Posted on 08/14/2018 5:54:38 PM PDT by Kaslin
Anti-Confederate liberals (of various races) can't get over the fact that pro-common-sense liberals, moderates and conservatives (of various races) can't go over the fact that rhetorical agitation over race has led us down a blind alley.
The supposed "nationalist" rally in Washington, D.C., last weekend was more an embarrassment to its promoters than it was anything else significant. No one showed up but cops, journalists and anti-nationalist protesters.
Ho-hum. We're back approximately where we were before the Charlottesville, Virginia, disaster the Washington march was meant to commemorate -- a foul-tempered shouting match that ended in death for a bystander hit by a "nationalist"-driven car.
A vocal coterie continues to think all vestiges of the late Confederacy -- especially, statues of Gen. Robert E. Lee -- should be removed from the public gaze. A far larger number, it seems to me, posit the futility, and harm, that flow from keeping alive the animosities of the past.
The latter constituency rejects the contention that, look, the past is the present: requiring a huge, 16th-century-style auto da fe at which present generations confess and bewail the sins of generations long gone. The technique for repenting of sins one never committed in the first place is unknown to human experience. Nevertheless, it's what we're supposed to do. Small wonder we haven't done it, apart from removing the odd Lee statue, as at Dallas' Lee Park. To the enrichment of human understanding? If so, no one is making that claim.
Looks as though we're moving on to larger goals, like maybe -- I kid you not -- committing "The Eyes of Texas" to the purgative flames, now that the venerable school song of the University of Texas, and unofficial anthem of the whole state, has been found culpable.
Culpable, yes. I said I wasn't kidding. The university's vice provost for "diversity" has informed student government members who possibly hadn't known the brutal truth that "The Eyes" dates from the Jim Crow era. "This is definitely about minstrelsy and past racism," said the provost. "It's also about school pride. One question is whether it can be both those things."
Maybe it can't be anything. Maybe nothing can be, given our culture's susceptibility to calls for moral reformation involving less the change of heart than the wiping away of memory, like bad words on a blackboard. Gone! Forgotten! Except that nothing is ever forgotten, save at the margins of history. We are who we are because of who we have been; we are where we are because of the places we have dwelt and those to which we have journeyed.
A sign of cultural weakness at the knees is the disposition to appease the clamorous by acceding to their demands: as the Dallas City Council did when, erratically, and solely because a relative handful were demanding such an action, it sent its Lee statute away to repose in an airplane hanger. I am not kidding -- an airplane hanger.
Civilization demands that its genuine friends -- not the kibitzers and showmen on the fringe -- when taking the measure of present and future needs, will consider and reflect on the good and the less than good in life, not to mention the truly awful and the merely preposterous. To remember isn't to excuse; it's to learn and thus to grow in wisdom and understanding.
In freeing the slaves, Yankee soldiers shot and blew up and starved many a Confederate. Was that nice? Should we be happy that so many bayonets ripped apart so many intestines? No. Nor should we be happy that so many Africans came in innocence to a land of which they knew nothing to work all their days as the bought-and-paid-for property of others.
History is far more complex, far more multisided than today's self-anointed cleansers of the record can be induced to admit. I think the rest of us are going to have to work around them. In the end, I think, and insofar as it can be achieved, we're going to have to ignore them.
Sure, the losers did, constantly changed hoping to find a winning formula.
Winners didn't change much.
Thomas Jefferson took over the Virginia-centered anti-Federalists faction in Washington's government, renaming themselves "Democratic Republicans" opposed to Northern John Adams' Federalists.
In 1800 Southern Jeffersonians became the majority and ruled in Washington until secession in 1861 -- as Southern Democrats.
Southern Democrats ruled by allying with Northern big-city immigrant bosses, i.e., Tammany Hall & Martin Van Buren.
After Civil War that alliance was quickly reestablished and worked to elect Democrat President Cleveland in 1884.
