Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[hedge]

"Stars and Bars represent a failed insurrection and attempt to overthrow the Constitution. Everyone involved was a traitor by definition."

You could say the same thing about the American flag and America. Or is your argument that only losers are traitors?

Precisely. And the Founding Fathers knew that if they lost, they would be hanged.

So you are saying might makes right. I pretty much agree, but am kinda surprised to hear you take that line...

[hedge]

"Angry at this person, this "neighbor" of mine. Angry at the culture that permits such blatant hatred."

I think a culture that doesn't "permit" hatred would be worse than one that does. Way worse...

[THE_WIZARD_]

shaddup

[aTm]

Most of my interactions with these traitors comes when I hear the names of major United States military installations.

[Johnette's Daddy]

"Stars and Bars represent a failed insurrection and attempt to overthrow the Constitution. Everyone involved was a traitor by definition."

You could say the same thing about the American flag and America. Or is your argument that only losers are traitors?

Precisely. And the Founding Fathers knew that if they lost, they would be hanged.

So you are saying might makes right. I pretty much agree, but am kinda surprised to hear you take that line...

From a practical standpoint, yes. The Irgun was just as much of a terrorist organization as the Palestinian Liberation Army (ask the British) - the difference is that the Irgun won and became what is now the Likud Party, which has pretty much dominated Israeli politics for the last 38 years.

The difference between a traitor and a freedom fighter is in the W/L column.

[hedge]

Jesus will be happy to hear that...

[Professor Tiger]

"Anger at the culture that permits such blatant hatred"

If he's talking about the neighbor flying a flag, it's called the First Amendment and that whole Constitution thing.

[Dr. Strangelove]

JD-

That's irrelevant. Any group that secedes from its original group can be considered traitors - including the U.S. forming its own country separate from England.

And plantation oligarchs were running the south. Of course, manufacturing oligarchs were running the north. Morally, very little difference between the two groups.

So very little difference between being a slave and working in a factory?

When did you turn communist?

[Professor Tiger]

I didn't know that Irgun hated black people.

[AlabamAlum]

JD-

That's irrelevant. Any group that secedes from its original group can be considered traitors - including the U.S. forming its own country separate from England.

And plantation oligarchs were running the south. Of course, manufacturing oligarchs were running the north. Morally, very little difference between the two groups.

So very little difference between being a slave and working in a factory?

When did you turn communist?

DSL,

You need to read more carefully. That was in response to JD and his post on Johnson and Reconstruction. There was no actual slavery then.

But do I think the power brokers of the north cared one way or the other about slavery? No, of course not. I've read their words. Do I think they were happy to bring in Chinese (and other laborers) to build the railroads in deplorable conditions? Yes. Do I think they minded working children for long hours for little or no pay in sweatshops? No. Generally speaking, do I think they treated the factory workers horribly? Yes. If one of the factory Irish got out of line, the Pinkertons would snuff dissent. Do I think they cared about their rights or freedoms? No. Do I think they would be happy to turn their charges into slaves? No. Not at all. What they did was more profitable than slavery. They did not have to buy, clothe, or feed their workers. And when that worker got out of line or too old or injured to work, a steady supply of fresh immigrants were available to be scooped up as replacements. It was one of the many "advantages" that the industrialists had over the plantation owner and the horrible treatment and conditions that the factory and sweatshop worker suffered gave life to the unions (which were a bloody mess) where even the few relatively good guys (like Carnegie) signed off on bloodshed (for example, the Homestead ordeal).

So, morally, do I think the plantation oligarch in (for example) 1875 was any different from the factory oligarch. Nope. And had a steady supply of cheap labor not been available to that same industrialist pre civil war, I think it likely that slavery would have been much more common in the north than it was.

In short, I reject any claims of superior northern morality out-of-hand as unsupportable, revisionist bullshit.

[hedge]

Well-stated and concur...

[sardis]

JD-

That's irrelevant. Any group that secedes from its original group can be considered traitors - including the U.S. forming its own country separate from England.

And plantation oligarchs were running the south. Of course, manufacturing oligarchs were running the north. Morally, very little difference between the two groups.

So very little difference between being a slave and working in a factory?

When did you turn communist?

DSL,

You need to read more carefully. That was in response to JD and his post on Johnson and Reconstruction. There was no actual slavery then.

But do I think the power brokers of the north cared one way or the other about slavery? No, of course not. I've read their words. Do I think they were happy to bring in Chinese (and other laborers) to build the railroads in deplorable conditions? Yes. Do I think they minded working children for long hours for little or no pay in sweatshops? No. Generally speaking, do I think they treated the factory workers horribly? Yes. If one of the factory Irish got out of line, the Pinkertons would snuff dissent. Do I think they cared about their rights or freedoms? No. Do I think they would be happy to turn their charges into slaves? No. Not at all. What they did was more profitable than slavery. They did not have to buy, clothe, or feed their workers. And when that worker got out of line or too old or injured to work, a steady supply of fresh immigrants were available to be scooped up as replacements. It was one of the many "advantages" that the industrialists had over the plantation owner and the horrible treatment and conditions that the factory and sweatshop worker suffered gave life to the unions (which were a bloody mess) where even the few relatively good guys (like Carnegie) signed off on bloodshed (for example, the Homestead ordeal).

So, morally, do I think the plantation oligarch in (for example) 1875 was any different from the factory oligarch. Nope. And had a steady supply of cheap labor not been available to that same industrialist pre civil war, I think it likely that slavery would have been much more common in the north than it was.

