Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Scotty on March 30, 2012, 01:31:08 am
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Linky. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nzyvo8SKa0M#t=2063s)
The above link is a youtube vid a few seconds before Santorum slips and gets half-way through calling Obama a [racial slur deleted] in front of an audience in Wisconsin before hastily rephrasing himself. Let the political crucifixion begin. I, for one, while appalled at the fact the slip occurred at all, will not shed tears over seeing one of the GOP's candidates crash and burn.
Discuss.
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Every candidate scares me
The more that shoot themselves in the foot the better
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Wasn't quite sure he was actually about to say [racial slur]. Then saw the look on his face when he slipped.
Good. ****ing. Grief.
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It strikes me as weird that Rick Santorum shall get more flak for almost saying a-not-very-nice-description-of-someones-skin-colour, as opposed to his blatant lies troughout the campaign.
Saying that obama is black might just be the most accurate thing he has said in his entire campaign (unless nigger has implications beyond someones skin colour, which are always lost to me for some reason...)
EDIT: Edited for a little bit more of political correctness and politeness.
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It strikes me as weird that Rick Santorum shall get more flak for almost saying a-not-very-nice-description-of-someones-skin-colour, as opposed to his blatant lies troughout the campaign.
Saying that obama is black might just be the most accurate thing he has said in his entire campaign (unless nigger has implications beyond someones skin colour, which are always lost to me for some reason...)
EDIT: Edited for a little bit more of political correctness and politeness.
politicians lying, meh find me a democratic country where this dont happen on a regular basis, especially in the run up to a voting cycle.
politicians being not nice regarding a persons differences to the white male norm ... BOOM ...
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He might as well say what he feels, since he's lost already anyways.
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Why couldn't this have been Romney instead?
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monsters rule your world
are you too scared to understand?
-lemmy
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I don't hear it.
Was it the "anti-war government nika eh pfft..." part? or should I listen on for the slip up? sorry if I don't feel like listening to a minimum of candidate ass-lube.
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It strikes me as weird that Rick Santorum shall get more flak for almost saying a-not-very-nice-description-of-someones-skin-colour, as opposed to his blatant lies troughout the campaign.
Saying that obama is black might just be the most accurate thing he has said in his entire campaign (unless nigger has implications beyond someones skin colour, which are always lost to me for some reason...)
EDIT: Edited for a little bit more of political correctness and politeness.
Next time you're in the US, feel free to describe black people as 'niggers', since it's just a term for skin color after all
I'll pick you up from the ER
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I'll pick you up from the morgue
FTFY
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(unless nigger has implications beyond someones skin colour, which are always lost to me for some reason...)
Jesus... (http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-stare.gif)
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It strikes me as weird that Rick Santorum shall get more flak for almost saying a-not-very-nice-description-of-someones-skin-colour, as opposed to his blatant lies troughout the campaign.
Saying that obama is black might just be the most accurate thing he has said in his entire campaign (unless nigger has implications beyond someones skin colour, which are always lost to me for some reason...)
EDIT: Edited for a little bit more of political correctness and politeness.
Next time you're in the US, feel free to describe black people as 'niggers', since it's just a term for skin color after all
I'll pick you up from the ER
Handy mnemonic
Say it with an "A", it'a A-OK
Say it was an "ER", you're going to the ER
As for Rick Santorum, he knows what his base likes to hear.
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Political Suicide
No it's not. It's probably going to be a minor backpage story.
Especially not in America. Let alone in countries with types like Marie "kill the jews" le Pen.
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His base actually likes using that word that way. Probably won't be a problem.
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(unless nigger has implications beyond someones skin colour, which are always lost to me for some reason...)
Jesus... (http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-stare.gif)
I think South Park did a realy great episode on the word "fag". I think that episode describes my feelings on those words (or the lack of feeling on those words) better then I can explain with my limited vocabulary.
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It strikes me as weird that Rick Santorum shall get more flak for almost saying a-not-very-nice-description-of-someones-skin-colour, as opposed to his blatant lies troughout the campaign.
Saying that obama is black might just be the most accurate thing he has said in his entire campaign (unless nigger has implications beyond someones skin colour, which are always lost to me for some reason...)
EDIT: Edited for a little bit more of political correctness and politeness.
