|
Post by kungfuzu on Oct 24, 2019 6:43:19 GMT -8
Following on my previous statement, I tire of the constant harping on slavery in the USA. It is as if the USA was the only country in the world where slavery existed. What a load of crap. Slavery existed for thousands of years across the world and still exists in some parts of the world.
It existed in various European countries off and on depending upon the economics of it. A time came when it was simply cheaper to hire workers who could be fired at will than to own slaves who had to be cared for throughout their lives.
And by the way, I looked up the author of the book Brad is reading and he would be the last man whose opinion I would solicit regarding the South. He came from a very well-to-do family, went to Sidwell Friends School in D.C. yes the same school the Obamanation sent his two girls to, and two, read it, two Ivy League universities. Do you think a bunch of crackers opened up to him due to common interests?
|
|
|
Post by timothylane on Oct 24, 2019 7:30:09 GMT -8
Slavery remains in a few Muslim countries. There's also illegal "white slavery". One of the purposes of the Mann Act was to fight that.
Jim Crow actually got started in the North. After the South was forced to free the slaves, they eventually took great advantage of the concept, abetted by the naive (or worse) SCOTUS decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.
Slaves and serfs could indeed be expensive. The concept of the initial portion (whence the title comes) for Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls (which I read in high school) is that a scammer named Chichikov was buying dead serfs from aristocrats. They were taxable property until the next census, so the aristocrats were happy to get rid of them. His idea was to use them as security for bank loans (needless to say, without mentioning that they were dead, of course).
On the other hand, I read that efforts to develop a hemp industry in Virginia around 1700 failed because their competition was in Russia, and Virginia slave labor was more expensive than Russian serf labor.
ARTraveler is a bit off on Republican presidential candidates. Although Hoover won many Southern states and Eisenhower did as well, both won enough northern states to win without them. So, obviously did Taft in 1908, Harding in 1920, and Coolidge in 1924. I'm not sure about Nixon in 1968. From 1980 on, every GOP candidate has won the bulk of the South, though Reagan probably would have won without it in 1980 and certainly would have in 1984.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 7:41:08 GMT -8
Mr. Kung, the author does note how polite they are in the South. And given that the book won a Pulitzer Prize, I have no doubt why: Conservative (right wing) bad, black people good.
So I get that angle. This is just one book. But unless this reporter is making it up, he’s come across some very poisonous people in the first third of the book.
But sample size is everything. What is representative of the region and what is truly fringe? If you wrote a book on Seattle and focused on nothing but the bums, hobos, and vagrants living between and underneath the freeways, you would get the impression that Seattle was a poor city instead of one of the richest (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.).
Still, there is a lunatic factor there to some degree. And I think the value of the book in regard to winning a Pulitzer Prize is the association of conservative complaints (affirmative action, flooding of the borders with illegal aliens, Big Government) with the low-brow types who apparently still do exist in the South who have all those issues and combine them with racist attitudes toward blacks — not to mention just kooky conspiracy theory views, including about the Jews.
Speaking of Jews, the author noted the irony of Jews backing the South in the South. Apparently three thousand Jews fought for the South. This Jewish author (Horwitz) noted:
|
|
|
Post by artraveler on Oct 24, 2019 7:44:41 GMT -8
And by the way, I looked up the author of the book Brad is reading and he would be the last man whose opinion I would solicit regarding the South. So did I, He is a DC beltway progressive looking for a political forum. I would not trust him to clean an outhouse.
|
|
|
Post by artraveler on Oct 24, 2019 7:54:37 GMT -8
Do you think a bunch of crackers opened up to him due to common interests? LOL, not in any way would any Southerner open up to this guy. He went looking for racism and surprise, surprise he found it. Hell, he did not even need to leave his toney townhouse in Georgetown. Now if he really wanted to find modern day racism all he need do is have a chat with the DC city council, or cross the river into Baltimore 7th district. But he better be armed those drug dealers shoot back.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 8:09:31 GMT -8
Agreed, Artler. And the point of the book is the author’s professed wish to see what is going on today in terms of understanding and even celebrating the past. From this book, at least in 1999, it appears that some are still living in the past, if not in an abject fantasy world.
But by and large it sounds as if the South is doing well. But this reporter is specifically putting himself in the nooks and crannies. It was in Guthrie, Kentucky, I think, that he went to a real bad-ass bar and barely escaped without getting the snot beat out of him. I went to a bar like that a long time ago in my town which has none of the old pathologies of the South. I barely escaped without a fight. But there will always be some half-drunk belligerent asshole looking for a fight in a seedy bar, no matter where you are. The only reason I was in that bar was to listen to a friend of mine who was playing in a band. Although the bar he talks about was pretty clearly some kind of Nazi/KKK-friendly bar.
