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Is The Citizenry Our Founders Feared Here?

Master Debator said:
We all saw you make apologies for the south. And at no point have you come close to convincing anyone that the South would ever have voluntarily given up slavery. Is that piece a paper worth more than millions of enslaved blacks? Are laws more important than righteousness? If the law makes it so helping slaves escape bondage is a crime who is in the right? Harriet Tubman or the slave owner looking to recover his property.
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A Confederate Apologist is one who denies the war was not about slavery or racism. It for sure was. I'm just saying a victorious South would have faced economics vs. slavery.

As for that piece of paper, WE ARE FINALLY BACK TO THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD! Would the founding fathers want citizens who would put principles over feelings? I believe the answer is, "YES!" Over 2.8 million dead, wounded, and missing Americans were officially sacrificed for our most treasured parchment. Untold deaths have made it priceless! The founders would want citizens willing to give everything to not lose the freedoms, due processes, and protections enshrined upon that paper.
 
Hondo said:
A Confederate Apologist is one who denies the war was not about slavery or racism. It for sure was. I'm just saying a victorious South would have faced economics vs. slavery.
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You don't get narrowly define the term and then determine it doesn't apply to you. When imagine scenarios of the Confederacy willingly giving up slavery and deciding to treat blacks as equals then yes, you are a Confederate apologist.


Hondo said:
As for that piece of paper, WE ARE FINALLY BACK TO THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD! Would the founding fathers want citizens who would put principles over feelings? I believe the answer is, "YES!" Over 2.8 million dead, wounded, and missing Americans were officially sacrificed for our most treasured parchment. Untold deaths have made it priceless! The founders would want citizens willing to give everything to not lose the freedoms, due processes, and protections enshrined upon that paper.
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And freedom for the slaves? They didnt give up everything did they? They gave up the liberty of millions of blacks in exchange for their union. My point through all of this is that words mean little. They spoke of liberty and justice for all but it did not exist for all. But apparently saying you're for liberty for all is more important than actually living it.
 
Master Debator said:
You don't get narrowly define the term and then determine it doesn't apply to you. When imagine scenarios of the Confederacy willingly giving up slavery and deciding to treat blacks as equals then yes, you are a Confederate apologist.
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I'm an American. Define it.
I'm a Pennsylvanian. Define it.
Define "Confederate Apologist." I make no bones about the evils of slavery or the wrongs of the Confederacy. I believe Lincoln's violations of due process were wrong and a case could be made for the legitimacy of secession for those reasons irrespective of the evil they held dear. I believe that if the Confederacy had won, they would have found slavery unsustainable. I believe that racism would have been met with slightly better temperance than history showed, but would have eventually arrived to the point we are at today. Not that being black today is all sunshine and rainbows. I know being white isn't, but I've never been black, so I never experienced that world.



And freedom for the slaves? They didnt give up everything did they? They gave up the liberty of millions of blacks in exchange for their union. My point through all of this is that words mean little. They spoke of liberty and justice for all but it did not exist for all. But apparently saying you're for liberty for all is more important than actually living it.
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Here we go again. They fought one battle at a time.
 
Master Debator said:
You don't get narrowly define the term and then determine it doesn't apply to you. When imagine scenarios of the Confederacy willingly giving up slavery and deciding to treat blacks as equals then yes, you are a Confederate apologist.




And freedom for the slaves? They didnt give up everything did they? They gave up the liberty of millions of blacks in exchange for their union. My point through all of this is that words mean little. They spoke of liberty and justice for all but it did not exist for all. But apparently saying you're for liberty for all is more important than actually living it.
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Just as many southerners opposed secession, many also believed the South eventually would willingly give up slavery. A North Carolinian named Hinton Helper even wrote a now famous book calling for it, The Impending Crisis of the South published in 1857, just three years before Sumpter. The crisis he foresaw wasn't a Civil War but the economic collapse of the South as a result of slave labor. The book wasn't exactly hit everywhere in the South. I think it was Mississippi that made it capital offense to possess a copy and actually hanged a couple of offenders. But he had his sympathetic readers in the South, not just in the North. It was also Lincoln's belief as well, of course, that slavery was economically unsustainable and would sooner or later be discarded.
 
