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Locked on 04/13/2005 10:44:44 AM PDT by Admin Moderator, reason:
Endless complaints. |
Posted on 12/31/2004 2:21:30 PM PST by Caipirabob
And Bushpilot called Booth 'one of the finest men who ever lived' in Reply 2526. Your lame claim that 'Southerners widely deprecated his deed' is ringing very holllow, at least for a lot of you rebel wannabes around here. I noticed that you breezed right by that in your haste to be a complete jackass, although you DID manage to avoide calling be 'boy' again so I guess that's something. But you're supposed to be my better? Now THAT is funny. Why don't you just crawl back to wherever it is that you hang out at, thump your chest with your other southron buddies, and leave me out of it?
Judging from the markings on the tail it looks like it's from the Navy Weapons Testing Center at China Lake, which might explain the weapons load. It would also date the picture as before 1995 since VX-30 stood up that year at Point Mugu to support the China Lake facility.
The tailkits and strakes are painted orange for visibility during free-flight (range cameras). If it was taken before 1995, it wasn't by much; seems like that would have happened right in the middle of JDAM's flight test regiment. Looks like he's got a pair of MK84's, the big boys. A well placed 2,000 pounder has a way of ruining your whole day.
Looks like you're probably right on that. I stand corrected.
Can't agree with him, and I didn't. You may have noticed my mention of Jefferson Davis.
Your lame claim that 'Southerners widely deprecated his deed' is ringing very holllow [sic], at least for a lot of you rebel wannabes around here.
Earth to Turnip-head: Jeff Davis.
Name the "rebels" (there was no rebellion) who've signed on with praising Booth.
Let's have a show of hands. All you Southerners, let's see 'em. Who thinks John Wilkes Booth was a hero (think, Bedford Forrest, J.E.B. Stuart, Bobby Lee, Pat Cleburne) and a representative example of the best in Southern manhood?
You didn't ask, by the way. You just made the association and started blowing snot.
I noticed that you breezed right by that...
Your equation of the best men in the South to Booth was what was on my mind. Was something else supposed to be?
....you DID manage to avoide calling be 'boy' again so I guess that's something.
Don't flatter yourself.
But you're supposed to be my better? Now THAT is funny.
Really? Prove it. Show by examples of your highminded posts that you are my better. Get a committee. Whatever. Show me.
Why don't you just crawl back to wherever it is that you hang out at, thump your chest with your other southron buddies, and leave me out of it?
Because you keep coming into the room to pee in the punchbowl with personal insults, general insults, insults to logic and reason, and expressions of gratification that the South was burned down and its men killed.
Keep acting like a troll, and I'll address you as a troll. You used to be better than this.
Oh bullshit. The tone went south in a hurry some time ago with your quick-on-the-trigger name calling of anyone who dares to disagrees with you. You're so prone to calling anyone who with another opinion an idiot or a troll or an inferior in one respect or another that it has become impossible to carry on a civil debate with you. So take you wounded pride and your phony self-righteous crap and stick it where the sun don't shine. I've been on the receiving end of your bad manners for too long to care what you think of Booth or me or anything else.
So, no states passed banning slavery after the Constitution?
Stephens made it very clear what the Founders believed regarding slavery and what they intended for it-to cease.
So, once again I ask, do you believe the words of the Declaration to be true for only white people?
The Founders took action against slavery.
The founders did not just believe slavery was an evil that needed to be abolished, and they did not just speak against it, but they acted on their beliefs. During the Revolutionary War black slaves who fought won their freedom in every state except South Carolina and Georgia. 24
Many of the founders started and served in anti-slavery societies. Franklin and Rush founded the first such society in America in 1774. John Jay was president of a similar society in New York. Other Founding Fathers serving in anti-slavery societies included: William Livingston (Constitution signer), James Madison, Richard Bassett, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Charles Carroll, William Few, John Marshall, Richard Stockton, Zephaniah Swift, and many more. 25
As the Founders worked to free themselves from enslavement to Britain, based upon laws of God and nature, they also spoke against slavery and took steps to stop it. Abolition grew as principled resistance to the tyranny of England grew, since both were based upon the same ideas. This worked itself out on a personal as well as policy level, as seen in the following incident in the life of William Whipple, signer of the Declaration of Independence from New Hampshire. Dwight writes:
When General Whipple set out to join the army, he took with him for his waiting servant, a colored man named Prince, one whom he had imported from Africa many years before. He was a slave whom his master highly valued. As he advanced on his journey, he said to Prince, “If we should be called into an engagement with the enemy, I expect you will behave like a man of courage, and fight like a brave soldier for your country.” Prince feelingly replied, “Sir, I have no inducement to fight, I have no country while I am a slave. If I had my freedom, I would endeavor to defend it to the last drop of my blood.” This reply of Prince produced the effect on his master's heart which Prince desired. The general declared him free on the spot. 26
The Founders opposed slavery based upon the principle of the equality of all men. Throughout history many slaves have revolted but it was believed (even by those enslaved) that some people had the right to enslave others. The American slave protests were the first in history based on principles of God-endowed liberty for all. It was not the secularists who spoke out against slavery but the ministers and Christian statesmen.
