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exnihilo
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You do not know how old I am and have lost some perspective on history. I believe the last slave died in the 1940s. I’m not sure when the last slave owner died but there are probably people alive today who have known a slave owner. Of course here we are only talking about the US. If we were talking about Brazil, where slavery ended only in 1888, then plenty of people would have met former slaves and slave owners. And there is still slavery in the other countries.
Of course I know that infanticide has always existed. I’m not sure how that relates to my point that I know several murderers. Are you saying murder is not worse than slavery? Are you saying that the number of abortions in modern America is not disgusting?
Are you claiming that wherever racial laws existed, and by the way they have existed in many cultures and times, there is no such thing as public? We’d have to go back an remove the concept of public from most of history including in much of the North and Midwest. By the way prior to the Civil Rights movement many southern states started black colleges.
No. The CSA was its own sovereign nation. The states lost the war and thus were forcibly made part of the US. The incidents you are referring to are within an entirely different context.
Yes, many battles did happen in the North. Let me rephrase and say the key battles of the Revolution occurred in the South. If you’ll look at your list you’ll notice the early battles were in the North and the later battles, and eventual surrender, in the South. Also the commanding general of the Continental Army and the first president under the current constitution was the Virginian George Washington.
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Faithdancer
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You are charitable to justify sweepingly dismissive and prejudicial statements with a response, exnihilo.
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Ridgerunner
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It may be reasonably questioned whether slavery would have gone on much past the civil war years even if there had been no war. Slavery was not a particularly profitable thing unless one was engaged in what we would call “agribusiness” today; that is, a pretty large-scale cash crop operation. That’s why few southerners owned slaves and, in some of the border slave states it barely existed at all. Slaves were very expensive if you adjust the prices to today’s dollars, and your operation had to be very profitable in order to justify it economically.
The main “agribusiness” crop at the time was cotton. Cotton was at its peak right around the time of the civil war, but declined in profitability drastically when the Brit mills found cheaper sources for higher-quality cotton than the American south. It really has never recovered from that decline, which is why cotton is so heavily subsidized today. But for those subsidies, it probably wouldn’t be grown in the U.S. now at all. Slavery was also used profitably, but to a much smaller degree in rice and sugar cane agribusiness…both of which are now protected by tariffs and heavily subsidized.
Undoubtedly infanticide existed in the 1860s, as it has undoubtedly existed throughout history. But it has not been sanctioned, let alone promoted by government until fairly recently. In some sense, it may be said that while “slavery” of a clandestine sort still exists in the U.S. and elsewhere, it is nowhere near as common as it was in 1860 because the government no longer protects and promotes it, but prohibits it.
So, over the long haul, we traded the abomination of slavery as a government sanctioned and promoted activity for the abomination of infanticide as a government sanctioned and promoted activity. We cannot be considered the least bit more virtuous for having made that trade.
Nor, in truth, can infanticide’s political supporters today claim any more virtue than slavery’s political supporters in 1860. Arguably, much less.
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andrewstx
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Why must we re-fight the Civil War on the pages of CAF? It was over 150 years ago and it should be allowed to drop.
My distant ancestors were slave owners and I am not proud of that fact. Even my recent ancestors temporarlly kept what they called “wetbacks” at slave wages in virtual slave quarters come cotton picking time. I am not proud of that either.
That was the way things were back then, but I have no desire to go back.
Several years ago I found out that I qualified for Sons Of Confederate Veterans and joind for one year only. When I started gertting their monthly publication I was appalled by the racism and ultra right poitics and resigned.
My distant ancestors were slave owners and I am not proud of that fact. Even my recent ancestors temporarlly kept what they called “wetbacks” at slave wages in virtual slave quarters come cotton picking time. I am not proud of that either.
That was the way things were back then, but I have no desire to go back.
Several years ago I found out that I qualified for Sons Of Confederate Veterans and joind for one year only. When I started gertting their monthly publication I was appalled by the racism and ultra right poitics and resigned.
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Faithdancer
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Sorry, exnihilo, I meant to say “dignify” and not “justify.”
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andrewstx
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Come to think of it the schools in my old home town were very segregated. As recently as my mothers time latino students were shipped all the way to San Antonio and educated at county expense at a Catholic boarding school just to keep them out of the lilly white schools.
I am not proud of that either. If it weren’t for Latinoes the Catholic church could not exist in this part of the state.
I am not proud of that either. If it weren’t for Latinoes the Catholic church could not exist in this part of the state.
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Ridgerunner
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A bit off topic perhaps, but this reminds me of an amusing incident of perhaps 20 years ago. I knew a banker here for a few years. He was an import from West Texas. Somehow he found out that I am Catholic and, not entirely believing it, asked me about it. I told him that, yes, I am Catholic. He explained to me that in West Texas he never knew any “white” Catholics and thought Catholicism was a “Mexican religion”. Since I am “Anglo”, he couldn’t figure out why I would be a member of a “Mexican religion.”
He wasn’t ugly about it or anything, just amazed.
I told him he needed to get out of the bank more.
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andrewstx
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LOLA bit off topic perhaps, but this reminds me of an amusing incident of perhaps 20 years ago. I knew a banker here for a few years. He was an import from West Texas. Somehow he found out that I am Catholic and, not entirely believing it, asked me about it. I told him that, yes, I am Catholic. He explained to me that in West Texas he never knew any “white” Catholics and thought Catholicism was a “Mexican religion”. Since I am “Anglo”, he couldn’t figure out why I would be a member of a “Mexican religion.”
