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Endless complaints. |
Posted on 12/31/2004 2:21:30 PM PST by Caipirabob
What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?
While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.
Stars with bars:
Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.
Some things are better left dead in the past:
For myself, I was more than pleased with the homage paid to General "Stonewall" Jackson in Turner's "Gods and Generals". Like him, I should have like to believe that the South would have been compelled to end slavery out of Christian dignity rather than continue to enslave their brothers of the freedom that belong equally to all men. Obviously it didn't happen that way.
Would I fight for a South that believed in Slavery today? I have to ask first, would I know any better back then? I don't know. I honestly don't know. My pride for my South and my heritage would have most likely doomed me as it did so many others. I won't skirt the issue, in all likelyhood, slavery may have been an afterthought. Had they been the staple of what I considered property, I possibly would have already been past the point of moral struggle on the point and preparing to kill Northern invaders.
Compelling story or KKK wet dream?:
So what do I feel about this? The photo above nearly brings me to tears, as I highly respect Abraham Lincoln. I don't care if they kick me out of the South. Imagine if GW was in prayer over what to do about a seperatist leftist California. That's how I imagine Lincoln. A great man. I wonder sometimes what my family would have been like today. How many more of us would there be? Would we have held onto the property and prosperity that sustained them before the war? Would I have double the amount of family in the area? How many would I have had to cook for last week for Christmas? Would I have needed to make more "Pate De Fois Gras"?
Well, dunno about that either. Depending on what the previous for this movie are like, I may or may not see it. If they portray it as the United Confederacy of the KKK I won't be attending.
This generation of our clan speaks some 5 languages in addition to English, those being of recent immigrants to this nation. All of them are good Americans. I believe the south would have succombed to the same forces that affected the North. Immigration, war, economics and other huma forces that have changed the map of the world since history began.
Whatever. At least in this alternate universe, it's safe for me to believe that we would have grown to be the benevolent and humane South that I know it is in my heart. I can believe that slavery would have died shortly before or after that lost victory. I can believe that Southern gentlemen would have served the world as the model for behavior. In my alternate universe, it's ok that Spock has a beard. It's my alternate universe after all, it can be what I want.
At any rate, I lived up North for many years. Wonderful people and difficult people. I will always sing their praises as a land full of beautiful Italian girls, maple syrup and Birch beer. My uncle ribbed us once before we left on how we were going up North to live "with all the Yankees". Afterwards I always refered to him as royalty. He is, really. He's "King of the Rednecks". I suppose I'm his court jester.
So what do you think of this movie?
You don't get it. Insurrectionists and traitors to the Constitution don't get to claim any of its protections.
You lose your slaves - so what?
You support the insurrectionist war effort and your crops get burned - too bad.
You ship contraband and your vessel is seized without compensation - tough break.
It's the price you pay for being on the wrong side.
I mirror the level of invective. There are several posters who are sympathetic to your side of the discussion with whom I have never had a cross word. I respect their comments and keep it at that level.
If the radicals in my state did something stupid like declare the new nation of Aztlan, you can bet the family farm I would oppose it violently.
The Constitution of 1787 was not a treaty.
Okay, it was a compact. Satisfied? Same difference: the People make it, the People unmake it. All power to the People.
Or do you have someone else in mind as sovereign of the United States? Non-Sequitur rolled over, he couldn't name anybody.
Whoever says who can come and go is the sovereign. I say it's the People.
Who's your favorite?
Of course. Of course, the South didn't do that.
No, you don't. Nobody called you a "cracker" or a "California fern-bar lizard" or anything like that.
As far as lying goes, you should have thought of that before you ran those BS posts on Ex Parte Milligan and Ex Parte Bollman and The Prize Cases at us. Your rep can't survive that kind of gamesmanship. Sorry about that -- but you did it, we didn't.
The difference between us is that the guys on my side, if you can post material showing them substantively in error, they will climb down because they know they have to. You won't.
