Posted on 06/23/2016 2:04:08 PM PDT by ColdOne
A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.
The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Pot=kettle
Does this mean you're going to stomp off in a huff now?
Interesting treatise on “Ape Lincoln”. Did you happen to see the grief the author received in the comments? It seems that the author (David Yeagley) is an indian (feather not dot) and his contemporaries felt he went off the reservation (so to speak) with his commentary.
Sometimes you can’t win for losing ;’}
DiogenesLamp responding: "I am not going to indulge the need to pretend the welfare of the slaves is what motivated this conflict.
I also note how you focus in on that like it's a life line.
No, we're not buying that propaganda anymore.
The North had slaves too..."
Typical of pro-Confederates, they always try to divert attention from the absolute centrality of slavery, not to the North, of course, but to Fire-Eater secessionists, especially in the Deep South.
Northerners cared about slavery only secondarily, but to Deep South secessionists slavery was not just an issue, it was the issue over which they first declared their secessions and, in the end, refused to settle for peace on any terms better than "unconditional surrender".
Sure, Northerners cared about slavery, somewhat, but what they really cared about was defeating the military power which had first provoked war, then started and declared war on the United States, while supporting pro-Confederates in Union states and territories.
That word, "slavery" is the answer to some, but not all, of the following questions:
"Protecting slavery" describes Confederate leaders' motivation, while "defending the Union" was more central to Northerners.
But yes, abolishing slavery, as Julia Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic proclaims, did become a "higher cause" helping to justify the Union's great expenses in blood & treasure for the Civil War.
Bottom line: Abolishing slavery was much more important to average Union soldiers than was, say, the Holocaust to WWII GIs, but abolition was not their first and foremost concern.
Defeating Confederates and preserving the Union was.
Sorry, but that's way, way too easy, and demonstrates yet again your abysmal ignorance of real history.
Did you ever go to a... you know, building they call, "school"?
How can you know so little that's actually true?
In fact, slavery has a long history going back at least to biblical times, and has at some point or another been practiced by every culture.
Slavery was only gradually and slowly abolished at different times in different places, and was both lawful and encouraged by Britain in all 13 US colonies.
So historically slavery was not the exception, it was the rule, and abolition was the exception taking many centuries, decades & years to gain acceptance.
And abolition was resisted the strongest in precisely those places where slavery was the most profitable, and slaves most in demand.
In 1860, no place on earth was more profitable for slavers than the US Deep Cotton South.
And no other place on earth was slavery more built-in to planters' "way of life".
Even today, some Southerners claim their ancestors loved their slaves like members of their own families, and DNA studies of US "black" people prove it.
x to DiogenesLamp: "My point, though, was that slave labor undercut the developments that would produce a modern economy, just as serfdom (and later Communism) did in Russia."
DiogenesLamp responding: "I am not following here.
What you say might be true, but i'm not seeing exactly how it may be true.
By what mechanism would a slave or serf economy inhibit development?"
This is actually a critical point, since by 1860 some slaves did work in Southern factories.
Yes, relatively few and far between, compared to growing Northern industries, but there were some in the South, and slaves could work in those factories as well as anyone else.
So by 1860 slavery represented an economic threat, not just to Southern agricultural workers, but also to factory workers.
This is what made the 1857 Supreme Court Dred-Scott decision so significant -- if now Southern slavers could bring their slaves into Northern states, and put them to work in Northern factories, then northern free-laborers (meaning paid workers) would be directly threatened economically.
For many threads now DiogenesLamp has argued that the Constitution itself forbids abolition of slavery, but in practical terms, no such understanding had any legal basis until the 1857 Dred-Scott decision.
DiogenesLamp on the possible primacy of Charleston SC: "The way things stood prior to 1861, that is true, but in absence of conflict, and with trade developing between Europe and Charleston, that infrastructure would have developed in the subsequent years."
In fact, there's no reason to suppose that Charleston would have any advantage over a dozen other Southern/Confederate ports, beginning with Norfolk, VA, Wilmington, NC, Savanah, GA, Pensacola, FL, Mobile, AL, New Orleans, LA & Galveston, TX.
Remember that all these ports were interconnected by Southern railroads and could easily transship people and goods from any one to any other port.
