[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
treasonous, traitorous people who played the victim card fast and loose while literally caging humans.[/quote]
You mean like the guy in your avatar?
;)[/quote]
Did Madison play the victim card fast and loose?
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
That being said, it isn’t too far of a step at all to start demanding that we stop honoring treasonous slavers and bigots. That is what the Confederacy was comprised of: treasonous, traitorous people who played the victim card fast and loose while literally caging humans.[/quote]
So let me get this straight: we should stop honoring any southerner who committed treason against his government, who made his fortunes as a plantation owner owning African slaves, who believed that the black and white races could never co-exist as free and equal entities, and who waged war to prevent the abolition of the institution of slavery in America?
Well, looks like you need to change your avatar.
;)[/quote]
Did Madison wage war specifically to protect slavery as an institution? I wasn’t aware of this.
Look, I fully admit the seemingly hypocritical nature of my post and my avatar, but perhaps I should clarify further. While Madison occupies a lofty position on my list of great intellects of all time, he doesn’t have the same status on my list of greatest human beings of all time.
But beyond that, I draw a sharp distinction between using someone’s image as an avatar on a website and honoring people in a country who literally did commit treason against that country. I think the slave-owning part only further drives that point home.
And do not think that I am trying to argue that treason is a greater crime than enslavement. Slavery is clearly worse than treason.
While I am generally loathe to use the whole “historical context” argument vis-a-vis slavery, I think it also bears mention that Madison lived at a time when slavery was still relatively acceptable in American society. Certainly, slavery was fast growing out of style in Madison’s heyday, but by the time of the Civil War virtually the ONLY civilized nation/region in the world that was openly and actively advocating slavery on a racial basis was the South.
Also, while we will never know the answer to this, I would argue that toward Madison’s later years, he grew increasingly skeptical of slavery as an institution, and I think it is likely that had Madison lived in the time of the Civil War he would have been against slavery. I certainly don’t think he would advocated secession in furtherance of slavery.
And I don’t mean to pick on James Madison.
Think about it, though. Whatever you can say about a Confederate “hero”, you can say about a number of “Founding Fathers”.
Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Benjamin Franklin, Button Gwinnett, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, James Madison, Benjamin Rush, Edward Rutledge and George Washington were all very wealthy men, most of them southerners, many of them plantation owners, ALL of them slave owners. ALL of them guilty of treason against their lawful government and would undoubtedly have been hanged as traitors had their rebellion failed. Many of them are on record as stating that the negro was the inferior of the white, and had no business being free and equal to the white. Many of them, in fact, including your avatar boy, wished to round them all up and send them back to Africa.
So let’s maybe be careful about painting with such a broad brush. Paint does have a tendency to splatter into places we’d like to remain clean and pure.
I will go so far as to say that the War of 1812 was a direct analogue to the Civil War. On one side we have a newly-minted Confederacy of slave-owning states who have seceded from their government, which has abolished slavery partly on moral grounds, but mostly because its industrial economy has rendered the institution unprofitable. The Confederacy was the instigator of the war, prompting a full-scale invasion by the central government, which resulted in the capital of the confederacy being burnt to the ground. A great number of slaves were emancipated from the Confederacy by the central government, and went on to fight against their former masters. The difference is that the rebels prevailed, the institution of slavery was preserved in the Confederacy, and the central government licked its wounds and went home.
The Star-Spangled Banner was the battle flag of this confederacy. Should we now, enlightened and sensitive as we are here in the 21st century, take it down, and stop singing about the battle over which it flew?
[quote]Chushin wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
And I don’t mean to pick on James Madison.
Think about it, though. Whatever you can say about a Confederate “hero”, you can say about a number of “Founding Fathers”.
Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Benjamin Franklin, Button Gwinnett, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, James Madison, Benjamin Rush, Edward Rutledge and George Washington were all very wealthy men, most of them southerners, many of them plantation owners, ALL of them slave owners. ALL of them guilty of treason against their lawful government and would undoubtedly have been hanged as traitors had their rebellion failed. Many of them are on record as stating that the negro was the inferior of the white, and had no business being free and equal to the white. Many of them, in fact, including your avatar boy, wished to round them all up and send them back to Africa.
