On this slow Slog night, just a little something to piss you off. Many Southerners, it seems, want to celebrate the upcoming 150th Anniversary of their fucking rebellion against the United States of America with public holidays and suchlike. Wonder what Bill Ayers would think about that?
And where do the Republicans say true Americans live?
Comments are closed.
OK, I’ll bite.
Who is Bill Ayers?
Holly shit. There’s a confederate history month? And one thousand towns celebrate/ recognize Jefferson Davis’s birthday??
“More than 1,000 municipalities celebrate the holiday with parades and festivals, said Charles McMichael, commander in chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and efforts are under way to spread it nationwide, state by state.”
Hey, no thanks.
Their rebellion? Oh you mean that one they lost?
Count me out. In fact, I wish they would re-secede. Let them go.
In my AP American History class, we studied the conclusion that the Civil War was mostly economic. The South was a commodities provider. The North was industry…as long as transportation was limited, the South supplied cotton to the Northern mills. What happened was the North could suddenly get cotton and materials from other, cheaper, sources. The South was looking at an “economic enslavement” because it could not compete with Northern factories. Therefore, the seceded to take control of their economy.
Only real Americans celebrate the break-up of America. Makes sense to me!
Why does Julie want to bite Bill Ayers? And where does she want to bite him? Hey, I’m getting this Slog shit down.
@5
‘course, the south’s commodity economy was driven almost entirely by … slavery. and let’s not forget that a huge part of the north/south divide was the slave slave state/free state. Read about Bleeding Kansas.
it seems to me that celebrating the confederacy is celebrating jim crow by proxy. And everything that entails. What a slime pit.
Have any of you ever been to a Civil War re-enactment? I haven’t.
It’s has all the hopeless romanticism and costumed nostalgia of a ren-fair.
Add to that the juvenile thrill of “playing guns” with authentic toys.
Barbecue may be typical. Beer may be served. It will likely be a spring day.
Don’t pass judgement if you ain’t never been to one.
I’d go to one of these things before I’d go to a monster truck show.
9
You’re being a little harsh.
Because great benefits were derived from the sacrifices of slaves.
And people didn’t believe Africans were as human as whites.
Slaves were the human embryos of the early 1800s.
Wow #5. It takes some wild defense mechanisms to blame the civil war on northerners secretly enslaving white southerners.
Southerners were poor and didn’t have health insurance.
Douglas ran on a platform of taxing rich Northerners to provide universal healthcare. Change you can believe in, he called it.
But Lincoln won and the poor Southerners said “screw this”.
Pretty clever how some Southern States observe Confederate holidays on MLK Day. Quite the rapscallions I’d say.
The devil offspring of the southern confederates have always sought to redefine their criminal past by romanticizing it. But no matter how much they try to weave their shameful “heritage” into american culture they will always be reject and seen for the rotten S O B’s they are.
Confederacy buffs are revisionist assholes to a man. Their interest in history dates to 1960, not 1860, when they had their whites-only polity taken away from them by civil rights legislation. You want to see the legacy of the Confederacy? Don’t look for Robert E. Lee; look for Bull Connor and the fire hoses of Birmingham, Alabama. You want to celebrate that? Go fuck yourself.
The thing about slavery is it was nearly defunct until the 1830s when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Only then could slave labor and Southern cotton become cost effective to produce. So here is an example of a compact technology which lead to the extension of slavery.
@5: Yes, but it was the North that bought the product and received the benefit of the reduced price cotton. The South was basically like an African country in the 1960s that wanted to nationalize its commodity products and reap the bigger rewards of industrialization. To do that they felt they had to rewrite the laws by seceding so that the North could not exploit them.
As far as Lincoln, he was pro-slavery until he realized that he needed to get popular support for a war designed to re-establish economic control over the southern states.
The South Will Rise Again….
Shit Floats.
@18: um, bullshit, all the way through.
I’m trying to picture the social, economic, and political climate of the US minus the Southern states, and I think I like it better. Screw secession, can’t we just vote them out?
@5: What you were taught in high school (in the South?) was more or less the argument that slaveholders used during the Civil War to justify succession. It not only ignores the role of racial ideologies in shaping regional economic differences, but ignores the emancipation proclamation’s significance to the Civil War. It is a dishonest argument.
@ 17: The south’s historical revisionism about the Civil War as a noble “lost cause” was actually immediate, not a product of the 1960s. White southerners renewed and reinforced that sense of victimization by the federal government in response to the civil rights movement’s use of federal laws to break Jim Crow.
It’s scary how much these toxic arguments linger. A friend of mine learned in high school in Virginia in the 1990s that the Civil War was the “war of northern aggression.” To this day they teach kids to hate Sherman, while none of them have ever heard of the Fort Pillow massacre or other genocidal acts by Southern soldiers and militias. They think slaveholders were victims of an oppressive system based in the North!
