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Posts by FLT-bird

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  • On Confederate Memorial Day, an honest annotation of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession

    05/08/2024 10:01:29 AM PDT · 153 of 155
    FLT-bird to BroJoeK
    BroJoeK: Sorry, but your own timeline is wrong, as I have now spelled out in detail, twice, above.

    Sorry, but its your timeline that is wrong as I have pointed out multiple times in this thread already and will continue to point out. The Corwin Amendment was ratified BEFORE the Confederate Constitution.

  • On Confederate Memorial Day, an honest annotation of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession

    05/08/2024 10:00:02 AM PDT · 152 of 155
    FLT-bird to BroJoeK
    BroJoeK: Then you have not really paid attention to jeffersondem's arguments here. Jeffersondem insists, against all evidence to the contrary, that our Founders "enshrined" bondage in their "pro-slavery" Constitution.

    Sure I have. My statement that they were embarrassed by slavery and his statement that they nevertheless enshrined it in the US Constitution are not at odds with each other. People can be hypocritical. The Founding Fathers were on this issue.

    BroJoeK: So I suspect jeffersondem will be dismayed to learn from you that our Founders were embarrassed by an institution which ran directly contrary to their own lofty rhetoric. Who would ever suspect that?

    I doubt he would disagree with me that they found it embarrassing.

    BroJoeK: And I think DiogenesLamp shares jeffersondem's views on this. Both will be highly disappointed to learn that you've now joined the opposition, at least on this topic.

    But I haven't.

  • On Confederate Memorial Day, an honest annotation of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession

    05/08/2024 9:34:15 AM PDT · 148 of 155
    FLT-bird to BroJoeK
    BroJoeK: "at pleasure" is a term you have invented which is nowhere to be found in the Declaration of Independence." Madison's term, "at pleasure" is not in the DOI because there was nothing "at pleasure" about it! Instead, our Founders used much stronger words: "When... it becomes necessary..." -- "necessary", is not "at pleasure". "...declare the causes which impel them to the separation." -- "impel", is not "at pleasure". "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends..." -- "destructive", not "inconvenient" or "unpleasant", to be discarded "at pleasure". "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes..." -- "light and transient causes", are synonymous with "at pleasure", and should not be used to change governments. "... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government..." -- "abuses and usurpations", "reduce them under absolute Despotism", these are the opposites of "at pleasure" reasons. "... such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government..." -- again, "necessity" is the opposite of "at pleasure". "...history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States..." -- "injuries and usurpations", "absolute Tyranny", these are the opposites of "at pleasure" secessions. "...In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." -- "Oppressions", "repeated injuries" and "define a Tyrant" are opposites of "at pleasure". "...We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends" -- yet again, "necessity" is the opposite of "at pleasure". By the way, we have discussed Madison's views on "at pleasure" disunion, so we might well also mention Jefferson's views on secession (which he calls "scission"), expressed in a June 4 1798 letter to John Taylor: "...perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch & debate to the people the proceedings of the other. but if on a temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the union, no federal government can ever exist."

    Oh. Madison's letter. Did he publish this letter before ratification? Did he include this in the Federalist Papers? Did he say this at the time the constitution was ratified by the sovereign states? No? Then it is just one man's opinion after the fact. It is NOT evidence as to what the states agreed to at the time.

    Nowhere in the DOI or the Federalist papers or the US Constitution does it say a state may not secede or that it requires a permission slip from anybody else to secede.

    BroJoeK: "But you clearly don't yet grasp the essential fact about 1860 Fire Eater secessionists, which is that they were Democrats, and Democrats, by definition are devotees to, indeed worshippers of, the Big Lie, and in 1861, one Democrat Big Lie was that they accurately represented our Founders' original intentions.

    more irrationality and namecalling from you. The Democrat party in the mid 19th century is radically different from the Democrat party today. Just as the Republican party today of today is becoming quite different from the Republican party of 20 years ago. Parties change over time just as societies and the values they hold change over time. Deal with it.

