GOP defending Confederate legacy?

[doodle]

Ok, but be careful what you wish for. What you're wishing for is basically a Hunger Games type government, centralized thousands of miles away and not listening at all to local concerns. I hope I got my movie analogy close to correct, because truthfully I only ever sat through half of the first Hunger Games movie.

Anywho, what the Confederates fought for was self determination via their state government, which they took to be their sovereign government at that time.

Let's be real, it was about slavery. You can couch it in whatever political science legalese you like....it was about having the freedom to own and subjegate human beings

[pmward]

Ok, but be careful what you wish for. What you're wishing for is basically a Hunger Games type government, centralized thousands of miles away and not listening at all to local concerns. I hope I got my movie analogy close to correct, because truthfully I only ever sat through half of the first Hunger Games movie.

Anywho, what the Confederates fought for was self determination via their state government, which they took to be their sovereign government at that time.

Let's be real, it was about slavery. You can couch it in whatever political science legalese you like....it was about having the freedom to own and subjegate human beings

I agree, the whole "state government" thing was just a convenient better sounding BS argument that they could use to rationalize the true reason they went to war. They wanted states to have power because their state would allow them to continue to pursue their selfish dehumanizing actions. Americans have always been selfish to a fault. Things still haven't changed in this regard, even 160 years later.

[Xan]

I agree, the whole "state government" thing was just a convenient better sounding BS argument that they could use to rationalize the true reason they went to war. They wanted states to have power because their state would allow them to continue to pursue their selfish dehumanizing actions. Americans have always been selfish to a fault. Things still haven't changed in this regard, even 160 years later.

It was the North that started the war, with no legal basis and for no reason other than to preserve tax revenues.

Slavery was on the way out globally. It would have ended in the US within a generation (I think the last was Brazil in 1888 or some such). An organic, peaceful end to slavery would have led to a much better outcome for everyone than what we got.

The whole "state government thing" is the way this country was designed. The North didn't give any more poops about black people than anyone else, but they did use the war to perform a revolution, centralizing all power in the federal government.

[Kriegsspiel]

Confederate soldiers fought to preserve one of the most brutal stains on American history. I really think many of you have emotionally disconnected yourselves from how reprehensible the system of slavery was that existed in this country for centuries.

IMO, it's quite the opposite. Modern Americans are entirely disconnected from understanding how important their state was to people back then. I'd wager that essentially every American alive today thinks enslaving people is quite distasteful; a much much higher amount have never even thought about whether states should be the ones to decide how they handle things that the federal government currently dictates. My ancestors fought for the North and I probably would have too, but I can understand why the Southern cause was such a tragedy.

Honestly, I think you're being a bit of a sophist trying to rile the forumites up like that. You have to like us a little bit to keep coming back here, why be insulting when you could try swaying people to your side?

[doodle]

Krieg, slavery was the key issue which moved the southern states to secede. It is disingenuous to pretend like it didn't play a central part in the war. And Xan, Whether it would have fallen of its own accord is irrelevant to the fact that the Confederacy was seeking to preserve the institution as well as expand it's reach into western territories.

[moda0306]

I agree, the whole "state government" thing was just a convenient better sounding BS argument that they could use to rationalize the true reason they went to war. They wanted states to have power because their state would allow them to continue to pursue their selfish dehumanizing actions. Americans have always been selfish to a fault. Things still haven't changed in this regard, even 160 years later.

It was the North that started the war, with no legal basis and for no reason other than to preserve tax revenues.

Slavery was on the way out globally. It would have ended in the US within a generation (I think the last was Brazil in 1888 or some such). An organic, peaceful end to slavery would have led to a much better outcome for everyone than what we got.

The whole "state government thing" is the way this country was designed. The North didn't give any more poops about black people than anyone else, but they did use the war to perform a revolution, centralizing all power in the federal government.

The North, to the degree we can collectivize the government and people into a blob and give them collective interests, didn't care much about slavery. But the South sure did...

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/prim ... ing-states

Nary a mention of taxes or tariffs...

The word slave, in all its derivations, is listed 83 times.

Texas' detail is particularly pertinent...

"She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time."

Slavery was not "on its way out" in the South. That's revisionist history garbage.

https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/201 ... e-way-out/

They were absolutely chomping at the bit to expand it to the west & Caribbean, and saw the federal government as a hindrance to that.

Regardless of how one feels about the US Government, or its soldiers, at this time (I certainly am not going to die on the hill of their greatness at all), the Confederate government, and all symbols of it (conveniently revived at certain times in history when blacks started getting a little too uppity) should be utterly reviled as a structure with the express purpose of defending the institution of slavery for the capital class in the South.

