Shooting In South Carolina

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
581

I guess I haven’t actually taken a position in this thread. I think the flag should come down. Most of the history of that flag and, more importantly, the express reason it was raised in that location was anti- integration and anti-civil rights. It really had nothing to do with the CSA. It was racist Democrats wanting to fight against black civil rights. If you want to fight for heritage or have a memorial, do it somewhere that doesn’t expand on that history and maybe try using a CSA flag.

That said, I don’t really care about what flags SC chooses to fly or not.

582

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Interesting trivia: Francis Scott Key was also a prominent slaveowner.[/quote]

That obviously needs to go then. Maybe we can get Kanye West to write a new anthem. [/quote]

As long as it still has rockets and bombs in it. We have to uphold our status as the only country in the world whose national anthem mentions rockets and bombs.

EDIT: Actually, fuck Kanye. I nominate the classic by Trey Parker, who to my knowledge never owned a single slave.

America fuck yeah-team america - YouTube [/quote]

Solid points as usual.

583

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Maybe it was someone else in this thread that had laid the deaths of Union soldiers at the feet of the evils of the cause of slavery. I know someone did.[/quote]

This is different.

The cause of slavery explicitly occasioned secession and, therefore, in a very real and non-rhetorical way underlay the war that was fought over the secession (and can be found in each and every soldier’s death).

If U.S. abortion law were ever to swing toward the Right, and the West Coast were to secede from the United States in defense of its citizens’ right to any-time abortion access, and a war were to ensue, we would – all of us – assign moral blame (and much worse) to the secessionists and their existential cause, and we would all spit in disgust with the fact that Americans had died in a war over abortion, even if the dead Americans had taken up arms specifically in order to keep the U.S. together, and even if many of them were themselves pro-choice. Same mechanism of action.

Edited.

584

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

Ok, so you side with the British. Good to know.

It wasn’t treason, precisely because of the justification. If it is justified, then it ceases to be treason, because justification is at the very heart of what constitutes treason or not - in the same way thay if you kill someone, if it was justified in the name of self-defense, you didn’t commit murder (although the person is dead all the same).

As an aside, why insist that the Founders committed treason? Oh yes, so that the Confederacy - which did commit treason - can claim kinship with the Founding Fathers, the usual libertarian line.
[/quote]

Kindly don’t put words in my mouth, I’ll make my own claims. I was only noting your bold falsehood. What they did was legally treason. The signers of the DOI acknowledged and knew this.

I’d also point out that the just-ness of an action is generally determined by what side wins. If we’d lost the revolution they’d have been hanged and remembered as traitors. They had all sworn loyalty to the British crown. The fact that they are now remembered for things afterward is due to the fact that we won and there was a later.[/quote]

The signed of the Declaration understood that they would be killed for treasonous acts, but they didn’t think they were committing treason. They thought they were invoking their natural right to revolt against an unjust government. If you are justified in doing so, you aren’t committing treason.

Doesn’t matter that the British thought it was treason - it only matters who was right. And regardless of who won the war, in this instance, someone was right and someone was wrong.

Lucky for us, our Founding Fathers weren’t moral relativists, as you appear to be. They thought liberty was worth revolting and fighting for, and they had the courage of their convictions, even if they lost the war.
[/quote]

I’m not discussing morality. I’m discussing treason. They swore and owed loyalty to the crown. They violated their oaths and revolted. That’s called treason. Those are the facts. I never said it was immoral.

You are the one that claimed treason was bad. You are the one that sided morally with the British.[/quote]

Treason is a moral crime, chief - it is an unjustified betrayal to one’s country. Treason is immoral.

Words actually have meaning, DoubleDuce. Treason is a very specific kind of moral criminal act, like murder. Like my example above, if you are justified in killing someone, you haven’t committed the moral crime of murder. There is no such thing as “justified treason” because if it is justified, it ceases to be treason.

These aren’t word games - the actual words carry moral weight. And if you actually think the Founding Fathers actually committed treason, you think their actions were not justified.
[/quote]

Well I think someone in this conversation doesn’t understand that words have real meanings, but it ain’t me. [/quote]

Sure thing, DoubleDuce. Thanks anyway.

