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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?
And Neely's a very shoddy scholar at that. He wrote a little blurb about Lincoln's house arrest of Judge Merrick based on the notes about it in the OR. Despite detailing it over a couple paragraphs, he was completely OBLIVIOUS to the fact that the arrest had anything to do with the habeas corpus case in Merrick's court that started the chain of events in motion! This wasn't any willful deception, though I don't doubt Neely would consider that. It was plain old sloppiness - he didn't write about the accompanying court case because he never bothered to research his subject properly and thus didn't even know it existed!
Bwahahahahaha!!!!
And don't forget the great yankee victory over the cacti at the "Battle of Fort Davis"!
"THE BALLAD OF FORT JEFF DAVIS"
In 1860 the temperature increased
So we went with Genr'al Carlton cross the desert to the east.
We loaded up our hard tack but it fell a little short
Then we fought hallucinations there at old Jeff Davis' fort.
CHORUS:
We fired our guns and the mirage kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin' on
Down the Rio Grand-e to the Gulf of Mexico.
We looked 'cross the desert and we see'd the rebels come.
Some bouncen apparitions of'em beatin' on the drum.
They zagged across the evening sky an floated through the night
We tried to shoot then cap'n said "ain't dat the Marfa light?".
CHORUS:
We fired our guns and the mirage kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin' on
Down the Rio Grand-e to the Gulf of Mexico.
Old Carlton said we could camp there for a bit
So we had a great big weenie roast, that fort it looked like sh*t
We slept inside the baracks on the dusty earthen floor
Till the injun's came a stirrin an they made off with the door!
CHORUS:
Well, we fired our guns and Apaches kept a'comin.
There soon was twice as many as there was a while ago.
They came right back an' we began to runnin'
Back up the Rio Grand-e from the Gulf of Mexico.
We fired at the injuns till the ammo horde was down down
So we grabbed ourselves a cactus & we fought another round.
Stuffed it full of carpetbags and dried up desert mud
But when we touched the powder off, fizz! It was a dud!
CHORUS:
Yeah, we tripped through the sinkholes and we ran through the cactus
We flopped across the desert where the scorpion wouldn't go.
We ran so fast old Fort Davis couldn't keep us
And we left the Rio Grand-e and the Gulf of Mexico
We pulled back to the mill site there in old El Paso town.
And we told 'em bout the battle with the ghost rebs we had found.
We'd made a charge an taked the place but time was runnin' short
Yet we struck a blow to Richmond now by takin' Davis Fort!
Yeah, we tripped through the sinkholes and we ran through the cactus
We flopped across the desert where the scorpion couldn't go.
We ran so fast old Fort Davis couldn't keep us
And we left the Rio Grand-e and the Gulf of Mexico.
Back about nineteen and seventy-one
I left Haight-Ashbury lookin fer fun
I never would've made it through the FR mud
If I hadn't been goin to meet the Tennessee stud
Had some trouble with the rebs I saw
So I tried to tell a lie but made a big guffaw
I slipped and I muttered just like Elmer Fudd
Then I fled the thread with the Tennessee stud
The Tennessee stud went by Mister Ed
But his name was Wlat and his politics were red
He worshipped Saint Abe and the spill of blood
There never was a horse like Tennessee stud
Drifted on down into no man's land
Toward the river called the Rio Grande
Went with Wlat to old Jeff Davis Fort
Captured just like Carlton but the battle was short
Me and the rebels, we couldn't agree
So I made up some court cases, sayin "lookie here, see?"
But they pulled out the lawbooks and my heart went thud
So I fled the thread with Tennessee stud
The Tennessee stud went by Mister Ed
He liked Michael Moore, "a true hero" he said
He cheered for Sherman cryin' "shed more blood!"
There never was a horse like Tennessee stud
I rode right back across Dixie land
I got whupped by 4CJ and nolu chan
Wlat said hey cap'n we're Loosiana bound
So we pulled in and stabled at the #3compound
Wlat hitched himself to the compound wall
And whipped out his favorite Lincoln bobble doll
Me and #3 had memories to share
Hitler and Lincoln, what a wonderful pair.
