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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?
States could no more secede from the Union then could states be ejected from the Union (also not stated explicity in the Constitution)
I think you are wound up a little too tight.
Imagine getting so worked up for a gov't that could not survive 4 years!
Oh yeah. There was also that "temporary" telephone line tax they passed to fund the Spanish American war that wasn't repealed until a year or two ago. Of course all of Lincoln's downright exhorbitant "war time" protective tariff hikes on top of the Morrill act stayed in effect for decades. "Temporary" "war time" taxes are yet another of Saint Abe's legacies.
So the secessionists understood that the Union was not meant to be temporary or short-lived?
And this helps your case-how?
As for Lincoln's tax increases, he was dead before he could start dealing with peace time issues,like removing war taxes.
BTW, Lincoln was right to not allow the Union to break apart, but that doesn't mean I think it was "constitutional".
The purpose of the Constitution was to form a more perfect union,
That is in the preamble, along with "general welfare". You're not gonna use the preamble to assert something is constitutional are you? Think about it, what socialist program, real or imagined, couldn't be argued as constitutional on those grounds?
No, it was not constitutional to secede.
The purpose of the Constitution was to form a more perfect union, That is in the preamble, along with "general welfare". You're not gonna use the preamble to assert something is constitutional are you? Think about it, what socialist program, real or imagined, couldn't be argued as constitutional on those grounds?
As an historical context with the Articles, the Constitution was created to make a stronger union between the states, not one that could be ended on a whim.
The South didn't need any 'justification' to secede. They could have seceded because it was Wednesday if they wanted. Mind you, I think they would have lost the whatever trade and stability benefits of the Union there were by doing that, but it was a question for them to decide for themselves, not some shopkeeper in New Hampshire deciding for them. If they felt they had been treated unfairly for years, and that the constitutional bargain had been broken by the other side (and it was), it was their right to secede if they wanted to. In their minds the disadvantages of union with the Northern states exceeded the advantages. They weren't trying to overturn the Federal government or revolt -- they just wanted to leave. And Lincoln forced them to return at the point of a gun, just as a tyrant would have done (and did).
Perhaps you meant to cite Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, not Cooperstown. Not that it clarifies his proposed actions to eliminate slavery in any event.
You didn't respond to my points about the Bill of Rights and the value of having states as checks against the excesses of an over powerful central government.
No, it gives the gov't the right to coin money, not control its volume.
The market is suppose to do that.
That was to keep the states from printing up their own currency.
Actually, we had private banks minting gold coins for general currency.
It's good that you finally realize that your argument for maintaining the union was not in the Constitution but only in the preamble. Which is not part of the Constitution but only a preamble for same (hence the name).
Now that is pretty lame.
LOL!
Well, if you think that any state could just pull up and leave the union for any reason, then talking about reasons for them leaving is totally irrelevant.
What you are advocating is simply chaos, which no federal government could survive, including the Southern confederacy.
You might as well just call each state a nation and be done with it and end the facade of having a union at all.
Let each state fend for itself making what alliances it feels necessary to survive and let the concept of 'American' cease to exist.
Lincoln had every right and responsibility to end a revolution which is what secession is.
Both Lee and Stephens stated it as such.
Perhaps you meant to cite Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, not Cooperstown. Not that it clarifies his proposed actions to eliminate slavery in any event.
Yes, thanks for the correction.
Yes, Lincoln was getting passed by the Republicans because of his house divided speech concerned them that he was advocating a war or division of the union.
Cooper Union showed that he had not intention of violating the provisions of the Constitution since he saw that it was the best hope for mankind, even if slavery had to exist in those states where it did.
He wanted a lawful end to slavery, but preservation of the Union was crucial.
You didn't respond to my points about the Bill of Rights and the value of having states as checks against the excesses of an over powerful central government.
And who questions that?
The Bill of Rights come from the principles of the Declaration, to protect individual rights from Central gov't and State governments as well.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n6_v48/ai_18177762
JUST six months later, Dole was again stumping for more taxes. In February 1983 he helped muscle through Congress a $120-billion increase in the Social Security payroll tax -- this the third heftiest peacetime tax hike in history -- in order to "rescue the system" from insolvency. The Washington Post saluted the package as being "as close to absolute fairness as any Social Security revision can ever be." Dole's co-conspirator Pat Moynihan proclaimed the bill "a grand success," proving that "there is a center in American politics, and the center can govern." Of course, conservatives had hoped that the center wouldn't be doing much governing during a Reagan Presidency. Again, the rightward half of the congressional GOP resisted. Rep. Bill Archer warned that the bill would "do nothing to alter the fundamental flawed structure of Social Security . . . and transfers the burden of supporting the system's shortcomings to future generations." Archer has been proved right. Social Security was supposed to remain solvent for 75 years, or through 2056, but the drop-dead date has been fast-forwarded to 2029. The "trust fund" is now in a $5-trillion actuarial black hole. That's some fix. Dole's ultimate triumph in 1983 was in convincing Reagan to sign on to the deeply flawed package. Indeed, when Dole is challenged on the 1982 and 1983 tax hikes he retorts that they couldn't be all bad, because Ronald Reagan signed them into law. This is hardly comforting. Throughout the 1980s, whenever Reagan's instincts were wrong, there was Bob Dole urging him onward.
