Southerners Used to Be Highly Redistributionist.

[Lisa Lisa]

Listen to this Son of the South talk about sharing the wealth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k

He sounds almost like a member of OWS, doesn't he? Well, Southerns
lionized Long, right up until the Sixties. Hmmm....I wonder what made
them change their minds?


Lisa

[DCI]

Lisa, Huey was full of it and simple folks ate it up. Today, folks would be cracking up and falling on the floor . . . wait a minute! Are those words being promulgated today?

DCI

[Lisa Lisa]

> DCI-

He wasn't half so silly as Tinkledown Deregulate Everything Until You
Have a Banking Crisis Remember the S&Ls Reagan or Severely
Conservative 47% of Americans Are Useless Eaters the Trees of Michigan
Are the Right Height Gay and Dog Torturer Dimwitticism Romney, who
wanted to discuss social problems in "quiet rooms." Maybe he meant
near the car elevator?

Lisa

[Nickname unavailable]

huey long.

[Bret Cahill]

The same as Jefferson, Lincoln or FDR.

The older ones died off and the youngins' never really studied
American history.

That's why we are having an outbreak of libertaria right now.


Bret Cahill

[Lisa Lisa]

On May 14, 12:10 am, Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cah...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Listen to this Son of the South talk about sharing the wealth:
>
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k
>
> > He sounds almost like a member of OWS, doesn't he?  Well, Southerns
> > lionized Long, right up until the Sixties.  Hmmm....I wonder what made
> > them change their minds?
>
> The same as Jefferson, Lincoln or FDR.
>
> The older ones died off and the youngins' never really studied
> American history.

The older ones didn't study American history either. Or do you think
that the average Southern male was a well-educated specimen?

> That's why we are having an outbreak of libertaria right now.

We're having an outbreak of libertaria right now because of the
backlash and repudiation of the Sixties, a decade that wrought
unwelcome change to many. And Nixon's Southern Strategy has worked
brilliantly for Republicans. How a Northerner like Nixon so
completely understood the Southern mind almost two generations ago, I
can't say, but I'll observe that he wasn't called Tricky Dick for
nothing. If ever there was a man of low cunning, it was him.

And Reagan completed what Nixon began. Hence the preoccupation with
the size of government, which had not previously been a feature of
Southern politics.

Lisa

[BeamMeUpScotty]

On 5/14/2013 1:16 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:
> On May 14, 12:10 am, Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cah...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Listen to this Son of the South talk about sharing the wealth:
>>
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k
>>
>>> He sounds almost like a member of OWS, doesn't he? Well, Southerns
>>> lionized Long, right up until the Sixties. Hmmm....I wonder what made
>>> them change their minds?
>>
>> The same as Jefferson, Lincoln or FDR.
>>
>> The older ones died off and the youngins' never really studied
>> American history.
>
> The older ones didn't study American history either. Or do you think
> that the average Southern male was a well-educated specimen?

Smart and educated are very different concepts.


As I remember HISTORY.....? General Lee was a west point Grad and he
pasted the North for the first few years of the war, until Sherman
burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves, and spread
starvation and disease and generally did the worst and lowest any human
can do to others.


If the North was educated, it sure ain't utopia up there is it.

--


*Rumination*
#18 - The problem with the global warming theory, is that a theory is
like a bowl of ice-cream, it only takes a little dab of bullshit to ruin
the whole thing.

[Nickname unavailable]

On May 14, 12:31 pm, BeamMeUpScotty

<ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote:
> On 5/14/2013 1:16 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On May 14, 12:10 am, Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cah...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>> Listen to this Son of the South talk about sharing the wealth:
>
> >>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k
>
> >>> He sounds almost like a member of OWS, doesn't he?  Well, Southerns
> >>> lionized Long, right up until the Sixties.  Hmmm....I wonder what made
> >>> them change their minds?
>
> >> The same as Jefferson, Lincoln or FDR.
>
> >> The older ones died off and the youngins' never really studied
> >> American history.
>
> > The older ones didn't study American history either.  Or do you think
> > that the average Southern male was a well-educated specimen?
>
> Smart and educated are very different concepts.
>
> As I remember HISTORY.....? General Lee was a west point Grad and he
> pasted the North for the first few years of the war,

both he and davis should have been hung for treason.

until Sherman
> burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves, and spread
> starvation and disease and generally did the worst and lowest any human
> can do to others.
>

sherman did what the "CONSERVATIVES" did to kentucky, so quite
bitching.

> If the North was educated, it sure ain't utopia up there is it.
>

the north built this country.



http://www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm?id=251

Industry and Economy during the Civil War
By Benjamin T. Arrington, National Park Service
As the war dragged on, the Union's advantages in factories, railroads,
and manpower put the Confederacy at a great disadvantage.

New technologies showing America's emerging industrial greatness were
refined the Civil War: the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, and
the steam-powered printing press
Library of Congress
The American economy was caught in transition on the eve of the Civil
War. What had been an almost purely agricultural economy in 1800 was
in the first stages of an industrial revolution which would result in
the United States becoming one of the world's leading industrial
powers by 1900. But the beginnings of the industrial revolution in the
prewar years was almost exclusively limited to the regions north of
the Mason-Dixon line, leaving much of the South far behind.

In 1860,
the South was still predominantly agricultural, highly dependent upon
the sale of staples to a world market. By 1815, cotton was the most
valuable export in the United States; by 1840, it was worth more than
all other exports combined. But while the southern states produced two-
thirds of the world's supply of cotton, the South had little
manufacturing capability, about 29 percent of the railroad tracks, and
only 13 percent of the nation's banks. The South did experiment with
using slave labor in manufacturing, but for the most part it was well
satisfied with its agricultural economy.

The North, by contrast, was
well on its way toward a commercial and manufacturing economy, which
would have a direct impact on its war making ability. By 1860, 90
percent of the nation's manufacturing output came from northern
states. The North produced 17 times more cotton and woolen textiles
than the South, 30 times more leather goods, 20 times more pig iron,
and 32 times more firearms. The North produced 3,200 firearms to every
100 produced in the South. Only about 40 percent of the Northern
population was still engaged in agriculture by 1860, as compared to 84
percent of the South.

Even in the agricultural sector, Northern
farmers were out-producing their southern counterparts in several
important areas, as Southern agriculture remained labor intensive
while northern agriculture became increasingly mechanized. By 1860,
the free states had nearly twice the value of farm machinery per acre
and per farm worker as did the slave states, leading to increased
productivity. As a result, in 1860, the Northern states produced half
of the nation's corn, four-fifths of its wheat, and seven-eighths of
its oats. 

The industrialization of the northern states had an impact
upon urbanization and immigration. By 1860, 26 percent of the Northern
population lived in urban areas, led by the remarkable growth of
cities such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Detroit, with their
farm-machinery, food-processing, machine-tool, and railroad equipment
factories. Only about a tenth of the southern population lived in
urban areas.

Free states attracted the vast majority of the waves of
European immigration through the mid-19th century. Fully seven-eighths
of foreign immigrants settled in free states. As a consequence, the
population of the states that stayed in the Union was approximately 23
million as compared to a population of 9 million in the states of the
Confederacy. This translated directly into the Union having 3.5
million males of military age - 18 to 45 - as compared to 1 million
for the South. About 75 percent of Southern males fought the war, as
compared to about half of Northern men. 

The Southern lag in
industrial development did not result from any inherent economic
disadvantages. There was great wealth in the South, but it was
primarily tied up in the slave economy. In 1860, the economic value of
slaves in the United States exceeded the invested value of all of the
nation's railroads, factories, and banks combined. On the eve of the
Civil War, cotton prices were at an all-time high. The Confederate
leaders were confident that the importance of cotton on the world
market, particularly in England and France, would provide the South
with the diplomatic and military assistance they needed for victory.
As both the North and the South mobilized for war, the relative
strengths and weaknesses of the "free market" and the "slave labor"
economic systems became increasingly clear - particularly in their
ability to support and sustain a war economy. The Union's industrial
and economic capacity soared during the war as the North continued its
rapid industrialization to suppress the rebellion. In the South, a
smaller industrial base, fewer rail lines, and an agricultural economy
based upon slave labor made mobilization of resources more difficult.
As the war dragged on, the Union's advantages in factories, railroads,
and manpower put the Confederacy at a great disadvantage.

