NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo Signs Law Banning Sale Of Confederate Flags That Will Absolutely Get Nullified
from the free-speech-and-all-that dept
Let's be clear: that fact that there are people all over America that for any reason would want to display the Confederate battle flag is monumentally stupid. For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion launched over southern states' desire to own other people. Don't give me the "states rights" argument; it's entirely invalid, unless the states right you're talking about is slavery. On top of that, the Confederacy, you know... lost. Proudly displaying the symbol of loserdom is both hilarious and befuddling.
Now that that's out of the way, entirely too often the folks who abhor the Confederate flag participate in a massive over-reaction to it. We saw this after Dylann Roof proved just how evil humanity can be in shooting up a historical African American church, with far too many people and companies focusing on displays of the flag, as though that were the real issue.
And now, in a move far more disappointing, Andrew Cuomo has signed into law a ban in New York State on the sale of the Confederate flag and other "symbols of hate" on public property.
"This country faces a pervasive, growing attitude of intolerance and hate—what I have referred to in the body politic as an American cancer," he wrote. "By limiting the display and sale of the confederate flag, Nazi swastika and other symbols of hatred from being displayed or sold on state property, including the state fairgrounds, this will help safeguard New Yorkers from the fear-installing effects of these abhorrent symbols."
Cuomo noted that "certain technical changes are necessary" to make sure the ban is compliant with the First Amendment, which protects free expression—including the expression of hateful ideas.
Should it not be obvious, it would be hard to state how performative and stupid this all is. This law will not survive a First Amendment challenge. There is no ground on which free speech is compatible with a law banning private persons from selling expressive symbols on public land. A whole lot of people are pointing to Germany's prohibition on Nazi imagery and symbols, as though that country's protection of free speech means that such prohibitions are compatible with free speech. They aren't. At all. We might want to say that Germany by and large has free speech, but that law is an exception to the rule, not evidence of it.
And Cuomo, who reportedly has his eyes on being Biden's Attorney General, most definitely knows better than this. And even beyond that, it's worth noting that this bill is a complete mess, somehow managing to be too broad and too ineffectual to have the desired effect.
It prohibits the sale of "symbols of hate," which it defines as "including, but not limited, to symbols of white supremacy, neo-Nazi ideology, or the battle flag of the Confederacy." Keep in mind that we live in a world where some people think the OK hand gesture is a white supremacist signal, and the New York Human Rights Commission has been particularly inclined to over-interpret the government's mandate to ban things. This is not a recipe for restraint.
The bill also exempts museums, books, and "educational purposes" in general, which provides wild interpretive leeway. And the aforementioned fairgrounds provision applies to private actors on public property, which is almost certainly unconstitutional. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that a notorious hate group, the Westboro Baptist Church, could stand on public property and shout obscenities near the funerals of military service members. There's little question that the First Amendment broadly protects hateful speech on public property.
And, to reiterate, Cuomo absolutely knows this law is going to get struck down one way or another. This is all pure theater for the cameras, the kind of performative woke-ism that is the exact opposite of small-L liberalism.
So why bother doing this at all?
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Filed Under: 1st amendment, andrew cuomo, confederate flag, constitution, new york
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Pendulum
Swings the other way.
Don't agree with them and have to hear them anyway.
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Flags of losers everywhere
I have no doubt whatsoever that in response to this a lot of confederate and nazi flags are going to be flying in New York very soon, so not only is it unconstitutional and performative garbage but it's also going to have the exact opposite result desired, that being less people flying flags celebrating bigoted and genocidal losers.
You want to see less of those cloth pieces of trash then make use of your free speech to condemn them and point out how pathetic the people flying them are for holding up symbols of racism, slavery, bigotry and mass-murder, as if people rightly associate anyone celebrating the confederacy and/or nazi's as losers celebrating losers then they're probably not going to be as quick to do so, even if there will still be plenty of people disgusting and vile enough to continue to do so.
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This one wonders...
That the indoctrination is long complete as to the complex reasons for the civil war. Ya got it wrong.. and the covid wars will be just as bad and remembered too simply.
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Re: Flags of losers everywhere
"You want to see less of those cloth pieces of trash then make use of your free speech to condemn them and point out how pathetic the people flying them are"
But, I've been told that those poor put upon Nazis are only Nazis because the libs are so mean to them...
Seriously, I've actually heard that argument.
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Well, that's not **quite** true.
"For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion launched over southern states' desire to own other people."
Before getting to that particular "for starters", how about we start with the fact that what people normally consider the "confederate" flag isn't even that blue star-filled X on red? These benighted idiots are flying, very specifically, the battle flag of the army of northern virginia. It's Robert E. Lees old banner.
The actual confederate flag or at least what came closest to be recognized as such, looks like a bog-average star-spangled banner except that it has only one star in the upper-left blue field and only three stripes in red, white and red.
Trust the good ole "Proud Boys" to be shaky even on what their own damn flag ought to look like.
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Re: Flags of losers everywhere
"...but it's also going to have the exact opposite result desired, that being less people flying flags celebrating bigoted and genocidal losers."
Better still than the alternative - that being that the bigots and nazis finally wise up and start hiding who they really are so we forget they still exist. When Sweden implemented laws against hate speech then sure, we could no longer see the neo-nazis marching down the street and holding rallies. Didn't mean they disappeared, and today the same people are in parliament pushing the same message, just wrapped in politically acceptable language, because we, the majority, forgot who these people are and what they stand for as soon as we weren't constantly reminded of it.
The problem with silencing a repugnant asshole is that it doesn't make him disappear. It makes you forget he exists.
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'We're such jokes the libs have total control over us.'
That's almost impressive, I'd already though them pathetic losers and yet they somehow managed to get even more pathetic by trying to blame someone else for their actions and who and what they choose to self-identify as, and not only that but doing so in a way that portrays them as pathetic weaklings forced to self-identify with the same label as bigoted, genocidal losers.
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If we’re gonna get that pedantic, I should note that only one Confederate flag really matters:
🏳️
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Re:
That's a very important point too.
Although...looking at the last few decades of republican government action, I'm not so sure that they aren't still, in the end, trying to win the war for the south at long last.
Considering that every time a republican president is in office, since the days of Reagan, they've tried to demolish the function, credibility, moral authority and constitutional validity of the federal government. I'd say give it three more Trumps and the states will start seceding - led, this time around, by the blue states.
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The fact he said “technical changes “ would just get brought up In court as intent to circumcise.
He’s lucky the flag has gotten a bad rep otherwise he would be even more an idiot then he already is.
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Guess I can't make my Nazis vs Confederates movie, can't get the props anymore
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Re:
You have to make your own then destroy them afterwards as they did with Man In The High Castle ;)
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/streaming/man-high-castle-swastikas-nazis-destro yed-amazon-a9206906.html
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just goes to show you the far left is closer to the far right...
This just goes to show that the far left is closer to the far right than most people want to admit. Both sides believe in freedom of speech as long as it's their speech.
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Nice marketing scheme by the flag industry.
Maybe the My Pillow guy will save the day and start making a My Patriot Flag.
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Re: just goes to show you the far left is closer to the far righ
What is this Far Left to which you refer?
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Dumb
This getting shot down by the courts will now give them a high profile victory to point to as justification for displays of this stuff. It will do nothing but embolden more idiots by publicly legitimizing their symbols.
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Loserdom
Do MAGA hats count?
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Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is closer to the far
The thing about far left and right is they both look alike when you give them a gun so it’s hard to tell who they are.
-me
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Re: Apptians is the best SEO Company in Delhi NCR
Get outta here, stupid spambot.
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Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is closer to the
They both look like idiots carrying loaded weapons, but that does not answer the question.
Point being, there is very little far left in the US. What is commonly referred to recently is actually what used to be the moderate right.
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Re: 'We're such jokes the libs have total control over us.'
But they're just following the example set by their Daddy, you know, Number 45.
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Re: Loserdom
I'd have to say yes, if my prediction comes true - that those certain members of the Republican party known as the Cult of Trump get themselves labeled as a domestic terrorist organization. That's pretty far off the path, but no further than Cuomo's proclamation.
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For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
"For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion launched over southern states' desire to own other people."
That assumes quite incorrectly, that slavery was the prime motivator for the Civil War. That was the rallying cry, but economics, like the fact that the southern states preferred to do business with England for machinery & such was more likely the cause... follow the money.
Fact is; that flag should be no more offensive than a Guy fawkes mask.
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Re: Re: Flags of losers everywhere
SDM is correct, better to keep them out in the open for easy surveillance. And while this might fail in the courts, it serves both as notice to the malcontents that they're being watched (and that they aren't particularly appreciated), and as a starting point in the much-needed discussion about how these clowns came to exist in the first place. I mean, they weren't born with the "sure knowledge" that white supremacy was a God-given right... someone had to teach them that crap, and that's the particular recidivism that I want to see rooted out and killed off.