585

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

Madison didn’t commit treason against his government…
[/quote]

Uh, what?[/quote]

What is confusing about this?
[/quote]

The fact that he was a bold faced traitor? And played a leading role in a treacherous revolution?

Maybe you specifically mean in his actions as president in the war of 1812? Though he was fighting the country he committed treason against and the conflict was largely a fallout from that treason. He was still a traitor.
[/quote]

The British certainly thought Madison a traitor. So you’re saying they were right?

Madison didn’t think he was a traitor - he thought he was participating in a justified revolution in defense of natural rights.

Either the British were right, or Madison is right, but both cannot be right - so which one is it?

You seem to think the British.
[/quote]

Oh dear, TB, the Founders knew they were traitors and risked hanging for being such. This is American History 101.[/quote]

Yes, they completely understood that what they were doing was considered treason by the British monarch and would be punished as traitors if they lost. But they were not actually committing treason, because their revolt was justified. Which they knew and believed.
[/quote]

Yes, it was considered treason by the legal government.

Likewise, the founders of the CSA completely understood that what they were doing was considered treason by the USA and would be punished as traitors if they lost. But they were not actually committing treason, because their revolt was justified. Which they knew and believed.
[/quote]

Well, no, for at least two reasons, and we’ve discussed this at least a thousand times.

First, the Confederacy’s “secession” wasn’t revolution justified by a breach of natural rights. Obviously, it was not - there is no right to revolt because of the outcome of an election you didn’t want. The Founders were revolting against an unjust government. The Confederacy was not.

Second, the Confederacy left the Union to preserve slavery - that’s no justification to revolt.

Try as you might (yet again), the CSA wasn’t leaving on leaving the Union on the same moral and legal grounds that the colonies left Britain. We’ve covered this ad nauseam, and every time, we wind up the same place. And we aren’t going to hit “reset” yet again for you to rehash all the same arguments that lost the first thousand times. There’s no sport in it.

586

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Ahhh…it’s very interesting that TB’s rhetoric that “justified actions” prevent the appropriate application of the word “treason” are almost verbatim what CSA promoters – then and now – use. It’s like they faxed the talking points from 1860 right straight to TB’s home office and he scanned them into a Word document and printed them right here on lil ol’ T-Nation.[/quote]

I was thinking that very thing. I wonder how many of the secessionists believed that their actions were in any way unjustified, immoral or treasonous. Especially inasmuch as they had the Bible to back them up on the morally justified part, and the precedent of the Revolution to back them up on the politically justified part.[/quote]

They didn’t have the Revolution as precedent.

587

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Ahhh…it’s very interesting that TB’s rhetoric that “justified actions” prevent the appropriate application of the word “treason” are almost verbatim what CSA promoters – then and now – use. It’s like they faxed the talking points from 1860 right straight to TB’s home office and he scanned them into a Word document and printed them right here on lil ol’ T-Nation.[/quote]

I was thinking that very thing. I wonder how many of the secessionists believed that their actions were in any way unjustified, immoral or treasonous. Especially inasmuch as they had the Bible to back them up on the morally justified part, and the precedent of the Revolution to back them up on the politically justified part.[/quote]

They didn’t have the Revolution as precedent.
[/quote]

Are you kidding?

What was the American Revolution if not secession?

588

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Maybe it was someone else in this thread that had laid the deaths of Union soldiers at the feet of the evils of the cause of slavery. I know someone did.[/quote]

This is different.

The cause of slavery explicitly occasioned secession and, therefore, in a very real and non-rhetorical way underlay the war that was fought over the secession (and can be found in each and every soldier’s death).

If U.S. abortion law were ever to swing toward the Right, and the West Coast were to secede from the United States in defense of its citizens’ right to any-time abortion access, and a war were to ensue, we would – all of us – assign moral blame (and much worse) to the secessionists and their existential cause, and we would all spit in disgust with the fact that Americans had died in a war over abortion, even if the dead Americans had taken up arms specifically in order to keep the U.S. together, and even if many of them were themselves pro-choice. Same mechanism of action.

Edited.[/quote]

The war was not fought against all slave states. Both the reason for succession and the reasons to invade and prevent secession are entirely critical in all deaths. Without either there are none. There is no good reason to single out one over the other.

