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 ...
(that way he can just "opine" to his heart's content)
Bump for later.
Listen to yourself. "A riot happened."
So, Hamilton-worshipper, are you going to send the BATF to kill me if I get in your way?
Nobody said that it didn't. You did, however, phrase your understanding of it in marxian terminology.
The state during H's day neither owned nor controlled companies nor businesses.
Then why all the attempts at price management?
His Report did not call for massive state intervention.
I've sure you've told yourself that more than enough times than is necessary to convince you it's true. Back here in the real world though everybody knows that it isn't.
Because your claims were so consistent with hers.
What are you blathering on about again, dyad boy?
Since the purpose of the tariff was to raise revenue such a tariff would have never been proposed because of its drastic reduction of that revenue.
Falsely assumed premise, thus a false conclusion. There was no "since" about it. The 1789 Tariff's purpose was to raise revenue. Hamilton desired to give favors to "infant industries" in the form of bounties and protective tariffs. That meant raising the tariff rate beyond what it was already doing, viz. collecting revenues.
Happily.
"By which several acts of misrule, the government of this country, as formerly exercised under the crown of Great Britain, is TOTALLY DISSOLVED."
You can't, because it doesn't exist.
No capitan. It's right there for all to see in the exact same place it was the last time I quoted it, and the time before that, and the time before that.
"By which several acts of misrule, the government of this country, as formerly exercised under the crown of Great Britain, is TOTALLY DISSOLVED."
You truly are incorrigible though, thus I suspect you will persist in denying what sits as plainly in your sight as well as anybody elses.
My proof is in plain view, capitan. The Virginia Constitution explicitly stated that the new Commonwealth's ties to Great Britain were "totally dissolved," meaning they were cut, severed, ended, and closed in full - in totality - without any qualifications or remaining links. I realize that you suffer from the side effects of a severe anal retentive medical condition and I realize that blindness-by-choice happens to be one of those side effects, but you simply cannot deny what is in that document any longer. You've lost, Black Knight, and have no arms or legs left.
BZZT! Wrong. The Constitution has a special provision specifically for those cases. If a public emergency requires Congress to act the President has the power to call Congress into session. The Supreme Court has affirmed Congress' power on habeas corpus at least twice (Ex Parte Bollman in 1807 and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in 2004), stating simply that if the president wants habeas corpus suspended he has to go through Congress. There is no other way around it.
When Congress reconvened on July 4th they supported Lincoln's actions.
BZZT! Wrong, and that makes two. When Congress reconvened in July Lincoln asked them for a bill granting ex post facto sanction to his suspension. Congress refused and killed the bill by letting it die in committee. It was not until 1863 - a full two years later - that Congress ever gave Lincoln the sanction he needed to legally suspend habeas corpus.
Regarding the Farber passages:
And yet, it is difficult to condemn these actions too harshly. Neither later historians nor Lincoln's contemporaries seem to have questioned the urgent need to expand the military.
First off, that is simply false. Lincoln's actions were heavily condemned in Congress (he later deported one of the congressmen who had been his biggest critic) and among the scholarly community of the day. Retired Supreme Court Justice Benjamin R. Curtis - best known as the dissenter in Dred Scott - wrote several legal volumes on the scope of the executive branch's power during the war. In them he harshly denounced Lincoln's assumption of unconstitutional powers and his suspension of habeas corpus.
Moreover, Congress did ultimately endorse these actions. On August 5,it almost unanimously passed a bill declaring 'all the acts proclamations and orders of the President' taken after Lincoln took office ' respecting the army and navy of the United States and calling out or relating to the militia or volunteers from the States, are hereby approved and in all respects legalized and made valid
Farber is mistaken again in that he severely overstates the purpose and effect of that bill. A simple reading of the congressional record reveals that it has nothing to do with habeas corpus and was in fact offered for no other purpose than to give Congressional approval to the fact that Lincoln had called out the military and provided them with orders. That it did not pertain to habeas corpus in any way, shape, or form was explicitly stated in the records of congress at the time of the vote. Furthermore, the federal court found the subsequent year that no act of congress passed in that session authorized the suspension of habeas corpus (Ex Parte Benedict, 1862). Congress ultimately settled the dispute in March 1863 with a statute declaring that the President did have the right to suspend the writ.