The Tennessee stud went by Mister Ed
But his name was Wlat and his politics were red
We all worshiped the Lincoln and the spill of blood
There never was a horse like Tennessee stud
That is just your characterization of what I wrote. Cite and quote me, don't come in here pretending to review me and play "channelmaster" without citing and quoting what I've said.
No, I don't "separate out" Southern voters for FDR. I pointed out that control of the party passed to the urban ethnics and their candidates in 1928. I didn't say FDR attracted no Southern votes, or that FDR blew them off -- quite the opposite, I pointed out that he worked to keep his coalition together, but its divergent interests pulled the party apart in 1948. But you knew that I didn't say that -- and you don't care. This part of your rodomontade isn't about history at all.
...you come across sounding like a real Dixiecrat jackass.....
That's right, Luke -- release your hatred. Let it swell! -- Luke, you know it's the truth! I am yoah faaatha! LOL!
.....when you lump the Irish and Italian Catholic voters of the cities in with liberal ideologues. "Urban Ethnic Progressives" indeed.
So explain where this came from:
The covert and indirect recognition given to the cities as members of the federal system continued well into this [20th] century. Four forces were to conspire to modify the practice of American federalism, however, from about 1930 onward. First was the cash grant-in-aid which superseded the land-grant system after the substantial depletion of the public domain. The cash-grant system, though originating in the late years of the last century, came to full flower with the advent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. It has affected the latter-day practice of federalism as profoundly as any other single factor. Second was the depression.....Third was the emergence following World War II of a metro-urban society attended by problems without precedent....Fourth was the demonstrated incapacity of the states to play as effective a role in the war on urban problems.In the circumstances it is not strange that the cities sought, and where opportunity offered, embraced new arrangements. Their recourse was to appeal directly to the federal government for assistance. The narrow and crooked paths of other years were broadened.....Direct relations between Washington and the cities, long existent but as long submerged, were brought to the surface and recognized openly......The chief instrument by which this transformation was effected was the grant-in-aid.
The year 1932 constitutes a sort of geologic fault line in the development of the federal system. Prior to that year the American partnership nominally had nominally been limited to the national government and the states; afterward the cities played an increasingly active and overt role in the practice of federalisma. The most meaningful indicator of the growing urban prominence is the multiplying relations between the cities and the national government, and the most telling measure of those increasing relations is found in the growth of federal grants-in-aid direct to the cities. As late as 1932 such grants totaled no more than $10 million, virtually all of which went to the District of Columbia. Direct grant-in-aid relationships were, therefore, negligible in that year. [Table 1, showing growth to $229 million in 1936, $278 million in 1940.]....
Like federal aid in airport development, low-rent public housing originated in response to depression needs. Thus the National Industrial Recovery Act (PL 67, 73d Congress) provided for participation by the national government in "low-cost housing and slum clearance projects" as early as 1933. The Emergency Relief Appropriation Act (PL 11, 74th Congress), passed in 1935, provided $450 million for housing. By 1937, as many as 50 low-rent public projects had been approved under these early acts......
The Housing Act of 1937, as amended, provides for a nationwide program of low-rent public housing.....Low-rent housing is designed to serve the neeeds of those of low income who otherwise would not be able to afford "decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings." Clientele given special consideration are low-income veterans (and their survivors), Indians, and the elderly. Public housing likewise is designed to serve an important slum-clearance function, and in that connection to work closely with the urban renewal and redevelopment program.
-- Roscoe C. Martin, "The Expanded Partnership", in The New Urban Politics, ed. Douglas M. Fox. Goodyear Publishing, Pacific Palisades, Calif., 1972, pp. 38-51 passim.
Damn, Luke, sure sounds like urban progressives took over the Democratic Party to me!
Of course, you have another opinion?
Am I patronizing? No, because I haven't called you "boy" or "son" yet.
No, because you don't have what it takes to do that. Boy.
You still laughing?
