Confederate States Of America (2005)

Yahoo Movies ^ | 12/31/04 | Me

[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?

[lentulusgracchus]

War places a context on actions. In fact, killing in war is not murder because of its context. The issue is context

Wow, I'll bet the Nuremberg defense lawyers would have liked to consult with you......

"Malmedy wasn't murder because of its context...."

"The Ardeatine Caves incident wasn't murder because of its context......"

"Khatyn Forest wasn't mass murder because of its context........"

Hmmmmmm. Can we "contextualize" our way to innocence for the SS-Wiking Division and the Death's-Head Division, the Black Hundreds, the Viet Minh and the Special Republican Guards? If we just "contextualize" history properly, can we come to a greater appreciation of the sacrifices imposed on leadership by context that requires them to kill large numbers of people (Cambodia, the Rape of Nanking, the Cultural Revolution) in order adequately to support policy?

Naaaaah, lipstick on a pig.

Nice try, professor.

Sure you aren't #3Fascist with a new computer?

[lentulusgracchus]

The facts are that the Hartford Convention was considered an act of treason.

Really? How many hanged?

Anyone brought to the bar of justice, as in Ex Parte Bollman?

[lentulusgracchus]

As usual, garbage_truck is full of garbage.

This point can't be remarked upon too often. Mind if I echo-bump this post? He needs to read it again.

Tu quoque , meaning roughly "you too," is a specific type of logical fallacy in which the arguer asserts that a noted wrong stated by a claimant to be dismissed, negated, or otherwise diminished due to an inconsistency, alleged or otherwise with other actions vis-a-vis the claimant or his/her claim.

Logic bump. Pearls before swine, amigo, but thanks for the service to logic and clarity. The thread could use more of these expository posts. They help the lurkers, too, cut through the Cheese Whiz put up by our interlocutors.

[rustbucket]

None of these children, or on either side would have been caught in the middle, if it were not for the insistence of South Carolina's Confederate politicians rejecting the Presidential election results and attacking Fort Sumter.

The North started the bombardment of Charleston civilians at 1:30 in the morning while the town was asleep. If you favor an approach to war like that, I suppose you would support American troops lining up a bunch of Iraqi civilians and saying we are going to shoot these people unless you Iraqi militants surrender.

If Lincoln had been a man of peace, he would have let the South go rather than plot and instigate war with the South. It was a voluntary Union after all, and I don't remember reading about a clause written in invisible ink on the back of the Constitution that states couldn't secede when they plainly retained the power to secede under the 10th Amendment. You ... you ... you invisible clauser, you. (How's that for an insult?)

[lentulusgracchus]

You really persist in seeing exactly what you want to profess to see, don't you?

The rebellion continues in 2005!

There was no rebellion when the Southern States left the Union, and there is no rebellion now. You're lying for polemical effect. Why are you emulating the worst propagandists the world has ever seen?

Wow, what was that again? Pro-slaver secessionists arresting elected popular political leaders in Eastern Tenn & loyal Americans fighting for the Union must be "crushed out instantly, the leaders arrested, and summarily punished!" (i.e., gunned down for being loyal American citizens?)

1. Your statement is pure propaganda bull. "Gunned down" is a color phrase added by you for polemical effect and to heighten the drama of the point you are attempting to make, at the expense of the responsible officers of the State of Tennessee.

2. When Tennessee held its plebiscite to leave the Union, the majority ruled. The statewide vote was 2:1 in favor.

3. States are the basic political unit in our part of North America, because our history and our organic law make them the basis of government in America. States may join or leave the Union, but dissident municipalities within a State may not partition a State.

4. The Unionists who took arms against their State were breaking the law -- which the Confederates were not doing -- and needed to be stopped and brought to justice. They were hurting their home State and their neighbors. They had no other State, and no other neighbors. They hadn't the right to take arms against them because the majority took Tennessee out of the Union, any more than someone else would have had a right to take arms against their state government because Texas, say, had joined the Union.

Today's Neo-Confederate hidden agenda is dedicated to turning the clock back some 150 years.

You'd be merely obtuse if you actually believed that, but you put it up as a malevolent smear on the people who disagree with you. Your statement is so clearly not true, that you should be embarrassed to put things like that up over your signature.

[GOPcapitalist]

Here is another favorable review of the work.

Yes, but is it scholarly? Gutzman's review was by a credentialed scholar and appeared in a scholarly peer reviewed journal. This Citron fellow seems to be nothing more than your run of the mill lawyer who agrees with Farber's legal brief for Lincoln and let us know in a webzine.

