| This thread has been locked, it will not receive new replies. |
|
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
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?
Just think if the Confederates had won, the South would have continued slavery possibly until World War One, European nations may have had aggressive ideas in terms of attacking the Northern states with full Confederate assistance, and today's Neo-Confederates would be as happy as clams in a clam bed.
The connection is a priori . Your reasoning must follow ethical rules, or it is flawed. Regardless of the logical construct around it.
There is no inherent ethical obligation of me or anybody else to expand or apply an argument anywhere beyond its immediate and identified object.
Your lack of morality is so noted.
In short, your doctrine of "fairness" has no inherent nature in what is truly "fair" or what is ethically obliged.
I'll just put you down as someone who doesn't recognize the difference between "right and wrong". There's a medical term that might apply also.
Cheers
According to Bensel's study.
13 is a pretty high number for a nation formed to 'resist Northern tyranny'
Since your so into the habit of making comparisons I'll let you tell me. Which is greater: 18 or 13?
And ofcourse, Bensel is the final word on this matter!
Can't tell you that. He is, however, one of the more reputable scholars who has attempted to quantify the comparison.
Davis had to do the same thing.
Not quite. Bensel's stats show Davis did it less than Lincoln, thus it is not the "same thing." We also know that where Davis and Lincoln have been criticized over similar types of abuses - foremost among them being habeas corpus - that Lincoln's violations of habeas corpus far exceeded Davis'.
So all you've got is a book review from a shoddy author slamming Davis for supposedly doing the same thing he praised Lincoln for in another book? I guess that's what passes for "scholarship" in the Wlat brigade...
Seeing as you've yet to demonstrate any ethical necessity or even connection in the doctrine you allege, assigning it a priori status is invalid. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Gee, and that difference between the two means what?
And ofcourse, Bensel is the final word on this matter! Can't tell you that. He is, however, one of the more reputable scholars who has attempted to quantify the comparison.
And do you have a reference for his work or a link?
Davis had to do the same thing. Not quite. Bensel's stats show Davis did it less than Lincoln, thus it is not the "same thing." We also know that where Davis and Lincoln have been criticized over similar types of abuses - foremost among them being habeas corpus - that Lincoln's violations of habeas corpus far exceeded Davis'.
Well, according to another poster, that may not be the case.
How come I knew that is what you were going to claim!
So what facts did he get wrong?
not a substitute for it.
You tell me. Which is greater: 13 or 18. If you cannot answer even that simple question then you will have demonstrated yourself incapable of acknowledging even the simplest indisputable mathematical inequality when it reflects unfavorably on your side.
And do you have a reference for his work or a link?
As I told you previously: "Yankee Leviathan" 1995 Cambridge University Press.
Well, according to another poster, that may not be the case.
And what poster would that be? I'm curious to know as it would prove mighty difficult to demonstrate that Davis did not receive Congress' sanction to suspend the writ, or that Lincoln did during the first 2 years he suspended it.
Perhaps because Neely's pro-Lincoln bias is well known. He's also one of the leading deniers of Ben Butler's colonization meeting in 1865 despite conclusive evidence that it happened.
So what facts did he get wrong?
Without having that particular book on hand, I couldn't tell you. It is however hypocritical to write two books on civil liberties in the two different regions of the civil war, bash one side for supposedly violating them, and then praise the other side for doing the same thing.
Yawn. And that would be what we call argumentum ad hominem.
Gee, and maybe 18 misdemeanors are better then 13 felonies?
Sometimes you have to look at what is being discussed.
Like having a passport system between the states?
Why aren't your papers in order?
And do you have a reference for his work or a link? As I told you previously: "Yankee Leviathan" 1995 Cambridge University Press.
Thank you, I must have not have caught it.
Well, according to another poster, that may not be the case. And what poster would that be? I'm curious to know as it would prove mighty difficult to demonstrate that Davis did not receive Congress' sanction to suspend the writ, or that Lincoln did during the first 2 years he suspended it.
Well, that may not be the crucial issues that determine how abusive the use of the writ was.
I know that you like to define the terms of the debate, but wheather Davis had permission and Lincoln did not is not the essential issue, the essential issue is how they each used or misused the power.