Tell me, am I really asking for too much here?
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Why?
To paraphrase Bruce Schneier: "Political Theatre"
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Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
Maybe. But we've lost the "feels bad man" frog thanks to neonazi use of the meme and now we may lose the "ok" hand sign for the same reason. Even the swastika was appropriated from Buddhists, now a universal sign for hatred instead of its original meaning.
There are plenty of other examples of redefinition and appropriation in history. The rebel flag is just the latest example and, in this case, they did this to themselves.
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Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
No, it was slavery. Why would they secede from the Union over doing business with England? And why would they specifically do so right as Lincoln was made President-elect? Nothing that Lincoln supported or fought against would have impeded that, and I’ve seen no evidence that suggests that southerners thought otherwise.
You’re right about the money, though. It’s just that the issue is that slaves were basically unpaid labor, so it’s cheaper to have slaves do the work than to hire a paid worker to do the job. Not to mention the fact that the buying and selling of slaves was also a fairly lucrative business in itself. So yeah, it was about money, but not England’s money.
Also, why would the South prefer England over the North? You never explained why they would prefer to do business with England for machinery and such, nor did you offer any evidence that they did. You simply asserted it as the most likely motivation and nothing else.
Seriously, read the documents by the people who voted to secede. They explicitly point to slavery as the key motivating factor for secession. The Vice President of the Confederacy explicitly stated that the new nation was founded primarily on the issue of slavery. There is nothing about doing business with England.
As John Oliver once said (I’m paraphrasing), “If the Confederacy wasn’t formed because of slavery, someone should really tell the f*€&ing Confederacy that!”
Plus, as you admit, the rallying cry for the Confederacy was slavery. That means that the flag was intended to represent a nation that at the very least claimed to be fighting for slavery. Even if that wasn’t actually the motivating factor, the flag itself is closely associated with the “rallying cry” of slavery and was intended as such.
Guy Fawkes, on the other hand, had no connection to slavery or racism at all. He also wasn’t involved in a years-long civil war but just a small act of rebellion that didn’t even work and ended in just one night. There also wasn’t any regional issues involved. On top of that, the way the mask gets used now has pretty much 0 connection to the original use. It just gets used in association with hacking and Anonymous. With the Confederate Flag, the claimed reasons for flying it nowadays (states’ rights and southern heritage) are pretty well connected to the original use (states’ rights to own slaves and the southern heritage of slavery).
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Wait...
Wait, so now Techdirt likes free speech? Make up your mind.
Oh, that's right ... Masnick and his Blue Checkmark commenters are a-okay with Thought Policing when it's big business doing it.
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Re: Wait...
Are familiar with the difference between a law enacted by a state and a business that has its own free speech rights?
Yes, of course you are, you're just a trolling idiot....
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"Your" side is trying to make US of A flag a racist symbol too.
Though for once I'd LIKE to agree with your text here, you're leaving out far too much.
We're now to the "cancel culture" era where "your" side is starting to erase all that's American. YOU support that to some degree.
Now, this is mainly an on-site dig, but IS relevant: Similarly, you thieves of content believe yourself on the right side YET chose the "Jolly Roger" -- a Nazi-like death's head and crossed bones, proclaiming piracy, rape, and murders -- for YOUR symbol, and PROUDLY call yourselves "pirates". Are any of you now ashamed of that symbol?
With this piece Timmy, you've outed yourself as independent, still have some Nationalist sentiment too, therefore you are now an enemy of the "Woke". I predict won't be long before you'll be attacked by your "woke" friends.
You chose Limbo by not objecting earlier to the leftist agenda. Enjoy.
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Re: Wait...
Free speech only means that the government will not stop you publishing your words at your own expense. It has never meant that you can compel others to publish your words or listen to you. Other may agree to publish your words, or help you publish your words, on a voluntary basis.
People can support your free speech rights without wanting to listen to what you have to say, or help you to publish your words. However if you keep butting in with off topic rants, you will be treated as the troll that you are, as reasonable people will work out the norms of a forum, and either conform to those norms or go and find an alternative forum that shares their ideas and way of speaking.
What you keep demanding is that other people are compelled to help you publish your words, and that is a violation of their rights by compelling them to associate with ideas they do not want to promote.
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For the record: Copyright maximalists likely used the term “piracy” to describe copyright infringement first. At a minimum, they played a large role in putting into the public sphere as a shorthand for copyright infringement. So blame those who tried their damnedest to make “piracy” a badge of shame for people adopting “pirate” as a badge of pride — because without the maximalists, “Pirate Bay” might not be in the global Internet lexicon.
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I don't like this Trump era style of editorialising the news. The whole first paragraph is unnecessary, just give us the facts please.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is closer to
you would like to think so. Unfortunately, that just isn't the case.
Let me help. The far left consists of that group of people who believe that:
Does that clear things up a bit for you?
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Re:
Then you might want to go to Wikipedia instead, just saying....
;)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is closer
Must be hard being such a victim.
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Re:
Which part of the first paragraph isn't a fact?
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Sir, this is an opinion blog.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is closer
Most of that list is fiction, not 'far left'.
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Re:
And I don't like this Trump era style of dumb commenting. Why the hell would you come to an opinion blog and whine about reading opinions?
(j/k, dumb commenting well preceded Trump)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is closer
"Does that clear things up a bit for you?"
It answers the question, whether anything is more clear now than it was is debatable. What is clear is that you are confused about a few things. Perhaps if you broadened your horizons beyond the gutter ... nah, forget it.
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Re: "Your" side is trying to make US of A flag a racist symbol t
[citation needed]
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is cl
not at all. I am neither far left, nor far right, more of a centrist personally. Just providing an answer to the original question of what far left meant.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is cl
if only that were true.......
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is cl
My horizons are plenty broad, thank you very much. What pray tell do you think I am confused about?
Also, what's the gutter have to do with this conversation? People are people, they should be free to think and talk and believe as they see fit, so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.
There are plenty of misogynist men out there but there are plenty of misandristic women as well (see: Pauline Harmange, author of I Hate Men). Evangelical Christians that hate the LGBTQ+ community and members of the LGBTQ+ community that label feminists transphobes for wanting a biologically woman only space. White supremacists and black supremacists (see: New Black Panther Party which the Southern poverty Law Center has called; "...a virulently racist and antisemitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers.).
Being in the center (O.K. maybe a little left of center if I am being truly honest) I can stand back and look at what both ends of the political spectrum are doing and how they are both counterproductive. Occupants of either end are blinded to the realities of what they, and their group, are espousing.
Perhaps if you broadened your horizons beyond your preconceived notions, you might learn something, or not.
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Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
The "money" side is that the southern economy was almost entirely reliant on slavery, which was not particularly compatible with industrial advances, leaving the southern economy increasingly subservient to the industrial centers of the north and Europe.
Their conclusion was that economic subservience to the European powers (who hopefully wouldn't care too much about what they got up to with their slaves, though how long the British Empire would have left that alone is pretty questionable) was preferable to economic subservience to the northern states (who had a history of "interfering" when slavery was concerned). It's slavery all the way down.
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Re: This one wonders...
If it weren't for the demand to not just keep humans as animals, but to expand the number of territories where that was allowed, there would have been no other "complex reasons".
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Re:
I don't know how your fiction is going to sell the conceit of Nazis v Confederates in the first place. They get in an argument over a woman or a bike or something?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left i
Wherein does privilege lie?
If only we knew...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is closer
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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You act as if right-wingers don’t do this, too. Or have you not read a single story about Christians complaining when atheists help put a stop to unlawful government-sponsored endorsements of religion such as Christian-only holiday displays at state capitols or prayers over loudspeakers at school sporting events?
When men are denied large swathes of opportunity in regards to employment, denied justice in cases of rape (to the point where any accusation they make is not taken seriously possibly even if there’s hard evidence), and treated like second-class citizens for a century or so (which includes being denied the right to own land and the right to vote), you can complain about misandry. Until then: Misogyny is a thing, it’s worse than any possible “misandry” you can think of, and you won’t solve either by trying to paint all men as victims of the Lesbian Gynocracy or what-th’fuck-ever you believe.
People of color can be racist, yes. And yes, their racism may help perpetuate existing institutional racism. But by and large, their racism isn’t the basis for either the founding or the perpetuation of a couple centuries’ worth of that institutional racism in the United States. Remember: Black people didn’t write the Constitution that declared them to be three-fifths of a person.
