More to the point, you are trying to polemicize against people who disagree with you by making them over into slavery advocates, which is just vile ad hominem.
If there is nothing to my charge, then why do you keep demanding that we defend slavery, when we don't?
Take your ad hominem and stick it.
Maybe you were provoked, but you do defend slavery. You certainly have excused segregation as a way of protecting the White population. And you've done all you could to defend slaveowners, and to remove the moral stigma from slaveowning. You and your pals have certainly argued that the right to own slaves had to be respected in 19th century America. Then when someone connects the dots, you get all angry about it. You want to have things both ways: to skate as close as you can to defending slavery in the Old South, and to throw fits, claiming that others are misrepresenting you. I'm not saying that you would want to own slaves yourself, or that you approve of slaveowning or want slavery back, but you certainly have defended slaveowning and slavery. It's what you do around here.
Your cronies attack Lincoln for showing less support for slavery and segregation in his time than you do looking back on the same period. For them, he is pro-slavery and racist. If those epithets apply to him, don't they fit you as well? How would your views of 19th century history actually differ if you were "pro-slavery," rather that whatever it is that you think you are instead? Please try to answer rationally. I'm not holding a dagger to your throat and don't know or want to know where you live.
NO one here is claiming that we desire a return to slavery, or that slavery is a blacks natural state. Some misguided people - northern and southern - might have held that opinion, but that has long since been abandoned and rightfully so.
Regarding our defending 'slaveowning and slavery' I must disagree. Speaking only for myself, I defend the LEGALITY of such at that time in our history, EVERY state admitted to the union prior to the war agreed that it was legal. Either it was a war against a foreign confederacy, or against itself, either way is was NOT a war to end slavery - Lincoln et al are on record as it simply being a war for union, and offered permanent slavery as inducement to re-join.
Yet moral revisionists here would have us to believe that the union - which LEGALLY permitted slavery, had some mystical call from God to end slavery by force of war, leading to the death of 623,000 Americans - more than any other American cause.
Now any person in their right mind would agree that any attempted invasion of the United States by England, France or any other country for the stated purpose of forcibly ending slavery would have been illegal. Any pretensions that we have of invading Cuba to depose Castro, invading Sudan to end slavery, attack the USSR to end communism, or invading England to end a monarchy would be denounced worldwide. Such a mindset would also imply that other countries have the right to invade us to end republican forms of government, which is just as ludicrous.
Then when someone connects the dots, you get all angry about it. You want to have things both ways: to skate as close as you can to defending slavery in the Old South, and to throw fits, claiming that others are misrepresenting you.
Our ancestors (I can account for over 26) fought in the Revolutionary War for our right of self-government. Each of the colonies fought for that same principle, some declaring independence before 4 Jul 1776, some after (NY IIRC). Those colonies banded together for the common purpose of defense from foreign nations, creating a common government for the MUTUAL benefit of all parties (the states), and later created a new government that admittedly would have been applicable to fewer states than previously united - no war was fought to prevent this, nor fought to force the all to re-unite - it was a VOLUNTARY Association.
During convention, all attempts to form a national government failed, the new union was federal, a compact as admitted repeatedly during convention, in the Federalist Papers, as well as state ratifications. During convention ALL attempts to use force against a state were dismissed, as was the attempt to ratify to form one people en masse, and despite Madison's motion for officers of the militia to be appointed by the federal government to help prevent secession [which was dismissed out of hand], no prohibition against secession was inserted into the Constitution. To further emphasize the limits of the delegated powers of the federal government and induce the two remaining holdouts, an amendment was added that reserved ALL powers not DELEGATED nor prohibited to the states - the parties to the compact. Even then, three of the ratifying parties explicitly RESERVED the power to resume SELF-GOVERNMENT at the ratifying states leisure. Misrepresentation? Not on our part.
No, I do not, and if you've been paying attention you would know that. Oh, wait -- you do know that, you're just smearing me. What, run out of argument so quickly? Or are you just feeling lazy today?
You certainly have excused segregation as a way of protecting the White population.
The Southern one, or the Northern one, hypocrite?
We're talking about people who lived 140 years ago, not today. This is another example of your trying to crib a cheap arguing point and play "Blemish"/ad hominem by accusing people who lived in the past of failing to measure up to modern moral predilections -- which include, by the way, popularizing lesbianism and pederasty in the public schools, easy divorce, and endorsement by public figures of the use of recreational pharmacy that would have fried the brains of anyone living in 1870. The things we put up with in the way of bad deportment, moral slovenliness, and personal ethical cheesiness (think Bill Clinton), Victorians would have found beyond shocking -- they'd just stop talking to you, forever, if they thought you indulged that kind of thing.