    BroJoeK: But the truth is that Democrats didn't then, don't now and never reliably have. And the reason is as obvious as it is simple -- the first Democrats' original supporters were anti-Federalists who opposed ratification of the US Constitution in 1788. Their successors have also opposed it, by whatever means they believed necessary, ever since.

    Antifederalists - like George Mason and Patrick Henry opposed the Constitution for a variety of reasons. It lacked a bill of rights. It lacked any restrictions at all on the "general welfare". They knew better than to trust government and knew it would - like any government - always seek to usurp ever more power for itself.

  • Fox Board Member Paul Ryan Will Not Vote for Donald Trump

    05/08/2024 8:29:40 AM PDT · 26 of 55
    FLT-bird to ChicagoConservative27

    Shock Shock, another backstabbing two faced RINO turns out to be backstabbing and two faced. We never would have guessed.

  • Putin had 'cheeks plumped with filler' for pageantry fifth inauguration, security expert says

    05/08/2024 7:57:00 AM PDT · 22 of 41
    FLT-bird to marcusmaximus

    Yeah Yeah and he’ll be dead within 6 months.

    2 years ago called. It wants its headlines back.

  • On Confederate Memorial Day, an honest annotation of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession

    05/08/2024 7:55:01 AM PDT · 146 of 155
    FLT-bird to BroJoeK
    BroJoeK:February 7, and since for 90% of it, all they did was copy and paste the 1787 US Constitution, we have to believe that most of the serious work was completed in a day or two. Then, it took a few weeks to discuss and print the final version for adoption on March 11.

    There is no evidence that the drafters of the Corwin Amendment were influenced by the Confederate Constitution. The Corwin Amendment came first after all.

    BroJoeK: Since December 1860, the US Congress had been dealing with many different proposals for "compromise" laws & amendments, hoping to stop further secessions. On February 28, long after the new Confederate constitution was all but completed, Congressman Corwin proposed an amendment to the US Constitution which matched rather well the Confederate: CSA Article I Section 9(4) "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

    You claim the Confederate Constitution was "all but completed" yet you have no evidence for this. The Corwin Amendment came out first. That article you cite in the Confederate Constitution was just the Corwin Amendment...and as you have said before, the Corwin Amendment was just an explicit spelling out of what already existed. The US Federal government could not bad slavery in a state. Nothing in the US Constitution gave it the power to do so.

    BroJoeK: It well illustrates my point, since even in 1861 the US Congress' proposed Corwin Amendment simply repeated a circumlocution from our 1787 Constitution:

    The Confederate Constitution was honest in saying "slave/slavery" while the US Constitution provided all the same protections, it just didn't use the word.

    BroJoeK:Our Founders in 1787 well understood that slavery was wrong and disgraceful, should not be mentioned directly in their Constitution and so must be addressed through circumlocutions and euphemisms. Such squeamishness was completely gone in secessionists' 1861 Montgomery constitution.

    The Founding Fathers were certainly embarrassed by how hypocritical it was in light of the rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence. Yet they were perfectly willing to protect slavery in the US Constitution. The only difference in the Confederate Constitution was it was more honest. They actually said the word "slave". They otherwise protected it no more than the Founding Fathers had in the US Constitution.

    BroJoeK: "The 1861 Confederate Constitution allowed for a major exception, which is not found in the 1787 US Constitution. I would not call that "stricter".

    What was that exception? OH! I see. It was that slaves could still be traded between those US States that still allowed slavery and Confederate states. In other words, they left the situation exactly as it had been prior to secession. They did not allow the importation of vast quantities of slaves from Africa like the US Constitution allowed for 20 more years. I would call that stricter.

    BroJoeK: "So you claim here, but the Corwin Amendment was intended to directly address your point, thus rather strongly implying the absence of such a guarantee in our Founders' original 1787 Constitution -- at least as perceived by Southern slaveholders.

    If anyone thought the federal government could force a state to abolish slavery, Lincoln sure answered that one. He expressly said the federal government had no such power and he said it repeatedly.