[GOPcapitalist]

Well, then we need to look at the circumstances themselves and see if they dictated the suspension or not.

And yet with every case that the "circumstances" go against you, you refuse to look at it or invent some silly reason to neglect it as you did with the Merrick incident.

[GOPcapitalist]

First, where do you get the idea that it is held in low esteem by the 'scholarly community'.

From the fact that a major scholar tore it to shreds in a peer reviewed academic journal.

You cited one pro-Southern reviewer as evidence.

You keep alleging and impugning Gutzman as pro-southern yet have offered no evidence to that, nor any evidence that anything Gutzman ever said about Farber was wrong. Why is that?

So, I did not know that Farber's work is considered in low esteem by scholars nor do I know that now.

And you'll never know as long as you invent phony reasons to dismiss and neglect every critical review out of convenience for Farber.

Here is a favoritable review of the work,

The Claremont Institute is not a scholarly peer reviewed journal. It is a Lincolnite hack machine that agrees with Farber because they share in his extreme partisan disposition toward Lincoln.

[lentulusgracchus]

I couldn't help but notice this particularly fatuous post of M. Espinola's......

Fish, meet bait, indeed!

Preventing any American from their right to vote in any election is a federal crime, but what do you care.

Civil War historians might care, because Lincoln went to considerable lengths to make sure that soldiers in uniform voted, but that Democrats were kept away from the polls. Stanton and other ministers were quite unapologetic in instructing military officers to "keep order" at the polls by suppressing "unreliable" Democrats and prevent their getting a ballot, by force if necessary.

Care to vent about that, Mr. Espinola?

Your regrettable & predicable <sic> sentiments......

Thanks for conceding that 4CJ's sentiments have a predicate.....oh, wait, you didn't mean that, did you?

Your claim instead that 4ConservativeJustices' opinions are predictable -- the word you were trying to use -- is your outright confession of bigotry toward him.

You assayed and prejudged him as a Southerner based on nothing more than his statements of loyalty to the Constitution and his opposition to the "living constitution" fictions invented by people who wanted to be tyrants and ordain policy over the heads of the American People.

That's good enough for you. If he's a Jeffersonian, that means he lynches people for a hobby. He has a Bondo-besmeared, rusty pickup truck with KKK stickers on the bumper (maybe a chain or two) and mangy dogs in the back. He would shoot you on sight if you durst come down here -- just like Schwerner and Goodman, right?

What a crock.

It's laundry day & the truth comes out from the dirty linen. What real shame the shoe could not be on the other foot.

Practice what you preach, pal.

Supremacist advocating despots must be weeded out from of the ranks of Republican Party once and for all.

And you've got the hoe, right? What a twerp you are! That why you keep hitting the "abuse" button? To make FR a "nice place", a Disneyland of homogenized opinion that's been pimped-over by you?

Who sent you, troll?

[GOPcapitalist]

No, the reviewer may not like some of the sources that were used, but the work nevertheless is worth reading.

Even the Communist Manifesto is "worth reading," ftD. That doesn't make its message any less horrendous though. Same goes for Farber, which very plainly is a partisan hack job.

As for being pro-southern, I read some of his opinions and they were clearly pro-Southern.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

[lentulusgracchus]

[ftD to Espinola] Amen to your post!

And you, you applauding with the propeller-beanie on your head, you're just being silly.

The guy is putting up bigoted rants, and you're egging him on. Your mother should see you.

[lentulusgracchus]

With regard to the failed raid led by Col. Dahlgren, you have yet to show that Dahlgren was under "orders" to assassinate Jefferson Davis and his cabinet.

And what will be required to "show" that, will rise in difficulty as more material is produced, right?

You've played this game before, capitan, and we remember.

[stand watie]

we southrons ALWAYS believe that we're dealing with HATEFILLED,ARROGANT, SELF-righteous, MORONS, when we deal with damnyankees.

of those 2 choices only (morons vs. hillbillies), i'll side with the "hillbillies", as at least they're DECENT & generally MORAL, GOD-fearing folk.

free dixie,sw

[GOPcapitalist]

Yawn. WHy don't you try looking at what the scholarly and peer reviewed journals actually have to say about him?