Queer roles should, ideally, be played by queer people. It’s not quite “the gay/trans equivalent of blackface” for straight/cis actors to play gay/trans roles. But it’s parallel to the practice of blackface because it helps perpetuate the bullshit notion that being gay is a “choice” or being trans is an “act” — i.e., that queer people can stop being queer any time they want.
The inverse of that idea — queer actors playing straight/cis roles — doesn’t come off nearly as heinous in comparison. After all, Neil Patrick Harris played a ladies’ man for years on How I Met Your Mother and nobody threw a bitch fit about that.
The rainbow/Pride flag stands for inclusion and positivity, for a celebration of queer people living and thriving in a world that does its damnedest to make queer people feel unwelcome (at best). The battle flag of the Confederacy represents the so-called Lost Cause of a failed nation-state that seceded from and fought a war with the United States over the right to own and treat Black people as property. Which one sounds like a flag you’d rather fly: a flag associated with love and inclusion or a flag associated with racism and hatred?
Let’s say you disagree with the phrase “Black lives matter”, the notion that women deserve equal opportunity in all areas of life, and the idea that queer people deserve to live and thrive in the public sphere without fear of violence or discrimination. For what reason should you deserve to avoid any and every social consequence for expressing those beliefs?
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If you can’t admit that you identify more with right-wingers who complain about “SJWs” and “virtue signaling” and “viewpoint discrimination” based on your posts complaining about the “far left”, you’re lying…even if only to yourself.
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Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
Plus, the GF mask derives from celebration the putting down of a rebellion. The guy figure is metaphorically burned alive because he was a (failed) traitor. The Catholics weren't celebrating.
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Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
"Guy Fawkes, on the other hand, had no connection to slavery or racism at all. He also wasn’t involved in a years-long civil war but just a small act of rebellion that didn’t even work and ended in just one night. There also wasn’t any regional issues involved. On top of that, the way the mask gets used now has pretty much 0 connection to the original use. It just gets used in association with hacking and Anonymous"
Well,, there's actually a lot to unpack as a comparison. The original Guy Fawkes was religious fanatic, terrorist and traitor who acted before well the US was ever a country. The November 5th tradition is a celebration of his failure, not of anything he did or stood for. The Victorian tradition of burning him in effigy every year became an ingrained part of British culture, until Alan Moore used his mask as a symbol for an equally unhinged (though perhaps more supportable) terrorist/vigilante in his anti-Thatcher allegory V For Vendetta. It's a striking image that became popularised in the Wachowski written/produced 2005 movie. It struck enough of a chord with nascent anti-authority movements including Anonymous and Occupy to become a defacto symbol of those defying overbearing authority.
In short, the mask is not controversial because it's essentially a 15 year old movie reference, and has never been used in support of the actions of the original violence of the person it portrays even before the graphic novel depiction.
Contrast that with the Confederate flag, which was flown in support of slavery, and became widely popularised during the fight against the civil rights act, and has generally been flown in support of the original actions of those who fought to preserve slavery.
it should be no mystery why one remains controversial and the other is not.
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States' rights?
"For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion launched over southern states' desire to own other people. Don't give me the "states rights" argument; it's entirely invalid"
I know this is a beloved topic of the people in the US who approve of the 'desire to own other people' part, and certainly southern states expressly went to war to prevent the abolition of slavery, but the 'rebellion'/war part is also significant. There was a problem with the Constitution that led to this particular highly contentious issue causing a civil war, and it's hard to say that no other issue could have provided a trigger if slavery hadn't.
In school here in the UK, we're taught a somewhat wider explanation that deals with the broader problems as well as slavery.
It's a bit like blaming the Great War on Gavrilo Princip, and ignoring train timetables, the Tripartite Alliance, and the clash of two great powers. (When you really get down to it, the root cause was basically Wilhelm the Tit feeling snubbed by his cousins in Britain.)
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Re: Re: Re: Flags of losers everywhere
"I mean, they weren't born with the "sure knowledge" that white supremacy was a God-given right... someone had to teach them that crap, and that's the particular recidivism that I want to see rooted out and killed off. "
Yeah, the problem here is that we already know where it comes from. It's not just a case of grandpappy raising his children on the merry-making bonfire-and-noose parties from his heyday in the KKK.
We're talking about people who have been raised to accept faith and feeling in favor of science and criticism. Who actively scorn education. Who are weaned, from birth, on the idea that government is bad without ever considering how much of their misery comes from actively undermining government. And how have been, for as long as they've been able to hear, been biochemically addicted to grievance and hatred.
73 million of them. All addicted to fear and hatred. All desperate for any explanation, leadership, or, well, dealer providing the next fix. And like any good junkie willing to justify their habit in any possible way, even if they have to leave logic and common sense by the roadside.
The fact that the FBI has noticed that former white supremacy actually suffer withdrawal symptoms from being deprogrammed and that violence researchers have noted that grievance and retaliation makes the brain act as if it's on an opioid trip means that yes; You are asking for too much.
Because getting 73 million unrepentant junkies to kick their drug habit of hatred and grievance is just a bit more than trying to get rid of a single topic causing recidivism.
You may want to google the following sentences for details:
What the Science of Addiction Tells Us About Trump.
Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual among Former White Supremacists.
The why is pretty easy. Young people in vulnerable demographics - badly educated, poor, stressed over economy - get hooked on that wonderful drug called a scapegoat, giving them the illusion that there's someone other than themselves ultimately responsible for them being failures in life, and then mistake the warm comfy rush which comes from expressing their hatred and dissaffection with the idea that they're actually helping themselves.
The end result being the people reduced to the last stages of a drug addiction where their daily performance keeps slipping and they're reduced to shouting "Fuck liberals" - or jews, or black people, hispanics, irishmen, or any other trending scapegoat - as the response to every problem they're facing. Just taking another hit from the crack pipe rather than actually help themselves out of the hole they're in.
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Re: Re:
"I don't know how your fiction is going to sell the conceit of Nazis v Confederates in the first place."
Easy enough. All it takes is for one nazi to stand there in an SS uniform and make a snarcastic comment about the confederate flag and the hillbilly toting it around...and it'll be on.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is closer
"Does that clear things up a bit for you?"
It certainly does. I mean, one strawman or falsehood would have been enough to inform us where you're coming from, but eight?
That's more or less just you bragging about being an alt-right troll. To begin with, anyone can be a racist or bigot but it takes some leaps of logic to try to explain factual evidence of racism with "yeah, but the oppressed minority has racists too".
Now, even if any of your statements actually held up to casual scrutiny they wouldn't be "the left".
Political left means something completely different and the only reason americans keep getting confused about what that means is because since the days of Hoover "leftism" apparently means "anyone we don't like" to people who can't pronounce the word "black" without using an N and two G's.
Left and Right are two sides on a political scale. And ironically the most factual leftist branch of US politics would be those alt-right asshats who fail to recognize the concept of private property - like the social networks they keep getting thrown out of. It's always amusing to see the self-styled "alt-right" quoting classical Maoism.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left i
"Being in the center (O.K. maybe a little left of center if I am being truly honest)..."
You really aren't - neither factual nor honest.
Left and Right have shit-all to do with individual liberties as neither side of that scale inherently represents any of it. Some of the most prevalent defenders of LGBTQ have been hardcore classical conservatives so right-leaning they make Lincoln look like a modern progressive.
The one and only example I've seen of "leftism" is the part where the self-styled "alt-right" tries to imply the owners of private property should not be allowed to dictate the terms under which they allow open access to their property - like social forums, for instance.
An actual bona fide right winger would just turn his back on facebook and go to Parler instead. The US right advocates for seizing the means of production - which is classical Marxism, and when applied to state-enforced speech, actual Maoism.
So far your arguments about left and right all emerge from the rhetoric equivalent of the Chewbacca defense. Try again, but this time around you might want to start from factual reality rather than redefining the dictionary to fit your narrative.
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Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
"That assumes quite incorrectly, that slavery was the prime motivator for the Civil War."
It was. There's a reason that where the US constitution has the Bill of Rights the Confederate version has a line about how the natural state of the black man is as a slave and the confederate states all come together to recognize that fact.
Followed by articles actually forbidding any law to be made to ever freeing a slave.
"...economics, like the fact that the southern states preferred to do business with England for machinery..."
This angle as also been looked at. You may want to look at how the wealthy southern landowners would have managed their business if labor costs shot up to where they'd have to be for work demanding a lot of consistent FTE's, like the cotton or tobacco industry.
Slavery was clung to with a dead man's grip because to the southern economy slavery was the vast majority of the profit driver.
"Fact is; that flag should be no more offensive than a Guy fawkes mask."
That flag was invented and flown to represent a secessionist nation which included slavery among it's core constitutional principles. It's as offensive as the swastika, for the exact same reason. Because what it represents is that a certain caucasian majority is superior to a minority ethnicity which can be abused and murdered at will.
