Slavery was no big deal, stop being so politically correct.

[TrollBuster9090]

Run time: 01:52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKrFFPBbOSA   Posted on YouTube: April 08, 2010 By YouTube Member: tpmtv Views on YouTube: 331   Posted on DU: April 08, 2010 By DU Member: TrollBuster9090 Views on DU: 1555

 
This is hilarious. The knee jerk response of the GOP and right wing populists to either oppose everything that Obama and the Democrats do (bad OR good), while defending whatever the GOP or Tea Party Patriots do (good or BAD) is a gift that just keeps on giving. I've often said that Obama, Pelosi and Reid should come out and pass a law against eating human excrement (for safety and hygine reasons) just for the fun of watching these lemmings hold massive sh#t eating rallies to protest the big government's attempt to destroy their liberty.

(I'm fully expecting Glenn Beck to do a little blackboard session pointing out that Lincoln's grandfather once built a church with some wood that was cut from a forest that was owned by an ancestor of Saul Alinsky...SO THERE! QED)

In Paul Waldman's 2006 book "Being Right is Not Enough" he outlined the classic fault lines in the Democratic party that the Republicans have been hammering away at for decades (gun control, abortion, flag burning and gay marriage), winning election after election. Then he pointed out that the Republicans have wedge issue fault lines of their own. The biggest one being the Confederate flag and the attitude of the American right wing when it comes to the Civil War. And he postulated that Democrats should take every opportunity to hammer away at that fault line.

Well, here we go, folks. Somebody was bound to take a sledge hammer to the Confederate GOP fault line sooner or later, but I'm just surprised it was McDonnell who did it. I mean, seriously, what the hell was he thinking? That he could appease that part of his base WITHOUT ANYBODY NOTICING?

So here we go. The right wing loons are coming out of the woodwork to defend the Confederate, and downplay slavery. Just look at all the dumbass comments that are popping up all over the internet. (ie-look at the response threads to this TPM video.)


From one faction you get the usual defiant appologetics:

"The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery....blah blah blah..."

"Lincoln didn't give a damn about slaves, it was all about power, not principle...blah blah blah..."

"Slavery was just the after-the-fact excuse. The real reason was big government wanting to take our freedom...blah blah blah..."

"There were slaves in NORTHERN states, too! Why pick on the South...blah blah blah..."

"Hey, EVERYBODY had slaves in those days! You can't take it out of context, it was a normal thing in 1861...blah blah blah..."

"Slavery was all over the place, so why bother mentioning it? But the courage and decency of the Confederate soldiers, that was UNIQUE, and worth honoring...blah blah blah..."



While other factions sputter:

"Yeah, but...but Lincoln was a REPUBLICAN, okay? And the only former KKK member in Congress is a DEMOCRAT..so THERE!"

and
"Hey, I'm a Libertarian, so don't blame ME for all this shit..."

Lovely fault lines.





Let's just see if anything has changed in 140 years, shall we?

1861: "The Civil War wasn't about slavery, so stop playing the race card. It was about States Rights, tyranny, and the Constitution!"

2010: "The Tea Party/Patriot Movement isn't about having a black, liberal Democrat in the White House, so stop playing the race card! It's about States Rights, (liberal, big govt) tyranny, and the Constitution!"

Same sh#t, different a**holes.

[kag]

1. Oh, this is NOT hilarious...

This guy probably has children and grandchildren, and they are all being taught to spout this same vitriolic prejudice. As are all of the offspring of all the racists in this country. It will not stop unless people like this moron stop getting attention and respect.

I couldn't tell from all of these soundbites whether she contradicted him on all of his points. I did like the one challenge that she gave him, to paraphrase, "i'm from West Virgina, so I know a little something about that area, and I'm black, so I know a little about slavery."

When I was in school in Texas, I was taught the same lies this waste-of-skin is spewing. They are probably teaching it still.

[monmouth]

2. Might be time to have a week-long showing of "Roots" again. I'm serious.

These people are so uneducated, stupid, mis-informed and proud of it. Of course, they probably wouldn't watch it...sigh.