Before independence, some states had tried to restrict slavery in different ways (e.g. Virginia had voted to end the slave trade in 1773), but the English government had not allowed it. Following independence and victory in the war, the rule of the mother country was removed, leaving freedom for each state to deal with the slavery problem. Within about 20 years of the 1783 Treaty of Peace with Britain, the northern states abolished slavery: Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in 1780; Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784; New Hampshire in 1792; Vermont in 1793; New York in 1799; and New Jersey in 1804.
The Northwest Ordinance (1787, 1789), which governed the admission of new states into the union from the then northwest territories, forbid slavery. Thus, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa all prohibited slavery. This first federal act dealing with slavery was authored by Rufus King (signer of the Constitution) and signed into law by President George Washington.
Although no Southern state abolished slavery, there was much anti-slavery sentiment. Many anti-slavery societies were started, especially in the upper South. Many Southern states considered proposals abolishing slavery, for example, the Virginia legislature in 1778 and 1796. When none passed, many, like Washington, set their slaves free, making provision for their well being. Following independence, “Virginia changed her laws to make it easier for individuals to emancipate slaves,” 27 though over time the laws became more restrictive in Virginia.
While most states were moving toward freedom for slaves, the deep South (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina) was largely pro-slavery. Yet, even so, the Southern courts before around 1840 generally took the position that slavery violated the natural rights of blacks. For example, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in 1818:
Slavery is condemned by reason and the laws of nature. It exists and can only exist, through municipal regulations, and in matters of doubt,...courts must lean in favorem vitae et libertatis [in favor of life and liberty]. 28
The same court ruled in 1820 that the slave “is still a human being, and possesses all those rights, of which he is not deprived by the positive provisions of the law.” 29
Free blacks were citizens and voted in most Northern states and Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In Baltimore prior to 1800, more blacks voted than whites; but in 1801 and 1809, Maryland began to restrict black voting and in 1835 North Carolina prohibited it. Other states made similar restrictions, but a number of Northern states allowed blacks to vote and hold office. In Massachusetts this right was given nearly a decade before the American Revolution and was never taken away, either before or after the Civil War.
Slavery and the Constitution
The issue of slavery was considered at the Constitutional Convention. Though most delegates were opposed to slavery, they compromised on the issue when the representatives from Georgia and South Carolina threatened to walk out. The delegates realized slavery would continue in these states with or without the union. They saw a strong union of all the colonies was the best means of securing their liberty (which was by no means guaranteed to survive). They did not agree to abolish slavery as some wanted to do, but they did take the forward step of giving the Congress the power to end the slave trade after 20 years. 30 No nation in Europe or elsewhere had agreed to such political action.
Even so, many warned of the dangers of allowing this evil to continue. George Mason of Virginia told the delegates:
Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgement of heaven upon a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities. 31
Jefferson had written some time before this:
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. . . . And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other. . . . And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever. 32
Constitutional Convention Delegate, Luther Martin, stated:
[I]t ought to be considered that national crimes can only be and frequently are punished in this world by national punishments; and that the continuance of the slave-trade, and thus giving it a national sanction and encouragement, ought to be considered as justly exposing us to the displeasure and vengeance of Him who is equally Lord of all and who views with equal eye the poor African slave and his American master. 33
Some today misinterpret the Constitutional provision of counting the slaves as three-fifths for purposes of representation as pro-slavery or black dehumanization. But it was a political compromise between the north and the south.. The three-fifths provision applied only to slaves and not free blacks, who voted and had the same rights as whites (and in some southern states this meant being able to own slaves). While the Southern states wanted to count the slaves in their population to determine the number of congressmen from their states, slavery opponents pushed to keep the Southern states from having more representatives, and hence more power in congress.
The Constitution did provide that runaway slaves would be returned to their owners (We saw previously that returning runaway slaves is contrary to Biblical slave laws, unless these slaves were making restitution for a crime.) but the words slave and slavery were carefully avoided. “Many of the framers did not want to blemish the Constitution with that shameful term.” The initial language of this clause was “legally held to service or labor,” but this was deleted when it was objected that legally seemed to favor “the idea that slavery was legal in a moral view.” 34
While the Constitution did provide some protection for slavery, this document is not pro-slavery. It embraced the situation of all 13 states at that time, the Founders leaving most of the power to deal with this social evil in the hands of each state. Most saw that the principles of liberty contained in the Declaration could not support slavery and would eventually overthrow it.. As delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Luther Martin put it:
Slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism, and has a tendency to destroy those principles on which it is supported, as it lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us to tyranny and oppression. 35
We have seen that after independence the American Founders actually took steps to end slavery. Some could have done more, but as a whole they probably did more than any group of national leaders up until that time in history to deal with the evil of slavery. They took steps toward liberty for the enslaved and believed that the gradual march of liberty would continue, ultimately resulting in the complete death of slavery. The ideas they infused in the foundational civil documents upon which America was founded — such as Creator endowed rights and the equality of all men before the law — eventually prevailed and slavery was abolished. But not without great difficulty because the generations that followed failed to carry out the gradual abolition of slavery in America.