You feel enslaved?
Yawn, and that is what you were doing to Neely.
And what makes you think he does that?
In his work on Lincoln he is critical, but places the abuses in the context of the war.
As far as I can tell from the review of the book on the Confederacy, he does likewise for Davis.
Here's an excerpt of one review: Carefully combing through the voluminous Confederate Secretary of War files, Neely discovers case after case of political prisoners arrested on suspicion of disloyalty and/or Unionist sentiment. The Confederate government, and states within the Confederacy repeatedly and blatantly jailed thousands of white and black Southerners, without formal charges, trial or legal counsel, often on the mere suggestion of Unionism or disloyalty to the Confederacy. Since the Confederacy never established a judiciary branch, the state court system retained a great deal of authority, especially in the Border South like Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia, and North Carolina, where Confederate officials believed the greatest danger of political dissent occurred.
Neely also uncovers a little known group of Southern lawyers who worked as "habeas corpus commissioners," providing what would seem to be legal protection for individuals' liberties. However, Neely discovers that these commissioners wielded considerable power by quietly ensuring that the Confederate government could continue to arrest citizens without formal criminal charges and keep them imprisoned for months, even years. If one of these so-called commissioners did not recommend a prisoner's release, that person might remain incarcerated indefinitely. The commissioners' reports were not made public and Congress provided little oversight of their activity. After the war, the existence of these commissioners was completely and conveniently forgotten, even by the commissioners themselves. Their existence and their reports remained essentially lost in the Secretary of War papers until Neely found them filed alphabetically by the individual names of the commissioners. Neely asserts that most Confederate citizens apparently accepted the curtailment of civil liberties, the issuance of passports for travel, the prohibition of alcohol, and the presence of guards and military posts throughout the South as necessities of war. There is little evidence of protest or even concern among loyal Confederates that thousands of civilians were being arrested and imprisoned for their political beliefs without being formally charged with any crime. Nor did lawyers, of whom there were many in the South, challenge the Confederate government's authoritarian tendencies. Most Confederates' desire for societal order, Neely reasons, was stronger than their desire for individual liberty.
Even in Arkansas, where General Thomas C. Hindman declared martial law and temporarily ruled ruthlessly, there were few outspoken critics. Hindman did what Neely maintains Davis wanted to do, and later attempted to do, throughout the Confederacy: silence dissenters and focus all available manpower on mobilizing for war. In the end, Neely sees more similarities than differences between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis as wartime presidents. As the bloody war progressed, both leaders believed that their respective constitutions came second to winning the war. After the war, Davis and other purveyors of the Lost Cause left out this unpleasant part of Confederate history, instead vilifying Lincoln as dictator and championing the Southern nation as the true defender of civil liberty. Neely challenges common assumptions concerning Southern Unionists too, maintaining that ideology, idealism, and selflessness played important roles in determining political allegiances, not materialism, class consciousness, ignorance, isolation, cowardly behavior, or greater affinity with the industrializing North. In East Tennessee, for example, he finds Unionists more strongly attached to the pastoral, traditional life style than secessionists who lived closer to railroads and were more directly connected to the burgeoning market economy.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3729/is_200107/ai_n8958586 4,298 posted on 04/05/2005 5:31:12 PM CDT by Heyworth
It should also be noted that (contrary to the impression that the other review gives) this book is no shill for the Confederate cause either. As a political scientist with a focus on finance capital, Bensel does not view the Civil War through the lens of a noble crusade to abolish slavery. At the same time, however, he uses the same lens of political economy to look at the southern state-building as well.
Ironically, the "Dixie Leviathan" was even more powerful and autonomous than the Yankee one. The small size of the southern economy and the broad popularity of the war gave the Confederate government both the need and the ability to confiscate property and trample states rights far more effectively than the Republicans did in the Union. The old slogans of Jeffersonian small government disappeared and big-government national mobilization became Dixie's order of the day. (emphasis added)
So what were saying about 18 vs 13?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0521398177/ref=dp_nav_0/102-3176425-4398506?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
It's really a riot, I always seem to discover their 'books' on the very bottom shelve in any major bookstore. I'm so Ferklempt not knowing how those 'books' are relatively hidden from browsing customers. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.