House drops Confederate Flag ban for veterans cemeteries

politico.com ^ | 6/23/16 | Matthew Nussbaum

[ColdOne]

A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.

The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.

[HangUpNow]

Sorry, but the "delusions" are all yours.

The fact is, you don't know your own history, and that's what makes your own posts so "bizarre".

You just know well enough to get out of your on way, do you?

Firstly, there is NOTHING more bizarre and delusional than your utterly insane Alinsky-ite characterization that myself and DiogenesLamp are, "Marxists/Democrat/Alinksyite posers consumed with Liberal angst."

Secondly, *my* understanding of the newly revealed "history" is the truth as opposed to the traditionally-indoctrinated/fabricated myths, "Da North fought ovah slavery" meme; "Lincoln saved da Union."; "Da South started a YUGE war at Charleston."

You can keep on created red herrings all you want; You can keep on failing to answer the devastating detailed rebuttals and dynamics forged by DiogenesLamp, Rustbucket, and PeaRidge; You can keep on ignoring the simple principle of the righteous, rightful, and legal personal and State sovereignty issue of the Confederacy...

You and your cohorts have failed to make you case that a coercive blitzkrieg by Lincoln and his cabal of profiteering pirates and vampires that wound up killing 700,000 Americans, maimed hundreds of thousands more, and scorched earth policy upon the South was justifiable, legal, moral, or necessary. PERIOD.

[jmacusa]

Oh, please, spare me the drama. Tell me something, if the South had won the war would it have freed the slaves? And by the way your ancestor fought so a bunch of treasonous Democrats could continue profiting from an economic system based on the use of slave labor.

[DiogenesLamp]

That is quite a generalization. WEB DuBois, who later ended up very radical and opposed to Whites, didn't have anything like that experience.

WEB DuBois was a Liberal pet. His experience was not the norm among interactions between Northerners and blacks.

Many other African-Americans in the North had similar experiences.

A Few. Those who weren't participants of Liberal virtue signaling generally had a pretty difficult time.

Governments are a lot craftier than you think. Cotton mill owners recognized that their business depended on the flow of Southern cotton and thus didn't want to risk antagonizing the South, but the US government would have got along just fine.

This is a non-sequitur. Yes, Cotton Mills and Textile manufactures were very concerned, but this does nothing to address the larger effect of European imports paid for by Southern products. The Government ran on the money collected on these imports, but as I have repeatedly tried to make clear, the loss of revenue to the Government is the lesser issue in terms of economic impact to the North.

The larger body of Trade which was represented by those tariff collections would have mostly moved to Southern ports because this would allow both the Europeans who were buying the Southern Products and the Southerners who were supplying them, to avoid the middlemen.

Give it back to the slaves? I don't think the country was ready for that.

Okay, now this is just snark. Firstly, that many billions of dollars in lost capitalization to which I was referring is that money which was spent buying all those slaves.

Before the War Lincoln recognized this and made it clear he had no legal authority to deprive people of what was then valuable legal property.

Secondly, the legal system of that time would have clearly stated that the ownership of that money from Southern production would be the owners of the businesses that produced it.

If you are going to keep applying modern morality in an anachronistic fashion, you are just going to keep the discussion going around in circles. Stay with the zeitgeist currently in discussion.

I notice that you haven't bothered to defend your absurd notion that Northern industrialists in 1860 were the Globalists of the day.

To the contrary, that is pretty much all I have been doing since I put forth this idea. I am also at a loss as to how you cannot grasp the analogy.

New York controlled shipping for pretty much the entire country. Almost all the money funneled through New York. The Warehousing, Insurance, Shipping, and Banking Industries all involved in the European trade, and the vast bulk of their transactions revolved around goods produced by Slave Labor in the South.

Today is the same. New York ran global corporations still use third world slave labor to manufacture the products they distribute.

I'm not saying that plantation owners and secessionists leaders were "globalist" in the sense of being for a UN or world government, but they were anything but "small is beautiful" localists.

They were trying to become the globalists that the New York wealthy businessmen already were. So long as all their traffic funneled through New York hands, that was never going to happen.

[DiogenesLamp]

Excellent commentary and devastating analogy. Thumbs up.