So like I’ve said before, sample size. I would that someone would go across the East Coast into the various Mosques and report on what is going on. You would surely not get a Pulitzer Prize because it wouldn’t likely forward the Progressive narrative on Islam. But you’d likely find out there is a significant and important ugly underbelly.
And that’s all this guy seems to be doing at present. There’s two-thirds of the book to go. We’ll see if and how he balances things out. But there always is a kook factor out there. The author pointed out you had all these whiny woe-is-me Southerners lamenting how everything is against them. But the author pointed out:
You made the point “Without the South the last Republican president would have been Theodore Roosevelt, a dubious distinction at best. Imagine what the 20th century could have looked like.” And I think the author reflects that when he writes:
But suffice it to say, unlike some of you, I have no need to defend the honor of the South. Frankly, I wouldn’t defend the honor of my own state if you called it a haven for Libtards (which it is).
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 8:17:40 GMT -8
The guy is a reporter. Of course he’s going to be tilted toward the Left. But then is he completely manufacturing the quotes he’s getting from people? That’s what you need to deal with, not that this guy might lean to the left.
For what it’s worth, he does seem to be a Civil War enthusiast — a Maryland Jew - who is interested in all things Southern and Civil War, good and bad. I think if you simply reject his reporting out of a sense of regional pride or defending the honor of the South, you might be missing something.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 8:24:53 GMT -8
That’s fine. Assuming I stay with it, I’ll see where the rest of the book goes. But America has slavery in its past. I don’t see the harm in looking at that. I don’t feel the need to deflect from it. It’s like when some people criticize Islam (as I often do) someone will say “But what about the Crusades?” Well, I’m not afraid to look at either one.
I’m not at the point of shooting the messenger yet, Mr. Kung. I can respect his point of view even if I don’t share it. One of the ironies of the “well to do” aspect is that the author pointed out, at least in South Carolina, that it was a very small well-to-do faction (the idle rich) who got them into the war.
Again, with suitable skepticism, I don’t share this reflexive need to defend against the “crackers” who opened up to the author. The remarkable part of the book so far is how willingly people talked to him about what they were thinking: good, bad, or indifferent. And he certainly does not appear to be on this journey because he hates the South. He apparently considers himself to be one of them, at least by heritage.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 8:32:51 GMT -8
Moral to the story: There were civil rights abuses. Measures were taken to address this. Such measures took on a life of their own — and taken to extremes — and created a political constituency based upon grievance. Now it’s become a “civil right” to chemically castrate a seven-year-old boy because someone has put it in his head that he’s actually a girl.
None of the excesses counter the fact that there have been, or continue to be, civil rights abuses. The problem is wading through the hyperbole and entrenched interests. And on that point, our society is at a standstill.
|
|
|
Post by kungfuzu on Oct 24, 2019 9:03:14 GMT -8
Again, the author appears to be writing with a somewhat limited understanding of what "the Jews" have been like throughout history. Only in the last couple of hundred years did a significant portion of "the Jews" start taking on their left-wing self-righteousness. Throughout history, some Jews owned slaves, were bums, scoundrels, crooks and horrible people. Before large numbers of them became preening self-righteous, history forgetting leftists, the Jewish people went through life like everyone else. Unfortunately, there are some (and the author would seem to be one) who appear to think they are morally superior to those of us who live below the Mason-Dixon line or have different ideas than they do. Thank God the Jews I have known are generally not of this ilk.
As to the honesty of journalists, I have written before that I have have personally experienced "journalists" lying about something I said. A couple of friends have had similar experience. So I would not put it past this guy to make something up for "the story's sake." It is also quite possible that he is someone like Adam Schiff who could magically translate Trump's telephone conversation to a vile language that exposed the truth of what Trump really meant.
|
|
|
Post by timothylane on Oct 24, 2019 9:42:03 GMT -8
My view on civil rights is that they should apply to who you are or what you believe, but not to how you act. This is especially important with the alphabet-soup sexual issues. Homosexuals don't get into trouble for their inclinations, but for acting on them. This is why "don't ask, don't tell" was a good idea. Asking "Are you a homosexual?" could be considered punishing people for who they are. Kicking them out for homosexual behavior would be an entirely different matter.
The same thing is true of sexual dysphoric people ("transgenders"). The fact that Chelsea (formerly Bradley, but he apparently did legally change his name) Manning (should that be Womaning. or even Womynning?) thinks he's a male is one thing. But when he expects us to agree that a man with male genitals and a Y chromosome can be a woman, that's another matter.
