'Confederate History Month' Declared By Virginia Governer

[Crusade]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/06/confederate-history-month_n_527363.html

Why does being American mandate that my palm touch my forehead 60% of the day?

[Nolan]

Can't be real. The media will crucify him.

[Crusade]

Can't be real. The media will crucify him.

Yes, but how will he be received by his Virginia voters? Republicans do a lot of things that give them negative press, this is why they hate the "liberal media" so much. I doubt they're concerned about the non-racist areas of the country. Oh, I mean the imperialist north tramplin' on muh states rights to own people.

[Martin Blank]

Fine. He wants to celebrate the rebels, then let's celebrate it right. Anyone know where we can get some artillery and blue coats? :D

[Nolan]

What's strange is that I just watched this video like an hour ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ic2nad-68A

[Barry Lyndon]

It's hilarious that these southern racist idiots cheer every time Washington carpet bombs yet another helpless Third World country, and call everyone who objects to such imperialism 'unpatriotic', but at the same time have nothing but hatred and derision for the one time(besides World War II, perhaps) a war was waged under the banner of the Stars and Stripes that was unambiguously just and progressive.

[Cal Engime]

This is only news because of the knee-jerk reaction people have to anything to do with the Civil War or the Confederacy. It is associated with race and slavery to such an extent that the period of 1860–65 is reduced to the level of complexity of a political cartoon. Evil, racist plantation owners were vanquished by the humanitarian, gracious knight in shining armour Lincoln and the glorious armies of the North.

Never mind that the Civil War impacted Virginia more than any other state, that Virginia suffered more than any other state. Never mind that Virginia gave over 100,000 of her sons (of whom less than 1 in 20 owned a slave) in that war that forged the modern American nation. Let's just declare someone's political career to be over because he isn't tripping over himself to remind people how terrible we were in the past whenever we discuss our history.

The war was about slavery, but it was not all about slavery, and slavery was not abolished in the North because of an advanced understanding of human rights. Slavery ended in the North because slavery was not economically advantageous in the small farms and factories there. There were still slaves in the North when the war broke out, and not just in the border states.

From a Marxian perspective, conditions in the North were not a great improvement over slavery. Abhorrent industrial conditions, appalling wage disparities, and nonexistence of remedies for workplace discrimination and injury on the job were the norm in the North for generations after slavery was abolished. In the South, black codes were created after Reconstruction that made the region almost unlivable for blacks for a hundred years.

Lincoln was a notorious racist who favoured the deportation of blacks to Liberia, and his motives for "freeing the slaves" were purely opportunistic. Saving the Union motivated many less noble actions. Elected officials were arrested and held without trial, people were assassinated, private property was seized, opposing newspapers were simply shut down, voters were intimidated by the soldiery, and a draft was instituted for the first time in our history.

The causes of the secession were complex, but Lincoln caused the war when he refused to recognise the Confederacy or negotiate the sale of federal properties in their territory. I fully believe that if the war had not occurred, slavery would have been abolished peacefully just like it was in every other Western nation.
What's strange is that I just watched this video like an hour ago:

6ic2nad-68AWhat I didn't get about that movie was, why would the CSA annex the North? Wouldn't that put them right back where they started? After all, their constitution was pretty much a carbon copy of the U.S. Constitution, except there were more fiscal restraints, and the slave trade was prohibited. The North would have had just as much representation in Congress as before.

[Red Commissar]

Can't be real. The media will crucify him.

There was a media shit storm, he issued an apology over not making a mention over slavery.

I actually find it sad how many people are buying into this Lost Cause bullshit. I guarantee you that this governor was eating out of the same bag.

[Barry Lyndon]

Wow, I never thought I'd read such neo-Confederate tripe on this forum.


Cal Engime: This is only news because of the knee-jerk reaction people have to anything to do with the Civil War or the Confederacy. It is associated with race and slavery to such an extent that the period of 1860–65 is reduced to the level of complexity of a political cartoon. Evil, racist plantation owners were vanquished by the humanitarian, gracious knight in shining armour Lincoln and the glorious armies of the North.Well, a history of putting men, women, and children in chains tends to elicit a 'knee-jerk' reaction. And its true, we should not oversimplify the situation- no one should claim that the North had some sort of inherent moral superiority over the South, it did not. But the historical circumstances, and the conflict between the Northern industrialist capitalist class and the neo-feudal Southern slaveholding class, did produce a highly moral outcome-the abolition and destruction of slavery in the United States.


Cal Engime: Never mind that the Civil War impacted Virginia more than any other state, that Virginia suffered more than any other state. Never mind that Virginia gave over 100,000 of her sons (of whom less than 1 in 20 owned a slave) in that war that forged the modern American nation. Let's just declare someone's political career to be over because he isn't tripping over himself to remind people how terrible we were in the past whenever we discuss our history.I love the hypocrisy. At the same time your saying that 'we'(presumably excluding black people, who are just not a part of your historical narrative), shouldn't be going over old stuff. And at the same time, you bring up your sob story about Virginia suffering more then any state, long before anyone living there was even born. And when have we as a nation been apologetic over slavery. The US Senate passed a resolution apologizing for slavery in 2009. In history class, sure, we hear that slavery was bad, but rarely to we really read about the true dimension of its horrors- every student knows about the 6 million Jews that died in the Holocaust, but how many know that 2-4 million blacks died on the Middle Passage? Why is it that in Washington DC there is a Holocaust Memorial Museum(something that did not even happen in the United States), but there is no slavery museum?



Cal Engime: From a Marxian perspective, conditions in the North were not a great improvement over slavery. Abhorrent industrial conditions, appalling wage disparities, and nonexistence of remedies for workplace discrimination and injury on the job were the norm in the North for generations after slavery was abolished. In the South, black codes were created after Reconstruction that made the region almost unlivable for blacks for a hundred yearsThis is completely ahistorical, to just dismiss the destruction of slavery on the basis that it didn't create an exploitation-free utopia. By that logic, we shouldn't support any revolution, ever. The Civil War didn't succeed in doing that, but it was a big step in the right direction and therefore was historically progressive. It was the last major historical event in which the capitalist class played a progressive role. Karl Marx himself recognized this and enthusiastically supported the Union cause, he and his fellow socialists even sent a letter of congratulations to Abraham Lincoln upon his re-election in 1864.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm


Cal Engime: The causes of the secession were complex, but Lincoln caused the war when he refused to recognise the Confederacy or negotiate the sale of federal properties in their territory. I fully believe that if the war had not occurred, slavery would have been abolished peacefully just like it was in every other Western nation.This is false. Slavery was NOT abolished 'peacefully' in every other Western nation. France and Britain abolished slavery only after a series of bloody slave rebellions in their colonies in the Caribbean, climaxing in a 13-year revolt in Haiti where black slaves under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture defeated French and British armies sent to put it down. And the British navy waged violent campaigns for decades in Africa and the Caribbean for decades to enforce the ban on slavery from the early 19th century on.

[Coggeh]

LONG LIVE TEH CONFEDERACY ! http://southparkstudios.mtvnimages.com/images/shows/southpark/vertical_video/import/season_03/sp_0314_12_v6.jpg