TobyOne said:
I can't imagine the founding fathers being 100% happy with the current country no matter how you look at it.

OTOH, it is the most powerful country the world has ever scene in terms of economic and military might so there is that. I don't think they'd be happy with professional politicians, the influence of money on policy and the cause of both - a huge central government.
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I can't be sure the founders would've been pleased with the economic and military might of the US.
 
Luther said:
Uh.... no they weren't
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Um yea they were. 41 of 56 of the signers of the Declaration were slave owners. These are the people that led the new to be country at the time. You can have your own opinions but not your own facts.
 
Hondo said:
Would the founding fathers want citizens who would put principles over feelings?
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The Founding Fathers didn't actually agree on many of the principles to "put over feelings." That's why, right from the start, there were incredibly heated disputes between the Federalists and the Republicans. It even got so bad that the Aurora, a newspaper published by Franklin's grandson, falsely accused Washington of collaborating with the British during the Revolution.


Over 2.8 million dead, wounded, and missing Americans were officially sacrificed for our most treasured parchment. Untold deaths have made it priceless!
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Yeah, that's the kind of worship that most of the Framers did not want. Madison thought it was a failure that wouldn't last. Jefferson toyed with the idea of writing new constitutions every 17 years. Just FYI.

Another problem? The framers are dead, each and every one. They had their say, they have no idea what our world is like, and their opinions can be mostly ignored. We are the ones who are alive, and we have to decide what type of society we want to live in.

Not only have they had their say, but you're basically putting words in their mouths by insisting "we should do X, because the framers said so!" But for the most part, they didn't say so. They did not live in a world that seriously contemplated nuclear warfare, or same-sex marriage, or Internet porn, or the NSA. It's not at all clear that they would have wanted the US military to drop napalm on millions of Vietnamese people, especially in their name. In many respects, you're anachronistically imputing your own desires onto them.

Maybe you ought to take a deep breath, and think less about what what you want a bunch of dead white aristocrats (many of whom owned slaves) to mean, and more about what we the people want.
 
Probably not. They seemed to be isolationists. But I think they'd be proud of our triumphs over nazism and communism. I can't imagine they'd be isolationists during WWII.


cabse5 said:
I can't be sure the founders would've been pleased with the economic and military might of the US.
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TobyOne said:
Probably not. They seemed to be isolationists. But I think they'd be proud of our triumphs over nazism and communism. I can't imagine they'd be isolationists during WWII.
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1.) Russia was not communist. The Russian people were powerless, which is the opposite of what happens in a communist form of government. 1980s Russia was closer to an authoritarian feudal state than communism.

2.) Russia collapsed from within because their military spending could not be supported when the people were living like slaves.

3.) We cannot continue our military spending when domestically we are sliding backward and the middle class is dying.
 
Hari Seldon said:
Um yea they were. 41 of 56 of the signers of the Declaration were slave owners. These are the people that led the new to be country at the time. You can have your own opinions but not your own facts.
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First of all....Our Founding Fathers are NOT limited to signing the DOI


You can have your own opinions but not your own facts.
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Right back at you(wink)
 
Lisa said:
1.) Russia was not communist. The Russian people were powerless, which is the opposite of what happens in a communist form of government. 1980s Russia was closer to an authoritarian feudal state than communism.

2.) Russia collapsed from within because their military spending could not be supported when the people were living like slaves.

3.) We cannot continue our military spending when domestically we are sliding backward and the middle class is dying.
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Russia was not communist.
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You sure?

a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs
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communism definition - Google Search


The Russian people were powerless,
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That's what communism does?


