Shooting In South Carolina

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
162

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
And the answer is the CSA was formed (it didn’t secede) for ALL the reasons, and more, that we’ve discussed. And it was part of a process that occurred over the course of several decades.[/quote]

What other reasons have we discussed? You named a few other states that talked about it for various reasons specific to their own concerns and times. What other reasons are you alluding to?

States’ rights is a generic term generally attended by something specific – states’ rights vis-a-vis this, that, etc. In the case of the states in question, they were clear in communicating the specific grievance about which they were so worried and angry as to secede.

What I am asking for is primary evidence that any of these other specifics played a role even slightly comparable to that of slavery. This evidence would have to be as strong as that already provided by me.

Otherwise, my characterization stands on the strength of its case.

This is an old song: the attempt to call a blue sky green. The song, though, never gets sourced. I am asking for primary sources as strong and formidable and overarching as the ones that point clearly to slavery as the overwhelmingly primary cause of the secession of the States that would become the CSA.

166

[quote]pushharder wrote:

I keep telling you its the primary cause. Now you’re making my point in that while primary it wasn’t exclusive.

But because it was primary does not mean the other factors and the rest of the political history in the decades before it is of little to no consequence. We can keep it relatively simple but should not strive to be superficially simplistic.[/quote]

I understand that history is highly complex, that nothing happens in A-B-C succession without underlying influences D-X and corollary events 1-589. But I also understand that certain causal chains in history are as unambiguous and paramount as they appear. Appeals to complexity are sometimes attempts at historical revisionism, and this is fully so with the Civil War.

The begrudging admission that slavery was “primary” while also reducing it to merely an “ultimate catalyst” – a kind of straw that broke the Union’s back – is very common. It tries to nudge things toward a kind of unspoken Great War analogy, where slavery is Franz Ferdinand: worth a couple of sentences in a 10,000-word essay, and not nearly as grand or important as the rest. In the case of the southern states’ secession, this is an ass-backwards and ahistorical impulse. It is not born of actual and direct evidence of the kind I offered earlier in this thread. Or it is, in which case someone needs to present the direct evidence.

Edit: Barring such presentation, the argument proceeds in a direct line to the CSA colors in flight on public property.

Speaking of which, let’s wait and see, but I suspect they are indeed going to come down:

172

[quote]pushharder wrote:
How 'bout this: “the primary catalyst?”

Yes, there we go. Now we’re all happy.[/quote]

Primary to such an overwhelming degree as to merit description as “the explicit cause of.” As I said previously, if there is evidence (that is as strong and direct and overarching as that I provided) of a secondary cause near enough to slavery in importance to warrant mention in the same breath, nobody seems keen to provide it. At all. Not a word.

[quote]
Stamp out every seeming vestige of the Civil War which even remotely attempts to honor the sacrifice of those who served the South?[/quote]

…To serve the South in the cause of maintaining and proliferating the property status of black slaves. All service has a cause, and this particular cause gives that particular “service” a different flavor.

[quote]
Should we then all line up and take a piss on R.E. Lee’s grave? How about we disinter Stonewall Jackson remains and then rebury him with a portrait of MLKIII? Will that satiate the hunger for “fixin’ everything?” [/quote]

I am not talking about exhuming bodies. I am talking about flying a flag on state property. Flags belong to a cause. To fly a flag is to announce or celebrate a cause, this to a far greater extent than to mark a tomb is to celebrate a man and all of his flaws (in evidence of this last bit: we do not rise in protest at the fact that Dylan Klebold was buried in a marked grave; we would, presumably, if the state of Colorado decided to design a flag in memory of his cause and fly it in public). The cause in question deserves to be remembered with regret and distaste, not celebrated.

173

I can’t really argue about this any more, though – I basically didn’t work today. I mean it, come to the Northeast. Or we will head north, to the Arctic, which plan is more intriguing by the day.

176

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Ahhh…here we go…what I’ve been basically saying:

“Had the flag not existed or not been on the grounds of the capitol, this massacre would have happened in any case, but it’s the standard liberal impulse: something happened really bad. So there’s got to be a problem, there has to be a solution, we must do something, even if that something is entirely irrelevant.”