Of course some soldiers on both sides fought bravely. You throw men into a meat grinder and some great acts of heroism will result. But both imperialistic governments should probably be looked at with little more than contempt, with that of the South pure disdain as it was organized for a purely malevolent purpose. And, like the Union, they usurped states rights, Habeas Corpus, and engaged in conscription of poor Southern whites.

Of course the individual plight of every individual soldier is a tragedy. That's what we get when we allow the capital class to throw us into meat grinders to defend their property and tax cattle. We shouldn't fly the very symbols of our oppressors and pretend its a symbol of freedom or liberation.

[Mountaineer]

Krieg, slavery was the key issue which moved the southern states to secede. It is disingenuous to pretend like it didn't play a central part in the war. And Xan, Whether it would have fallen of its own accord is irrelevant to the fact that the Confederacy was seeking to preserve the institution as well as expand it's reach into western territories.

The good news is you have apparently had access to history books. They weren’t all destroyed by “the self-proclaiming righteous thugs” in an attempt to rewrite history to conform to a current narrative.

[stuper1]

I think you give African American teenagers less respect than they deserve. They can understand fighting for what you believe in and protecting your family. They can also understand that what people believe to be right can evolve over time.

As I said...people can rationalize anything. I'm shocked that you can even believe the bullshit that you just wrote...when what you "believe in" is the dehumanization, objectification, murder, rape and torture of an entire race of people. Seriously shocked the lengths that some people will go to defend this legacy.

How many of those Confederate soldiers that died were slave owners? I have no idea actually, but I would imagine it was a minuscule percentage. So, what were they fighting for? They were fighting for their family and country. At that time, their country was Virginia or Georgia or whatever state they came from. That was their country. That was what they were fighting for.

I don't believe in slavery any more than you do, but feel free to keep reading my mind if you are so good at it.

[stuper1]

Ok, but be careful what you wish for. What you're wishing for is basically a Hunger Games type government, centralized thousands of miles away and not listening at all to local concerns. I hope I got my movie analogy close to correct, because truthfully I only ever sat through half of the first Hunger Games movie.

Anywho, what the Confederates fought for was self determination via their state government, which they took to be their sovereign government at that time.

Let's be real, it was about slavery. You can couch it in whatever political science legalese you like....it was about having the freedom to own and subjegate human beings

I agree, the whole "state government" thing was just a convenient better sounding BS argument that they could use to rationalize the true reason they went to war. They wanted states to have power because their state would allow them to continue to pursue their selfish dehumanizing actions. Americans have always been selfish to a fault. Things still haven't changed in this regard, even 160 years later.

Every human being is selfish. That's the constant throughout history. Do you think Americans have a monopoly on selfishness? By the way, America didn't invent slavery. It was practiced quite widely throughout the world for most of history, including in Africa. If anything, white people should be thanked for ending slavery.

[pmward]

Ok, but be careful what you wish for. What you're wishing for is basically a Hunger Games type government, centralized thousands of miles away and not listening at all to local concerns. I hope I got my movie analogy close to correct, because truthfully I only ever sat through half of the first Hunger Games movie.

Anywho, what the Confederates fought for was self determination via their state government, which they took to be their sovereign government at that time.

Let's be real, it was about slavery. You can couch it in whatever political science legalese you like....it was about having the freedom to own and subjegate human beings

I agree, the whole "state government" thing was just a convenient better sounding BS argument that they could use to rationalize the true reason they went to war. They wanted states to have power because their state would allow them to continue to pursue their selfish dehumanizing actions. Americans have always been selfish to a fault. Things still haven't changed in this regard, even 160 years later.

Every human being is selfish. That's the constant throughout history. Do you think Americans have a monopoly on selfishness? By the way, America didn't invent slavery. It was practiced quite widely throughout the world for most of history, including in Africa. If anything, white people should be thanked for ending slavery.

Just because everyone else did it, and just because everyone else is selfish, does this make it right? Are any other countries still celebrating and enshrining the famous slavers of their grim pasts? No. So why are we?

[vnatale]

I agree, the whole "state government" thing was just a convenient better sounding BS argument that they could use to rationalize the true reason they went to war. They wanted states to have power because their state would allow them to continue to pursue their selfish dehumanizing actions. Americans have always been selfish to a fault. Things still haven't changed in this regard, even 160 years later.

It was the North that started the war, with no legal basis and for no reason other than to preserve tax revenues.

Slavery was on the way out globally. It would have ended in the US within a generation (I think the last was Brazil in 1888 or some such). An organic, peaceful end to slavery would have led to a much better outcome for everyone than what we got.

