
In the US, the bulk of the pro-life movement is religious, specifically Christian. There are certainly many individual exceptions, but the major organizing groups are either church-affiliated or formally secular but largely staffed by Christians. Where abortion is concerned, the Catholic part of the movement and the Evangelical Protestant part are entirely on the same page, but there is no similar agreement on birth control. Opposing birth control is part of Catholic dogma, while Evangelicals generally have no moral problem with contraceptives, so long as they are used within the context of otherwise proper sexual ethics.
That said, Evangelicals very much support the right of Catholics to follow their consciences on the issue, even if they differ on the object-level question. Catholic opposition to taxpayer-funded contraceptives is a given, and Evangelicals usually have other ideological reasons for opposing "free" stuff. So you'd likely have very minimal organized Christian support for taxpayer-funded contraceptives.
However, Evangelicals (and many American conservatives in general) have supported a related measure for pretty much the exact reasoning you lay out above--rescheduling oral contraceptives from prescription-based to over-the-counter. I would not expect Catholic support for this type of measure, but at least it doesn't raise the same conscience issues as direct subsidy.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1mo ago
Also in the theme of keeping games-related comments together, some good news!
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is now on Steam!
It's old and the UI is a bit clunky (though fan patches can help), but it's a beloved classic for a reason. Prokhor Zakharov is my guy all the way for gameplay reasons--probably a popular choice in these parts--but there's something to love in each character. For a (very) deep dive into the interplay of game mechanics, storytelling, and philosophy of SMAC, I also recommend the classic blog series Paean to SMAC: Meditations on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
ApplesauceIrishCream
4mo ago
Assuming every Senate seat is filled, present, and voting, conviction and expulsion requires 67 votes, not 60. I don't think either party can get to 67 without either a reasonable fraction of bipartisan support or a truly enormous political upheaval (60 is difficult, but possible). In Biden's case specifically, the only way he gets expelled is if a big chunk of Democratic leadership decides to remove him; even in that case, I strongly believe they would engineer his resignation instead.
ApplesauceIrishCream
10mo ago
Fun framing story. I'll take a stab at explicitly stating the point of the narrative so that people can correct me if I missed something, or as a starting point for those who found the intent here to be a bit opaque.
Is there ethical consumption under capitalism? In each case, the narrator/purchaser is collecting Funko Pops solely to fill out his collection--I'd say this is pretty morally neutral as motives go--but the consequence of each purchase will be different, based on how the seller intends to spend the money received. The ultimate question raised is whether the narrator/purchaser is morally responsible for any of the known ends that his money will help finance, and whether there are intuitive break points where an observer should say, "By making this purchase in this context, you have done something morally wrong."
In the first case, we've got animal rights/animal cruelty/meat consumption, where the purchaser is a vegetarian/vegan. The second exchange concerns two oppositely-coded political figures, both of whom are known for a long history of good deeds, and a much more recent highly-controversial action, where the purchase/ownership of the figures will stoke up the culture war. The third instance depicts a controversial single figure (J.K. Rowling is the obvious example), where the seller is not a supporter of the figure, and proceeds from the sale will not in any way return to her. The fourth deal is another controversial figure, where some of the funds will go to the political support of his views. And finally, we've got literally Hitler, fundraising for his local death squad.
ApplesauceIrishCream
11mo ago
I've been trying to get myself to do a writeup of Walter Russell Mead's four traditions of American foreign policy, because he was confronting exactly this question in the late 1990s--the various conflicts involving the breakup of Yugoslavia produced an anti-intervention movement on the Republican side of the Senate, which lost to the pro-intervention faction led by President Clinton. This also seemed, on first blush, to be a reversal of the left-coded anti-war movements in earlier decades.
In short, Mead proposes a two-axis framework, where each quadrant contains the interplay of the axes and also an intellectual pedigree particular to the US. One axis is the usual hawk/dove; the other is nationalist/internationalist. (Here, "internationalists" favor more widespread and ongoing engagement with other nations, while "nationalists" prefer to interact with other nations only when necessary, and reserve most of their attention to domestic affairs.)
Hamiltonians are the dovish internationalists, who have a particular interest in expansive trade and the promotion of American business interests abroad. They don't have strong opinions about how other countries run their own affairs, so long as Americans have robust access to foreign markets.
Jeffersonians are the dovish nationalists, whose central ideal is perfecting democracy at home and avoiding foreign entanglements that might distract or corrupt American national purpose. These are your classic anti-war isolationists.