So let’s maybe be careful about painting with such a broad brush. Paint does have a tendency to splatter into places we’d like to remain clean and pure.[/quote]
Winning gets you a lot of forgiveness. [/quote]
Precisely.
Had the South won, would they have been right?
EDIT: further to that, any doubt in anyone’s mind that if the British had prevailed in the War of 1812, that the rebellious confederacy would have been forcibly re-integrated into the Empire, the slaves emancipated, and the North American colonies would have been “reconstructed” by British carpet-baggers?
Or that today, the Founding Fathers would be demonized as traitors and bigots, and anyone flying the Star-Spangled Banner would be denounced as a rebel sympathizer and a racist?
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I will go so far as to say that the War of 1812 was a direct analogue to the Civil War. On one side we have a newly-minted Confederacy of slave-owning states who have seceded from their government, which has abolished slavery partly on moral grounds, but mostly because its industrial economy has rendered the institution unprofitable. The Confederacy was the instigator of the war, prompting a full-scale invasion by the central government, which resulted in the capital of the confederacy being burnt to the ground. A great number of slaves were emancipated from the Confederacy by the central government, and went on to fight against their former masters. The difference is that the rebels prevailed, the institution of slavery was preserved in the Confederacy, and the central government licked its wounds and went home.
The Star-Spangled Banner was the battle flag of this confederacy. Should we now, enlightened and sensitive as we are here in the 21st century, take it down, and stop singing about the battle over which it flew?[/quote]
I would argue that the analogy suffers one fatal flaw: Slavery was the great, operative cause underlying the CSA and its secession. It had no analogous existential association with the War of 1812. You are right, of course, as was DD, about slavery’s figuring, far more incidentally, into the latter conflict (as what is essentially a British military tactic).
Similarly, the difference between a Founder and a leader of the CSA is, for me, this: We celebrate the Founders for their role in the Founding. They were flawed men who created something that was equally flawed but also exceptional and destined for true and literal greatness in no small part because of the genius with which they created it. There are causes and consequences here worthy of emphatic celebration, even as we remember the dirt under the fingernails. In the case of the causes and consequences bound up with the CSA, less presents itself for public celebration. The dirt under the fingernails was kind of the whole idea.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I will go so far as to say that the War of 1812 was a direct analogue to the Civil War. On one side we have a newly-minted Confederacy of slave-owning states who have seceded from their government, which has abolished slavery partly on moral grounds, but mostly because its industrial economy has rendered the institution unprofitable. The Confederacy was the instigator of the war, prompting a full-scale invasion by the central government, which resulted in the capital of the confederacy being burnt to the ground. A great number of slaves were emancipated from the Confederacy by the central government, and went on to fight against their former masters. The difference is that the rebels prevailed, the institution of slavery was preserved in the Confederacy, and the central government licked its wounds and went home.
The Star-Spangled Banner was the battle flag of this confederacy. Should we now, enlightened and sensitive as we are here in the 21st century, take it down, and stop singing about the battle over which it flew?[/quote]
You are correct except the rebels did not prevail. That war was a draw.
[/quote]
Any time a rebellion is not crushed, the leaders not hanged, and their flag not banned is a victory for the rebellion.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Did Madison wage war specifically to protect slavery as an institution? I wasn’t aware of this.
[/quote]
Well, then, to quote my good friend Mister Push Winchester Harder, “yew jes’ better study up, son.”
Madison of course wrote Article I, section 9 of the Constitution, which forbade Congress from banning the importation of slaves, and also Article V, which forbade any amendment of section 9 for twenty years. He also wrote section 2 of Article IV, which outlawed any state from freeing a slave who had escaped from another state, and required escaped slaves to be returned to their owners. Most importantly, he authored (and fought hard for the inclusion of) the infamous section 2 of Article I, which required slaves to be counted in a state’s population for congressional districting, albeit at a rate of three-fifths of a white person.