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Re: States' rights?
"There was a problem with the Constitution that led to this particular highly contentious issue causing a civil war, and it's hard to say that no other issue could have provided a trigger if slavery hadn't."
That's doubtful. Slavery and the economic impact of slavery on the industry of the south was so very much at the heart of every conflict and inflamed argument in senate and congress at the time it's impossible to separate from any of the other issues.
It's like trying to take the nazis out of the world war 2 history. You could argue that antisemitism and anti-slavic sentiment still existed and that germans were miffed about versailles...but there is no way you can piece the resulting history together after taking the nazis out of it.
And if we're talking World War one it wouldn't be just taking Princip out of the equation...it would be taking Germany out of the equation.
I can understand americans not wanting to own that bit of their history, because unlike Germany americans have never been able to put the confederacy away. Major slave owners and surviving monsters weren't publicly hung én másse like the nazi top leadership was at Nürnberg.
No one wrote school books about the atrocities of the confederacy - indeed, most books just whitewashed and exculpated the rebels, like those state-sponsored history books in Virginia which up until modern times covered the topic of slavery with touching anecdotes on how well most owners treated their "extended family".
Rather than covered the number of them who liked to burn uppity slaves alive, whipping them to death, or maiming them for such crimes as objecting when the master decided to rape their daughter or wife, or for trying to run away.
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— from the Cornerstone Speech given by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States, on the 21st of March 1861
— from A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union, formally declared on the 9th of January 1861
— Fulton Anderson, in a speech to the secessionist convention of Virginia, in February 1861
— Judge Alexander Hamilton Handy, from a speech given in February 1861
— from Georgia’s declaration of the causes of secession, adopted on the 29th of January 1861
— from Texas’s declaration of the causes of secession, adopted on the 2nd of February 1861
— George Williamson, in a speech given at the Texas secession convention on the 11th of February 1861
— Stephen F. Hale, in a letter to Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin dated on the 27th of December 1860
— from an article in the Richmond-based Southern Punch published in 1864
But sure, tell me again how the Confederacy wasn’t primarily concerned with preserving the enslavement of Black people for the sake of, shall we say, Southern comfort.
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Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
"Slavery was clung to with a dead man's grip because to the southern economy slavery was the vast majority of the profit driver."
This is completely wrong. It's the most bizarre part of the whole thing, in hindsight: slavery isn't as profitable as freeing the slaves and giving them jobs. (It's what got economics called the 'dismal science'.) Basically, if you keep slaves you have to feed them or lose your 'property', plus try and get work out of them. Free the slaves, and you can pay them what you spent on food etc, and save the costs of whips, overseers, etc - and get more work out of them. Of course, you have to make it impossible, in practice, for them to migrate in any numbers, but that's about it. No need for all the rest of it, you still get an underclass to oppress.
I wouldn't say it's clear the slavers generally knew this, but there's a good argument that the knowledge slavery was coming to an end anyway, in the relatively short term, and (avoiding?) facing up to a change in their social structure, is what triggered the Civil War. If they'd known what they'd still be able to do using the Jim Crow laws etc, the South wouldn't have seceded imo. They were concerned about maintainiing white supremacy more than worried about losing their 'property'.
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Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
"That flag was invented and flown to represent a secessionist nation which included slavery among it's core constitutional principles. It's as offensive as the swastika, for the exact same reason. Because what it represents is that a certain caucasian majority is superior to a minority ethnicity which can be abused and murdered at will."
I brought this up elsewhere, but it's also worth noting that in terms of its modern usage, the Confederate battle flag gained popularity as it did not because of some clinging to heritage directly after the civil war, but primarily in the 1950s/60s in opposition to the civil rights movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_display_of_the_Confederate_battle_flag
Yeah, it's a mystery why a symbol of opposition to black people wanting equal rights would be considered controversial /s
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Now seems like a good time to remind everyone that Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, repeatedly raped one of the Black women he enslaved and forced her to bear his children. Sally Hemmings was 14 years old and he was 44 when this cruelty began. And she remained enslaved to Jefferson until his death nearly 40 years later.
The Confederates were slavery-supporting assholes — of that, there can be no doubt — but the history of the United States is littered with similar assholes. We’d do well to remember that the people we hold up as heroes for essentially telling the British Empire to go fuck itself were as human as anyone else. Their flaws and failures deserve the same level of acknowledgement as their successes.
And if that means calling Thomas Jefferson a rapist, so be it. At least that’s being honest, compared to the “it was states’ rights” crowd.
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Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
To be clear, my point is that while one can debate the extent to which 'the peculiar institution' was a cause or a trigger, there's no doubt that the flag represents white-supremacy. One doesn't need to note the somewhat debatable depths to which some Southerners sank, when there is an unarguable if marginally lesser vileness.
It's also a much better fit to the reasons people fought for the South. People who didn't own slaves were on the bottom of that society - except the slaves. They were fighting to preserve that dubious privilege, in many cases, but they'd been led to believe that was good for them when it was quite the opposite. (A lot like people duped by Hitler, really.)
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Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
That's not quite right. The disgustimg heritage of the Civil War persisted until the civil rights movement came along to challenge it.
In any case,the reason we're trying to explain the offensiveness of the flag is because there are peopke who don't think it stands for such things. They're wrong, but it doesn't mean they're deliberately white-supremacist; it usualky means they've swallowed a load of propaganda and not thought about the broader meaning.
With Nazi symbology, it's quite common to find people from Yokelsville, Eastern Europe who were completely ignorant of the real meaning when they had something tattooed on their bodies. They only knew that everyone hates Nazis, and that they'd got dealt a shitty hand in life, so wanted to be offensive. Generally they grow up, see a bit outside their hometown, learn a bit, and get the tattoos covered up, because they were never really Nazis.
Here in Europe, most people with a confederate flag are just pig ignorant, and not even trying to offend. I have no idea how much that's true in, say, Kentucky.
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Re:
You've missed the secessionary constitutions, which prove that point even more strongly. There's no argument that slavery wasn't the immediate casus belli.
You've also completely missed my point. It isn't an either-or. It's a both. Actually understanding history is much more interesting than avoiding talking about things racists would like to use as propaganda - as well as, imo, the best way of countering that propaganda.
The point I tried to make clear is that whilst the disagreement between states was over slavery/white-supremacy, the reason that disagreement became civil war is that the Constitution isn't clear enough on whether e.g. Abolitionist states have the right to impose their views on other states. IMO, that problem has never been resolved, and explains the polarisation of current US politics, so it isn't an idle point.
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Re: Re:
Oh, I know!
A nazi kicks a hillbilly f150 in the fake balls
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far le
In money
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Re: Re:
"whether e.g. Abolitionist states have the right to impose their views on other states."
I thought it was the federal government that wore blue outfits.
Are you prepping the upcoming court battle where a few southern states try to force the swing states to change their electors? I read that was doomed to failure. Are the trumpies really going to start a civil war?
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Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
"This is completely wrong. It's the most bizarre part of the whole thing, in hindsight: slavery isn't as profitable as freeing the slaves and giving them jobs."
I'm not sure where you get that data from. But here's a few google suggestion to get you started for a completely opposite view;
Slavery was so profitable, it sprouted more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation.
Slavery has been popular, and remained popular through history because as long as you can run it past any moral considerations, it pays off.
"Basically, if you keep slaves you have to feed them or lose your 'property', plus try and get work out of them."
There are plenty of records detailing how you do that, both from ancient rome and from the 18th century american south.
You could feed a slave anything, even stuff free men wouldn't touch. You fed the overseers, then boiled soup or gruel out of the shreds they left and the kitchen waste - and gave to the slaves.
Getting work out of them was easy. Tell them they either fulfill the quota of the day or their wife and daughter spends the night entertaining the overseers. Burn the most rebellious slave alive - because with every newborn similarly being a slave you can breed them rather than buy them. You need exactly one cage and an overseer to put a bunch of children in, put it in hot sunlight and tell the parents for every basket of cotton they return with they get to feed their kids a sip of water.
And for those slaves who run away or protested I invite you to read up on the various punishments levied in full public view- Hobbling, burning alive, whipping. Slavery is anathema because it relied on extreme cruelty and inhumanity meant to produce a people so broken they would blindly work themselves to death - because to not do so was worse.
But from a purely fiscal perspective he system worked and it made a lot of people very, very rich.
And that is why there was a war. Slavery literally carried the southern economy on it's back and everyone who held fiscal or political power in the south was a massive beneficiary of the institution.
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Re: Re: States' rights?
Firstly, i'll note that the value of discussing this sort of thing is that it brings out points that might not be clear. You're absolutely right to point out that people in the US who talk about 'states rights' do so to take slavery out of the discussion. That is in no way my intention.