    “There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that— I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them.” Abraham Lincoln

    BroJoeK: You are unwilling to draw this same distinction between Federal and state authority regarding the proposed Corwin Amendment, which you insist would have ended abolition forever in the USA. This suggests the distinction between Federal and state authorities was not so well established in Confederate minds as you'd have us believe here.

    Again, if that distinction were not so clear, Lincoln certainly cleared that up. See above quote.

    BroJoeK: But more important, the CSA constitution itself directly restricts states authority over slavery in Article IV -- Sections 2(1) and 3(3), such that, using Crazy Roger Taney's logic, it would be impossible for any Confederate state to pass laws even restricting slavery, much less abolishing it.

    No. This only pertained to a right of transit as existed in the US prior to secession. A Confederate state could not bar transit. It could certainly abolish slavery if it wished. A proposal that states that had already banned slavery not be admitted to the CSA was voted down in Montgomery during the Confederate constitutional convention.

    BroJoeK: This means your implied claims, that the 1861 CSA Constitution was effectively "slavery neutral" for states, are pure undiluted hogwash.

    No it doesn't. It proves that your claims are pure undiluted hogwash.

    BroJoeK; The key fact which you refuse to acknowledge, is that a majority of Republicans in Congress opposed Corwin, while 100% of Democrats supported it, and Democrat Pres. Buchanan signed it! That should cause you to pause and reflect, but since it doesn't comply with your Lost Cause propaganda, you simply ignore the most important fact.

    That's great. What you refuse to acknowledge is that Republicans introduced it to each house of Congress. It could only have passed Congress with the necessary 2/3rds supermajority with substantial Republican support, and that the Republican leadership lobbied for state ratification and got several states to in fact ratify it. Of course admitting that would contradict your PC Revisionist propaganda so you refuse to admit those inconvenient facts.

    BroJoeK: Sure, and as we've reviewed before, 100% of the seven concurrences (including Crazy Roger himself) were Democrats, and five of those seven were Southern Democrats, while the other two concurrences were Northern Doughfaced Democrats -- Nelson from NY and Grier from PA. The two dissenters were Republicans -- Curtis from MA and McLean from Ohio. So Dred Scott's concurrences in no way prove that Crazy Roger was sane, rather they prove that all Democrats were (and many remain) equally insane.

    Your constant namecalling aside, what this decision proves is that it was a majority opinion of the SCOTUS and as such was binding law in the US. Full Stop.

    BroJoeK; None of the Founders said anything about the issue - unless you can provide us a quote from each of the Founding Fathers showing otherwise."

    You said none would agree to the ruling. It is incumbent upon you to provide evidence - not incumbent upon me to provide counter evidence. You made the claim after all.

    BroJoeK: Of course we do have many quotes from Founders on related subjects, beginning with this one from Jefferson, Franklin and Adams: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." And there are many similar quotes from virtually every Founder, all of them strongly suggesting that Crazy Roger Taney, and all Southern Democrats, if not all Democrats, had, by 1857 turned into stark raving lunatics.

    Yet many of those same Founding Fathers were themselves slaveowner and they incorporated protections for slavery in the US Constitution. That strongly suggests they would have agreed with the majority opinion of the SCOTUS in Dred Scott.

    BroJoeK: No Northerner accepted Crazy Roger's Dred Scott opinions as legitimate, for one reason, as Lincoln said in 1858: "We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State." It's a major factor in turning previously Democrat states of Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois to Republicans in 1860.

    Not all Northerners were Abolitionists. In fact, Abolitionists were a tiny minority prior to the war. Their candidates could not get more than single digit percentages of the vote. I have no doubt many were pissed because "the other team" won that round in the Supreme Court and that burned their asses just like it does today when the SCOTUS comes down on one side or the other of a political issue. I suspect Northerners were far more pissed about that than they were committed to abolition. All the evidence is, they overwhelmingly were not abolitionists.

    BroJoeK: As for proving our Founders' intentions, I have proved those with one quote from the DOI above, and could add many more similar, if you still don't "get" it.

    And I have proven that many of them were slave owners or as in Franklin's case were perfectly happy to profit from slavery and that they included protections of slavery in the US Constitution....if you still don't "get" it.