Next time you're in the US, feel free to describe black people as 'niggers', since it's just a term for skin color after all
I'll pick you up from the ER
win
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I think South Park did a realy great episode on the word "fag". I think that episode describes my feelings on those words (or the lack of feeling on those words) better then I can explain with my limited vocabulary.
i'm just gonna quote this and leave this here
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The word 'Nigger' has had derogatory implications for years, it used to be a demeaning term for slaves which was used in much the same context as a pet like a Cat or a Dog, but with considerably less affection attached. Yes, it was also a colour, (there used to be an oil paint that used that word to describe itself) but it's cart-before-horse, the word denoting the colour came from the perceived colour of the people themselves.
Like many words, it also depends on the intention of its use, and Fag is an excellent example, because in the UK "I'm going to smoke a Fag" is something completely different to the US. But, like many other racial 'nicknames' that have obtained negative connections, words such as that are an extremely loaded subject.
With regards to the OT, I actually think he said 'Governmentnik' and then '-er' as a natural hesitation, just at precisely the wrong moment (much like someone who is vehemently anti war is called a Peacenik, maybe he was trying to say that Obama was addicted to large Government), which transformed the word. That said people will read it as they see fit, and I won't cry any tears if it has a negative impact on his chances.
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It strikes me as weird that Rick Santorum shall get more flak for almost saying a-not-very-nice-description-of-someones-skin-colour, as opposed to his blatant lies troughout the campaign.
Saying that obama is black might just be the most accurate thing he has said in his entire campaign (unless nigger has implications beyond someones skin colour, which are always lost to me for some reason...)
EDIT: Edited for a little bit more of political correctness and politeness.
Protip: It's because americans are super sensitive about these things.
We dutch? We don't care nearly as much. It's a difference in culture. Everything is bigger in america :p
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No penis size threads.
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its more of a result from transitioning away from slave culture to one that values civil rights over the course of only about 100 years. if i remember my history most of europe had abolished slavery long before we did, and so the wounds between blacks and whites had longer to heal. but here its only a few generations back. seems black people are still holding a grudge though, especially where the n word is used.
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Protip: It's because americans are super sensitive about these things.
We dutch? We don't care nearly as much. It's a difference in culture. Everything is bigger in america :p
Yeah, you never had a slavery issue the way we did, so we actually kind of give a **** about racial issues in a way you've never had to.
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Don't the Dutch have a comic relief blackface character they parade around at Christmas or is that a different country?
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Don't the Dutch have a comic relief blackface character they parade around at Christmas or is that a different country?
Robert Downey Junior?
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Don't the Dutch have a comic relief blackface character they parade around at Christmas or is that a different country?
Robert Downey Junior?
There is a bit in that film, I think when he's pep talking them the night before they raid the drug village where it dawns on him how absurd the whole scene is and he almost breaks character. It's great that they left it in because it was hilarious watching him struggle to keep it together.
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Difference being, him breaking character isn't actually breaking character as he's just playing a character playing another character so in reality his character would be breaking the character portrayed by the previously mentioned character whom is the one who realizes how absurd the scene is and is breaking character but not really because he's still in character just as another character
Charception
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This Dude!
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Sintenpiet.jpg/344px-Sintenpiet.jpg)
On the plus side, at least the Dutch Santa dresses like a pimp too. Look at that cane!
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You went full minstrel, man. Never go full minstrel. You don't buy that? Ask Jar Jar Binks, 1999, "The Phantom Menace." Remember? Went full minstrel, went home empty handed.
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God I love that movie. So much.
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This Dude!
*image*
On the plus side, at least the Dutch Santa dresses like a pimp too. Look at that cane!
Hell yeah mother****er.
This guys and his sidekicks give presents and candy to kids like a boss.
Protip: Your Santa was partly based on the Sint.
Yeah, you never had a slavery issue the way we did, so we actually kind of give a **** about racial issues in a way you've never had to.
How long ago was slavery abolished in america?
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This Dude!
*image*
On the plus side, at least the Dutch Santa dresses like a pimp too. Look at that cane!
Hell yeah mother****er.
This guys and his sidekicks give presents and candy to kids like a boss.
Protip: Your Santa was partly based on the Sint.