Overall, Reagan did quite well on taxes, but he did make some mistakes on them.
Then what are you still ranting and raving about Reagan for?
Nice if you would supply some context to my statement?
The context is there for anybody to see by simply scrolling up the thread.
I believe I said you were babbling over the recipients of SS receiving less which had nothing to do with what we are discussing.
Given that you referred to a Social Security bill signed by Ronald Reagan I thought we were discussing the Social Security Act Amendment of 1983 - as in the main bill having anything to do with Social Security during the Reagan Administration - which raised the benefits age and made 50% of the handouts susceptable to taxation, thus REDUCING the handout. Now I see that in spite of you ranting 'Reagan Reagan Reagan Social Security Social Security Social Security' for the course of several posts, you were really referring to some as of yet unnamed act by Bob Dole and Bush Sr. but did not bother to specify it. Am I correct? And if not, would you care to specify exactly what the hell it is you ARE talking about cause it certainly isn't making any sense
I did no such thing, I stated very clearly that I was not blaming Reagan for anything.
Ex post facto retraction. You attributed all sorts of unspecified social security "tax hikes" to Ronald Reagan and purported that they were so large that they completely negated and even surpassed his income tax reductions of 1981-3 and 1986. You now seem to be indicating that you were mistaken, are you not?
Well,in this case it is true, but you know that.
No ftD. I don't know much of anything about your true political inclinations except for what you provide on this forum in written words. When I see those words ranting and raving about some horrible unspecified mega Social Security benefit bill and tax hike that Ronald Reagan supposedly signed I noticed it resembled a common liberal Reagan basher line. Given that the Cult of Lincoln right here on FR - as in the very same one you associate with - has a pretty lousy record when it comes to conservative credentials, I take nothing for granted, your political views included. The ranks of your fellow Lincoln idolaters have produced a Michael Moore-loving marxist (WhiskeyPapa), an Aryan Nation neo-nazi (#3fan), an anti-semitic Bush hater (LLAN-DDEUSSANT and about a dozen different other pseudonyms he got banned under), and a guy who thinks Bill Clinton should not have been impeached (mac_truck) so finding a Reagan hater in their ranks would be par for the course.
Alright, let us leave out the effects of the Dole SS tax increase, and grant that taxes did go down under Reagan.
Dole was never President and you still have not specified which bill or year you are referring to as his, ftD.
And other conservative presidents did not, like Ike, who put balancing the budget ahead of tax cuts.
Ike was a moderate. Bob Taft was the conservative at that time.
No doubt, he did a good job with what he had, but as I stated, he wanted to get our military back in shape and that was his first priority.
IIRC Reagan's very first priority as president was getting us out of the Carter Recession, and he did that with tax cuts - his first big legislative victory. It was called Reaganomics in case you've forgotten, and increasing military spending (which he argued would be more efficient and economically stimulating than transfer programs like welfare) was only one of its components.
Well, in the Wall Street Article I posted to you, they put Reagan with Lincoln.
Since when did the Wall Street Journal become the ministry of historical comparison?
Maybe they would have approached the problem in a different way, but both believed in individual freedom.
Is that why Lincoln closed down all those newspapers and threw about 10,000 people in jail without charges?
I find that a little difficult to believe that they could not have gotten a compromise bill using blocking tactics.
If you knew your history you would not find it difficult at all, but it is evident that you don't know your history. By the time secession came around Senator Hunter of Virginia - the south's main point man on tariff bills - had spent over a year trying to get a compromise with no success. The most he could muster was delaying the tariff bill vote from the spring of 1860 until after the election and even that took a bitter floor fight. The yankees voted in unison to defeat all the attempts to amend the thing.
I am sure some clever Byrd like Senator could have figured out a way to get an extra vote or obstruct the bill enough to get it watered down.
Sorry, but they already tried that. Hunter delayed the damn thing for an entire year but that's the most he could muster because the yankees simply refused to budge.