Nearly
every sector of the Union economy witnessed increased production.
Mechanization of farming allowed a single farmer growing crops such as
corn or wheat to plant, harvest, and process much more than was
possible when hand and animal power were the only available tools. (By
1860, a threshing machine could thresh 12 times as much grain per hour
as could six men.) This mechanization became even more important as
many farmers left home to enlist in the Union military. Those
remaining behind could continue to manage the farm through the use of
labor-saving devices like reapers and horse-drawn planters.

Northern
transportation industries boomed during the conflict as well--
particularly railroads. The North's larger number of tracks and better
ability to construct and move parts gave it a distinct advantage over
the South. Union forces moving south or west to fight often rode to
battle on trains traveling on freshly lain tracks. In fact, as
Northern forces traveled further south to fight and occupy the
Confederacy, the War Department created the United States Military
Railroads, designed to build rails to carry troops and supplies as
well as operating captured Southern rail lines and equipment. By war's
end, it was the world's largest railroad system.

Other Northern
industries--weapons manufacturing, leather goods, iron production,
textiles--grew and improved as the war progressed. The same was not
true in the South. The twin disadvantages of a smaller industrial
economy and having so much of the war fought in the South hampered
Confederate growth and development. Southern farmers (including cotton
growers) were hampered in their ability to sell their goods overseas
due to Union naval blockades. Union invasions into the South resulted
in the capture of Southern transportation and manufacturing
facilities. 

The Southern economy, while shaky throughout the war,
grew markedly worse in its later years. The Emancipation Proclamation
both enraged the South with its promise of freedom for their slaves,
and threatened the very existence of its primary labor source. The
economy continued to suffer during 1864 as Union armies battered
Confederate troops in the eastern and western theaters. In the East,
General Ulysses S. Grant threw men and materiel at Robert E. Lee's
depleted and increasingly desperate army. Grant took advantage of
railroad lines and new, improved steamships to move his soldiers and
had a seemingly endless supply of troops, supplies, weapons, and
materials to dedicate to crushing Lee's often ill-fed, ill-clad, and
undermanned army. Though the campaign eventually fell into a stalemate
at Petersburg, Virginia, Grant could afford to, as he stated, "fight
it out along this line if it takes all summer," while Lee could not.
In the western theater of the war, William T. Sherman's Union troops
laid waste to much of the Georgia countryside during the Atlanta
Campaign and the subsequent "March to the Sea." Sherman's campaigns
inflicted massive damage to Southern industry, agriculture and
infrastructure. His soldiers destroyed rail lines and captured the
major economic and transportation hub of Atlanta and the critical
seaport of Savannah. When Sherman famously telegraphed Lincoln in
December 1864, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of
Savannah," his gift included "about twenty-five thousand bales of
cotton." Sherman himself later estimated that this campaign, which
eventually moved north and similarly impacted the Carolinas, caused
$100 million of destruction. An already troubled Confederate economy
simply could not absorb such massive losses and survive.

As the war
progressed, substantial and far-reaching changes were taking place far
from the battle lines. When Lincoln became president in March 1861, he
faced a divided nation, but also a Congress dominated by Republicans
after many Southern Democratic members left to join the Confederacy.
Lincoln and congressional Republicans seized this opportunity to enact
several pieces of legislation that had languished in Congress for
years due to strong Southern opposition. Many of these bills set the
course for the United States to emerge by war's end as a nation with
enormous economic potential and poised for a massive and rapid
westward expansion. When Southerners left Congress, the war actually
provided the North with an opportunity southerners from Congress, the
war actually provided the North with an opportunity to establish and
dominate America's industrial and economic future.

Foremost among
these bills was the Homestead Act, a popular measure regularly debated
in Congress since the 1840s. This law provided free title to up to 160
acres of undeveloped federal land outside the 13 original colonies to
anyone willing to live on and cultivate it. Southerners had for years
opposed the idea because it would severely hamper any opportunity to
expand slavery into the areas where settlement would be likely. In the
North, "free soilers" had clamored for the bill for decades, while
abolitionists viewed it as a means to populate the West with small
farmers vehemently opposed to slavery's expansion. Abraham Lincoln
publicly stated his support while president-elect, stating, "In
regards to the homestead bill, I am in favor of cutting the wild lands
into parcels, so that every poor man may have a home." He made good on
his promise by signing the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862.

In
order to make the farms more efficient and to help industries develop
new and better equipment, as well as provide opportunities for
students in the "industrial classes," in 1862 Congress passed the
Morrill Act (Land-Grant Colleges Act), by which each state was granted
land for the purposes of endowing Agricultural and Mechanical (A and
M) colleges. The purpose of the act was "to teach such branches of
learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts." This
unprecedented national investment in higher education also required
instruction in military tactics. 

Another major initiative was the
Pacific Railway Act, approved by President Lincoln on July 1, 1862.
The transcontinental railroad linking the East and West had, like the
homestead bill, been heavily debated by pre-war Congresses.
Southerners wanted a railroad built along a southern route.
Northerners, not surprisingly, wanted a Northern route. Once
Southerners left Congress at the outset of the war, Republicans passed
legislation that actually dictated a so-called "middle route" with an
eastern terminus at Omaha and a western one at Sacramento. The
construction of the first transcontinental railroad meant jobs for
thousands in factories producing tracks and tools as well as those
that labored for years to lay the tracks across rough terrain. It also
meant the literal and symbolic linking of East and West (to the
exclusion of the South) and decreased travel times for passengers and
goods. It improved commercial opportunities, the construction of towns
along both lines, a quicker route to markets for farm products, and
other economic and industrial changes.

During the war, Congress also
passed several major financial bills that forever altered the American
monetary system. The Legal Tender Act authorized the federal
government to print and use paper money, called "greenbacks," to pay
its bills and finance the war. Even though greenbacks were not backed
by similar amounts of gold and silver, creditors were required to
accept them at face value. By the end of the war, the government had
printed over $500 million in greenbacks, and the American financial
system's strict reliance on transactions in gold or silver ended. The
National Bank Act created a national banking system to reduce the
number of notes issued by individual banks and create a single federal
currency. The Internal Revenue Act eased inflation primarily by
placing excise taxes on many luxury items such as tobacco and jewelry.
More famously, the first U.S. income tax was imposed in July 1861, at
3 percent of all incomes over $800 up to 10 percent for incomes over
$100,000 to help pay for the war effort. 

For better or worse, the
political philosophies underlying the creation of the Confederate
States of America, with its emphasis upon a strong state and a weak
central government, coupled with its vast investments in a slave-labor-
based agricultural economy, meant that the South had neither the
ability nor the desire to develop the kind of industrial economy or
centralized financial system required to sustain a "modern" war. By
contrast, the Union's willingness and ability to vastly increase the
influence and footprint of the federal government not only contributed
directly to its military success in the war, but it also transformed
many other areas of national life, including industrial, economic,
agricultural, mechanical, and financial realms. Simply put, the United
States of America would be a very different nation today than had the
war never been fought. If we are truly the world's last remaining
superpower, then it is, at least partially, the massive industrial and
economic expansion enabled by the Civil War that allowed us to ascend
to that role in the first place.

This essay is taken from The Civil
War Remembered, published by the National Park Service and Eastern
National. This richly illustrated handbook is available in many
national park bookstores or may be purchased online from Eastern at
www.eparks.com/store.

[Lisa Lisa]

On May 14, 1:31 pm, BeamMeUpScotty

<ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote:
> On 5/14/2013 1:16 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:

> > On May 14, 12:10 am, Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cah...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>> Listen to this Son of the South talk about sharing the wealth:
>
> >>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k
>
> >>> He sounds almost like a member of OWS, doesn't he?  Well, Southerns
> >>> lionized Long, right up until the Sixties.  Hmmm....I wonder what made
> >>> them change their minds?
>
> >> The same as Jefferson, Lincoln or FDR.

Whatever that means.

> >> The older ones died off and the youngins' never really studied
> >> American history.
>
> > The older ones didn't study American history either.  Or do you think
> > that the average Southern male was a well-educated specimen?

> Smart and educated are very different concepts.

> As I remember HISTORY.....? General Lee was a west point Grad and he
> pasted the North for the first few years of the war

So fucking what. Lee came from an elite family. Of course the South
had an elite class of planters---for the first part of the 19th
century, they were the richest people in America.

I'm talking about the average Southerner; often hookworm infested and
nearly illiterate, right up until relatively recently. Did you know
that a lot of white Southerners couldn't vote because they couldn't
pass a literacy test? Yep, they got Jim Crowed too.

> until Sherman
> burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves, and spread
> starvation and disease and generally did the worst and lowest any human
> can do to others.