The whole "state government thing" is the way this country was designed. The North didn't give any more poops about black people than anyone else, but they did use the war to perform a revolution, centralizing all power in the federal government.

How do you define the North as starting the war. It was NOT started with the South bombing Fort Sumter?

"Fort Sumter is a sea fort in Charleston, South Carolina, notable for two battles, the first of which signified the start of the American Civil War."

Vinny

[vnatale]

Ok, but be careful what you wish for. What you're wishing for is basically a Hunger Games type government, centralized thousands of miles away and not listening at all to local concerns. I hope I got my movie analogy close to correct, because truthfully I only ever sat through half of the first Hunger Games movie.

Anywho, what the Confederates fought for was self determination via their state government, which they took to be their sovereign government at that time.

Let's be real, it was about slavery. You can couch it in whatever political science legalese you like....it was about having the freedom to own and subjegate human beings

100% in agreement with this.

Vinny

[stuper1]

Ok, but be careful what you wish for. What you're wishing for is basically a Hunger Games type government, centralized thousands of miles away and not listening at all to local concerns. I hope I got my movie analogy close to correct, because truthfully I only ever sat through half of the first Hunger Games movie.

Anywho, what the Confederates fought for was self determination via their state government, which they took to be their sovereign government at that time.

Let's be real, it was about slavery. You can couch it in whatever political science legalese you like....it was about having the freedom to own and subjegate human beings

I agree, the whole "state government" thing was just a convenient better sounding BS argument that they could use to rationalize the true reason they went to war. They wanted states to have power because their state would allow them to continue to pursue their selfish dehumanizing actions. Americans have always been selfish to a fault. Things still haven't changed in this regard, even 160 years later.

Every human being is selfish. That's the constant throughout history. Do you think Americans have a monopoly on selfishness? By the way, America didn't invent slavery. It was practiced quite widely throughout the world for most of history, including in Africa. If anything, white people should be thanked for ending slavery.

Just because everyone else did it, and just because everyone else is selfish, does this make it right? Are any other countries still celebrating and enshrining the famous slavers of their grim pasts? No. So why are we?

Do you have any understanding of human nature? Are you aware that people are full of contradictions? We have statues of people that were considered honorable at the time they lived. Does that mean they were perfect?

George Washington owned slaves. Is his statue coming down next and we're renaming Washington DC to George Floyd DX and renaming the Washington Monument to whatever? If that's what they want, it doesn't really bother me, but they should be consistent at least.

While we're at it, we should be sure to destroy the Jefferson Memorial because he owned slaves and the Lincoln Memorial because he thought blacks were lesser beings than whites.

And let's be sure to just do all this as mob rule. We don't need any rule of law or due process or anything like that. In other words, let's just go back to the jungle. We don't need civilization.

When we find out something bad about Martin Luther King Jr let's be ready to take his monument down too.

[vnatale]

When we find out something bad about Martin Luther King Jr let's be ready to take his monument down too.

J Edgar Hoover already performed that task 50 or so years ago.

Vinny

[stuper1]

Seriously, you guys are brain dead if you're going to support mob rule.

If these people want the statues to come down, there's a very simple process to follow. Get a state assembly person to write a bill and get a majority of assembly people to vote for it. Boom, there, done. If you can't get enough votes, then sorry, it's not going to happen. At that point, you have a choice. Stay in Virginia or wherever, or move to a more enlightened place, like maybe Minneapolis or Chicago or Baltimore where the leftist utopia is causing manna to grow on trees.

Doing it by mob rule is not the way to do anything unless you want us to go back to the dark ages.

[flyingpylon]

Regarding soldiers on either side of the Civil War, there’s a sentiment that soldiers don’t fight for ideology, country, patriotism, medals, etc. They fight for the men standing next to them.

I wasn’t there and I don’t completely trust any particular version of the history of that time, especially not anything concocted in “modern times”. But I wonder how much thought soldiers really gave to some of the underlying issues vs just trying to keep themselves and their buddies and families back home alive.

[Mark Leavy]

Whenever the new religion out-populates the old religion, the priests from the new religion incite the masses to tear down the old idols.

Been happening for awhile.

[Xan]

The North, to the degree we can collectivize the government and people into a blob and give them collective interests, didn't care much about slavery. But the South sure did...

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/prim ... ing-states

Nary a mention of taxes or tariffs...

The word slave, in all its derivations, is listed 83 times.

Texas' detail is particularly pertinent...

"She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time."

Well, there are really two issues there. One is slavery, and the other is whether the federal government is going to respect the agreement that was made among the states that created that government.