DiogenesLamp to x: "My point here is that the Wealthy elite of New England saw Southern independence as a fiscal threat to their businesses, and pushed the President to stop it. (same as today.)"
Your insane Marxist preoccupation with "the Wealthy elite" has blinded you to the fact that war itself was a huge "fiscal threat to their businesses" and so they would wish for it last of all.
Nor did Lincoln wish for war, or ever intend to start it.
In his inaugural he announced that Confederates could not have a war unless they themselves started it.
But that's just what they did, and so the Civil War came.
Are you done stomping you feetsies and holding your breath?
Did you really type, "Marxists/Democrat/Alinksyite posers"?? Oh, the irony. You're projecting, even using techniques from Saul Alinsky's own book. Well done.
One of your problem is your stunning inability to understand the devastatingly effective Civil War dynamics and Big Picture that DiogenesLamp has painstakingly revealed. You, unfortunately, will remain in the dark, incapable of seeing an inch beyond your own hand.
Nonetheless -- I congratulate you on a remarkable lack of curiosity, steeped in the absurd characterization of your own delusion and perspective. I understand your frustration and dismay that the Civil War "truth" you've been indoctrinated by since childhood has gone up in smoke under careful, documented scrutiny. And in case you still haven't gotten the memo, the CW was NOT about "slavery."
Please don't take it personally that your own ignorance and embrace of Stockholm Syndrome and propaganda with respect to true American history is exposed. I consider you one more victim. Dewey's public education system and Secular Humanism's hijacking of logic and truth didn't do America many favors.
Lol...sounds like you all struck a nerve.
But Lincoln certainly did attempt to negotiate by offering "a fort for a state" meaning Sumter for Virginia.
But Virginians turned down Lincoln's offer.
As for Confederate "emissaries", the Constitution requires that Congress has authority over such matters.
But no "emissary" ever asked Congress for anything.
DiogenesLamp: "The evidence indicates that Lincoln never had any intention of respecting the principle that States can become independent."
No, the evidence from Lincoln himself demonstrates he had every intention of peacefully respecting Southern arrangements, so long as minimum constitutional functions were performed.
DiogenesLamp: "And really that is the crux of the matter isn't it?
Whether states have a right, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, to become Independent, or whether our principles of governance requires the forcible subjugation of people who are no longer happy with the existing government and wish to leave it."
No, as we've shown over and over again, no Founder believed in an unlimited "right" to unilateral declarations of secession "at pleasre" or for "light and transient causes".
All were at pains to insist that declaration of disunion was a last resort, when all else failed, not a first resort whenever somebody wakes up with a headache.
DiogenesLamp: "All the rest is just spinning."
All the rest of you argument is just nonsense.
So the whole world is wrong and you and a tiny handful of malcontents and neo-confederates stand alone against “revisionism”? Good luck with that.
No, the fact is: so long as Deep South Congressional Representatives & Senators remained on the job, the new Morrill Tariff did not, and could not, pass.
The bill only passed after they began to resign.
Now, as to what woulda, coulda, shoulda happened if pro-Confederates had stayed in Congress, nobody knows, or can know.
Remember, not every Northerner favored higher tariffs and not every Southerner wanted lower tariffs.
Many were eminently, ahem, "persuadable" depending on the views of their own voters plus other "inducements".
So the issue really came down to: who wanted the higher or lower tariffs worse, and which side would put more, ah, "energy" into the political battle.
Finally, I'll remind you that the notorious "Tariff of Abominations" happened under President Jackson and Vice President Calhoun.
So the idea that all Southerners, even Deep South officials were forever and adamantly opposed to all tariffs is pure ex post facto pro-Confederate propaganda.
Total insanity. Wow.
Well considering there was no such thing as Marxism in 1861 you have a point but the fact of the matter is the Confederacy was bought about by Southern Democrats.
Doctor David Yeagley was a PhD at the University of Oklahoma until he passed away two years ago. He billed himself as an “American Indian Patriot’’. He was a Comanche who didn’t follow the ‘’poor Indian’’ meme and was very out spoken against the Left and liberals. He was a good guy. I used to communicate with him a lot.
PeaBrain responding to quote: "BS again.
From the day of its origin, Morrill rates were very high.
The bill proposed raising the taxation rate from an average of approximately 37.5% with a greatly expanded list of covered items..."
