Shooting In South Carolina

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
401

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Sure, again though I think we’d find a lot of publicly paid for things are named after folks that did some pretty crummy things during their lives if we looked hard enough.[/quote]

True. And if the things they did were bad enough, and they were sufficiently involved with the bad things, and particularly if the bad things were sufficiently historically consequential, I don’t have any problem changing them. If I were to find out that the person after whom my high school was named had in fact been an architect of the holocaust before immigrating to the U.S., I would definitely support a name change. Not to spare anybody’s feelings, but because I am particular about what is commemorated with public property and money.[/quote]

I’ve got no problem with that.

402

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Slavery was a huge part of the fight in the Atlantic. They were absolutely fighting over slavery in that theater. And the US was absolutely fighting for its preservation. Hell, it even had its own emancipation proclamation:
'A Proclamation
Whereas it has been represented to me that many persons now resident in the United States have expressed a desire to withdraw therefrom with a view to entering into His Majesty’s service, or of being received as free settlers into some of His Majesty’s colonies.
This is therefore to give notice that all persons who may be disposed to migrate from the United States, will with their families, be received on board of His Majesty’s ships or vessels of War, or at the military posts that may be established upon or near the coast of the United States, when they will have their choice of either entering into His Majesty’s sea or land forces, or of being sent as free settlers to the British possessions in North America or the West Indies where they will meet with due encouragement.
Given under my hand at Bermuda this second day of April, 1814, by command of Vice Admiral.�?�¢??

It was a big part of the war. What percentage of the motivation does it have to be to make them unworthy? The US was fighting to preserve slavery, period. Was it the only reason? No, but it was still a big issue. Why shouldn’t that qualify the US at the time for exclusion?
[/quote]

I’m well aware of the black refugees and the excerpted proclamation, which postdated the start of the war by years. I asked for direct, primary evidence that slavery played an even slightly comparable part in the raison d’etre of the war. Without that, you are comparing a country that was created to protect slavery with a war that was fought by a country in which slaves happened to exist. Slavery was the CSA cause, and you and I both know that I can easily prove it. For your comparison to hold, you need to show that it was similarly explicit and prominent in the War of 1812.[/quote]

Okay fair enough. You draw the line at the creation of a nation to defend slavery, but an existing country fighting to preserve it as only part of a conflict is okay. I’ll admit I think your line is a bit arbitrary but it’s your judgment.

I don’t see the big difference. James Madison, the slave owning president of the US, sent the might of the US military to help preserve slavery. That makes him at least as guilty as someone like Lee who freed his slaves, but decided to fight for his state in my book.

403

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Okay fair enough. You draw the line at the creation of a nation to defend slavery, but an existing country fighting to preserve it as only part of a conflict is okay. I’ll admit I think your line is a bit arbitrary but it’s your judgment.

I don’t see the big difference. James Madison, the slave owning president of the US, sent the might of the US military to help preserve slavery. That makes him at least as guilty as someone like Lee who freed his slaves, but decided to fight for his state in my book.[/quote]

I am not so much drawing a line as saying that there definitely is a line and the CSA is definitely on the wrong side of it. The relationship between slavery and the CSA is a central, existential one. No such relationship has been shown to link slavery to the War of 1812. You are saying that we fought to preserve slavery, but what evidence do you have of this? The British freed American-owned slaves (a good recruiting tool and a good form of economic warfare and a good “fuck you” to the Americans) and, long after the war began, made it official with the proclamation you excerpted. These are minor/tactical events in an unrelated conflict, and they were enacted by an empire that would still allow slavery in its territories for many years to come.

When you describe the U.S. as a country “fighting to preserve [slavery],” you need more than the above. You need evidence that slavery figured prominently into the war’s raison d’etre. Though I’ve read about the War of 1812, I’m no expert, so maybe there is more and I’m unaware of it. But it there isn’t, the language in your post is unsubstantiated.

As for the accusation of arbitrariness, I readily admit that I could not come up with a set of non-arbitrary guidelines by which to determine whether something is too tainted for celebration. But I know that there are things that certainly are and things that certainly aren’t, just as I know that there was one time in my life during which I was certainly a child and another time – now – during which I was certainly not (I couldn’t tell you when the one became the other).

404

So, what do we do if and when we change all the names of everything, take down every last flag and some nut-job still kills another group of people because he doesn’t like them for whatever reason?

