I very rarely double quote & respond, but in this case, I thought you might like this video entitled The Myth of the Lost Cause: Revealing the Truth About the Civil War. A historian, Edward H. Bonekemper III, author of the book of the same title as the YouTube video, discusses the South’s nonsense about their losing losers. You might also find it of interest that the late Mr. Bonekemper, although a native of Pennsylvania, graduated from Old Dominion.
Thanks. When I heard " a 2 hour talk" I kinda zoned out. But it does sound interesting. I’ll try it when I have more time.
That’s interesting, thank you. It seems, though, that this addresses his decision to resign from the Army rather than his decision to join the Confederates. Despite his difficulty in making the decision, it seems it may have been inevitable because he did not want to take up arms against the South (and so turned down the leadership post he was offered).
It would be interesting to get some perspective on his seemingly incongruous decision to then take up arms against the Union.
I don’t appreciate DuBois’ invocation of “humanity’s God,” but I think he’s right when he says Lee was a traitor “not indeed to his country, but to humanity”. Which was the point I was trying to make.
Powers &8^]
I’ve said it before and will again: If the state does not deliver justice, the mob will.
That doesn’t mean the mob is good, but it’s an inevitable outcome.
I find it endlessly amusing that conservatives are often the ones who lean on “that’s just how it is” to explain why you can’t do things. Raise minimum wage and you’ll just cause unemployment, they say; too bad, it’d be nice to pay people more, but that’s just how the world works. Cops HAVE to shoot people, it’s how the world works. Why, you can’t have rent control, that’s just how it is, you;d cause housing shortages.
But when it comes to this issue, that the downtrodden will only take bullshit for so long before exploding, the conservatives suddenly don’t want to live in reality anymore. No, they say, black people should just suck it up and eat shit until some magical point in the future when there’s racial justice. People who get fucked by the banks and the rich should just suck it up and learn to code or get a fifth job, they shouldn’t demand change. (These positions, however, did NOT apply to the Founding Fathers, who were absolutely correct to engage in armed rebellion over… taxes.) That attitude simply is not based in reality. It is not how human beings work, never has been. If you keep screwing over the people they will first ask for justice, and then they will protest, and then they will stop asking and protesting and they’ll take it by force. That is how the world works, it has always been how the world works, and it always will be.
To use economic injustice as an example - I am absolutely, positively, in favor of capitalism and a free market. Those things work, and balanced with rule of law and government involvement in areas of market failure, can lift people out of poverty. But the new support for socialism in the USA, and to some degree here in Canada, is totally understandable to me; I may disagree with a lot of “let’s get rid of capitalism” and find its supporters often woefully ignorant, but I know WHY it’s an increasingly popular position. The 2008 banking crisis should have resulted in a seriously regulatory overhaul of US banking and sent hundreds of people to prison for long sentences, and yet basically nothing was done. Infrastructure is crumbling and people in the USA and going bankrupt to pay for health care and yet Elon Musk has been given five billion dollars in free government cash, and he’s hardly an outlier. If capitalists are going to act like fucking pigs, the people are going to want bacon.
And to loop back to racial injustice, I cannot even begin to imagine the constant anxiety and indignance (is that a word) a black person must feel. As others have said, there’s a reason NWA didn’t record a song called Fuck the Department of Sanitation.
I would really not make such a statement, especially in the context of American racism.You do you, but the history of mobs demanding “justice” has not generally managed to be decent, let alone morally good.
It’s a bit like complaining that your town is underwater after refusing to do any maintenance on the dam upstream.
It’s not a situation anyone wants, but it is one that is inevitable and predictable.
People dont just understand slavery in the South. Look, Washington wanted to end slavery and even freed many in his will . But they were a major part of his capital.
OK, let us say the single family home and automobiles are evil. A case could certainly be made. So, have your house demolished , turn the land into a park, and scrap your car- with no recompense. Could you, would you do this? No, you cant afford to. Washington (and Jefferson) simply couldnt afford to give up his slaves all at once. And legally could not free many of them:
Of the 317 slaves at Mount Vernon in 1799, 123 individuals were owned by George Washington and were stipulated in Washington’s will to be freed upon his wife’s death. However, these conditions did not apply to all slaves at Mount Vernon. When Martha Washington’s first husband Daniel Parke Custis died without a will, she received a life interest in one-third of his estate, including his slaves. The other two-thirds of the estate went to their children.
Neither George nor Martha Washington could free these dower slaves by law. Upon her death the slaves would revert to the Custis estate and be divided among her grandchildren. By 1799, 153 slaves at Mount Vernon were part of this dower property…In accordance with state law, George Washington stipulated in his will that elderly slaves or those who were too sick to work were to be supported throughout their lives by his estate. Children without parents, or those whose families were unable to see to their education were to be bound out to masters and mistresses who would teach them reading, writing, and a useful trade, until they were ultimately freed at the age of twenty-five. Washington’s will stated that he took these charges to his executors very seriously…
So George could not free the dower slaves. They were part of a dower. He did what he could to arrange good lives and freedom.
If only Washington had had some say in the formation of the new American government, or maybe a position of some authority in it after it was formed, he might have been able to do something about the circumstances in which he found himself. Alas, his hands were tied.
And that was really the excuse of many slave owners. That they couldn’t give away something that they were still making payments on.