Blue = Democrats:
Pelham: "Pigeonholing of the parties creates a comic book version of American history... which is what Dinesh is doing, ergo his popularity... "
But why deny obvious facts?
The fact is that Southerners voted for Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party, for Jackson's Democrats and for secession.
After Civil War they remained Southern Democrats until, basically, LBJ kicked them out and Barry Goldwater invited them in.
It didn't happen overnight, of course, but it did happen.
Pelham: "...he’s also playing a me-too game of vilifying American history, as in his recent attack on Andrew Jackson. "
I've seen no attack on Jackson, except the Trail of Tears, but Jackson was a Southern Democrat & slaveholder.
Like our President, I admire Jackson as a patriot, military leader, and for paying off the national debt, the only president ever to do so.
That explains his reluctance to outright abolish the "tariff of abominations".
Pelham: "But it all scratches the itching ears of conservatives today who like their history to be a simple morality tale that puts them on God’s side, which in this telling is the angelic GOP.
Nothing new in that idea either."
Of course conservatives are on God's side!
It's what being conservative is all about -- the Constitution and the Bible, not necessarily in that sequence.
Why would Pelham find that objectionable?
Which part of your own beliefs rejects God or traditional morality?
As for "angelic GOP", nobody today claims President Trump is "angelic", but we think his policies are closer to our Founders' intent than anything anyone on the Left advocates.
Was Lincoln "angelic"?
Well, first, let's go back further, to George Washington, was he angelic? Some thought so:
And Lincoln? Maybe, a little:
Bottom line is that George Washington's Federalists became Lincoln's Republicans and today's conservatives.
Are we always on the side of angels?
Unlike Democrats, we always try to be.
Rubbish.
Ohioan: "Nowhere--apart from the baldest of assertions--do you actually paint a dynamic picture of the actual interaction between the parties.
Moreover, you conmtinually elevate form over substance. "
Total nonsense, what was your phrase?
Ohioan: "Moreover, you conmtinually elevate form over substance."
More "arrogant pretense" and "parochial strut", I'd say.
Ohioan: "The pejorative terminology, which you prefer in an historic debate, where it is inappropriate, says far more about you than it does about those whom you denounce.
In some places it is particularly ridiculous. "
So what exactly is your problem with terms like "Fire Eater", "peculiar institution", "slaver", "copperhead", "doughface", "wide awakes", "slave power", " 'Ape' Lincoln", "Black Republicans", "yankees" or "rebels"?
Do you condemn everyone who uses historical terms, or only those defending the Union?
Ohioan: "For example, you refer to me as a "lost causer."
Please point to some place where I lament General Grant's victory.
As a patriotic Ohioan, I certainly do not..."
Sure, lots of Lost Causers objected to being called "neo-Confederates", so I switched to "pro-Confederates" and nobody objects to that.
If you wish to distinguish yourself from all other Lost Causers, I'm all ears -- distinguish away, FRiend.
Tell us all the many places where you disagree with and oppose other Lost Causers' arguments.
Feel free to use, or not use, whatever more colorful terms from that period (i.e., "Ape" Lincoln, "Black Republicans") you wish.
Ohioan: "I do believe that the South had the better legal argument in the war, for reasons you will find discussed in this thread."
If I get time, I'll go back and respond to your previous posts.
In the mean time, I gather you wish to make the Lost Causers' arguments without being yourself called a "Lost Causer", right?
Fine, first tell us where you disagree with and oppose our Lost Causers.
By the way, let us note here that we now have a third supposedly non-Southerner making the Lost Cause arguments, the others being self-admittedly DiogenesLamp and presumably jeffersondem.
Combined your voices drown out the real Southerners here, a fact of great interest.
After all, we can totally understand how a Southerner born & raised on the mother's milk of pro-Confederate Lost Causer mythology would not wish to throw it away on Free Republic.
But what excuse can there be for a Northerner who presumably learned the truth at some point would wish to discard it for a pack of Lost Cause lies?
