…excepting the ones that aren’t. In this case, given that Shodan and I are together make an albatross, and we agree on this case, which of us is the hypocrite?
Your post is a lazy accusation, and it’s exactly what my sig is bitching about.
Forget the racism, withhold funds until they remove symbols of treason from thier flags.
Cite for the “left wing” trying to legislate against racist or offensive speech?
And why did you put “racist” in scare quotes? Is there no such thing as racist speech?
I don’t have a cite for anyone trying to legislate for it, all I have is my own personal experience with a lot of leftists who always demand that people be fired or forced to resign for speaking their mind on a controversial topic and expressing a right-wing point of view. Right here in my town, General Peter Pace was awarded a chairmanship at the Kelley School of Business at IU. When Pace was found to have made remarks saying that gays should not be in the military, people around here were livid, and foaming at the mouth to have Pace removed from his honorary position at the Kelley school. The former vice presidential candidate John Edwards gave a speech at IU, some time later, to much fanfare - this was after it was revealed that he had cheated on his wife, while she was suffering from Stage IV breast cancer. I did not read one single letter to the editor or hear one single comment from a leftist suggesting that Edwards should not have been allowed to speak, or that he was a bad person in any way, because he cheated on his wife while she suffered from cancer. Why is it that a general who says that there shouldn’t be gays in the military is evil, but a politician who cheats on his wife while she has cancer is hunky-dory?
OTOH, Jumping ahead about 19 years, we have Hazelwood, and apparently they do:
Now I’m waiting for the decision Diogenes references from a few months ago. Did the free speech concept get reversed yet again?
I was thinking of Morse v. Frederick. I meant to say a couple of years ago, not a couple of months.
First, it needs to be reiterated that there’s no 1st Amendment issue here. There’s no involvement of government, hence no Constitutional infringement.
Secondly, the cases are not really analogous since you’re comparing public hate speech by a person in somewhat of a public position to private sexual behavior of a person who held NO public position (and why should anyone, right, left or indifferent, care about private sexual behavior in ANY case?). I would point out that the left is consistent in both these cases in seeing private sexual behavior as nobody else’s business.
One situation is a guy being a jerk in his personal life and the other situation is a guy who wants to deny privilege to thousands of people? I’m really disappointed in Edwards but I don’t think the two situations are comparable.
OK, if you want to define fucking another woman behind your wife’s back while she is fighting for her life against advanced breast cancer as “being a jerk,” then you can do that. But I don’t view that as being a jerk, I view it as being a morally reprehensible man who is far worse than a general who simply reiterated the military’s typical line on homosexuals in the service. I guess this is a matter of perspective.
It sure is. I view other people’s sex lives as none of my fucking business. Do you keep tabs on your neighbors to see if they’re cheating on their spouses? If not, why not? Why is one private citizen’s sex life your business, but not another’s?
John Edwards’ sex life affected zero other people (and I don’t see what cancer has to do with it. Is it worse to cheat on sick wives than healthy wives?). The General was expressing a desire to keep millions of people from having equal civil rights.
Would you have a problem with a black General saying white people shouldn’t be allowed in the military?
Yeah, I would. But those would just be words. I judge a man by his deeds. General Pace is not preventing homosexuals from openly serving in the military - that’s already their policy, and chances are that most other generals agree with him.
Whether or not government was involved, in this case it was an instance of the left-wing crowd demanding that a man be removed from an honorary position because of what he said. General Pace is a practicing Catholic and his anti-homosexual stance was simply him asserting his religious beliefs. Do I agree with them? No, but he has a right to say what he wants and not lose a position over it. But that’s just me. Obviously others don’t feel that way.
If you want to define treating people as second class citizens undeserving of basic rights just because of an accident of their birth as reiterating a line, then you can do that. Ohhhh man the smarm it feels soooooo good, doesn’t it?
One person was a jerk in his family life. It’s not cool, I don’t like it. I specifically mentioned I was disappointed. And when I say I was disappointed I want to say I didn’t have a glowing image of the guy in my mind when I started. I never thought he was all that great. But even with my low expectations he still disappointed me.
It’s probably how republicans felt when they found out about Newt Gingrich’s transgressions. Ahahahaha no I’m just kidding they don’t care about that stuff unless you’re a Dem.
Anyway, back on track, what Edwards did was a personal failing that’s ultimately between him and his wife and kids. Those are the people affected by Edwards’ actions.
Your General? His actions serve to further marginalize thousands of people that only want to serve our nation. His actions tell them they aren’t good enough. They don’t deserve it. His actions reinforce a cultural oppression against a minority. I’m no advocate of adultery under any circumstances, but systemic bigotry trumps it easily on my list of social evils.
Hmmm. Thanks for trying to make me exercise my brain.
The Union did not demand abolition of slavery until after the war started. Hence my confusion, I guess.
Slavery divided the U.S. into two political power blocks as I mentioned, but it was the South’s contention that States Rights (and the Territories looking to become states) was in jeapordy.
Link to S. Carolina’s Articles of Secession: http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/decl-sc.htm
Paragraphs 13 - 15 asserts the idea of semi-sovereign States united for common cause.
Paragraphs 18 - 21 indentifies the political powerblock (of the North), and it’s impact on S. Carolina.