Is that what the Straussians taught you to call other people's historical frame of reference while you're trying to get over them?
Keep trying.
Not that you'll get there, but it'll be socially useful if you remain preoccupied with trying to get over.
Johnny Horton indeed. I posted it on a thread a long time ago back when he was arguing that the yankees "captured" the uninhabited and abandoned Fort Davis in the middle of nowhere, thus striking a great blow to the confederacy in the west!
The Regulars included many leading Texas oilmen in their ranks as well as several members of its congressional delegation. Senator W. Lee O'Daniel and Congressman Martin Dies were among its best known members.
Of course knowing Mr. X, he'll simply dismiss the entire group as dixiecrat racist slaver confederates and argue that having FDR was better than defeating him so long as the opposition was those mean old Texas Regulars!
Where the heck did you get that? If you're going to do polemic, fella, it helps if you make sure you're zipped up before you rush out of the men's room and into the forum.
Urban ethnics who wanted city services and federal assistance were the liberals of their day. What's hard about that? Nobody seems to have trouble with that correlation except you. Ever hear of the Progressive Movement?
Thus, the backers of high tariffs in the 19th century have to be for "vast, programmatic expansions of government and infrastructure," because it fits your projection of 20th century politics back on the 19th century.
I don't do that. I bring threads of identity and "commonality" forward. The Morrill Tariff was a fairly complex scheme that would have been reviled by the Jeffersonians of an earlier and was in fact reviled by the old Jacksonians of the Civil War era. And its parentage also brought forth the corporate-welfarist railroad legislation and the distributive Homestead Act.
What is your problem? You're just throwing the kitchen sink. Take a pill. Chill.
The details get lost in this imposition of the scheme on the realities of the time, and you don't see how the past may differ from the present.
Oh, please! You're just being silly now.
Your portrait of Lincoln as an abolitionist not very different from the more militant members of the movement is also worthy of comment. You don't want to be described as "pro-slavery," but you attack those in 19th century politics who weren't even modestly opposed to slavery or who weren't fully pro-slavery. The fellow who believes that eventually slavery should end some day and begins by restricting its territorial expansion is lumped in with those who favor direct action and immediate abolition.
Yeah, well, political parties tend to do that. The Republican Party did it on purpose -- it's called "base-broadening". Or will you deny that, too?
Perhaps having a conspiracy theory helps one to do that, but it looks like you deny anti-slavery Northerners any opportunity to stand their own ground,.....
No, I don't. Representative Clement Vallandigham didn't support slavery, but he tried to stand his own ground, and look where it got him.
.... and put any opposition to slavery or its expansion beyond the pale. If you actually were proslavery or "pro-slavery-as-it-existed-in-the-Southern-states-in-19th-century-America," how would your view be any different?
Another hyperventilating attempt to hang pro-slavery views on me? This is what, the fourth time we've been around on this? You trying to use Goebbels's technique of just repeating something over and over again?
Your question is keyed to a false premise. I don't support slavery, I've told you that, and you aren't tall enough or smart enough to put hateful words like that in my mouth. So flake off.
What I do put beyond the pale is instigating open war between sister American States and killing nearly a million citizens over a political difference. And I'll repeat that one as many times as you care to hear it.
I was reading the lyrics and humming Battle of New Orleans myself.
It's truly a great song. When I was a kid we had a record player in the den. Dad had an old 45 rpm of the Battle of New Orleans and it was my favorite song as a kid. He used to play that and Herb Alpert all the time on the record machine.
Missouri had some pro-slaver, Lincoln supporters, too. But then that state was in a whirlwind for years before and after the War.
If you actually were protyranny or "pro-tyranny-as-it-existed-in-the Northern-states-in-19th-century-America" how would your view be any different?
Look here: Discussion of teleology.
In argument, I use it in the sense of Aristotelian or "internal" teleology, particularly with reference to discussants' introduction of efficient causes and final causes, the latter being an end state of "no slavery, the South defeated: 'it was inevitable, self-ordaining -- and good.'" That's teleological argumentation, and logically invalid, like so many of those stockbroker's bromides-for-all-occasions, or Irish bulls, whose real function is to persuade the customer that the customer's man knows what he is doing: "Always let your profits run" but "always leave the last 10% for the other guy".