Ohioan: "But where you really go overboard is with your Nazi argument.
The implied suggestion that we can not make judgments against a foreign political party that attacked us, for the reasons that it was very inappropriate to make moral judgments against a sister State in our Federal alliance, demonstrates your total obliviousness to the actual dynamics of the relationship."
Such a long-winded sentence hiding such a weak argument!
I get it: you don't like the Nazi argument, even if I generously offer to play the role of the Nazi?!
Fine, we can use any example, how about Tojo Japanese, who were our allies in the First World War?
Suppose I said to you:
Just as with Confederates.
Ohioan: "It is not about your childish word games; there are clear and obvious markers, which have clear & obvious meaning in the context of interaction."
"Childish word games" describes your arguments here.
Ohioan: "For example Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution gave each State effective total control of the suffrage--including Federal suffrage--within that State.
Who would be allowed to vote gets deeply into a species of political/social values, ethics--moral questions."
Which is why the 13th amendment was required to define limits on such state authority.
And your point here is what, exactly?
Ohioan: "For other examples of the importance of respecting the acceptance of an interaction based upon mutual respect, note Article I, Sec. 9; Article IV, etc."
And your point here is what, exactly?
Ohioan: "Or consider the solemn pledge, at the end of the Declaration Of Independence! (Incidentally, you quote the Declaration out of context, in a dishonest way"
Incidentially, I have never quoted the Declaration out of context, or in a dishonest way.
So your point here is what, exactly?
Ohioan: "You cannot reasonably postulate a continuing Union between the parties without assuming the mutual respect, which was the foundation.
Securing the 'Blessing of Liberty' to the Founders' posterity absolutely required same."
So you're trying to say something about "mutual respect"?
And that is what, exactly?
Ohioan: "As to the terrible effect of Reconstruction on the new Freedmen in the South, you might want to get a hold of a copy of the study by the -- I believe -- chief actuary of Prudential Insurance, Frederick L. Hoffman, in the 1890s, which documents the point"
And that point is what, exactly?
I'll repeat my point: Reconstruction ended as a result of the 1876 presidential election when Republicans agreed to pull Union troops out of the South, thus ending enforcement of the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments and allowing white Southerners to become what they most wanted -- Black Codes, Jim Crow, voting restrictions, KKK-type enforcement, ending Republican African-American influence in Southern legislatures and the US Congress.
Ohioan: "Or since you claim to be defending Abraham Lincoln, explain how the Thad Stevens Radical Republicans carried out his pledge of "with malice towards none," etc., to bind up the wounds. (There is an ocean of malice in the 14th Amendment, if you are not too busy to look.)"
I support the 14th amendment as originally intended, not as misused & misapplied by modern activist judges.
As for your alleged "malice", there was infinitely less malice in Union officials than there was in some ex-Confederates towards their newly freed ex-slaves.
But the bottom line question here is, why would an alleged Northerner like Ohioan voluntarily buy into a pack of Lost Causer lies, and if you haven't really purchased all of them, can you explain which ones you dispute & oppose?
DiogenesLamp lives in a fantasy world, some of it his own creations, a world ruled over by "Northeastern power brokers" who send a "war fleet" to "attack Confederates" in Charleston harbor.
So DiogenesLamp hates the truth or any facts which burst his mythological bubble.
That's why he shrinks from my posts like Count Dracula from the Cross of truth.
DiogenesLamp: "Ohioan's point was that BroJoeK used pejoratives.
BroJoeK says they were accurate for the time period.
Flaw in BroJoe's thinking is that we are not currently in that time period.
Today those terms are considered pejorative, so, not such a brilliant response in my opinion."
Spoken like a true Democrat!
You Democrats want to refight the Civil War and you want your side to win this time, so the first thing you have to do is take control of the language!
How very Democrat-ic.