There are only five states in that document, four of them seceding before Lincoln raised his army. The one that led the second batch, Virginia, is in the document. And it barely mentions slavery, in fact, it does so only by way of describing the states involved: "the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States."


Also, an interesting point: what's typically known as "the Confederate flag" was never the flag of any government. It was a battle flag, a symbol of the soldiers (who did not own slaves) in their fight. That emblem did end up getting used as an element in the flags of the national government, and in various state flags afterwards.

Globally, wherever local people are attempting to throw off oppressive foreign governments, the Confederate flag has flown. It was at the fall of the Berlin Wall, for example.

I'm not saying everything the Confederacy stood for was good. Of course it wasn't. That's true of every government and nation. But it wasn't all bad either.

Edit: It's especially sad to see NASCAR dropping it, because the whole reason NASCAR races stock cars is to outrun federal agents attempting to collect taxes on moonshine. Organizationally, it really is part of their heritage! (And has nothing to do with slavery.)

[doodle]

Seriously, you guys are brain dead if you're going to support mob rule.

If these people want the statues to come down, there's a very simple process to follow. Get a state assembly person to write a bill and get a majority of assembly people to vote for it. Boom, there, done. If you can't get enough votes, then sorry, it's not going to happen. At that point, you have a choice. Stay in Virginia or wherever, or move to a more enlightened place, like maybe Minneapolis or Chicago or Baltimore where the leftist utopia is causing manna to grow on trees.

Doing it by mob rule is not the way to do anything unless you want us to go back to the dark ages.

This shouldn't have to come down to mob rule. There should be widespread consensus that removing Confederate names and statues from public spaces is the proper thing to do given the sordid history that they represent to a large segment of our population. Slavery was equally as bad as the Nazi crimes during world war 2.....don't see many Goebbels high schools or Hitler monuments over there.

[vnatale]

Confederate soldiers fought to preserve one of the most brutal stains on American history. I really think many of you have emotionally disconnected yourselves from how reprehensible the system of slavery was that existed in this country for centuries.

IMO, it's quite the opposite. Modern Americans are entirely disconnected from understanding how important their state was to people back then. I'd wager that essentially every American alive today thinks enslaving people is quite distasteful; a much much higher amount have never even thought about whether states should be the ones to decide how they handle things that the federal government currently dictates. My ancestors fought for the North and I probably would have too, but I can understand why the Southern cause was such a tragedy.

Honestly, I think you're being a bit of a sophist trying to rile the forumites up like that. You have to like us a little bit to keep coming back here, why be insulting when you could try swaying people to your side?

All my ancestors were in Italy until at least 1900. I've only lived in the North so I have no direct Southern influence or heritage.

That said, in the South in the latter part of the 1800's, Italians were viewed by Southerners as being no better than Afro-Americans. That led to a lynch mob in New Orleans in 1892 murdering 11 Italian immigrants. In an attempt to appease the both placate Italian Americans and ease diplomatic tensions with Italy, President Harrison declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration.

Do we have any records of how many lynchings took place in the North and how many in the South, throughout United States history?

Was it proper states rights for George Wallace to attempt to block an Afro-American student from attending an Alabama college, a hundred years after the end of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves?

I close with some lynching stats I find on Wikipedia:

Lynching is the practice of murder by a group of people by extrajudicial action. Lynchings in the United States first became common in the Southern United States in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, at which time most of the victims were white men.[2] Lynchings of blacks rose in number after the American Civil War during Reconstruction; they declined in the 1930s.[2] Most lynchings were of African-American men in the Southern United States, but women and non-blacks were also lynched, not always in the South. White lynchings of blacks also occurred in the Midwestern United States and the border states, especially during the 20th-century Great Migration of blacks out of the Southern United States. The purpose was to enforce white supremacy and intimidate blacks through racial terrorism. According to Ida B. Wells and Tuskegee University, most lynching victims were accused of murder or attempted murder. Rape or attempted rape was the second most common accusation; such accusations were often pretexts for lynching blacks who violated Jim Crow etiquette or engaged in economic competition with whites. Sociologist Arthur F. Raper investigated one hundred lynchings during the 1930s and estimated that approximately one-third of the victims were falsely accused.[3][4] On a per capita basis, lynchings were also common in California and the Old West, especially of Latinos, although they represented less than 10% of the national total. Native Americans, Asian Americans, Italian-Americans, Greek Americans, Jewish Americans, and others were also lynched.[5][6] [7] Other ethnicities, including Finnish-Americans[8] and German-Americans[9] were also lynched occasionally.

According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, including 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 whites. More than 73 percent of lynchings in the post-Civil War period occurred in the Southern states.[10] According to the Equal Justice Initiative, 4,084 African-Americans were lynched between 1877 and 1950 in the South.[11]

Vinny

[vnatale]

Seriously, you guys are brain dead if you're going to support mob rule.