It definitely was Sherman's policy to bring the war to the Deep South
and destroy their capacity to make war. Set those warehouse alight,
and turn those railroads into ribbons of twisted steel. As for rape,
that was emphatically not his policy.

American soldiers still rape during war, but is rape an American
policy?

Sadly for you, the March through Georgia was not a rapefest.

No one thinks you empathize with the "poor slaves." And they were
hardly Sherman's target.

Sherman's march, all by itself, destroyed slavery. The slaves had
seen their masters humbled and impoverished. The system that had
supported them was completely wrecked. Nothing would ever be the same
again. So go cry in your beer, you stupid liar.

> If the North was educated, it sure ain't utopia up there is it.

The South had the worst school system in America, thanks to the
Bourbons.

Lisa

[Bret Cahill]

> > > Listen to this Son of the South talk about sharing the wealth:
>
> > >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k
>
> > > He sounds almost like a member of OWS, doesn't he?  Well, Southerns
> > > lionized Long, right up until the Sixties.  Hmmm....I wonder what made
> > > them change their minds?
>
> > The same as Jefferson, Lincoln or FDR.
>
> > The older ones died off and the youngins' never really studied
> > American history.
>
> The older ones didn't study American history either.

They didn't need to study because they were living it. They knew the
U. S. had great leaders and they knew they were redistributionist.
Jefferson redistributed a lot of land from the richest individualist
private sector man on earth to a collective.

In many southern towns during the Great Depression there were 2
pictures on the mantel:

Jesus and FDR

Memorial Day was called "N---- Day."

> Or do you think
> that the average Southern male was a well-educated specimen?

The issue was what changed their minds.

The answer is that they didn't change their minds. They died off.

And the younger people just never knew what Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR
were all about.

Hollywood and the media do not help.

Even the supposedly educated _NY Times_ indulges in heavy duty
historical revisionism spinning things in favor of the right wing
nonsense.

Read _Democracy In America_ -- the greatest profille of any country
ever written -- and it's 100% guaranteed you'll be stunned at the
economic liberalism of the 1830s.

Thomas Paine supported guaranteed income from the gummint for everyone
over 50..

> > That's why we are having an outbreak of libertaria right now.
>
> We're having an outbreak of libertaria right now because of the
> backlash and repudiation of the Sixties, a decade that wrought
> unwelcome change to many.

The prime mover is always economic scams.

The culture wars are just a way to keep the discussion off of vast and
constantly increasing disparity of wealth.

> And Nixon's Southern Strategy has worked
> brilliantly for Republicans.

Until the internet tossed a monkey wrench into that engine of
despotism.

Now the GOP is hopelessly confused. How can they reach out to
minorities without losing the bigots.

There is no solution so they scandal monger.

Maybe Bloomberg can restore sanity to the party but it would be some
effort.

> How a Northerner like Nixon so
> completely understood the Southern mind almost two generations ago, I
> can't say,

That is interesting. Most Mass Democrats, Dukakus and Kerry for
example, don't have a clue. There are exceptions like Jay Leno.

Where is Nixon from anyway? Apparently no one wants to discuss that.

> but I'll observe that he wasn't called Tricky Dick for
> nothing. If ever there was a man of low cunning, it was him.
>
> And Reagan completed what Nixon began.  Hence the preoccupation with
> the size of government, which had not previously been a feature of
> Southern politics.

A lot of black leaders still don't understand that a lot of
Southerners are so racist that they would rather die of a treatable
disease than have a black person get health care.

In fact that was exactly the situation with Ron Paul's campaign
manager. He was handling millions in contributions from white
supremists in red states and wouldn't even buy Blue Cross Blue Shield.

It was surreal as wingers here said everything worked out perfectly.

Sid9 said, "but he's dead."


Bret Cahill

[Bret Cahill]

> Sherman's march, all by itself, destroyed slavery.  The slaves had
> seen their masters humbled and impoverished.  The system that had
> supported them was completely wrecked.  Nothing would ever be the same
> again.

Read Faulkner's _The Unvanquished_.

The North was too sick of war to finish the job and finishing the job
might have even required killing of most of the whites.

If Jefferson didn't want to think about a problem it shouldn't be too
surprising others later gave it less than proper treatment.

The assassination of Lincoln might not have made any difference
either.

Obama is a lot like Lincoln in a lot of ways. It took Lincoln a long
time to figure out olive branching wouldn't solve the problem.

Obama is taking his sweet time as well.


Bret Cahill


Jefferson is freedom.

-- Lincoln

[Lisa Lisa]

On May 15, 2:06 pm, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
> > > > Listen to this Son of the South talk about sharing the wealth:
>
> > > >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k
>
> > > > He sounds almost like a member of OWS, doesn't he?  Well, Southerns
> > > > lionized Long, right up until the Sixties.  Hmmm....I wonder what made
> > > > them change their minds?
>
> > > The same as Jefferson, Lincoln or FDR.
>
> > > The older ones died off and the youngins' never really studied
> > > American history.
>
> > The older ones didn't study American history either.
>
> They didn't need to study because they were living it.  They knew the
> U. S. had great leaders and they knew they were redistributionist.
> Jefferson redistributed a lot of land from the richest individualist
> private sector man on earth to a collective.

Could you please clarify? Who was this man, and how did it happen?

> In many southern towns during the Great Depression there were 2
> pictures on the mantel:
>
> Jesus and FDR

Like I said, Southerners were redistributionist. That is, until the
Civil Rights movement came along. Then they suddenly turned
Libertarian.

> Memorial Day was called "N---- Day."

> > Or do you think
> > that the average Southern male was a well-educated specimen?
>
> The issue was what changed their minds.
>
> The answer is that they didn't change their minds.  They died off.
>
> And the younger people just never knew what Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR
> were all about.
>
> Hollywood and the media do not help.

Well, I disagree. I say that the rise of the Civil Rights movement,
rather than a mere changing of guard, is what turned white Southerners
away from redistribution.

> Even the supposedly educated _NY Times_ indulges in heavy duty
> historical revisionism spinning things in favor of the right wing
> nonsense.
>
> Read _Democracy In America_ -- the greatest profille of any country
> ever written  -- and it's 100% guaranteed you'll be stunned at the
> economic liberalism of the 1830s.

You mean Tocqueville? I have a copy hanging around somewhere.

> Thomas Paine supported guaranteed income from the gummint for everyone
> over 50..

An idea that was clearly never taken seriously. Unless you think a
High Federalist or a rich planter would have supported such a move---
and they were very far from doing so.

> > > That's why we are having an outbreak of libertaria right now.
>
> > We're having an outbreak of libertaria right now because of the
> > backlash and repudiation of the Sixties, a decade that wrought
> > unwelcome change to many.
>
> The prime mover is always economic scams.

Well, let's face it, the Republicans are back to their Hooverite
selves. As long as the Roosevelt coalition held, they had to bow to
reality and behave moderately. I kind of doubt they ever really meant
it. The coalition broke up because cunning Republicans like Nixon knew
how to make political hay from the excesses of the Sixties. Now that
the coalition is safely broke, their true colors are showing.

> The culture wars are just a way to keep the discussion off of vast and
> constantly increasing disparity of wealth.

That's partly correct, but not entirely. I think a lot of
Republicans are truly horrified by the changes of the past 50 years.
I even think that superrich Republicans like the Koch Bros. are
disturbed by social change, and are as horrified by it as the more
lumpen Republicans.

That Obama should be president is a Code Red warning to them.

> > And Nixon's Southern Strategy has worked
> > brilliantly for Republicans.
>
> Until the internet tossed a monkey wrench into that engine of
> despotism.

I think it's the demographic changes, not technology. That's why
they're straight-arming the white lumpen types and reaching out to
Hispanics. They're trawling.

> Now the GOP is hopelessly confused.  How can they reach out to
> minorities without losing the bigots.

Absolutely! May they fall between two chairs!!!!

> There is no solution so they scandal monger.

They don't know whether to shit or wind their watches.

> Maybe Bloomberg can restore sanity to the party but it would be some
> effort.

It won't happen. Waaay too far gone.

> > How a Northerner like Nixon so
> > completely understood the Southern mind almost two generations ago, I
> > can't say,
>
> That is interesting.  Most Mass Democrats, Dukakus and Kerry for
> example, don't have a clue.  There are exceptions like Jay Leno.

Jay Leno understands the Southern mind?

> Where is Nixon from anyway?  Apparently no one wants to discuss that.

California.