    BroJoeK: Only if you agree with the US 1787 Constitution, as grossly distorted by Crazy Roger Taney's 1857 lunatic opinions.

    No matter how much you splutter and spew venom at Taney, that was the majority opinion of the SCOTUS and as such was the supreme law of the land.

  • STOSSEL: Why Trump Failed to “Drain the Swamp"

    05/08/2024 6:07:40 AM PDT · 64 of 86
    FLT-bird to MayflowerMadam

    Obviously outsiders cannot be allowed to pay the salary of federal employees. Just think of the endless corruption that would result in. No, there’s just no money for all these federal workers. Too bad. So Sad. I guess all of you will just need to leave - if you want to make any money at all......

  • Data: More Than Data: More Than 200,000 People On North Carolina Voter Rolls ‘Missing’ ID Numbers

    05/08/2024 3:11:48 AM PDT · 15 of 25
    FLT-bird to bitt

    This is why we passed Voter ID overwhelmingly by statewide referendum in 2018. With rare exceptions and only valid reason, voters need to vote in person and they need to show government issued photo ID. That’s not a guarantee to stop all the fraud.....but that would stop at least 95% of it.

  • Andreessen Horowitz investor says half of Google's white-collar staff probably do 'no real work'

    05/08/2024 3:06:32 AM PDT · 12 of 23
    FLT-bird to Reno89519

    Amen! I’d allow companies just as many H1Bs as they want. Its just that each one will cost $50K. The license for one can be renewed annually and the fee paid annually.

    That right there - making them more expensive to employ than an American - would result in probably a 97-98% reduction in H1bs.

    Companies would bring back the job training programs they used to have REAL fast.

  • STOSSEL: Why Trump Failed to “Drain the Swamp"

    05/08/2024 3:02:44 AM PDT · 25 of 86
    FLT-bird to RandFan

    He made some mistakes no doubt. In initially tried to work with the RINO Establishment and he thought he could work with the Bureaucrats in Washington. He also did not fire every single last Obama holdover he could in every single last agency. He did - let’s face it - hire some lousy people. Part of that was that he had no choice but to work with the existing Republican operatives who had served under the Bush administration.....but part was he just made some lousy appointments.

    This time, he knows he can’t trust the RINO Establishment. He will have a lot more MAGA people to appoint rather than Bush flunkies. He will know better than to allow any Democrat holdovers (look for example how much trouble an obscure appointment like the national archivist caused him). He will have every incentive to clean out the CIA and FIB with a flamethrower....in fact I’d like it if he abolished the FIB entirely. He also has every incentive to fire just as many bureaucrats as possible. If you can’t fire them fine.....just don’t budget any money for them.

    “Oh, you still have a job....its just that there is no money to pay you a salary. So if you stay, you get nothing.”

  • On Confederate Memorial Day, an honest annotation of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession

    05/08/2024 2:52:49 AM PDT · 143 of 155
    FLT-bird to x
    Many, many errors in there, but I don’t have the time or the patience to carry on this pointless discussion any longer. Go on living in your fantasy world if you like.

    The fantasies are yours. I have backed up everything I've said with numerous facts, sources and quotes from the people involved at the time.

  • Alligator visits bank drive-through, 'did not have an account'

    05/07/2024 8:26:58 PM PDT · 36 of 42
    FLT-bird to Cowgirl of Justice

    That’s strange. Gator mating season when I was in Gainesville consisted of sorority girls saying “I’m so wasted”..........

  • McLaughlin Poll: Virginia and Minnesota are in play

    05/07/2024 8:19:30 PM PDT · 31 of 32
    FLT-bird to TexasFreeper2009

    The problem is the 3 counties of Occupied Northern Virginia. It would take a fairly high yield thermonuclear device to get rid of those.

  • Swedish politician regrets ‘refugees welcome’ policy: ‘We were fundamentally wrong on the immigration issue’

    05/07/2024 7:57:51 PM PDT · 16 of 69
    FLT-bird to yesthatjallen

    Too late. You have admitted enough third world and especially military age muslim men to cause radical spikes in violent crime - especially rape. You have imported enough to fundamentally change the demographic profile of your country and to eventually bankrupt your social programs.

