[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
If my state can seceded then I can also secede, too. That is anarchy.[/quote]
Can you secede from the T-Nation forums now?[/quote]
said the guy who have been here for two months to the guy who have been here for six years.
just saying.
While I agree that most people in this country are slovenly, lazy animals, I think you are all vastly underestimating the fighting spirit of people who are pushed that far.
Also, generally right before any type of revolution there’s a lot of difficulty getting food, and that is the spark… so maybe they’d slim down a bit out of necessity.
The man of 1860 was undoubtedly more conditioned to go to war… but southerners did say that about the Northerners- that they were inside dogs, so to speak, who were clerks and storeowners and the like and wouldn’t be able to put up a fight against the more outdoorsy southerners.
You see how well that worked out.
Perfect example- find kids today that would ever be able to pull this off. The upbringing from back then was far more suited to soldierdom… maybe it’s found on a few frontier parts of the country still but not the majority, and that kind of sucks.
the patriot is a kickass movie!!!
had to say that, carry on.
To answer the original question, I will agree with most on this thread who have said it would depend on why we were seceding. There is a small group people in Texas who truly want to secede, and seem to have no other reason than we used to be our own country. I have heard some of their arguments, and I really can’t imagine ever having another conversation with any of them. They’re just silly.
Can you imagine really being faced with that question? A huge part of my self-image is being a Texan - but also being an American. I want them both. So it’s not just questioning your politics, it’s a revision of what it means to be you.
We do have good chili.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
And in an urban environment, where US cizizens would for the first time encounter a nervous military that cannot tell friend from foe from bystander…
Then we wait for the first photos of random people who were snatched from the streets and beaten to a pulp, excuse me, interrogated, IEDs not long after that, political assassinations, the gloves really come off when it comes to things like they patriot act and the average American will have to ask permission to take a piss…
The whole notion that a military or a government can hold on to power when it has a sizeable and determined part of the population against it is ludicrous.
[/quote]
It would be ugly. The US military would not just be killing very small yellow people or Islamic fundamentalists wearing their garb… it would be everyday American citizens, and there could be no dehumanization.
[/quote]
I think you seriously underestimate teh ability of people to dehumanize fellow human beings. [/quote]
well… yea you’re probably right.
[quote]jj-dude wrote:
Let me see, would you lay down your life for money? How about oppressing the masses? Nope? Are you special? My point is that people will do things like this for abstract, great causes – this is the only real way, unless there is a palpable immediate threat to life and limb. Folks down South are no different. They saw their society being undermined by the rise of Commerce in the North. The cotton market was collapsing and just like any other developing country, they were increasingly desperate. We think it grand when India or Tibet resists modernization but our own, homegrown example is despised as backwards (FWIW the progressives in those countries hold much the same opinion of their own rural areas, but I digress – Hell, a lot of folks find something appealing in al Qaeda’s attempts too for this reason.)
[/quote]
Got to stop you here. You’re way off the mark. The cotton market was HUGELY profitable right up until the start of the war, and the slave economy was worth more money than EVERY other asset of the US combined.
That’s the reason they were so protective- and that’s understandable. But do not say that the cotton market was collapsing- it was only until the Union blockade tightened around the South that the British (and consequentially, the rest of Europe) began using Indian cotton as opposed to Southern cotton.
David Blight goes into this in depth in his lecture series- the myth that the southern economy was actually collapsing is a historical fallacy not supported by the numbers.
[quote]
And what did happen after the war? Better set the record straight while I have your ear. Aside from Jefferson Davis and other high ranking Democrats (no Southerner would have been caught dead voting for a Republican and when I think of good old boy, insular & parochial politics I think Democrat – how they got a PR campaign to paint themselves as enlightened Progressives is flabbergasting, to say the least), most of the people who ran the South during the War Between The States (nothing civil about it) were back in power shortly after the war. They enacted laws which mostly did carry out their agenda, after the remnants of the Confederate Army donned white sheets as the KKK and drove the occupying Union army out. Then the KKK disbanded (by 1875 at the latest). I know, my great-great grandfather rode with them. He was disgusted that they put the Democrats back in charge who then legislated the South into the Third World, and ended his days trying to organize unions down South, which he thought would/should be the future. So yes, ultimately the South won. It stayed that way until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s, which was a Good Thing. (The modern KKK was re-created by Progressives in the early 1900’s since Racism had become a chic social theory, mostly as a side effect of the movie “Birth of A Nation” which was supposedly Woodrow Wilson’s favorite film. They have no relationship to the original one and are a bunch of racist buffoons.)
– jj[/quote]
The fact that Southerners still lived in and governed the south doesn’t mean they “won.”
They were brutally subdued and forced back into the US, slavery was abolished, and blacks were free. Certainly the sharecropper system, in combination with the KKK, Jim Crow laws, and all the other fine laws southerners passed as a “fuck you” to the blacks, kept blacks down in the south, but the pure, unequivocal truth was that regardless- the blacks could get up and leave. They were free.
This, along with the South’s pitiful attempts at further giving “fuck yous” to the blacks by reacting to the Civil Rights era the way they did, does not constitute a win by any means.
I’m off my original point, but I just wanted to point that out.
And another thing- I’m not saying that the North was much better in terms of racism- do not misunderstand me.
I’m reading “The Savage City” right now by TJ English, I highly recommend it… we up here were just as bad as anyone down there throughout the Civil Rights era. We just didn’t fly the flags.
[quote]Miss Parker wrote:
To answer the original question, I will agree with most on this thread who have said it would depend on why we were seceding. There is a small group people in Texas who truly want to secede, and seem to have no other reason than we used to be our own country. I have heard some of their arguments, and I really can’t imagine ever having another conversation with any of them. They’re just silly.