I wonder what Horwitz thought of Judah P. Benjamin, who spent half the War of the Rebellion as Davis's Secretary of State. Incidentally, there were black slave-holders before the War (though not many), who may have supported the Confederacy. Even some slaves probably did. Booker T. Washington later said that if it had come to it, he and his fellow slaves would have fought to defend his master and family (the Taliaferros -- probably related to Confederate General William B. Taliaferro).
There were even 2 free black militia regiments in Louisiana, though the Confederates never activated them. Nathaniel Banks (mocked by many as "Napoleon P. Banks" for his military misadventures, though he gave Stonewall Jackson a very hard time at Cedar Mountain despite being heavily outnumbered) decided that if the CSA could have used them, the USA could. And since they were free blacks, he wasn't (officially) encouraging a slave revolt.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 9:43:16 GMT -8
In Chapter6, Horwitz has “returned home to Virginia badly in need of a furlough.” The hardcore reenactor he had met, Robert Lee Hodge, calls him up and invites him to a major event of the campaign season: the Battle of the Wilderness.
Horwitz takes part in it and has some interesting insights:
Horwitz has joined up with a unit and is in the middle of the reenactment of the Battle of the Wilderness. But Hodge had not given him a gun.
Having finally fallen, Horwitz engages in a conversation with a dead man next to him:
After the battle, Horwitz toured
Horwitz sums up his impression of it all:
|
|
|
Post by timothylane on Oct 24, 2019 10:12:52 GMT -8
One Memorial Day several years ago, Elizabeth and I visited the Patton Museum in Fort Knox. On the way back, we noticed that there was a re-enactment going on at a local War of the Rebellion fort overlooking the Ohio. We found that the idea was to simulate a Confederate attack (purely fictional, the Confederates never attacked Louisville). So we went up and watched. Being in the fort, we of course were among Union re-enactors, in this case probably strictly military. Then there was the attack. I can assure you that those rifles and cannons are quite noisy.
There's also an annual battle re-enactment at Perryville. Oddly enough, we never went, and in fact never visited the battlefield at all. Now it's too late.
We also encountered a brief "living history" chap at the Museum of the Confederacy (which, I was pleased to see, included sabers produced by the Nashville Plow Company). At the visitor's center at Chickamauga, we attended a brief demonstration of firing a typical rifled musket (probably a Springfield or Enfield). There was a discussion of other issues; he mentioned that gun accuracy declined in Wilder's Lightning Brigade after he turned them into mounted infantry and armed them (initially at their expense) with Spencer repeating rifles. (Tucker discusses Wilder's brigade and its achievements extensively in his study of Chickamauga.)
We also intended many historian lectures at battlefields. I can recall one at Antietam noting that the Army of Northern Virginia ate a lot of green corn during the campaign so that, unlike McClellan, they definitely did not have "the slows". I mentioned to one at Spotsylvania that the troops involved probably considered the Bloody Angle fighting (5/12/64) the closest thing to Hell on Earth, and she agreed. (I had meant to wear the button I had with John Sedgwick's famous last words, given as "Why, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--", but forgot to get it out.)
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 10:12:57 GMT -8
Best I can tell is that you can contact him here (he has an email address listed) to ask that question unless it was purely rhetorical or you had some unstated point to make. He does mention Benjamin in this section: You wrote: Part of the “Catechism” I mentioned included this bit: This is the worst sort of double-talk, clearly ranging into evil. It would hardly be news that people adapt even to horrible situations. Jews inside the death camps sometimes played beautiful music. But what a monstrous assertion it would be to say that the Nazi death camps were fomenters of culture. And books I’ve read (including “Up from Slavery”) note this phenomenon. But as far as I understand, there were very few blacks fleeing the North and attempting to join a Southern plantation. The reverse was common. One could certainly gain a sense of belonging and family honor even if one was a slave. One might even gain the much criticized “plantation mentality.” An actual slave must be cut a whole lot of slack in this regard. They had little choice in the matter and had to make due with what was forced upon them.
|
|
|
Post by kungfuzu on Oct 24, 2019 10:45:49 GMT -8
He won't be able to reply as he recently died.
|
|
|
Post by timothylane on Oct 24, 2019 10:51:33 GMT -8
As a matter of fact, Up From Slavery is where I read that. I do wonder how accurate this recollection was. Washington wanted racial reconciliation, and may have remembered things in the manner that was most convenient for that purpose. But some slaves did support the South, and there are (disputed) reports that some may have fought for it. (On the other hand, Pat Cleburne's career was derailed after he suggested freeing and arming the slaves to fight for the South. As Howell Cobb put it, "If the Negroes can make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong." Well, actually, they could and it was. Only in extremis would the South finally set up a version of Cleburne's proposal -- too late to save them, and for that matter too late for Cleburne to be notice since he had already been killed at Franklin.)