First off, that act did not "settle the dispute" - it mooted it for future cases. The fact that for two years Lincoln continously arrested thousands of civilians absent the writ without sanction from Congress and in direct violation of at least three separate federal district court rulings and two separate federal circuit court rulings - all of which he simply ignored (an impeachable offense, BTW) - remains as a large spot of tarnish upon his presidency.
Oh, and your choice for a source - Farber - is a Berkeleyite left wing kook and a downright shoddy historian as the erronious implications he makes in your quoted passages show.
The United States is currently linked by all sorts of agreements and treaties to countries around the world and organizations like the UN. Does that render our separate expressions and acts of sovereignty meaningless as well?
Not one of these states made a separate treaty with a foreign nation, the real test of a nation.
You are incorrect about that. IIRC there were a couple of agreements made between one or two colonies and european nations during the revolutionary war (I pinged 4CJ on this in case he remembers which ones and the dates). Some of the states also made treaties with each other during the revolutionary war, the first being Georgia, South Carolina, and the Cherokee Nation over borders and indian relations in 1777. And of course there is the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the war, which was signed between "His Britannic Majesty" and the "free sovereign and independent states" of "New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia"
Now you're flat out lying, capitan. I've cited thousands of original historical documents on these threads to support my case in discussions of this sort. The most recent is a very common and accessible one - the 1776 Virginia Constitution - which you oddly refuse to even acknowledge.
I do take issue though when you spout your own misinterpretations of second and third hand crap from modern "historians" and then arbitrarily declare your misinterpretation of their writings to trump all else - original source material included - on the basis that the source you chose has been anointed by you as the "living authority" of the hour for whatever subject you need to argue. You're a filthy liar, capitan, yet a bad one. That's why you always get caught and that's also why you react with such unpleasantness every time you get caught.
"TOTALLY DISSOLVED."
He was parrotting Hamilton -- just like you -- and it probably says something about Wood, that he felt tender enough about quoting Hamilton on this point, that he went to the more obscure Iredell instead to lay the losing marker.
Here is Hamilton, in Federalist 84, temporizing with and condescending to popular opinion, knowingly patronizing and lying to the People about the huge implications of the "necessary and proper" and "general welfare" clauses which he had co-authored:
It has been several times truly remarked, that bills of rights are in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgments of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince. Such was Magna Charta, obtained by the Barons, sword in hand, from king John....It is evident, therefore, that according to their primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations. "We the people of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America." Here is a better recognition of popular rights than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several of our state bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government....I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power. [Emphasis supplied.]
Hamilton knew what people like him in Government would do, absent a Bill of Rights, and armed with all the numerous powers and scope-enlarging weasel-phrases like "necessary and proper" that Hamilton and his allies had larded the Constitution with. He knew, and so did the Antifederalists:
The wording of the Constitution as a whole was cited, and particular attention was paid to the "necessary and proper" and "general welfare" clauses. "No terms," wrote "Brutus" [Robert Yates, aka "Sydney", a New York Antifederalist sent by the Clinton party "to keep an eye on Hamilton"], "can be more indefinite than these, and it is obvious, that the legislature alone must judge what laws are proper and necessary for the purpose." [Antifederalists almost universally failed to anticipate the role of the Supreme Court.] What powers, therefore, did the Constitution acutally withhold from Congress? The new government would be omnipotent. Similarly the words "general welfare" might be interpreted to extend to every possible subject.....[examples of quoted opinions, by Silas Lee and "Timoleon", cited]...[Emphasis added.]In short, it was argued that the general welfare and the necessary and proper clauses were indefinite and indefinable. The state governments had no check on the powers that they would confer by interpretation upon Congress. If the Constitution truly established a government of limited powers [which the lying Hamiltonians said it did], then some restrictions were obviously essential. An amendment must be added which definitely reserved to the states all ungranted powers. As a result of this argument all of the states which proposed amendments included one similar to that which became the tenth amendment to the Constitution.