In short, I reject any claims of superior northern morality out-of-hand as unsupportable, revisionist bullshit.

The difference is that the factory worker could leave.

[AlabamAlum]

Sardis,

We're talking after the civil war. Reconstruction. So, the plantation worker could too.

[AlabamAlum]

No one is arguing that being a slave is preferable or equal to being a worker in a sweatshop. Of course, being a Slave is worse. Much worse. Unless you owed money to the company store, or were indentured in some fashion, you could freely leave. Which is huge.

[Toemeesleather]

‘Lots of folks expected us to do something strange and break out in a riot. Well, they just don’t know us,” the Rev. Norvel Goff told the packed, multiracial congregation of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, on Sunday.

It was the first service since the horrific slaughter of nine innocent souls by a racist fanatic.

Not being a Christian, I can only marvel at the dignity and courage of the victims’ relatives who forgave the shooter. If I could ever manage such a thing, it would probably take me decades. It took them little more than a day.

Less shocking, but almost as uplifting, was the conduct of the broader Charleston community, which has been unified and dignified, despite the expectations of some in the media — and the accused gunman, who’d singled out Charleston because of its success at racial integration.

And this points to Goff being right, not just about Charleston but about the South in general.

There are few subjects that ignite more casual, uninformed bigotry and condescension from elites in this nation than Dixie.

“Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment,” the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky wrote last year.

How, then, to explain the tens of thousands of South Carolinians, white and black, marching in unity across the Ravenel Bridge on Sunday night? Did the city bus in decent Northerners?

The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins glibly asserts that “the Confederate battle flag is an American swastika, the relic of traitors and totalitarians, symbol of a brutal regime, not a republic.”

If it were left to me, I’d take the flag down. But this kind of cheap moral preening is galling. Is it really too much for people to muster the moral imagination that the issue isn’t nearly as simple as that?

A November poll of South Carolinians found that 61 percent of blacks wanted it down. That means nearly four in 10 blacks felt differently. Are they the moral equivalent of self-loathing Jews, happy to live under a swastika?

It’s a sure bet that some of the white South Carolinians marching across that bridge and attending services at Emanuel AME Church also support keeping the flag. That doesn’t mean they’re right, but they surely aren’t the American SS of Jenkins’ imagination, either.

Blogger Glenn Reynolds noted that when the South was solidly Democratic, we got “Gone With the Wind” nostalgia. Now that it’s profoundly less racist, but also less useful to Democrats, it’s the enemy of all that is decent and good.

If we’re going to offer ridiculous flag comparisons, a better one would be the Japanese imperial flag. After World War II, the United States banned it until 1949.

Douglas MacArthur then opted to let a defeated, once-authoritarian society keep a few symbols of its past in order to build a better future.

Can anyone argue that the South hasn’t done likewise? White Northern liberals explain how the South is an irredeemable cesspool of hate, while ignoring the fact that blacks are abandoning the Northern blue states in huge numbers to move to the South.

Demographer Joel Kotkin found that 13 of the 15 best cities in the country for African-Americans to live in are now in the South. Over the last decade, millions of African-Americans have been reversing the Great Migration of a century ago to live in Dixie.

A big part of that story is economic, of course — the “blue state” model has failed generations of minorities — but it’s also cultural.

Word’s gotten out that while the flags may be around in some places, the Old Confederacy’s gone.

Whenever conservatives complain that blacks vote monolithically Democratic, liberals are quick to argue that this is a rational decision given the realities of the black community. Surely, the same thing holds when they vote with their feet?

No, the South isn’t perfect; name a region that is. But it does have good manners, which is why it routinely acts with more dignity — and in Charleston, with more grace — than its critics to the north.

[sardis]

I wonder if Tsaernev's victims' families will be as forgiving in their interaction with the killer today.

[Johnette's Daddy]

Sardis,

We're talking after the civil war. Reconstruction. So, the plantation worker could too.

Well, not quite. Slavery ended in 1865 in most places, but what replaced it was only a degree or two better, and the mobility options for blacks in debt slavery (share cropping) were limited. http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/share ... YrPtflViko

After the close of the Civil War, many assumed that the scar of slavery had been done away with - that it was something to be put into the annals of American history, only to be brought up in classrooms. Yet, the situation, in many ways, couldn't have been farther from the truth. Slavery was still around, however, in a much different form. Besides the convict lease system, which kept black people as slaves within the construct of leasing them to corporations, there was also sharecropping, which kept blacks tied to the land they worked.

[Jungle Rat]

I would be Jennifer Anistons slave in a heartbeat

[AlabamAlum]

Sardis,

We're talking after the civil war. Reconstruction. So, the plantation worker could too.

Well, not quite. Slavery ended in 1865 in most places, but what replaced it was only a degree or two better, and the mobility options for blacks in debt slavery (share cropping) were limited. http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/share ... YrPtflViko

After the close of the Civil War, many assumed that the scar of slavery had been done away with - that it was something to be put into the annals of American history, only to be brought up in classrooms. Yet, the situation, in many ways, couldn't have been farther from the truth. Slavery was still around, however, in a much different form. Besides the convict lease system, which kept black people as slaves within the construct of leasing them to corporations, there was also sharecropping, which kept blacks tied to the land they worked.

Correct. The factory/mining equivalent were company stores and company housing, which kept you in debt and obligated.

[aTm]

Also we all have that kind of serfdom/slavery in our background. Except the people descended from royal assholes, I think a few have bragged about it on here...