History, but not as America knows it (The Politically Incorrect Guide to the History of America)

timesonline.co.uk ^ | February 06, 2005 | Sarah Baxter

[x]

Secession probably existed as a theoretical right, the union was originally a union of largely sovereign states which voluntarily turned over certain powers to the national government voluntarily and these powers theoretically could be reclaimed by the states.

Just about anything can be right in theory or a right in theory. Theories tend to multiply and swarm around the available facts. In 1860 plenty of Americans, from the President, President-elect, and Attorney General on down assumed that unilateral secession at will was unconstitutional. Given the disagreement it would have been for the best had the Supreme Court ruled on the question, or had the states appealed to Congress for deacession, but the rush to form a new country was too great.

[GOPcapitalist]

Woods, sorry to say, isn't credible.

I've yet to see a substantive factual challenge to anything asserted in his book. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about all recent US history books written from a conservative perspective.

[LS]

BWA=HAHAHAHAHAAHAH.

[LS]

For starters, Woods says miscegination laws were put in place to protect blacks from whites, not to prevent the "pollution" of white blood by blacks. That is simply silly. He is apparently clueless as to when the first miscegination laws were even passed (try 1660s) and the CLEAR purpose was to prevent intermarriage so as to prevent the "inferior" race from bringing down the "superior" race. These laws were only passed when there were large numbers of interracial marriages showing up---clearly nothing to be worried about if whites were taking black wives, because black wives would be no more "abused" than white wives. But that wasn't what they were worried about: the Virginians were clearly obsessed by "black blood" mixing with white.

[GOPcapitalist]

For starters, Woods says miscegination laws were put in place to protect blacks from whites, not to prevent the "pollution" of white blood by blacks. That is simply silly.

Do you recall the page number that is on?

[Celtman]

I guess it depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

      The question is whether an "Authorization for Use of Military Force" constitutes a declaration of war.  My answer is no.  It's not a new question.  The Korean "Police Action" had all of the trappings of a war, except for a declaration of war - and it has not ended, it's just suspended by an armistice.  Was the invasion of Iraq autuorized by an act of Congress?  Yes.  Was that Act authorized by the Constitution?  No.  Does it matter?  Yes.

[Celtman]

Thanks - dare I ask Finland?

      No, don't believe the US ever declared war on Finland, but I don't believe that Finland ever declared on the US, either, and I doubt that Finnish and US forces ever fought a battle.  Finland did fight our "allies", the Soviet Union, after they were invaded, but by the end of the war, they were fighting against the Germans, and Finland was not occupied by the Allies.

[Wneighbor]

I like it already and I haven't even read it. LOL

[Destro]

I would love a sit down over a beer. I agree with you completly and I accept Turner's conclusions, like all conclusions with such archeological evidence with an asterik.

[Destro]

I know the Brits bombed Finland.

[Chad Fairbanks]

And we pulled our ambassador from Finland sometime in 1944 when the Finns kept up their war with the USSR... but now, we didn't declare war on them... :)

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I suppose there should have been a resolution added to allow the president to use harsh language.

[Auntie Dem]

Not credible, I'm sorry.

You mean those Mayans who carved that "horse", or whatever large four-legged animal it was, didn't know what they were doing?

Or do you mean they carved that image while on peyote, and it was just some imagined animal?

As to the long-nosed Rain God, why is it the first European "archaeologist" (such as they were in the mid- 1800's) who drew the first drawings of the Mayan ruins with Chac's long curled nose, drew them clearly as elephants? (I think his name was Maudseley). A reasonable argument could be made that as one who had seen a living elephant those long curling snouts would remind him of an elephant. But why could not the same argument be made about the Mayans who carved those images? It is because the later PC Archaeologists all "knew" there were no elephants in the Americas--at least during the times the Mayans (or the much earlier Olmecs) populated Central America.

Conventional Wisdom often holds us back from the discovery of Truth that inconveniently contradicts that Conventional "Wisdom".

[Destro]

It looks like a horse to you - it may well be a badly drawn or stylized dog. Fossil evidence indicates NO horses in America until they were introduced by the Spanish. Also how can you be sure when the carvings were made?