Jacksonians are the hawkish nationalists, who mostly don't care to have extensive involvement with other nations, but react with vigorous force to assaults on American interests and especially American honor. Unlike the other traditions, Jacksonianism is predominantly a grassroots/populist tradition, not elite.
Finally, the Wilsonians are the hawkish internationalists, who want to promote democracy, human rights, and other American ideals abroad whenever possible. The neoconservatives of the late 70s are a central example, but so are President Clinton's interventions in the former Yugoslavia in the 90s.
At different points in history, these traditions have individually been more or less popular, and have allied with each other in varying combinations. I think the overall framework makes a fair amount of sense descriptively, and a few thoughts towards refinement/critique.
ApplesauceIrishCream
5mo ago
I find it ironic that as recently as 2005, the most culturally-prominent example of the Confederate battle flag was widely recognized as a pure expression of regional pride, and not at all a racist symbol. As it happens, that example isn't as much of a tangent as you'd think.
It's important to realize just how $Current_Year this iconoclastic movement is.
ApplesauceIrishCream
8d ago
The other responses you've got are mostly correct, but I'll elaborate on a few points. I've written a bit about the process before here.
@VoxelVexillologist is correct to point out Roberts' automatic seniority as Chief and its consequences, but the case is complicated by the fact that the right-ish portion of the Court has six Justices, not five. Roberts is certainly inclined to write more moderately than Alito, but if he writes too moderately, Thomas/Alito/Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Barrett can form a majority without him. Dobbs is an exceptionally high-profile example of exactly that.
Recusal is more of an issue for a new Justice, but still pretty rare unless the new Justice was a very recent Solicitor General (or other high-ranking member of the Justice Department, including the AG). The Solicitor General is the number two guy at Justice and has the special responsibility of representing the US in court--he usually does so personally before the Supreme Court, and delegates to staff in lesser cases--so he'll often be involved in litigation strategy of multiple cases that later appear before the Supreme Court.
Each Justice has exactly one vote. The way any given Justice may punch above or below his weight is based entirely on his personal relationships with the other Justices (this is much more likely to be a negative factor; you don't get to the Supreme Court with a weak ego) and the persuasiveness of his arguments, most often in writing. My personal guess is that Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are very slightly more advantageously placed than average, and Roberts and Jackson are slightly less than average.
@pigeonburger is right about how the majority opinion of the Court is initially assigned, but not the dissents. All dissents and concurrences are not assigned; they are written by any Justice who chooses to do extra writing. There was a recent case where Kagan registered her dissenting vote on the outcome, but neither wrote a dissent herself nor joined another opinion, so her exact reasoning is unknown. This is perfectly valid; it's just much more common that Justices are inclined to explain themselves, both to their colleagues and to posterity.
One point often missed is that in a given Term--and indeed, in each month--every Justice writes as close as possible to exactly the same number of majority opinions. This may seem unintuitive, but remember that the most common voting outcome in any given case has always been 9-0, and still is. Naturally, the more conservative Justices will be more likely to write for the majority in controversial decisions today, but that just means that Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson are more likely to be assigned the 8-1 or 9-0 cases. This practise is intended to make sure that each chambers is carrying its weight in terms of the essential work of the Court. As I said above, though, dissents and concurrences do not factor into load-balancing--those opinions are entirely discretionary on a Justice-by-Justice basis, and are purely extra work.
ApplesauceIrishCream
4mo ago
The Democrats got to 60 in 2008; it was part of the drama surrounding Obamacare. The first draft got 60 votes in the Senate on a vote of cloture, with Ted Kennedy supplying the 60th vote on his deathbed. A special election was held to fill Kennedy's seat after he died--not the usual process for filling a Senate vacancy, but the result of a cascade of political maneuvers and especially large amounts of irony--and Massachusetts elected Scott Brown, a Republican (!), who explicitly ran on a platform of blocking Obamacare. This caused great consternation in DC, and quite a lot of emergency brainstorming as to how to get the final package passed. The details are fascinating, if you like political/procedural trainwrecks.
Note, though, that the Democrats only got to 60 following two successive wave elections in their favor (2006 and 2008; GWB was extremely unpopular towards the end of his presidency). In the modern day, it's hard to get to 60. The Republican party should have a marginal advantage in the Senate, based on state-by-state political tilt, but they have routinely underperformed across the last several cycles.