Problem is, it’s not a car or a house, it’s a human being.
Yeah, Jefferson tried that during the Second Continental Congress, and it didnt work out so well.
Washington foresaw that an open debate over ending slavery, let alone a push to do so, would probably keep the South out of the new republic and maybe even prevent it from being established at all. He and the other Framers kicked the can down the road, tragically but understandably. After repeated compromises and recurring sectional struggles, the question was finally, and bloodily, answered in 1861-65.
This is something I’ve considered as I wrote about it tangentionally in the context of the Civil War. What I did not say was that the Revolutionary War generation weakened slavery; if it was not killed they went much farther than they had to, and did so with good motives. They had reason to think they had put it on the course of gradual destruction and the integration of African slaves into American life. In their own lifetimes, the Revolutionary War generation ended the slave trade and eased the actual practice of slavery.
The fault in slavery’s continued evil was not theirs; but the fault of the generation after, which extended slavery, planted it along the Mississippi, bought the cotton for the mills, and worshiped Mammon every weekday (Sundays reserved for Christ - but oh, who has the time, right?). That first American-born generation strengthened slavery. Yes, there were those who opposed it but not enough, although regional sorting* didn’t help. The generation or so after that would rather destroy the nation rather than lose their cotton profits, although again we are largely talking here of the states dominated by planters rather than all the citizenry, but the difference can be confusing since planters practically ruled their states.
The Founding Fathers, faults and all, gave us a great deal. They reached beyond what any government had yet achieved, and frankly beyond what most achieve today. It is more than a little unfair to not only expect them to foresee the evils of future generations but to resolve those as well. They were men, not Gods, with the frailties and limitations of men. Vanity, greed, lust, selfishness, ignorance, weakness: you can find these and more among them. They still deserve their glory, if for no other reason than we can hardly reproach them except via their own ideals.
If I (the metaphorical “I”, not necessarily literally myself) were to condemn, say, Thomas Jefferson for holding slaves, I could not do so better than via his own Declaration of Independence. That being the case, how should I then condemn Jefferson? it is not that I thinking slave-holding morally right, but that I am no position to preach moral courage to someone with more of it than I. Rather, it is I who should learn and do better. Or, to put it another way, if I see farther than those who came before, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants, not because I possess such excellent height and vision on my own merit.
*Not exactly a secret that many “Southern” slave-owners were actual from the North and a lot of Southern-born folks moved to free-soil areas.
So Hurricane Laura did what locals would not. ‘South’s Defenders’ Confederate Statue In Lake Charles is gone with the winds.
I wouldn’t deny mobs can also deliver evil. But that’s kind of my point. If the state won’t deliver justice, the mob will, and that is not a place you should want to go. It is really best for the state to get it right.
“…In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics. This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets… The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand. Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives… The old code of equity law under which we live commands for every wrong a remedy, but in too many communities, in too many parts of the country, wrongs are inflicted on Negro citizens and there are no remedies at law. Unless the Congress acts, their only remedy is the street…”
JFK, June 11, 1963
What if the mob doesn’t want “Justice”? What if it wants something quite evil, or nonsensical, or what if the mob is composed of a bunch of random people who want different or even opposed things? Or, what if its members are too uninformed to even know what they are doing?
At best, mobs deliver a wild and flailing vengeance, and that vengeance is often random and targets the innocent at least as often as the guilty - assuming there is guilt. Mobs do not have a long history of careful and cool judgements. Political parties, unions, movements, or whatever may demonstrate and demand something in broad daylight* after deciding what to ask for and considering how to demonstrate their resolve. Mobs can, and do, destroy without necessarily having a constructive alternative.
Let’s go back to the actual OP in this case: should statues of “Some Guy, Jr.” be removed. Assume for the moment that this is a arguable point: it should therefore be so argued. The arguments can be in public, with the reasons pro or con made in public, and the decision made by officials with the lawful responsibilities. I see no reason at all the votes should be in the hands of self-appointed vigilantes. If you think that it should, well, you do you. But I know I’d prefer to live in a community where decisions are made my way, rather than yours.
*Not literally in daylight. I mean metaphorically out in the open.
That’s why the government should listen to the people.
As RickJay said and you so eloquently ignored, mob justice is random and can be evil.
The way to avoid that is to be answerable to the needs of the people, and not put the people in a position where they feel the need to take power back from those who would abuse it.
Really, when it comes down to it, the American Revolution was little more than mob justice.
Yes, but…
Let’s put a hypothetical statue of Robert E. Lee in the town square of Raleigh, North Carolina. A non-binding referendum goes on the state ballot for removal of the statue. 65% of the state says it should stay up; 52% of Raleigh says it should stay up.
“The People” of North Carolina said that the statue should stay. “The People” of Raleigh say that the statue should stay. The Mayor / council of Raleigh should know that society is changing, and that there is no place in modern America for a statue of a traitor to the United States of America. They mayor refuses to remove the statue, saying “the voters have spoken”.
I am not in favor of mob violence, but I can see where the statue is removed by mob, not by government.
You’ve just summarized the inherent flaw in American democracy.
Yeah, it gets interesting like that.
And if the demographic breakdown is that 70% of white people think it should stay up, and 95% of black people think it should come down, then you are going to see some civil unrest, one way or another.
Not sure how you resolve oppression of a minority in a democratic manner.