So you're going to condemn my use of colorful terms from the time -- will you also condemn their use by Lost Causers?
jmacusa post #265: "The more I listen to these Johnny Reb wannabes the more I’m convinced none, certainly the majority of them never had an ancestor that was anywhere near having held a musket and worn a Confederate cloth."
DiogenesLamp: "Absolutely true of me.
My family didn't arrive here until the 1900s, and they didn't settle in any confederate state. Don't have anyone I have to defend on either side.
That's why I can see the conflict more objectively."
But there's nothing "objective" about DiogenesLamp's posts here -- you've bought into all the Lost Causer mythology and concocted some new stuff of your own to add to it.
Why?
Your cover story makes no sense -- you claim a black roommate bragged how Lincoln "tricked" Jefferson Davis into attacking Fort Sumter and now suddenly all of real history in your mind is false and all Lost Causer mythology is true??
It doesn't wash because Davis intended to attack both Forts Sumter and Pickens before he knew anything of Lincoln's "invasion fleet".
DiogenesLamp: "The South had the right to leave, (As asserted in the Declaration of Independence, and as Lincoln himself described in two different written statements) and the North did not attack them to stop slavery. "
The North did not attack them first, period.
Confederates attacked & illegally seized many Federal properties, threatened Union officials, fired on Union ships, attacked Union forces in Union states and formally declared war on the United States long before a single Confederate soldier was killed in battle by any Union force and before any Union army invaded a single Union state.
DiogenesLamp: "The North attacked them to keep control of Southern money and European trade. "
So now we start into DiogenesLamp's Marxist contribution to Lost Causer mythology -- "it was all about those evil Northeastern power brokers' money..."
DiogenesLamp: "The Civil War created the "Establishment/Crony Capitalist system", loosely centered on New York and Washington, and which we are still fighting to this day."
Still nonsense, regardless of how often you post it.
Let me refer you to Item #6 in the 1860 Republican party platform:
I'd call that a non-denial.
"Dixiecrats" makes my point stronger than just "Southern Democrats".
But if you wish to correct me, then by all means do: what, exactly, is your political genealogy?
Why would the real John S Mosby, noted for his post-war opposition to Lost Cause mythology, become a screen name for somebody here to sell it?
Hmmmmmm…. ?
Ditto that!
Naw, the real reason is DiogenesLamp fears the truth & avoids facts the way Count Dracula shrinks from the true Cross.
That's why he won't read my posts.
DiogenesLamp: "What I have are facts.
I can show where the money went.
You guys can't."
You can show nothing factual that opposes real history.
Nobody denies that money flowed in 1860 just as it flows today, from producers to consumers & back again by various routes & reasons.
Nobody denies that once secessionists began renouncing their debts and refusing to pay what they owed, then Northern Democrat merchants suddenly had skin in the game.
Instead of supporting their Southern brethren's secession, they now began to oppose it.
But there's no evidence -- none, zero, zip evidence -- suggesting those Democrats were suddenly driving Republican Lincoln's policies or actions.
DiogenesLamp: "This Country is ruled by New York and Washington DC mostly, and every day people bitch about the Media (New York) and the "Establishment" (Washington DC) and not a one of you can see when this all started, and why it has kept going."
It started with the first US administration in Washington, DC, and that was.... ?
Oh, yeh, Southern Democrat Thomas Jefferson, 1801.
Sorry, FRiend, but you'll have to be more specific to make sense.
What "little cabal" did I allude to, and where?
What does that have to do with Chapel Hill?
Who did we tolerate for 20 years?
No, Pelham is committed to an interpretation which minimizes the role of Southern Democrats from Day One until today.
Ohioan: "An immigrant cherry picking incidents to call attention to himself by "proving" a fantasy interpretation, is only a distraction -- albeit a very unfortunate distraction, when we are at a pass where an American future is the real issue."
There is certainly a historical fantasy at work here, the Lost Cause fantasy, which turns real history on its head.
That fantasy is supported on Free Republic by the likes of Pelham, DiogenesLamp, wardaddy & seemingly, Ohioan.