The View of Slavery Changes
Most of America's Founders thought slavery would gradually be abolished. Roger Sherman said that “the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the U.S. and that the good sense of the several states would probably by degrees complete it.” 36 But it was not. Why?
Succeeding generations did not have the character and worldview necessary to complete the task started by the Founders. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Each generation must take up the cause of liberty, which is the cause of God, and fight the battle. While the majority view of the Founders was that American slavery was a social evil that needed to be abolished, many in later generations attempted to justify slavery, often appealing to the Scriptures (though, I believe, in error at many points, as mentioned earlier).
American slavery was not in alignment with Biblical slave laws and God's desire for liberty for all mankind. This inconsistency produced an institution that proved too difficult to gradually and peacefully abolish. Some Founders (like Henry and Jefferson) could not see how a peaceful resolution was possible and gave the “necessary evil” argument. Henry said: “As much as I deplore slavery, I see that prudence forbids its abolition.” 37
Jefferson was opposed to slavery yet he thought that once the slaves gained freedom, a peaceful coexistence of whites and blacks would be very difficult to maintain. Jefferson predicted that if the slaves were freed and lived in America, “Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites' ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.” 38
This is why many worked (especially many from Virginia, like James Monroe and James Madison) to set up a country in Africa (Liberia) where the freed slaves could live. Some at this time did not see integration as possible, and apart from the power of God, history has shown it is not possible, as there have been and are many ethnic wars. The church must lead the way in race relations, showing all believers are brothers in Christ, and all men have a common Creator.
The invention of the cotton gin, which revived the economic benefit of slavery, also contributed to a shift in the thinking of many Americans. At the time of independence and the constitutional period most people viewed slavery as an evil that should and would be abolished. But by the 1830s, many people, including some Southern ministers, began to justify it. Some, like Calhoun, even said it was a positive thing. Others justified it by promoting the inequality of the races. Stephen Douglas argued that the Declaration only applied to whites, but Lincoln rejected that argument and sought to bring the nation back to the principles of the Declaration. In the end these principles prevailed.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=94
Uh-uh. You got called down for passing around ad hominem arguments, appeals to force, and exercises in teleological self-congratulation. I criticized your style of argument, which is to attack the opponent with moral charges of some sort based on a bracketing attack tying your interlocutor to somebody like Henry Wirtz or John Wilkes Booth or someone equally disreputable. It doesn't get any more aggressive than that.
I also called dozens, and still do, on your habit of
A. Quoting left-wing authors and appealing to them as authorities (ad verecundiam, which only works if the authority is truly venerable, and not a Marxist spear-carrier from Berkeley or Columbia),
B. Echoing their 160-year-old moral invective against the South, and then trying to play "Blemish" (more ad hominem) with anyone who objects, bracketing him with slave-traders, Kluxers, and George Lincoln Rockwell,
C. Gloating over the ruin of the South and expressing regret that it wasn't more total, and that Southern casualties weren't higher, as they deserved to be,
D. Propagandizing for the rejected Hamiltonian vision of an amalgamated People subject to their Government, itself the plaything of people like, well, Alexander Hamilton, because that is the construction of the Constitution necessary to justify and wash clean what was actually done to the seceding States by Abraham Lincoln.
Other than that, I don't have too many complaints with you ..... beyond your persistence in all of the above, and your refusal to listen to any point anyone else has, grandly waving your hand and dismissing everything posted to you as either "opinion" or original documentation which your interlocutors are debarred from understanding by mental incapacity.
Now, why would anyone be displeased with a performance like that?
</sarc>
Yeah, yeah, then he assasinated Lincoln, was hunted down, and shot like the dog he was. And your point is?
Well three out of four charges are total nonsense, but if they were true then what makes you think that we could possibly have anything to discuss? Yet here you are, butting in with your bad manners and foul disposition, pooping out more of your opinion when I could honestly not care less what you have to say.
That's one I need to buy. I love that about Stonewall, even in the midst of a war, he remembered his HIGHER call.
How you and your inbred family spent their gatherings is of no interest to me. I just object to your fine old southern tradition of calling grown men 'boy'. By all means free to do it, too. I would expect nothing less from you.
That being said, the exaggerated sensitivity to "boy", goes hand in hand with inordinate amount of time and energy utilized by NS (and other Wlat clones) to defend the tyranny of Linkum and to bash the South.
Well, the alternative is giving dimwits like yourself free reign to post any lie, no matter how outrageous, with out being corrected. It sometimes seems to be a never-ending battle but the problem is that when one cracker drops out there always seems to be another cracker to take it's place. So the war goes on.
A good shrink may be able to release the inner "boy" and cure the need to react to anything and everything pro southern.
And an elementary school education somewhere outside of the south might have done wonders for your spelling. There is no 'm' and no 'u' and no 'k' in Lincoln.
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