Quote from: Ek Ehecatl on November 19, 2013, 04:14:18 PM
Hey Sci Fi, you want to debate realities of 1860 using 21st century Liberal symbols of social justice??

You suggest "slavery is wrong" is exclusively a 21st century liberal symbol of social justice?

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I know it's difficult but try to realize in 1860 slavery had existed forever,

Strike one against the appeal to tradition fallacy that has been employed by conservatives since time immemorial.

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it was a necessary part of the Agricultural age,

Oh brother we can dedicate an entire board to debating this point, but this doesn't remotely ethically justify the South's actions.  And thus any economic hardships it experiences pales in comparison to the looming shadow of slavery.

Quoteand had been for thousands of years.

So have rape and murder.  Who cares how long it's been around?  Yes, the south will suffer many adjustment years to restructure their economy around more amiable employment methods - but that level of suffering is far inferior to that of the slaves toiling under the "greatest material interest in the world". 

QuoteThe South knew it was on it's way out, the Cotton Gin, and new imports being illegal had made that obvious. If left to there own liberties the South would have eventually abandoned slavery in favor of machines, more efficient and they stay in the barn in the off season,

Did they not loudly proclaim the exact opposite in their Constitution?  And the Cotton Gin and other inventions had the opposite effect to what was expected, increasing rather than decreasing the demand for slaves.

Not that the millions that would suffer more abuses as you wait for their masters to turn to other economic modes would much agree with your cost-benefit assessment.

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but to force the issue at the cost of several hundred years of labor, investment and selective breeding without any form of "exit strategy" is stupid.

Slavery is an evil institution and I really don't care how much the South invested in an evil institution.  They deserved to lose all of it - why are you trying to sympathize with them?

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Do a little homework on Lincolns thoughts about what to do with all the "freed" slaves.

Lincoln was no saint but he learned and grew over the course of his presidency, as the war and his interactionis with free blacks such as Frederick Douglass led him to eventually support black suffrage.  But I don't see how this is a very relevant point on your part, as the question here is the South's culpability, not Lincoln's character.

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Does Georgias statement make you proud to be a Democrat?? 

LOL, you're the one trying to sympathize with the Confederacy it joined.  Notice how confederate sympathizers are virtually always hardline right wingers?  When's the last time a "tax and spend liberal" went out and claimed that it was OK for the south to secede to protect the slaves it had invested so much money in "selective breeding"?  That disturbing shit is more than enough evidence that the democrats and republicans switched, so out with all the "lincoln was a republican" knee jerkers.

Blah blah blah..... Where are you from?? I am a Southerner, proud of it. Yes slavery is wrong, you've made your feelings clear about it, and apparently you feel the "Civil War" (The Second American Revolution) was just and the correct thing to do, no matter the cost, and those damn slave owners got what was coming to them huh?? The righteous majority defeats the "evil ones"...... Now just for the fun of it, let's move into the 21st Century. The majority, whether they will openly admit it, doesn't like gay marriage, gay's in the military or public education. So what do you think about after BO,  if that same Majority decides they don't like the Gays and decide to "invade" San Francisco, Washington DC and Greenwich Village" and free them from their bondage and reunite them with the majority. You OK with that?? Even though technically it's "legal" but many see it as immoral???
Good old Democracy versus a Representative Republic?? 

You throw around that Democracy thing far to much, exactly where in the founding docs DofI and Const. does it  say the USA is a "democracy"???

By the way Sci fi, did you study up on the Confederate Constitution?? I can't wait to hear your deep thoughts on the subject. Study it and ignore the "slavery" parts....just for fun.....

Besides, it might give you a more detailed clue of what the conflict was really about.

Quote from: Ek Ehecatl on November 19, 2013, 04:46:49 PM
Blah blah blah..... Where are you from??

That should not be relevant in passing moral judgment.

QuoteI am a Southerner, proud of it.

That's no cause to automatically side with your geographical region in spite of all reason and common ethics.

QuoteYes slavery is wrong, you've made your feelings clear about it, and apparently you feel the "Civil War" (The Second American Revolution) was just and the correct thing to do, no matter the cost, and those damn slave owners got what was coming to them huh??