Thanks. It seems clear to me that Lincoln had no strict adherence to either principle, and would simply go whichever way he thought would benefit him the most.

Whichever way you look at it, he was either denying people their freedom, or he was giving away states that he had no right to give.

[DiogenesLamp]

between Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor.

I'm not even going to entertain this notion. I flatly reject it. I am more like to question the sanity of anyone who suggests a comparison between the two.

[DiogenesLamp]

So, like DiogenesLamp, you are a secret Marxist railing against "the rich" or "the 1%" or "economic elites" ...

This is another line of thought that belongs squarely in the "Is this guy a kook?" Category.

[DiogenesLamp]

Any suggestion that "crony capitalism" in America somehow started with Lincoln, or was illegally supported by him, is ludicrous to the max.

The evidence is indicating otherwise. Sure we had corruption in government before, but nothing on the scale that we saw in the immediate aftermath of the war.

That was the most corrupt period in US History.

[DiogenesLamp]

So how is that DiogenesLamp doesn't even know the difference between New York and New England?

New York, New England, whatever the h3ll you want to call that massive special interest power block which resides within the Washington D.C. / Boston corridor.

You know, where the media gets it's orders, and where they support Big Government and underhanded Liberal Lawyer Presidents from Illinois.

[DiogenesLamp]

So why would any non-Marxist focus on things like "rampant profiteering" when more serious post-Civil War problems in the South are represented by the KKK, lynchings & disenfranchisement of black voters, segregation and discrimination against African-Americans?

This is called "deflection." You don't like where this "follow the money" line of discussion is going, so now you are trying to wave the bloody shirt.

I think i'll stay focused on this money issue. It has all the markings of being the larger moral question regarding the launching of the attack against the Southern states.

[DiogenesLamp]

I am increasingly satisfied that posters like DiogenesLamp and HangUpNow are really Marxists/Democrat/Alinksyite posers consumed with Liberal angst over "the top 1%" or "the rich" and "elites".

That's rich. I point out what appears to be corruption and you say my concern over Crony Capitalists getting away with evil despicable acts is tantamount to Marxism.

I will remind you that Adam Smith himself warned us about these sorts of unethical businessmen who attempt to create monopolies and otherwise "rent seek."

Nowadays, the Crony Capitalists are completely in bed with the Marxists. Witness how much Corporate support Obama has, and that the left has in General.

Is it also "Marxist" to point out how Bill and Hillary have misused the power of government to line their own pockets, or should we just appreciate these "capitalistic" efforts on their part?

[DiogenesLamp]

The important point to remember here is that 100% of those commercial relationships were voluntary, and they corresponded to their political alliance -- between the Southern Democrat Slave-Power and Northern Democrat big-city bosses -- i.e., Tammany Hall.

Voluntary? Is that what you call it when you jigger the laws to force the usage of Northern Shipping companies because it's far too expensive to pay the fines to use European manufactured ships or crew?

It's the same sort of "voluntary" we all experience when they tell us we must send in tax money to support policies which we find abhorrent.

It's the sort of voluntary where if you chose to do otherwise, you will soon find guns pointed in your face.

[DiogenesLamp]

No, fantasy is the notion that Confederate military force which first provoked war,

I have come around to the position that the refusal to evacuate those forts and the refusal to negotiate for a peaceable withdraw from them represents the start of the war.

Once you accept that someone is going to hang on to something that has no further value to them except as a casus belli, then you realize the intent was to have a war all along.

[DiogenesLamp]

Sadly, DiogenesLamp seems utterly consumed by his anti-historical fantasy of Charleston SC suddenly becoming an economic rival to New York, or any other major US ports.

Trade must Balance.

When you can explain how to balance the money represented by this map with the origins from whence it come, you can start arguing about "fantasy."

The reality is that the only way to balance that map as it existed in 1860, is by a whole bunch of people taking a cut out of the money that belonged to people in the South.

There's just no evidence suggesting Charleston could ever, even under conditions of peace between US & Confederacy.

You can theorize all you want, but 3/4ths of the trade represented by that money pile would move to the South if the South became independent.

~ 300 million dollars was a lot of money in 1860. The loss of which was easily enough to start a war over.

