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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?
"Still clinging to the Marxian principle of central government supremacy. What do you think the Founders feared so much? They feared two things, one was the central government, the other was democracy."
To anarchists like yourself, everything looks like marxism.
You forget your history, newbie. The Founder's did fear a strong central authority ... and ended up with an "imbecilic" (to use Madison's description) general government under the unworkable Articles of Confederation & Perpetual Union. So the Framers of the Constitution, a group that included some of the founding fathers, devised a new form of limited, national government. They did this, not because the existing confederal government was too strong, but because it was too weak.
"Revolution may be "extralegal" however it was granted by the Founders, the formal referendum (legal proceedings) to establish beyond any doubt that the people of the seceding State wished to free themselves of the the oppressor (real or percieved) as the Founders did not define the parameters of "oppression". So not only did they revolt, they did it orderly according to Hoyle so to speak."
Amidst all that gobbledegook, I believe is a statement that contends a right to revolt against oppression. I agree. However, in the case of the CSA, the oppression did not exist and the revolt utterly failed.
"I read it in the "more perfect" Federalist Papers, written in todays language."
Quotation? Citation?
"We the People does not refer to the USA as a whole, but instead to the People of the respective States."
If that were the case, the Preamble would begin with "We the PeopleS..." The authors of the Constitution were a decidedly nationalistic group, interested in avoiding the anarchy developing from a system of government where the general government was at the mercy of the state governments. The Constitution changed that equation, with the Supremacy Clause I quoted in the earlier post. However, they tempered the authority of the national government by provided it a limited sphere of influence. If you were an educated person you would realize there is nothing marxist or socialist about that.
Newbie, secessionists are just one step behind anarchists.
"The oppression whether real or percieved is all that was required for a resumption to independent status. This is so blatantly obvious as it was the States who granted conditional approval of certain specified powers and duties to the Federal Government for the purpose of SERVING the needs and conviences of the States. This condition as with the New York and North Carolina conditions of ratification applied to all States and to future States. How can you be so obtuse to deny this?"
The argument you make is nothing new. it is the same one that the disgruntled Calhounians made in the 1830s, and the fire-eaters aped in the 1850's and 1860's. Madison had you guys pegged, when he wrote:
"But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy. Its double aspect, nevertheless, with the countenance [received] from certain quarters, is giving it a popular currency here which may influence the approaching elections both for Congress & for the State Legislature. It has gained some advantage also, by mixing itself with the question whether the Constitution of the U.S. was formed by the people or by the States, now under a theoretic discussion by animated partizans."
Madison's position was clear. The Constitution was formed by the People; unilateral secession was not a legal principle, and revolution was for relief from intolerable oppression. The secessionists never made their case then, and you fail to make your case now.
Recycling the stale arguments of the notorious racist Albert Bledsoe, as the Kennedy twins do in their book "The South was Right," isn't going to help your case.
GOPc - virtually everything you post is obnoxious and inflamatory.
People were jailed for open sedition, not dissent. Dissent was not restricted -- sedition was.
Frankly, I wish Bush were following Lincoln's example today and locking up some of the Ramsey Clark mob.
Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't. I will note for the record though that you have failed to provide documentation either way. In other words, you have failed the very same test you demanded of others regarding the 1848 Illinois Constitution.
But if 53% lived down south I suppose that means that 47% did not. Given that the south had close to 100% of the slave population one would have expected that percentage to be higher.
Would it though? If what you've been telling everybody is true, all the free blacks in the south were constantly being reverted into slavery for failing to leave...yet their numbers were both larger than the north and growing. Care to explain?
You know, if Illinois had been the 12th confederate state it would have had the 5th largest free black population.
And that's supposed to impress me? That's kinda like praising a baseball team for coming in fifth place in their league. Of course you could measure them in terms of the nation as a whole and get an equally mediocre 15th place. Of course the best measure for cross-comparisons of free black populations between states is to standardize them in a measure that accounts for both large and small states. In other words, you must take their demographic percentage in the total population. Rank ordering the states that way ranks Illinois 22nd out of all the states and territories, placing it behind such locations as Nevada and Rhode Island - two locations renowned for their free black populations, no doubt.
In spite of those black codes you insist were oh-so-discriminatory.
I take it then that you find a law punishing blacks for entering the state by public whippings and sale at auction into slavery to be non-discriminatory? You sure are a strange one, non-sequitur.
...says the #3fan of the #3neo-nazi.
Spoken like a true parrot, eh Rog?
It was dated 9 Jan 1734. Anyone bringing a slave in was subject to a 50 pound sterling fine.
Sure there is. Just because you keep saying there isn't one, doesn't mean you're right. You're wrong.
Because Texans tend to be laconic, and have a horror of redundancy.
The State that sent Hood's division to General Lee doesn't need to stipulate that it's a Southern State.
Your quote answers itself.
The secession conventions and referenda of 1861 were not a "violation without cause", but were precisely revolutionary, sovereign, privileged acts of the People, made in redress of their grievances against the North.
The secessionists never made their case then, and you fail to make your case now.
Teleology and appeal to force again -- your favorite. Losing a war does not change the sum of two plus two or the laws of gravity, but that's exactly the way you want it.
What buncombe.
Your brass in lying your face off absolutely amazes me. And in front of all these people. We have discussed Lincoln's programme and his politics extensively, and you still refuse to see the whip in his hand. The Morrill Tariff, the Emancipation Proclamation, the blockade, the illegal call for troops -- none of this seems to make any impression on you whatsoever. You are a case-hardened polemicist and not to be believed for five seconds on anything.
And there was no "revolt". The People never "revolted" against themselves -- Lincoln simply summoned illegal armies, and launched a war on them, to war down the People themselves and make his faction their master.
The Supreme Court disagrees with you. Still.
Is that right. I thought it had more to do with cultural pride.
Secession, ratification, and other sovereign acts of the People are ultra vires the Supreme Court.
That's even if the Chief Justice who wrote the opinion that you refer to without citation were not (as in the case of Salmon P. Chase) a Lincoln stooge who'd have been a defendant himself in any proceeding in justice and equity, given what the Lincoln Administration did to the People.
Invalidating tag: "I thought".
What would you know about Texas?
"Too often people forget that what we currently accept as being obvious, in an ethical sense, only became the standard response after much thought, blood, and change."
Exactly - *our* children's children will look back on us with scorn, asking "people were murdering babies to enable recreational sex and you did nothing?".
As for the movie, its premise is absurd. A confederacy would not have had the strength to fight the WWs or go to the moon.
Its likely just an excuse for the producer to bash Red Staters.
"Why was that?"
Because natives like me regard Texas as a Nation, not to be grouped up with all those silly states to our east ;)
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