Posted on 01/25/2012 8:44:30 PM PST by JerseyanExile
It was; slaves were learning useful skills, more and more owners were freeing them, and more and more states were abolishing the system as time went on. If they had then taken on Eastern European immigrants as low paid labor, the entire system would have been gone and the system would have slowly been ended and blacks integrated as productive citizens, not forced to fend for themselves pretty much right away while adjusting to freedom. It would have also preseved Southern Culture and values and independence rather than smashing it with a bullet and shattering a process that was ending the system while not traumatizing the culture.
It’s the desire for cheap labor htat started this, as usual.
The problem isn’t so much with rich/poor as it is with makers/takers (legal AND illegal).
There are too many people here doing absolutely nothing to help themselves or others and expecting everyone else to pay for everything they desire. They expect to be handed high paying jobs for no skills. They think they deserve everything for little or no work on their part. They think they show up on time for work and get a bonus for it.
There are people who are getting welfare that aren’t poor. They are at the grocery store buying far more expensive items in price and quantity than I can buy. No shame in handing over the debit card of other peoples’ money that are funding their alcohol, rich meats, junk food and soda. They expect and demand more. They believe they deserve it.
Then (for example in Wisconsin) we have many government workers, at all levels, that get great benefits, work security that nobody in the private sector has, that scream the world will end and it will be chaos if they have to pay a little more for their healthcare (no changes in the cadillac plans or coverage), and a tiny portion of their pensions (used to be 100% funded). WI govt workers earn about 50% more on average than average private sector WI workers. The average WI worker doesn’t have the awesome health plans they do, and they pay 20% of their hcare premiums, while the state workers now pay about 12%. They don’t have pensions but 401k’s. WI state workers had taxpayers paying 100% of their pensions, Governor Walker finally changed it so they pay a measly 5% of their pension, taxpayers still pay the other 95%. And for these small changes that resulted in no state worker layoffs, Walker is facing a recall (he will totally survive by the way). These losers believe they deserve it. They think they are entitled to it, and think they are doing worse than everyone else.
Makers vs takers. This is what’s bringing the country down. Not necessarily rich/poor. Government under Obama is fomenting it on purpose.
It was on the way out.
The Industrial Revolution where machines could work faster and longer were going to overtake output of those areas just using human labor.
Problem is you can’t really start working to change the way people think about another human being (less than people) if you can still legally treat them that way. Unless they can admit they know they’re wrong, there’s really only one way to deal with people like that.
Heh.. My daughter lives in Fishtown.
Murray only fails to state the obvious - - America’s decline is inversely proportional to the growth of government and the socialist welfare state, which is the relentless work of selfish, corrupt Democrats and cowardly Republican enablers. Friggin’ duh.
I don’t know how Gate’s treats people, but I have a friend that regularly goes to movies and he has seen Bill and his wife at the movie theater several times sitting in a row eating popcorn along with the rest of them.
Impressive, isn’t it?
Goes to show that it’s nto just the amount, but where it comes from.
I have told all my kids that I am proud of them that they find topics that go against the normal cultural grain, and that they hold their ground. I see the biggest divide with them and their peers in the liberal/conservative issues (we live in a very liberal area), and also the moral aspects of things.
But pretty cool when a friend asks “How come you don't swear?”
Yeah, kids could be kids.
Congratulations.
I have a friend that works at Microsoft - multimillonare I imagine based on his position in the company and his nice home. But not to look or talk with him! We spent Christmas eve at our church helping with dinner for the homeless guys.
I think the other thing growing up years ago, my folks grew up during the Depression, they were very thrifty. When I was growing up I knew I was fortunate to live in a decent house in a decent neighborhood. But I didn’t know of the real hard struggles my folks had - or the huge success they had (until later). The idea of being thrifty was there all along, which kept things at an even pace.
My home was no different than those of my dad’s employees. (Well, except the one carpenter that lived on a lake!)
You know, I think that this divide is largely self imposed by a lot of people and a huge part of this is in fact just that a lot of people are giving up. When a lto of American kids see a future of supporting the entire planet with their taxes and the stability of other countries with their lives and not having a family of their own (because they have ot put off having kids while others breed ‘em like rabbits and use welfare), why try?