ApplesauceIrishCream
5mo ago
Underdog analysis can also be complicated by questions of scope--are we talking about Israel vs. Hamas, Israel vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world that funds them, or Israel + its supporters in the US vs. Hamas + the wider Islamic world? The homeless guy vs. Mr. Rogers scenario doesn't quite capture the dynamic of group vs. group when each side has debateable membership.
That said, I don't favor underdog analysis as a particularly useful lens, though clearly others disagree.
ApplesauceIrishCream
3d ago
Your argument would be more sound if you didn't misrepresent one of the most famous lines in the English language.
The line is "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal," etc. What Jefferson is doing here is declaring his axioms. He does make several arguments later in the Declaration, but they follow from those axioms; they aren't meant to prove them. Jefferson is speaking to multiple audiences, some of whom reject his axioms--the Declaration is a bold statement that the American colonies intend to chart a path entirely separated from the monarchical institutions of Europe, from the bedrock assumptions of society up.
You can't rephrase "we hold these truths to be self evident" as "obviously." Your conclusion, that handing down traditions takes effort, is sound, but Jefferson would likely agree. Ben Franklin certainly would; when asked what kind of government the Constitution created, he responded, "A republic, if you can keep it." The conditional displays your point, that traditions and institutions require maintenance, and are not immune to decay if neglected.
ApplesauceIrishCream
9mo ago
Are you thinking of Scalia's long friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg? I wasn't aware of him being close to Elena Kagan.
(That said, I agree that Justice Kagan is both quite intelligent and a good writer.)
ApplesauceIrishCream
8d ago
Both dissents and (except in unusual cases[1]) concurrences have zero legal weight as precedent, though this needs a little further unpacking.
Formally, the Opinion of the Court is binding on lower courts, and is precedent to be followed or rejected by future Supreme Courts. The wiggle room is that a lower court may argue that an existing Supreme Court decision is distinguishable from the current case because of [reasons]; that explanation may vary wildly in ingenuousness. The Supreme Court has a fancy legal doctrine called stare decisis, which means that it's more important to be consistent than correct, though some Justices (Roberts) are bigger fans of the doctrine than others (Thomas).
Every opinion of any type can affect future legal development to the extent that the arguments therein are persuasive to future Courts. If a Court decides that a prior decision was in error, it may overturn the precedent by a simple majority, just like every other decision. Often, the dissents in the original case may provide the rationale for a later reversal, though the Court tends to change its institutional mind by individual retirement and replacement, rather than a particular Justice reversing his earlier opinion (though that too has happened).
Also, there is no formal difference between a 9-0 decision and a 5-4 decision. Both carry the full authority of the Court, so a 5-4 decision may overturn a 9-0, hypothetically. Informally, though, every judge can do the most basic of math and realize that a 9-0 decision is less likely to be overturned in a future case than a 5-4.
[1] You can have a situation where the Court splits 4-2-3 or the like on a given case, where the 4 and the 2 may agree on the outcome of a case (and the 3 disagrees), but they do not agree on a reasoning. The case would be resolved as a 6-3 decision as to the outcome, but with no reasoning, as no opinion carried a majority. That said, the lower courts would treat the 4 opinion as a strong hint, since it's the closest to a majority, even though the logic is not formally binding. The Justices try to avoid this outcome, if possible.
ApplesauceIrishCream
3mo ago
I guess I'll make the obligatory cynical post pointing out the fact that the Declaration of Independence wasn't really a legal document, but essentially just a very eloquently worded piece of Patriot propaganda, primarily meant to rally stateside on-the-fence loyalists and potential overseas allies over to the cause.
Certainly, I agree.
It was not, as many now seem to want to interpret it, an actual good-faith attempt to justify their cause to the British government. (Basically an "open letter" to the crown. Most of the grievances were incredibly exaggerated, bordering on fabricated, which the actual British government would have realized; the drafters didn't care, because again, it wasn't actually intended for that audience.)
I agree that the Declaration was not an attempt to persuade the British--either the Crown, Parliament, or the British people--but it did not claim to be that. As Jefferson himself explicitly notes in the Declaration itself, those appeals had already happened, and the colonists did not find the prior responses to be tolerable. The entire point of the Declaration is a statement that the colonists were past the point of making their case by petition, and intended to resort to force of arms instead.
