The Confederacy was About Slavery

@perennialloner,

perennialloner wrote:

To the guy who said the Confederacy was about power. Sure, but where did the Confederate States power come from, as they saw it? Slaves. Southerners relied on slaves. The Southern economy prospered because of African labor. You know this. So, if the power the Confederacy sought came from these slaves, how was it not about slavery?

I don't know many times I have to state the Confederacy was about slavery before some of you catch on.

Stating that it's most fundamental level, the Civil War was about power is not denying the premise of this thread. As you noted, and which I posted more than once before your recent contributions, slavery was the source of the South's power. The two thoughts are not mutually exclusive you know. There's nothing particularly admirable about clinging to power, and if that power is derived from the suffering of other human beings it is repugnant and reprehensible.

The basis of your consternation and that of others in this thread seems to be that I refuse to accept the premise that millions of people living in a given region for scores of years were denizens of Mordor, and,more importantly, that the taint of slavery is a clear and present stain on the South even today.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

There's nothing particularly admirable about clinging to power, and if that power is derived from the suffering of other human beings it is repugnant and reprehensible.

Yet you offer up excuses for the US doing that throughout its entire history, Finn. Incredible suffering "of other human beings [that] it is repugnant and reprehensible", starting with the Finn admitted genocide against Native Americans and continuing with the rape and pillage of many lands and peoples.

1 Reply

@camlok,

camlok wrote:

Quote:
There's nothing particularly admirable about clinging to power, and if that power is derived from the suffering of other human beings it is repugnant and reprehensible.

Yet you offer up excuses for the US doing that throughout its entire history, Finn. Incredible suffering "of other human beings [that] it is repugnant and reprehensible", starting with the Finn admitted genocide against Native Americans and continuing with the rape and pillage of many lands and peoples.

No I don't.

I don't "excuse" atrocities committed by Americans or in the name of America. I'm sure we disagree on what constitutes an American atrocity. For example I don't believe Hiroshima or Nagasaki were.

Other than in the case of the French, it's just not rational to declare every German, every Roman, every Southerner, every Japanese and every American guilty of the crimes that either their ancestors or their governments have been guilty of (except of course for the ones who adopt your slash and burn approach)

You are obviously, for some reason, fixated on America.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Yes, you do, Finn. The war crimes are ongoing to this day and still you make excuses. I am not blaming every American, just those who hypocritically point fingers at bad guys who don't come remotely close to the crimes of the US.

War crimes, crimes against humanity have no end. If you do what you pretend you do, why haven't you been asking for the indictments of Bush, Bush, Cheney, Obama, Clinton, ... ?

I am no more fixed on the US than the US was fixed on Nazi Germany. Where is the promised poison chalice, the one that needs to be passed to each and every war criminal?

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@Finn dAbuzz,

"Power" is not a fundament. "Power" is a generalization. Fundamentally, i.e. the foundation, of this "power" in regard to the Confederacy and the Civil War that it launched was slavery.

The taint of slavery is a clear and present stain, not on "the South," but on the Southern denialists and their enablers who argue otherwise, your puerile straw man metaphor notwithstanding.

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@snood,

But how can you make history speak when it has chosen to be silent?

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

The taint of slavery is a clear and present stain, not on "the South," but on the Southern denialists and their enablers who argue otherwise, your puerile straw man metaphor notwithstanding.

The northern denialists share in that stain. The US, the whole of the US, established slavery, with many, most? of its high falutin' founding fathers the worst of the lot. The hypocrisy of the US and its defenders is stunning in its capacity to keep on doing so with no sense of shame whatsoever.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

I haven't read all of your responses in the thread. Even so, to even bring up such a thing gives credence to all ideas suggesting the Confederacy wasn't about slavery. The Confederacy doesn't need yet another element added to the discussion of its conception and legitimacy to distract from its awfulness.

1 Reply

@InfraBlue,

InfraBlue wrote:

The taint of slavery is a clear and present stain, not on "the South," but on the Southern denialists

Well, we don't disagree on that.

Quote:

...and their enablers who argue otherwise

You often use the term "enabler" as a rhetorical club against people you wish to sweep into your dustpan of villainy, but for which you have no actually evidence of malfeasance or bad intent. It's not puerile at all, it's noxious, and it's an obvious tactic you use for people who don't share the full depth and broad scope of your loathing about one or another of your designated villains. Zionists are a perfect example.

1 Reply

@perennialloner,

By stating that the Civil War (like just about every war ever waged) was about power doesn't in anyway exonerate Southern slaveholders, or untie the knot that connects the Confederacy to slavery.

If someone wants to use my statement about power as way to dodge the undeniable truth about the Confederacy, why should I care? It's hardly providing them with valuable ammunition.

I find the notion that there are rules about how we can discuss the Civil War to be silly.

You do know they lost don't you and that slavery was abolished?

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

So the taint of slavery is a clear and present stain on Southern denialists, but it isn't a clear and present stain on their enablers? You haven't explained how they aren't tainted, you've merely provided a straw man.

Likewise, just as Zionist denialists are stained with the oppression of the Palestinian peoples, their enablers are as well, and you haven't explained how they aren't.

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

If someone wants to use my statement about power as way to dodge the undeniable truth about the Confederacy, why should I care? It's hardly providing them with valuable ammunition.

So then, what is this undeniable truth about the Confederacy, that fundamentally, it was about power or that it was about slavery?

Obfuscation of thought results from the rationalizations of denialism.

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@InfraBlue,

I've already expressed my view on your use of "enabler"

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@InfraBlue,

Two things can be true at once, but perhaps not in your black and white world

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

So then, what is this undeniable truth about the Confederacy, that fundamentally, it was about power or that it was about slavery?

Obfuscation of thought results from the rationalizations of denialism.

Indeed it does, Infra, and you are exuberantly exhibiting your last sentence.

This is as ludicrous an "argument" as your "conciseness" BS!

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Two things can be true at once, but perhaps not in your black and white world

Sure, but not in regard to what the Civil War was, at its "most fundamental basis," about, because, in consideration of all of the things that may be considered its "fundamental bases" slavery is the utmost, since slavery was fundamental to its power. Slavery is more fundamental than power in regard to what the Civil War was about.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

I've already expressed my view on your use of "enabler"

Yeah, with straw man arguments.

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@camlok,

How do you figure?

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

since slavery was fundamental to its power. Slavery is more fundamental than power in regard to what the Civil War was about.

The two were inextricably intertwined. The south didn't want to give up power, which was slavery and the south didn't want to give up slavery which was power.

Two sides of the same vicious racist coin.

But don't be jumping on your high horse trying to make lame suggestions that the north was about freeing the slaves for that is crap of the highest order. How Blacks were treated by the PEOPLE of the USA tells the whole story.

How Native Americans were and still are treated by the USA tells the whole story.

How [stick in any nation invaded, plundered and had their citizens murdered] were treated by the USA tells the whole story.

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@camlok,

Slavery has more meaning than the civil war.. It was around longer

1 Reply

The Confederacy was About Slavery

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