[unapatriciated]

4. No time like the present-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78EioN7A9yA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_FglUXth-E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Jquf1Xwmw

[d_r]

3. every single time some dumbass pulls that shit

somebody had better call them on it. Every single time. I swear, it is our responsibility to the next generation not to let it go unchallenged. Somebody says the civil war wasn't about slavery, say hell yes it was. They say it was about "state s rights" say "state's rights to do what? What were the states wanting to do so bad that they had a war over it? Own slaves, dumb ass." I heard someone say it was because the north had passed laws favoring northern textile mills over the south's ability to sell a "natural resource" over seas. I said bull shit, cotton wasn't a "natural resource" it was picked by slaves.

Look. I'd say that most of the kids who died for the south in the civil war weren't in it for slavery, they were in it because they believed the same sort of patriotic crap from the rich man that kids today believe and go off in wars to die for. I understand that. But today, and with the history we've had since then in the south, through jim crow and civil rights eras, these revisionist history buffoons that want to romanticize this time are in denial if they tell themselves it isn't about slavery or racism.

[teknomanzer]

5. Fucking revisionists...

The Southern States seceded from the union because they were losing the battle to expand slavery into the new states and territories. The war was about the institution of slavery all the other arguments about the war are incidental to the slavery issue. Now take your ignorant clap-trap else where you ignorant douche nozzles.

P.S. You fucking lost... AND YOU WERE WRONG! Get over it.

[niceypoo]

6. I have a Democratic friend from SC

...and she swears up and down that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery. She refers to the civil war as the, 'war of northern aggression.'

The whole south is in denial, IMHO.

[SouthernLiberal]

8. I live in SC myself

But I wasn't born here.

Every once in a while, the local paper will print the document South Carolina published in 1860 to explain why they were leaving the Union. They make it quite clear that the problem was that non-slave-holding states ("The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa" not a non-northern state among them) were passing anti-slavery laws so stringent, that they would not consider any person inside their borders a slave, even if they were only there temporarily.

So, consider the facts -

South Carolina started the 'war of northern aggression' by seceding from the United States
South Carolina said that this was because of the anti-slavery legislation of northern states
South Carolina further said that even if these states did not want slavery within their borders, the Federal Government had an obligation to force them to accept slavery.


What 'everyone' in South Carolina knows -

The war had nothing to do with slavery. It was all about the Federal Government denying 'States' Rights'. And apparently, shooting back after a South Carolinian shoots at you, is what they mean by aggression.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Mr. Davis' prejudice doesn't bother me as much as what is either willful ignorance or . . .

. . . his cynical attempt to rewrite history.

Slavery was not "all over the United States" in 1860. Moreover, those were contiguous states south of the Mason-Dixon line, the Ohio River and the state of Missouri. Of the states that legally recognized the right of some human beings to own others, only Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware remained in the Union.

[JDPriestly]

9. Actually, this southern gentleman is wrong, very wrong..

The reason for the Civil War was in fact that the Northern states did not want to enforce laws requiring the return of fugitive slaves to their masters who were mostly in the South.

The majority of Northerners had become, over time, increasingly opposed to slavery. More and more Northerners were willing to harbor slaves and assist their escape from the South. The Southerners read the handwriting on the wall: no slave would stay bound that could find refuge in the North.

My family was among the first to become staunchly, vocally anti-slavery way back when. But, I went to high school in the South, so I know that this man is repeating what he learned in history class at school. Southerners were taught back then that the "War Between the States" was about states rights and about, in particular, certain disputes about who would process Southern cotton and whether Southern states could export their products freely. At least -- that is what I recall from history lessons long, long ago. By the way, we spendt so much time on the "War Between the States" and the preceding periods in American history that we learned virtually nothing about anything post-reconstruction. We flew through that. The Southern White view of the "War Between the States" was drilled into our heads.

No wonder I am so suspicious of propaganda and so interested in conspiracy theories (even those I find absurd). I had to sort out true from false pretty early on.

Several of may ancestors fought for the Union. One was an abolitionist preacher. Activism goes back a long, long way for some of us. I'm sure I'm not the only DUer with this kind of family history.