Yeah, you never had a slavery issue the way we did, so we actually kind of give a **** about racial issues in a way you've never had to.
How long ago was slavery abolished in america?
at the end of the civil war. durring the civil war, in 1862. before the war states had the right to decide whether they wanted to allow slavery or not. the war really had nothing to do with salvery. the south didnt like the federal government to have much power, preferring to let the states do things their own way. while the north was pushing for a stronger federal government. lincoln would have even allowed the south to have slaves if they stayed in the union. but they wanted to do their own thing, while the north didnt want to loose in on the tax revenue it was getting in the cotton trade. lincoln had his emancipation proclamation essentially ending slavery in the usa (though in the csa it persisted till the end of the war). it was originally used to get slaves, even freed slaves from the south, into the union army. when the south lost the war, it effectively ended slavery. last year was the 150th anniversary of the civil war so 150 years is a close approximation.
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But segregation carried on until much later. And that's definitely a cause of racial issues in America.
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yea, but only in the south. it took the civil rights movement in the 1960s to put that to an end.
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Nuke, go read the declarations of secession of all the Southern states and then try and tell me with a straight face that the Civil War really had nothing to do with slavery. You might also want to read the discourse and personal letters of prominent Southern politicians of the time. That war had everything to do with slavery, so much so that just about every last one of the states that seceded (might even be every single one, not sure) mentioned it prominently as a primary reason that they were seceding. This "states rights" bull**** that the South has been peddling ever since they got their asses rightfully kicked and were forced to stop enslaving other human beings needs to ****ing stop.
Also, -Joshua-, "nigger" is just about the most offensive thing you could call a black person in the US ever. To a Southerner in the not-so-distant past, saying that they treated black people like dirt would have been a grievous insult to dirt. Race relations in the US really were that bad, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the repercussions of the US' slave-holding past are still felt today.
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it did not. it had everything to do with the power of the federal government. the south didnt like having their state rights limited by a larger federal government, and yes slavely was one of those rights, but it was not the only one. the north certainly wasnt fighting for the negros, if you would have asked a northerner to go to war to free a negro he whould have laughed at you. no they were sent into battle to "preserve the union" while the south was going into battle to defend their state's rights. before the civil war, states had a lot more power than they do now.
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Cheers, Nuke
But segregation carried on until much later. And that's definitely a cause of racial issues in America.
This is actually something I forgot about. I was almost going to say "150 years ago yo, time to get over it."
But then this post reminded me that not until all that long ago, there were seperated places for black and white people in public transport and what not. Making it all a wee bit more recent.
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I'll just quote straight from the horse's mouth, then. This particular horse happens to be Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy:
"Slavery was without doubt the occasion of secession; out of it rose the breach of compact, for instance, on the part of several Northern States in refusing to comply with Constitutional obligations as to rendition of fugitives from service, a course betraying total disregard for all constitutional barriers and guarantees."
He wrote this in his memoirs in 1866, basically right after the war ended. The "rendition of fugitives from service" he mentions was referring to the Fugitive Slave Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850), which essentially required Northern states to return escaped slaves to their masters based on nothing more than someone's say so (i.e., all they had to do was say, "Hey, I recognize that guy! He's one of my employer's slaves!"). This ran completely roughshod over the Northern states' rights, by the way, since it removed from them the ability to determine if a claimed escaped slave actually was, and how to determine this. Now, while Article 4, Section 2 of the Constitution did require the return of escaped slaves, and the Northern states had attempted to circumvent this to varying degrees, it does not excuse trampling their rights, now does it?
Another bit of hypocrisy regarding the fugitive slave business is that the Southern states held nullification of federal law to be an explicit right of all the states (look up the Nullification Crisis for more on that subject), so if they were consistent with this, there should have been no complaint about the Northern states exercising their rights by not complying with the law!
The South also didn't think much of Lincoln or the Republican Party, and one of the other reasons they seceded can basically be boiled down to the fact the country elected a President they didn't like! See, for example, a portion of Georgia's Declaration of the Causes of Secession:
"A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state."
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anyway as far as the subject of this thread goes, ITT; Observer Bias.
