PC Gone Too Far

Having your child SOLD, with no chance of ever seeing it again, was fairly common practice. That's a far cry from custody issues. In Canada, we recognize the concept of cultural genocide. You don't have to physically kill people to kill their society. Loss of freedom, loss of identity, loss of family all contribute to making slavery like death. No. I said that slavery is "like" death. Slavery IS genocide. Huh? You think that sending a whole society to the afterlife before they want to go is not genocide? That's what I said. Their lives were like death and Hell. They were hoping for Heaven after their physical death.

Of course. The first step in solving a problem is understanding that you have one. Thanks for making my point. By remembering the evils that I do (that my society does), future generations will not be condemned to repeat history. And when nobody is evil, as Percy claims, it also loses its utility.

Maybe they should be. Then we wouldn't have people making excuses.

What would you describe as the lessons to be learned from the antebellum South?

This seems, at best, an oversimplification. I may be going off topic a bit here, but I think it all ties in to the whole idea of the lessons we draw from history.It seems to me that slavery dominates the American understanding of history too much; in that many things are explained as being the result of slavery, while ignoring the fact that the same or similar things happen(ed) in places without the legacy of slavery.When looking at the right to bear arms, for example, we can see that this was a fairly common demand of liberal constitutionalists in 18th and 19th century Europe, where clearly the threat of slave rebellions was not present. That the quntessential example of 18th centiury liberal constitutionalism (ie. the USA) included this in its constitution is not too surprising.When we further take into account that the drafters of the consitution had, in their immediate history, just been in a situation where the state had attempted to restrict the flow of arms to citizens to prevent a rebellion, the idea that the successful rebels would want to prevent such a thing from happening again doesn't seem unusual; without needing any fear of slave rebellion.

I haven't seen him claim that.

Your perception of slavery is lacking.

By Ringo's logic, it's most definitely will.According to him, a person who never owned a slave but was conscripted into the Confederate Army was an evil person who fought to preserve slavery.So, anything your country does you are directly responsible for.Being a member of a country that continues to burn fossil fuels while they know that they're ruining the planet makes you an evil person.You really should feel bad about yourself

I agree. The answer is much more complex. However the process of adopting the constitution involved attracting as much agreement as possible, and one of the reasons the 2nd amendment appealed to some folks was the reason Rrhain gave.Slavery and the Second Amendment: From Slave Patrol Militias to School Shootings

quote:

---

Professor Bogus[1] concurs with Payton. In his close analysis of James Madison’s writings, Bogus described the South’s obsession with militias during the ratification process: The militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population. Anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats. He also described how leading anti-Federalists Patrick Henry and George Mason used the fear of slave rebellions to drum up opposition to the Constitution, and how Madison used the Second Amendment to placate Virginians and win their support for ratification.

---

Rrhain overstatement notwithstanding, history does indeed reveal a connection between the 2nd amendment and the need to put down slave rebellions.[1]Because citing a quote from a "Professor Bogus" might cause one to the post out of hand, I here provide a link to the professor's web page. Official Site of Carl T. Bogus - Professor, Author & SpeakerEdited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

On the one hand, we have a person claiming such as you describe above were evil, on the other hand, we have folk claiming that even owning slaves was not evil. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between those extremes. What's your opinion?

Yes, we can tell that story without once describing slavery as evil. How does the story change or become harder to tell when evilness is not overlooked. I see no evidence that people who call slavery morally bankrupt have any problem understanding historical events. I'm willing to accept the general principle that we might overlook some good qualities in folk because of slavery, but the story of how the Confederacy came into being would not seem to be told without mentioning slavery at all.At best we could tell the story and leave the characterization of the those folks up to readers. How would adding the characterization make the story incorrect? Is it really preferred to describe the slave trade in terms like "The Atlantic slave trade between the 1500s and the 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations". Should describe the arrival of Africans during that period as immigration.[1] Does that tell the story more correctly in anyone's eyes.I see in this thread folks who talk about the fact that in a previous generation people considered homosexuality evil as some kind of cautionary tale. If I were to go back into the archives, I wonder how many folks I might find who did call those folks homophobes and who correctly compared the suffering of gays to those of African Americans during the 60s, who now claim that it is wrong to characterize folks who were even worse in their behavior?[1]http://www.nbcnews.com/...ing-african-slaves-workers-n438836

