A curiosity about the South, for people who live here

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Of course the south won. They were fighting for freedom, which is always the right thing to do - it was a moral victory.

Raw and stinking bullshit.  They were fighting for a static aristocracy.

They were fighting for the freedom to determine how to run their own economy and government. You can't really say that someone has the God-given right to pursue happiness, and then turn around and say "Well, but only if your method of pursuing happiness doesn't include human trafficking." These were honest, Christian farmers being faced with the possibility of being unable to leave their workforce to their children. Similarly, being forced allow illiterate non-citizens with no stake in the country to cast votes defeats the entire purpose of democracy - it's not self-determination if an outside power is manipulating the voting population to  its own ends.

It's not Freedom if you can't abuse it.

I'm leaving this thread now, out of sheer depression brought on by watching two supposed bipeds defend/support this sort of shit.

[LMNO]

I think I got reverse Poe's Law-ed.  I could have sworn that GA was rolling on satire.

[Cain]

I'm 100% certain GA is trolling here.

I may be wrong, and if so I will fully admit it, but I'm pretty sure he's poking fun at every defense of the South that has been made.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I'm kind of surprised at the way people buy Civil War history exactly as packaged, and how quick they are to make the assume any defense of the South is evidence of racism. I guess the campaign to equate the two has been pretty successful for it to infect a group of people deeply distrustful of authority. I still think it's artificial, though.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm kind of surprised at the way people buy Civil War history exactly as packaged, and how quick they are to make the assume any defense of the South is evidence of racism. I guess the campaign to equate the two has been pretty successful for it to infect a group of people deeply distrustful of authority. I still think it's artificial, though.

They will say the same thing about the teabaggers in 50 years.

[LMNO]

Oddly enough, sometimes A actually is A.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Fair enough, I guess. My problem is I wasn't alive 150 years ago. I'll leave it at not supporting the Confederacy per se, but having a somewhat naive and idealistic affection for the political arguments they used.

I do think adding the (slavery-unrelated) CSA Constitution provisions above would substantially improve our own, though.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Fair enough, I guess. My problem is I wasn't alive 150 years ago. I'll leave it at not supporting the Confederacy per se, but having a somewhat naive and idealistic affection for the political arguments they used.

I do think adding the (slavery-unrelated) CSA Constitution provisions above would substantially improve our own, though.

One Northern general, guy by the name of Chamberlain, wrote the best argument against the CSA...That it was an incipient hereditary aristocracy, and that this alone made it worth fighting.

Basically, the South fought for two reasons:

1.  The Smoot/Hawley tariff, arguably the stupidest idea ever to come out of congress, and

2.  "States rights"...Specifically, the right to their "peculiar institution", which was how they referred to "chattel slavery".  This was in fact the driving force behind the war, no matter what revisionists say, the proof of which is that they seceded upon the election of Lincoln - as they said they would - because they perceived him to be an abolitionist.

Don't go looking for noble causes where there are none.  The South was going to be for "Quality People" (rich Whites), with the buckra beneath them, and the slaves at the bottom.

[kingyak]

My local news station (which specializes in throwing shit in the air rather than reporting news) covered the prom dress thing. The completely expected irony was that the people who were up in arms about the violations of the girls First Amendment rights were the same ones who are always all for violation of students' Fourth Amendment rights when the argument of the day is about drug testing or strip searches.

On the flag:
Short answer: Except for a few open racists and reenactors (who are their own special brand of crazy), most people who wear/fly/whatever the confederate flag have little or no idea what it's supposed to mean. It's about tribal branding, like wearing a Nike shirt or St. Louis Cardinals hat.
Long answer: http://goatheadgumbo.blogspot.com/2012/05/heritage-or-hate.html

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am really surprised how many people here actually believe that the Civil War was about slavery. And Thanksgiving was about indians and pilgrims cooperating and sitting down to dinner together.

Sorry guys, but although there are valid perspectives on either side, Vex has done his homework. The war wasn't about great justice, it was about keeping the union together for economic reasons. Slavery was a divisive factor, but as Vex rightly pointed out, it was a dying institution even before the war began. It was used as a politically divisive instrument in much the same way as abortion and gay marriage are used now, but all existing evidence (of which there is a lot) indicates that the Civil War would have occurred even had slavery already been abolished in the South. The war actually exacerbated existing racism in ways that we are still dealing with the effects of.