What then?

405

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
So, what do we do if and when we change all the names of everything, take down every last flag and some nut-job still kills another group of people because he doesn’t like them for whatever reason?

What then?[/quote]

Guns of course.

412

The Democratic National Convention in 1860 was very pro-slavery. The front runner, Stephen A. Douglas, was considered a moderate because he advocated allowing settlers in each territory to decide for themselves if slavery were to be allowed. The popular opinion among the rest of the candidates, which correlated with the Dred Scott decision, was that slavery should be protected in all territories.

Historian Eric Foner observed: In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the south during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican Party’s infrastructure, etc…

In other words, the KKK was the “enforcement arm” of the DEMOCRATIC party…

Modern Democrats are doing everything from “revising history”, to outright LYING to the American public about the racist roots of the Democratic Party. For example Al Gore told the American public that his father was voted out of office because he voted FOR the civil rights act. That is patently false! Gore Sr. voted against the act and was voted out of office in 1970 for other issues. The Democratic Party consistently lies to the public and actually tries to twist the facts of history to demonize Republicans. How on earth do they get away with this? Any serious student of history knows the Republican Party was the party of reconstruction, anti-lynching laws, and the civil rights acts of 1875, 1957, 1960, and 1964. While the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, black codes, Jim Crow, and the KKK.

As recent as 2010 the Senate’s president pro tempore was former KKK Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd (DEMOCRAT, WV)… So all of this bullshit from the Democratic party about “banning things that were historically racist” is a wee bit hypocritical, doncha think?

The ENTIRE Democratic Party was pro-slavery and steeped historically in racism… Why don’t we ban the Democratic Party?

413

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

…Adolf Hitler Elementary School…

[/quote]

Oh good grief, now we have Godwin’s Law rearing its ugly head in this thread. Again.

[/quote]

As I explained at the time, and as you can surely understand, I am not comparing Hitler to the Confederacy, but rather testing a maxim. It was being suggested that fixing a name solves no “real problem.” If this maxim is legitimate, then it is universally applicable. From this it follows that the name “Adolf Hitler Elementary School” is (on the maxim) not a real problem, and the suggestion that it be changed “fixes” nothing.

This is, of course, absurd and untrue. Therefore, the maxim is invalid, and names of things can indeed be problems which merit being fixed. I can assure you that there is not a speck of illegitimate logic here.

There is a very important difference between arguing that someone is “like Hitler” and using Hitler as a test in a thought experiment. He happens to be very useful in the latter case, because he represents the most extreme test a maxim can undergo. After all, as you can see, he showed me to be right.

414

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Smh, even though we’ve become e-buds over the years as you’ve drifted right (from your left wing T-Nation roots) this thread exemplifies the fact that left wing lunacy is still coursing through your veins. You need another transfusion or two. I’ll even donate.[/quote]

In this case, my friend, there’s no amount of blood that could make me think night is day and day night. You’d have to put a pound of angel dust in there for me to not be able to figure this one out. Indeed I have drifted right over the years, but not into la-la land.

You have suggested I’m wrong again and again, but you’ve never – not once – made an argument in refutation of mine. You flirted with some of that “you’re not from South Carolina” piffle, but you recognized it for what it was very quickly. And, indeed, this latest exchange was occasioned by your comment on happenings in California, in which state, I believe, you do not live. It was always horseshit to suggest that someone’s argument about something smart/stupid is invalidated by his zip code – logic lives and dies on its own strength and nothing more.

So I will happily shred whatever actual argument you’d like to make in support of the contention that it is appropriate for a school owned and maintained by the public and on the public’s dime to be named after a military or political leader of an enemy nation to the United States which killed many American soldiers and which was created explicitly in order to safeguard the health and future growth of the legal ownership of black slaves. Bonne chance with that one.

415

To be clear, I?m not entirely against SMH on this one. I just think that if we are going to start taking names off public things who did really bad things, we basically just need to go ?1st street? ?Smokey mountains park? type names and be done with people all together. Certainly guys like Jakson and Grant est should be gone at the minimum.

I also would weight personal character over the character of which side they were on. Someone like Nathan Forest who had a change of heart and eventually saw the light is more acceptable to me than someone who fought on the right side for the wrong reasons and never changed.

416

Very interesting image from the shooting today. Anyone notice anything?