If these people want the statues to come down, there's a very simple process to follow. Get a state assembly person to write a bill and get a majority of assembly people to vote for it. Boom, there, done. If you can't get enough votes, then sorry, it's not going to happen. At that point, you have a choice. Stay in Virginia or wherever, or move to a more enlightened place, like maybe Minneapolis or Chicago or Baltimore where the leftist utopia is causing manna to grow on trees.

Doing it by mob rule is not the way to do anything unless you want us to go back to the dark ages.

Is it the same for when that Saddam statue was torn down? Anyone critical of that being done by a mob? Should it have been done by legally sanctioned government action?

Now that I thought more about it I just checked to see if our military had a hand in that action, and, yes, "Working together in the heart of Baghdad, US marines helped crowds of Iraqi men bring down the imposing monument on the day the city's population celebrated its liberation."

Vinny

[doodle]

Ok, but be careful what you wish for. What you're wishing for is basically a Hunger Games type government, centralized thousands of miles away and not listening at all to local concerns. I hope I got my movie analogy close to correct, because truthfully I only ever sat through half of the first Hunger Games movie.

Anywho, what the Confederates fought for was self determination via their state government, which they took to be their sovereign government at that time.

Let's be real, it was about slavery. You can couch it in whatever political science legalese you like....it was about having the freedom to own and subjegate human beings

I agree, the whole "state government" thing was just a convenient better sounding BS argument that they could use to rationalize the true reason they went to war. They wanted states to have power because their state would allow them to continue to pursue their selfish dehumanizing actions. Americans have always been selfish to a fault. Things still haven't changed in this regard, even 160 years later.

Every human being is selfish. That's the constant throughout history. Do you think Americans have a monopoly on selfishness? By the way, America didn't invent slavery. It was practiced quite widely throughout the world for most of history, including in Africa. If anything, white people should be thanked for ending slavery.

Just because everyone else did it, and just because everyone else is selfish, does this make it right? Are any other countries still celebrating and enshrining the famous slavers of their grim pasts? No. So why are we?

Do you have any understanding of human nature? Are you aware that people are full of contradictions? We have statues of people that were considered honorable at the time they lived. Does that mean they were perfect?

George Washington owned slaves. Is his statue coming down next and we're renaming Washington DC to George Floyd DX and renaming the Washington Monument to whatever? If that's what they want, it doesn't really bother me, but they should be consistent at least.

While we're at it, we should be sure to destroy the Jefferson Memorial because he owned slaves and the Lincoln Memorial because he thought blacks were lesser beings than whites.

And let's be sure to just do all this as mob rule. We don't need any rule of law or due process or anything like that. In other words, let's just go back to the jungle. We don't need civilization.

When we find out something bad about Martin Luther King Jr let's be ready to take his monument down too.

I see this differently. Washington and Jefferson were the founding fathers of our nation. They didn't start a war and secede from the nation because they wanted to preserve the institution of slavery. Like it or not the historical consensus is very clear...the seminal issue of the civil war was slavery. This states rights pertains almost singularly to that issue.

[vnatale]

Globally, wherever local people are attempting to throw off oppressive foreign governments, the Confederate flag has flown. It was at the fall of the Berlin Wall, for example.

But also to this day Neo-Nazi's in Germany use the Confederate flags because it most closely represents the ideology represented by the forever banned Nazi flag. That ideology being one race is superior to another.

Even in our country Nazi supporters link the Confederate flag to their cause.

Capture.JPG (100.16 KiB) Viewed 4509 times

Vinny

[stuper1]

Alright, enjoy your mob rule. Should be fun times for all. I'm sure we'll all be better off due to the wisdom of the mob.

When they decide that anyone who has more than $100,000 saved in a financial account needs to give 50% of their total to the mob because they need it more than you do, I'm sure you will see the wisdom of their decision and won't complain if they need to break your windows and doors in order to come inside your home and help you better understand the wisdom.

[Xan]

Globally, wherever local people are attempting to throw off oppressive foreign governments, the Confederate flag has flown. It was at the fall of the Berlin Wall, for example.

But also to this day Neo-Nazi's in Germany use the Confederate flags because it most closely represents the ideology represented by the forever banned Nazi flag. That ideology being one race is superior to another.

Even in our country Nazi supporters link the Confederate flag to their cause.

Capture.JPG


Vinny

Mmmkay, but in that picture they're also (mis)using the Stars and Stripes. And the official flag of the KKK is the Stars and Stripes. Should we can that flag?