Tendo City

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100406/ap_o...rty_blacks

Since its beginnings early last year, the TEA movement has been wrongfully labeled as a white supremacist movement made up of angry white racists. You can think the leftist mainstream media for these straw man labels.

The article linked above proves that even through a majority of the TEA party movement is white, there are other races that are not afraid to admit that they are conservatives that fully support the movement.

One thing that really angers me about this article is the sickening way that African-Americans are treated by their own people. I always hear blacks talking about the ways the white man is always getting them down. Really? Always getting you down, huh? That's funny, because according to the article, it's not whites that are the problem. Instead, it seems to be your own people that are attacking you. Being called derogatory terms like Oreo for daring to disagree with a man because he's the same color as you is so stupid that its laughable. When Bush was in office, I was never called racist by other whites for calling him an asshole. Then again, he was an asshole, so I guess there was no reason to question something that was justifiable. Still, people called what they thought he was, and never got called got called out for being a racist. Now that there's a black man in office, the issue of race has become the weapon of choice for people--especially those on the leftist side of the spectrum.

Personally, I've never been called a racist for disagreeing with Obama. However, I do know people who have. What's funny about this is that similar tactics were used when Bush was in office. If you disagreed with anything that he said, you were accused of being a terrorist sympathizer. Again, I was never no one ever said to my face, but I know that I was put in that camp. Now, things are different. Disagree with Obama? You must be a racist!!! Uh...what? I'm a racist because I don't agree with this war? I'm a racist because I don't agree with the Federal Reserve system destroying our currency via inflation? I'm a racist because I don't agree with the PATRIOT Act? I'm a racist because I don't agree with a health care bill that forces people to by something that they have a right to refuse? Many of those things were items that Obama promised to get rid of when he got into office. So far, he's continued to act like the last bozo that was in the White House. What's shocking is that people on the left side of the spectrum refuse to acknowledge any of it. Instead, they're too busy playing a card that has had its power drained.

By now, most of you are familiar with the lefts attempt to label the TEA Party movement as racist by accusing a TEA Party member of shouting the n world at an African-American member of Congress. What's funny is that those accusations are completely false. A recent video taken by someone at the TEA Party shows that the man in question was shouting "Kill the bill!" with fellow members. The n word is not mentioned once. Here's the video in question:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdOHZe8yq...r_embedded

The left has also accused the movement of cutting the gas lines attached to the houses of Democratic members of Congress. The problem, however, is that no one has come forth with any solid evidence proving it was people like me who did it. They simply accuse the TEA party because of the deep hatred that they have for the movement. I find this funny considering the factor of "hate" is what motivates the left to attack people like me on a daily basis.

The issue of violence must also be dealt with. The TEA party movement has never done anything violent at their movements. People get energized, but not to the point where riots break out.

The left, on the other hand, is guilty of such acts. Consider the following story:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/...s_bea.html

You may have heard about the story above on many news stations. To sum it up: an African-American man supporting his Constitutional and God-given right to stand against Obama was violently beaten for handing out flags that had the famous "Don't Tread on Me" words printed on them. According to the article, another black man walked up to him and shouted: "What kind of a ni**er are you?!" According to the article, Gladney--the man who was beaten up--kindly asked the man who yelled the racial slur at him if he would like a flag. Tell me: is this not racism? Is beating a man for advocating his rights not a sign of discrimination?

I want to conclude my rant with this: the issue of race is a factor that has gotten completely out of hand in this country. While I do recognize the fact that there are racists in the TEA party movement, I find it stupid and pathetic to label everyone who supports the movement as such.

We as a people need to remember that when Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he clearly stated that all men are created equal. In other words, all men are subject to the same God-given to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. None of these things are judged on factors like race. If America fails to understand this fact, we are doomed to continue this stupid race argument for decades to come.

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The Republican party in general is racist, and the tea party movement is on a right fringe of the Republican party. Should it be surprising that many of them are racists? Not exactly. So the fact that there have been quite a few very disgustingly racist posters and things said at tea party rallies isn't exactly surprising. It's sad, but not surprising. America still has a big racial problem, obviously.