> > but I'll observe that he wasn't called Tricky Dick for
> > nothing. If ever there was a man of low cunning, it was him.
>
> > And Reagan completed what Nixon began.  Hence the preoccupation with
> > the size of government, which had not previously been a feature of
> > Southern politics.
>
> A lot of black leaders still don't understand that a lot of
> Southerners are so racist that they would rather die of a treatable
> disease than have a black person get health care.

Here I EMPHATICALLY agree.

> In fact that was exactly the situation with Ron Paul's campaign
> manager.  He was handling millions in contributions from white
> supremists in red states and wouldn't even buy Blue Cross Blue Shield.
>
> It was surreal as wingers here said everything worked out perfectly.
>
> Sid9 said, "but he's dead."

Ron Paul, underneath it all, is a neo-Confederate. In fact, they all
seem to be! That Libertarianism is phony, anyway. He was caught
double-dipping for travel expenses:

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_90/Records-Show-Ron-Paul-Trips-Paid-Twice-212118-1.html

> Bret Cahill

[Bret Cahill]

> > > > > Listen to this Son of the South talk about sharing the wealth:
>
> > > > >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k
>
> > > > > He sounds almost like a member of OWS, doesn't he?  Well, Southerns
> > > > > lionized Long, right up until the Sixties.  Hmmm....I wonder what made
> > > > > them change their minds?
>
> > > > The same as Jefferson, Lincoln or FDR.
>
> > > > The older ones died off and the youngins' never really studied
> > > > American history.
>
> > > The older ones didn't study American history either.
>
> > They didn't need to study because they were living it.  They knew the
> > U. S. had great leaders and they knew they were redistributionist.
> > Jefferson redistributed a lot of land from the richest individualist
> > private sector man on earth to a collective.
>
> Could you please clarify?   Who was this man,

George III. He owned North America. Maybe Chinghis Khan had more
land.

No one talks about what really happened but Jefferson organized a
collective to take vast amounts of land from the libertarian George
III.

We are supposed to be celebrating that every 4th of July, not
unhealthy food like bacon hot dogs.

> and how did it happen?

Thomas Paine pointed out the scam of the private sector George III.

> > In many southern towns during the Great Depression there were 2
> > pictures on the mantel:

> > Jesus and FDR

> Like I said, Southerners were redistributionist.  That is, until the
> Civil Rights movement came along.   Then they suddenly turned
> Libertarian.

And Christian fundy to end run desegregation.

> > Memorial Day was called "N---- Day."

> > > Or do you think
> > > that the average Southern male was a well-educated specimen?

> > The issue was what changed their minds.

> > The answer is that they didn't change their minds.  They died off.
>
> > And the younger people just never knew what Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR
> > were all about.

> > Hollywood and the media do not help.
>
> Well, I disagree. I say that the rise of the Civil Rights movement,
> rather than a mere changing of guard, is what turned white Southerners
> away from redistribution.

The legacy media never point out that rather obvious truth.

You are "just supposed" to "know it."

> > Even the supposedly educated _NY Times_ indulges in heavy duty
> > historical revisionism spinning things in favor of the right wing
> > nonsense.

> > Read _Democracy In America_ -- the greatest profille of any country
> > ever written  -- and it's 100% guaranteed you'll be stunned at the
> > economic liberalism of the 1830s.
>
> You mean Tocqueville?  I have a copy hanging around somewhere.

It's a real eye opener.

It's interesting the way he predicted the Civil War. He never
mentions the abolutionists because they never were players.

It was all economic.

1. Slavery dishonors labor and introduces idleness to society.

2. Productive people moved North and the North became prosperous
which attracted even more people.

3. Every 10 years the census moved congressmen from the South to the
North.

4. The South, losing power at the national level, would invoke
states' rights.

5. States' rights => civil war.

This needs to be repeated because wage slavery is much like chattel
slavery in many ways.

> > Thomas Paine supported guaranteed income from the gummint for everyone
> > over 50..

> An idea that was clearly never taken seriously.

Paine believed he was betrayed by the revolution he started.

That will not happen this go round.

> Unless you think a
> High Federalist or a rich planter would have supported such a move---
> and they were very far from doing so.
>
> > > > That's why we are having an outbreak of libertaria right now.
>
> > > We're having an outbreak of libertaria right now because of the
> > > backlash and repudiation of the Sixties, a decade that wrought
> > > unwelcome change to many.

> > The prime mover is always economic scams.

> Well, let's face it,  the Republicans are back to their Hooverite
> selves.

Lincoln saw it coming. He said he feared monied interests in politics
more than war.

> As long as the Roosevelt coalition held, they had to bow to
> reality and behave moderately.  I kind of doubt they ever really meant
> it. The coalition broke up because cunning Republicans like Nixon knew
> how to make political hay from the excesses of the Sixties.

LBJ predicted everything.

> Now that
> the coalition is safely broke, their true colors are showing.

This calls for a celebration! I may party myself to death but what a
great way to go!

> > The culture wars are just a way to keep the discussion off of vast and
> > constantly increasing disparity of wealth.

> That's partly correct, but not entirely.  I think a lot of
> Republicans  are truly horrified by the changes of the past 50 years.
> I even think that superrich Republicans like the Koch Bros. are
> disturbed by social change, and are as horrified by it as the  more
> lumpen Republicans.

Koch Bros could care less about abortion this or gay that or Obama
being a black guy. They just want to ride the people -- whites as
well as blacks and Mexicans -- "booted and spurred" as Thomas
Jefferson warned in his last letter.

> That Obama should be president is a Code Red warning  to them.

Like Clinton, Obama has more cards up his sleeve than the legacy media
would have you know.

Clinton's card is what caused Koch to blurt out, "Obama is just like
Saddam" a couple years ago.

That's not skin color.

The only ones concerned with race are in the trailer trash "GOP base"
not the rich.

> > > And Nixon's Southern Strategy has worked
> > > brilliantly for Republicans.

> > Until the internet tossed a monkey wrench into that engine of
> > despotism.

> I think it's the demographic changes, not technology.

Large minority populations will save us from anything like Nazi
Germany.

On that issue I fully agree with the liberal media.

> That's why
> they're straight-arming the white lumpen types and reaching out to
> Hispanics.  They're trawling.

> > Now the GOP is hopelessly confused.  How can they reach out to
> > minorities without losing the bigots.
>
> Absolutely!   May they fall between two chairs!!!!

In tennis you either play the net or the baseline. In between is
called "no man's land."

That's where the GOP is.

The only one who can get the GOP to the net is Bloomberg.

> > There is no solution so they scandal monger.

> They don't know whether to shit or wind their watches.

And most know it as well.

> > Maybe Bloomberg can restore sanity to the party but it would be some
> > effort.

> It won't happen.  Waaay too far gone.

Probably true but we can always be hopeful.

> > > How a Northerner like Nixon so
> > > completely understood the Southern mind almost two generations ago, I
> > > can't say,

> > That is interesting.  Most Mass Democrats, Dukakus and Kerry for
> > example, don't have a clue.  There are exceptions like Jay Leno.

> Jay Leno understands the Southern mind?

Almost as good as Colbert. Leno is astute.

> > Where is Nixon from anyway?  Apparently no one wants to discuss that.

> California.

That's not the South.

> > > but I'll observe that he wasn't called Tricky Dick for
> > > nothing. If ever there was a man of low cunning, it was him.

> > > And Reagan completed what Nixon began.  Hence the preoccupation with
> > > the size of government, which had not previously been a feature of
> > > Southern politics.

> > A lot of black leaders still don't understand that a lot of
> > Southerners are so racist that they would rather die of a treatable
> > disease than have a black person get health care.

> Here I EMPHATICALLY agree.

> > In fact that was exactly the situation with Ron Paul's campaign
> > manager.  He was handling millions in contributions from white
> > supremists in red states and wouldn't even buy Blue Cross Blue Shield.

> > It was surreal as wingers here said everything worked out perfectly.
>
> > Sid9 said, "but he's dead."
>
> Ron Paul, underneath it all, is a neo-Confederate.  In fact, they all
> seem to be!

They call it the "War of Northern Aggression."

> That Libertarianism is phony, anyway.  He was caught
> double-dipping for travel expenses:

> http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_90/Records-Show-Ron-Paul-Trips-Paid...

Republicans are so rife with libertarian internal contradictions on
economics, i.e., Norquist "starving the beast" with Laffer's "increase
in revenue," Democrats could do much much better focusing on the
disreputable GOP "market" economist scams than culture war issues like
gun control or even demographics.


Bret Cahill

[Lisa Lisa]

On May 14, 1:31 pm, BeamMeUpScotty

<ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote::

> Sherman
> burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves

(I can' let this one get away.)

