The recent public discourse over Confederate History month adds more flames to the fire concerning racism as a component of black America. by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Monday, April 12, 2010
April is Confederate History month! Not just in Virginia, where Governor McDonnell issued a proclamation honoring the service of Confederate soldiers, but all across the South.
African Americans are living through Obama's Presidency and their actions to this point have already raised questions about exactly what African Americans are? Is black support for Obama based solely on his race? In other words are they racist in their politics? Or is black support for Obama because blacks support his socialist, anti-Israel policies?
But now, one has to wonder. As blacks continue to rise in influence in America will they ignore well documented history to re-write their own version dominated by a racist version? For example, former Governor Wilder of Virginia, an African - American, said the Civil War was exclusively about slavery. That statement is false if your read Abraham Lincoln's own words...that he would not free one slave if it would save the union. It is proven false by the fact that the first Thirteenth Amendment, approved by two thirds of both Houses of Congress in 1861, guaranteed slavery as a right to the Southern states! If slavery in the South were the issue, this amendment would have quelled secession.
The South did not leave the Union exclusively over slavery. The differences between North and South were wide and broad; one region agrarian - one region industrial, one region welcoming immigrants, one not, one region devoutly Christian, the other region not so much.
The differences were so great between the regions that they persist today. Yet, slavery is gone for almost one hundred and fifty years.
If one were to look at the Confederate Constitution one would see the following differences:
a. The Southern Constitution calls on God to guide the nation in the preamble.
b. The Southern Constitution prohibits the spending of any tax dollars for private business and industry.
c. The Southern Constitution provides the President with Line Item Veto power and prohibits attaching non related amendments to any bill.
d. Requires a two thirds majority in both Houses to increase the President's budget.
e. Acknowledges the states as the senior partners in the federal-- state relationship.
g. Requires natural born citizenship to hold office.
In a Southern nation there would be no abortion, no questions concerning Gay marriage, no bail out of the banks or auto industry, no interstate highway system, no Department of Education or National Public Radio System, and probably no NASA. Federal spending would conceivably be both deficit neutral and federal taxes would be considerably less as a portion of an individual's tax bill.
The South saw (and still sees) the federal government as a nuisance required by the international world. Given that slavery in every other western hemisphere nation faded away on its own, without internal wars in those nations, the likelihood that American slavery would have ended without national violence is almost assured.
Now these are the facts as they lay out. It could be that revisionists, white or black, will continue to try to re-write American history for their own reasons...but as we move forward the question will remain, are black-Americans blacks first or Americans first?
Mark Vogl
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Posted By: Ross Williams
Date: 2010-04-12 11:14:58
Governor Wilder of Virginia, an African - American, said the Civil War was exclusively about slavery. That statement is false if your read Abraham Lincoln's own words...that he would not free one slave if it would save the union
Many rationalists attempt this argument; it's always a rationalization.
Yes, Lincoln claimed that the preservation of the Union was the most important issue; he was wise enough to understand - as you [and I] do, now, after the fact - that slavery, as an institution, is strictly incompatible with capitalism, that it is a net capital-loss investment which cannot sustain itself over the long-term. Without a civil war, and with popular sentiment - even contemporarily in the "old south" - slavery was becoming more and more of a rich-man's luxury. The new generation of middle-class white farmers could not afford slaves and actually were starting to resent the rich who could. Slavery was going to die in the US within a generation. ...by voter revolt in the south and severe lack of participation elsewhere.
The legacy of the Civil War is one of resentment, forced subservience, and ultimately entitlement. A very good argument could be [and has been] made that allowing slavery to wither on its American vine as it did in European colonial outputs at around the same time and not forcing the issue, we could have avoided the generations of strife, backbiting, disharmony and debilitating false palliatives.
Imagine what life would be like in the US in 2010 if blacks and whites had started their current rate of miscegenation in the early 1900s instead of the late 1900s... 60-75% of us would be tawny-skinned, ringlet-headed folks who drew on both sides of the genetic pool [so that guys would have bigger dicks and the gals would have better butts], and the term "African-American" would be reserved for those who, like Barama, have one African parent and one American parent.
"Interracial" would be what we'd call hooking up with a Canuckian. We'd be generations beyond the pertinence of calling "black" anyone who has the teeniest smidge of "black" in their past and thus deny that the fastest-growing demographic in the US is not hispanics as we are commonly told, but the black-white mutts.
Ah, but that is just the dream I hold for my children's children, to get beyond all this horseshit.
The South did not leave the Union exclusively over slavery. The differences between North and South were wide and broad
You forgot to mention that southerners were more likely to be Scots-Irish ... as if that has any more bearing on it than the rest of your irrelevancies. The South seceded over "states rights". They seceded specifically over the state's right to allow the ownership of slaves. The seceded over the state's right to allow the ownership of slaves even despite Lincoln saying he wouldn't touch slavery, because the southern states didn't believe him.
It didn't matter what Lincoln said to get his delegates; he'd already said enough that southerners did not believe he would be slavery-neutral. So they seceded. Over states rights. To own slaves.
The rest is either hogwash, or it's excuse-making.
as we move forward the question will remain, are black-Americans blacks first or Americans first?
I've heard a number of rather facile arguments put up about things Southern in the past. Typical targets are the Confederate flag, Confederate gravesites, Civil War 'stuff' in general and, now, Confederate History Month.