I have some voices recorded in a haunted house, I think it says 'huperdink', or maybe 'plum pudding', or it could be 'dumb boutique'
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I'll just quote straight from the horse's mouth, then. This particular horse happens to be Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy:
"Slavery was without doubt the occasion of secession; out of it rose the breach of compact, for instance, on the part of several Northern States in refusing to comply with Constitutional obligations as to rendition of fugitives from service, a course betraying total disregard for all constitutional barriers and guarantees."
He wrote this in his memoirs in 1866, basically right after the war ended. The "rendition of fugitives from service" he mentions was referring to the Fugitive Slave Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850), which essentially required Northern states to return escaped slaves to their masters based on nothing more than someone's say so (i.e., all they had to do was say, "Hey, I recognize that guy! He's one of my employer's slaves!"). This ran completely roughshod over the Northern states' rights, by the way, since it removed from them the ability to determine if a claimed escaped slave actually was, and how to determine this. Now, while Article 4, Section 2 of the Constitution did require the return of escaped slaves, and the Northern states had attempted to circumvent this to varying degrees, it does not excuse trampling their rights, now does it?
Another bit of hypocrisy regarding the fugitive slave business is that the Southern states held nullification of federal law to be an explicit right of all the states (look up the Nullification Crisis for more on that subject), so if they were consistent with this, there should have been no complaint about the Northern states exercising their rights by not complying with the law!
The South also didn't think much of Lincoln or the Republican Party, and one of the other reasons they seceded can basically be boiled down to the fact the country elected a President they didn't like! See, for example, a portion of Georgia's Declaration of the Causes of Secession:
"A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state."
wikipedia is not a valid source when it comes to politics.
much of the history of the civil war underwent a rewrite during the civil rights movement. i see this as a guilt reduction amongst whites for holding slaves. to say "were not the bad guy, we went to war for you and your rights!". i also think this was a major factor in getting obama elected, in addition to the anti-republicanism developed following the bush years. but thats beside the point. to say that the war was all about slaves is just an oversimplification.
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Hmm... I wonder what those quotes were. Must've been them fabrications, there.. from when the history was re-writ.. :nervous:
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to say that the war was all about slaves is just an oversimplification.
And to say that it wasn't about slaves at all isn't? :)
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to say that the war was all about slaves is just an oversimplification.
And to say that it wasn't about slaves at all isn't? :)
Downplaying the role of slavery in the Traitor States' decision to secede is not an oversimplification. It's a blatant falsehood.
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Let's fight about it. :V
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this has been debated by historians for decades. and frankly i dont have the time for that kind of intellectual wankery.
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Nuke may not, but I do!
Somehow I think you guys aren't seeing the whole picture. Without an issue to contest between the federal government and the states, there would be no reason to complain about limited state's rights, and without a federal government limiting state's rights there would be no reason to complain about state's rights either. Point being slavery is only an issue if state's rights are an issue as well, and state's rights being the super-set of the problem it seems more appropriate to refer to that. I don't think I've read a single declaration of secession in which slavery was the only issue being discussed (granted, I've only skimmed four of them just now). I don't think anyone was saying that slavery wasn't one of the most obvious manifestations of this problem. It's really a bit of an absurd discussion we're having, really. If you could only say that the cause of the civil war was "slavery" xor "state's rights" it would be more appropriate to choose state's rights since that includes the issue and the reason why it's an issue, but I don't think anyone here is taking a true/false test on this atm.
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For those who claim that the Civil War was about slavery, explain why the Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free slaves in the North. The side that supposedly were fighting to end slavery.
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If it weren't about slavery, why write the Emancipation Proclamation at all?
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My god! Could it be that the Civil War was in fact a much more complicated affair than we amateur historians on an obscure video game modding forum think it was? Is it even remotely conceivable that slavery was a major factor in the war, and yet was also not the sole reason for the war? Surely there's no way we could reach a kind of.... consensus or or.... middle ground so to speak. If we were to do that, we could avoid arguing about the US Civil War for ten pages, and that just wouldn't be in the spirit of HLP! :(
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My god! Could it be that the Civil War was in fact a much more complicated affair than we amateur historians on an obscure video game modding forum think it was? Is it even remotely conceivable that slavery was a major factor in the war, and yet was also not the sole reason for the war? Surely there's no way we could reach a kind of.... consensus or or.... middle ground so to speak. If we were to do that, we could avoid arguing about the US Civil War for ten pages, and that just wouldn't be in the spirit of HLP! :(
No, it couldn't. I'm on the internet for ONE reason: information of questionable veracity and simplicity. Stop overcomplicating things with "reason" and "accuracy"!
