Posted on 11/13/2004 11:12:00 AM PST by LouAvul
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Based on Margaret Mitchell's hugely popular novel, producer David O. Selznick's four-hour epic tale of the American South during slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction is the all-time box-office champion.
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Considering its financial success and critical acclaim, "Gone With the Wind" may be the most famous movie ever made.
It's also a lie.
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Along with D.W. Griffith's technically innovative but ethically reprehensible "The Birth of a Nation" (from 1915), which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroic, "GWTW" presents a picture of the pre-Civil War South in which slavery is a noble institution and slaves are content with their status.
Furthermore, it puts forth an image of Reconstruction as one in which freed blacks, the occupying Union army, Southern "scalawags" and Northern "carpetbaggers" inflict great harm on the defeated South, which is saved - along with the honor of Southern womanhood - by the bravery of KKK-like vigilantes.
To his credit, Selznick did eliminate some of the most egregious racism in Mitchell's novel, including the frequent use of the N-word, and downplayed the role of the KKK, compared with "Birth of a Nation," by showing no hooded vigilantes.
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One can say that "GWTW" was a product of its times, when racial segregation was still the law of the South and a common practice in the North, and shouldn't be judged by today's political and moral standards. And it's true that most historical scholarship prior to the 1950s, like the movie, also portrayed slavery as a relatively benign institution and Reconstruction as unequivocally evil.
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Or as William L. Patterson of the Chicago Defender succinctly wrote: "('Gone With the Wind' is a) weapon of terror against black America."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacticket.com ...
free dixie,sw
Laissez faire is a nice idea but impossible in a political world particularly a democratic one. Hamilton dealt in realities and practical applications and demostrated quite handily that government intervention can be very productive. He never said or wished that the government should control the economy. It could be a positive good but was not necessarily so. His assumption and funding program showed that it was such in that case.
Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal brought her into it since it postulated the same thinking you employ.
Your evidence of Hamilton's mercantilism is essentially trying to use a revenue tariff as evidence of a protective tariff which I rejected. Hamilton's ideas wrt economic change went far beyond anything Mercantilism ever proposed.
Nor does acknowledgement of this fact buck "the entire field of economic sciences." In fact, reducing Hamiltonianism to mercantilism indicates you don't understand either.
I realize that you dislike argument based on authority, because recognized authority almost always cuts against you. Which is why you prefer to base your argument on lack of authority and end up repeating yourself.
Well I have not really been obsessing about Lincoln as you folks seem to do but have read enough to know that he is not the hideous ogre you try to paint him as. Nor would I take your interpretation of anything regarding Lincoln since you are unbalanced when it comes to the man.
Lincoln is not the issue in most of this either and his existence in no way excuses the Slavers' Insurrection.
Come on, stand, a gentle loving soul like you couldn't make anyone angry. All can use your posts as a model of clarity, sanity and sensibility can't they?
or are you just being a little troll???
free dixie,sw
I certainly don't see you as reflecting the views of EVERYONE. More likely you can gather everyone in the country who believes as you in a small room, a very small room.
watie will relate that he had the unfortunate assignment in grad school to read through a bunch of Lincoln's letters and he was appalled by them. He won't say where the correspondence was kept, what era it was from, or how it can be similarly viewed today.
If your question was comprehensible I might try to answer it. You need to consult your Hysteria-English dictionary and re-translate.
It was from the Lincoln Hater's Handbook, lies you all can use by I.P. Freely.
Those being ...?
Just like everyone else, sw.
Just like southerners who try to rationalize the defense long ago, of a slave-based economy.
There is an authority higher than the People, l --just as the Declaration and the Constitution recognize.
And all the Founders.
Whether you think it is impossible and what value judgement you place upon it is of no relevance, as my only concern is the proper use of the term itself. Using the term "capitalism," which in its modern definition connotes a laissez-faire style free market approach, to refer to a system of intended widescale state intervention is incorrect whether you think that such a system is unattainable or ready for implementation next Tuesday.
Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal brought her into it since it postulated the same thinking you employ.
I don't recall ever citing that book, Rand, or anything out of her ideology and invite you to prove otherwise (which you cannot and thus will not do). In case you haven't taken the very clear hint from my tagline, I tend to come from the Austrian perspective of laissez-faire, BTW.
Your evidence of Hamilton's mercantilism is essentially trying to use a revenue tariff as evidence of a protective tariff which I rejected.
You reject a lot of factual certainties in pursuit of your bizarre Hamilton fetish. They are nevertheless factual certainties and one of those certainties is that Hamilton espoused protective tariffs, protective bounties, and several other forms of state economic intervention and price management throughout his report.
Hamilton's ideas wrt economic change went far beyond anything Mercantilism ever proposed.
Are you blind or simply stupid, fake-it? As I have noted repeatedly, the mercantilist school did NOT stop in its footsteps circa 1780 - it continued to develop for well over a century beyond that and some elements of it persist to this day. The stage of mercantilism in which Hamilton finds himself is commonly called "neo-mercanitilism" and is defined by two major (Hamilton himself and Friedrich List) and several minor (Henry C. Carey) writers. It was the direct evolution of the school and it came about as a REACTION to the classical school of Smith and Ricardo, which tended toward an anti-interventionist philosophy that later became identified with laissez-faire.
Perhaps you are thinking of John Dickinson's July 12, 1776, draft of the Articles of Confederation, which says in part:
ART. III.