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.  Do you actually have any substantive rebuttal to my positions beyond an appeal to personal incredulity?

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The righteous majority defeats the "evil ones"......

Why do you put quotations around "evil ones", as though slavery were not evil?

QuoteNow just for the fun of it, let's move into the 21st Century. The majority, whether they will openly admit it, doesn't like gay marriage, gay's in the military or public education. So what do you think about after BO,  if that same Majority decides they don't like the Gays and decide to "invade" San Francisco, Washington DC and Greenwich Village" and free them from their bondage and reunite them with the majority. You OK with that?? Even though technically it's "legal" but many see it as immoral???
Good old Democracy versus a Representative Republic?? 

Do you honestly believe "I don't like gays" holds the same moral weight as "I don't like slavery"?

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You throw around that Democracy thing far to much, exactly where in the founding docs DofI and Const. does it  say the USA is a "democracy"???

The declaration states that all men are created equal.  Granted I can justify this assertion on more than just an argument from authority, but the point is that the south was very wrong to own slaves, and you haven't provided a single reason why I should feel sympathetic to precisely that - slave owners.  You simply try to shift the conversation to the question of the North's good will (as though I ever claimed it was saintly) to avoid the fact that you're defending a government founded to preserve the most evil institution created by man.  And all because of what?  Because you hail from the same vague geographic location? 

The southern declarations of secession repeat literally dozens of times in a single paragraph that the war was fought to preserve slavery and prevent any semblance of socio-economic parity or even recognition of personhood of blacks.  This is not my interpretation of their intentions; they made their intentions clear and were proud of it.

(cont.)

Quote from: Ek Ehecatl on November 19, 2013, 04:57:12 PM
By the way Sci fi, did you study up on the Confederate Constitution?? I can't wait to hear your deep thoughts on the subject. Study it and ignore the "slavery" parts....just for fun.....

Besides, it might give you a more detailed clue of what the conflict was really about.

This is like asking someone to study the mein kampf and ignore the racist and fascist parts to prove that the mein kampf wasn't racist or fascist.    And why do you put quotations around "slavery"?  Do you deny that the Confederacy condoned and defended the institution?

And let me try to get this through to you: on balance, slavery outweighs any good ideas the confederacy might have had.  Let's say they wanted low taxes and tariffs and you think these were good things, great...that does not compensate for slavery.  Very, very little would compensate for slavery.  Defending the South's actions is indeed a "lost cause".

Gosh.....I keep forgetting most lefty moonbatsget their Southern slavery mindset from the Mandingo books...  not history.

Quote from: Ek Ehecatl on November 19, 2013, 05:52:49 PM
Gosh.....I keep forgetting most lefty moonbatsget their Southern slavery mindset from the Mandingo books...  not history.

Interesting that whenever confronted with debate and counterarguments, rather than respond in kind and address the contentions, you just make vague, non-replies like the above.   

Tell me this is from a "mandigo book".  It's Texas's declaration of secession.  Try counting how many times they bring up slavery, white supremacy or black suffrage:




The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former, as one of the co-equal states thereof,

The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery - the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits - a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slaveholding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.

By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.

The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement therefore, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.

These and other wrongs we have patiently borne in the vain hope that a returning sense of justice and humanity would induce a different course of administration.

When we advert to the course of individual non-slaveholding States, and that a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.

The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions - a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color - a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slaveholding States.

By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.

They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is a "higher law" than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights.

They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.

They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offenses, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved.

They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.

They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.

They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.

They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.

And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slaveholding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

In view of these and many other facts, it is meet that our own views should be distinctly proclaimed.

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons

- We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.

Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.

Quote from: Ek Ehecatl on November 19, 2013, 04:14:18 PM
Hey Sci Fi, you want to debate realities of 1860 using 21st century Liberal symbols of social justice??

Sorry to truncate the rest of your post, but frankly it's wasted on the neohippie you're directing it toward.  Pearls before swine, and all that....  But I wish to focus on the only thing that can ever possibly matter to the people who proudly proclaim their status as "The Forty Seven Percent." 

I assume you've read the liberal Bible -- the book 1984. 

If it were even remotely possible to convince any Communist that there could potentially be a distinction between a fact and a symbol, then he wouldn't be a liberal in the first place.