417

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Very interesting image from the shooting today. Anyone notice anything?[/quote]

Ya, it’s a fucking gun free zone… Shocker.

418

The reports I’ve seen are saying that 4 marines died.

419

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Smh, even though we’ve become e-buds over the years as you’ve drifted right (from your left wing T-Nation roots) this thread exemplifies the fact that left wing lunacy is still coursing through your veins. You need another transfusion or two. I’ll even donate.[/quote]

In this case, my friend, there’s no amount of blood that could make me think night is day and day night. You’d have to put a pound of angel dust in there for me to not be able to figure this one out. Indeed I have drifted right over the years, but not into la-la land.

You have suggested I’m wrong again and again, but you’ve never – not once – made an argument in refutation of mine. You flirted with some of that “you’re not from South Carolina” piffle, but you recognized it for what it was very quickly. And, indeed, this latest exchange was occasioned by your comment on happenings in California, in which state, I believe, you do not live. It was always horseshit to suggest that someone’s argument about something smart/stupid is invalidated by his zip code – logic lives and dies on its own strength and nothing more.

So I will happily shred whatever actual argument you’d like to make in support of the contention that it is appropriate for a school owned and maintained by the public and on the public’s dime to be named after a military or political leader of an enemy nation to the United States which killed many American soldiers and which was created explicitly in order to safeguard the health and future growth of the legal ownership of black slaves. Bonne chance with that one.[/quote]

As a means to heal our nation and restore unity, the South, its citizens, leaders and military officers, were all accepted back into the union. Not a single one was tried for treason. Congress made all former Confederate soldiers US Veterans. Their rights and privileges as citizens of the US were fully and completely restored. With that, they ceased to be “enemies”. According to the US Congress, Robert E. Lee High School in Montgomery, Alabama, is named after a United States Veteran.

420

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Smh, even though we’ve become e-buds over the years as you’ve drifted right (from your left wing T-Nation roots) this thread exemplifies the fact that left wing lunacy is still coursing through your veins. You need another transfusion or two. I’ll even donate.[/quote]

In this case, my friend, there’s no amount of blood that could make me think night is day and day night. You’d have to put a pound of angel dust in there for me to not be able to figure this one out. Indeed I have drifted right over the years, but not into la-la land.

You have suggested I’m wrong again and again, but you’ve never – not once – made an argument in refutation of mine. You flirted with some of that “you’re not from South Carolina” piffle, but you recognized it for what it was very quickly. And, indeed, this latest exchange was occasioned by your comment on happenings in California, in which state, I believe, you do not live. It was always horseshit to suggest that someone’s argument about something smart/stupid is invalidated by his zip code – logic lives and dies on its own strength and nothing more.

So I will happily shred whatever actual argument you’d like to make in support of the contention that it is appropriate for a school owned and maintained by the public and on the public’s dime to be named after a military or political leader of an enemy nation to the United States which killed many American soldiers and which was created explicitly in order to safeguard the health and future growth of the legal ownership of black slaves. Bonne chance with that one.[/quote]

Without agreeing or disagreeing, I would point out one thing - this was not a war against an enemy nation, and Lincoln took great pains to refuse to ever concede the Confederate was another nation (period), despite the Confederacy’s claims at being so.

I don’t make this point to score a technical point - I think it matters greatly in how we think about people associated with the Confederacy. It isn’t like naming a school after Emperor Hirohito or Santa Anna. They were rebels, but they were our rebels. So whatever the answer on naming schools and such after Confederate men, the calculus is different than it would be for an enemy nation.

People closer to the war - this who had faced the blood and mud - were much more accepting of this idea that with the war over, former Confederate were not members of an enemy nation. Sure, Radical Reconstructionists aimed to punish, but many didn’t have that view. And many military men had tremendous respect for one another.

Hell, Confederate General Joseph Johnston was a pallbearer at General Sherman’s funeral. (And refused to wear a hat out of a sign of respect for Sherman, despite the winter cold and rain, and died a month later from pneumonia.)

This is also why Lee is such a revered figure by both sides of the conflict.

I guess my point is, with the Civil War, it’s different and should be different. These were Americans - flawed ones, who committed treason - but they are ours. A blanket deletion of them from our monuments makes little sense, and it would confound many of the greatest men who fought on the winning side.

EDIT: fixed broken sentence.