Madison was affiliated with the predominantly-southern Republican party, which, contrary to the wishes of the predominantly-northern Federalists, wished to preserve the institution of slavery in the United States. The Federalists were against going to war again with Britain, but the Republicans pushed for it.
At stake was the very preservation of the new nation, under the Constitution, which allowed slavery. The British had abolished the slave trade in 1807, and a British victory in the War of 1812 would have meant the end of slavery in North America rather sooner than it actually happened.
So yes, in a very real sense, Madison waged war in order to preserve the institution of slavery.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Most Southerners were conscripted into armed service. However, if you were conscripted and you didn’t believe that an act of treason in furtherance of preserving slavery was worth fighting for, there was this place called “the North” to which one could travel. [/quote]
You make it sound like they could just jump in their Ram 1500 and cruise on up to “the North.”
[quote]
It seems to me that Southerners who stayed and fought willingly were either fighting for the preservation of slavery, an act to which no heroism can be attached, or they were too cowardly to stand up for what they believed in and they decided not to flee the South. Either way, I don’t see anything heroic that is worth celebrating. [/quote]
They could have been fighting what they believed (or were convinced of) was an invading force into their sovereign lands / their homes. I’ve no interest in arguing over succession because frankly I’ve no business doing so. Your average soldier or conscript had no idea if succession was legal either.
[quote]
And deep down, I think most conservatives understand this perfectly well. [/quote]
I think that a lot of social conservative are concerned more so about giving yet another inch on a topic fearing where it will lead. It feels like liberal never give an inch on conservative values and I think many conservatives are just tired of it in general so everything (common sense or not) is a fight.
[quote]
They just don’t like having to admit that liberals aren’t wrong on EVERYTHING after all. [/quote]
Never!
[quote]
So they try to couch their opposition to this renaming/reflagging thing in any other terms possible rather than have to actually admit that a liberal movement has some genuine merit to it. [/quote]
My position is more akin to, “Why now and how does this stop race based crime?” The only answer I can come up with is that there’s really no reason to do this now other than political gain and it will do nothing for race relations. I believe this actually hurts race relations tbh because now borderline racists are pissed off about this whole mess and who do you think the’ll take it out on?
Personally, I don’t care, but this is a knee jerk response to a tragedy while simultaneously doing nothing of value to actually effect positive change. It’s a hollow gesture in my opinion.
[quote]
Yeah, people don’t like the fact that shit is simply CHANGING on them, but fucking deal with it. I generally think all this racism bullshit has gone way too far and I think minorities need to shut the fuck up about white privilege and cultural appropriation (Darius Rucker is as guilty of cultural appropriation as any white). That being said, it isn’t too far of a step at all to start demanding that we stop honoring treasonous slavers and bigots. That is what the Confederacy was comprised of: treasonous, traitorous people who played the victim card fast and loose while literally caging humans.[/quote]
That’s a good point, but I think it will lead to a place many of us don’t want to go.
I thought we had wrapped this up. The US, all of it, every bit, that existed in 1860 was built upon the backs of slaves in some form or fashion. It is more than a little hypocritical to take a side of an argument that condemns confederates while overlooking the wrongs of the founders, the slave owning north and the slave owning generals of the slave owning north.
While your at it, you should also ignore the constitutional amendment that Homest Abe proposed to protect slavery to try to keep the south from leaving. Don’t even think about considering the fact that the Great Emancipator allowed slavery to continue in the north until 1870. Let’s overlook all that and focus on a catch phrase about “a nation created to perpetuate slavery” or whatever the fuck.
I have now decided that I am against schools and public buildings being named after anyone. They should just be given numbers. And all flags should be solid white. That should cut down on everyone being so offended and at the same time magically eliminate racism.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Most Southerners were conscripted into armed service. However, if you were conscripted and you didn’t believe that an act of treason in furtherance of preserving slavery was worth fighting for, there was this place called “the North” to which one could travel. [/quote]
You make it sound like they could just jump in their Ram 1500 and cruise on up to “the North.”
