tomndebb's warning of DigitalC

[John_Mace]

@Richard_Parker

Isn’t UltraVires arguing that such a thread should be sent to the Pit? Mods might not agree with him, but his argument is only an improper application of the rule because of a different subjective judgment about what is rightly inflammatory vs. needlessly inflammatory.

Not seeing it. Can you point to where you think he/she is doing that?

You also seem to be defending this kind of moderation on the grounds that the post was off-topic. But I don’t think anyone has asserted that rationale. Surely, tomndebb’s “no needlessly inflammatory ideas” concept is not limited to off-topic ones.

I’m saying that is part of what I see as the problem with that post, although certainly not all that is wrong with it. Perhaps the mods think differently-- I’m not sure.

[Der_Trihs]

@John_Mace

You must not have been paying attention in the last year or two, when similar posts have been routinely moderated. Why do you think Der Trihs doesn’t post in GD anymore?

Because a specific moderator there decided to infract me over and over again for imaginary offenses, and finally suspended me for the terrible crime of arguing against genocide. I know quite well that anything I say there or in Elections will draw an infraction that can be used to permanently ban me.

[John_Mace]

It’s a well established fact that this MB tends towards favoring genocide, so I guess that’s not surprising.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Kill all the gens!

[UltraVires]

@John_Mace

It’s a well established fact that this MB tends towards favoring genocide, so I guess that’s not surprising.

But, you know who else was in favor of genocide? Hit…ah, well, never mind.

[Colibri]

@John_Mace

It’s a well established fact that this MB tends towards favoring genocide, so I guess that’s not surprising.

Being in favor of genocide is one of the requirements for being a moderator on this board, in fact.

[dreamregent]

I know I’m kind of butting in here…sorry about that but I saw this thread and it interested me because I have a keen interest in history. While my primary interest is in pre-Classical ancient civilizations, I am also well-versed in U.S. political history.

@UltraVires

I am unsure why some on the left cannot simply debate the proposition without resorting to charges of bigotry, xenophobia, or the ultimate comparison of why the current idea is exactly the same as Jim Crow laws.

While I would not assert an “X is Y” argument here, I find that a large number of conservatives I talk to have been indoctrinated with false beliefs about this general issue…and I fear this spreads far beyond the people I’ve personally talked to. Of course, this is true of both liberals and conservatives about all sorts of issues, some the same on both sides and others different for each side. The term conservative did not enter the political lexicon until the 1810s. At first, it was used very rarely but, almost immediately, the term was appropriated to describe the institution of slavery, which was always predicated on white supremacy. Right after the Confederate Constitution was adopted, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, delivered a very famous address called the Cornerstone Speech. Most people cite the following passage when they speak of it (pg. 721):

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea ; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man ; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.]

This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

However, the more inconvenient part of this for conservatives is found further into the speech as Stephens explicitly identifies the effectuation of this policy, the Confederate Constitution, as the product of Conservative political ideation (pg. 725):

Of the men I met in the Congress at Montgomery, I may be pardoned for saying this, an abler, wiser, a more conservative, deliberate, determined, resolute, and patriotic body of men, I never met in my life. [Great applause.] Their works speak for them ; the provisional government speaks for them ; the constitution of the permanent government will be a lasting monument of their worth, merit, and statesmanship. [Applause.]

The fact of the matter is that people have been expressing bigoted rhetoric and establishing bigoted policies for 200 years, regardless of party label, while explicitly calling those very expressions and policies examples of conservatism. Although the Republicans effectively occupied the liberal left wing during the Civil War era (Democrats claimed the Conservative mantle at that time), even Abraham Lincoln did this when he placed his stamp of approval on white supremacy and advocated the preservation of slavery in the south as a “conservative” political goal of the Republican party in 1859. This sort of thinking has continued all the way up to the present day. If you look up the newspaper of the White Citizens Councils which formed in the south during the 1950s, you’ll find they claim their racist rhetoric was merely a conservative viewpoint (I didn’t look, but IIRC, this is in a statement describing their goals in Volume I, Issue 5). George Wallace gave a speech while running for president on a segregation platform in 1964 in which he claimed to be expressing his conservative viewpoint. In the late 1970s, Anita Bryant claimed to be expressing her conservative viewpoint as she was denouncing gay people as child molesters. While Chief of Staff in the Reagan White House in 1981, Lee Atwater, who later became chairman of the Republican Party, backhandedly admitted modern Conservative economic policies were designed to hurt blacks more than whites in order to attract bigots to the party while avoiding the use of explicitly racist rhetoric:

Frankly, liberals are not making this stuff up. Like I said, I would not use an "X is Y" argument here, but the idea that institutionalized bigotry is firmly rooted in Conservative sociopolitical ideation is well-founded.

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

This is so weird. Some on the left consider bigoted, xenophobic ideas to be flawed due to their bigotry and xenophobia. This isn’t a resort, it’s an argument from values. If an idea’s support is predicated primarily on appeals to fear of foreigners, for example, it’s laudable to point that out; it’s not a “resort.”

Actually, it is not. The terms bigotry and xenophobia do not describe values. They are defined as species of ideation. It is the same as designating a limerick as an example of poetry. I would also note that bigotry and all phobias are defined as unreasonable. Effectively, they are logical fallacies…specifically, burden of proof logical fallacies, at minimum.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

I like your post, dreamregent, and I sure hope that you stick around and become a regular.

The problem is that while you may be a student of American History, you don’t know the history of this message board. It’s completely true that conservatism has advocated for and been identified with “racism, misogynism and xenophobia” for its entire existence, long before the current makeup of the parties. That can be asserted here.