I refuse to call them the First and Second World Wars, because they were not part of a series, they were two separate events.
The Great War was in fact 'the war to end all wars' - at least, an end to direct conflicts between major, rich, nations. The real root cause was that no-one knew how catastrophic it would be for both sides. So yes, you can take Germany out, or ally them with Britain, instead of France, and the war would still happen.
The 'Second World War' is only linked by occurring fairly soon after. It is a unique event: the Anti-Nazi war. I tend to believe it wasn't economic factors which were responsible - they're a prerequisite, but we often get economic collapses without a Holocaust. The cause was simple, for once: Hitler's talent for exploiting the then-new mass media in the service of populism, combined with his particular brand of hatred.
The Southern rebellion is also a unique event, and the root cause isn't slavery, but a failure of the constitution to adequately define and/or limit Federal power. (Let's call it that instead of 'states' rights'.) That issue has never been resolved. Does the majority have the right to enforce moral issues on other states? Forget slavery for a moment, and imagine we're talking about the illegality of murder being disputed. (Antiabortionists would probably argue that's exactly what we're debating there. Not my cup of tea.)
The relevance of slavery to modern US politics is less than that of the flawed Constitution. There's a reason things like abortion-legalisation and sex-irrelevant marriage were done through the Supreme Court rather than direct legislation, and that reason is fear of another civil war. It's not a good solution long-term, but it allows a different characterisation - rather than legislation imposing the majority view, a Supreme Court ruling says 'this is what the law always was, we just didn't realise it before'.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebell
"Here in Europe"
We're not talking about Europe. The story is specifically about the USA.
Also, for a European, you seem to be very focussed on muddying the waters and deflecting from the obvious reasons why this flag is offensive to so many people. That's a little strange.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebell
Ths has been well known, and undisputed, for a couple of hundred years.
https://www.google.com/search?q=slavery+economically+inefficient
"You fed the overseers, then boiled soup or gruel out of the shreds they left and the kitchen waste - and gave to the slaves."
That's less profitable than selling it to them...
I don't think you have any idea how poor conditions were in e.g. company towns, absent slavery.
You also don't understand productivity. Sure, you can force a minimum amount of work from a slave. Let him think he's working to his own benefit, and you get much more out of him for the same cost, because you're still only paying him the food.
As for your views on the cruelty of slavery, apparently the fact that the same stuff was still going on a hundred years later has passed you by. Have you realy never heard of Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, or Jim Crow laws?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a re
I've never suggested anything other than that the flag is offensive. We're talking about why that is.
Perhaps being more distant from your history makes it easier to understand rather than get invested in. And as I pointed out in other comments, the constitutional issue has a direct bearing on current Us politics in a very different way to the legacy of slavery and segregation.
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I have no idea what 'blue outfits' refers to. My only interest in the Trumpa-loompas' lawsuits is laughing at their ineptitude.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebell
"With Nazi symbology, it's quite common to find people from Yokelsville, Eastern Europe who were completely ignorant of the real meaning when they had something tattooed on their bodies. They only knew that everyone hates Nazis, and that they'd got dealt a shitty hand in life, so wanted to be offensive."
In particular much of eastern europe knew the soviet apparatchik oppressors they had sitting all over them hated nazis as well, so there was something of an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" conflation going on there.
"Here in Europe, most people with a confederate flag are just pig ignorant, and not even trying to offend. I have no idea how much that's true in, say, Kentucky."
Not unlikely the same. Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia are especially known for...having had a lot of whitewashing and glossing over done in their schoolbooks. And every time someone's tried to put the record straight the local white supremacists and other Very Fine People have done their damnedest best to weaken or obscure the lesson. There are still anecdotes about the "gentle masters" treating their uneducated and naive "happy slaves" floating around the deep south.
It's very telling that very few, usually only historians and people interested in civil liberties issues, have an inkling about the way slavery in the american south was a system of inhuman cruelty deliberately instituted to break people, or the many ways you can turn a human into a beast of burden without hope who will work himself to death rather than face the punishment if he fails to meet his quota.
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Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
Guy Fawkes' night may originally have been a celebration of failure. At least since I was a kid, though, the idea has been the opposite. We quite like the idea of an annual reminder to the politicians that they could all be assassinated - keeps them in line.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a re
"Ths has been well known, and undisputed, for a couple of hundred years."
You realize that Robert Fogel says exactly the opposite of what you try to bring out here, right?
"Southern slave farms were more productive, per unit of labor, than northern farms. The implications of this, Engerman and Fogel contended, is that slavery in the American South was not quickly going away on its own (as it had in some historical instances such as ancient Rome) because, despite its exploitative nature, slavery was immensely profitable and productive for slave owners. This contradicted the argument of earlier Southern historians. "
"That's less profitable than selling it to them..."
Not if you first have to pay them the money they are supposed to use to buy their food from you, no. That's...self-evident, even without Fogel and Engerman (from the link you provided) shooting holes in your assertion.
"As for your views on the cruelty of slavery, apparently the fact that the same stuff was still going on a hundred years later has passed you by."
Not to the same extent, no. The racial massacres in the history of the US makes for glum reading but even as bad as that got you do not hit the level where a person could drag a black man to a stake on his lawn and set him on fire with the only complaint of the neighbors being about the noise.
"Have you realy never heard of Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, or Jim Crow laws?"
Seriously? I mean, frigging seriously?
Jim Crow was apartheid, which is bad enough. The slavery era makes *trafficking look tame.
Not only are your links leading to material which decisively show that slavery was profitable as all hell for the south, your arguments then derail. Apartheid and Jim Crow were bad, but as compared to black people being owned and often maimed at will it's just not comparable.
There have been a lot of attempts to show that "slavery was inefficient" and "doomed to eventually be abolished" - mostly made by the same people who try to rewrite the history of the civil war as being caused by "northern aggression" and most often quoted by people who prepend their argument with syntax like "Liberals often claim that...".
Briefly put, you've managed to float across the apologist version of civil war history, as pushed hard by americans very vested into explaining away the stuff which hurts their "southern pride".
It's pretty damn clear to most researchers not actively pursuing a very skewed perspective that slavery was, at the time of the civil war, still the cornerstone foundation of the economy of the south. That it would have eventually become far less optimal with heavier industrialization some 30 years down the road is, bluntly put, moot.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a re
Re neo-Nazis in Europe, it's so stupid it's funny when Polish neo-Nazis claim to be nationalsts while marching to commemorate Hitler's birthday.
I find it interesting that we completely agree on the evils of slavery, but have such different views about why it was evil.
Leave aside the economic aspects, and you're horrified by the direct cruelty, while I'm much more concerned with dehumanisation and deprival of liberty that allowed the cruelty to flourish.
I think you're not as aware of how slavery really worked as you think. Ironically, you're arguing a view that's both better and worse than the reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_rebellion#North_America
The system didn't work. Slavery isn't efficient - unless you ignore the costs of keeping the social conditions and laws needed to make it work. And yet, most slave-owners weren't pure evil. One of the main ways of keeping slaves obedient was the threat of being 'sold down the river' to an owner who behaved in just the horrifying ways you describe; it follows, therefore,that most slaves were not treated as badly as the worst. (Also true of Jews under the Nazis. One of Hitler's bigger problems was that he made a big thing out of caring for the veterans of the Great War, but there were a lot of Jewish veterans and heroes. Hence Theresienstadt.) Similarly, there was an opposite pole on the spectrum to the horrific treatment, which was the people who truly believed 'negros' were incapable of being adult humans and required a master to look after them - bearing in mind that's how most landowners around the world saw their villagers, at that time - and, crucially, acted accordingly. Obviously that still isn't good, but Theresienstadt was a lesser evil than Auschwitz.
It's when you start to explore questions like how so many Jewish people remained in Nazi Germany, or how so many decent men fought for the worst cause imaginable in your civil war - e.g. Robert E Lee was offered command of the Union forces, and would utterly despise the people who put up statues of him today (and was also a slave-owner, like Washington, so not simple to pigeonhole) - that you start to understand what really causes history to happen.
Ultimately, it's a populist falsehood to suggest the north was good and the south was punished for being bad. That's the kind of easy untruth that serves populists on both sides, but it doesn't lend itself to understanding why peoople behave the way they do.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
FWIW, I'd suggest Judah Benjamin as the epitome of the conflict between historiography and reality in the US Civil War.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/judah-benjamin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_P._Benj amin
He just doesn't fit either popular version of the history, so he's ignored. He's far too interesting to deserve that, but he isn't wholly good or wholly bad, so no-one wants to take on the challenge of dealing with him properly.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
You don't appear to realise how late the US was to join the Abolitionist movement. The arguments you characterise as apologetics are in fact pure abolitionism, and the underpinning of US abolitionism.