Practically all my main supporting arguments have been ignored, and there's no evidence that repeating them yet again would bear any fruit. My Lincoln quotes had a specific and narrow focus. They were not offered to broaden the debate or divert discussion further away from the topic, but to provide better expressions of what I've been saying. Well, duh! So what the hell were you thinking when you denied it? I'll tell you what it made me think: "I'm not having a discussion with a rational person, this is a waste of time, keep replies short." I didn't say it did. What I did say was that since the latter half of your post was all excerpt and almost no description, I wasn't sure what argument you were making, so I asked what your argument was. The misstatement was called to your attention without further comment. No, that's not my argument (what a surprise, you're misstating my arguments again). My argument is that it's a distraction *to you*. If it's not a distraction to you then just answer the question: Why did the South so vehemently embrace and defend slavery? It isn't because they were evil. I even provided my own answer hoping to provoke meaningful discussion, but it was ignored. Well that's wonderful that no one's arguing that Southern evil was a meaningful factor leading up to the Civil War, but then why are you insisting the South was evil? Well, the North wasn't making sincere offers of shared sacrifice, and since you probably disagree therein lies an interesting discussion, but we'd be wandering even farther afield from the topic. You seem to keep forgetting that our disagreement about slavery is not qualitative but terminological.My main point is that calling Southerners evil has no objective value, and you keep cycling back with, "If you don't believe Southerners were evil then you don't believe slavery was evil, and you're wrong." And off we go again. Why don't you just give up this useless insistence that Southerners were evil? If you want to believe that in your heart then that's fine, but it has no objective value and doesn't belong in the discussion. That's a good start, but... It would be difficult interpreting this as a neutral and objective statement even coming from someone else, and coming from you after all your arguments to the contrary it just reads like the long form of, "They're evil." Yes, judge.--Percy

The ban on the international slave trade (in 1807 I think) forced the South to rely upon itself for the supply of slaves and made slave families important. Slave children had little value as a commodity, but their value would naturally increase as they approached maturity.The breaking up of slave families was a more common criticism, and the South's answer was that every effort was made to keep slave families whole. This was probably not anywhere as true as the South liked to believe, but even had it been every slave owner's sincere goal to keep slave families whole the exigencies of the world still interfered. The variability of agricultural success and failure would have forced occasional financial stress, creditors could force sales, heirs often had little concerns for the fate of slave families as they administered an estate, and so forth. Right, I think we get it down here, too. Interestingly, the South *did* understand this to their core being, but they applied it to themselves and not their slaves. This was one of the many contradictions the North noted about Southern arguments in favor of slavery, but the South convinced themselves that the negro race was subhuman and not entitled to human rights. I originally thought you were just drawing parallels between slavery and genocide to make a point, which seems fine, but if you're walking that line then you can't insist that literally "Slavery IS genocide" because that is false. I think we get your point about the extermination of a culture and the trampling of hopes and dreams, and you can emphasize that point by drawing upon more extreme terms like "genocide," but genocide is the systematic killing of a group and is not an equivalent term for slavery.--Percy

That imposing your will upon another people is extremely difficult and often counterproductive. Despite our experiences in Central America and the Caribbean nations and Cuba (there's a reason "gringo" is an epithet) and Korea and Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, we haven't learned the lesson yet. The WWI and WWII experiences were great victories (both militarily and, especially for WWII, morally), but with the unfortunate consequence of providing examples where interference and imposition of our ways had positive consequences.--Percy

Do you never tire of misrepresenting my views? What is the point of this? Anyone reading your posts in this thread is going to think, "Geez, there's idiots in this thread arguing that owning slaves was not evil." I resent these continual misrepresentations. I'm not arguing that, and you know it.What I am arguing is that it makes no sense to judge history on some continuum from good to evil. Learn it. Love it. Live it. And every once in a while, get it right.I don't get your problem. Do you think misrepresentation is some kind of honorable debate technique?--Percy