No, it is to put things in context
No. It is a matter of tu quoquery - a diversion tactic away from the subject of Lincoln, who we are discussing. If you want to talk about the CSA government's shortcomings go start a thread on it and see who responds.
We are not talking about the SS payment, we are talking about what comes out of the check of the person who is not getting any SS benefits.
Quite frankly I am still not sure what YOU are talking about since you've never bothered to specify the bill and have subsequently attributed first to Reagan then to Dole then to Bush. In fact I am not so sure that YOU even know what you are talking about, given your difficulty in identifying the bill and your apparent confusion of it with the Social Security Act Amendments of 1983.
Talk about double-talk!
The only double talk is your own, ftD. Social Security is an expenditure that is financed by a tax yet you have called it a tax, an expenditure, and both interchangably at the same time while referring to some mythical social security bill that was passed by Reagan and then by Dole and then by Bush Sr, all without so much as a date to verify whatever the heck it is you are talking about.
No, what the Social Security tax did was increase taxes on those paying and not receiving as well, the level of taxable income increased-did it not?
WHICH SOCIAL SECURITY BILL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
I suspect that you do not even know, so I am asking you once again to figure it out then name the bill and year.
We are only talking about Reagan because you said Lincoln and he were so different in philosophies. That is ofcourse, untrue.
That has yet to be demonstrated and at the present the evidence (Lincoln the tax hiker versus Reagan the tax cutter) is against you.
And how did Reagan spend the money coming in? On increasing defense spending-which increases the size of Gov't.
Yet at the same time he was also reducing domestic discretionary spending, which reduces the size of the government.
I thought there was a large SS tax increase at the end of the Reagan administration, co-authored by Dole.
And that is something for you to figure out. I'm not going to do your homework for you, and since you based an argument on some supposed bill signed by Reagan it is your burden to figure out what that bill is, who proposed it, when it was signed, and what it did.
Well, freedom isn't free.
And neither is tyranny.
Oh, how clever!
Glad you think so. It does demonstrate the idiocy of your attempted causal argument though.
Had there been no Lincoln there would have been no US to defeat the Jap, Nazi's and Communists, and no Ronald Reagan.
That supposes the japanese, nazis, and communists would've emerged the same way they did absent Lincoln, and that cannot be known for certain since they all happened some 60 to 70 years after Lincoln's death. One thing is fairly certain though - Ronald Reagan's birth does not seem to have been contingent on there being an Abe Lincoln, thus you are wrong on that count.
Well, Lincoln told them in the first inaugural, that peace and war was in their hands.
Yeah, and Osama bin Laden told us in a video tape just before the 2004 elections that more terrorism was in our hands based on whether we picked Bush. According to your illogic then, Osama is not to blame for the next thing he blows up since the voters chose the "wrong" guy in Bush just like the confederacy chose the "wrong" path of secession.
They did not have to attempt to leave the union, but he had to defend the laws of the Union.
And what law was it that they broke again?
Government is not handing out anything, they are getting rid of what is not their's in the first place.
Is that not the second half of the very definition of "handout," ftD? Handout = government laying claim to what is not theirs in the first place then getting rid of it by giving it away to somebody!
Yea, keep repeating that nonsense mantra to yourself.
Unless you are denying now that Lincoln taxed the hell out of everybody through a system that lined the pockets of the "protected" northern manufacturers (and it is a historical fact that he did just that), what I stated was neither nonsense nor mantra. Rather it was an uncomfortable fact that you wish not to acknowledge since it also demonstrates that Lincoln, by raising taxes, did the exact opposite of Reagan, who cut taxes.
I thought that the Republicans had total control of Congress, now you are telling me with Southern states not represented in Congress, the Democrats could still give Lincoln a hard time?
That or he simply had little patience for any form of dissent. Needless to say, he orchestrated the expulsion of one Democrat senator, the arrest of an influential Democrat ex-senator who had just retired, the arrest of at least two Democrat congressmen (one of them was deported), the arrest of dozens of northern and border state legislators, mayors, sheriffs, and local officials, the arrest of the Democrat attorney general of Missouri, the forced expulsion and replacement of the entire Democrat-dominated government of Missouri, the house arrest of Democrat-appointed federal judges, and the attempted arrest of the Democrat-appointed Chief Justice of the United States, just to name a few. He also used his military agents to rig local elections for the Republicans in Maryland, New York, and several other states.
It was the Southern slave owners who split their own party and got Lincoln elected in the first place.
Back to the same old post hoc lines again...