The particular issue lies in the oddity that the fact cannot be expressed as “Conservatism IS racism, misogynism and xenophobia” ostensibly because that is a personal insult against conservatives and by extension Republicans.

You may find this strange. You may feel that the statements are identical. Many, probably most, of us are saying that.

The mods - who have a difficult and often impossible job of keeping the board civil - argue otherwise. They also argue that here in our Wonderland words mean just what they choose them to mean—neither more nor less. That often means logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead. Every once in a while we win and resurrect their meanings. Most of the time - as it should be - the mods stay the course, to throw in a different metaphor. It’s a game with rules as imperfect as any Alice dealt with.

You have to have fun with the game or it will drive you crazy. And you’ll find that some posters here took it too seriously long, long ago.

[dreamregent]

@dreamregent

Although the Republicans effectively occupied the liberal left wing during the Civil War era (Democrats claimed the Conservative mantle at that time), even Abraham Lincoln did this when he placed his stamp of approval on white supremacy and advocated the preservation of slavery in the south as a “conservative” political goal of the Republican party in 1859. This sort of thinking has continued all the way up to the present day. If you look up the newspaper of the White Citizens Councils which formed in the south during the 1950s, you’ll find they claim their racist rhetoric was merely a conservative viewpoint (I didn’t look, but IIRC, this is in a statement describing their goals in Volume I, Issue 5). George Wallace gave a speech while running for president on a segregation platform in 1964 in which he claimed to be expressing his conservative viewpoint. In the late 1970s, Anita Bryant claimed to be expressing her conservative viewpoint as she was denouncing gay people as child molesters.

Sorry, I had to rush out earlier to take my dad to the doctor and I didn’t have my sources together. For the Lincoln speech from September 16, 1859 in Columbus, Ohio:

Now gentlemen, I don’t want to read at any greater length, but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it, and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas, he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowments. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every living man.

Upon a subsequent occasion, when the reason for making a statement like this recurred, I said:

While I was at the hotel to-day an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, or intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position, the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman or child, who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men.

And a couple of paragraphs later:

This chief and real purpose of the Republican party is eminently conservative. It proposes nothing save and except to restore this government to its original tone in regard to this element of slavery, and there to maintain it, looking for no further change, in reference to it, than that which the original framers of the government themselves expected and looked forward to.

Obviously, that’s self-explanatory.

For the Citizens’ Council newspaper, see Volume 1, Issue 5 (page 3 of that issue but the document contains more than one issue so you actually want the 7th page of the whole document). Under an article in the top-left corner of the page entitled What Our State Citizens’ Councils Stand For–:

The vital interests of the vast majority of responsible, **essentially conservative, white men and women of the South have never in our time been represented by any organization.

It is the dedicated task of the Citizens’ Councils to represent those interests.–

That is what the Citizens’ Councils are FOR.**

While you can certainly find quite a bit scattered throughout the document that’s rather bigoted, you actually don’t have to go far. Simply look in the top right corner of the same page and read the article entitled Negro Progress Is Big Credit To White South. Obviously, black progress which occurred prior to the issuance of this paper occurred in spite of Jim Crow but, here, these “conservative” southern whites are patting themselves on the back for “Negro Progress.” It’s really one of the most absurd abuses of logical reasoning I’ve ever seen.

For George Wallace, we have his speech entitled The Civil Rights Movement, fraud, sham and hoax delivered on July 4, 1964. Here is his description of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which had just been signed into law:

It is therefore a cruel irony that the President of the United States has only yesterday signed into law the most monstrous piece of legislation ever enacted by the United States Congress.

It is a fraud, a sham, and a hoax. This bill will live in infamy. To sign it into law at any time is tragic. To do so upon the eve of the celebration of our independence insults the intelligence of the American people.

It dishonors the memory of countless thousands of our dead who offered up their very lives in defense of principles which this bill destroys.

Never before in the history of this nation have so many human and property rights been destroyed by a single enactment of the Congress. It is an act of tyranny. It is the assassin’s knife stuck in the back of liberty.

With this assassin’s knife and a blackjack in the hand of the Federal force-cult, the left-wing liberals will try to force us back into bondage. Bondage to a tyranny more brutal than that imposed by the British monarchy which claimed power to rule over the lives of our forefathers under sanction of the Divine Right of kings.

And his devotion to the Conservative cause:

Conservatives of this nation constitute the balance of power in presidential elections.

I am a conservative.

I intend to give the American people a clear choice. I welcome a fight between our philosophy and the liberal left-wing dogma which now threatens to engulf every man, woman, and child in the United States.

I am in this race because I believe the American people have been pushed around long enough and that they, like you and I, are fed up with the continuing trend toward a socialist state which now subjects the individual to the dictates of an all-powerful central government.

Sound familiar? And I would note that is coming from a Democrat in 1964, not a Republican.

Unfortunately, I will have to find the evidence for Anita Bryant again. It is in a film archive I combed once but I failed to catalog it as I watched it so I will have to go through it again. Evidence for her bigoted rhetoric is readily available on Youtube, but there is a newsclip where she explicitly claims it is a conservative viewpoint that I need to find in this archive.

There are probably thousands of examples of this kind of thing. Although, these explicitly use the term Conservative when other Conservative viewpoints such as appeals to States’ Rights are certainly more common. I really need to get a documentary history going.

[dreamregent]

@Exapno_Mapcase

I like your post, dreamregent, and I sure hope that you stick around and become a regular.

Thanks. We will see.

[engineer_comp_geek]

Moderator Note

We’re starting to stray away from the board issue and are getting into topic debates and opinions. Let’s move those types of discussions to a more appropriate forum please (IMHO or GD) and focus on how these topics are moderated while we are here in ATMB.

Also, welcome to the SDMB, dreamregent. We hope you enjoy your time here.