[quote]
It seems to me that Southerners who stayed and fought willingly were either fighting for the preservation of slavery, an act to which no heroism can be attached, or they were too cowardly to stand up for what they believed in and they decided not to flee the South. Either way, I don’t see anything heroic that is worth celebrating. [/quote]
They could have been fighting what they believed (or were convinced of) was an invading force into their sovereign lands / their homes. I’ve no interest in arguing over succession because frankly I’ve no business doing so. Your average soldier or conscript had no idea if succession was legal either.
[quote]
And deep down, I think most conservatives understand this perfectly well. [/quote]
I think that a lot of social conservative are concerned more so about giving yet another inch on a topic fearing where it will lead. It feels like liberal never give an inch on conservative values and I think many conservatives are just tired of it in general so everything (common sense or not) is a fight.
[quote]
They just don’t like having to admit that liberals aren’t wrong on EVERYTHING after all. [/quote]
Never!
[quote]
So they try to couch their opposition to this renaming/reflagging thing in any other terms possible rather than have to actually admit that a liberal movement has some genuine merit to it. [/quote]
My position is more akin to, “Why now and how does this stop race based crime?” The only answer I can come up with is that there’s really no reason to do this now other than political gain and it will do nothing for race relations. I believe this actually hurts race relations tbh because now borderline racists are pissed off about this whole mess and who do you think the’ll take it out on?
Personally, I don’t care, but this is a knee jerk response to a tragedy while simultaneously doing nothing of value to actually effect positive change. It’s a hollow gesture in my opinion.
[quote]
Yeah, people don’t like the fact that shit is simply CHANGING on them, but fucking deal with it. I generally think all this racism bullshit has gone way too far and I think minorities need to shut the fuck up about white privilege and cultural appropriation (Darius Rucker is as guilty of cultural appropriation as any white). That being said, it isn’t too far of a step at all to start demanding that we stop honoring treasonous slavers and bigots. That is what the Confederacy was comprised of: treasonous, traitorous people who played the victim card fast and loose while literally caging humans.[/quote]
That’s a good point, but I think it will lead to a place many of us don’t want to go. [/quote]
It is also important to note the very different roles federal and state governments had at that time (something the civil war ultimately changed). People saw themselves as from their state first and an American second. States were largely the higher authority even legally back when the Fed actually obeyed the 10th amendment.
What this means is that southerners in states that succeeded where traitors regardless of what they did. Their only options where to violate their allegiance to the federal government or to violate their allegiance to their home state. Most of the people of the day would undoubtedly have seen their state as the higher loyalty.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
It is also important to note the very different roles federal and state governments had at that time (something the civil war ultimately changed). People saw themselves as from their state first and an American second. States were largely the higher authority even legally back when the Fed actually obeyed the 10th amendment.
What this means is that southerners in states that succeeded where traitors regardless of what they did. Their only options where to violate their allegiance to the federal government or to violate their allegiance to their home state. Most of the people of the day would undoubtedly have seen their state as the higher loyalty.
[/quote]
This. And I think this is the reason for the argument that the war was about states’ rights-it was not at the time, but it ultimately resulted in the individual states being basically eliminated as meaningful governing bodies.
My new catch phrase for this thread: “Fought for a nation built upon the backs of black slaves”. I plan to integrate it into each and every response in opposition to my opinion.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
That being said, it isn’t too far of a step at all to start demanding that we stop honoring treasonous slavers and bigots. That is what the Confederacy was comprised of: treasonous, traitorous people who played the victim card fast and loose while literally caging humans.[/quote]
So let me get this straight: we should stop honoring any southerner who committed treason against his government, who made his fortunes as a plantation owner owning African slaves, who believed that the black and white races could never co-exist as free and equal entities, and who waged war to prevent the abolition of the institution of slavery in America?
Well, looks like you need to change your avatar.
;)[/quote]
Madison didn’t commit treason against his government, nor did he wage a war to preserve slavery.