The law of the land WAS slavery. It would be like if the west seceded and we invaded while states remaining in the east continued with the same abortion law as those who succeeded. Meanwhile the East promised repeatedly that they didn’t want to end abortion and offered them paths to stay in the union and keep their abortions. Again the picture is far more grey than you are willing to acknowledge.

589

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Maybe it was someone else in this thread that had laid the deaths of Union soldiers at the feet of the evils of the cause of slavery. I know someone did.[/quote]

This is different.

The cause of slavery explicitly occasioned secession and, therefore, in a very real and non-rhetorical way underlay the war that was fought over the secession (and can be found in each and every soldier’s death).

If U.S. abortion law were ever to swing toward the Right, and the West Coast were to secede from the United States in defense of its citizens’ right to any-time abortion access, and a war were to ensue, we would – all of us – assign moral blame (and much worse) to the secessionists and their existential cause, and we would all spit in disgust with the fact that Americans had died in a war over abortion, even if the dead Americans had taken up arms specifically in order to keep the U.S. together, and even if many of them were themselves pro-choice. Same mechanism of action.

Edited.[/quote]

^ And, in the future, all the (by then ancient) regulars would log onto PWI and howl like wolves with crushed testicles at the thought of public celebration of the West Coast Secessionists. We all know this to be so.

590

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Ahhh…it’s very interesting that TB’s rhetoric that “justified actions” prevent the appropriate application of the word “treason” are almost verbatim what CSA promoters – then and now – use. It’s like they faxed the talking points from 1860 right straight to TB’s home office and he scanned them into a Word document and printed them right here on lil ol’ T-Nation.[/quote]

I was thinking that very thing. I wonder how many of the secessionists believed that their actions were in any way unjustified, immoral or treasonous. Especially inasmuch as they had the Bible to back them up on the morally justified part, and the precedent of the Revolution to back them up on the politically justified part.[/quote]

They didn’t have the Revolution as precedent.
[/quote]

Are you kidding?

What was the American Revolution if not secession?[/quote]

Talk about revisionist.

591

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Maybe it was someone else in this thread that had laid the deaths of Union soldiers at the feet of the evils of the cause of slavery. I know someone did.[/quote]

This is different.

The cause of slavery explicitly occasioned secession and, therefore, in a very real and non-rhetorical way underlay the war that was fought over the secession (and can be found in each and every soldier’s death).

If U.S. abortion law were ever to swing toward the Right, and the West Coast were to secede from the United States in defense of its citizens’ right to any-time abortion access, and a war were to ensue, we would – all of us – assign moral blame (and much worse) to the secessionists and their existential cause, and we would all spit in disgust with the fact that Americans had died in a war over abortion, even if the dead Americans had taken up arms specifically in order to keep the U.S. together, and even if many of them were themselves pro-choice. Same mechanism of action.

Edited.[/quote]

^ And, in the future, all the (by then ancient) regulars would log onto PWI and howl like wolves with crushed testicles at the thought of public celebration of the West Coast Secessionists. We all know this to be so.[/quote]

If California broke off and fell in the ocean…? I think you overestimate the sadness of people here. I’d be fine with them leaving personally.

592

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

It would be like if the west seceded and we invaded while states remaining in the east continued with the same abortion law as those who succeeded. Meanwhile the East promised repeatedly that they didn’t want to end abortion and offered them paths to stay in the union and keep their abortions. Again the picture is far more grey than you are willing to acknowledge.[/quote]

And yet the West has seceded explicitly because they were (correctly) afraid of where abortion law was headed and because of increasing and proliferating anti-abortion sentiment, momentum, and actual legislation in the East.

Yes, you’ve made this more detailed and realistically complex (and I’m certainly fine with that: it’s a good thing), but we arrive the exact same result and not the slightest bit of grey vis-a-vis the West, its moral cause, and the extent to which it and its leaders are deserving of public celebration.

