Posted on 06/28/2013 12:23:43 AM PDT by neverdem
It's a miracle! A fascinating and compelling movie whose plot is driven by the protagonist's fidelity to the Constitution. (In fact there were more mentions of the Constitution than any other movie I have ever seen.) You have never seen a movie like Copperhead, and you ought to take the opportunity to see it on a big screen if you live in one of the forty-some cities where it is opening today. But even if you don't, it is available today via all on-demand platforms, which is a great strategy to reach the widely dispersed audience that would appreciate this movie and have access to on-demand via cable, satellite, or the internet.
The story covers several months starting in the spring of 1862, as the Civil War began to felt in upstate New York, where dairy farmer Abner Beech holds a very politically incorrect view for his time and place: he is a so-called Copperhead who believes that the war was unwise, that President Lincoln has violated the Constitution in his conduct of the war, and the Confederacy should be allowed to go its own way or reunite with the Union, as it wishes.
Far from being a racist indifferent to slavery, Beech deplores it, and the viewer discovers that he has been secretly part of the Underground Railroad funneling fugitive slaves to Canada. The neighbors that react negatively to his stance have no clue as to his beliefs, and the abuse he endures is in the end tragic in unexpected ways. I won't spoil the plot, but it is the very opposite of a preachy, talky movie about politics. The characters have depth, the acting and directing are terrific, and the plot moves forward in a completely logical and compelling manner. There is romance, conflict, violence, and much more...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
He's not true to Fredric's novel, which may be sympathetic to Beech's convictions and suffering but doesn't pretend the Copperhead hero was actually anti-slavery or anything less than what later generations would call a racist.
I disagree that most people held their loyalty to their state first. Breckinridge accepted a general commission from the pretended Confederacy, though his home state of Ky was not a member. Pemberton also took a commission though being from Pa. Thomas was a general in the US Army, despite being from Va, as was Winfield Scott. Major Anderson was from the south, yet was loyal to the US.
People were loyal to the slave power, against the constitution, or were loyal to the US government established by the constitution. And then there were the people who hoped to avoid a distasteful duty, either because they hoped thereby to profit, or to avoid loss.
If called to jury duty, do you decline, because you are against theft, but are opposed to locking criminals up? That is the rationale that we are expected to accept from the protagonist of Copperhead.
As for Lord of the Rings, I seem to recall a lot of people trooping around with swords, some occasional competition to see who would kill the most bad guys, and a lot of arrows and lances.
Fighting for virtue is a laudable activity.
Actually we don’t assert that the common people were fighting for slavery. Rather we assert that the political class started their insurrection to further and extend the cause of human slavery, because they wrote that they did so.
The common people of the south, after having long been coerced to performing slave patrols, were coerced into fighting for the slave power, while large slave owners were given deferments from conscription.
“The most fervent Copperhead criticism of the administration revolved around race. Copperheads were deeply racist, even by the standards of their own time. Their racial fears increased as slaves ran to Union lines in search of freedom. Laborers feared that freedmen would take their jobs. Others simply did not want African Americans anywhere near them. Whatever the case, Peace Democrats were convinced that abolitionists had brought on the war by stirring up so much trouble in the antebellum period. Under the Lincoln administration, abolitionists had far too much influence and were, claimed the Copperheads, running the government. (Never mind that Lincoln was a raging moderate who moved to the left only as the war forced his hand.) Tensions were so high in the summer of 1862 that race riots broke out in Toledo and New York.”
From your link.
Most academic historians are reliable Democrats first and historians maybe later.
Except that states rights wasn’t what the pretended confederacy was about. They were for keeping and expanding slavery, and states rights to ban slavery, or even to provide a civil process for the fugitive slave, or for kidnapped whites that could be sold as slaves, anytime or anywhere was a bad thing to them.
2/3rs of House and Senate and consent of 3/4s of the state legislatures to pass an amendment. Of course if you can do that, you can pass amendments to fix various things that you think are wrong with the federal government.
You obviously missed the whole point of LOTR.
What “evil means” are you referring to in your #14?
The Ring was evil. Several of the characters wanted to use it to fight the power of Sauron, but, since the ring was so evil, the result would have been evil, no matter how good the intentions of the users.
I liken this to the government. No matter how good the intentions, the result of government action is more often evil than good, because government is inherently evil because it is based on force and coercion, a sometimes necessary evil, but mostly an intolerable one.
That’s what I thought.
I totally disagree. Lincoln’s government wasn’t evil and didn’t act with evil intent. For that matter neither was jeff davis’s. They were without a doubt wrong and wrong-headed, but not evil. There was violence during the Civil War, and misery, and heaps of hate coming from both sides that drove them on.
There were acts of unheralded courage and bravery that happened on the battlefields, and despicable acts of treachery and cowardice too. Such is the proposition of war.
Evil is simply an inappropriate term to apply.
” Lincoln’s government wasn’t evil and didn’t act with evil intent.”
I’m sure that some folks below the Mason Dixon line would not agree with you.
” For that matter neither was jeff davis’s.”
Some folks about the M-D line will disagree with that.
They can disagree all the want - they are wrong.
Lincoln was right to fight the Civil War. The South was wrong. Much as I appreciate a movie that is pro-Constitution, this one doesn’t sound like it’s it.
Maybe you are.
I doubt it. I have read it over a thousand times.
What did Tolkien say?
“Such is of the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”
They were not saved by G-d, (as the remnant of Noldorin elves and Men were perhaps saved by the Valar in the Silmarilion) but by the courage and steadfastness of Sam who (1) gave up the ring and (2) carried Frodo up the side of the mountain.
They were also saved by the nature of evil (1) Sauron’s greed made him blind to the notion that anyone could refuse the ring and (2) The interaction of the Ring and Gollum’s fallen nature: Gollum recaptured the ring and then focused on it to the exclusion of all else, to his death.
Aragorn, Eomer, Gandalf served as a diversion. The Eye of Sauron was elsewhere, not on the Hobbits that wrought his end.
The ring was used to fight and defeat Sauron. Sauron was defeated when it was destroyed.
It was not used symmetrically to counter Sauron’s force with force.
That is a woefully weak thread title. Fail.
I agree that there is much similarity between the Ring of Power and Government.
Note how the Ring achieved the desired good goals only when its power was rejected (by SAM!). In like manner, Government can achieve good goals when the its power is rejected.
Good government is small government.
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