I suspect most of those friendlier sorts were house slaves, who were treated much better than field hands. (One of their possible punishments was being demoted to field hands.)
Jefferson Davis treated his slaves very well, and thought he had their loyalty in return. (He turns up in one of Barbara Hambly's Ben January novels -- about a free colored physician in New Orleans -- and expresses the idea that you should be able to trust your slaves. Hambly said she was reflecting Davis's expressed views on the subject.) Then came emancipation, and Union forces entering the area where his plantation was located. He was distressed that those nice, well-treated slaves looted Brierfield.
For that matter, "Mad Lizzie" Van Lew, a top Union spy in Richmond, relied heavily on information from slaves, and I suspect most of them were household slaves. Probably even some of Davis's, who would have had access to some really juicy information.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 10:53:52 GMT -8
I’d recommend reading the book, Mr. Kung, rather than tilting at windmills.
I think it’s a fair point that so many Jews supported the South given the realities of Pharaoh and their history. It’s also a fair point to criticize Jews (or anyone) for supporting Big Government which can be another oppressor.
I think there is an interesting passage in the book which talks about the confederate flag issue. In at least one of the towns, it wasn’t an issue until people made it one and then there was a very polarized lining up of opposite sides and an exaggeration of all issues. Horwitz quotes one of the teachers their who said they’d all been better off if someone took it down in the middle of the night way beforehand. No one would then have likely made a stink. At last that was her (his?) opinion.
I can only address this particular journalist (Horwitz). It would be deeply unfair to tar him with the same brush as Rachel Maddow simply for being a journalist. One can always frame the subject by picking quotes, of course. But in this book (so far) he is letting people speak for themselves.
Whatever the case may be, this fellow has (so far) written an interesting book.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 10:58:40 GMT -8
Booker T was no friend of slavery. But it would be accurate reporting to note that his fellow slaves often felt quite devoted to their masters. I don’t expect Booker T to act like one of our current journalists who is afraid to announce the truth for fear that it hurts his narrative.
Booker T, from what I remember, wasn’t for denying reality. Many slaves were very loyal to their masters. This is, of course, a completely separate question as to whether slavery was or was not an evil institution. Booker T had no illusions about the awfulness of that institution. But he was a light in the darkness because he was one of the few (then or now) who wished for productive reconciliation rather than eternal victimhood.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 11,007
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 24, 2019 11:15:03 GMT -8
LOL. Yeah, there’s some biblical irony in that.
That doesn’t sound appealing but was obviously better than nothing. At the civilian reenactment camp, Horwitz mentions “Confederate coffee” being drank which was “parched corn sweetened with dark molasses.” That doesn’t sound particularly appealing either, but you never know.
Of course, feminists can ruin anything:
To understand women is to understand they they deeply resent it when men have fun without them. But then it sounds as if there is no shortage of women reenacting faithfully the roles women played by in the 1860s. So the point with these feminist hags was simply to make sure men had no place that they could call their own. Feminine fascists.
One humorous point is made regarding all this:
I’d never heard that term, “galvanizing.”
|
|
|
Post by kungfuzu on Oct 24, 2019 11:28:20 GMT -8
And that is my point.
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history will know that it is basically variations on themes of man's cruelty to each other and the strong abusing the weak. What I despise is the left's ploy of excluding much of the history of our progress and the special place of the USA in this. I have no problem studying our history of slavery. I do have a big problem with it being taken out of context (a well known leftist ploy) and being used as the biggest cudgel to beat down and destroy America. And that is exactly what is being done.
Nobody today brings up slavery in order to study the thing, they bring it up to attack America. It is a sad fact that few people take the time to wade through the hyperbole, entrenched interests and dishonesty spewing forth from these leftists. And the leftists understand that they are exacerbating the situation as regards human rights abuses. As a result of their hyperbole, most people now seem to fall into one of two categories, 1) Every reported "abuse" is true and every American except themselves is a racist, homophobe, misogynist, 2) Every reported abuse is just another fake report spread by leftist scumbags who hate America. This is not healthy for the country and you can thank preening Confederate Flag haters and their fellow travelers as part of the reason for this situation. They are trying to shut down free speech.
It is indicative of the insanity of the left's present social discourse that slavery is not a political question of 1855, but one of 2019. When dealing with such mental disorder and dishonesty, it does not pay to be wishy-washy.
|
|