For anyone who questions that the Republican Party is racist, I don't mean that all Republicans are. Of course they're not. They did for instance elect Michael Steele as party chairman. However, just look at the party. Look at how it is Southern-dominant... Southern WHITE dominant. The Republican Party crushingly dominates in the South, and that provides almost all of their solid base and most of their significant lawmakers. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Republican Party decided that, as the Democratic Party was moving in the direction of finally supporting civil rights for blacks, and thus alienating their traditional Southern Democrat base that had been a big part of their party, the Republicans would go in the opposite direction, abandon their founding principles, and jump headlong into racism. It worked brilliantly for decades, and led to a Republican-dominated period in American history. That period is now ending, though, but in the South they haven't let go...

I mean, just look at the recent scandal in Virginia over "Confederate History Month", and how the governor (a Republican) somehow forgot to mention slavery, the only actual cause of the war, the statement announcing it. He was criticized for that and did a few days later add that in, but that they'd have something like that in the first place, a month celebrating the legacy of a country founded on the principle of wanting to continue to hold slaves... we shouldn't forget the Civil War, but we also shouldn't forget why the South was actually fighting.


Anyway, to get to some of your points. No, of course disagreeing with Obama does not immediately make someone racist. Things like the support for Confederate history that is so common among white Southerners (who are now mostly Republican, and you can try to deny it but the Tea Party movement obviously comes out of the Republican Party) do. Things like the posters comparing the Obamas to monkeys do. Things like the Birther Movement does (I would estimate that somewhere around 100% of the actual reasons why birthers think that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. are because of racism, considering that there is no actual sane reason to believe such idiocy).

Anyway, yes, of course you're right that the black community has hurt itself, with its opposition to learning (people being "too white" if they try to do well in school, etc), the glorification of violence, exploitation of women, and drug use, etc. That much is obvious. And of course people shouldn't be beaten up for disagreeing with most black people, that's horrible... but that doesn't mean that the Republican Party has the intrests of poor or minority people at heart, it most certainly does not. The Tea Party movement's not the same as the traditional Republican line, but they're not much better, with how opposed they are to the social safety nets that are so vital to our poor people need so badly.

As for black Republicans, with how racist so many of the party leaders are, and with how most black people are poor and the Republican party is very strongly anti-poor and very strongly pro-rich, it's not exactly hard to understand why there aren't many of them... and the same goes for hispanics, except add in the anti-immigrant stuff there too. (On that note, President Bush II was quite far ahead of his party on hispanic issues, and actually tried to reach out to hispanics, supported immigration reform, etc. It's one of the only good things I can say about him. It's just too bad that his party wasn't behind him.)

Quote:We as a people need to remember that when Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he clearly stated that all men are created equal. In other words, all men are subject to the same God-given to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. None of these things are judged on factors like race. If America fails to understand this fact, we are doomed to continue this stupid race argument for decades to come.

Jefferson also owned slaves and supported slavery, though, so he didn't exactly live up to those ideals either... but that is part of why he's such an interesting figure, so contradictory and yet so inspiring sometimes in his rhetoric...

FYI: I don't watch FOX news. Hell, I don't watch any type of mainstream media.

Quote:deny it but the Tea Party movement obviously comes out of the Republican Party

The TEA Party movement was not started by the Republicans, Falcon. It was started by the Ron Paul movement--an organization that supports libertarian principles. The main function of the TEA Party movement when it first started was to advocate an end to the Federal Reserve, the war, and the Police State. After some time, neo con Republicans like Palin were able to hijack the movement and bring their people in. If the TEA Party movement does have racists, I can assure you that Palin's people are responsible for it. I'm part of the movement that started the TEA Party, and I can assure you that the people in Campaign for Liberty movement are not racist.

Quote:I mean, just look at the recent scandal in Virginia over "Confederate History Month", and how the governor (a Republican) somehow forgot to mention slavery, the only actual cause of the war, the statement announcing it. He was criticized for that and did a few days later add that in, but that they'd have something like that in the first place, a month celebrating the legacy of a country founded on the principle of wanting to continue to hold slaves... we shouldn't forget the Civil War, but we also shouldn't forget why the South was actually fighting.

The Civil War was not fought over slavery, Falcon. I can't believe that myth is still around. Even if slavery did have something to do with it, it was not the main reason. First off, the idea that Lincoln supported racial equality is something that needs to end. It's been proven that Lincoln thought that blacks were inferior to whites in terms of physical and mental abilities. In a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858, Lincoln said that he believed that black people could not equal themselves to whites (Woods, 2007, pg. 75). In his mind, whites and blacks could not live together in terms of "social and political equality" (Woods, 2007, pg. 75). To add more fuel to the fire, Lincoln did nothing in Illinois to "challenge the state's treatment of blacks, who could not vote, testify in court against whites, serve on juries, or attend a public school funded in part by their own tax dollars" (Woods, 2007, pg. 76).