@18: I’m sorry that our education system has failed you.
@15 Actually the article was misleading. They don’t celebrate the Confederacy on MLK day out of spite, as it may seem prima facie. Jan 19th is Robert E. Lee’s birthday. MLK day is celebrated on the third Monday of every January, which, this year, happened to fall on R. E. Lee’s day.
R. E. Lee was a decent man, ahead of his time, and as worthy as any American from that war to be celebrated. He freed the slaves that he inherited, and gave them all trust funds. And his definitive surrender was not only courageous, but it saved the nation from perpetual guerrilla warfare and never-ending violence.
@23 Your rebuttal overlooks the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves living in seceded states. Lincoln cared less about human rights and more about using politics to win the war. The E.P. didn’t do shit for slaves in Maryland, Kentucky or Missouri…
A lot of slave owners died in blue and a lot of non-slave owners in gray. It was no doubt a huge impetus for secession, but let’s not delude ourselves thinking that Unionists marched nobly to battle hoping to end slavery. Most were not likely quite so altruistic. Racism is the larger issue and it was not determined by the state lines in which one found himself.
@26: The Emancipation Proclamation changed the war. No one said it ended racism, northern or southern. As for Lee, this “decent man” prolonged a senseless war to defend the rights of white people to OWN black people. Only after the South was thoroughly destroyed by the North did he “courageously” surrender. And he didn’t even “save the nation from perpetual guerrilla warfare and never-ending violence.” Ever heard of the KKK? The race riots in Memphis, Wilmington, Atlanta, Tulsa et al?
Jesus Christ I can’t believe people think this shit in the 21st century!
This time let’s celebrate by letting them secede. Sorry, minorities, homosexuals, intellectuals, etc., you’re going to have to move in with us. We’re not letting these goofballs drag us down anymore.
It’s none of your business how Southerners decide to honor their heritage. You want them to be ashamed of their entire ancestry to satisfy your own New Millenium sensi-poo. What none of you know and will never know or accept is that Southerners know that slavery was wrong and that the fight to preserve that horrific, out-moded system was a fundamentally stupid idea. You’ve all drunk this ignorant Kool-Aid of “Southerners as mumbling hayseeds” and think they all lack the ability to reason altogether. Well, that’s YOUR problem, not the problem of the South. I believe you’ll find, if you were to ask, that there are not a lot of Southern folks sitting up nights worrying about what people in Seattle think of their stewardship of their heritage. To say that it’s wrong of Southerners to commemorate the signal event of their history is like saying that all Germans shall now and forever more don sackcloth and ashes for their “role” in the rise of Hitler. News Flash: all those folks who did that stuff are DEAD. Hitler is DEAD. Your own proud ancestors – who, it goes without saying, never broke any laws, did anything stupid or inhumane, or even once did a thing which was accepted then but is seen as immoral now – are all DEAD. We are all responsible for what we do NOW. And that does not mean that the citizens of ANY region of this country have to surrender their rituals or their pride in the memories of their ancestors to please Seattle. This entire discussion is indicative of FAR more about the typical Northwesterner’s presumption of superior enlightenment that it is about any supposed character flaws inherent in the Southern culture. In other words – BUZZ OFF. If you don’t like the ceremonies, I suggest you not attend. That’ll show ’em.
So who is this Bill Ayers?
Is he one of al-Qaeda’s top operatives amongst the Talibangelists that hate America?
Let’s build more high speed railways and crush them.
@29: To say that it’s wrong of Southerners to commemorate the signal event of their history is like saying that all Germans shall now and forever more don sackcloth and ashes for their “role” in the rise of Hitler.
Yeah! It’s kinda like a German proposing to celebrate November 9th as a “national heritage” holiday, right?
Asshole.
@18: It’s a fairly minor point amongst the gallons of bullshit you’re spewing, but Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, not the 1830’s.
And nothing was preventing any ambitious Southerners from starting up industries. But when the rich men could live off the sweat of slaves, and spend their time going to balls and fucking their (slave) maids, where’s the incentive? And as for the poor backwards-ass redneck peckerwood fucks who are still the majority of white Southerners, well I guess they were just too stupid and lazy to exhibit any initiative.
People who say the Civil War was not about slavery are idiots.
One thing about all the posters here…you don’t realize that many southern states have or are achieving majority African American populations. They, like any rational group of people, may also wish to secede so as to not have to pay the bills of overspending, nonproductive coastal cities.
But when the rich men could live off the sweat of slaves, and spend their time going to balls and fucking their (slave) maids
Dude…have your parents put on v-lock; you’ve been watching the AMC directors cut of Mandingo too many times.