(LOL)


Nice water down job of Communism(wink)
 
Hondo said:
I'm an American. Define it.
I'm a Pennsylvanian. Define it.
Define "Confederate Apologist." I make no bones about the evils of slavery or the wrongs of the Confederacy. I believe Lincoln's violations of due process were wrong and a case could be made for the legitimacy of secession for those reasons irrespective of the evil they held dear.
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:lamo

What are you ranting about? American and Pennsylvanian have clear definitions. Whether or not you're an apologist for Confederates is a subjective call. I happen to believe that when someone claims they would of sided with the Confederacy that perhaps, maybe, they are a Confederate apologist.

:shrug:

Hondo said:
I believe that racism would have been met with slightly better temperance than history showed, but would have eventually arrived to the point we are at today.
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Oh look, another attempt to excuse the very real terrorism and violence perpetuated by those former Confederates based on nothing but your idyllic fantasies about the character of those Confederates who would go on to murder and terrorize the black population of the south for generations.


:roll:

JackA said:
Just as many southerners opposed secession, many also believed the South eventually would willingly give up slavery.
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So?

:shrug:

Any asshole can make a prediction. We saw what actually happened with our own eyes. The provision in the 13th Amendment that eliminated slavery for everyone except those incarcerated lead to the criminalizing of the black population. Black codes kept them marginalized and then racist southerners used vagrancy and petty theft as excuses to round of black people and put them right back to work. The criminalizing of black lives has continued ever since. Capitalism adapted. See the weren't slaves anymore. They were criminals. Convicts. Completely different.

Luther said:
First of all....Our Founding Fathers are NOT limited to signing the DOI
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That's a weak retort. :roll:

Even though the vast majority of signatories to the Declaration of Independence being slave holders is devastating enough to your attempts to excuse the founders as products of their time, I'll let one of those abolitionists you said I didnt want to talk about share his view from all the way back in the 1840s....

Our fathers sinned—sinned grievously and inexcusably—when they consented to the hunting of fugitive slaves—to a slave representation in Congress—to the prosecution of the foreign slave trade, under the national flag, for twenty years—to the suppression of slave insurrections by the whole power of the Government….The Union should not have been made upon such conditions. - William Llyod Garrison
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Master Debator said:
:lamo








Any asshole can make a prediction. We saw what actually happened with our own eyes. The provision in the 13th Amendment that eliminated slavery for everyone except those incarcerated lead to the criminalizing of the black population. Black codes kept them marginalized and then racist southerners used vagrancy and petty theft as excuses to round of black people and put them right back to work. The criminalizing of black lives has continued ever since. Capitalism adapted. See the weren't slaves anymore. They were criminals. Convicts. Completely different.
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Any asshole can be an absolutist, as assholes tend to be.
 
Master Debator said:
:lamo

What are you ranting about? American and Pennsylvanian have clear definitions. Whether or not you're an apologist for Confederates is a subjective call. I happen to believe that when someone claims they would of sided with the Confederacy that perhaps, maybe, they are a Confederate apologist.

:shrug:




Oh look, another attempt to excuse the very real terrorism and violence perpetuated by those former Confederates based on nothing but your idyllic fantasies about the character of those Confederates who would go on to murder and terrorize the black population of the south for generations.


:roll:




So?

:shrug:

Any asshole can make a prediction. We saw what actually happened with our own eyes. The provision in the 13th Amendment that eliminated slavery for everyone except those incarcerated lead to the criminalizing of the black population. Black codes kept them marginalized and then racist southerners used vagrancy and petty theft as excuses to round of black people and put them right back to work. The criminalizing of black lives has continued ever since. Capitalism adapted. See the weren't slaves anymore. They were criminals. Convicts. Completely different.




That's a weak retort. :roll:

Even though the vast majority of signatories to the Declaration of Independence being slave holders is devastating enough to your attempts to excuse the founders as products of their time, I'll let one of those abolitionists you said I didnt want to talk about share his view from all the way back in the 1840s....
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Master Debator, huh? Might I suggest a name change to Ad Hominem?
 