Many of the southern generals who fought for the south supported slavery. General like Jackson and Lee were against slavery. They both went on record as describing it as a "moral and political evil" (Woods, 2007, pg. 76). James Thronwell, a well-known theologian in the south, stated that he had hoped for the power of emancipation to take place at the time of the war (Woods, 2007, pg. 76).

Another interesting thing about the Civil War is that soldiers who fought for the war were against it. Many of the letters that soldiers in the south sent home to their families stated that they were fighting for the principles of self-government and self-determination (Woods, 2007, pg. 76).

What's more is that slavery--no matter who advocated it--would have disappeared without the Civil War. In Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, Jeff Hummel makes the following observation regarding the economics of the plantations in Cuba and Brazil:

"Slavery was doomed politically even if Lincoln had permitted the small Gulf Coast Confederacy to depart in peace. The Republican controlled Congress would have been able to work toward emancipation within the border states, where slavery was already declining. In due course the Radicals could have repealed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. With chattels fleeing across the border and raising slavery's enforcement costs, and peculiar institution's destruction within an independent cotton South was inevitable" (Woods, pg. 76, 2007).

What's interesting about all this is that defenders of Lincoln have stated that they acknowledge these facts. What's more is that they admit that when Lincoln sent the first 75,000 men into the South for war, his intentions had nothing to do with slavery (Woods, pg. 77, 2007). They have stated that the idea of ending slavery evolved in Lincoln's mind (Woods, pg. 77, 2007).

The main reason that the South fought in the Civil War was the issue of sovereignty. Around the time that the war began, many Europeans began to understand that the war was about turning "the decentralized America system into a unitary modern state" (Woods, pg. 79, 2007). In other words, the "Union's constituent parts, actively resisted the central government on a great many occasions in defense of their liberties would become a unitary modern state in which any such resistance would henceforth by demonized as treasonous" (Woods, pg. 79, 2007).

Many great thinkers of the South understood the importance of stopping centralization. Consider the words of Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America:

"If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity" (Woods, 2007, pg. 80).

Robert E. Lee wrote a similar message to the British Libertarian Lord Action:

"I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only are essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it" (Woods, 2007, pg. 80).

It has been stated that if the Confederate States of America had won, they would have helped America keep its name as a country where the sovereign states and its people were the most powerful check on a government that was always subject to going out-of-control (Woods, 2007, pg. 81).

In short, even if slaves did exist in the South, they were not the main reason for the war. Furthermore, the North was not the great system that our Marxist history professors love to paint it as. If we are to learn anything from "real" history, it's that the South was fighting for its freedom. It was not fighting for the immoral practice of slavery.

A little bit of advice, Falcon: stop quoting everything that comes out of your government indoctrinated text books. If there's one thing of learned from people like Professor Tom Woods, it's that most of the stuff that I learned in my public history classes was a load of shit.

Reference:

Woods, T. (2007). 33 Questions about American History that you're not Supposed to Ask. New York, NY: Random House.

>The Civil War was not fought over slavery, Falcon.

It totally was.

Southern white politicians started the Civil War, and the idea of states' rights made it sound nicer, but let's not lose reality here: Southern white politicians started the Civil War so that they and their wealthy white plantation-owning friends could continue owning them some niggers.

Quote:The Civil War was not fought over slavery, Falcon. I can't believe that myth is still around.

Before this I haven't thought that you were racist, but you seriously believe that? Really? I guess it could just be generic Southern apology instead of racism, but the ties are so close that there's no way for someone saying what you did there to get away from the charge. Sorry, but it's true. You talk of "looking at the actual history", but you sure aren't looking at history very closely if you believe that kind of thing.

"Slavery wasn't the main cause of the Civil War" is something that has been said by many historians, but they're mostly Southern historians, and they were either trying to deceive or were misinformed, I'd say. That thinking is a lot less common now than it used to be because the real story has come out, and the old denials and excuses have fallen one by one.

On a related note, President Grant has seen a serious upswing in popularity in recent years for similar reasons. While for many years Reconstruction had been seriously maligned by those same Southern historians, called ineffective, lots of mentions of those awful "Carpetbaggers", etc, etc, in recent years more study has shown that no, in fact reconstruction WAS getting somewhere. Black people were actually elected in Southern states. Once the Republican Party abandoned reconstruction in 1876 for electoral victory (look up that incredibly contested election for the details), that wouldn't happen again for nearly a century in many parts of the south. Grant did have many corrupt people in his administration, but that wasn't his fault, and reconstruction was a good, if ultimately unsuccessful because it was ended early, effort. Grant isn't called one of our worst presidents quite as often anymore I think...