    Shutting the barn door after all the horses have bolted is not going to fix the problem.

    The only way you are going to get you country back to being even a semblance of what it was is to implement a mass deportation program. The Muslims and those not willing to FULLY embrace the Swedish language and Swedish values must be deported back to where they came from. Sadly, I don’t think Swedes or other Europeans have the balls to actually do it. I fear for your future and it makes me sad to see what you have ruined.

  • On Confederate Memorial Day, an honest annotation of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession

    05/07/2024 7:52:43 PM PDT · 141 of 155
    FLT-bird to x
    You can’t just ignore or dismiss the real fears that people had at the time. The Blair family, whose patriarch had been a confidant and strong supporter of Andrew Jackson, was building the Republican Party in Missouri and Maryland. Germans in those states were also voting Republican. Politicians in South Carolina and other Deep South States looked at the Border States with alarm and could imagine Republicans building up their party in Western Virginia, Eastern Tennessee and Northern Alabama.

    I don't see a realistic prospect at that time for the Republican Party to make real inroads with the Southern states. Their entire focus was as a Northern sectional party. They would have had to change their policies on just about everything to appeal to Southerners.

    Slave uprisings were a major fear in the slave states: Gabriel’s rebellion, the German Coast uprising, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner. Patrols for runaways were a major part of life, and they were vigilant about slave gatherings that they thought might spark a rebellion. Some slaveowners might believe that slaves were contented until abolitionists got to them, but they were terrified of abolitionists getting to them, even from a distance (hence the desire to keep slaves illiterate when possible).

    of all those mentioned, Nat Turner's was the only one that was really violent. The others leaked or were squelched pretty easily. There were certainly concerns about runaway slaves. That was especially economically damaging because those most likely to flee tended to be the young and fit - precisely those slaves who were the most economically productive. I think runaways were a much bigger concern than slave rebellions though I'm sure people had fears of the latter.

    In contrast, tariffs weren’t a major burden on most Southerners. If the slave states had stayed in the union, tariffs wouldn’t have gone up as high as they did. Lincoln would have lost control of Congress in the next election and tariffs would have gone down again.

    The Tariff of Abominations was a major burden on everyone in the cotton producing states especially. You say tariffs would not have gone up as high as they did (53%). They didn't need to be that high to be economically devastating but they certainly would have risen to a level that would have crushed the South's economy. Given their larger population and thus more votes, the North would have every incentive to keep jacking tariff rates ever higher. After all, it lined their pockets. You say Lincoln would have lost control of Congress in the next election and Tariffs would have gone down again. I don't buy that at all. The money interests in the North had every reason to push for higher and higher tariffs. The North had a significantly larger population and thus more votes for Congress.

    The militancy against the 1828 tariff was largely confined to South Carolina, the state where slave owning families were most powerful and had control of the government. Other states probably recognized that tariffs went up and down with the political climate. Later secessionists adopted talk about the tariff and fishing bounties because they were large slaveowners themselves, or because they wanted their revolt to be about more than worries about slavery. It wasn’t the main issue until after the war when no one who had supported the rebellion wanted to acknowledge the importance of slavey.

    The only part of this that is even remotely accurate is that the most virulent opposition to the Tariff of Abominations came from South Carolina. South Carolina took the lead because they were the largest cotton producing state at the time. It was damaging to all of them and cotton production had soared since the 1820s so any future tariff like that was going to be quite devastating to all of them. Southerners complained bitterly about the tariff before and during the war - not just after. I've provided all kinds of quotes from Southern politicians and Newspapers before and during the war showing this. I've also provided quotes from Northern and Foreign sources backing up this assessment - ie that the North stood to gain hugely from higher tariffs and stood to lose far more if the South seceded while the South stood to gain hugely in that case. The claim that they only cared about slavery or that they only discussed other grievances after the fact is just so much Yankee propaganda.