"Don't blame Lincoln for all the people he oppressed and killed! It was the southerners fault for allowing him to be elected!" - ftD"Don't blame me for all the people I oppress and kill! It's the Americans fault for reelecting George W. Bush!" - Osama bin Laden
And you are still avoiding the fact that a war was being fought.
Then why did Lincoln's "temporary" income tax (a) last over 6 years after his death and war, and (b) serve as an inspiration for the progressives when they directly modelled their own after his precedent?
I am sure the Confederates were taxing everything also.
Quoth the ftD: "Tu quoque! Tu quoque!"
and that is Lincoln's fault?
He certainly never showed any plans for tapering it down as the war came to a close. In fact he hiked the thing in late 1864. Furthermore, his exhorbitant protective tariffs were just where he wanted them to stay after the war.
You guys claim we worship Lincoln and here you are blaming him for something he had no control of.
No control, ftD? Lincoln only SIGNED the damn thing! But let me guess...that was all the south's fault too.
1984: 7%
1985: 7.05%
1986: 7.15%
1988: 7.51%
1990: 7.65%
TOTAL HIKE: Sixty-five hundredths of a percentage point from the 1983 level.
Is THAT what you've been ranting and raving about for all these posts, ftD? A lesser provision in the 1983 overhaul bill that ammounted to a 0.65% rate increase spread out over the next seven years? And you honestly believed that 0.65% increase negated the Reagan income tax cuts of 12% on average across the board and 42% on the upper 70% bracket? I hate to be blunt, ftD, but you are out of your flipping mind!
In just over four years Abe Lincoln can TRIPLE the U.S. tariff schedule, impose the nation's first-ever income tax across the board on everybody who is in the middle class or higher, double the rates of that tax and lower the income threshold of its upper brackets only three years later, and enact a complex system of additional internal excises, duties and other taxing schemes and it's all okay because it's only a "war measure."
But if Ronald Reagan signs a bill that includes, among its minor provisions, a section that gradually increases the Social Security tax by a mere sixty-five hundredths of a single percentage point over the course of seven years it's treated as the most horrible and burdensome tax increase to hit the United States since FDR!
What I am advocating is a federal government that doesn't grossly take advantage of one state or region. Is that too much to hope for? When it takes advantage of that state or region, there is no longer an incentive for that state or region to remain bound to it.
The Union put together by the Founders failed for that reason in 1860-1861. The compromise that had permitted the Union to be formed in the first place was falling apart. A revised Union came out of the war. I'm sure you must be familiar with de Tocqueville's observations about this.
However strong a government may be, it cannot easily escape from the consequences of a principle which it has once admitted as the foundation of its constitution. The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their sovereignty, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right. In order to enable the Federal government easily to conquer the resistance that may be offered to it by any of its subjects, it would be necessary that one or more of them should be specially interested in the existence of the Union, as has frequently been the case in the history of confederations.
If it be supposed that among the states that are united by the federal tie there are some which exclusively enjoy the principal advantages of union, or whose prosperity entirely depends on the duration of that union, it is unquestionable that they will always be ready to support the central government in enforcing the obedience of the others. But the government would then be exerting a force not derived from itself, but from a principle contrary to its nature. States form confederations in order to derive equal advantages from their union; and in the case just alluded to, the Federal government would derive its power from the unequal distribution of those benefits among the states.
By showing that the causes of secession were not "light and transient" as you sometimes like to say, quoting Madison, and that they truly did rise to a necessity of revolutionizing the affairs of the People of the seceding States.
The Southern States did indeed have the reserved right to secede, and they exercised it responsibly after long years of frustrating national discussion, and in exercising it they observed, for the most part (Arkansas was an exception), the proper forms and uses for action on the Constitutional level.
Not that they needed your permission or anything.
That was Dole doing his "I-was-in-the-room" shtick. Dole always had to be the essential man, he always had to be "in the room". He'd give away the store on policy, if you would let him take a meeting with you and have a photo-op afterward. He did DEFRA and TEFRA back-to-back, basically gutting Reagan's tax cuts, because Ronnie didn't run it by Bob first.
Dole had a lot of good qualities, but we're better off with him in retirement, dropping Viagra and keeping Elizabeth happy and out of office herself.
Well, the obvious problem with his embarrassing statement is that the Morrill Tariff was far from a (temporary) "war measure": it was the raison d'etre of both the Whig and Republican Parties, going back to the days of Henry Clay's "American System". Tax, tax; spend, spend.
The Civil War was just the occasion that allowed Lincoln and the Black Republicans to get the Morrill Tariff passed. They wanted that tariff, and the ideas behind it, as a major policy objective in and of itself. Ditto their railroad and homesteading bills.
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