Confederate apology is looked on very dimly by most black (and liberal) leaders for a very good reason, it's excusing slavery and racism. In fact, only white Southerners believe that anything other than slavery caused the Civil War. You won't find many people outside of the South saying things like that, because they aren't true. Why, then, do so many white Southerners insist that it was a "glorious cause" and try to deny the links to the only thing that caused the war? I'm not sure, but to theorize...

-Guilt -- admit it and you have to admit your heritage and history of slavery and racism against other humans. Deny and you can keep pretending that it wasn't so bad.
-Continuing racism -- As I said in my last post, white Southerners are almost certainly the most racist block of people in the country. While most white Southerners probably don't want slavery back, they don't like black people very much, so who really minds THAT much what we did...

I'm sure there are some other factors, but I think that those are some of hte most important ones. (Oh, first, as a note, yes, there is a lot of racism in the north too, no question. Absolutely. Quite a lot of it, and there always has been. It's just worse in the South.)

Really, what's crazy is that they still won't admit the obvious truth... get over it already, admit it, and get past it. One of the major things keeping the Confederacy active as an issue is that a lot of white Southerners still won't really admit that racism, even slavery, is wrong. Sure, they might make a few motions, but then they do things like the Virginia Governor just did and reveal the racism behind it that perhaps even they won't admit to themselves.

I mean, here's the truth: Most of the rest of America (outside of the black community) got over the Civil War back in the late 1800s. Only the South is keeping that memory alive, and in a very hateful way...

The fact is that every other "reason" for southern secession was an excuse that would never have caused secession without the key issue, slavery, that was behind all of them. The founders saw this from day one, too. The Constitution itself had a compromise with slavery in it because they valued unity at that moment over division, but they knew that they were just putting off the problem, not solving it. The first half of the 1800s was then consumed with the debate. Anyone who seriously thinks that any state would have seceeded without slavery being the driving issue is not looking at actual history, they are looking at a twisted vision of events that they wish happened so that they can come up with reasons to celebrate their heritage instead of be ashamed for it for the horrible things they did and the horrible reasoning that was behind it.


In my studies in history for the past few years, actually, I've done a lot of research in some related issues to this, namely that of Japan and how it will not admit what it did in World War II (and a bit on how Turkey is the same way with the Armenian Genocide) versus Germany, who have seriously taken just about every imaginable step to try to make up for what they did in World War II. Somehow comparing it to civil rights in America didn't come to me before this thread here, so I'm actually kind of happy the issue came up, it's a fascinating comparison...

I do mention that America has a very hard time admitting to the bad things it has done in my paper, but I just reference it with Vietnam (where many people still will not admit that it was a mistake and that we could never have won, insanely), not the Civil War and continuing Southern denial of its causes. Eh, you can't mention everything. :)

(On that note, I'm just about finished with my masters' thesis, on said Japan and its refusal to admit its history issue... a bit over 77 double-spaced pages now, not including notes. :))

Quote:First off, the idea that Lincoln supported racial equality is something that needs to end. It's been proven that Lincoln thought that blacks were inferior to whites in terms of physical and mental abilities. In a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858, Lincoln said that he believed that black people could not equal themselves to whites (Woods, 2007, pg. 75). In his mind, whites and blacks could not live together in terms of "social and political equality" (Woods, 2007, pg. 75). To add more fuel to the fire, Lincoln did nothing in Illinois to "challenge the state's treatment of blacks, who could not vote, testify in court against whites, serve on juries, or attend a public school funded in part by their own tax dollars" (Woods, 2007, pg. 76).

Absolutely true, most Northerners didn't like black people. I would never say that just because the North opposed slavery their position on black rights was good, it was most certainly not. Think for instance of the riots in New York City during the war, when the Irish got mad that black freedom would mean black people coming in and taking their jobs... or things like how Lincoln and so many others did not think that blacks and whites could ever be equal.

The thing is though, even if they thought that black people were inferior, they thought that they should not be enslaved. It was a moral issue (despite that parts of the bible support slavery, opponents used other parts (mostly the New Testament I imagine) to say that it was morally wrong), a religious issue, a policy issue... so yes, most Northerners were racist, but they didn't like slavery that much.