[DiogenesLamp]

Typical of pro-Confederates, they always try to divert attention from the absolute centrality of slavery, not to the North, of course, but to Fire-Eater secessionists, especially in the Deep South.

Well since the Union didn't regard it as a cause or goal of the war, why should we pay any attention to it when they didn't?

Slavery is a side issue that you and others keep desperately trying to divert the discussion towards.

You only want to talk about it until I show you how much money the Northern Power Brokers were making from it.

Northerners cared about slavery only secondarily, but to Deep South secessionists slavery was not just an issue, it was the issue over which they first declared their secessions and, in the end, refused to settle for peace on any terms better than "unconditional surrender".

So you are just going to ignore their attempts to negotiate a peaceable settlement over that Fort for which the Union no longer had any legitimate use?

Apart from that, the Southern reasons for leaving are not germane to the Northern Reasons for attacking. It was Lincoln who decided that there would be a war, and it was he who decided for how long it would continue.

He is the only man that had the power to start it or stop it, and it mattered not at all what the Southern people did, so long as someone wanted war with them, they were obliged to participate in it.

Sure, Northerners cared about slavery, somewhat, but what they really cared about was defeating the military power which had first provoked war, then started and declared war on the United States, while supporting pro-Confederates in Union states and territories.

Well sure, since Lincoln rigged that outcome and controlled what they were being told. Hearst did something similar in the Spanish/American war.

That is the power of propaganda.

[DiogenesLamp]

What did Deep South Fire Eaters want to protect in declaring secession from the United States?

Their right to be independent from what they regarded as a biased and despotic government in Washington D.C. (Same as today.)

Why did Confederates provoke, start & declare war on the United States?

When did you stop beating your wife?

When someone asks you to leave their home, they are entirely within their rights to do so. If you insist on staying when it has been made very clear to you that you are not welcome, you don't get to call them the aggressor when they toss you out of their home.

When you come back to their home with a big crowd of rowdies to whip their @$$ for tossing you out, you are still the aggressor.

[DiogenesLamp]

I’m skipping this one, because if you start it off acting like an @$$hole, I don’t expect it to get any better from there.

[DiogenesLamp]

But Lincoln certainly did attempt to negotiate by offering "a fort for a state" meaning Sumter for Virginia. But Virginians turned down Lincoln's offer.

We've already covered that. Lincoln had no legal power to do such a thing. If states have a right to leave, Lincoln could not tell them "no." If States have no right to leave, Lincoln cannot tell them "Yes."

It is an abuse of power on the very face of it.

It doesn't matter what "The Deal" was, Lincoln did not have the constitutional authority to make such a Deal.

Either the matter of states leaving was an affair for the entire government, and especially the Congress, or it was entirely a matter of the States being free to do as they wished.

From a constitutional standpoint, I don't see where Lincoln has any power to "Make a Deal" over the issue.

[DiogenesLamp]

Slavery was very important to some Northerners,

Absolutely. It was putting gold in their pockets, and they wanted business to continue as usual.

That Secession business couldn't be tolerated because it was about to interrupt the money flow.

and more as the war progressed.

As the propaganda machine cranked up, sure. Arresting thousands of dissidents tends to get everyone else on the bandwagon. Wilson did the same thing in World War I.

[DiogenesLamp]

That is a great response to DiogenesLamp's claim that "New England Power Brokers" pushed Lincoln into war.

I skewered that non-sequitur the moment I laid eyes on it. Hardly a great response. In fact I would characterize it as "not even a response".

The evidence of "follow the money" has yet to be refuted in any reasonable manner. Indeed, Charles Dickens noted that the War appeared to be over who was going to get the slave money.

…the Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug disguised to conceal its desire for economic control of the United States.…Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as many, many other evils. The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.

Oh, and lest you think he was some sort of Southern Sympathizer, he was adamantly anti-slavery. He just happened to be willing to tell the truth.

[DiogenesLamp]

What you and every pro-Confederate "conveniently ignore" is the historical fact that until 1860, the South ran Washington DC.

Well they certainly *PAID* for it, but so far as "running" it is concerned, you will have to explain to me how the 11 Southern states managed to outvote the 23 Other states, in Congress.