Can you imagine really being faced with that question? A huge part of my self-image is being a Texan - but also being an American. I want them both. So it’s not just questioning your politics, it’s a revision of what it means to be you.
We do have good chili.[/quote]
What if you could draw inspiration for your identity from something real that did not have anything to do with collectivism and an arbitrary notion such as borders?
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What if you could draw inspiration for your identity from something real that did not have anything to do with collectivism and an arbitrary notion such as borders?[/quote]
Then maybe, the mind set of “Them x Us” would disappear and how would we be without that familiar separation? Would we have to truly accept differences and would we have to let go of our attachment to
“My way is right and your way is wrong.”?
How would the world “work” if we said “My way is right for me and your way is right for you.”.
Is it just a question of identification or is it a question of respect for the real boundaries of each individual?
[quote]Alpha F wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What if you could draw inspiration for your identity from something real that did not have anything to do with collectivism and an arbitrary notion such as borders?[/quote]
Then maybe, the mind set of “Them x Us” would disappear and how would we be without that familiar separation? Would we have to truly accept differences and would we have to let go of our attachment to
“My way is right and your way is wrong.”?
How would the world “work” if we said “My way is right for me and your way is right for you.”.
Is it just a question of identification or is it a question of respect for the real boundaries of each individual?
[/quote]
Excellent point. To me identity is entirely about individual boundaries – our aptitude, our abilities and natural talents…
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
[quote]jj-dude wrote:
Let me see, would you lay down your life for money? How about oppressing the masses? Nope? Are you special? My point is that people will do things like this for abstract, great causes – this is the only real way, unless there is a palpable immediate threat to life and limb. Folks down South are no different. They saw their society being undermined by the rise of Commerce in the North. The cotton market was collapsing and just like any other developing country, they were increasingly desperate. We think it grand when India or Tibet resists modernization but our own, homegrown example is despised as backwards (FWIW the progressives in those countries hold much the same opinion of their own rural areas, but I digress – Hell, a lot of folks find something appealing in al Qaeda’s attempts too for this reason.)
[/quote]
Got to stop you here. You’re way off the mark. The cotton market was HUGELY profitable right up until the start of the war, and the slave economy was worth more money than EVERY other asset of the US combined.
That’s the reason they were so protective- and that’s understandable. But do not say that the cotton market was collapsing- it was only until the Union blockade tightened around the South that the British (and consequentially, the rest of Europe) began using Indian cotton as opposed to Southern cotton.
David Blight goes into this in depth in his lecture series- the myth that the southern economy was actually collapsing is a historical fallacy not supported by the numbers.
[/quote]
The tariffs Lincoln wanted to impose would have seriously hurt the South because other nations would have put up trade barriers in return and the South was very export oriented.
Also, it was quite clear that the North could not implement Lincolns rather misguided trade policies if the South seceded because most of the big trade ports were in the South.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
If my state can seceded then I can also secede, too. That is anarchy.[/quote]
I perceive it as the exercise of free will.
I thought that freedom was the exercise of free will.
(By any one person or individual persons; as the posters who said they would side and secede to protect and preserve the lives of their family members.).
[quote]Alpha F wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
If my state can seceded then I can also secede, too. That is anarchy.[/quote]
I perceive it as the exercise of free will.
I thought that freedom was the exercise of free will.
(By any one person or individual persons; as the posters who said they would side and secede to protect and preserve the lives of their family members.).[/quote]
There is no such thing as free will. All will is bounded by limitations. I cannot will myself to fly to the moon. That does not necessarily mean my rights have been violated. Liberty is more the area of non-interference.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
There is no such thing as free will. All will is bounded by limitations. I cannot will myself to fly to the moon.[/quote]
I think your understanding of the idea of “free will” is too ambiguous.
Because I lack an ability to do something does not mean there is no free will.
My free will allows me to try and become better skilled at those abilities.
Every time I lift big weights, for example, I am exercising my free will – or liberty – to try and become, bigger, stronger, and faster; and just because I cannot bench 400# does not mean I am less free. however, the fact that it is a crime for me to use AS make me less free.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
There is no such thing as free will. All will is bounded by limitations. I cannot will myself to fly to the moon.[/quote]
I think your understanding of the idea of “free will” is too ambiguous.
Because I lack an ability to do something does not mean there is no free will.
My free will allows me to try and become better skilled at those abilities.
Every time I lift big weights, for example, I am exercising my free will – or liberty – to try and become, bigger, stronger, and faster; and just because I cannot bench 400# does not mean I am less free. however, the fact that it is a crime for me to use AS make me less free.[/quote]
Humans are as much a physical part of the natural world as a 400 lbs barbell.
There is no logical distinction to be made between the physical limitations that a rock causes you and the physical limitations other humans cause you.
Then we need to have two different terms to distinguish between inanimate objects that limit my freedom versus someone else’s free will that limits my freedom.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Then we need to have two different terms to distinguish between inanimate objects that limit my freedom versus someone else’s free will that limits my freedom.[/quote]
What is the rational behind that distinction?
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Then we need to have two different terms to distinguish between inanimate objects that limit my freedom versus someone else’s free will that limits my freedom.[/quote]
What is the rational behind that distinction?[/quote]
Because the two distinct ideas have very different implications and consequences and we need to be able to communicate about them in the least ambiguous way.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Then we need to have two different terms to distinguish between inanimate objects that limit my freedom versus someone else’s free will that limits my freedom.[/quote]
What is the rational behind that distinction?[/quote]
Because the two distinct ideas have very different implications and consequences and we need to be able to communicate about them in the least ambiguous way.
[/quote]
That is what I’m asking, what makes them different?
A bear comes into your house and kills you trying to steal your food, that isn’t a violation of free will, but if a human does it, it is? Why is that different?