593

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Ahhh…it’s very interesting that TB’s rhetoric that “justified actions” prevent the appropriate application of the word “treason” are almost verbatim what CSA promoters – then and now – use. It’s like they faxed the talking points from 1860 right straight to TB’s home office and he scanned them into a Word document and printed them right here on lil ol’ T-Nation.[/quote]

I was thinking that very thing. I wonder how many of the secessionists believed that their actions were in any way unjustified, immoral or treasonous. Especially inasmuch as they had the Bible to back them up on the morally justified part, and the precedent of the Revolution to back them up on the politically justified part.[/quote]

They didn’t have the Revolution as precedent.
[/quote]

Are you kidding?

What was the American Revolution if not secession?[/quote]

Is this a serious question?

The colonies didn’t secede - they revolted. They didn’t formally withdraw from the government, they couldn’t - they overthrew the government and replaced it with their own based on the right of revolution, based on denials of natural rights.

Once the nation was formed, there was no legal right to secede from the Union - absent a constitutional convention - and the Confederacy had no justification for the kind of revolt waged by the colonies: there was no denial of rights, only a perfectly legitimate democratic outcome they didn’t like. That ain’t a basis for revolution.

Apples and oranges. I see the appeal, though - as I mentioned earlier, there is a strong desire to show kinship among the Slave Power and the Founding Fathers to help legitimize “secession”. Problem is, it’s not true.

596

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
and not the slightest bit of grey vis-a-vis the West, its moral cause, and the extent to which it and its leaders are deserving of public celebration.[/quote]

This would be true if the whole of the individuals was encompassed by the war and the politics of the day. After reading a Forrest biography, I’m actually more okay with his celebration. His hard work in rebuilding the union and arguing for black rights and integration after the war are extraordinary especially in his day. (there happens to be a large Forrest statue not too far from where I work that regularly gets vandalized)

597

[quote] pushharder wrote:

The nuances between the two revolts differ. The fundamentals don’t.

Nuances don’t trump fundamentals.[/quote]

The differences are in the fundamentals. Go re-read all the threads where we hashed this out.

The Slave Power lost an election. That was the basis for their “secession” - after dominating Congressional politics for decades, they were beginning to lose the argument that slavery wouldn’t be allowed to aggressively expand in the West, as with the rise of the Republicans, slavery would in fact be quarantined and would die a “natural” death.

Revolt isn’t justified in a democracy just because you’re on the losing side of an issue put to the democratic test.

The Slave Power left for one reason - slavery was going to die at the hands of democracy. There is nothing in that situation that justifies revolt…unless you think that democratically ending slavery is a denial of your natural rights.

598

And we see something else in these arguments - the philosophical bent of our resident libertarians to be mor relativists, and in their own way, post modernist types: there is no Right or Wrong, there is only Power, and by Power alone defines rightness.

Yes, I have always contended that libertarianism is far closer to radical, left-wing philosophy, and I’m never more convinced of it than when we start on this subject.

599

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote] pushharder wrote:

The nuances between the two revolts differ. The fundamentals don’t.

Nuances don’t trump fundamentals.[/quote]

The differences are in the fundamentals. Go re-read all the threads where we hashed this out.

The Slave Power lost an election. That was the basis for their “secession” - after dominating Congressional politics for decades, they were beginning to lose the argument that slavery wouldn’t be allowed to aggressively expand in the West, as with the rise of the Republicans, slavery would in fact be quarantined and would die a “natural” death.

Revolt isn’t justified in a democracy just because you’re on the losing side of an issue put to the democratic test.

The Slave Power left for one reason - slavery was going to die at the hands of democracy. There is nothing in that situation that justifies revolt…unless you think that democratically ending slavery is a denial of your natural rights.
[/quote]

It is your contention that there weren’t political grievances between the north and the south? Sorry, the south was getting politically railroaded. The fact that they were being politically bullied in the right direction on a critical issue doesn’t change the fact that there was a lot of bullying.

600

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
And we see something else in these arguments - the philosophical bent of our resident libertarians to be mor relativists, and in their own way, post modernist types: there is no Right or Wrong, there is only Power, and by Power alone defines rightness.

Yes, I have always contended that libertarianism is far closer to radical, left-wing philosophy, and I’m never more convinced of it than when we start on this subject.[/quote]

I think you mistake telling it the way it is from advocating what should be. On the contrary, what I see being argued is that you and SMH are having your views tented by relativism that occurs when one side wins a war.