Each Colony shall retain and enjoy as much of its present Laws, Rights and Customs, as it may think fit, and reserves to itself the sole and exclusive Regulation and Government of its internal police, in all matters that shall not interfere with the Articles of this Confederation.
The states rejected Dickinson's wording. See the following account of Thomas Burke:
At present, nothing but executive business is done, except the Confederation, and on mere executive business there are seldom any debates; (and still more seldom any worth remembering.)
We have agreed to three articles: one containing the name: the second a declaration of the sovereignty of the States, and an express provision that they be considered as retaining every power not expressly delegated; and the third an agreement mutually to assist each other against every enemy.
The first and latter passed without opposition or dissent, the second occasioned two days debate. It stood originally the third article; and expressed only a reservation of the power of regulating the internal police, and consequently resigned every other power.
It appeared to me that this was not what the States expected, and, I thought, it left it in the power of the future Congress or General Council to explain away every right belonging to the States and to make their own power as unlimited as they please. I proposed, therefore an amendment, which held up the principle, that all sovereign power was in the States separately, and that particular acts of it, which should be expressly enumerated, would be exercised in conjunction, and not otherwise; but that in all things else each State would exercise all the rights and power of sovereignty, uncontrolled.
This was at first so little understood that it was some time before it was seconded, and South Carolina first took it up. The opposition was made by Mr. Wilson of Pennsylvania, and Mr. R. H. Lee of Virginia: in the end, however, the question was carried for my proposition, eleven ayes, one no, and one divided. The no was Virginia; the divided, New Hampshire.
I was much pleased to find the opinion of accumulating powers to Congress so little supported, and I promise myself, in the whole business I shall find my ideas relative thereto nearly similar to those of most of the States. In a word, Sir, I am of opinion, the Congress should have power enough to call out and apply the common strength for the common defense: but not for the partial purposes of ambition.
We shall next proceed to the structure of the common Councils; and here, I think, we shall meet with difficulties of the most arduous nature. The inequality of the States, and yet the necessity of maintaining their separate independence, will occasion dilemmas almost inextricable. You shall, Sir, know the whole progress of the matter if I can conceive and convey it with sufficient clearness."
[Source: Thomas Burke to Governor Caswell, 29 April, 1777. North Carolina Colonial Records, XI, 461.]
Yawn.
Appeal to Authority (argumentum ad verecundiam)Definition: While sometimes it may be appropriate to cite an authority to support a point, often it is not. In particular, an appeal to authority is inappropriate if:
1. the person is not qualified to have an expert opinion on the subject,
2. experts in the field disagree on this issue.
3. the authority was making a joke, drunk, or otherwise not being seriousA variation of the fallacious appeal to authority is hearsay. An argument from hearsay is an argument which depends on second or third hand sources.
Source: http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/aa.php
It should be noted that you habitually employ both items #1 (i.e. citing a certain literature professor as a legal authority) and #2 (citing only the experts that support your view despite the existence of others that do not)
Five conditions for a legitimate argument from authoritySource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority1. The authority must have competence in an area, not just glamour, prestige, rank or popularity.
2. The judgement must be within the authority's field of competence.
3. The authority must be interpreted correctly.
4. Direct evidence must be available, at least in principle.
5. A technique is needed to adjudicate disagreements among equally qualified authorities.
It should also be noted that you habitually violate conditions 1 (pointing to an author's supposed "prestige" as a substitute to serious consideration and critique of his position's competence), 2 (citing authorities whose opinion is offered from outside their fields of competence), and 3 (correctly interpreting what the authority said - your most recent escapade violated this condition as you read your own extraneous material into the position you cited). Sadly, you have been corrected many times on each of these counts to no avail. Your positions are consistently flawed and consistently wrong yet you remain incorrigable. Every single post from you of late has that same old deadly combination of ignorance and arrogance.
"TOTALLY DISSOLVED."
The historical fact that the official published version did not elicit one official complaint from any of the other eight justices provides adequate evidence that you are merely B.S.-ing, yet again.
While you may believe the world shares your vocabulary it doesn't. Capitalism was the economic system created by the bourgeoise (or vice versa) and is that because of its connection with the creation of capital. A simple definition in the Dictionary of Economics is " An economic system based upon the private ownership of all kinds of property and the freedom of the individual to contract with others and to engage in economic activities of his own choice and for his own profit and well-being."
It is simply false that Hamilton proposed or implemented a "widescale state intervention." Hamilton's push to bring capitalist development to the US was one of the factors which drove the opposition to his program. He was a prime mover in the development of capitalism in the US. Jefferson, particularly, was opposed to such developments believing any system not dependent upon agriculture was evil in nature.
Never claimed you cited Rand's book.
As I pointed out months ago a 15% tariff is not protective whether you believe it to be or not. A protective tariff is often 100% or more. Bounties were a means H used in order to help build up industries necessary for the national defense. He would have never suggested them as a means of protecting mature industries other than defense.
Hamilton's goal was to develop a new style of thought in America consistent with capitalist development and to bring about the Rule of Law. It was to change the entire mindset of the People and usher in the modern era which he could see being born. He was as far from backward looking as one can be and his foresight helped create the wonderful country we share today. There was nothing Mercantilistic in the creation of the National bank which went against everything Mercantilism stood for particularly the great concern to run positive trade balances in order to accumulate specie. From any indication H had little or no concern about the trade balance per se. Your mania to squeeze into convenient pigeon holes things which do not fit is rather amusing.
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