This source shows that average pre-Morrill tariffs in 1860 were 15%.
This source, as well as others I've seen says of the original Morrill tariff bill:
"The tariff also differed in that it distributed the burden of protection across society rather than placing it on specific regions or poorer classes....
The bill placed a 10 percent duty on goods considered necessities and a 20 percent impost on products that were less necessary.
Congress authorized a 30 percent tax on luxury items based on their value..."
PeaBrain: "Your comment about 'the wisdom of Congress' raising the rates after secession is flat out BS again."
This source says about the First Morrill tariff:
Finally, this source disagrees with the above, and more closely agrees with you, PeaBrain, but I think some of the explanation is: comparing the original Morrill proposal of 1859, in the face of Southern opposition, with the final Morrill Act of 1861 given the new Republican majorities.
I've seen that before.
See my post above.
There may be a dispute amongst historians on what, exactly, were the results, but I think at least some of the explanation is in differences among:
As previously posted:
So, bottom line: at 4:30 AM, as Confederates began their 4,000 gun bombardment of 85 Union troops in Union Fort Sumter there was within sight, one small warship Harriet Lane plus one unarmed civilian steamer SS Baltic.
Well said, thanks for a great response!
Slavery was very important to some Northerners, and more as the war progressed.
Others were simply outraged that Southern slavers wanted to destroy their Union.
Thanks!
That is a great response to DiogenesLamp's claim that "New England Power Brokers" pushed Lincoln into war.
Good question.
Since everybody grows, matures or as they say today "evolves", which version should we credit?
Well, as a general rule, the more mature, longer considered opinion should be given priority -- unless there are circumstances discrediting it.
But I see none such in this case regarding Madison.
Further, we remember that to save his political career, Madison "evolved" from staunch Federalist in 1788 to anti-Federalist and Jeffersonian Democratic Republican by 1799.
Then late in life Madison returned to his roots, writing a strong defense of Union against suggestions it might be dissolved "at pleasure".
rustbucket: "The one that said the following when trying to get the Virginia Ratification Convention to ratify the Constitution?
My emphasis below. "An observation fell from a gentleman, on the same side with myself, which deserves to be attended to.
If we be dissatisfied with the national government, if we should choose to renounce it, this is an additional safeguard to our defence."
Obviously playing the politician, Madison here used a word, "dissatisfied" which can mean different things in different contexts.
For example: political "divorce" being likened to marital divorce, we might look at two types of "dissatisfied".
So, which form of "dissatisfied" did Madison refer to?
Of course, as a politician, Madison left it to his listener to hear what he wanted to hear.
But later in life, Madison makes clear that he did not believe in disunion "at pleasure" or for "light and transient causes".
Nor did any other genuine Founder.
And here we see a key point I've posted over and over: the reason Virginia refused to declare secession before Fort Sumter, and along with Virginia also North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, the reason was they needed a legitimate Constitutional excuse.
They could not legitimately secede "at pleasure" or "for light and transient causes", but Fort Sumter provided them the excuse they needed.
Now and only now, could they claim "injury and oppression" justifying unilateral unapproved declaration of secession.
And that, seems to me, is entirely reason enough to explain why Jefferson Davis ordered the military assault on Fort Sumter in the first place.
In one quick move, Davis doubled the Confederacy's white population and military manpower.
rustbucket quoting Marshall at Virginia's constitutional convention, 1788: "[w]e are threatened with the loss of our liberties by the possible abuse of power, notwithstanding the maxim, that those who give may take away.
It is the people that give power, and can take it back.
What shall restrain them?
They are the masters who give it, and of whom their servants hold it."
First, I think we should question the quote itself, along with the one alleged of Madison, as to whether it is certainly authentic.
Casual comments overheard in a hallway or dining room should not necessarily fall into the category of "Founders' Original Intent".
But even if, for sake of argument, we grant Madison & Marshall may have uttered such words, in what evidence do we find that either ever intended to approve of disunion "at pleasure" or "for light and transient causes"?
I don't think they did, and thus my argument still stands.
rustbucket: "I've told you much of this before. So why do I respond now?"
Because, just as before, you misunderstand both my argument and some key facts of history, FRiend.
But I'm patient... ;-)
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