McCain/Some chick from Canada 08: Folding Under Pressure

[fajwat]

1) Nothing in the civil war was about slavery.  Nothing.  Even freeing the slaves wasn't about the slaves.  Seriously.  This is amply documented.  Believe it or go do more research, but don't just keep disagreeing.

2) Pork?  Pork?  No, that wouldn't save any pro-homo legislator in most states.

Civil rights need to gain momentum at the local level.  States have to prove the viability of these laws by voting for and against state constitutional amendments, having individual state supreme courts worry and tease the issues.  Eventually, a stable model of gay rights will evolve, be adopted in practice by a group of states, and a consensus will bubble up from the states' laws.  People at the federal level will then say, "It's time to bring the nation up to date with the new status quo."  The supreme court will eventually support a challenge to gay marriage, and that will be the approximate end of it.  But the federal Supreme Court very frequently (possibly always) takes into account the states' laws and states' practices regarding issues before it.  

Democracies always invite tyrannies of pluralities.  No one should ever vote on someone's civil rights, it's fucking obscene.  But we have the system we have, and it doesn't work according to the exact wording of the constitution (inalienable, equal rights) and it doesn't work the way (most) history books describe.  Instead it's organic, and it'd be painful to ask for bigger, larger central government and less control at the local level.  The local level is the only place that change by the people and for the people is possible.  Grassroots government.  The fed eventually follows the states.  But states have to break the ice, and show a model system of laws/changes which work before the more conservative people/states/feds will follow.

argh. 

[nacho]

Well said!

[Matt]

Slavery figures into any issue with the Civil War. How the hell does it not?

[nacho]

You wish slavery was an issue.  Sorry to break it to you -- nobody cared.  That's why the blacks spent another hundred years in de facto slavery in both the north and the south.  Robert Kennedy ended slavery, not Lincoln.

Start here, Matt, then come back and discuss:
http://www.amazon.com/Ordeal-Fire-Civil-War-Reconstruction/dp/0072317361

That's my favorite title on what it was all about.  Forget everything you learned about the Civil War, and everything you've seen from Hollywood.

[RottingCorpse]

Just added to my wish list, but $80?

[nacho]

It's a textbook.  You'll see there are cheap used options.  The second edition runs for 11-13 bucks.  Second edition is not too different from the third... It really needs a fourth edition, because the third came out eight years ago.  And there was only five years between the second and third.

[Reginald McGraw]

God bless you, Fajwat, God bless you.

[Tatertots]

My library has this huge collection of books that document pretty much every piece of correspondence relating to military matters during the Civil War. It's huge. Read *that*!

[fajwat]

And here is one of my favorite letters of early American history, published in a major newspaper at the time:

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/greeley.htm

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable [sic] in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

[Matt]

My library has this huge collection of books that document pretty much every piece of correspondence relating to military matters during the Civil War. It's huge. Read *that*!

This, basically. I don't have the time to read another book, especially not as the semester's winding down. Give me cliff notes or a link to something that states the arguments of the book more clearly.

[Cassander]

My library has this huge collection of books that document pretty much every piece of correspondence relating to military matters during the Civil War. It's huge. Read *that*!

This, basically. I don't have the time to read another book, especially not as the semester's winding down. Give me cliff notes or a link to something that states the arguments of the book more clearly.

Is there a block Matt option in the forum?  Cause you could be wiped from off my screen and I would still be able to infer whatever dumb shit you said by people's reactions. 

[Matt]

There's an ignore feature, use it.

[Cassander]

seriously, can anyone tell me if there's an ignore feature?

[Tatertots]

Yeah, I installed it so everyone could ignore Monkey -- look in your profile somewhere.

[Cassander]

but i currently have my profile ignored.