Farber glimpses this fact in his conclusion, which emphasizes Lincoln's personal qualities. He writes, "It was Lincoln's character -his ability, judgment, courage, and humanity - that brought the Union through the war with the Constitution intact" (p. 200). Of course, this assumes that Lincoln saved the Constitution, rather than destroyed it. If the Constitution was originally a voluntary association of separate sovereigns, then he illegally engrossed the nation in a war that claimed over six hundred thousand lives and destroyed the economy of much of the nation. We may add violations of civil liberties to his sins, although at that point it would be hard to plunge his reputation any farther into disgrace. On the other hand, if Lincoln was right that the Constitution foreclosed secession and authorized the use of force to suppress any such movement, the entire problem of civil liberties needs to be re-gauged. As Richard Posner writes, "If the Constitution is not to be treated as a suicide pact, why should military exigencies not influence the scope of the constitutional rights that the Supreme Court has manufactured from the Constitution's vague provisions?"110 My own view is that the founders did not think secession was a constitutional right, but also could not have imagined that the federal government under the Constitution they had created would be so strong and so motivated as to prevent one-third of the states from withdrawing and reconstituting a government.111 I thus think it fair to say that Lincoln, through the Civil War, effected a shift in the nature of the regime. Lincoln himself anticipated that a Union victory in the Civil War would give rise to a "new birth of freedom,"112 and he essentially cast himself in the role of a founder. The principles on which the Lincolnian regime were to be founded were not quite identical to those of the original regime, for most importantly the scourge of slavery would be eliminated. In this respect, as well as in laying the framework for a decisive shift in the relative power of the state and Federal Governments, it is perhaps not quite correct to say, as Farber does, that Lincoln "saved" the Constitution: he transformed it. - Craig Lerner, Michigan Law Review, May 2004

In short, Farber missed the point entirely. And there are others...

But before the war came, Lincoln was most closely associated with the moderate anti-slavery position that the states could permit or forbid slavery as they saw fit, but that Congress had plenary power to exclude slavery in federal territories-the latter being the very position that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in Dred Scott. The Court's decision was wrong, horribly wrong, and seemingly deliberately wrong. The Court's decision crushed Lincoln's faith in the judiciary as an impartial instrument of constitutional interpretation, and led him by degrees ultimately to a very narrow, case-specific conception of judicial authority, and to a very strongly "departmentalist" view of constitutional-interpretive power generally, under which the notion of judicial supremacy over the political branches in constitutional interpretation became tantamount, in Lincoln's eyes, to resignation of popular government and violation of the executive's sworn duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.10 These are huge themes-with huge consequences for the other issues Farber discusses (as I will develop below). But they are, in the main, ignored in Lincoln's Constitution. In addition to the slighting of slavery and Dred Scott (and the specific substantive issues I address below), I have two other minor quibbles with Farber's presentation. First, there are too many distracting side excursions into modern Supreme Court cases that relate only indirectly to Civil War-era themes. U.S. Term Limits, Inc v Thornton11 (pp 27-28, 30, 33, 38, 79-80), Alden v Maine12 (p 28), New York v United States13 (pp 95-96), and Printz v United States14 (p 96) are interesting recent cases, presenting important issues of federalism and sovereignty-themes at the crux of the Civil War. But the issues presented by 1990s cases involving sovereign immunity from damages suits and intergovernmental immunity are a far cry from secession and civil war. Farber's subtle attempts to tar conservative Rehnquist Court decisions with the brush of neo-Calhounism, while not utterly implausible, are a bit strained. Mostly, though, they just feel out of place-anachronistic-and detract from the narrative. Attempts to extract specific lessons for today's marginal federalism controversies from the great convulsions of interposition, nullification, secession, and civil war have their limits. Some readers, perhaps, may cheer Farber for making Civil War-era issues "come alive" for today's controversies. Others will (like me) find Civil War issues lively enough on their own, and will find Farber's modern-day morals-of-the-story dull, and forced, by comparison.15 Similarly, Farber's inclination to evaluate the constitutional propriety of Lincoln's actions through the lens of Supreme Court decisions rendered a hundred years later-as he does, for example, with issues of separation of powers and executive power, invoking the three-category paradigm of Justice Robert Jackson's concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co v Sawyer16 (pp 120, 130-32, 156), and with respect to the First Amendment freedom of speech in time of war, invoking Brandenburg v Ohio17 (p 172)-feels very much like modern, court-centric anachronism. Farber acknowledges the problem of anachronism, but nonetheless seems bound by modern judicial paradigms and doctrinal tests. - Michael Paulsen, University of Chicago Law Review, May 2004.

...and that from a review that also claimed, like Gutzman, that the book was "interesting."

