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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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How would the world have been worse off if Lee, and the rest of the confederacy, had decided that their cause and this war was a stupid, disgraceful affair?

You're asking the question "what if this one specific army didn't follow orders in this one specific way". A general principle of "armies don't need to follow orders" won't result in that specific situation and nothing else.

It's like saying "what if the police didn't obey the law... in this one situation where it happened to be a good thing to frame a suspect". You can't have police who will only frame one single guilty suspect. You can only have police who mistreat suspects in general.

This is like saying you can't expect a soldier not to shoot his comrades when you order him to fire. People can follow more than one instruction at the time, they can do conditional clauses.

I don't think it's ever a good thing to frame a suspect. If necessary, they should just murder the guy off-duty, so there is no corruption of the justice system.