Charles Krauthammer[/quote]

Right, because they blame society and not the individual. That is the problem with collectists and other assorted commie, pinko non-thinkers. They think it’ll be different this time, that THEIR version of communism will work…

When the fact of the matter is, it won’t and can’t, because they ignore the individual for the sake of the collective. Their fatal flaw is the basis of their entire premise…

Sad really.

177

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Ahhh…here we go…what I’ve been basically saying:

“Had the flag not existed or not been on the grounds of the capitol, this massacre would have happened in any case, but it’s the standard liberal impulse: something happened really bad. So there’s got to be a problem, there has to be a solution, we must do something, even if that something is entirely irrelevant.”

Charles Krauthammer[/quote]

For the record, I agree. The flag didn’t cause this, and removing it doesn’t change the killing. But the killing happened to bring to light – note that Roof loved the flag too, for the fact of its historical meaning – something that should have been done anyway and 15 years ago.

In other words, the argument is still absolutely correct, and still stands.

178

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

For the record, I agree. The flag didn’t cause this, and removing it doesn’t change the killing. But the killing happened to bring to light [/quote]

But that is the over riding problem.

A monster killed otherwise good people. And what is the reaction? Symbolism? Empty gestures?

Wouldn’t starting a charity in the names of the victims to council troubled youths actually be more meaningful? Wouldn’t donations to the church’s philanthropy be more, I don’t know the word, robust?

What does even thinking about the flag accomplish other than the whole “never let a good crisis go to waste”?

I don’t care if the flag is taken down, and I dont’ care if it flies. The men who fought and died for it came from different time, a different understanding of the world. Wrong? Sure, absolutely. But taking it down solves nothing and you know it too. It solves nothing to do with this shooting, nothing to do with the racial problems in the country and nothing to solve the actual issue… Which in the end is humans are humans.

179

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

For the record, I agree. The flag didn’t cause this, and removing it doesn’t change the killing. But the killing happened to bring to light [/quote]

But that is the over riding problem.

A monster killed otherwise good people. And what is the reaction? Symbolism? Empty gestures?

Wouldn’t starting a charity in the names of the victims to council troubled youths actually be more meaningful? Wouldn’t donations to the church’s philanthropy be more, I don’t know the word, robust?

What does even thinking about the flag accomplish other than the whole “never let a good crisis go to waste”?

I don’t care if the flag is taken down, and I dont’ care if it flies. The men who fought and died for it came from different time, a different understanding of the world. Wrong? Sure, absolutely. But taking it down solves nothing and you know it too. It solves nothing to do with this shooting, nothing to do with the racial problems in the country and nothing to solve the actual issue… Which in the end is humans are humans. [/quote]

It solves its own problem. It isn’t about Roof. Nothing can be done about him save for the meting of justice. This is a separate argument, and that it doesn’t solve the killing does not detract from the fact that it’s correct. It’s been correct all along, and many of us have been making it all along. It’s just that now, people are noticing.

Those colors were created for a country that was created for the continuance and future prosperity of the legal enslavement of black people. Full stop. They belong nowhere near any state house. This isn’t calculus, it’s two plus two. And the failure of so many on the Right to do the math gets at why they just might, against all odds, stuff their heads far enough up their own asses to lose the White House a third time.

As for it being from a different time, I am not a moral relativist, and what was wrong then is wrong now. Many people summoned the brain power to figure this all out in 1860. But either way, this is now, and we are in the present day, and we can make simple decisions about which idiotic ideals of our past we want to display above our seats of governance.

180

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
It’s just that now, people are noticing.

[/quote]

This part I don’t buy. (I don’t argue with your other points because I largely agree it has no place flying anywhere near a state building, but I don’t think it’s my call, it isn’t my state house. That said, I could argue the moral relativist angle, but it would end up a semantically futile back and forth, and I don’t agree with slavery in any shape or form so it isn’t in my interests to belabor the point.)

I think people have noticed for a long, long time. While they might very well be happy about the flag coming down, do you think if given the choice the victims would be satisfied that the flag coming down was the symbol of their sacrifice?

All I’m saying is: can we not find a better use of our focus here?

I’m not saying your point is wrong or that I disagree with it. I’m saying it is an empty gesture that is ultimately… light in the meaning area.

Someone on the internet reminds me every day I’m a bad person because I’m a white male. That I should feel something for the actions of others that share a skin shade and/or penis in common with me. Does taking down the flag mean I don’t have to any more? No… It doesn’t solve any problem by a symbolic one.