I mean, you're literally calling William Wilberforce an apologist for slavery. If that isn't enough to make you consider that you might be wrong, there's no point my adding to it.
You do realise the US was almost the last place in the world to abolish slavery, don't you? Even Russian serfs had more rights by that era. This stuff was empirically proven long before you lot ever abolished slavery. FFS, the Northern states were some of the last places on the planet, let alone the South.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
P.S.
Re the economics, the costs of slavery are 'externalities' in economics. It's like the way petrol (or gasoline, if you prefer) prices reflect the cost of oil, not the costof emitting CO2.
Also, one other thing, the US had something much like apartheid in the north during the JCl era. The South had the stuff you claim was only under slavery. People were still being burned alive with no law enforcement. (That was illegal before abolition too, for what that's worth).
It's odd how you're so invested in 'the North was morally right' that you'll mae arguments I would generally characterise as white-supremcst apologetics, given that your other statements make it clear that's not your intention- and indeed you seem to think the same of me.
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Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
They were very much linked as the treaty of Versailles very much set up the conditions that enabled Hitler to achieve power, by amongst other things forcing crippling debts onto Germany.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left i
"if only that were true"
I guess that everyone interprets the real world in different ways, the annoying thing about that is that some think their interpretation is The Correct Interpretation simply because it is what they think or were told rather than it being based upon some amount of inspection/analysis.
Sometimes people use the word true to indicate their belief system rather than what is observed/measured/analyzed.
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Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
Revisionist history
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Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
"The 'Second World War' is only linked by occurring fairly soon after."
The second world war was caused by the first world war and the subsequent levying of reparations which crippled the nation causing wide spread poverty and a fertile ground for fascism.
But revisionist history is so much more fun isn't it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
I specifically addressed that argument. It is comforting to believe, but it just ain't true. Let's explore that argument-space a little more.
The Weimar Republic didn't, as is often claimed, get rid of its reparations through hyperinflation. The reparations were denominated in Gold Marks - a separate currency.
It's also indisputable that Germany, even with reparations, suffered less, economically, than some other (equally major) economies. The US, by many measures, had it worse. The US didn't go Nazi.
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/economics/history/paper56/56dimsdale.pdf
Do you remember differential equations from school? Hitler is the factor that doesn't cancel our.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
That's a comforting but untrue explanation, as i explained above.
Unlike revisionism, this is based on facts, not different axioms.
If I were doing revisionism, I'd be arguing that the USA is a hoax, and so is your civil war (because that's fun nonsense). I can if you like; it'll demonstrate the difference between nuanced, academic history and revisionism.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
Just re-read this, and I would like to clarify the spectrum of which I referred to in terms of an opposite pole is that of slaveowners' evil, not of right or wrong. I think it should literally go without saying thatthese are shades of evil, but we're arguing on the internet, so...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
"as i explained above"
Some explanation ya got here
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
If you have any responses to the actual arguments presented above [at 10.44 - someone else said the same thing as you first], feel free to respond there. Obviously I set out a framework rather than writing a comprehensive thesis, so tell me what you'd like me to explain further for you.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
P. P. S.
"Not if you first have to pay them the money they are supposed to use to buy their food from you, no. That's...self-evident, even without Fogel and Engerman (from the link you provided) shooting holes in your assertion."
That's why I mentioned company towns.
https://youtu.be/RRh0QiXyZSk
You load 16 tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don't call me, I can't go;
I owe my soul to the company sto'.
That was without slavery. You can get a man to do a long day's work for enough to support his family. That is, food, and shelter, and very little else - what slaves got. Unless he has alternatives that pay better, of course.
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Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
It was never that. They only cared about “the failure of the Constitution to adequately define and/or limit federal power” to the extent it affected their ability to own slaves and/or discriminate against blacks. That’s it. I encourage you to read the writings of the people responsible for the secession of the South and who ran the Confederacy. They make it crystal clear that slavery was the primary cause.
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Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
Let’s assume that that’s true. Did the southern slave owners know and believe that that was true? If they genuinely believed that slavery was more profitable than paid workers stuck in debt, then it really doesn’t matter which is actually cheaper; what matters is the perception. Southern writings at the time make it clear that they believed slavery to be integral to the southern economy. As far as establishing motivations, contemporaneous writings by the people themselves are the best evidence. After all, people can be easily motivated to act against their best interests if they believe it to be in their best interest, whatever the actual facts are.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a re
Here’s the difference between feeding workers in an industrial city/town vs an agricultural town/village: in an industrial company, food is an external cost that ultimately goes elsewhere. In agriculture, the work is being done to make food, so food is not an external cost. Slaves were essentially harvesting what they’d eventually eat (among other things like cotton or tobacco). There was no need to sell the food to the workers to recoup costs associated with obtaining food. That’s why slavery worked in the primarily agricultural South and not the industrial North.
Oh, we’ve heard about them, all right, but as bad as blacks were treated 100 years after slavery ended, it was nothing compared to how they were treated as slaves.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol
An apologist for the South =/= an apologist for slavery, and Wilberforce was never explicitly mentioned.
Oh, absolutely. That doesn’t change anything, though.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol
The last part is absolutely true, but slaves also had separation from families, being treated as property, being whipped by their owners, etc. under slavery, which was not the case after abolition.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
No one’s saying the North was good; they just didn’t have the specific evil (slavery) that the South did. And no one is saying that the way the worst slave owners treated slaves was the only problem with slavery. You’re attacking a strawman that no one believes is true.
Whether or not that’s true, it’s all about what the slave owners in the South thought was true, and they thought slavery was efficient enough to merit those costs. They also thought it was their moral imperative and God-given right, but perception of costs was also a factor.
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Re: Re:
Uh, I’d say the 13th through 15th Amendments and a number of Supreme Court cases have largely settled that particular question. The abolitionist states imposed their view that slavery is wrong.
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Well, I mean, aren’t they? Lots of men get raped who don’t get taken seriously, if they can even bring up the courage to talk about it.
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one letter
Did Cuomo really write “fear-installing” rather than “instilling”?
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Re: a most ingenious paradox
And yet it seems to me that slavery would have died sooner if the secession were successful than if it had never been attempted, for at least two reasons. The more obvious is that the Fugitive Slave Laws go away, the Underground Railroad becomes much shorter, and the Union stops pretending to give a damn about Abolitionist troublemakers.
My other reason is more … obscure? convoluted? contrived? reality-challenged? But here goes.
Slavery was a symbol, the defining feature of the Southern bloc in Congress. Having lost an early majority in the House as the North industrialized and prospered, Southern political machines clung to ensuring that (at least) half of the Senate represented slave states. In an independent Confederacy, slavery loses its symbolic value, and voters become more interested in its externalized costs.
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CPABuild
Did Cuomo write rather than “instillingf
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
Obviously your opinion does not agree with that of others who may or may not be more or less informed about the history of the civil war.
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I thought you claimed to know a bit about the civil war, but you do not know what the uniforms they wore looked like. lol
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Re: Re: a most ingenious paradox
Lots of assumptions. Why would the slaves magically no longer try to escape?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebell
There is the running joke that he was the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a re
"That's less profitable than selling it to them..."
Lol, what? How is feeding them whatever scraps you have left over less profitable than working out some kind of wage system then forcing them to pay you the money you gave to them? Do you think slaves were drawing a salary?
"I don't think you have any idea how poor conditions were in e.g. company towns, absent slavery."
Slavery and company towns are somewhat different on a couple of basic levels. Let's see if you can work out how.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebell
Well, you seem to have grown up in a different version of the UK than I did, but your support of terrorism is noted.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
"I've never suggested anything other than that the flag is offensive. We're talking about why that is."
Yes, and you seem to be spending a hell of a lot of time trying to deflect from the well documented reasons why that is, and trying to deflect to irrelevancies like how it's viewed outside of the country under discussion.
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Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
"The 'Second World War' is only linked by occurring fairly soon after."
Lol, no. They are directly, inextricably linked and Hitler's rise to power was directly on the back of the sanctions placed on Germany as a result of WWII.
"It is a unique event: the Anti-Nazi war"
If you think that's all it was, you really need to do some reading, even if you cling to the falsehood that the rise of Nazism wasn't a direct consequences of WWI and the treaty of Versailles. You might do well to also read up on who was involved in the war (hint: Germany was not the only Axis power).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol
"That was without slavery. You can get a man to do a long day's work for enough to support his family. That is, food, and shelter, and very little else - what slaves got. Unless he has alternatives that pay better, of course."