As far as the South having a heavily stratified class system with what essentially amounts to a hereditary aristocracy, that was and is true. Not particularly relevant, unless you are in favor of the mentality that if we don't like a culture we have a moral imperative to invade it and force it to be like us, but true. I find it repugnant, but that's their culture, and war didn't beat it out of them. In fact, it probably reinforced it. Regardless of how much we may dislike it and believe that the North was in the right, the South was (IMO) within their rights to secede.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I am really surprised how many people here actually believe that the Civil War was about slavery. And Thanksgiving was about indians and pilgrims cooperating and sitting down to dinner together.

Sorry guys, but although there are valid perspectives on either side, Vex has done his homework. The war wasn't about great justice, it was about keeping the union together for economic reasons. Slavery was a divisive factor, but as Vex rightly pointed out, it was a dying institution even before the war began. It was used as a politically divisive instrument in much the same way as abortion and gay marriage are used now, but all existing evidence (of which there is a lot) indicates that the Civil War would have occurred even had slavery already been abolished in the South. The war actually exacerbated existing racism in ways that we are still dealing with the effects of.

As far as the South having a heavily stratified class system with what essentially amounts to a hereditary aristocracy, that was and is true. Not particularly relevant, unless you are in favor of the mentality that if we don't like a culture we have a moral imperative to invade it and force it to be like us, but true. I find it repugnant, but that's their culture, and war didn't beat it out of them. In fact, it probably reinforced it. Regardless of how much we may dislike it and believe that the North was in the right, the South was (IMO) within their rights to secede.

I just think it's unfortunate that real self-determination was the primary casualty of the war. In using slavery to justify both sides of the war, we effectively sunk the entire argument over a State's Rights -- which, contrary to what they tell you in school, really is an argument on its own and doesn't depend on racism or even conservatism. But thanks to 150 years of equating "States' Rights" with slavery, the Civil War, ignorance, and backwards thinking, we can't have that discussion anymore.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am really surprised how many people here actually believe that the Civil War was about slavery. And Thanksgiving was about indians and pilgrims cooperating and sitting down to dinner together.

Sorry guys, but although there are valid perspectives on either side, Vex has done his homework. The war wasn't about great justice, it was about keeping the union together for economic reasons. Slavery was a divisive factor, but as Vex rightly pointed out, it was a dying institution even before the war began. It was used as a politically divisive instrument in much the same way as abortion and gay marriage are used now, but all existing evidence (of which there is a lot) indicates that the Civil War would have occurred even had slavery already been abolished in the South. The war actually exacerbated existing racism in ways that we are still dealing with the effects of.

As far as the South having a heavily stratified class system with what essentially amounts to a hereditary aristocracy, that was and is true. Not particularly relevant, unless you are in favor of the mentality that if we don't like a culture we have a moral imperative to invade it and force it to be like us, but true. I find it repugnant, but that's their culture, and war didn't beat it out of them. In fact, it probably reinforced it. Regardless of how much we may dislike it and believe that the North was in the right, the South was (IMO) within their rights to secede.

I just think it's unfortunate that real self-determination was the primary casualty of the war. In using slavery to justify both sides of the war, we effectively sunk the entire argument over a State's Rights -- which, contrary to what they tell you in school, really is an argument on its own and doesn't depend on racism or even conservatism. But thanks to 150 years of equating "States' Rights" with slavery, the Civil War, ignorance, and backwards thinking, we can't have that discussion anymore.

Yup.

[hooplala]

This is why we can't have nice things.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

This is why we can't have nice things.

DAMN YOU, LINCOLN THE SOUTH AMERICA HUMAN NATURE !!

[Cain]

People in The South were idiots.  Not surprising really, given their idea of a strategy was "threatening, then direct military attack on a nation with more money, greater population and greater industrial output" than they had.

Obviously anyone who thought that was a good idea probably really thought they could get away with seceding with no consequences, either.  Sure, nice in theory, but ignores the practicality of the situation, which is those with more guns gets to make the rules.  Also ignores the history of the USA directly after founding, with The Whisky Rebellion, Shays Rebellion etc