[stand watie]

even if the popular vote was PRO-secession NOW, the damnyankee elites who control essentially everything in the north would NEVER let us go PEACEFULLY.

what will happen eventually is that Los Estados Unidos de Azatlan will leave & then perhaps we southrons also can depart the union, PEACEFULLY.

otoh, once again (sigh!) i must remind you/all, SECESSION is one of the POWERS RESERVED to the STATES or to the PEOPLE.

may i suggest you read the TENTH AMENDMENT? had the RIGHT to secession been CEDED to the central government, the document would have said so. NO FREE STATE would have entered a contract, from which i could NOT have just as FREELY departed.

free dixie,sw

[GOPcapitalist]

Whom in here are "marxists" or "commies". Name them. 1. James McPherson, historian - known affiliate and contributer to the World Socialist Web Site, an official propaganda outlet of a communist political party.

2. Eric Foner, historian - self described neo-marxist

3. WhiskeyPapa, aka Wlat, banned freeper from your side of the argument and close associate of many of your allies here - avowed Bush-hater and known idolizer of Michael Moore

In addition to that crowd, you also have #3fan - another banned associate and friend of your allies. He turned out to be a neo-nazi.

[GOPcapitalist]

Whom in here are "marxists" or "commies". Name them.

I have already done so at least three times, but since you are illiterate:

1. James McPherson, historian - known affiliate and contributer to the World Socialist Web Site, an official propaganda outlet of a communist political party.

2. Eric Foner, historian - self described neo-marxist

3. WhiskeyPapa, aka Wlat, banned freeper from your side of the argument and close associate of many of your allies here - avowed Bush-hater and known idolizer of Michael Moore

In addition to that crowd, you also have #3fan - another banned associate and friend of your allies. He turned out to be a neo-nazi.

[M. Espinola]

"You really persist in seeing exactly what you want to profess to see, don't you?"

You catch on quickly lol

The "heighten the drama" effect works! You always draft a responding speech which goes on, and on, and on, similar to old Hubert Humphrey's endless speeches used to, Pilgrim.

Why are you emulating the worst propagandists the world has ever seen? Thank you for the compliment but I'd rather you continue holding that title.

..."the responsible officers of the State of Tennessee." Oh, yes, I of course I recall the irresponsible, brutal Confederate officers which arrested or gunned down pro-Unionist Eastern Tennessee citizens.

Do you want to hold your own little "plebiscite to leave the Union?" Just purchase an overseas airline ticket, one way, it's not complicated.

If you really would like to leave the Union please take along the hippie, lesbo, commies from Vermont, still screaming wacko Dean is not President.....will you?

I love the numeric method you issued, makes for easier readability and quick responses.

Okay, we are addressing #3 I take it.

"States may join or leave the Union" once congress approves petition for statehood, but once in, no chickening out :)

Moving right along. #4 "The Unionists who took arms against their State were breaking 'the law' -- which the Confederates were not doing -- and needed to be stopped and brought to justice. They were hurting their home State and their neighbors. They had no other State, and no other neighbors. They hadn't the right to take arms against them because the majority took Tennessee out of the Union, any more than someone else would have had a right to take arms against their state government because Texas, say, had joined the Union.

I reprinted your statement in its entirety so you could review it for required alterations, as in "The Unionists who took arms against their State were breaking the law"

Whose law? Do mean "the law" as in the so-called 'law' of Confederate traitors who seized control by armed force? That 'law'? Similar to the 'laws' of Nazi Germany, or maybe Saddam's (former)'laws', or how about the mullah's Islamic 'laws'?

You are the one who knowing IS embarrassed with your mob rule 'laws'.

You stated you are no a 'neo-confederate, so what's the beef with the following statement? "Today's Neo-Confederate hidden agenda is dedicated to turning the clock back some 150 years."

[GOPcapitalist]

Whose law? Do mean "the law" as in the so-called 'law' of Confederate traitors who seized control by armed force?

Now that's funny. The last time I checked, Texas left the union by way of a popular referendum of the voters as called through their elected representatives in the legislature and their elected delegates to the state convention. The only attempt to "seize control by armed force" of course was Abe Lincoln's offer to Sam Houston of sending troops to overthrow the convention. Houston, as we all know, tossed Lincoln's letter into his fireplace in disgust.

[Modernman]

what will happen eventually is that Los Estados Unidos de Azatlan will leave & then perhaps we southrons also can depart the union, PEACEFULLY.

There'll be a lot of dead Mexicans if the Southwest tries to secede. This country has shown that it knows how to deal with rebels and traitors.