Correction: "In 1857...."
Twaddle. Anyone accused of a crime is entitled to all the protections of the Constitution. Persons accused of treason are afforded a further special protection, which we've discussed and which you are now ignoring, in order to post twaddle and BS that makes you feel good.
See what I mean?
You've no right to complain about being labeled and hosed over stuff like this.
U.S. Const., Art 3, Sec 3: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
I sure get tired of posting the same old lines from Article III (treason) and Article IV (statehood).
He seems to be convinced that Bill and Hillary Clinton were right about Whitewater. Jim McDougal once said about them, and it, that "I can expose them faster than they can lie about it". His death and their successful escape from justice proved him wrong. Too bad. Now The Klintonx have imitators of their disinformative arts.
Teleology and appeal to force. You ain't gonna get much help when those Mes'kins come for you, amigo.
That's a new fallacy, by the way, one I made up myself, just for you: "appeal to John Brown's body".
You seem to be particularly dense when it comes time to understand inconvenient parts of the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't grant power to States, it grants them from States, to the federal government. Fallacy of wrong direction.
That the requirement of Congressional approval for secession is an implied power reserved to the United States.
Implication is a Hamiltonian gimmick that says, I'm going to do everything I want to that you can't prove is prohibited by the Constitution. It is the opposite of the true spirit of the Constitution, which is that of strict construction. Jay and Marshall's discoveries of "implied powers" were exercises in legal positivism, which is juridical fraud.
Just because Hamilton did a good job of BS'ing people doesn't mean he won the argument. The dicta Jay and Marshall handed down from the bench were wilfully concocted in error, in an attempt to snatch back the historical compromises the Federalists had made with the Antifederalists to secure ratification of the Constitution -- compromises like the Tenth Amendment.
Marshall and Jay need to be dug up, redecided, and plowed back under. Strict-construction, American as opposed to half-British Imperial judges, will eventually get around to that large and momentous work.
Just because the Federalists won a few elections doesn't mean they get to welsh on the Constitution and rewrite it in the middle of the night with Squealer's little paint-pot from Animal Farm.
As to your vaporing about all these "living-Constitution" "implied powers" -- "Implied", my foot. Silence is silence.
There is no federal power to prevent a State so determined to secede from the Union.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Implied powers is a concept that every court has agreed to at one time or another, from the Marshall court down to the Rehnquist court.
Like I said, time to jerk up Marshall by the roots, and bring "implied powers" back to the understanding of grants of power that Marshall himself had during Virginia's ratification debate. (Consider it quoted, again.)
And the fact that you disagree with Chase's findings, or any other justice's findings, is meaningless and doesn't invalidate a court decision.
"I win" isn't an argument. If a justice smokestacks a decision, like Owen Roberts did in voting for the constitutionality of FDR's Social Security Act, are you prepared to stand by his corrupt, interested, or politically logrolling decision? How about Plessey? You willing to stand pat on Plessey vs. Ferguson?
The first duty of the Court is to get it right, not to Get It Right for Our Side. But the latter is what Marshall and Jay were doing, and Chase after them.
[You, quoting me] The grant of the power you desire to account for was never given. Ergo, it remained, untarnished and unalloyed, with the People of the States.
[You] By implication it was.
No way. We aren't talking about some collateral duty of the President or an executive department here. We're talking about all the marbles. If it isn't on paper, you don't get the power.
[You, retorting] You need to work on your reading comprehension. It says no such thing.
My reading comprehension skills are just dandy, Andy. As for what it doesn't say, here is what it does say:
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
Lincoln's "non-blockade blockade" violated this provision of Article I. Among other things.
But yeah, the winners in this case wrote the history, and the liberals who twisted it after it was written did it in such a nefarious manner that we may never know the truth except as it has been told within our own families.
Your malice helps make the case against your side. Keep doing that.
The illegal secession, yes.
And I believe otherwise. Now what do we do?
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