The slavery issue was the defining, and most important by many orders of magnitude, issue in American politics for decades before the Civil War finally broke out. In fact the Civil War almost broke out in 1850, but a compromise was reached that delayed it again. It might have actually have been better to fight it then, there was less industrialization in the South so the South might have lost faster... and those compromises always ended up giving more to the South than the North, too, for no long-term gain other than putting off the problem.

Anyway, the Republican party was founded in part to oppose slavery. That's why the South seceded, because they thought that Lincoln would do away with slavery if they stayed in the country with him in charge. It probably wasn't true, he was cautious and probably would not have done that. Look at how hard it was to convince him to free the slaves even during the war... but we'll never know how justified their fears really were, of course, because South Carolina seceded almost immediately.

However, finding broad-based support for a huge war just to stop slavery might have been tough, so it is true that during the war in the north Union was emphasized over Stop Slavery. That really was just a cover, though. Slavery was the real issue... but they used "Union" as the cry because "End Slavery" just wasn't popular enough in the North. It was popular, but not enough to drive the whole war effort I believe. Either way though, that was just the propaganda... the political reality that had caused the war was much, much more clear, and slavery was the only issue behind it.

>Before this I haven't thought that you were racist, but you seriously believe that?

Okay, and now you knock it off. It's not entirely untrue just as it's not entirely true. There was a strong amount of constitutional wrangling involved not just in secession itself, but in decades of debate over the issue of slavery before that event.

Regional differences over tariffs were also a long-term contributing factor.

So, let's stop throwing around the pejoratives. It's possible to examine non-racial factors of the Civil War without being racist, you know.

Unreadphilosophy Wrote:In short, even if slaves did exist in the South, they were not the main reason for the war. Furthermore, the North was not the great system that our Marxist history professors love to paint it as. If we are to learn anything from "real" history, it's that the South was fighting for its freedom. It was not fighting for the immoral practice of slavery.

Exactly why would Marxists want to paint the bourgeois capitalist north in a positive light given how much America is considered Satan incarnate in all Marxist circles?

There has been an element which has attempted to portray Lincoln as holding classic Socialist views.

His depiction in Harry Turtledove's Timeline 191 series shows him having survived the Civil War and, later in life, breaking the Republicans, taking control of the then-infant Socialist Party, and turning it into a major national party. The party initially is extremely Marxist, but as time goes on, they mellow out and eventually end up as more of a progressive party than a model Socialist party.

Weltall Wrote:>Before this I haven't thought that you were racist, but you seriously believe that?

Okay, and now you knock it off. It's not entirely untrue just as it's not entirely true. There was a strong amount of constitutional wrangling involved not just in secession itself, but in decades of debate over the issue of slavery before that event.

Regional differences over tariffs were also a long-term contributing factor.

So, let's stop throwing around the pejoratives. It's possible to examine non-racial factors of the Civil War without being racist, you know.

Sure, but saying that slavery wasn't the cause of the civil war? Nobody would have seceeded just over tariffs. And states rights isn't a separate reason from slavery, of course. The whole "States rights" argument was just a cover for slavery.

I did say though that a lot of it in this case is unconscious, a learned thing common in the region,and not always done for racist reasons. Denial of that sort certainly is about an issue of national pride. Is it hatred of Armenians that gets Turkey to still deny that in the end of World War I Ottoman troops committed a genocide that killed a million Armenians or so? Probably not, it seems to be more about not wanting to admit a national shame, not wanting to hurt the people's love for their country (because if you admit to such a horrible thing, it's going to be harder for your people to want to fight for it, etc.), and things like that. The same thing is true for Japan and its war denial, pretty much.

So yes, that's certainly a huge part of the explanation. The complicating factor is how much racism there still is in this country, particularly among white Southerners. And that's where my above other reason for Confederate apology starts to fall apart... I do think that racism has to be a central, key element to why many white Southerners still deny that the Civil War was fought over slavery and have such a strong unwillingness to forget the Civil War or the Confederate cause. Because as I said, that's just not true in the North.

The other explanation that I can think of is that it's partially also institutional inertia, that is southerners have been saying "It wasn't just slavery" for so, so long now that many of them really do believe it... I'm sure that's true. That kind of thing is quite tough to break down, but we have to do it, I think, if the nation is ever going to heal its racial divides better than it has so far.