Five or six years ago, a black lady called in to an afternoon goofball radio show for their "what's bugging you"-style segment, and she teed off on "confederates". How dare they, she wondered. They were traitors, they became a foreign nation, and why should their gravesites be honored in any way with an emblem of their treason - the brass Confederate flag marker? After all, she claimed, no other foreign soldiers who tried destroying this country are honored with their flags on their graves...
Incorrect.
New England and the middle Atlantic states are dotted with Revolutionary War graveyards where British soldiers are buried under a Union Jack, and Hessians are buried under the banner for the city-state of Hess. French soldiers are buried under their trefoil, and graves of old spaniards in Florida and the southwest are buried under the old Spanish flag. These are simply what I have seen being a history tourist.
And even though I don't know for certain, I would imagine also that there are going to be a few graves of Russians in alaska buried under the Czarist flag, and some old Dutch cadavers are buried in New Amsterdam under a Dutch marker.
It is respectful of the soldier to commemorate his grave with the flag he fought under. It does not justify the cause for which he fought.
...unless it does, in which case New Englanders are crypto-monarchists for maintaining their Union Jack-studded graveyards for 230 years.
Being American means letting people do as they please, even if it annoys you, right up until the wish to take physical action against you. The Confederate flag does not require the holder to be a slave-owner, or even be an advocate for slavery. Until the drivers of thousands of stars-n-bars bearing pickup trucks attempt to do business in slave-trading, give them their symbolic bird-flipping in peace.
And the Civil War happened. For good and bad - and it was both. There's trivialization and revisionism on both sides of it, even now.
I'm sorry, but even abolitionistswere racist in some fashion (But to a far less degree than the Pro-Slavery groups.)
Mormons were passionate abolitionists themselves. They wanted Blacks to be free in every possible sense. The only things Mormons didn't promote, were Black Men holding the priesthood, and Joseph Smith himself ordained a Black Man an Elder. It was Brigham Young who started the priesthood ban. Everything else was available. However Inter-racial sexual relations with blacks was forbidden. This was especially true with white males having relationships with black females---mainly because of how poorly black women were treated by everyone back then---including other black men and especially depraved slave owners. Mormons fanatically detested how poorly women were treated back then--which kindof lead to polygamy--but that is an entirely different subject for a later time.
A black man having sexual relations with a white woman was likely to be hanged. Everyone in the U.S. back then was generally or passionately oppose to inter-racial sexual relations with Blacks and Whites . Many people today still oppose it, but not as passionately. Most people simply don't care anymore.
Just wanted to point out that this statement is incorrect
" Given that slavery in every other western hemisphere nation faded away on its own, without internal wars in those nations, the likelihood that American slavery would have ended without national violence is almost assured."
I think you are forgetting about the successful slave rebellion that took place in the Western Hemisphere nation called Haiti.
I disagree with much of what you stated but all of us can have a point of view. I just wanted make sure the record was straight with that.
The Civil War was a war about slavery. It might have started off as a secession crisis, but it became a war about slavery. Even Lincoln's "if I could save the Union without freeing any slaves..." quote was followed by "I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free." Talk about revisionist history!
If you want to celebrate Southern heratige, you don't have to use the backwards-minded Confederacy. White secessionists are not the only Southerners there are, and the Confederacy is a stain on American history.
Mathew, it is because of you that I fly the Confederate flag every day! It is because of your complete lack of understanding of both our history, and what the Confederacy represented that I will always promote Southnern heritage and history. Secession was and is a right of the states, and its not just Southern states where modern secession movements are most active. Slavery was a blight, but now it is a monstrerous obstacle to the discussion of what was wrong with federalism in the past and today. Each day, because of people who know better, the rest of us lose a degree of freedom. The Confederate flag is a symbol of defiance against those (like you) who would impose their views of right on others. God Bless the South and the Confederacy! HUrrah for Dixie and all she can be.
Posted By: Ross Williams
Date: 2010-04-15 14:04:57
I think you are forgetting about the successful slave rebellion that took place in the Western Hemisphere nation called Haiti
Actually, Aaron, the slave revolt in Haiti only threw off the French slave-holders; they retired quietly to France. The Haitians quickly reimplemented slavery - a few more times, if I recall correctly - before it died mostly from lack of anyone willing to reimpose it and risk getting drawn and quartered for it by revolting slaves.
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the Confederacy is a stain on American history
Drop the piety, Matt. There's many such "stains", and there's no shortage of people who can accurately claim to have a lineage suffering from one such "stain" or another.
My family more recently escaped the exact same "stain" around 35 years more recently than Lincoln emancipated the US slaves. Of course, that "stain" belongs to the czarist Russian legacy.
My wifes family - still living, by the way - escaped another exact same "stain" just 65 years ago. You didn't need to be a Jew or a Gypsy in order to be put into the slave labor camps of the Third Reich. You just needed to have a male family member in the subsumed military of an anschlussed Czech unit, and off goes your family - to ensure "loyalty".
Every design you can name in the tapestry of History is a "stain" to someone else. And even if you can get the majority to agree with you on the particular "staininess" of your stain, it's still History, and it cannot be marginalized just because you're uncomfortable discussing it.
If you need to be reminded of some "stains" relevant to events and circumstances that you undoubtedly support and consider worthy, just let me know. I find your superficial and simplistic view of history to be offensive and sanctimonious.