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The problem with that is that the Southern states' only complaint about states' rights that actually matters (i.e., isn't either a blatant lie, complete bull****, or both) has to do with slavery. And besides which, their own vice president explicitly admitted the whole thing was over slavery, as I quoted earlier. The idea that the war was ever about states' rights at all came afterwards.
Anyway, it looks like only four states actually bothered putting together the reasons for their secession in a single document: Mississippi (http://www.civilwar.com/resources/government/confederate-states-of-america-government-documents/148335-declaration-of-secession-mississippi.html), Georgia (http://www.civilwar.com/resources/government/confederate-states-of-america-government-documents/148334-declaration-of-secession-georgia.html), Texas (http://www.civilwar.com/resources/government/confederate-states-of-america-government-documents/148337-declaration-of-secession-texas.html), and South Carolina (http://www.civilwar.com/resources/government/confederate-states-of-america-government-documents/148336-declaration-of-secession-south-carolina.html). I've looked at the statements of the others, and they're just legal stuff about how they voted for secession: "Blah blah we secede blah blah union dissolved blah blah the North sucks."
Mississippi doesn't say much of interest; they start talking about how awesome slavery is and how terrible it is that the North wants to end it in the second sentence and never stop.
Georgia goes off the deep end. In one sentence, they actually complain about the government paying for lighthouses and subsidizing fishermen. They also spin some weird conspiracy theory about how the North is waging total economic warfare on them and using the federal government to do it. They proceed to connect to the abolitionist movement in the North (what?) and essentially say that the Republican Party is a result of this grand economic conspiracy (what?). After this little jaunt, they mostly rant about the North doesn't support slavery, none of the Northern states are complying with the Fugitive Slave Act and thus are in abrogation of their Constitutional responsibilities (which, I suppose, is technically true, but I'm not blaming them for it), and talk about how mean and terrible it is that slavery is forbidden in the territories.
Texas explicitly admits that they subsumed themselves into the US when they were (willingly) annexed, and maintains that they were explicitly admitted as a slave state, which is true. They then have this to say:
"The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States."
Say what? This is a blatant ****ing lie, as should be immediately obvious. Of course, what they actually mean is that slavery was not permitted in any of the territories bought conquered from Mexico in the Mexican-American war. That territory also wasn't "owned in common by all the States." It was administered and owned by the federal government. After this howler, they talk about Kansas and how bad the Northerners were there, when it was the Southerners who came in a rush to prevent Kansas from becoming a free state (Google "Bleeding Kansas" for more on that little episode). They didn't succeed there; Kansas was admitted as a free state. Anyway, they do actually have something that could possibly be a valid complaint in all this. They complain that the federal government hasn't done enough to secure the borders of Texas against Mexican bandit and Indian incursion. Of course, they then complain about how the government didn't pay them for their expenses in repelling these incursions. My guess is they asked, and got told "that's a matter for the state police. No, you aren't getting money from us for it." Most of the rest of the document is either complaining about how the North hates slavery, or is full of effusive praise of how awesome slavery is.
Now we get to South Carolina, the first of the states to secede. What do they have to say? They are in fact the only state that mentions states' rights in their Declaration of Secession, but pretty soon reveal that they were only talking about their right to own slaves. Every single grievance they list is in relation to slavery or the abolition thereof. As a subset of this, towards the end they also complain about the Republican Party, and how the duly elected President, Abraham Lincoln, (gasp!) opposes slavery, and has called for its abolition.
Also of interest may be this page (http://www.filibustercartoons.com/CSA.htm), which details the differences between the US and CSA constitutions, and has the texts side by side. The TL;DR is that the Confederate states only gained a few minor rights under the CSA Constitution, but the right to own slaves was put in in just about as ironclad language as possible in multiple places. The CSA Constitution does not modify the Supremacy Clause, Interstate Commerce Clause, or the Necessary and Proper Clause, which tend to be major sticking points for states' rights activists.