[liberation]

11. It is a little more complicated than that...

like most major/violent events in our country's history, the civil war is no exception and at its most basic level it was a conflict with taxes and commercial issues at its core.

The North vs. South positions regarding slavery had more to do with regards to taxation and labor costs, than the human morality of the institution of slavery. Lincoln himself, albeit having personal views contrary to slavery, made it clear that had the South not declare secession, he would have had no problem with the institution of slavery being continued if it allowed for all the states to remain united.

Furthermore, right after the war ended, the border Southern states which had remained loyal to the union were allowed to continue slavery. Whereas the confederate states were forced to end it. A move which had more to do with political revenge, than human empathy for the slaves. Let's not forget that it took another hundred years, and plenty of struggle, for the black population in America to stop being de facto 3rd class citizens.

It is not that one has to be suspicious of propaganda, because I almost do not consider it "propaganda" since it is my impression that these are the narratives that the majority of the population wants to hear. As much as many people in the South have a weird psychosis regarding the civil war, and it is really psychotic and suffocating in nature. There is also a similar attempt at rewriting history with a similarly fictitious narrative, where the war was solely about slavery because the North cared ever so deeply. But the same people turn a blind eyes to the realities that institutionalized racism was never removed from their states either. Look at some major cities in the North, as soon as blacks moved into the city, there was an exodus of whites out to the suburbs (Detroit for example).

However, the fact that in the XXI century we have people like the asshole in this segment, which can say with total abandon that "slavery was not that big of a deal"... it simply makes me weep a little. We have yet so much advance as a society... hopefully in another couple of generations people like this idiot will be told politely to go f*ck themselves.

The past decade of endless warfare by choice, the subsumtion of our rule of law regardless of the party affiliation, the unwillingness of a huge chunk of our population to even fathom helping their fellow citizen by providing basic healthcare for all our citizens, and seeing all these cockroaches come out into the light in full force now that we finally elected an non-white president. All that and more, saddens me... we still have so much evolving to do.

[garthranzz]

12. Yes, but...

(This is based on the excellent Team of Rivals and some other Lincoln readings. See particularly his Cooper Union speech.)

Lincoln opposed slavery, but at first did not support integration. He though Blacks should have their own territory. What he did oppose - and made clear in his Cooper Union speech - was the extension of slavery into the territories. That's also where the economics came in. Lincoln felt, as did many others, that if slavery were confined to the confederacy - and the Constitution allowed it to exist there, so there was no choice - then it would be economically strangled to death. The agrarian system based on slavery could not long compete, without exportation to the west, to the technological system from the north. Southerners saw it too, and preferred secession and a violent struggle to a slow economic strangulation.

Seward was a vehement anti-slavery person, and Lincoln's point man.

The border states were allowed to continue slavery because Lincoln did not have the political (and perhaps legal) authority to end it - see Team of Rivals and the readings of the Constitution. When the Southern states seceded, they forfeited the Constitutional rights. That's why they had to be let back in - Reconstruction and all that, which was political vengeance, something Lincoln fought against. See the history of the Emancipation Proclamation.

You're absolutely right, though, there were complex causes to the Civil War. But slavery wound through them all.

[JDPriestly]

13. Have you read Team of Rivals?

That book clearly explains Lincoln's motivations in going to war. And, of course, at the beginning of the war, he had no intention of declaring the emancipation of the slaves. But, many Northerners including some of the most influential and steadfast members of his cabinet were abolitionists.

I believe that Lincoln freed the slaves because, as president, he came to know and respect African-Americans, and especially because he appreciated their willingness to fight for the Union. Lincoln was also motivated to free the slaves because, by freeing them, he weakened the rebel army which relied on slaves to do a lot of the work. So it was complicated.

Regardless of Lincoln's reasons for fighting the Civil War, the fact is that a lot of the Union troops, the volunteers in that war were abolitionists. That was true in my family I can say for sure. They volunteered because they were fervent abolitionists.

[muntrv]

10. Slavery no big deal? So the confederate would not mind picking a bale

of cotton for free and getting the whip all the time, eh?