Yeah, I’m sure Texas and Arkansas chose Jan. 19 just because R.E.L. was so fucking important. It was just a coincidence that the date falls on or near MLK Jr. day every year. It’s not like they could have their little shindigs on April 12 or April 9.
For your sake, and the sake of any of your current or future progeny, I sure hope you’re a parody troll.
Clearly, the South has nothing to be proud of other than being descended from treasonous bigots. If they want to proclaim that is their greatest source of regional pride, who am I to disagree with them?
28
No thanks.
We’d rather stay in the Union and leverage our political power to get the nation to do what we want.
The GOP is in our pocket.
And until last year the only Democrats who could get elected President for half a century were Southerners and unless Obama starts reaching out his Presidency will make Carter’s look good. (You don’t think Warren was there to please Seattle Liberals, do you?)
If gays had a tenth the political savvy of your average redneck potbellied Southern Senator they would have gotted marriage 80 years ago and have elected a President by now.
No, I think we’ll stay where we are and continue to have whoever is trying to run the country kiss our asses.
(Oh yeah, and keep collecting a bucK fifty for every buck we pay in taxes- Thanks!)
I wouldn’t celebrate Alabama or Mississippi being at the bottom of every quality of life measurement. And the behavior of the South during the civil rights era was nothing short of a disgrace. To say nothing of the damage done to the reputation of this country around the world because of it’s continuing racism. But Obama must piss them off for daring to be President and celebrating Abraham Lincoln. Let them have their parties, the fucking losers. Oh, and the South did rise again with G.W. Bush and look at the shameful mess they made. It seems they never learn.
Ever see the mockumentary “Confederate States Of America?” A show based on the premise of American life, had the South won the Civil War. As I watched, feeling uncomfortable by the contents of this movie, I strangely envisioned many a southerner masturbating at the very prospect of how life would have been, had the south won, as they watched this tongue-in-cheek movie.
39
That wasn’t your imagination, frau. That was me a few rows behind you. EeeHay!!
The south is sort of America’s bad little joke. Every time they try to “rise again” they get slapped dowm. I have some confederate flag toilet paper, but I won’t use it for fear of desacrating the sewer system.
41 ps
And because my tongue works so much better anyway.
@33
Hey shithead: the coastal (and inland) cities pay far more federal taxes than mostly rural Southern states, all of whom get far more back in taxes from the Feds than they pay. So, yeah, secede again, please. Leave my tax dollars for urban issues.
This year, on the anniversary of the Whiskey Rebellion, I’ma get loaded and shoot my guns!
Did the south secede to protect slavery? Well, lets take a look at the primary materials, shall we? How about the ordinances of secession from Georgia, Texas, South Carolina and Mississippi? (http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons…) Every single one of them lists the protection of slavery as the primary cause of secession.
Georgia: For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.
Mississippi: Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world.
South Carolina: Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery;
Texas: We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
Anybody who says that the civil war wasn’t caused by slavery is a stupid, hypocritical, delusional sack of shit.
45
you never get any, do you…
@45
You rock. Primary documents: the one thing the internets let us get at, but so few of us actually peruse or use.
Thanks for the link, 45.
Why not have a 150 year celebration? The US Navy could even chip in by blockading all the southern ports.
Chicago Fan –
I’ll send him the article and let you know.
46:
Actually, no I don’t. But bloviating like this hardly takes any time at all. What really keeps me from getting any is writing a statistics book in my spare time.
@33, @43: more detail about what states pay in taxes and receive in services can be found here: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/sh…
The old Confederacy gets a great deal from the Feds. Here’s 2005:
Mississippi got $2.02 for every tax dollar they send in
Louisiana got $1.78
Alabama got $1.66
Virginia got $1.51
Arkansas got $1.41
South Carolina got $1.35
Tennessee got $1.27
North Carolina got $1.08
Georgia got $1.01
Florida got 97 cents
Texas got 94 cents
Those Northern “coastal cities” are getting screwed:
New Jersey got 61 cents back on every dollar
Connecticut got 69 cents
New Hampshire got 71 cents
Delaware got 77 cents
California got 78 cents
New York got 79 cents
Massachusetts got 82 cents
Washington got 88 cents
Oregon got 93 cents
Southern Pride is heavily subsidized by government spending. Northerners and Westerners, especially in the big cities, are carrying the South. If the South is going to rise again, maybe y’all could start paying your own way, hmm?
@33 and @ FNARF
Thanks for Data–and note that the two old Confederacy states which don’t get back more than they send the Feds are the two states with the most big cities/metro areas: Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Fort Worth, Austin, Arlington–Miami, Orlando, Tampa-St.Pete, Jacksonville. Only a few of the other rebel states have more than one top-100 cities by population.