For those who claim that the Civil War was about slavery, explain why the Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free slaves in the North. The side that supposedly were fighting to end slavery.
The Emancipation Proclamation was, at the time, largely a political move. Lincoln's only initial goal was to preserve the Union; there's a rather famous quote of his where he says that he would willingly let slavery continue if it would preserve the Union. Of course it wouldn't have, since at least for Georgia, one of the reasons for seceding was that a Republican President was elected at all.
Anyway, during the Civil War, there was great concern in the North over whether the so-called "Border States" would secede. These were, at first, Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland. West Virginia could be added to this group later; it didn't become a state until 1863, when it broke away from Virginia and returned to the Union. All three of the original border states were slave-holding, and Lincoln could not risk alienating them and potentially driving them to the Confederacy, especially Maryland. Washington, D. C., you may remember, is on the border of Maryland and Virginia, and was thus directly across the river from enemy territory. Had Maryland decided to secede, the Union capital would have been surrounded, and its position completely untenable. This probably wouldn't have resulted in the end of the war, mind, but it would have been a great blow.
It wasn't until later in the war that Lincoln came to believe that freeing the slaves was a worthy war aim in and of itself; he had begun to change his position before writing the Emancipation Proclamation, but IIRC he had not yet fully come around to the hardline abolitionist point of view (he initially favored a slow phasing out of slavery over several decades, as I recall). The Emancipation Proclamation also served to placate the abolitionists as well, began to shift the North's war aims towards total abolition, and also may have helped dissuade any European power from intervening on the Confederates' side. Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emancipation_Proclamation) actually has a pretty good article on the whole subject.
In short, the South seceded almost entirely because of slavery, while the North then proceeded to fight a war the South started to preserve the US and suppress the South's rebellion. Only later did the war end up becoming about slavery as well for the North.
Edited for spelling.
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Urgh, what did I just say!
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If it weren't about slavery, why write the Emancipation Proclamation at all?
i always understood it was to encourage freed slaves to enlist in the union army.
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My god! Could it be that the Civil War was in fact a much more complicated affair than we amateur historians on an obscure video game modding forum think it was? Is it even remotely conceivable that slavery was a major factor in the war, and yet was also not the sole reason for the war?
That's kinda the point I was making. If the Civil War was solely about slavery the Emancipation Proclamation would have ended slavery in America. The fact that it didn't shows that it was much more complicated than that.
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Astronomiya has raised some pretty compelling arguments/evidence that slavery was paramount to (though of course not solely) the cause of conflict; I'm surprised nobody has yet addressed his post.
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My god! Could it be that the Civil War was in fact a much more complicated affair than we amateur historians on an obscure video game modding forum think it was? Is it even remotely conceivable that slavery was a major factor in the war, and yet was also not the sole reason for the war? Surely there's no way we could reach a kind of.... consensus or or.... middle ground so to speak. If we were to do that, we could avoid arguing about the US Civil War for ten pages, and that just wouldn't be in the spirit of HLP! :(
(http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-frogout.gif)
But seriously I'd go so far as to wager that people at the time of the Civil War weren't even unanimously agreed on what it was about.
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The job of politician needs to be made more attractive to people who would make good politicians. I'm sure anyone who really wanted to make a difference would not be able to deal with all the crap that goes with it. Thus human garbage like this get to the top instead of people with ideals, values, brains, strength and will that should be running things.
There are no great leaders anymore. And I believe that's because instead of having their every move picked over by the press, they were left to quietly get on with the job and assemble men of talent around them and get things done. There wouldn't be all these power hungry people around then because they'd be outnumbered and dealt with by people who actually wanted to make a difference.
Someone could be the best politician in the World, but thanks to the image politicians get these days, they'd be thought of as scum by the majority anyway, and others would likely steal any achievements they made. Great peple don't brag about their accomplishments, they just get on with it. No one knows the names of any of the real great people in this World, the inventors, the modernisers, the revolutionisers, the philanthropists. But they know the names of celebrities.
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The job of politician needs to be made more attractive to people who would make good politicians. I'm sure anyone who really wanted to make a difference would not be able to deal with all the crap that goes with it. Thus human garbage like this get to the top instead of people with ideals, values, brains, strength and will that should be running things.
