I think you are probably wrong. I will start another thread in GD if you disagree, but allow me to flesh out my premise here and we’ll see what you think.
I think extremists who kidnap reporters and cut off their heads on the internets make all Muslims look bad. I do not judge the group by the actions of the individuals, however. I’m not saying that Muslims are bad. I’m saying that as long as there are those in their community who think they are justified in strapping on a bomb vest and blowing up a store full of civilians, than folks are going to treat that group differently. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, just that it’s a fact. Global history is my cite.
Not all people who live in the South are racists. But there are a lot of them there, and there are enough of them making enough noise that it paints all folks with a lilting accent with a bit of that brush, true or not. It sucks, but it’s part of human nature. Especially when they take up that “Southern Pride” type attitude.
It takes 2 sides to create an “us vs. them” devide. Both sides are at fault here.
Just to illustrate a point i would like to say that this thread has spiraled downhill from the OP to a more or less blanket condemnation of “The South.” During my career I have lived in:
Texas ( my home state and I hate the place)
California (L.A. and Santa Cruz)
Oregon
Kentucky
Ohio
Kansas
Arizona
Florida
I have encountered racists in each and every one of these states and in equal proportion as the the people of “The South.” If “The South” is such a hot bed of racism, how do we account for the racism I encountered in these other states? I’m fair sick of the condemnation of “The South.”
I’m sure I will regret posting this but I’m a little bit irritated.
Honestly I don’t really see much difference between your two scenarios. You acknowledge that right or wrong both segments are judged on the vocal minority within their ranks. The only difference I can take away is that you do not judge the Muslim religion based on the crazy people that may have the same religious views or live in the same region. But with regards to the south you would feel comfortable assuming I am a racist if we were to meet and you heard a deep Alabama accent, until I proved differently or you simply got to know me better.
I understand if you want to start a seperate thread on the topic. I most likely would not participate since I don’t post to GD for the most part. In fact this may be the first thread I have ever posted to in this forum. I enjoy reading the debates since the regulars can articulate and argue much better than I can. I would definitely read the thread, but would most likely not participate (I mention this simply to set expectations if you decide to start the thread).
BTW, thanks for replying in a reasonable manner to my previous post.
[QUOTE=Dick Gregory]
Down South they don’t care how close I am as long as I don’t get too big, and up North they don’t care how big I am as long as I don’t get too close.
[/QUOTE]
The analogy is straining already, but technically the pasta places they’ve been going to for years would have to have buffets, allowing the Chinese eaters to have Chinese on their plate and Pasta eaters get Pasta. Considering how convoluted the analogy is getting, I regret starting it. My point was just that the South’s secession was essentially: “Rather than try to keep this group together with it’s constant bickering, why don’t you do your thing and we’ll do our (despicable) thing.”
Isn’t that bolded portion true of the Union, though? It’s certainly effectively the case.
I think the difficulty we’re having here is semantic. They wanted Southern control. Since they were in the South, I would consider that more local.
In my scenario, 100% wanted to become independent (as an intellectual exercise). The only avenue available to them is to beg the other states to let them leave.
What’s your standard for which nation’s borders are permanent and which are not? Should Israel keep the Gaza Strip and West Bank because all those Palestinians are just traitorous secessionists? Should southern Sudan just resign itself to continued religious strife? “Sorry, Tibet, we’ve already drawn the maps and China gets to keep you…”
Every reasonable person can see the wisdom of redrawing borders to rectify past conquests or historical injustices, but is this really all that different? Why should a region of soil remain (for all practical purposes) the irrevocable territory of one country because long-dead politicians signed on in a bygone era? If the current views and loyalty of the people who live there now lead them to want independence, it seems reasonable to me that they be able to do something about it.
Let me put it this way, imagine that the British Empire was effectively a democracy. If the Colonies had had due representation in Parliament, would you have been satisfied that their motion to seek independence was defeated by the MP’s from Blackburn, Salisbury, and Kent?
I’m sorry, I misread your post. I thought you were referring to the overlap between Neo-Confederates and White Separatists on one side and Confederate Flag wavers on the other. (I suppose the fact that I read the two groups as essentially the same thing gives you my view on the matter. Near total overlap, I would imagine.)
No, I was referring to the overlap between Neo-Confederates on one side and White Nationalists on the other. But it’s not an overlap; nowadays the latter set contains the former.
Indians had to convince the British to let them go. In the same way, South Carolina needed to convince the United States to let them go. They cannot make a unilateral decision to cop a walk.
Forget the analogy. What the South was saying was “We cannot be part of a group we cannot control.” They did not want local control. They wanted control. You can’t stand on the principle of more local control when the proximate cause of your leaving the group is that you can no longer exert control on others, and immediately form a group that has even less local control.