The slaves were getting raped by the slavemasters! That's why African-
Americans have so much European ancestry. Because the great-
grandpappies of some of those Tea partiers were raping slave women.


Lisa

[DCI]

Lisa, don't forget the sexual contacts between the white indentured(s) and the slaves. There was a lot of fence jumping going on in the heyday of slave ownership, etc.

DCI

[BeamMeUpScotty]

Yes there were some nasty slave owners.... that doesn't excuse Sherman's
march and the NORTH's willingness to starve out the South and their
Slaves until they die of disease or capitulate. Then after the war the
NORTH sent down the Carpet Baggers to steal what little was left and the
ex-SLAVES got the short end of that stick and they starved for many more
years.

In fact there was a Scientist/Doctor that discovered vitamins after the
Civil war after seeing so many malnourished and dying people and so many
undiagnosed diseases.


I understand your point but you ignore that "the NORTH made themselves"
the self righteous moral totalitarians. If we all have to live by your
morals, should you be doing things that are more heinous than the people
you are forcing to live by your code.....


Will you torture people to stop them from torturing other people?


What does that say about your moral compass?


*Rumination*
#17 - Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know where the nuts
are? -Gump that-

[RichTravsky]

BeamMeUpScotty wrote:
>
> On 5/16/2013 8:04 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:
> > On May 14, 1:31 pm, BeamMeUpScotty
> > <ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote::
> >
> >> Sherman
> >> burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves
> >
> > (I can' let this one get away.)
> >
> > The slaves were getting raped by the slavemasters! That's why African-
> > Americans have so much European ancestry. Because the great-
> > grandpappies of some of those Tea partiers were raping slave women.
> >
>

> Yes there were some nasty slave owners.... that doesn't excuse Sherman's
> march and the NORTH's willingness to starve out the South and their
> Slaves until they die of disease or capitulate. Then after the war the

Why did you want the blacks kept as slaves for even longer?

> NORTH sent down the Carpet Baggers to steal what little was left and the
> ex-SLAVES got the short end of that stick and they starved for many more
> years.
>
> In fact there was a Scientist/Doctor that discovered vitamins after the
> Civil war after seeing so many malnourished and dying people and so many
> undiagnosed diseases.
>
> I understand your point but you ignore that "the NORTH made themselves"
> the self righteous moral totalitarians. If we all have to live by your
> morals, should you be doing things that are more heinous than the people
> you are forcing to live by your code.....
>
> Will you torture people to stop them from torturing other people?
>
> What does that say about your moral compass?

That it's better than yours. Why did you want the war to drag on even
longer? The south was already hurting, having little industrial base
and cut off from foreign trade. A few months after the march, Lee
surrendered.

What happened next was completely unpredictable and therefore
not to be considered with the march.

[BeamMeUpScotty]

On 5/18/2013 2:06 AM, RichTravsky wrote:
> BeamMeUpScotty wrote:
>>
>> On 5/16/2013 8:04 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:
>>> On May 14, 1:31 pm, BeamMeUpScotty
>>> <ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote::
>>>
>>>> Sherman
>>>> burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves
>>>
>>> (I can' let this one get away.)
>>>
>>> The slaves were getting raped by the slavemasters! That's why African-
>>> Americans have so much European ancestry. Because the great-
>>> grandpappies of some of those Tea partiers were raping slave women.
>>>
>>
>> Yes there were some nasty slave owners.... that doesn't excuse Sherman's
>> march and the NORTH's willingness to starve out the South and their
>> Slaves until they die of disease or capitulate. Then after the war the
>
> Why did you want the blacks kept as slaves for even longer?

Why would you want to kill 600,000 Americans? There was a peaceful
solution, it was just never executed.

[DCI]

On Wednesday, May 15, 2013 8:21:21 PM UTC-7, Bret Cahill wrote:

Cut -

>
> Republicans are so rife with libertarian internal contradictions on
>
> economics, i.e., Norquist "starving the beast" with Laffer's "increase
>
> in revenue," Democrats could do much much better focusing on the
>
> disreputable GOP "market" economist scams than culture war issues like
>
> gun control or even demographics.
>
> Bret Cahill

Bret, I take it that you are not enamored by Republicans or their political positions on issues.

DCI

[RichTravsky]

BeamMeUpScotty wrote:
> On 5/18/2013 2:06 AM, RichTravsky wrote:
> > BeamMeUpScotty wrote:
> >> On 5/16/2013 8:04 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:
> >>> On May 14, 1:31 pm, BeamMeUpScotty
> >>> <ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote::
> >>>
> >>>> Sherman
> >>>> burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves
> >>>
> >>> (I can' let this one get away.)
> >>>
> >>> The slaves were getting raped by the slavemasters! That's why African-
> >>> Americans have so much European ancestry. Because the great-
> >>> grandpappies of some of those Tea partiers were raping slave women.
> >>
> >> Yes there were some nasty slave owners.... that doesn't excuse Sherman's
> >> march and the NORTH's willingness to starve out the South and their
> >> Slaves until they die of disease or capitulate. Then after the war the
> >
> > Why did you want the blacks kept as slaves for even longer?
>
> Why would you want to kill 600,000 Americans? There was a peaceful
> solution, it was just never executed.

More would have died had the war not been shortened.

The "peaceful solution" was let them keep blacks as slaves. Not surprising
you prefer that.

[Lisa Lisa]

On May 16, 8:40 pm, BeamMeUpScotty

<ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote:
> On 5/16/2013 8:04 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:
>
> > On May 14, 1:31 pm, BeamMeUpScotty
> > <ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote::
>
> >> Sherman
> >> burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves
>
> > (I can' let this one get away.)
>
> > The slaves were getting raped by the slavemasters!  That's why African-
> > Americans have so much European ancestry.  Because the great-
> > grandpappies of some of those Tea partiers were raping slave women.
>
> > Lisa
>
> Yes there were some nasty slave owners.... that doesn't excuse Sherman's
> march and the NORTH's willingness to starve out the South and their
> Slaves until they die of disease or capitulate.

Sherman calculated that bringing the war to the folks back home would
drive home the costs of war, and they'd be more likely to quit
somewhat sooner. By the way, it was not Sherman's intent to starve
out the slaves! You keep mentioning the slaves and their owners in
the same breath, as though they were equal targets with the same
interests and goals.

Freed slaves flocked to the Union army during the war. At first, they
were considered the contraband of war. No one knew what to do with
them. But since the North was not initially fighting to free them,
they could be sent back to their owner, and maybe sometimes were
(Perhaps someone can enlighten me on this.)

Once the Emancipation was proclaimed however, it was clearly a
different story, and freed slaves joined the Union Army by the hundred
thousand. General Shaw led an all-black regiment. A statue of him
and his soldiers is right here, near the Boston Garden:

http://www.nps.gov/boaf/historyculture/shaw.htm

> Then after the war the
> NORTH sent down the Carpet Baggers to steal what little was left and the
> ex-SLAVES got the short end of that stick and they starved for many more
> years.

Sounds like the Dunning School of Reconstruction. That's that tired
old school that says Reconstruction was all bad.

Reconstruction was a human endeavor, and like all human endeavors, it
had a mixed record. But what do you do with a region that was always
taxed at a super-low rate so that it was extremely backward, had
little infrastructure, and no schools to speak of, because the planter
elite was entirely uninterested in the public welfare in any
meaningful way? Even if the South hadn't been obliterated by war,
developing it would have been a tall order. Schools and hospitals
were started under Reconstruction, and the Freedman's Bureau helped
the indigent of both races.

Reconstruction got off to a bad start under Johnson. Basically, he
appointed rebels for governor, and they appointed other rebels, so
that within a short time, the old order made a partial comeback.
Hence Congress had to take matters into their own hands. Among their
numerous tasks: quelling murderous anti-black violence. This was the
era of the KKK, the White Camellias, the White League, and lord knows
what else. This was also the beginning of the Black Codes, which came
as close to recreating slavery as the Southern elite could manage. It
was amazing that blacks made any progress at all under such hostile
conditions, but they did, running for local office in reasonable
numbers, and becoming literate.

The North withdrew its troops from all Southern states as part of a
corrupt political bargain in 1877, and Reconstruction wound down. By
the early 20th century, almost all blacks were expunged from the
voting rolls. One of the best proofs of the efficacy and
constructiveness of Reconstruction is simply this: the South opposed
it, and ended it as soon as they were able to.