For those born & raised in the South, it's fully understandable, but for those not, it's incomprehensible.
“You understand American politics.”
I got a chuckle out of that little gem.
rockrr: "I got a chuckle out of that little gem."
Who says that?
Maybe yet another who's on the prod to chivvy his mess & gom into a tally book?
What do you think, is Ohio now a different country?
;-)
No, the fact is Southern support for secession was exactly proportional to the numbers & percentages of slave-holder families.
Southern regions with few-to-no slaves remained loyal Unionists -- i.e. Appalachia.
In such regions "support" for the Confederacy was only achieved through violence against civilians.
Ohioan: "This is not to say there was anything wrong with a civil discussion of philosophic differences"
You mean the types of discussions enforced by today's Snowflakes in their "safe spaces"?
I suspect you intended to say something important here.
Would you like to say what that is?
But no such claim of eminent domain was ever advanced by any Confederate entity.
Instead they merely seized what they wanted, demanded surrender, threatened Federal officials and fired on Union ships.
There was no pretense to legality in it and no offer to Congress of compensation.
I don’t hold Ohio responsible. Just like I don’t hold southern states responsible...
How about if we start here: huge regions in every Southern state were both respectful of Union and opposed to secession:
All told, millions of whites in the Upper South and Border States opposed secession, and that's not even considering slaves -- how much respect did those Unionists receive from Confederates?
But there's another important question: how much respect did Southerners on the US Supreme Court show, in 1857, in concocting their Dred Scott ruling?
Anyway, here's the bottom line: in 1776 and 1787 our Founders achieved mutual respect by, among other things, compromising on slavery.
All of the leaders recognized slavery as morally wrong and in need of abolition, gradually, eventually, lawfully, with some compensations.
They gave Federal government authority over international slave trade and slavery in territories.
They expected slavery to die out lawfully & peacefully.
By 1860 all that changed.
Now slavers claimed slavery was a positive good, better than Northern "wage slavery" and should be expanded, certainly into western territories and even via Dred Scott into Northern states.
That's what p*ss*d off Republicans, big time.
Respect is a two way street.
FLT-bird: " 'stray temporarily from the constitution'.
LOL! This is exactly the argument his sycophants made.
Its the same argument tyrants always make."
First of all the Constitution makes provisions for extraordinary actions "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
Such actions are not unconstitutional.
Second, claims that "Lincoln the tyrant" did anything unconstitutional are not supported by any court ruling or Congressional act ever.
Such claims remain creatures of Lost Cause propaganda and nothing else.
FLT-bird: "It wasn’t a rebellion.
It was states exercising their sovereign right to peacefully leave a voluntary union."
But those states did peacefully leave the Union, nobody stopped them or even slowed them down.
Lincoln even told them they could not have a war unless they themselves started it.
So they did.
In post #282 I promised to go back and review your previous posts to learn exactly what was that "better legal argument" and your reasons for thinking so.
I have now reviewed your posts on this thread and find no such "better legal argument" or your reasons for thinking them so.
Did I look in the wrong places?
"Peculiar institution" wasn't a pejorative term used by Northerners or abolitionists.
It was a euphemism used by Southerners and slave owners, a way of talking about slavery without using the word "slavery."
"Peculiar" in this case didn't mean "weird" or "strange" but "unique to" or "exclusive to."
Once again, WEEKS later, you desperately try to draw me back in to one of these threads.
Get a hobby.
Right you are BroJoe. Missouri was split between between competing factions, procession and against. Missouri then would be what we would call today a ‘’hot mess’’ of divided loyalties. Maryland’s population for the most part wanted to secede but it’s legislature didn’t. When Lincoln learned of this he sent troops to make sure they stayed in the building till the mobs who wanted to storm the place could be dispersed. And the Confederate legislature itself was another matter. Absenteeism, legislators away fighting the war. A quorum could gathered to get any serious business done
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