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.
Nowhere does it say in the constitution that a state does not have the right to secede - more perfect or otherwise.
Secession was legal and was the original intent of the states which ratified the constitution in the first place.
“It covered all states then in rebellion...”
I know all that but it had no legal effect, it was merely to encourage the slaves to revolt. If they remained on the plantations they were no more or less free than they were before. Most Americans today seem to believe that it freed all the slaves immediately which is only a fantasy. The slaves who fled when the proclamation was issued could just as well have fled the day before.
What a sharp rapier intellect you have plus a profound nuanced understanding of US history. /sarc
Except that there was no "klan machine" before the movie. The original klan began with guerilla war resistance to Union occupation during Reconstruction and had been defunct for years. The 2nd Klan arose because of the movie, which people today don't realize was the first major motion picture. It was the first instance of a movie reproducing itself in real life.
The 2nd Klan was national and it had as many members in the Midwest and Far West as the South. Typical members were middle class white men. The vast majority regarded it as fraternal organization promoting a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant America at a time of mass immigration from Eastern Europe.
At its peak as they waved American flags while parading through the streets of Washington DC in 1925 the Klan had around a million members and wielded political clout.
Students of American history may remember the first Catholic candidate for President. Al Smith, Democratic nominee in 1928. I wonder how Dinesh manages to explain that in his KKK = Democrats game.
1924 Democratic National Convention
"The Ku Klux Klan had surged in popularity after World War I, due to connections of its public relations leadership to those who had promoted the successful Prohibition Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, becoming a political power throughout many regions of the United States. It reached the apex of its power in the mid-1920s, when it exerted deep cultural and political influence on both Republicans and Democrats. Its supporters had successfully quashed an anti-Klan resolution before it ever went to a floor vote at the 1924 Republican National Convention earlier in June, and proponents expected to exert the same influence at the Democratic convention.
Instead, tension between pro- and anti-Klan delegates produced an intense and sometimes violent showdown between convention attendees from the states of Colorado and Missouri. Klan delegates opposed the nomination of New York Governor Al Smith because Smith was a Roman Catholic. Most Klan delegates instead supported William Gibbs McAdoo. Non-Klan delegates, led by Sen. Oscar Underwood of Alabama, attempted to add condemnation of the organization for its violence to the Democratic Party's platform. The measure was narrowly defeated, and the anti-KKK plank was not included in the platform.
In a few sentences you sum up the conundrum very succinctly.
Madison’s opinion was enunciated in a letter from him to Alexander Hamilton during the NY state ratification convention decades before.
A representative republic does not require universal consent to get anything done. A confederacy does not demand a representative republic. There were no such things when millions have no say in anything. The southern political Rulers also did not franchise many of the White population.
Only the Original Seven had even a slight pretension to secession. ALL the other states were created by the federal government - the Congress.
Those arguing as you do seem to ignore the difference between a confederacy and a federal government. This is discussed in the Federalist - Hamilton, I think.
On the contrary. The Confederate Constitution protected slave imports, guaranteed that any territories acquired by the Confederacy would be slave territories, ensured that individual states could not outlaw slavery, and likely ensured that it could not be amended to end slavery entirely. Protections that the U.S. Constitution did not provide.
and of course it was Lincoln who chose to make war.
But it was Davis who chose to start the war.
Yes they’re talking about the South....which has been ideologically consistent in opposing centralized power and favoring smaller government for well over 200 years.
LOL! We must be thinking of different South's.
You are beating a Dead Horse.
Show me the statements.
Only in GA where Sherman was burning his way to the sea and destroying everything so nobody, black or white, had anything to eat.
Autocrat though he may have considered himself to be, Davis was not the only Southern leader of the rebellion. And many of those that were listed slavery as the reason behind their actions.
Between the globalist Free Traitors™ and the South bashing state-ists there are very few reliable Freepers that post will the truth.
Thanks for your great post BTW.
That was what the Constitution did.
What do you think “constitution” means. It is a foundation for a system of laws not a pile of bricks.
Surely that little pin-prick won’t cause the whole balloon to burst. Pulling that pillar from the house doesn’t mean it will collapse.
Sumter was a federal fort granted the Union 30 or 40 years before by South Carolina. Unless you believe Indian Givers act appropriately.
It had no authority over Sumter.
You once again display a total lack of understanding of US history and the Constitution. Please post the article and section making secession unconstitutional. We’re all waiting.....
Lol, that is pretty funny.
Oddly, Neither Madison nor Hamilton ever claimed states did not have the right to unilaterally secede anywhere in the Federalist Papers. For that matter, neither objected when New York, Virginia and Rhode Island passed express provisos reserving their right to secede when they ratified the constitution - nor did either claim the ratifications of those states were thereby defective. Unilateral secession was entirely consistent with the Constitution. Both Madison and Hamilton went on at length to assure states that they were not surrendering their sovereignty to the newly created federal government and that it would not become some all powerful leviathan........which is what it has become today after usurping all sorts of powers the states never agreed to give it.
In fact, in the NY Ratification Convention, Hamilton expressly said that the federal government had no right to force states to remain in via the sword.
If you want to play the card that the elected political leaders in the South did not have the votes of all White voters (or of Blacks or of Women) OK.....but then by that logic nobody was truly democratically elected until well into the 20th century. They were democratically elected in 1860 just as surely as they were in 1790.
All states are equal under the Comity Principle. To claim a state does not have the right to secede because it was not one of the original 13 states is a nonstarter.
So Davis was a “tyrant” as much as Lincoln.
The Confederate Constitution banned the slave trade.
The Confederate Constitution also allowed states to join which did not have slavery - and did not require them to adopt it.
Oh and of course it was Lincoln who chose to start the war.
Clearly we must be thinking of different Souths. The South...Dixie...the Southern states has consistently been in favor of decentralized government, limited government powers and balanced budgets.
Which statements specifically?
The obvious does not require justification.
You need to step up your game.
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