> In fact there was a Scientist/Doctor that discovered vitamins after the
> Civil war after seeing so many malnourished and dying people and so many
> undiagnosed diseases.

Sometimes medical progress follows war. Or war may hasten medical
progress. For instance, penicillin saved many American soldiers'
lives during WWII. Your comment proves nothing whatsoever.

> I understand your point but you ignore that "the NORTH made themselves"
> the self righteous moral totalitarians.   If we all have to live by your
> morals, should you be doing things that are more heinous than the people
> you are forcing to live by your code.....

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but the South could have
retained slavery, as far as Lincoln and the Republicans were
concerned. They simply didn't want slavery brought into the new
territories. The South very much did want the territories open to
slavery. They wouldn't compromise. They brought the whole thing upon
themselves.

> Will you torture people to stop them from torturing other people?

See my previous statement.

>
> What does that say about your moral compass?

It says that the South got real cocky, and thought one rebel was worth
ten Yankees. But they didn't have the goods to back up their big
southern mouths. BTW, did you know that the North came out richer and
more developed after the war?

It's true. You started something and you couldn't finish it. Too
bad.


Lisa

[Lisa Lisa]

On May 19, 11:06 pm, RichTravsky <traRvEskyM...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> BeamMeUpScotty wrote:
> > On 5/18/2013 2:06 AM, RichTravsky wrote:
> > > BeamMeUpScotty wrote:
> > >> On 5/16/2013 8:04 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:
> > >>> On May 14, 1:31 pm, BeamMeUpScotty
> > >>> <ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote::
>
> > >>>> Sherman
> > >>>> burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves
>
> > >>> (I can' let this one get away.)
>
> > >>> The slaves were getting raped by the slavemasters!  That's why African-
> > >>> Americans have so much European ancestry.  Because the great-
> > >>> grandpappies of some of those Tea partiers were raping slave women.
>
> > >> Yes there were some nasty slave owners.... that doesn't excuse Sherman's
> > >> march and the NORTH's willingness to starve out the South and their
> > >> Slaves until they die of disease or capitulate.  Then after the war the
>
> > > Why did you want the blacks kept as slaves for even longer?
>
> > Why would you want to kill 600,000 Americans?    There was a peaceful
> > solution, it was just never executed.
>
> More would have died had the war not been shortened.
>
> The "peaceful solution" was let them keep blacks as slaves. Not surprising
> you prefer that.

Lincoln and the Republicans were initially prepared to allow the South
to keep their slaves.
What they didn't want was the expansion of slavery into the
territories acquired from Mexico.

Southerners were adamant that a slaveowner ought to be able to bring
his property anywhere in the new territories.
This alarmed Lincoln, among others. Remember the "house divided"
speech he gave at his nomination? He didn't
mean that he was afraid America would be half-slave and half-free. He
meant that eventually, it would become "all one or
the other." IOW, that even Maine could become a slave state. And, in
the wake of Dredd Scott, there was a real possibility that slavery
could spread to the North.

Lisa

[BeamMeUpScotty]

On 5/22/2013 6:57 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:
> On May 16, 8:40 pm, BeamMeUpScotty
> <ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote:
>> On 5/16/2013 8:04 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:
>>
>>> On May 14, 1:31 pm, BeamMeUpScotty
>>> <ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote::
>>
>>>> Sherman
>>>> burned raped and pillaged the South and those poor slaves
>>
>>> (I can' let this one get away.)
>>
>>> The slaves were getting raped by the slavemasters! That's why African-
>>> Americans have so much European ancestry. Because the great-
>>> grandpappies of some of those Tea partiers were raping slave women.
>>
>>> Lisa
>>
>> Yes there were some nasty slave owners.... that doesn't excuse Sherman's
>> march and the NORTH's willingness to starve out the South and their
>> Slaves until they die of disease or capitulate.
>
> Sherman calculated that bringing the war to the folks back home would
> drive home the costs of war, and they'd be more likely to quit
> somewhat sooner. By the way, it was not Sherman's intent to starve
> out the slaves! You keep mentioning the slaves and their owners in
> the same breath, as though they were equal targets with the same
> interests and goals.

They were both standing on the same geography and the very old and young
couldn't travel and so yes they were very much the same. You look at it
through the eyes of a 21st century Liberal who can get in a car and
leave the south in 4 hours, they couldn't


But thanks for pointing out that little fact.


--


*Rumination*
#43 - ObamaCare is slavery and that violates the 13th Amendment.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,.... shall exist within the
United States...

[BeamMeUpScotty]

Very true.

> Southerners were adamant that a slaveowner ought to be able to bring
> his property anywhere in the new territories.
> This alarmed Lincoln, among others. Remember the "house divided"
> speech he gave at his nomination? He didn't
> mean that he was afraid America would be half-slave and half-free. He
> meant that eventually, it would become "all one or
> the other." IOW, that even Maine could become a slave state. And, in
> the wake of Dredd Scott, there was a real possibility that slavery
> could spread to the North.
>

Under the King they were all slave colonies. The King made the
laws.... so we had been making some successful moves to more freedom.

> Lisa

[Lisa Lisa]

On May 22, 8:16 pm, BeamMeUpScotty

<ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote:
> On 5/22/2013 7:10 PM, Lisa Lisa wrote:

<snip>

> > Southerners were adamant that a slaveowner ought to be able to bring
> > his property anywhere in the new territories.
> > This alarmed Lincoln, among others.  Remember the "house divided"
> > speech he gave at his nomination?  He didn't
> > mean that he was afraid America would be half-slave and half-free.  He
> > meant that eventually, it would become "all one or
> > the other."  IOW, that even Maine could become a slave state.  And, in
> > the wake of Dredd Scott, there was a real possibility that slavery
> > could spread to the North.
>
> Under the King they were all slave colonies.   The King made the
> laws.... so we had been making some successful moves to more freedom.

The King? What king? What are you dithering about now? The Dredd
Scott decision was made in 1857. It would have
allowed the spread of slavery into the territories. And perhaps the
next step would have been the spread of slavery
into the Northern states.

That's what Lincoln was afraid of.


Lisa

[Nickname unavailable]

here is what is driving all "CONSERVATIVES" even more bat shit crazy
than ever. they are seething for the chance to reinstate slavery.

"CONSERVATISM", Our cause is thoroughly identified with the
institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world:
In an ongoing revisionist history effort, Southern schools and
churches still pretend the war wasn't about slavery


"The perfect liberty they seek is the liberty of making slaves of
other people." -- Abraham Lincoln

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/16/the_south_still_lies_about_the_civil_war/

The South still lies about the Civil War
In an ongoing revisionist history effort, Southern schools and
churches still pretend the war wasn't about slavery
By Tracy Thompson