No question there is creativity outside of Belmont. What he seems to be suggesting, however, is that the folks of Belmont will want to send their kids to school in Fishtown so that they can experience the diversity of our culture. But even Obama sends his kids to an elite private school, so Murray is dreaming if he thinks that’s going to happen.
This is something that goes right to the heart of liberalism and the left, and is why they are so evil and corrosive.
The cardinal sin to liberals is...oddly enough..Hypocrisy.
Their defense against being accused of hypocrisy is a bizzare combination of Rousseauian Moral Relativism coupled with a strain of Orwellian Doublethink. They believe that all behaviors are matters of personal choice regardless of consequence, and one type of behavior is equally as valid as another.
To put it another way, they don't have any values or standards. If you don't have values or standards, you can never be called to be held to them, and can never be accused of Hypocrisy.
Most conservatives understand the Christian concept of hate the sin, love the sinner. We know that people are not pefect, but we do think that standards should be there as, at the very minimum, a goal to strive for. If you don't reach those standards, you try to learn from the experience and learn to try again.
Liberals think that every kid is going to have sex no matter what is done or said, so there is no valid reason to discourage it. And if you can't bring yourself to discourage it, then there is no reason you should make them suffer for doing something they can't help doing anyway. It just occurred to me that liberals might even go so far as to supply safe areas for kids to have sex, so they wouldn't do it in the woods or in a dangerous building. (Perhaps they already have, and I have simply not noticed.)
Throughout this article, the effects of liberalism coming home to roost are first and foremost.
Actually I think what he is saying (from the whole article) is that everyone sent their kids to the local school sp you had a mixture of Belmont and Fishtown in the same building, and in the streets, and in civic organizations, etc.
I remember when I went to Catholic school many moons ago, and granted they were private diocesan schools, but not elitist ultra-expensive schools, we had kids whose parents never went to college (like me) and we had kids whose parents went to college and set up computer systems for entire countries. Even though we were overwhelmingly white, there was a real diversity of background there.
What? Take all their stuff at gunpoint, and burn the rest?
In a couple of decades, the law could have been changed without that.
As far as changing cultural attitudes go, the biggest difference is that in one area the population was more honest about its attitudes while the other was sanctimoniously hypocritical.
Maybe, 150 years after that, we are getting over that as a society--and maybe not.
Either way, the damage was done to the Republic, and the Federal Government became the one to routinely impose its will upon the States instead of the other way around. Now we see the result of that.
Your son is right. It is pretty well known that slaves were not sent into the holds of tobacco ships being loaded: the hogsheads being loaded (Barrels 14 ft. long and ten ft. or more in diameter—the shipping containers of the day) could shift and crush someone, and the slaves represented an investment. It is no accident that dangerous jobs such as teamster, longshoreman, cop, and powder monkey (to name a few) ended up being taken by Irish and other immigrants—they were cheaper to replace.
Bump for later read.
Perhaps, but the split of the South was factored on more than just slavery. Maybe in time those things would have changed on their own over decades, but everyone lives in the here and now as well. If your family is not doing well and the economics are crushing you you’re going to deal with short-term things that can help you rather than long-term that can’t help you now when you need it.
So very true. Slavery was a minor issue, really, albeit the future of the insititution was a factor of division.
The idea of freeing the slaves was a further economic sanction to be imposed on the states which had lower immigration rates and relied on the production of labor intensive crops for their economies.
While the South was industrializing, which would have meant the eventual end to the North's lock on much of the finished goods trade which relied on cheap (exploitatively so) southern raw materials, or their reliance on foreign sources affected by trade sanctions, that had not reached the critical mass where the South was not still reliant on outside markets for its produce.
While the the idea of the taking of economically vital property without compensation, and the prevention of that property from being marketable in the expanding Union while decreasing in value were drivers in the schism, other economic factors played a bigger role.
With homegrown industrialization, though, the need for cheap labor would have declined, and with that decline, manumission would have gained popularity. Without that industrialization, one region simply exploited another, and used the weight of law to do so, especially with droves of new faces skewing the voting base in the House.
In all likelihood, the transition may have been significantly smoother, with more complete cultural integration, had the South simply been allowed to develop its own industrial base.
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