Have you heard of "social contract"? That's what our government is based upon. As citizens, we give up certain "expectations" of personal liberties and receive protection and services provided by the government. They wanted a "confederacy", well they got it.......and it wasn't very good.......and it got its A$$ kicked.....
These states are observing Confederate Memorial Day today
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Have you heard of "social contract"? That's what our government is based upon. As citizens, we give up certain "expectations" of personal liberties and receive protection and services provided by the government. They wanted a "confederacy", well they got it.......and it wasn't very good.......and it got its A$$ kicked.....
You ever hear of the cotton gin? And these numbers disagree with your stupid, racist justification..............
Some of "our" founding fathers were slave owners, How does that make you feel?
I use "some" in the same context with blacks or whites. I simply do not know all of them so I used preface "some". Do you not fine that appropriate?
Who is “them”? I think MLK is as much of a hero to our nation as anyone else.
Slavery isn't picking cotton or whatever per se, rather it is forced labor. If a society is set up such that one group of people can be forced to do labor for another then it will happen. Where the labor is put to use (farming, factories, whatever) isn't the point but rather the point is that the labor is forced.
In the decades after the Civil War the country started to get more mechanized and factories in cities started to be the big thing. And people would go there because that life in the city was better than life in the country (which has been happening forever worldwide and continues to happen).
And eventually a movement started to reform the factories because people were working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, in dangerous conditions, yadda, yadda, and there become a movement to improve the lot of people doing the labor.
But all that was when the labor was free to go where it wanted. What if that was happening where there was slavery? What kind of movement can there to be to improve the lot of people working in factories when the people working in factories are slaves? If slavery had continued then as the South became more mechanized the slaves would have been shifted from the fields to the factories.
As long as it was considered legit to have slave then people that could make money off of slavery would have slaves. Big plantations would eventually have been replaced with big factories and the slave labor would have shifted to the factories.
What incentive would the South have had to ever end slavery had it not been for the Civil War? Where would such a movement have begun and how would it have played out? I don't see how it was going to just die out on its own.
ETA: I don't see how it was going to just die out on its own ESPECIALLY considering that at the time it was spreading westward and that part of the tension between the North and the South was over whether westward territories becoming states should be allowed to toe have slavery or not. In the early 1860s the South was trying to SPREAD slavery in North America.
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Conflicted to be sure. I appreciate the slave owners who are documented as saying the practice should be outlawed though, even though I feel they should have moved quicker to make it happen....I also understand the weaknesses of the new United States, and the need for the agrarian economy to grow fast. This was not the case at all when the South broke away.
You are attempting to put words into my mouth again, and you do not have the capacity to do it. I have no problem with either MLK nor confederate nor Mardi Gras. Have no problem with celebrating an event over a period of time. Celebration does not have to be one day. No law that prevents it.
I'll have to let you determine who them is, you suggested they needed a holliday !
It was black slavers providing slaves to the American slave market....
And I have not problem with you supporting the event nor that he was a great American. We don't celebrate a day for all great Americans. That too is OK. Not overly fond of President's Day as it currently is.
I don't need to, you said it yourself. See post #45 where you question why we need an MLK day and you provide support for Confederate Memorial Day.
A problem IMO in discussions like these is that people become 100% one side or the other. There were indeed African blacks capturing and selling blacks into slavery in Africa in the past. It seems like everybody either tries to pretend that isn't true or else pretends it makes all the stuff that happened to black slaves in the US irrelevant because after all, black Africans were involved in the trade too.
How about instead just looking at reality. Slavery has been around pretty much everywhere forever. Both the Bible and Qu'ran tolerate it. It has happened to people all over the globe and the word slave comes from "Slav" because there was once so many Slavs enslaved that they named the word after them.
No group anywhere in the world was so good that they weren't above treating others like crap, including enslaving them. The reality was that in the distant past ethics all over the planet was very different than now and was appalling by current standards.
All that is both (a) true and (b) irrelevant for what should have happened in the South. A response to "The South treated slaves like subhumans" shouldn't be "Well so did slave traders in Africa" but rather should be "The South should have stopped treating slaves like subhumans."
Help me a little with this "social contract"? I do not want to assume and misunderstand what you offer. And, what about the "confederacy wanted".
I thought we were a Republic. Definitely not a Democracy that so many people misunderstand.
Do you think the USA is better served by freedom to choose or history of slavery as perceived by liberal authors who do not necessarily believe in previously written history. Should these people have the liberty to write and supplant prior written history with a personal opinion?
I agree. But that reality doesn't mitigate towards lessening how bad slavery was in the US.
So would you label the liberal base in California who want to secede from the Union "traitors"?
You are again implying that "ALL" participated. You know that is not true. I thing Robert E. Lee was one who released his slaves prior to entering the war. There were others. And your bias requires you to stick with your opinion(or desire) that "ALL" is the key word to sell your blurred vision.
I don't care whether "all" did. "All" never do anything. And I don't know, or care, if Lee released his slaves. He fought to both (a) carve a new country out of the existing USA and (b) preserve slavery as an institution. If that doesn't make you a bad guy in the USA then what does?
That's not a rhetorical question. Think of something that makes you a bad guy in the USA and then compare it to the two things about Lee I listed above and see which is worse.
How should it make him feel? It was an accepted practice of the time. Why and how do people insist that they have to have a feeling of guilt? These things are history of our country. It cannot be changed and it should not be attempted to be altered in any way. I obviously did not live in that period and I feel no obligation to feel sorry for those who lived thru the times. I cannot change it, nor should I try.
This is where @moe seems to think I'm in alignment with certain elements. Slavery was an abomination for our country. It nearly tore our country apart.You ever hear of the cotton gin? And these numbers disagree with your stupid, racist justification..............
Where does it say I'm OK with slavery? My statement is that it is still common place and has not been eliminated by more enlightened times.Slavery is an abomination.
In the context of this discussion nobody is insisting that people have feelings of guilt for what their ancestors did 150 years ago. Granted, some people do sometimes insist on such a feeling of guilt for what ancestors did, but that's a separate issue in a separate discussion.
The current discussion centers around Confederate Memorial Day and how it is perceived as a thumb in the eye of rest of most of the rest of the country.
I agree that it is a thumb in the eye. It should not be a holiday.