That the north practiced the equivalent of indentured serfdom is another topic entirely. And utterly irrelevant given that before and during the civil war it's manifestly obvious that the South gained a massive economic advantage out of slavery. Mississippi and the other large slave-owning states down south became wealthier by far than the north - despite the north having a solid advantage in engineering and heavy industry, which is normally the balance breaker in fiscal competition. So let's move those goalposts right back, because the whataboutist argument will not help exculpate the southern aggression.
There is no real doubt, historically, that the US south benefited enormously from slavery and that slavery was the clincher which brought what would otherwise be petty political bickering into a situation where southern senators and congressmen threatened to shoot anyone raising the issue of slavery to the floor, right there in congress. And which finally resulted in secession and the war. The "states right" to own slaves and not let the escaped slaves be turned into free men once across a state line was what the south as a whole found a vital necessity to preserve.
And that's why the confederate constitution was almost identical to the original one, save the parts in it which mention that black people are slaves, no slave shall ever be set free, and no law shall be made to allow a slave to be made free.
What there is, is plenty of southern historians trying to whitewash their past, not wanting a history to remain where their venerated ancestors were so set on owning other people they'd betray their nation over it. You see the results of that propaganda every time they tear down the statue of a confederate general and some hillbillies stand around decrying the despoliation of history and how the depicted general was a brave soldier and not a villain willing to kill and die for the right to own slaves.
This is what happens when you don't hold a Nürnberg trial where you string the whole top leadership up after beating a bunch of truly horrible cunts, and then spend the next twenty years exorcizing every shred of propaganda used by the rogue state. The US never managed to cleanse itself which to this day means there are people brought up who still cling to the same ideals the confederates held.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebell
"Southern writings at the time make it clear that they believed slavery to be integral to the southern economy."
And similarly clear that all the calls for war were about retaining the southern advantage of slavery. Hell, you could argue any other item on the senate floor but written records make clear that as soon as slavery was raised as a topic a few southern senators would stand up and threaten to shoot the person raising the topic like a dog.
That said history is pretty clear that for the south at the time slavery was an enormous advantage over the north's company model, the infamous "company town" being the competitive reaction to southern slavery.
The confederacy was and remains the symbol of a bunch of people so enamored of the advantage of slavery they were willing to kill and die to defend it. Nothing more. It was that one state's right they really cared about. Were it otherwise you'd think their constitution would have included some other significant changes from the original other than multiple passages on how black people were slaves, slavery was eternal, and no law could be made changing the state of slavery.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
"Leave aside the economic aspects, and you're horrified by the direct cruelty, while I'm much more concerned with dehumanisation and deprival of liberty that allowed the cruelty to flourish."
All cruelty comes from the marginalization of a demographic. The most heinous of crimes come from first getting a group of perpetrators to view their victims as objects. Once objectification is successful, cruelty follows quite naturally. That's the key as to why nazi camp guards could be in almost every respect "decent" people except when it came to those enemies of the state they'd been told were human-shaped vermin.
"I think you're not as aware of how slavery really worked as you think. Ironically, you're arguing a view that's both better and worse than the reality."
I'm not, and your provided link actually proves my point; No matter how bad the punishments, the slaves would eventually revolt..once they knew getting across a certain state line meant they were free.
"The system didn't work. Slavery isn't efficient - unless you ignore the costs of keeping the social conditions and laws needed to make it work."
It's not efficient if the slaves have hope. For the south slavery worked quite well, and remained functional until the point where the north started letting escaped slaves free and the railroad started running.
I repeat - the civil war was all about slavery. The confederacy rose out of a desperate attempt by the south to maintain their advantage of slavery, and the reason they were desperate was because when northern states started acknowledging black people as free men...that's when the situation you imply began.
Not only did the northern carpetbaggers insist slavery should be abolished, by far worse their very existence meant there was suddenly no keeping the slaves on the plantation, no matter the punishments invoked.
Had the civil war not happened then what you describe would eventually have come to pass and slavery ceased to be viable, simply over the fact that any escaped slave would set a foot in the north and suddenly free.
"And yet, most slave-owners weren't pure evil. One of the main ways of keeping slaves obedient was the threat of being 'sold down the river' to an owner who behaved in just the horrifying ways you describe..."
I think I see the part where we diverge. I would claim your first sentence there's an oxymoron. It's the literal excuse for the trafficker who treats his victims relatively gently. It's the commandant at Nürnberg who as a good family man and soldier "just followed orders". Let's start with establishing the fact that yes, by holding slaves you are pure evil, a contributing part of the evils of the system. This is as true for southern slave owners as it was for the Founding Fathers.
"Similarly, there was an opposite pole on the spectrum to the horrific treatment, which was the people who truly believed 'negros' were incapable of being adult humans and required a master to look after them..."
Ah, yes, the "white man's burden". I always find it surprising how we deal with moral relativity when it points to a dreadful bit of history we should learn never to repeat as if the contrast somehow pushed the less utterly horrifying behavior as being somehow excusable.
"...how so many decent men fought for the worst cause imaginable in your civil war - e.g. Robert E Lee was offered command of the Union forces, and would utterly despise the people who put up statues of him today (and was also a slave-owner, like Washington, so not simple to pigeonhole)..."
You know, every time you bring a new assertion up it's clearer that you've gone for the revised version of history. May I advise you to google "The Myth of the Kindly General Lee"?
He saw slavery as a "crucible" required to melt black people into a better type of man, casually tossing aside their "painful discipline" as a sort of moral necessity with the panache of the tyrant justifying enslavement and torture as a required means to an end, or a nazi camp guard justifying his grim task of mass murder as "for the greater good".
There were no decent men among the confederate forces. There were simply those who with all their heart believed themselves decent, simply because they perceived black-skinned humans as cattle.
Lee thought himself a good master, but here's what history has to say;
"Lee’s cruelty as a slave master was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading the Man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that “Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families” by hiring them off to other plantations, and that “by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days.” The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lee’s slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see.”"
At best he can be described as a person who held the religious belief that the black man was such a hopeless loser only severe and persistent torture could eventually render him a decent specimen of human.
"Ultimately, it's a populist falsehood to suggest the north was good and the south was punished for being bad."
And that's not the discussion here. The union had many moral failings but the confederacy, by every credible account, was fully on par with the third reich in all but scale. There's no "both sides" debate to be found here.
The south held to slavery both as part of religious belief of supremacy and as the primary driver of southern economic supremacy. And when the north undercut that model both in rhetoric and by allowing freedom to black people, the result was a war which held more atrocities and fanaticism in shorter timespan than most contemporary and recent wars in europe.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: States' rights?
"It's also indisputable that Germany, even with reparations, suffered less, economically, than some other (equally major) economies."
You keep bringing up these failings of...normal math...
First, it's anything but undisputed that the versailles treaty was the cause of the collapse of the German economy. It is, in fact, highly disputed which role the treaty had.
What is very clear is that the reparations demanded were indeed quite crippling with each installment being higher by far than the Weimar could afford, and that this had a fairly major effect on the weak economy.
What is also very clear is that all of Germany and no few other nations believed the treaty was the cause for the hyperinflation effect.
The bohemian corporal is neither more nor less than a successful idiot savant when it comes to demagoguery and allocating human resources. The factors required to add it all up to WW2 is Hitler, The versailles treaty whipping up the german population in a perception of oppression, and a tired and/or inept leadership in the form of weimar.
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Re:
Just calling a spade a spade. There are lots of people posting here bashing the right thinking that somehow the ideals of the left are sacrosanct. One doesn't have to agree with either viewpoint to point out that the tactics are getting similar and they are both showing an intolerance of opposing views.
I notice you didn't bother to argue with the substance of any of my points, resorting to an ad hominem atack implying that I am a right-winger.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far le
Well, as this is an article about a US law in a US state, it only makes sense to argue about US versions of left and right as political constructions in the US. You appear to be trying to redefine the argument (a.k.a. moving the goalposts) in an attempt to refute the points I have made.
I am a little left of center politically. (as in US politics). The list I had provided initially were examples of what I consider to be members of the extreme left. I even provided concrete examples. Something my detractors have yet to do. You have not pointed out where any of my examples are not factual reality.
Both the left and the right (here in the US) have called for the state to restrict speech (or perhaps you haven't been reading the many articles on this site regarding section 230 for starters). You can't honestly be claiming that the left, however you decide to define it, hasn't been trying to get the government to ban hate speech?
So, to use your own words:
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Re: Re:
"One doesn't have to agree with either viewpoint"
The real problem is people who are dumb enough to think there's only two viewpoints, and address opposing views like they're playing a team sport.
I will just note that most of the terms you're using have wildly different definitions depending on where you're commenting on. Half the people that American agitators claim are "far left" would still be considered conservatives in Europe.