But anyway, yes, you're right that racism isn't the only reason. A big reason is just that they can't admit to something so awful, just like America in genral can't with Vietnam, Japan can't with World War II, etc. I do think that racism is a factor, in why the argument is still so commonly made, though.

Irregardless of that, though, I think everyone can agree that the Republican Party has a racism problem. (Democrats aren't perfect, but they're better...)

I mean, if white Southerners weren't still having so many problems with race I would be more forgiving, I think. That they clearly are still having some of those problems is why I said that.

Despite that, though, overall America does seem to be moving somewhat in the right direction on race, despite the extreme reaction of certain elements of American society I think that it's clear that overall we are moving in the right direction, and things like Obama's election help prove that. That is exactly why they're being drawn out though, racists see the growing equality in America, hate it, and react by doing sickening things like making "Obama is a monkey born in Kenya" posters. Obviously those people are not a majority anywhere. Birtherism is scarily popular among Republicans, though, and I can't see any explanation for that except for racism, so yeah...

Thing is though, the Republican party's racism is only hurting it long term. If Republicans keep alienating Hispanics, even Texas isn't reliably Republican long-term, eventually there will be enough Hispanics there to swing the state Democratic...

In Unreadphilosophy's first post here he says that black people should be free to oppose the Democrats' positions too, and that is absolutely true. That would be much easier if the Republican party wasn't tied so closely to racism thanks to the "Southern Strategy" that I mentioned.

"Southern Strategy":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

America would be a better place today if the Republicans hadn't done that and the racists had been forced to form their own racist Ex Southern Democrat party or something like that. It's too bad that their political greed overwhelmed their values, right when the Democrats were finally facing their very bad proslavery past and turning against it.

Wow, Falcon. Just...wow. I guess I can label you into the "typical liberal" category, right? First off, what did I say at the end of my statement? Again, stop vomiting up everything you were taught in your public history textbooks. Everything you stated is nothing more than the same shit that I had pumped into my skull when I was in high school. You know happened to me? I GREW up. I opened my mind to the real truth.

It's funny: out of everything I stated, you never refuted anything that I said. Well, not that I said. More like what Professor Woods said. I guess when you have a BA from Harvard and a MA and Ph.D from Columbia, it's hard to be refuted. Oh, and let's not forget being a senior fellow at the most prestigious economic school in the country: the Ludvig Von Mises Institute.

First off: denial? Really? You think this is about denial? No, my friend, it's not. It's about truth. You wanna call me a racist because of the way I think? Go right ahead. I've been called much, much worse by people who don't like my ideals.

Secondly, I don't deny that Vietnam was a shit fest. I fully recognize that we did some pretty horrible shit over there. I've neither advocated nor supported what we did in that country. Hell, calling it a war is a mistake in itself. If was nothing but a police action.

"Slavery wasn't the main cause of the Civil War" is something that has been said by many historians"

Yeah, you're right. The difference between those historians and your historians is honesty. The man that I quoted in my little rant is a very respectable individual n the liberty movement. Woods has makes it his job to cut through the crap that our society has been led to believing since grade school. I don't expect you to accept that fact.

Who do you quote? Your typical leftist leaning Ivy League professor who likes to twist history for personal gain? Yeah, that's real rich. Thank you for reminding me about the reasons that led me away from seeking a history degree. I would've learned the same garbage all over again.

"In fact, only white Southerners believe that anything other than slavery caused the Civil War."

How about some evidence? You don't cite or quote a single book in your answer to what I said. Have you met everyone in the North? I didn't think so. Therefore, you can't honestly believe that you're right.

"-Guilt -- admit it and you have to admit your heritage and history of slavery and racism against other humans. Deny and you can keep pretending that it wasn't so bad.
-Continuing racism -- As I said in my last post, white Southerners are almost certainly the most racist block of people in the country. While most white Southerners probably don't want slavery back, they don't like black people very much, so who really minds THAT much what we did..."

One word: strawman. That paragraph does not refute a single thing that I said. You're just attacking Southerns by using the stereotype that everyone down there is racist.

Btw, Falcon, I'm not from the South. I'm from the North. I was born on the East Coast. I do have relatives from the South. I can assure you that they're not racist.

"As I said in my last post, white Southerners are almost certainly the most racist block of people in the country. While most white Southerners probably don't want slavery back, they don't like black people very much, so who really minds THAT much what we did..."

And you this....how? I've been to the South, and I've seen whites and blacks getting along just fine.