Excerpted from "The New Mind of the South"
In the course of our conversation, Yacine Kout mentioned something else
—an incident that had happened the previous spring at Eastern Randolph
High School just outside Asheboro. On Cinco de Mayo, the annual
celebration of Mexico’s defeat of French forces at the Battle of
Puebla in 1862, a lot of Hispanic students brought Mexican flags to
school. The next day, Kout said, white students brought Confederate
flags to school as a message: This is our heritage.
The Civil War is like a mountain range that guards all roads into the
South: you can’t go there without encountering it. Specifically, you
can’t go there without addressing a question that may seem as if it
shouldn’t even be a question—to wit: what caused the war? One hundred
and fifty years after the event, Americans—at least the vast majority
who toil outside academia—still can’t agree. Evidence of this crops up
all the time, often in the form of a legal dispute over a display of
the Confederate flag. (As I write, there are two such cases pending—
one in Oregon and the other in Florida, making this an average news
week.) Another common forum is the classroom. But it’s not always
about the Stars and Bars. In 2010, for instance, Texas school
officials made the news by insisting that Jefferson Davis’s inaugural
address be given equal prominence with Abraham Lincoln’s in that
state’s social studies curriculum. The following year, Virginia school
officials were chagrined to learn that one of their state-adopted
textbooks was teaching fourth graders that thousands of loyal slaves
took up arms for the confederacy.
At the bottom of all of these is one basic question: was the Civil War
about slavery, or states’ rights?
Popular opinion favors the latter theory. In the spring of 2011, in
recognition of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War,
pollsters at the Pew Research Center asked: “What is your impression
of the main cause of the Civil War?” Thirty-eight percent of the
respondents said the main cause was the South’s defense of an economic
system based on slavery, while nearly half—48 percent—said the nation
sacrificed some 650,000 of its fathers, sons, and brothers over a
difference of interpretation in constitutional law. White non-
Southerners believed this in roughly the same proportion as white
Southerners, which was interesting; even more fascinating was the fact
that 39 percent of the black respondents, many of them presumably the
descendants of slaves, did, too.
We pause here to note that wars are complex events whose causes can
never be adequately summed up in a phrase, that they can start out as
one thing and evolve into another, and that what people think they are
fighting for isn’t always the cause history will record. Yet, as
Lincoln noted in his second inaugural address, there was never any
doubt that the billions of dollars in property represented by the
South’s roughly four million slaves was somehow at the root of
everything, and on this point scholars who don’t agree about much of
anything else have long found common ground. “No respected historian
has argued for decades that the Civil War was fought over tariffs,
that abolitionists were mere hypocrites, or that only constitutional
concerns drove secessionists,” writes University of Virginia historian
Edward Ayers. Yet there’s a vast chasm between this long-established
scholarly consensus and the views of millions of presumably educated
Americans, who hold to a theory that relegates slavery to, at best,
incidental status. How did this happen?
One reason boils down to simple convenience—for white people, that is.
In his 2002 book “Race and Reunion,” Yale historian David Blight
describes a national fervor for “reconciliation” that began in the
1880s and lasted through the end of World War I, fueled in large part
by the South’s desire to attract industry, Northern investors’ desire
to make money, and the desire of white people everywhere to push “the
Negro question” aside. In the process, the real causes of the war were
swept under the rug, the better to facilitate economic partnerships
and sentimental reunions of Civil War veterans.
But an equally important reason was a vigorous, sustained effort by
Southerners to literally rewrite history—and among the most ardent
revisionists were a group of respectable white Southern matrons known
as the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
The UDC sounds like one of those genteel ladies’ organizations that
would have quietly passed into oblivion about the time women ditched
their girdles and entered the labor market, but they are still around—
a group of about twenty thousand ladies dedicated to various
educational and historical preservation causes. Since 1955, the UDC
has recruited next-generation members through a young persons’
auxiliary called the Children of the Confederacy, which does similar
kinds of work. Blight was surprised when I told him in an e-mail that
as part of my research I planned to visit the 2008 C of C convention
in Fredericksburg, Virginia. “I knew there used to be such an
[auxiliary] organization decades ago but did not know that it still
exists,” he replied. “Amazing. How I would like to be a fly on the
wall there.”
The significance of the UDC lies not in its present-day clout, which
is negligible, but in its lasting contributions to history— both for
good and for ill. From its inception in 1894 up through the 1960s, the
UDC was the South’s premier social and philanthropic organization, an
exclusive social club where the wives, sisters, and daughters of the
South’s ruling white elite gathered to “revere the memory of those
heroes in gray and to honor that unswerving devotion to principle
which has made the confederate soldier the most majestic in history,”
as cofounder Caroline Meriwether Goodlett grandly put it. At first,
the UDC provided financial assistance and housing to veterans and
their widows, offering a vital public service at a time when for all
practical purposes most local and state governments in the South were
nonfunctional and/or broke. Later, as the veteran population aged, the
UDC built homes that allowed indigent veterans and their widows to
live out their days with some measure of dignity. Long before there
was such a thing as the National Park Service, the UDC played a
crucial role in preserving priceless historic sites, war cemeteries,
and battlefields across the South. At the same time, it embarked on a
spree of monument building: most of those confederate monuments you
can still find in hundreds of courthouse squares in small towns across
the South were put there by the local UDC chapter during the early
1900s. In its way, the UDC groomed a generation of Southern women for
participation in the political process: presidents attended its
national convocations, and its voice was heard in the corridors of the
U.S. Capitol.
But the UDC’s most important and lasting contribution was in shaping
the public perceptions of the war, an effort that was begun shortly
after the war by a Confederate veterans’ group called the United
Confederate Veterans (which later became the Sons of Confederate
Veterans—also still around, and thirty thousand members strong). The
central article of faith in this effort was that the South had not
fought to preserve slavery, and that this false accusation was an
effort to smear the reputation of the South’s gallant leaders. In the
early years of the twentieth century the main spokesperson for this
point of view was a formidable Athens, Georgia, school principal named
Mildred Lewis Rutherford (or Miss Milly, as she is known to UDC
members), who traveled the South speaking, organizing essay contests,
and soliciting oral histories of the war from veterans, seeking the
vindication of the lost cause “with a political fervor that would
rival the ministry of propaganda in any 20th century dictatorship,”
Blight writes.
Miss Milly’s burning passion was ensuring that Southern youngsters
learned the “correct” version of what the war was all about and why it
had happened—a version carefully vetted to exclude “lies” and
“distortions” perpetrated by anti-Southern textbook authors. To that
end, in 1920 she wrote a book entitled “The Truths of History”—a
compendium of cherry-picked facts, friendly opinions, and quotes taken
out of context, sprinkled with nuggets of information history books
have often found convenient to ignore. Among other things, “The Truths
of History” asserts that Abraham Lincoln was a mediocre intellect,
that the South’s interest in expanding slavery to Western states was
its benevolent desire to acquire territory for the slaves it planned
to free, and that the Ku Klux Klan was a peaceful group whose only
goal was maintaining public order. One of Rutherford’s “authorities”
on slavery was British writer William Makepeace Thackeray, who visited
Richmond on a tour of the Southern states during the 1850s and sent
home a buoyant description of the slaves who attended him: “So free,
so happy! I saw them dressed on Sunday in their Sunday best—far better
dressed than English tenants of the working class are in their holiday
attire.”
But presenting the “correct” version of history was only half the
battle; the other half was preventing “incorrect” versions from ever
infiltrating Southern schools. Before the Civil War, education was
strictly a private and/or local affair. After the Civil War, it became
a subject of federal interest. The first federal agency devoted to
education was authorized by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1867, and
Congress passed several laws in the 1870s aimed at establishing a
national education system. White Southerners reacted to all this with
a renewed determination to prevent outsiders from maligning the
reputation of their gallant fighting men by writing textbooks
especially for Southern students. One postwar author was none other
than Alexander Stephens, former vice president of the Confederacy,
whose portrayal of the war sounds remarkably like the version you hear
from many Southerners and political conservatives today: it was a
noble but doomed effort on the part of the South to preserve self-
government against federal intrusion, and it had little to do with
slavery. (This was the same Alexander Stephens who had proclaimed in
1861 that slavery was the “cornerstone” of Southern society and “the
immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”)
As the UDC gained in political clout, its members lobbied legislatures
in Texas, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and Florida to ban
the purchase of textbooks that portrayed the South in anything less
than heroic terms, or that contradicted any of the lost cause’s basic
assertions. Its reach extended not just to public schools but to
tenured academia—a little-known chapter of its propaganda effort is
detailed by James Cobb in his 2005 book “Away Down South: A History of
Southern Identity.” Cobb recounts how in 1911, for instance,
University of Florida history professor Enoch Banks wrote an essay for
the New York Independent suggesting that slavery was the cause of
secession; Banks was forced by the ensuing public outcry to resign.
Perhaps Banks should have seen that coming: seven years earlier,
William E. Dodd, a history professor at Virginia’s Randolph-Macon
College, had complained that to merely suggest the confederacy might
not have been a noble enterprise led by lofty-minded statesmen “is to
invite not only criticism but enforced resignation.” Dodd himself
would later migrate to the University of Chicago, where he established
a Northern outpost for Southerners who were interested in a serious
examination of Southern history. Such scholarship was not encouraged
back home: the first postwar society of Southern historians was
created in 1869 for the explicit purpose of vindicating the
confederate cause.
The fear of losing one’s job worked to keep most dissenters in line,
