If we can't face facts about the Civil War, how can we ever deal with modern issues?

[struggle4progress]

Herald-Leader Columnist,Tom Eblen
September 1, 2015 Updated 2 hours ago

... Americans have an uncanny ability to believe what they want to believe, regardless of facts. No chapter in our history has been more mythologized than the Southern rebellion that officially ended 150 years ago ...

While there were a few side issues, the Civil War was all about slavery. White supremacy was the Confederacy's core belief. Read every state's secession documents. Read the politicians' speeches. There is no doubt.

The other reason the Civil War still resonates is that deep divisions of race and class in America have never gone away; they have just become more subtle and complex. And each time it feels like our national wound is healing, the scab is torn off ...

This ugly reality has refocused attention on Confederate symbolism, which has always been racially divisive. In Kentucky, the hottest debate is over the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis placed in the Capitol rotunda in 1936 ...

http://www.kentucky.com/2015/09/01/4015533_tom-eblen-if-we-cant-face-facts.html?rh=1

[HuckleB]

1. True enough. And yet too many DUers don't face facts about the science on...

... vaccines, GMOs, and alt med nonsense.

We are screwed! Period. It sucks.

[tymorial]

5. People who base their opinions purely on emotionalism only acknowledge facts

which validate their preconceived notions. When presented with evidence to the contrary, they attempt to discredit with circular reasoning, redirection and eventually insult.

[HuckleB]

6. Yup. Exactly.

[Journeyman]

2. And one of the hardest facts for most to accept is that both sides were equally guilty. . .

Mr Lincoln expressed it best, in his "Second Inaugural". . .

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

We were all complicit. The whole nation shared in the guilt. And for our collective sin, as Mr Lincoln saw it, we all suffered together.

So we continue forward as Mr Lincoln admonished us at the close of his "Second Inaugural" . . .

[center]". . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves . . ."[/center]

[First Speaker]

3. That is the greatest speech in the English language...

[Glassunion]

4. I believe that president Whitmore gave a better speech.

[struggle4progress]

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