"Really, what's crazy is that they still won't admit the obvious truth... get over it already, admit it, and get past it. One of the major things keeping the Confederacy active as an issue is that a lot of white Southerners still won't really admit that racism, even slavery, is wrong."

Once again: strawman. You don't back-up your claims with any sort of facts. Are there racists in the South? Of course. I'm not saying there aren't. The problem that I have is that you're acting as if everyone down there is a Hillbilly that has missing teeth. I've seen more respectful people in the South than I have anyone else in this country. If you think everyone is hateful, you need a serious reality check.

"Only the South is keeping that memory alive"

Gee, maybe that's because they're sick and tired of having their history manipulated
in a way that always paints them as hateful.

You seem to have completely ignored everything I said. Go back and read what I said about Generals like Lee showing opposition to slavery. Go read the information regarding the letters about soldiers showing no desire to fight for keeping slavery alive.

They're keeping the memory because they want to try and set the record straight. Woods is behind that movement.

"The fact is that every other "reason" for southern secession was an excuse that would never have caused secession without the key issue, slavery, that was behind all of them."

Oh my God! That has to be one of the most ignorant things I've ever read. That was behind all of them? So...what? Are you trying to say that secession is code for oppression? If that's the case, you have dark view of our history. If the Founders hadn't declared secession from England with the signing of the Declaration, there's that chance that we wouldn't be here right now.

Once again, slavery was not the only reason. Secession was the last remaining tool that the South had to protect its people from a government that wanted to take control and throw out the tenth. If they had been centralized, the power of the state governments to nullify and fight against the Federal level would have gone out the window.

I actually wrote this a few days ago and didn't post it, meaning to do more with it or something, but eh... I think it's good enough, so I'll just post it as is.


You keep digging yourself deeper and deeper into the hole I was hoping you wouldn't go in... but saying that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War should be just as unacceptable as the Turkish government's claims that the Armenian genocide never happened, or Serbs saying that what they did in Bosnia was okay. It's insane, stupid, and horrible.

Quote:Wow, Falcon. Just...wow. I guess I can label you into the "typical liberal" category, right? First off, what did I say at the end of my statement? Again, stop vomiting up everything you were taught in your public history textbooks. Everything you stated is nothing more than the same shit that I had pumped into my skull when I was in high school. You know happened to me? I GREW up. I opened my mind to the real truth.

So you decided to abandon actual facts and go with made up lies that make you feel better or something? Awesome, go ahead, I won't try to stop you, but it certainly doesn't make any of it even remotely true.

Just because you don't like the government doesn't mean that back then they disliked the government for similar reasons, or that somehow things would have been better off if the South had won, even if we look at issues other than slavery. This was seen during the war in fact, or can also be seen by looking at how nonfunctional the US government was under the Articles of Confederation. When the states have too much power it's almost impossible to get anything done, which is why we created the Constitution in the first place. The South was seceeding over slavery, uusing "state's rights" as their excuse, but they did put it into practice too (didn't want to be THAT contradictory or something I guess?) and it hurt them. Just like the US before the Constitution, the Confederate government had a hard time getting much done, which was good for America in general (helped sabotage their cause, etc, because two Americas, one with slavery, would obviously not have been a good thing). Nobody should seriously want those days back.

Quote:Gee, maybe that's because they're sick and tired of having their history manipulated in a way that always paints them as hateful.

... You do know that I said the exact opposite of that, right? And anyway that's ridiculous, Southerners dominated the Civil War history field for a long time, which is how things got to the point I was describing. As I said they were the ones who kept talking about it. It's the South that talks constantly about the Civil War, keep flying the Confederate flag, that symbol of horrific racism, and pretending that it's "just heritage"... the North doesn't really care that much. Why do you think they do?

Anyway, they're the ones manipulating history, so the whole thing's academic anyway. They succeeded at making their version the "standard version" of Civil War era history it for a long time, but they aren't getting away with it any more, fortunately. Some people are actually standing up to idiotic things like the new Texas school history book codes.

Quote:You seem to have completely ignored everything I said. Go back and read what I said about Generals like Lee showing opposition to slavery. Go read the information regarding the letters about soldiers showing no desire to fight for keeping slavery alive.

It's widely known that Lee fought not because of belief in slavery, but because he believed in his state more than his country, so when Virginia seceded he left too.

On that note that is one of the most important things that came out of the Civil War. People started talking about being citizens of America first, not citizens of their state first. It was a very important advance, obviously, and a very good one. How can we have a country if people will abandon it the second their state doesn't like something about it? That's not much of a nation.