There are no great leaders anymore. And I believe that's because instead of having their every move picked over by the press, they were left to quietly get on with the job and assemble men of talent around them and get things done. There wouldn't be all these power hungry people around then because they'd be outnumbered and dealt with by people who actually wanted to make a difference.
You should read some newspapers from 1776.
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The job of politician needs to be made more attractive to people who would make good politicians. I'm sure anyone who really wanted to make a difference would not be able to deal with all the crap that goes with it. Thus human garbage like this get to the top instead of people with ideals, values, brains, strength and will that should be running things.
There are no great leaders anymore. And I believe that's because instead of having their every move picked over by the press, they were left to quietly get on with the job and assemble men of talent around them and get things done. There wouldn't be all these power hungry people around then because they'd be outnumbered and dealt with by people who actually wanted to make a difference.
You should read some newspapers from 1776.
I do not know what happened in 1776. But I do know there are plenty of brutal tyrants in history. And the World was a harsher place.
EDIT: American Revolution. I could have guessed. I have no idea what you might be referring to in the papers though. I'm English btw.
I don't think I did as good a job with that initial post as I would like, although I did edit it after your post. What I'm saying is people who get good things done, they do it quietly. No one is shoving cameras and microphones into the faces of scientists and inventors. They're just left to get on with it quietly and they produce results. Now with the current political structure, we DO need to keep an eye on them, I'm not suggesting don't. But I just can't imagine any of the great thinkers or doers of this World wanting to be a politician for these reasons.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776
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My point is just that the media has always been merciless, petty, and partisan. Our country has been deeply polarized in the past. In a sense the post-WW2 island of civility was an anomaly, and today's increasingly partisan bickering is a return to the status quo.
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My point is just that the media has always been merciless, petty, and partisan. Our country has been deeply polarized in the past. In a sense the post-WW2 island of civility was an anomaly, and today's increasingly partisan bickering is a return to the status quo.
I think that is the main point. What I've been floundering around trying to grab onto. People in power should be scrutinised. But scrutinised fairly. The press, if they interview you, they don't want facts, they want to trip you up. If it was different, if they were unbiased, and sang the praises of those who accomplished things as well as exposed corruption, great people would come to the job I think. Today, I view politicians at best with apathy. I've only ever voted once, and that was to block a dangerous minority candidate, not because I wanted my vote to win.
Yes, I truly hate today's press. If an alien came down and watched the news, they'd think we lived in the most terrible society, when even in the current economic climate we are prosperous, compared to most of the World.
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I'll go onto another point. Society in general is not geared for producing great people. It starts in the schools. The teachers and authorities bend over backwards to drag wasters who don't give a **** kicking and screaming through the system, while the people who do want to learn are left to fend for themselves. I believe it's called "No child left behind" in America. We have something similar in the UK. They get through despite the system, not because of it. If such resources were directed towards those people, and I'm not talking about just the gifted, although imagine if those resources were directed to them instead to groom them for important roles in adulthood. I mean anyone who tries. Anyone who wants to learn. A person with severe learning difficulties who tries is worth any number of able bodied people who don't give a ****. Throw those people away, and focus on the people who want to learn. Those people who don't give a **** drag everyone else down with them. They offer nothing to society, and damage the prospects of those who will offer something to society.
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Astronomiya has raised some pretty compelling arguments/evidence that slavery was paramount to (though of course not solely) the cause of conflict; I'm surprised nobody has yet addressed his post.
Because it's too long.
I'd offer another interpretation for you: John Brown was the proximate cause of the Civil War.
Not his actual actions, but the way he was heroized in the North in general and by the Republican Party in particular for his plan to incite a racial war and have most people of power and property in the South murdered in their beds. Lincoln himself expressed admiration for Brown a couple times. When a man is elected who openly supported murdering you in your bed, bad things will happen one way or another.
Now, to say that slavery is a root cause is also true, but you're all viewing it as a moral issue rather than an economic one. The Civil War was inevitable because of the marriage of two completely different economic systems with no overlapping interests. The Emancipation Proclamation is the proof of this, by annihilating slavery in the states where it was the pillar of all economic activity (excepting Maryland, but only because Lincoln had arrested the legislature before they could secede and there was suspension of habeus corpus and the like). Karaj's point about it is thus turned on its head.