    The percentage of slaveowning families in the Deep South States was rather high, estimated at 49% in Mississippi and 46% in South Carolina, at 36.7% in the first seven seceding states and at around 25.3% in the last four states to secede. Those numbers aren’t exact, but even if one lowers them they still reflect the place of slavery in the slave states. Those who didn’t own slaves were often dependent on the slaveowners — and of course they were concerned about what a post-slavery future would look like.

    We can consult the 1860 US Census. The percentage of the White population which owned slaves was indeed higher in the states of the Deep South which was more agricultural than in the Upper South which was well on the way to industrialization, but of the states that seceded, only 5.63% of the population owned slaves. My source for that is the 1860 US Census. I also dispute the claim that even people who did not have slaves were "dependent" on people who did.

    “Slavery was strictly, a sectional interest” — sure, until Southern states tried to overturn the Missouri Compromise and even the Northwest Ordinance. Slaveowners brought their problems upon themselves. Eventually, unless more territory were annexed, slave states would become a minority. Wouldn’t we have hoped that would be the case?

    They already were a minority. Slave owners did not create the problem all by themselves. Yankee Slave Traders had a huge hand in it. So did Bankers and Lawyers and Insurers and shipbuilders and Sailors and "Factors" (middlemen....people in wholesale and logistics we would call them today). They ALL had a big hand in slavery. They all profited from it.

    The leading founders certainly wished for an eventual end to slavery. Slaveowners couldn’t face that so they engineered the situation that brought Northeast and Midwest together — just as their splitting the Democratic party created the situation where a Republican’s election would be inevitable.

    They "engineered the situation" that brought the Northeast and Midwest together? No. The Republican Party did that. Southerners complained about it and saw slavery as a wedge issue Republicans and corporate interests were using to get Midwest farmers to align with Northeastern industrialists.

    Lincoln’s first draft of his inaugural address didn’t mention the Corwin Amendment. The amendment hadn’t been passed by Congress then, but still, he didn’t see fit to mention it. Several historians have suggested that Seward, who had put a lot of effort into crafting the amendment and spiriting it through the Congress, prevailed upon Lincoln to the mention amendment in his inaugural address. I haven’t been able to find out if that is true, but historians who have been suspicious of Lincoln in this matter have made that suggestion when it would benefit their cause not to.

    Neither side was fighting over slavery. They both said so numerous times in public and in private. Lincoln said it. Davis said it. The US Congress passed a resolution stating that they were not fighting over slavery. Slavery was an issue they could compromise on. The country's economic policy and who would wield the power of the federal government to benefit their economic interests was a long and bitter fight.

    Republican votes had to be “whipped” for the Corwin Amendment because more Republicans voted against it than voted for it, but Lincoln wasn’t the one doing the whipping, nor did he bring the “whole party machinery” behind it for ratification. I asked you to provide evidence for your claims, and you haven’t.

    There were LOTS of Republicans who were for it. I counted dozens and dozens who voted for it not to mention the fact that Republicans introduced it in both houses of congress. Lincoln was certainly engaged in using his influence to get Republican Congressmen to vote for it. I have provided ample evidence for what I've said on this subject numerous times on this board for years and years. You just don't want to acknowledge it.

    Pushing the amendment would have broken the Republican Party in two. A substantial part of the “party machinery” didn’t and wouldn’t support the amendment, which was quickly overtaken by events and became a dead letter. The amendment wasn’t going to be ratified by the necessary 3/4ths of states.

    The amendment was pushed. It did not break the Republican party in two. A substantial part of the party DID support it such that it got the necessary 2/3rds supermajority in each house of Congress and it got that AFTER the Southern Congressional delegation withdrew. It was ratified by multiple Northern states and Seward guaranteed he could get highly influential New York to ratify it if the Southern States agreed. Its extremely likely that enough states would have ratified it had the Southern states agreed to it as the price of them dropping independence.