Building that sense of union was an aftereffect of the war, brought on by the trauma, but it was an important step forward. Of course, had that feeling existed before the war would never have gotten that far, keep Virginia in the Union and the Confederacy folds quickly... so sure, if you look just at that you could say "see, it's not just about slavery, it's about state over country being the way people thought"... which is true, but of course one of the major blocks separating the states was of course slavery. The major block, from the early 1800s on. I find it impossible to imagine that the country would not have unionized (said "The United States Is" instead of "The United States Are", for instance) much quicker had slavery not been in the way. Of course from the beginning there were many worries about the federal government, but slavery was the big one. The South really didn't want the government coming in and taking their slaves away. That, and that they really wanted more territories to expand slavery into and were frustrated at the limited areas they had (with the North and much of the West slave free), and they thought that if slavery was limited to just the areas it had it would probably eventually wither and they couldn't allow that...

Quote:Once again: strawman. You don't back-up your claims with any sort of facts. Are there racists in the South? Of course. I'm not saying there aren't. The problem that I have is that you're acting as if everyone down there is a Hillbilly that has missing teeth. I've seen more respectful people in the South than I have anyone else in this country. If you think everyone is hateful, you need a serious reality check.

No hillbillies are needed. Just go to the nearest Republican party convention, you'll find more than enough racist views and pro-Confederate stuff to last a long time. This is certainly not confined to the South, but it's most prevalent there, as you would expect considering the success of the Southern Strategy.

Quote:Another interesting thing about the Civil War is that soldiers who fought for the war were against it. Many of the letters that soldiers in the south sent home to their families stated that they were fighting for the principles of self-government and self-determination (Woods, 2007, pg. 76).

Most of the Confederate troops were poor people who owned no slaves. They weren't necesarially going to fight hard to defend an institution that didn't benefit them directly. Now, it did benefit them some, because even the poorest white person could say "At least I am better than THOSE people" (and this was an important boost to their morale), but not enough. So the Confederate governments fed them a story about how it was really all about states rights and self-determination, and not about what it was actually about, just like how in the North they told people that it was all about union and not all about slavery, becuase that's what people there wanted to hear.

In both cases while as I said those feelings (of the question of states versus union) were key to understanding why the war happened, without slavery the impetus that drove the entire mechanism would not have existed. Civil war would have been no more likely than between Rhode Island and Massachusetts or Delaware and Pennsylvania or something.

Quote:"Slavery was doomed politically even if Lincoln had permitted the small Gulf Coast Confederacy to depart in peace. The Republican controlled Congress would have been able to work toward emancipation within the border states, where slavery was already declining. In due course the Radicals could have repealed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. With chattels fleeing across the border and raising slavery's enforcement costs, and peculiar institution's destruction within an independent cotton South was inevitable" (Woods, pg. 76, 2007).

True, but it would have taken a lot longer that way, a lot more people would have suffered, and anyway, that requires agreeing that secession from the U.S. is possible, which the Constitution does not allow (by not mentioning it). States can't just leave. The Republican Party had run in part on stopping the surrendering that the government had been doing for years, not continuing to give in to the South every time they demanded more slavery-related concessions "or else we'll leave!"

Also, I think the durability of racism in the South, from Jim Crow to the racism of today, says that in the deep South I wouldn't be surprised if it had held on quite a while... they still had Apartheid in South Africa until the early 1990s after all, and that put black South Africans in a near-slavelike position.

The Republican party in general is racist

And the Democratic Pary is, in general, homosexual, illegal, and minority-based. Oh wait--or is that a stereotype, a cliche?

Darunia Wrote:The Republican party in general is racist

And the Democratic Pary is, in general, homosexual, illegal, and minority-based. Oh wait--or is that a stereotype, a cliche?

Not all Republicans are racist...just the people they elect into office to represent them...

You guys got me. I have nothing with which to defend my stance here. Republicans ARE all evil and crazy people, especially these insane, extremistRadical Republicans. Then you have more contemporary filth mongers like Edward Brooke. These evil anti-american racist pigs EVEN have a clan website! I mean, look at all these fat, rich old men, with their fuzzy muttonchops, monocles, and top-hats! These vicious pro-slavery, white supremacists! Its a good thing we've always had good, strongly moraled Democrats to keep those swine at bay, like Jefferson Davis, and those brave, stalwart early Democrats who championed human rights with grassroots campaigns.