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Re:
Sigh more whataboutism and deflection.
Because group A is or was historically oppressed, discriminated against, abused, denied opportunity, that makes it O.K. to to the same to others, even those who had no part in those acts.
Straw man: I never said right wingers don't believe that they have the monopoly on defining discrimination, just that the left does as well.
Just because men have historically defined power/society (in your eyes ) then it's O.K. for men to be attacked by there wives and girlfriends (or even killed by the same) don't deserve justice. That college men who are falsely accused of rape and railroaded though the system is O.K. in your mind.
You claim that non-whites can be racists (good for you on admitting reality), but somehow that's O.K. because whites were racists longer.
You agree with reserving LGBTQ+ roles to LGBTQ+ actors, but say the reverse isnt' as heinous since historically people haven't complained, dodging the current uproar when a straight actor is cast for an LGBTQ+ part.
You make my point in regard to symbols by defending the symbol that you agree with running down the own you don't. Don't you think someone on the other side would make the same argument, just as compassionately? My point is both sides want the others banned and they want the government to do it.
I'll counter your Black Lives Matter example (the proverbial have you stopped beating your wife question) with a more straight forward one, or two.
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Re: Re:
"My point is both sides want the others banned and they want the government to do it."
It must be nice to live in a world that's so simplistic and dumbed down that there's only 2 possible sides to every story, and everyone on the "other side" always agrees with each other and wants the exactly same thing without question.
I mean, it's not the real world, but it must be nice to be able to ignore the complexity of other people like that...
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Re: Re: Re:
Agreed, there are an entire spectrum of opinions and views and many (most) people are of the buffet variety, choosing a little from here and a little from there.
Since we are currently discussing what I would consider a rather silly attempt at virtue signalling by a US governor regarding a US state, which would be illegal under even a casual reading of the US first amendment, I would think that the apropos definition would be that used in the US in US politics. Just saying....
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Re: Re: Re:
It must be nice to redefine your opponents arguments and argue against those instead of the actual argument made.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left is cl
Calling something a straw man doesn't make it so. I have provided a listing of what I believe defines the far left. My definition, by definition, can't be a straw man (or a series of straw men). You can choose to argue that my definition is fictitious, or that folks that self identify as being on the left don't exhibit those traits if you want. So far though you haven't. I have provided concrete examples (some with links) which you have yet to refute. You appear unable to argue coherently and so are reduced to arguing (somewhat hypocritically) against straw men of your own creation and hurling ad hominum attacks against my person.
Let's review shall we.
I started my thread with the observation that those that I consider to be on the far left are closer to those on the far right (especially in their tactics) than they would like to believe.
This was followed by a request for my definition of the far right, which I provided.
Then there was a bunch of attacks on my person, and refuting of arguments that I hadn't made.
I followed this up with examples to back up my points.
There was more attacks, whataboutism, and deflection. With just a little bit of moving the goal posts in trying to argue dictionary or European definitions of the political right vs left.
Finally you succeed in demonstrating my point that those that don't adhere to a certain orthodoxy is in my case an alt-right troll.
Congratulations for making my point. At no point in my posts or responses have I typed anything that could have been remotely considered trollish. Nor have I stated anywhere that I agreed with the alt-right or what they stand for. I have simply pointed out that the tactics of antifa bear more than a passing resemblance those of the proud boys. That those who self identify as being on the left and that believe non-whites can't be racists are wrong, and when provided with a concrete example can't admit that they were wrong, but instead lash out and deflect. I could go on with my various other points, but I have already done so and you have shown that would be pointless. You don't show any indication of being willing to discuss honorably or even honestly. You are clinging to your preconceived notions and would rather argue dishonestly and resort to name calling than accept that things aren't exactly as you believe. That they might be a little more nuanced. That those with whom you self identify might not be going about things in the best of ways.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"It must be nice to redefine your opponents arguments and argue against those instead of the actual argument made."
Yes, so I do wish you'd stop doing that and address the arguments instead o f trying to pretend that any moderate centrist who disagrees with you is on the "far left", and pretending that everybody on the 2 arbitrarily defined "teams" you've invented agree in lock step with each other.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
OK, so in that context when you mean "far left", you mean "moderate centrist" in general parlance. Good to confirm.
I'm just confirming that you'¡e using the skewed perspectives fed to you by the alt right (something with an actual definition that doesn't change depending on who uses the term), rather than the actual meanings of those terms, so that everyone knows what the playing field you've built looks like before responding.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far left i
"My definition, by definition, can't be a straw man "
It most certainly can. Words mean things, and it's by a common understanding of those meanings that we can use them in conversation. If you're going to redefine them on the fly, they become as useless as if during a conversation about fruit salad I decide that the word "grape" refers to a potato. At that point, no matter what anyone says, one person is no longer referring to the ingredients of a fruit salad even if they use a word that would normally describe one of them.
Same with political discussions. If you insist on using false, inflammatory, labels for people and inventing positions for them, you're no longer having the same discussion as everyone else.
"At no point in my posts or responses have I typed anything that could have been remotely considered trollish"
I'd re-read them if I were, you, you might be surprised.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
you have yet to point out when I have ever done that in this thread, though I have pointed out numerous cases where the same has been done to me.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the far le
Thanks, I did, and they weren't.
Other than some folks arguing US left / right vs European left / right (and this is a discussion about a US governor) I haven't heard of anyone complaining that I am using improper or redefining anything.
Go back and review my comment on racists and racism. How, pray tell, an I using a definition any different than what most people (and the dictionary) would consider racism.
I made the observation that I believe members of the far left don't believe that non-whites can be racists. That is my opinion. I backed it up with a link to an African-american racist hate group. Instead of arguing that;
It's like that for most of the points I have made. As for the accusation that I am an alt-right troll, I haven't posted any off topic, or extraneous messages. I made a reasonable comment on the story, answered questions presented politely, and backed up my points with examples and links. What I appear to have done is to point out things that some people would rather not have pointed out. As the last of my definition noted, folks that I consider to be on the far left often resort to name calling when their orthodoxy is challenged.
And in this I have been proven more than right.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the fa
Jilocasin -
You must be new here. I applaud you for trying to fight the good fight. It's interesting but depressing to see what happens when a normal American like you comes into the Techdirt comment section, believing you'll be arguing with good faith actors who don't absolutely despise their ancestors and themselves. But that's what you're getting into.
Eventually people like you come to realize that you're arguing with a very strange bunch of anti-White professional victims, presumably adults, who spend their days with video games and pornography, and whose worldview is whatever their role models at Vox and Slate and the JY Times tells them. It's a weird ideological anti-American, anti-Free Speech circlejerk - weird because, though all of them were born with male genitals, they tend to identify as one of these modern "choose your own perversion" genders, like nonbinary or trans or pedosexual or clovergender or kinkbeing.
You get the idea.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you th
So, in a discussion about the racist history of the USA and how the resulting political landscape should affect current policy, you think it's "normal" to obsess over the genitals you imagine the people you speak to have?
You're not really helping your cause here, but as with your impotent rage every time you're flagged, at least you're having your episodes here and not on the streets. Good work, I hope your new batch of meds arrives soon.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you th
I don’t recall any of us saying we identify as anything but cisgender males or cisgender females. That we support trans rights and acknowledge that gender is not black and white is another issue entirely.
Furthermore, that we recognize that blacks tend to have a different experience than whites and that racism is a real issue is not the same as being anti-white. We also don’t consider ourselves to be victims, and we’re pro-free speech.
Basically, none of what you said was remotely accurate.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you the fa
For what it’s worth, I don’t have any major problem with what you said, other than I don’t believe the far left is as loud or as prevalent as the far right in the US. Also, that most people here aren’t that far left, despite your impressions.
Yes, any race can be racist and any gender can be sexist. Some people don’t believe that to be true, and most of them I would classify as far left. There is the question of whether the two are equally bad, but I’m not entering that discussion.
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Re: (x10) just goes to show you the fa
Thanks (I think), but I've been here for quite a while. There's no need to insult people personally. You can disagree with the argument, but I believe you should leave the person out of it. While some of the more voracious commentators may be of the extreme left (as I have defined it) and some of the anonymous ones of the opposite inclination, I believe that most are somewhere in the middle. If we can't appreciate each other's views and at least agree to argue civilly, there is no real reason to post.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just goes to show you th
Thanks. I think that the far right is a lot louder and more prevalent offline and the far left is a lot louder and more prevalent online.
My original comment wasn't about the related merits of either side, but instead about how their tactics are becoming more similar. Personally I don't think that's a good thing.
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Como's
If Como wants to show he's against injustice instead wasting time on outlawing the sale of the confederate battle flag he can pardon victims of domestic violence incarcerated in New York prisons.
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