Link to other Articles of Secession: http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html
Slavery forced the issue early (and exasperated by making such a clear geographical dividing line), no doubt.
It still seems to be a political and economic struggle to me, with slavery being central (economic) issue.
He has a right to say it. keeping his position is not a right, though. There is nothing that says a private institution can’t cut ties with him. By your logic, an employer can’t fire an employee for telling him to fuck off.
Public protest, boycotts and the like are just part of free speech. I can say what I want, and people can respond to it how they want. A guy working the drive-through at Chick-fil-A can call a customer a cunt, and that customer can ask the management to fire him. The Chick-fil-A is free to make its own decision as to what is best for its own business. That’s how it works. If a private business or institution wants to put somebody in a public position, then they’re going to have to deal with how that person represents them publicly, and with how the public responds to them. A college had a pesron in a public position. That person publicly declared that a segement of the population (many of whom attend that college) did not deserve equal human rights. The public expressed its displeasure of the college. That’s how it works.
The John Edwards thing isn’t really parallel. For one thing, it did not involve speech (which I thought was the point of this discussion), and for another thing, Edwards was in no public office or position, so what would you expect the public demand? He had no job or position to be fired from.
I think you need to scrap the Edwards comparison and try to come up with an example of actual offensive speech by someone in a public position which could be described as “liberal” and for which the political left did not complain.
But that contention, or at least the fact that they cared about that contention, was bs. They said it was about state’s rights, sure, but as soon as they were their own nation they took the right of slavery away from the states and gave it federal protection. The Confederate version of state’s rights said that states had no right to outlaw slavery.
From here. Or…
From, Article 1, Section 9-4 of the Confederate Constitution.
Bah. I hate it when I learn something new at this (my) old age. Heh.
The secessionists were absolutely pro-slavery and founded a state (the Confederacy) on slavery. The position of the Unionists is not as clear-cut. The Unionists were at pains to state that they had no intention–at the start of the war–of marching into South Carolina or Georgia or Mississippi and taking their slaves by force. Lincoln said that he wanted only to maintain the Union and prevent the country from being divided, not to abolish slavery.
But then why would the South have seceded over slavery in the first place, if the North wasn’t trying to abolish slavery? Because in 1860 the U.S. outside of the slaveholding states was controlled by people who were anti-slavery. The Republican Party was founded as an explicitly anti-slavery party. They weren’t “abolitionists”–they weren’t planning on forcibly ending slavery in states where it was a going concern. But they wanted to restrict the spread of slavery to new areas. They were deeply unhappy at being made to personally take part in upholding the slave system by enforcing fugitive slave laws, and increasingly refused to do so. They did want to contain slavery in the hopes that it would eventually die out. There was also a radical sometimes violent minority who did favor immediate abolition, by force if need be; e.g., John Brown. The slaveholders saw it as a classic slippery slope–like (and I mean no moral equivalencies by these comparisons, only an analogy of the political dynamic at work) pro-choicers leery that any restrictions on abortion will lead to a complete ban, or gun owners fearful that any gun control is the first step towards general confiscation.
So the slaveholders were faced in 1860 with the rest of the country having elected a government with the open intention of “containing” slavery and halting its spread–treating the central economic, social, and political institution of the slave states like the swine flu–and citizens in the free states refusing to do their constitutional duty to uphold slavery in the slave states, and a radical minority trying to spark armed insurrection by the slaves. The secessionists believed the handwriting was on the wall, and that if they stayed in the Union slavery would inevitably be abolished, later if not now, and so they choose slavery over union. Ironically enough, they almost certainly guaranteed that slavery was ended far more quickly and decisively than it would have been had they not chose such desperate measures to protect it.
The only states’ rights the secessionists mentioned with any regularity involved slavery. When it came to the fugitive slave laws, the South had no use for states’ rights; conversely, some Northern states explicitly used the rhetoric of states’ rights to justify their laws nullifying the federal constitutional guarantee that fugitive slaves would be returned to their masters. And the territories were not in jeopardy of anything–the issues were, would the various territories become slave states or free states? Opponents of slavery wanted to be able to bar slavery in territories; the slaveholders contended that neither Congress nor the territorial governments had the power to restrict slavery–only a state government could do that–leaving the way open for those territories to join the existing slave states as new slave states.
The state declarations of cause do an excellent job of showing the centrality of slavery to the Southern cause: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world” (Mississippi; note the Mississippians don’t talk about “states’ rights” at all, only about “the right of property in slaves”); “That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations…” (Texas). And from South Carolina’s declaration, the power blocs are not “North” and “South” or “agrarian” and “industrial” or “the Old Thirteen Colonies” and “the West”–they’re “non-slaveholding states” and “slaveholding states”. South Carolina sought to excercise its putative right of sovereign self-determination because the non-slaveholding states were threatening slavery.
Without slavery, there was no issue. There were no political conflicts without slavery; economic conflicts–other than slavery–were marginal and capable of being compromised on. Only slavery could not really be compromised; and slavery led to secession and the war.
Yeah, I’m seeing (agreeing) with you now.
I never actually read the Articles of Secession before. ( :eek: ) Eye opening stuff.
Thanks for the history lesson. 
I came across the following ad on the last page of The Southern Magazine Vol. I from December of 1934:
Just though I’d share.