However, as much as Jefferson's dramatic flair is clearly in play, I think an in-depth review of the period shows that the British abuses were real, pervasive, and relatively severe compared to the expectations of the average British citizen. It's trendy to be cynical about the motivations of the Founders; this cynicism is badly misplaced.
Just as the South did; it's not prominent nowadays for obvious reasons, buts there's plenty of equally eloquently written justification for secession by the moral and philosophical heavyweights of the Southern Cause.
Some of those writers dodge the issue (others embrace it), but the central issue under dispute was slavery, full stop. Yes, there were absolutely other political disputes between the South, broadly, and the North or the West, but none of them held a candle to the central dispute over slavery. Take away slavery, and there would not have been a secessionary movement. It was both a necessary and sufficient cause of the Civil War.
Yes, the American colonists succeeded at seceeding, and the Confederacy did not; that's a fact of history. However, when we're evaluating other secessionary movements in different times and contexts, I think it's much more useful to realize that the American colonists were fighting for free expression, the right to self-defense, the sanctity of the home against intrusion, the rights of the accused and convicted, etc., while the Confederacy was fighting for the right to own slaves. If your modern movement bears more similarities to the first, then I will probably agree that it's justified; more like the second, and no.
...the only real moral justification to the American Revolution, or secession, or whatever you want to call it, is the fact that they won the military conflict.
I completely disagree. 'Justification' is an appeal to morality, and I reject the idea that successful efforts are justified, and failures are not. One who robs a bank and gets away unpunished is not morally justified in his theft.
ApplesauceIrishCream
3mo ago
This may result in minor damage to Obama's influence within the Democratic Party, since he was very supportive of Gay throughout this process. (Alternatively, it may be evidence of his influence weakening.) I'd be curious as to whether the plagiarism or the anti-Semitism was the decisive factor, as there are significant examples of each that the Party does not consider to be disqualifying.
My guess--for what it's worth--is that a faction within the Party found Gay's defense of anti-Semitism to be seriously objectionable, and tried to get her ousted on that basis before she could do more damage to Harvard's institutional reputation with elite employers. When this failed, the considerable evidence of her plagiarism was leveraged instead. Plagiarism is considered the highest of high crimes within academia, in theory (and even occasionally, in practice!), so Harvard decided it could not weather the purely academic hit to its reputation as well.
ApplesauceIrishCream
3mo ago
My expectation is that Jackson's jurisprudence will be most similar to Sotomayor's on the current Court, though with the usual caveat that this is a condensed model, and even justices that are close to each other will still come down on opposite sides of some cases. This sort of left-to-right mapping tends to be most predictive in high-profile cases where the issue is graspable by non-lawyers, but more obscure areas can produce lineups that appear to be almost random.
It's also important to note that the most common lineup has not changed--it is still 9-0.
ApplesauceIrishCream
4mo ago
Says me, on the basis of a vast amount of American political history, and the knowledge of what happened in Massachusetts in the 2000s. The usual process for filling a Senate vacancy is the appointment of a replacement by the Governor, and that appointment lasts until the next even-year November election. This is the well-known procedure in most states, both now and for the past several decades at a minimum. There are exceptions; they are unusual.
In 2004, Massachusetts had a Republican Governor (Mitt Romney, as it happens) and a Democrat supermajority in the state legislature (an odd combination, but not unheard of in Massachusetts). Anticipating the vacancy of John Kerry's Senate seat if he won election to the Presidency that year, the legislature amended the procedures for filling a Senate vacancy over Romney's veto, stripping him of his appointment power, and calling for a special election to fill the vacancy temporarily. As far as I'm aware, the legislature definitely had the power to do exactly that, but it was also an obvious political power play, and calling such "(legal) shenanigans" is defensible.
This power play did not pan out as expected. First, Kerry lost the Presidential election in 2004, so no Senate vacancy was had. Second, Romney was succeeded by a Democrat, Deval Patrick, in the 2006 gubernatorial election. Third, Ted Kennedy provided the next vacancy by dying in office in 2009. Shortly before his death, Kennedy persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to re-empower the Governor to appoint a temporary replacement pending the results of the special election. While Patrick could (and did) appoint a Democrat to replace Kennedy, the people of Massachusetts picked a Republican, Scott Brown, in the special election. Brown's election dropped the Democrats' Senate majority from 60 to 59, triggering the next round of drama in DC.