  • On Confederate Memorial Day, an honest annotation of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession

    05/07/2024 7:22:46 PM PDT · 140 of 155
    FLT-bird to x
    According to historian William Freehling: Lowcountry secessionists agreed that Republicans would immediately attempt no overt antislavery laws. Such an effort would scare Southerners out of the Union and out of Yankees’ clutches. In contrast, Republicans’ deployment of southern patronage would leave the region enfeebled. John Townsend spread a spooky metaphor for nonovert enfeeblement, as chilling as a caged rat: a spider’s web. Imagine, wrote Townsend, “some insect, strong in itself, but which has sillily entangled itself in the meshes of a spider. With moderate exertions at first, it could … free itself. … But it prefers to be quiescent for awhile. Fatal hesitation!” The “artful” spider “dashes forth from his hiding place and fastens a cord around the wing,” then retreats, pauses, rushes forth, retreats, pauses, assaults, until the prey can barely move. Republicans will creep southward “stealthily, cautiously at first, lest we break through their meshes, and form a government for ourselves.” By appointing southern turncoats to federal stations in the South, including custom houses, post offices, and court houses, Lincoln would spread his meshes inside the South. After we become “unable to resist,” we will have to “submit to…the mercy of the spider.” Presidential patronage as creepy as a monster spider—and more spooky than the master image for territorial confinement, a rat in a poisoned cage?! Absolutely, for Republican office would supposedly be the poison inside the jailed South. The patronage bait would attract allegedly traitorous southern politicians to make agitation against slavery as democratically normal as arguments against tariffs and banks. It would be as if gag rules had been lifted not only inside Congress but also throughout the South, as if English abolitionists had been allowed to spread their ideology across the Texas Republic, as if Kansas free soilers had been permitted unrestricted access to western Missouri slaves and nonslaveholders, as if Border Northerners had been invited to perfect their Liberty Line inside the Border South— with all of this Jacobinical disruption now contaminating hidebound South Carolina.

    Interesting. Not at all a realistic fear IMO but interesting. Slavery was already dying in the upper South as it steadily industrialized. Slavery wasn't the big issue though. The South knew it would be much better off outside the union and able to set lower tariff rates that better suited its economy and free to spend whatever revenues were generated on its own infrastructure. Absent some grand bargain on the economics, the regions were always likely to splinter.

  • Disney LIED to Shareholders About Star Wars

    05/07/2024 9:47:23 AM PDT · 31 of 36
    FLT-bird to SeekAndFind

    ROTF! What kind of accounting is that? You just ignore your acquisition costs? Well hell. I can make any financial model look fantastic and generate a stratospheric ROI if I get to just ignore the cost to buy the damn thing to begin with.

  • UNC Under Fire After Professors Threaten To Hold Grades Hostage In Solidarity With Hamas

    05/07/2024 9:42:46 AM PDT · 2 of 32
    FLT-bird to DFG

    Fire all such professors with cause immediately.

  • Germany’s Right-Wing Political Miracle

    05/07/2024 9:40:54 AM PDT · 28 of 34
    FLT-bird to Forward the Light Brigade

    The problem with Germany today is not that its too strong. Its that its too weak. Without the Germans and their science, technology, industrial capacity (this is withering away), the Europeans will never have a military force that is capable of anything. Nobody else even has the potential to be strong enough.

    If you want dependents who will be a net drain on America then by all means wish for a weak Germany. If you want the Europeans to be the strong ally of freedom they should be and could be, forget it then.

  • Germany’s Right-Wing Political Miracle

    05/07/2024 9:33:45 AM PDT · 27 of 34
    FLT-bird to nonliberal

    The difference between the National Socialists and the State Socialists was that the State Socialists would foolishly take over a business and parachute in some party flunkie who had no idea how to run it. The National Socialists by contrast were smart enough to leave the existing owners/managers in place - so long as they did what the government wanted them to do.

    Profits would be strictly limited. The government would put out contracts for various military items that would take up just about all the productive capacity of the entire economy, but so long as you did what you were told the Nazis were content to sit back and let you figure out how to run the company. Needless to say, things ran much better with managers and owners who knew what the hell they were doing in the first place.

    Make no mistake though....the government controlled and dominated the economy and if you tried to make products the Nazis didn’t approve of or were unwilling to produce the products they wanted, the best you could hope for was to have the government take over the company and throw you out. At worst, things could get much uglier than that for you.