The Mayans wrote everything down - they wrote nothing about the horse or any large draft animal that had vanished within memory. Such a memory would have been around and have eliminated the shock of seeing Spanish mounted on horses.

Sorry, not credible.

[Destro]

PS: Are you a Mormon?

[Destro]

PS: The images of horses and elephants I am talking about are from carved stone slabs that were found in the mid to late 1800s. Most if not all were hoaxes.

[Auntie Dem]

Fossil evidence indicates NO horses in America until they were introduced by the Spanish.

Not true.

http://www.acnatsci.org/museum/leidy/paleo/equus.html

says there were remains of horses on the American continent that are pre-Columbian. Is this site not credible? I searched on "Horses in ancient america" and came up with 10 + hits, not all of which are "Mormon" related. There is ample evidence that this issue is far from settled--at least beyond the closed minds of the PC crowd.

Also how can you be sure when the carvings were made?

Can anyone be sure when anything was carved? The photo I saw of the horse was taken around 1950, and it is on a stone that is an integral part of a ruined building (the Nunnery, I think), IMHO it is not a forgery, if it were forged with the intent of making people think horses were among the Mayans, when all credible PC archaeologists know there were none, the forger would have carved a more convincing "horse". Moreover, why would anyone need to create false evidence of the existence of animals that even real science admits were on this continent, even if they don't agree on the timing? The PC crowd says elephants and horses (equus) were extinct 10,000 years ago. They easily could have missed a few isolated herds that survived for a few thousand years more until they interacted with the Olmecs between 3,200 B.C. and their (the Olmecs) subsequent demise around 200 B.C.

Perhaps the reason the Mayans associated the image of an elephant with a rain god, is because the elephants were more plentiful when the climate was wetter, but became extinct during a prolonged drought. Deifying a symbol of wetter climate would be one way a culture would try to end droughts.

Science is continually discovering some species they thought died out eons ago, finding out that small herds of horses or elephants survived a couple of thousand years longer than they thought is no big deal.

The Mayan culture had apparently developed a "tradition", for lack of a better word, that eschewed the use of draft animals, even if they had them. It appears the Mayan kings preferred being transported around by servants on couches (?). They also apparently didn't use wheeled transportation despite the presence of an extensive network of wide, paved roads. This aversion to wheels for transportation is puzzling when we discover the Mayans had wheeled toys. They must have had some cultural reason for not using the wheel for transportation. I find it dificult to believe that an ancient society that had the numeric concept of zero, plotted the orbits of multiple planets, and calculated lunar and solar calendars equal in accuracy to our own calendars, was too stupid to know about the wheel.

I am not beholden to any requirement that horses and elephants be proven to have existed among the Mayans. None of my beliefs would be shaken if it could be proven that was the case. IMHO the stone depictions of Chac the Rain God look more like an elephant than do the stone depictions the PC Arcaeologists say are jaguars look like jaguars. They admit the Mayans knew what a jaguar looked like because the jaguars are still there. They don't think the Mayans knew what an elephant looked like because the elephants are not still there. (Maybe the jaguars ate all the elephants?)

[FDNYRHEROES]

So why is there a picture of actor Tom Beringer potraying General James Longstreet on the cover of the book?

[Destro]

Horses were LONG extinct and were NEVER domesticated before the Spanish arrived with horses in the Americas. Period.

You are a Mormon?

[Auntie Dem]

Horses were LONG extinct and were NEVER domesticated before the Spanish arrived with horses in the Americas. Period.

And your proof of this assertion is.........?

You are a Mormon?

Yes, but what does that have to do with your failure to provide proof that horses were never (absolutes are so difficult to defend) domesticated before the Spanish brought theirs here?

It seems there are plenty of other opinions out there, and most are non-Mormon, that cast a doubt on your absolute statements.

All I am saying is there is uncertainty over some of these issues, and you cannot prove your argument to the satisfaction of the sceptics--Mormon and Non-Mormon. You may, and obviously do, subscribe to your absolutist position, but the rest of the world does not.