Had Massachusetts followed the "usual process" in filling the Kennedy vacancy, Patrick's nominee would have continued in office for several more months until the next general election in 2010, maintaining the Democrats' 60-vote Senate majority for that period. That this did not occur was the ironic result of political gamesmanship on the part of the Massachusetts state legislature.
ApplesauceIrishCream
5mo ago
The tornados that I'm familiar with do not have moral agency, and that is one of the many differences between them and humans. Is there a particular reason to suggest that Palestinians do not have moral agency?
ApplesauceIrishCream
3d ago
An axiom is a premise to an argument. You don't set out to prove axioms within the scope of an argument not because they are obviously true, but because they are outside the scope of the argument by definition. You use axioms to prove conclusions. Yes, you may use "self-evident" more or less interchangeably with "obvious," but I never said otherwise. I said that "we hold these truths to be self-evident" is not the same as "self-evidently." "We hold" is doing crucial work here, and may not be discarded without changing the meaning of the statement.
Jefferson's use of "self-evident" in the quoted letter to Madison is consistent with the above. Again, Jefferson is declaring an axiom, or at least offering one for discussion--"I suppose to be" is a somewhat less emphatic phrasing than "we hold," but it serves the same basic purpose.
Jefferson's twenty-year sunset idea is famously nutty[1], but there's a distinction to be drawn between his private writings to Madison, and the public documents he drafted, like the Declaration. In the Declaration, Jefferson isn't just speaking for himself--after all, there's a long list of signatories, and Jefferson's early drafts got cut down a fair bit in editing-by-committee.
[1] Well, they are famously nutty now, with the posthumous publication of a great many letters and documents that were private at the time they were written. As I recall, Madison's response was more or less, "what a fascinating idea; you should definitely not mention it to anyone else." Madison was considerably more sensible than Jefferson, admittedly not the highest of bars.
ApplesauceIrishCream
23d ago
The central thesis of HBD is that differing selection pressures produce divergent results between populations, and intelligence is one of the features that vary in this way. It's a pretty straightforward example of evolution, broadly understood.
The very word evolution means "change." Why would anyone consider a process of evolution to be static, immutable, unchangeable?
HBD does not claim there is no path out of the conundrum you observe. I'm not saying there are easy fixes--though I believe there are a great number of small policy changes that might produce results on the margin--but I'm baffled by the take that "HBD = nothing can change."
The way for average black IQ to rise is for black women to choose intelligent black men to father their children. This is not impossible.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1mo ago
There's so much "it gets worse." On the one hand, they slip in references to at least medium-deep lore with no show-internal explanation, so only fairly invested Tolkien fans will even recognize that a point was being made, but on the other hand, you've got major lore-breaking points shoved in your face right and left that are obvious to more casual fans. (Was that a bit of casual flirting between Galadriel and Elrond? Did I just throw up a bit in my mouth?)
Like introducing a fourth Silmaril to support the 'origin' of mithril through philosophical dualism that is completely anathema to Tolkien and his works...and never once mentioning Feanor. Or the famous motto of the Numenoreans, "The sea is always right." Or the infamous teleporting armies problem straight out of GoT S8. Or the greatest smith of the Second Age having to be handheld through the concept of "this is an alloy," and the importance of (fuck me) and I quote "coaxing" metals together instead of "forcing" them.
They actually have disguised-Sauron describe his little "alloy" tip to Celebrimbor as "a gift." That only lands if you know that Sauron is supposed to be disguised as Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, BUT HE ISN'T! Who is that for?! The only thing I'm left with is that the Easter eggs hidden in the show are intended as calculated insults to fans of Tolkien's actual work. No presumption of charity can or should stand against the mountain of contrary evidence.
@FarNearEverywhere is welcome to her claim on the blood of the showrunners, but I would at least like to watch.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1mo ago
Sadly, Christopher Tolkien died on Jan. 16th, 2020. The silver lining is that he never had to see Amazon's desecration of Middle Earth. RIP to JRRT's first and best editor.
The generation after Chris has been...less protective of their grandfather's literary estate.
ApplesauceIrishCream
3mo ago
Have you tried the "save comment/post" functionality? That seems like the logical place to hang a notification flag, if one isn't already there.
Thank you for the nomination, and congratulations to all of our quality contributors!
If you will forgive a bit of self-advertising, a couple of months ago I wrote another comment about the Declaration of Independence in the context of justifying secession. I'd hoped that people might find it interesting, but then I managed to post it in the old CW thread after the new one had just gone up.