JackA said:
Any asshole can be an absolutist, as assholes tend to be.
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I'm a realist son. In that I believe in things that are real instead of making excuses for people who perpetuated one of the worst atrocities in American and human history. Explain to me exactly, how a handful of dissidents, who according to you were persecuted and even lynched, comes anywhere near to giving weight to the theory that southern culture was prepared to abandon the notion of white supremacy and its hatred and cruelty of black lives?
 
Master Debator said:
I'm a realist son. In that I believe in things that are real instead of making excuses for people who perpetuated one of the worst atrocities in American and human history. Explain to me exactly, how a handful of dissidents, who according to you were persecuted and even lynched, comes anywhere near to giving weight to the theory that southern culture was prepared to abandon the notion of white supremacy and its hatred and cruelty of black lives?
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A "realist son" is what?

Not interested, sorry. The post I contributed stands on its own until someone offers a relevant reply.
 
JackA said:
A "realist son" is what?

Not interested, sorry. The post I contributed stands on its own until someone offers a relevant reply.
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:lamo

Complaints about tone and temperament are the last bastion of the weak and feeble minded. Scurry along now boy.
 
Master Debator said:
:lamo

Complaints about tone and temperament are the last bastion of the weak and feeble minded. Scurry along now boy.
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Confusing relevance with "tone and temperament" isn't a bastion of any kind, merely feeble.
 
TobyOne said:
Probably not. They seemed to be isolationists. But I think they'd be proud of our triumphs over nazism and communism. I can't imagine they'd be isolationists during WWII.
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The founders considered a standing army to be an affront to liberty...
 
JackA said:
Confusing relevance with "tone and temperament" isn't a bastion of any kind, merely feeble.
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And what exactly is irrelevant about asking you to prove your point against the backdrop of history? You provided those examples and I merely asked for how they were relevant to the notion that the culture of white supremacy and black hatred, that prevailed throughout the south, and was the cause for a hundred years of terror after the war, was on it way out.

Irrelevant in this instance seems code for questions you're loath to answer.
 
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Lisa said:
1.) Russia was not communist. The Russian people were powerless, which is the opposite of what happens in a communist form of government. 1980s Russia was closer to an authoritarian feudal state than communism.

2.) Russia collapsed from within because their military spending could not be supported when the people were living like slaves.

3.) We cannot continue our military spending when domestically we are sliding backward and the middle class is dying.
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There is so much wrong with your opinions in this post. Are you saying, for example, that China isn't communist since Hong Kong is powerless? I assume you to be a democratic voter. What has the democratic party done to better the plight of the middle class??? Other than to attempt to make everyone a part of the middle class?
 
Master Debator said:
And what exactly is irrelevant about asking you to prove your point against the backdrop of history? You provided those examples and I merely asked for how they were relevant to the notion that the culture of white supremacy and black hatred, that prevailed throughout the south, and was the cause for a hundred years of terror after the war, was on it way out.

Irrelevant in this instance seems code for questions you're loath to answer.
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They were relevant in that they were oppositional, but that wasn't your question; no one is denying the insidious effects of Southern white supremacy.
 
Luther said:
Or actually been here for many decades?


What say you?
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Yep

Those deplorables are a scary bunch. Faux and the rest of right wing hate media's propaganda has certainly been effective. Damn shame they have brought America to this point. We certainly aren't the shining example for other countries to emulate any longer.
 
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Master Debator said:
And what exactly is irrelevant about asking you to prove your point against the backdrop of history? You provided those examples and I merely asked for how they were relevant to the notion that the culture of white supremacy and black hatred, that prevailed throughout the south, and was the cause for a hundred years of terror after the war, was on it way out.

Irrelevant in this instance seems code for questions you're loath to answer.
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What is this fixation with slavery? That was a long time ago. Most countries participated in it. Some still do. Nothing particularly different about America.
 
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