Quote from: kopema on November 19, 2013, 06:56:30 PM
Sorry to truncate the rest of your post, but frankly it's wasted on the neohippie you're directing it toward.  Pearls before swine, and all that....  But I wish to focus on the only thing that can ever possibly matter to the people who proudly proclaim their status as "The Forty Seven Percent." 

Slavery.  Slavery.  Slavery?  Oh.  Do you actually bother to read what your conservative friends are posting before you rush to defend them?  I suggest you do so this time.  You know, like arguing that we shouldn't have ended slavery ourselves because the South invested lots of time into selectively breeding them - he literally argued that.

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I assume you've read the liberal Bible -- the book 1984. 

Patriot act?   War on drugs?  Liberal bible? 

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If it were even remotely possible to convince any Communist that there could potentially be a distinction between a fact and a symbol, then he wouldn't be a liberal in the first place.

Uh huh, such as the brilliant tactic of never subjecting your arguments to falsifiability, by making vague generalizations in the third person?  Is this just an attempt to symbolize the conservative perception of "ideology before the facts", ingrained again and again into your skull?

OK, I read the Texas resolution, and your point is what?? You want to have an adult conversation about history, or just spew moonbat crap???
Neo hippies, can't live with em, can't napalm the FCS........ 

Quote from: Ek Ehecatl on November 19, 2013, 04:57:12 PM
By the way Sci fi, did you study up on the Confederate Constitution?? I can't wait to hear your deep thoughts on the subject. Study it and ignore the "slavery" parts....just for fun.....

Besides, it might give you a more detailed clue of what the conflict was really about.

I know exactly what you're talking about, but he'll never get it.

Quote from: Ek Ehecatl on November 19, 2013, 08:04:53 PM
OK, I read the Texas resolution, and your point is what??

I'll try to put this again slowly, and I recommend you read this carefully:

Maybe you feel that the Confederacy had some good ideas.  OK, maybe you can champion those ideas to me right now.  But do not pretend that this gives the Confederacy legitimacy, nobility or even remote sympathy.  Why?  Because slavery (which, with the texas declaration of secession and that of various other confederate states, I have quite strongly established to be the principal; not sole, but principal reason for the South's secession) outweighs any good the Confederacy might have conjured by orders of magnitude.  Similarly, enslaving millions of innocent people is so far worse than, say, the North levying unfair taxes that to try to bring up the latter in defense is not even worth discussion.  And no, economic necessity does not justify enslaving entire generations of human beings.  It certainly does not denying even the concept of personhood to them.  Slavery is perhaps the most evil institution created amongst mankind, and that an entire government was explicitly founded, primarily if not solely to defend such an institution utterly destroys its moral legacy.  So maybe you can cut out the Confederacy apologism, and then we can have a more rational conversation about the economic and social implications of the Civil War, instead of your being driven by a deluded sense of some old glory of the Southern cause bullshit.

"Slavery is perhaps the most evil institution created amongst mankind, and that an entire government was explicitly founded, primarily if not solely to defend such an institution utterly destroys its moral legacy."

No boy you're wrong, Fascism/Communism/Socialism (FCS) hold that despicable place in history, almost 100 million slaughtered and still counting.
Hell of a team you chose huh?? 

Quote from: Ek Ehecatl on November 20, 2013, 09:23:57 AM
No boy you're wrong, Fascism/Communism/Socialism (FCS) hold that despicable place in history, almost 100 million slaughtered and still counting.

...seriously?  So your best defense of the Confederacy is that at least they weren't as bad as Hitler and Stalin?   

Quote from: Sci Fi Fan on November 21, 2013, 12:14:15 PM

QuoteNo boy you're wrong, Fascism/Communism/Socialism (FCS) hold that despicable place in history, almost 100 million slaughtered and still counting.

...seriously?  So your best defense of the Confederacy is that at least they weren't as bad as Hitler and Stalin?   

NINTY percent slavery today is far worse than TEN percent slavery a century-and-a-half ago.... 

Only in the mind of the most rabid propagandist could that incredibly trite observation magically transform into an accidental confession that anyone who criticizes Fascism or Communism is "defending" Africa's slave trade.