I'm not arguing a "slippery slope", I'm arguing a million dead people.
You just don't see it, because you assume that the consequences that you deplore are implicit in your principles and the consequences that others would regret are somehow apart from the moral and legal principles at issue.
Cite and post where I said that.
I will admit, several orders' of ten worth of dead people are somehow implicit in my principles. Do you care, or is it just all part of the job?
That's something you might want to work on.
Yeah, right, I'll rush right out and do that.
It's the Pottery Barn rule -- the one Colin Powell cited to President Bush, remember? Are you saying it's invalid?
No, I see that it isn't "duplicitous". It's coherent and follows the form, "the Confederacy followed form in exercising their right to quit the Union in view of irreconcilable differences over policy, and in so doing a) did so in order to preserve the vision of the Founders, b) did so to forefend becoming vassalized, and c) did so in a manner foreseen by Jefferson as one possible outcome for the future of the country, one which he hoped would not occur but, if it did, like the other Framers would not have countenanced the use of violence to preserve the Union against the wishes of its citizens.
That is a straight-line progression of thought and not in the least "duplicitous". And who the hell are you to call me "duplicitous"? Making the other poster the issue, as you have just raped 40 quadrillion electrons doing in the last five or ten posts, is deceit in debate (wanna link?), so if you want to talk about deceit, we'll have to pull down and discuss some more of your posts.
If someone argues that the world is better off because the Union was preserved, you can call that, in your own way of speaking a "teleological" argument and hence an invalid one.
No, see above. If someone argues fortunate outcomes in respect of later events, they have a point. They can't say, however, that division of the Union in 1861 would have lead inevitably to a loss of the later good outcome. You can't say, for instance, that if the South had won the Civil War (as a long-ago magazine article did), that Soviet ICBM's would eventually have been stationed in Canada. Neither can one say that other desirable outcomes, like the overthrow of the Kaiser and the failure and death of Hitler, would have gone a-glimmering. Canada is a country independent of the United States, to offer an analogy, but their troops were present on D-Day along with the rest of the Anglo-American world's, the British Empire's and those of the Free French. Yet in arguing consequences, to say that the mayhem and destruction of the Civil War was a horrible outcome, a malum horrendum that Lincoln did much to bring to the country, and too little to avert, I am pointing to a concrete fact, and not a mere warning of unacceptable consequences, which is the fallacy.
Yet you habitually malign the Unionists because of what came afterwards, and your arguments are just as consequentialist as what you abhor.
No, they aren't, as I just explained. The consequences of the Civil War were, in fact, its consequences. They are not a phantasm or a debater's bugbear.
Now you can claim that you're in favor of the founders' vision, and that the consequentialist part of your argument grows out of that, but your opponents likewise consider that the founders' words and actions support their view of things.
So? We disagree, mostly thanks to Hamilton and Lincoln, who wanted an empire. Hamilton didn't get his, but Lincoln got his, because he was the first president able to command two million bayonets.
The founders foresaw all manner of problems that could assail the Republic, among them fragmentation and civil war, as well as tyranny. That's why the Framers of the Constitution were keen on union and not so wild about secession.
But at the same time, as I just said, they equally abhorred interstate violence and considered it beyond justification by raison d'etat. Lincoln's transgression was that he disagreed with them -- and took the country to war with its own.
Keep your day job. You'll never make it as a soap opera script writer.
"Secession can be the proper course of action when hateful abuse is the alternative."
Any person, or community of persons, can always execute their natural right of revolution if things become oppressive. They don't have to invent phony political theories.
In the 1st Amendment, "Congress shall make no law...." I think that is plain enough. In fact, even into the middle-1800's, individual state governments supported some churches with public funds.
The 2nd Amendment expresses a "right of the people." A right that should be respected by both the federal and state governments.
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