If I beat up my brother every day for years, am I making a principled stand when I call the cops on him the first time he is big enough to fight back? Can I claim that I had to do it because bully can’t be tolerated?
Of course it is. But no one ever claimed the Union was fighting for the principle of local control.
Who cares? That was at most a side effect and not the point. You can’t choose an arbitrary result of secession and claim it was a guiding principle.
Yep. Because this nation is interconnected. My state has been paying for the rest of the country for years. Do you get to take all the things my money paid for with you?
That is all very well, but it does not address any of the points of the Civil War. The South was quite happy with Union as long as they had the whip hand. The South did not believe in the general principle of succession. The South attacked the North. A large fraction of the population of the South did not want to secede. There are real situations where breaking up a country makes sense for a variety of grounds. Ultimately, you need enough force or enough persuasion to make it stick.
Actually, I would have. Even the U.S. Revolution, as well as it has turned out for me, was not so cut and dried as most of us are taught. The Tax Act that they were protesting in Boston? It lowered taxes on tea. Why was that a cause for protest? Because those organizing it were tea smugglers and the new legal price undercut them.
I just went back over the thread prior to your first post. The only posts that seemed to address the whole of the South rather than Neo-Confederates specifically was addressing things like state flags. And you really can’t claim that the state flag does not represent the state, as that is its whole point.
The fact is that Neo-Confederalism is almost entirely a Southern phenomenon. And it is also a fact that Neo-Confederalism largely gets a pass in the South in a way that Northern find disturbing.
Side note, when you responded to** John DiFool’**s first post, you seemed to miss his point. He was not talking about being shamed in the sense of being humbled by someone else, he meant ashamed of past behavior.
Not a fair comparison. That arrangement was an empire of Britain over India; i.e., the Indians were subjects of a foreign government in which they had no voice (and in which British voters had some limited voice, depending on the period). The U.S. does not involve an empire of, say, New York over South Carolina; if an empire, it is a different kind, an empire of the whole over the parts, and all the parts are represented in the government of the whole. Just like your state is an empire of the state government over its towns and counties – and if you think that’s an unfair arrangement and want local independence, why, where would that end?! With every house an independent state?! I don’t and I hope you don’t want to live in the America Neal Stephenson portrayed in Snow Crash (every gated community a sovereign state).
I recall in the 80s and 90s, when the former Soviet bloc was breaking up, how many American politicians were waxing poetic about the Important Principle of Self-Determination.
I really don’t think you can come up with any simple one-size-fits-all answer to the problem of self-determination, secession, or whatever you want to call it.
If Slobovia is ruled by the Ruritanian Empire, with the country governed by a Ruritanian Viceroy with autocratic powers, and the Slobovians subjected to confiscatory levels of taxation (which lead to frequent famines), forbidden from speaking the Slobovian language or practicing their native religious traditions, and the Ruritanians routinely kill any Slobovian who gives them any trouble (with a pretty loose definition of “giving us trouble”), I think most people will support the noble Slobovian freedom fighters in their struggle for liberty.
If Slobovia is a republic in the multi-ethnic Federal Republic of Ruritania, with the Slobovian Republic having both representation in the democratic central government of the Federal Republic and internal autonomy under its own elected government, complete with protections for the Slobovian language and other cultural traditions, freedom of religion guaranteed for all citizens of the Federal Republic, and also protection for ethnic Ruritanians and the Wisian minority within Slobovia to speak their own languages and practice their own traditions; and Slobovia wants to break free of the Federal Republic of Ruritania in order to indulge in their time-honored pastime of massacring those damn dirty Wisians and those snotty Ruritanians, I think most people might have a problem with that (especially if ethnic Slobovians are only 43% of the population of the Slobovian Republic, with the rest being Wisians, ethnic Ruritanians, and members of other ethnic groups).
I don’t think the secession of South Carolina–in which the minority but dominant ethnic group of South Carolina chose to break free of the federal union in whose government they were fully represented, just to make sure they could continue keeping the majority but oppressed ethnic group of South Carolina in a state of chattel slavery without any possible future interference–is a model that proponents of more self-determination and localism should really want to embrace. It’s just a lousy example to use to make your argument.
It was the principle of national self-determination. You know, that idea from the 19th Century, that every ethnocultural “nation” should have its own state, united and independent. The standard by which the Russian Empire (and later the USSR) used to be called “the prison-house of nations.” Ethnoculturally, Lithuanians are not Russians. Ethnoculturally, South Carolinians are Americans. Even Indians and Native Hawaiians are, nowadays.