I've told you guys before about playing this game. I'm not going to let this go. Stop it now -- it's morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest. You know as well as I do that you cannot lay your own moral compass on people separated from you by so large a distance in time, customs, laws, and manners. You know better than this.
Yes, because that right was protected by the Constitution until and unless someone amended it, and to despise that right, however unwisely, imprudently, or questionably held to, was to walk on the Constitution -- and on the very idea of rights. Either people have all their rights, or they don't have any. You know that.
Then when someone connects the dots, you get all angry about it.
No, I get angry about people who keep dragging invalid forms of argument in here to try to prove that Jeff Davis was an australopithecine morlock, when nothing of the sort was true, and to shout "and you're another!" at anyone who won't let you have your way.
You want to have things both ways: to skate as close as you can to defending slavery in the Old South, and to throw fits, claiming that others are misrepresenting you.
Category error, compounded with ad hominem. If you call yourself an American, you have to defend the idea of rights, and you have to mean it, even when you disagree with the right in question, as policy.
You are the one throwing the fit. Your post is triple-distilled moral pique masquerading as reasoned discourse. You are doing exactly what University of Kansas political scientist Kimberly Smith said about the Abolitionists's use of moralizing arguments:
Using the Enlightenment model, abolitionists first claimed that slave narratives were a form of judicial testimony. Critics, however, attacked the credibility of the witnesses, so "instead of producing a consensus about the facts of slavery, the narratives became mired in epistemological uncertainty, prompting apparently endless and irresolvable disputes over the truth of slavery". Abolitionists continued to use narratives for another reason: they thought that sympathy would motivate action against slavery where reason had failed. Abolitionists like Douglass and Stowe thought that by cultivating sympathy for slaves, they could reasonably attack the immorality of slaveholders, but critics responded that they just demonized their opponents. [Emphasis supplied]Source: Kimberly K. Smith, reviewed by J. Shields, in H-Net Online.
"Action against slavery", of course, is in the circumstances a euphemism for starting a bloody civil war.
I'm not saying that you would want to own slaves yourself, or that you approve of slaveowning or want slavery back, but you certainly have defended slaveowning and slavery. It's what you do around here.
Yeah, when we run out of pins to stick in our corn dolls, that's what we do around here. And I would point out it's scarcely a concession on your part, to say on the one hand that I don't want to own slaves, while saying on the other that I date axe-murderesses and wear pink leos. Would you please pay attention to the argument and not the leotards?
And here come the axe-murderesses:
Your cronies attack Lincoln for showing less support for slavery and segregation in his time than you do looking back on the same period. For them, he is pro-slavery and racist.
In the first place, why don't you take that up with them? In the second place, would you like to try to parse that again? You are accusing modern Southerners of supporting slavery, again. What you granted with one hand above, you take away now with the other. Why don't you make up your mind?
Thirdly, your statement still doesn't parse: so far, I have you saying that we say that Lincoln was racist and pro-slavery, but we reprobate him for being insufficiently racist and pro-slavery. Your flair for moral comparisons is making you incoherent. Try logic. It's like a sort of mental road map, to help keep you from getting lost and wandering around.
If those epithets apply to him, don't they fit you as well?
Whom are you asking? Me, or all of us? Gee, I'd have to take a poll, but I'm pretty confident starting off with a count of at least one non-racist, or even anti-racist in stand_watie.
But I'm puzzled how you could infer anything about Lincoln's critics, from Lincoln's rhetoric -- the language that nolu chan quoted in luxuriant extension. Pardon me if I don't make a big effort to help you out here, but after all, you are saying something pretty vicious about people on our side of the argument. You're on your own, bucko.
How would your views of 19th century history actually differ if you were "pro-slavery," rather that whatever it is that you think you are instead?
How would my view of the sum of four plus six differ from that of Professor Einstein, or of Albert Speer? We'd all get the same answer. The 19th century was the 19th century. This happened, then that happened. Or it didn't. Whether it did or not is not a subjective process for logical people, unlike you liberals and your endless, restless search for "usable history".
Please try to answer rationally.
Just as soon as you ask a rational question. Are you up for it?