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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?
No, you are not sorry, you gloat unceasingly over the destruction and subjugation of the South. You rejoice in the misery and prostration of others, which opens you up to all manner of interesting observations about your interest in these issues. And as far as the Supreme Court's usurpations of scope, there it isn't.
Courts that jump up and assert competence beyond their scoping and mission can be slapped down by the Congress. The Congress in turn answers to the People. Does that suggest anything about the gradient of authority to you?
The federal government's authority, under the Constitution, is binding on individuals, and not on States. When the People of the State sit in convention and act as the People, there is no higher authority in their State, not even the U.S. Constitution, which is their instrument and plaything. They made it, and they can abrogate it.
That lurker would have to come to the conclusion that if you did read the Constitution then you never made it as far as the 22nd Amendment.
In the interval between Virginia's convention vote on April 17th and their plebiscite on May 23rd and North Carolina's secession convention vote on May 20th, a number of things happened while both States were still legally members of the Union, North Carolina not having yet even taken up the question of secession.
Including Virginia's illegal seizure of the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry on April 18 and the illegal seizure of the Navy Dockyard at Portsmouth on April 20, and North Carolina's illegal seizure of the U.S. Mint in Charlotte on April 21 and the federal arsenal at Fayetteville on April 22nd.
Waging war on a State over political differences is a pretty grave breach of whatever it is you keep insisting that the States are supposed to share.
Those states were waging war on the U.S. government long before.
You're carrying the martyred south act a bit too far, don't you think?
The federal government's authority, under the Constitution, is binding on individuals, and not on States.
Ridiculous. In that Constitution, which you keep claiming to have read, is a clause stating that the Constitution and the laws written under in are supreme over state laws and state constitutions.
[You, being silly] So you keep saying.
LOLOL -- Okay, wiseacre, go ahead and produce Jeff Davis's trial transcript. You seem to know where it's been hidden all these years.
And while you're at it, since you can't stand the idea that the People are sovereign in these United States, perhaps you will try again and favor us with a new guess: Who is the Sovereign of the United States, if it isn't the People? Who holds the highest Power, the one that cannot be gainsaid? Who holds the final authority to say "No", without being second-guessed or overruled? Who holds the title, The Master of the People, the States, and Everything?
Davis was never tried because the 14th Amendment made it impossible to do so without violating his constitutional protections, as has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions.
Who is the Sovereign of the United States, if it isn't the People?
You would have us believe it's the states. I still vote for King Lentulusgracchus the First.
The Union garrison burned it and abandoned it on the night of the 17th. The Virginia Militia took charge of an abandoned, burnt-out shell. Of course, if the local fire brigade occupied it and spent a day stamping out embers, you'd still be screaming that that was in insufferable breach of federal oneupmanship or something.
.... and the illegal seizure of the Navy Dockyard at Portsmouth on April 20, ....
Burned and abandoned -- unlike the Militia battery at Sewall's Point, which the Navy opened fire on.
......and North Carolina's illegal seizure of the U.S. Mint in Charlotte on April 21 and the federal arsenal at Fayetteville on April 22nd.
You might have a complaint there, North Carolina being as yet an unseceded State of the Union. A court suit, even. But an invasion and blockade, and burning the State to the ground?
You're dealing in pretexts, amigo. You just want to burn them all down and the hell with them -- just like Abe. Isn't that the case, really? It's about making the South lie down for a 200-year raping, not about a mint or an arsenal.
Those states were waging war on the U.S. government long before.
No, they weren't. With the exception of the mint and the arsenal, neither of those States committed an act of violence on the United States, before the United States blockaded them and sent other States' troops down to occupy them -- the Fourth Massachusetts was in Fortress Monroe five days after Lincoln's proclamation of April 15th. That's not an ordinary troop movement, that's war-waging by a president determined to break the South to his faction's will by armed violence. He turned the federal government into a tool of sectional revenge and factional aggrandizement, and used it to wage war on States of the Union -- taking care to drive as many of them as possible out of the Union, first. And if you want me to quote John Nicolay on the "maturation" of Lincoln's war plans, I will be only too happy to throw that particular spotlight on what Lincoln was really doing.
Oh, baloney -- that didn't stop anyone from hanging Mary Surratt.
[You, evading again] You would have us believe it's the states. I still vote for King Lentulusgracchus the First.
More buncombe -- that is the second or third time you've refused to answer that question. Marker.
Hey, guys -- Non-Sequitur can't tell us who is sovereign in America.
He doesn't think it's the People, but he won't say who he thinks it really is!
Anyone want to take a whirl at it? N-S having become shy and taciturn all of a sudden.
OK, now we've worked our way down to the 14th Amendment which, had you read the Constitution that far, you would know was ratified on July 9, 1868. Mary Surratt was hanged just over three years before that.
The Virginia militia just happened to be in the neighborhood, is that it? And the fact that they had been alerted to move on Harper's Ferry the day BEFORE the secession vote is just coincidence. Sure.
Slavery might have been illegal, but the state legislature admitted via resolution that slavery - under the guise of so-called 'involuntary servitude' did exist up to 1865. Blacks that did not leave the state within 10 days were arrested and forced to pay a $50 fine (about 3 months wages for a white man). If unable to do so Illinois law required them to be 'sold' into slavery indenture to the highest bidder - in case of a tie the buyer offering the shortest term of servitude won. Any person bringing a black into the state with the intent to free them was fined $1000.
Bite me. Mary Surratt is still dead. And she had the Fifth Amendment and Fourth Amendment to work with, some of the language in the Fifth being very close to that of the 14th, and she still swung.
My point remains: Chase's argument was bunk. If Davis had gone on trial, they'd have hanged him -- screw the Constitution, this was Jeff Davis. Chase's piffle about the 14th was just to shut down a trial before it started, for political reasons (the most important kind of reasoning to Salmon P. Chase, apparently).
Bump.
[You, popping off] Ridiculous. In that Constitution, which you keep claiming to have read, is a clause stating that the Constitution and the laws written under in are supreme over state laws and state constitutions.
No, I'm referring to the previously-discussed paragraph in The Federalist No. 20, cited in the Antonin Scalia opinion on the successful Ravalli County challenge to the Brady Act (Printz vs. United States, 1997):
"I make no apology for having dwelt so long on the contemplation of these federal precedents. Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred. The important truth, which it unequivocally pronounces in the present case, is that a sovereignty over sovereigns, a government over governments, a legislation for communities, as contradistinguished from individuals, as it is a solecism in theory, so in practice it is subversive of the order and ends of civil polity . . . ." [Emphasis supplied.]
Remember now?
It is a well published fact that Chase advised against trying Jeff Davis, because they would "Lose in court, all that was gained on the battlefield." Secession could not have been proven to be treasonous......
True! :)
No, it's not a coincidence. But the fact that the Federals burned the place before they got there, takes your imputation of a Virginia assault on the arsenal off the table. Ditto the Gosport shipyard and works at Norfolk.
You can't charge people with stealing a burnt-down building.
And there was no confrontation.
Maybe he thinks the power rests with Das Fuhrer :)
*HUMOR* *SARCASM*
And the political damage to the Black Republicans would have been fantastic.
Like I said -- that's the sort of thing that CJ Chase cared about. That's why he was on the Court, IMHO -- and not just "on the Court", but Chief Justice, the position that steers the opinions and the docket, as a political cadre and back-catcher on the bench.
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