Edit to add: I have reposted the comment here.
ApplesauceIrishCream
5mo ago
A central tension within the concept of communication is between efficiency and precision. Larger lexicons and more complex signifier structures are less efficient to parse, but are better able to capture fine distinctions of meaning.
Even within a given language, this trade-off may be handled differently in different contexts. Jargon--properly used--is an example of domain-specific terms that are mostly not used outside that domain (something like an optional DLC for the base language), but have high precision within the native context. (It's the mark of a corrupted field of knowledge when the 'jargon' is used to obfuscate meaning, rather than identify a relevant concept precisely.)
The other end of the spectrum would be practically undefined interjections like "dude" for a Californian surfer. Tone, volume, affect, etc. carry all of the communicative weight, but this is acceptable because the intended expression is an emotive reaction to the given context--most people find it easy to distinguish between a cheerful greeting, a surprised reaction, dismayed disbelief, or judging censure--and the finer details are either not important or may be further clarified with additional words.
A couple of months ago, @zeke5123 started a discussion about secession and the right to self-determination, and suggested that such a right was likely contingent, rather than absolute. In response, I wrote an analysis of the most famous writing on the topic of secession...and then posted it just after the following week's CW thread went live, which was very poor planning on my part. I hope the following is sufficiently interesting to justify a repost.
I've remarked before that I think the American Revolution should be more properly understood as an example of secession, not revolution. After all, the most famous document promulgating and defending the American position is the Declaration of Independence, and the choice of title is appropriate.
The part that comes before the famous "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." is the following:
This is a document about secession and self-determination. Next is the really famous bit (I'm adding numbers in brackets to highlight an internal list):
A clear statement of fundamental principles, but one key point later on is that Jefferson isn't claiming that these principles are a departure from English tradition, but that the Crown has been egregiously violating English tradition. The list doesn't end at three items:
"Alter or abolish" covers many potential approaches, from reform to secession to complete revolution. Which approach is justified in which cases?
This, I think, is the start of the answer to your question--the right of self-determination in terms of fully reforming/seceding/revolting must reach a threshold of severity in terms of provocation. The reasons matter, and the weight of tradition matters. "Light and transient causes" are not enough, and so:
When there is a longstanding pattern of abuse aimed at fundamental liberties, some variation of reform/secession/revolution is justified, and even morally compulsory. Note that Jefferson is not merely concerned with rejecting the old, abusive system, but also the necessity of replacing the old system with a new government that will properly "secure these rights." He is justifying a transition from a very bad system to a better system--tearing down the old and stopping at anarchy is not acceptable.
What follows is a bill of particulars, listing the offenses of the British Crown according to Jefferson, which amount to "a long train of abuses and usurpations...evinc[ing] a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism...." The details of this list are instructive, but outside the scope of this comment. After the list, Jefferson argues that the leadership of the American States has done its due diligence, and tried to fix the situation by attempts at reform, before proceeding to secession:
We have appealed to both the Crown and the British People for redress; neither provided it. As a result, we're walking away from this toxic relationship, but we're not going to kill your cat out of spite--we just want to go our own way. Note that Jefferson doesn't merely say that the behavior of the British Crown has been grievously bad, but that the American representatives have been particularly patient and prudent--there's an implied standard of conduct for the secessionists that continues in the final paragraph:
Jefferson wraps up with the final requirement for secessionists who are doing things correctly--you need to make your case. Not just that the suffered abuses have been so terrible, but also that you've tried lesser means and are only escalating when those means have failed, and that your judgment and restraint are being offered for consideration to both "the Supreme Judge of the world" and "the opinions of mankind." Are your reasons sufficient, or just "light and transient causes"? Do you have a plan for self-government, such that you can responsibly join the community of "Independent States"? Have you "Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms" and are you confident in the "rectitude of [y]our intentions"?
Any secessionist or revolutionary worth their salt will answer yes to those questions with confidence--such is human nature. But Jefferson clearly isn't claiming that 'we've investigated our own motives, and found them acceptable,' he's appealing to God and man to be his judges.
In my view, Jefferson adequately makes his case as to the justice of the American secession from Britain. I think other secessionary movements are a mixed bag--some meet the various thresholds of behavior and others do not. In this framework, there isn't an unfettered "right to self determination" by a given identifiable subgroup of a larger political unit, but extreme cases may present a duty to reform an abusive government, or seceed from it, or overthrow it.
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