-- The Antifederalists, pp. 154-155.
Author Main also adds in a footnote that, according to a history of the town of Durham, Connecticut, written in 1866, elderly citizens who survived from the Federal era told him that Durham had voted against ratification of the Constitution "from the apprehension and fear felt by the people of the town, that the Federal Government to be created by it [the Constitution], would take advantage of the powers delegated to it, to assume other powers not delegated." No fools they. Their neighbors should have listened.
But Hamilton knew all this -- and he lied about it, wheedling and cajoling and speaking with forked tongue.
And you admire this guy.
Just like our interlocutor's cred.
What's next for those guys? Blood sacrifices of strict-constructionists on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial? Hecatombs of doubters?
Not oddly for him. He sells used cars, remember.
Oatmeal in the differential housing. New VIN numbers tacked on everywhere. Stop-Leak in the radiator.
Flat-out lie and abusive, too. GOP cites his @ss off -- he just cited the Virginia Declaration to you, and quoted it, and you still won't acknowledge him on it.
You might also get over your churlish, swinish habit of refusing to acknowledge other people's arguments and acting as if you're holding stone tablets with divine writing on them. You're acting like totally political scum -- like a Clintonista. Like Sidney Blumenthal.
It is really not that difficult of a concept. it just takes a little reading comprehension. Drama queen.
I don't recall anything about their government only being a "local" creation, which would be absurd in itself. Do you really expect anyone to believe you when you are effectively claiming that Virginia sent a message to the King telling him the equivalent of "we reject your rule and kick out your government, but we're still a part of your empire"? If so you truly are dumber than I thought, and that's saying a lot because one has to be pretty darn dumb to get caught 4 separate times attempting to falsify 4 separate court cases with extraneous material, having never learned from the first failed attempt at that stunt...or second...or third.
Returning to Virginia's constitution, I do see that they declared "the government of this country, as formerly exercised under the crown of Great Britain, is TOTALLY DISSOLVED"
See that capitan? Totally. Totally, as in a term connoting absoluteness. Totally, meaning in totality, as in a final, full, and complete severance from the government of Great Britain, period. To suggest anything other is simply dishonest...which is exactly what you are. A whiny, arrogant, ignorant, obnoxious and filthy little liar.
The 1776 Virginia Constitution also reads "All escheats, penalties, and forfeitures, heretofore going to the King, shall go to the Commonwealth, save only such as the Legislature may abolish, or otherwise provide for."
Now tell me. If Virginia was not asserting its independence from Britain but rather merely reorganizing the local government while remaining part of the British empire, why would they lay claim to King George's lands for the new Commonwealth? I patiently await your answer. It will no doubt prove to be as absurd and laughable as your previous attempt to explain your way around the irrefutable and obvious.
You are wedded to your interpretation.
That George Mason - what an absurd fellow!
From the Virginia Declaration of Rights: "SEC. 14. That the people have a right to uniform government; and, therefore, that no government separate from, or independent of the government of Virginia, ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof."
"no government separate from" and "within the limits thereof" = "local government" = "not from Great Britain"
You are so full of it. He doesn't cite the Virginia Declaration; he interprets it.
And I have acknowledged his interpretation - primarilly by pointing out where he has gone wrong.
"You might also get over your churlish, swinish habit of refusing to acknowledge other people's arguments and acting as if you're holding stone tablets with divine writing on them. You're acting like totally political scum -- like a Clintonista. Like Sidney Blumenthal."
You are oozing frustration. It is obvious by your personal attacks. You need a break. Have a nice Thanksgiving.
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