He wasn’t ugly about it or anything, just amazed.
I told him he needed to get out of the bank more.
Actually you might be surprised just how many Irish, Poles, Germans etc in West Texas are now baptists.
Around here diversity is completely rejected, nearly everyone hasnthe same religion baptist or so called “non denominational”, listens to the same music, and votes the same. %85 of the county voted the same.
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Faithdancer
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At least those conservative Protestants vote the right way, which is more than can be said for many Catholics.
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Ridgerunner
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While I cannot endorse protestantism, it was, to me, remarkable that in the 2004 election, the Methodist George Bush was more faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church in any important way that I could see, than was the Catholic John Kerry.
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GEddie
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The current topic is secession from the Union; so it’s only natural that there would be references to the last time it was tried.
Those who consider secession desirable also seem to be CSA apologists; which sets up the verbal ACW reenactment.
It doesn’t make sense though. If state secession in the ACW was not about slavery but rather, resistance to Federal tyranny; and the then much weaker Federal government did not let it happen; why would one imagine that the now huge and (allegedly) tyrannical Federal government would allow a peaceable secession now?
As long as the USA exists as a stable nation, secession is off the table. Put the dream away and get those eyelids open.
God Bless and ICXC NIKA
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Ridgerunner
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Personally, I don’t really think those thinking about secession are CSA apologists, or at least not all of them. As a physical thing, secession seems indisputably off the table, and I don’t think too many would deny that.
But I do think the thought is, by and large, an expression of what a lot of people are thinking. It’s an “internal secession”; the only one possible. In other words, if your own country becomes so alien to your principles and your faith that you no longer identify with it in any way other than an entity with a shared language, governing system and highways, do you not come to a point where, internally, you have “seceded”?
I think a lot of people are in that mode at present. How does one deal with a government that promises penury to one’s children and grandchildren; that forces one to pay for abortion; that profanes marriage and oppresses the Church? Can one truly remain in “union”, internally, with a nation like that? If the governing body and, indeed, the culture of a nation that countenances it, becomes sufficiently alien, can we truly identify with it past that point?
No, I don’t think physical secession is going to happen at all. But I do think, for many, the “ties that bind” are thread-thin. For some, they are broken entirely, and they think about things like secession.
A thinking Catholic has to think of those things; to analyze what his values and morals really are. If, for example, when Obamacare puts a lot of Catholic institutions under the earth, as they promise presently to do, will our minds and spirits, at that point, secede entirely? When, as seems probable, it overtly forces everyone to support abortion, what then? If homosexual marriage gets forced on the clergy by some means, will we then feel we are in as alien a country as we would be in Turkey, but for the language and the Interstate Highway system?
It could be a lot worse than it is. A lot worse. But everyone has a breaking point in a relationship, including the relationship with one’s country. For me, it isn’t taxation. It isn’t even the deficit, though I resent that a great deal, not because I’ll be paying it but because one way or another my children and grandchildren will. For me, the breaking point is when this government, which has already put its heavy foot on the Church’s neck, starts to press down.
I won’t put on a gray cap and practice the rebel yell. But I don’t see how I could possibly be “of this country” in that event, notwithstanding that I will still be physically within it.
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TheRealJuliane
Guest
Yes, yes, YESSSS!!! I’m already there. Starting to extricate myself from self-concepts I’ve held all my life. Things change, and national values shift. My loyalty lies with God, and the Church, first of all. All else falls well under those. “Internal secession,” EXACTLY.
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Marc_Anthony
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You’re right, but if you take a look at the thread, quite a few of them are-some vehemently.
I am extremely conservative, probably as conservative as anyone here, but if it were the Civil War I would be a Unionist. But most of the conservatives here seem to support the Confederates (not their slavery ideology, but the ideology of what they were doing in principle).
Make of this what you will, but there’s undoubtedly a connection.
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Marc_Anthony
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Yes, that would be the point for me I think. A matter of priorities.
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Reep
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I appreciate your candor. I assume that as a Unionist you would be willing to kill me and my fellow Missourians rather than watch us walk away from the union peacefully.
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Faithdancer
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I am there as well. Allegiance to our Church must come before allegiance to any nation. If I had to choose between becoming a “man without a country” and the Catholic Church, I would choose the Church, every time. I don’t think this makes me unpatriotic, but there is a higher power than national governments, even the best one ever created- the USA. Governments rise and fall, but the Church is eternal.
I will continue to honor our flag and national anthem, to say the pledge of allegiance in the classroom, and to honor and respect our fighting men and women. But my trust in the federal government is severely damaged. Fortunately, the current government is just a collection of people with a particularly heinous agenda, and is not the beautiful ideal that is the United States of America.
Parenthetically, I think ever more fondly of the Constitution Party platform: constitutionparty.com/OurPrinciples/2012Platform/tabid/127/Default.aspx
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GEddie
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If we can at all get it back, however, then that becomes our duty. Fantasies (for that is what they are) about new attempts at state secession are counterproductive.
ICXC NIKA
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Faithdancer
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Well, he might not be willing, but he could be conscripted. There is historical precedent for that.
As for me, if Missouri successfully secedes, I might be moving to Creve Coeur. Not that I can afford a house there- maybe someone needs a live in tutor?
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