but if that failed, self-appointed censors in the community were
always on the lookout. In 1913, for instance, the sons of confederate
Veterans succeeded in banning from the University of Texas history
curriculum a book that they felt offered an excessively New England
slant on recent history. The UDC industriously compiled lists of
textbooks used in schools across the South, sorting them into one of
three categories: texts written by Northerners and blatantly unfair to
the South; texts that were “apparently fair” but were still suspect
because they were written by Northerners; and works by Southern
writers. Outside academia, the New South creed, popularized by Atlanta
newspaper editor Henry Grady in an effort to spur economic
development, also reinforced this new orthodoxy. A big part of Grady’s
canny public relations was to pay extravagant homage to the imagined
splendor of the antebellum South, and to portray the New South as a
revival of that genius instead of what it really was: the rise of a
whole new class of plutocrats.
If all of this wasn’t enough to stifle all public debate and
intellectual inquiry in the decades after the war, other prevailing
conditions might have finished the job: the widespread poverty of
those decades, the rise of Jim Crow and the need to maintain the
belief in white supremacy, a pervasive religious mindset that put a
higher value on faith than on reason. There were more thoughtful
voices, of course—in Atlanta, W. E. B. Du Bois was writing brilliantly
about the black experience and reconstruction. But the racism of his
day postponed his wider influence to a later era. For all but the rich
and/or socially elite this was the South that H. L. Mencken lampooned
as “a stupendous region of worn-out farms, shoddy cities and paralyzed
cerebrums”—far more concerned with the next meal than with
intellectual inquiry. Among white Southerners, rich or poor, the
universally accepted history was the version that would later find
fame in Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel “Gone With the Wind”—a book
that sold millions, was translated into twenty-seven languages, and
has probably had a more lasting influence on public perceptions about
the South to this day than any other single work. It’s no wonder that
the so-called Southern renaissance of the 1930s happened outside
academia, in the field of fiction; as Cobb points out, the people
least interested in understanding Southern history at that time were
Southern historians, and Blight agrees. “It would have been impossible
to grow up in the South from 1890 to World War I and not have heard or
read [the lost cause version of history] many times over as the common
sense of white Southern self-understanding.”
I would quibble with that last part; the era when this was “the common
sense of white Southern self-understanding” lasted at least until
1960, very conservatively speaking, and its legacy thrives to this
day. In an era when any assertion of “fact” is met by noisy
counterassertions of competing “facts,” it’s hard to grasp how
completely this warped version of history was accepted as gospel in
the South, as silly to dispute as the law of gravity. Former New York
Times correspondent John Herbers is an old man now, living in
retirement in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Betty. but when he
was growing up in Mississippi in the 1930s and 1940s, “the lost cause
was one of the main themes my grandmother used to talk about: ‘slavery
was nothing to do with the Civil War—we had a cotton economy and [the
North] wanted to dominate us.’ It was an undisputed topic.” At the
time, he accepted this version, as children do; today, he is struck by
the vigilance with which adults in his world implanted this story in
the minds of their children. “They pushed themselves to believe that,”
he said. “If [the war] had anything to do with slavery, they had no
ground to stand on.”
Claude Sitton, another Southerner who covered the civil rights
movement for the New York Times, remembers participating in a yearly
essay contest sponsored by the UDC when he was a high school student
in Rockdale County, Georgia, in the early 1950s. I did not encounter
the UDC essay contests when I was a student in public schools in the
1960s, but the things I heard from my mother could have come straight
from Miss Milly’s approved textbooks. History books were unfair to the
South, she told me, so I was not to believe anti-Southern things I
might read in them, and she was vigilant about correcting me if she
heard me use the term “the Civil War” in conversation. To call it a
Civil War was to concede that secession was impossible and/or
unconstitutional—something no self-respecting Southerner should ever
do. “The proper name,” she would say, “is The War Between the States.”
Her reminder to me was nothing out of the ordinary; millions of
Southern schoolchildren of my generation had absorbed such messages,
as had several generations before us. “As late as the 1970s, neither
textbooks nor curricula veered far from lost cause interpretations,
especially in the Deep South,” writes historian Karen L. Cox—and in
his book on the civil rights era in Mississippi, historian John
Dittmer concluded that the lost cause version of post-Civil War
reconstruction in the South still held sway among the vast majority of
whites in that state as recently as the early 1990s.
Die-hard defenders of some version of the Lost Cause today say that
the South has always been the victim of “political correctness” in
school textbooks, and that this continues to this day. The truth is
just the opposite: for decades, publishers of school textbooks went
out of their way not to offend delicate Southern sensibilities in
their treatment of the Civil War. One longtime publishing executive
told me that when he got into the business in the 1960s, it was common
to see two different versions of school history textbooks—one for in
the Deep South and one for everywhere else, “and the difference was
how you treated the Civil War.” By the mid-twentieth century, even
textbooks that did not repeat the UDC party line still tiptoed
carefully through the minefield. Take this passage, for example, from
a widely used 1943 high school history textbook, which depicts a slave-
holding South of stately mansions and benevolent slave owners: “The
confederates . . . believed they were fighting for the democratic
principle of freedom to manage their own affairs, just as the thirteen
colonies had fought in the Revolutionary War.” The same textbook
describes the Ku Klux Klan as a group that “sometimes” resorted to
violence in its effort to retake local governments from the hands of
incompetent former slaves. A 1965 textbook used in Alabama public
schools taught another key point of the lost cause creed—that slavery
was a benign institution: “In one respect, the slave was almost always
better off than free laborers, white or black, of the same period
[because] the slave received the best medical care which the times
could offer.”
Publishers don’t offer a special “Southern” version of history
anymore; these days, they cater to individual state educational
standards, though some states—like California and Texas—have a
disproportionate national influence on what those standards are. The
problem today, the former publishing executive told me, is that “with
so many state standards, the books have become in the last ten years
longer, blander, more visual, certainly—and more inclusive. There’s so
much to cover.” The result is like light beer: better tasting, less
filling. With no space to truth-squad a 150-year-old public relations
campaign, today’s texts simply strive not to offend; they don’t
perpetrate the lost cause myth, but they don’t do much to correct it,
either. Take this passage from a text widely used in public high
schools today, which neatly splits the difference between the “states’
rights” and the “slavery” camps: “For the South, the primary aim of
the war was to win recognition as an independent nation. Independence
would allow Southerners to preserve their traditional way of life—a
way of life that included slavery.” That’s a way of putting it even
Miss Milly might have been able to live with.
“I grew up in a cocoon,” Herbers says today, recalling his childhood
and the version of history he absorbed. It’s an apt metaphor for what
happened to any Southerner born before about 1970, and to a good many
of those born since. Although the field of Southern history underwent
a revolution at the university level in the 1940s and 1950s, the
version ordinary Southerners knew in 1970 and even later had not
changed appreciably since 1900. Perhaps 1970 sounds like a long time
ago, but in educational terms it’s not: 1970 was when a lot of people
who are still teaching today learned what they know, and what they’ve
passed on to their students. James Loewen, a sociologist and author of
“Lies My Teacher Told Me,” has said that when he speaks to public
school educators across the country today, somewhere between 60 and 75
percent say that the Civil War was fought over the issue of states’
rights. Whether the group he’s speaking to is predominately white,
predominately black, or racially diverse, the percentage stays roughly
the same.
The Southern version of history also prevailed for decades at Civil
War battle sites, thanks to the fact that Congress appropriated money
for the National Park Service, and Southerners in Congress had their
hands on the purse strings. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the Park
Service—under pressure from the academic community and a few members
of Congress—made it a priority to revamp its exhibits to “interpret
[the Civil War] and the causes of the war based on current
scholarship,” said Dwight Pitcaithley, a professor of history at New
Mexico State University who was chief historian of the Park Service
from 1995 to 2005. In December 2008, Pitcaithley gave a talk to public
school educators in Mississippi, and used as part of his presentation
this quote from the Mississippi Declaration of Secession: “Our cause
is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest
material interest of the world.” That sentence is now prominently
displayed on the wall of the National Park Service visitors’ center in
Corinth, Mississippi, near the site of the battle of Shiloh.
Pitcaithley took a picture of the display and used it in his
presentation. After his talk, he was chatting with a thirty-four-year-
old black school principal who had grown up in Mississippi, attended
its public schools, and received his university education there. “I
asked him if he’d ever seen that [quote] and he said no—he’d never
even heard of that.”
All of which explains both how that dubious assertion that thousands
of slaves fought in defense of the Confederacy came to be included in
that Virginia textbook back in 2010, and how the error came to light.
As it turns out, the textbook’s author took her information from the
Sons of Confederate Veterans’ website; the error was discovered when a
history professor at the College of William and Mary happened to come
across it while browsing through a copy of one of her fourth grade
daughter’s schoolbooks. Had that not happened, who knows how long the
book would have been in use? To this day, it’s possible to stir up a
hornet’s nest among ordinary Southerners by asserting that slavery was
a primary cause of the Civil War; at the least, it will earn a native
Southerner the accusation of having signed over his brain to those Ivy
League intellectual snobs who despise all things Southern. The
conviction that the South went to war primarily to defend the concept
of states’ rights “is in [Southerners’] families, in their churches,
in their schools, in their political structure,” Pitcaithley said.
“They’ve been taught that over generations. It so embedded that—as you
have found—if you suggest otherwise they look at you like you’ve put
your pants on your head.”