Why would you assume Bricker would think otherwise? He’s conservative, but he’s also a member of an ethnic minority.
He’s a first generation U.S. citizen born of immigrants from (as I recall) El Salvador.
I hardly see that that is relevant. He is a complete conservative. There is very little in the way of conservative thought that he will not defend, and defend enthusiastically, with vigor, and at great length. Well, duh, he’s conservative. That he opposes this with enthusiasism, with vigor, and with sincerety tells me something about him that I already knew, and I was hoping that others who oppose him politically will realize: Bricker is honorable and is honest in propounding his beliefs.
Wrong or not - and I certainly think that in most cases he is wrong - he argues his position from honest belief, and I cannot ask for more from anyone.
This is what really thoroughly fuckin’ pisses me off about McDonnell’s proclamation. If he gave two fleas on a rebel soldiers parched corn kernel coated liquid shit about honoring valor and heroism and patriotism and history, he could choose the living over the dead.
World War II was a global war in which nobody reasonable can deny the U.S. was among the good guys as well as the winning side. It involved Americans of all races and creeds and backgrounds overseas and on the homefront working together. And oh yeah- THERE ARE ACTUALLY PEOPLE STILL ALIVE WHO CAN REMEMBER THE DAMNED THING!!!
Though this may not be true much longer. My father was in the youngest group of WW2 veterans (he turned 18 the month Japan surrendered) and if he were alive he would turn 83 this summer. Most surviving WW2 era veterans are in their late 80s and over- some are centenarians- and there are significantly fewer every New Years Eve than there were on the preceding New Years Day.
How about honoring them? There are many sites in Virginia associated with WW2 (just as there were in every other state) and it was a completely patriotic war. True there was the sadness of the Japanese-Americans, but they were not slaves and the government apologized and even gave them money (not saying that makes it all right, but it’s more than an empty gesture). If McDonnell really cared about honoring a past there’s TONS that could be done for WW2 veterans and their families.
The last verified Confederate veteran died in 1951. This means that you’d have to be well over 60 just to remember him and even then you’re going to remember an ancient man whose mind was gone who gummed his food and couldn’t walk and probably scared the shit out of you when you were a kid. Pretty much all of us over 40 knew WW2 veterans and often we knew them in the prime of their lives. For those who are dead their widows and children are often still around. (Hell, Tony Randall was a WW2 veteran and his widow’s younger than I am while his kids aren’t through middle school yet- it’s still alive.)
I know the names and regiments and the like of all my Confederate ancestors, I have photographs of a few and have even been into their houses. I’ve known in my life some of the people who knew them- old people I knew when I was a kid who knew old people when they were kids- but I don’t really feel a personal connection to them. It’s quickly passing from living memory.
Likewise, if you proclaimed a World War I month, few people would feel anything at all. I knew WW1 veterans- my grandfather and most of his oldest friends were- but it doesn’t really register with us. There’s only 1 surviving WW1 veteran (at least who’s confirmed) and even in the widows only number in the few hundreds (and most of them significantly younger than their late husbands), and it was fought more than half a century after the Civil War!
World War 2 will be here for quite a while- permanently really thanks to film and recording equipment- but the veterans won’t be. Ten years from now there will be very few left at all and twenty years from now the few that are left will be well over 100.
But no, he deliberately picks a divisive, long dead and controversial era, one that coincidentally honors “keepin’ nigras in their place” during the administration of the first president of African ancestry (who is also the descendant of Confederates, so McDonnell can always hoo and haw about that proving it’s not about race). This is far from an unintentional little “oops! I didn’t realize it was a sensitive topic” goof- he’s fucking trying to stir some shit up, just as he did with his homophobic backlash. Fucker.
Mon dieu… Bricker has finally glamoured Frank! (I thought Dopers were immune…)
Comments like this are about as wrong headed as the Bushistas comments that those who did not support the war in Iraq were not American.
The Confederacy was American. The problems that led up to secession were American. The institution of chattel slavery is an integral part of American history. Being American isn’t about being perfect - no nationality is. The slave system is as much part of America as the underground railway, just as Jim Crow is as much a part of America as Martin Luther King.
It is all what makes America a fascinating case study - a nation that built itself on the concepts of freedom and equality, yet also built itself on slavery and the genocide of the aboriginal population.
And, just as an anecdotal point, I saw way more rebel flags when I lived in central Pennsylvania, 20 miles north of Gettysburg, than I ever did living down in Nashville.
Well, if he were running for President, I’d vote against him. And then nag him about paying off the bet.
2 things:
First, I don’t give a shit about nuance in the Pit. So fuck you South, you race-baiting backwash of a whore’s sour, lotus-boobed milk. Your rancid curds infected what could have been good Americans but for their fetish for being poor losers, and an entire region was corrupted as a black mole on a skinhead’s white face. Cunts like this traitor/governor need to be lynched as they all want and pray blacks would be, because they’re evil and to tolerate evil is evil itself.
And second, sorry about the people you know, I’m sure they’re nice, but it makes ranting hard when I have to single them out for exceptions. It’s much easier to just demonize the South, because they were the Confederates. I’m sure even among Confederates there were nice people, but damned if I’m going to say “Fuck Conderates, except for theose nice guys”. So yeah, fuck the South.
I find it hard to consider the Confederates Americans when they violate American values. Yes, you can say that slavery was as much a part of the Constitution as the Bill of Rights, but I don’t believe the BoR contradicts other parts of the Constitution. The enshrined values of freedom and liberty, though they did not apply to women or minorities, are the American values I follow. The Confederates went against that because of politics and because they liked being lazy dicks and not working while black people plowed the fields. So while the Confederates were part of America and it’s history, I don’t consider them American, especially since they tried to actually break off
Hypothetically, if a state seceeded successfully, how long do we wait until we don’t consider them American? I would say “instantly”. That’s how I see the Confederates. They rejected America and broke away, and the Union forced them back. But they don’t want to be Americans? Fine, I’ll grant them their desire, they’re not Americans in my eyes, they’re traitors.
I’m not asking them to be perfect, but when people poke you in the eye and tell you they are not part of you, how can you welcome them back? The whole Bush thing was obviously politics, anyone with a brain can see that. This involved the desertion of entire states and the taking up of arms against the legitimate government of the country. If that’s not being a traitor, then NOTHING is.
Patrick Cleburne was gay? Heh, that’s another damning argument against excluding them from military service. Any US Army officer with even a passing knowledge of the Civil War would love to have Cleburne in his command.
YogSosoth – for a while there I was wondering if I’d erred in placing this thread in the Pit. 
Quite alright. Stupid people only fuck up nuance anyway; it’s better they not try at all.
So is Obama a “race-baiting backwash of a whore’s sour, lotus-boobed milk” because while he’s not a southerner he is a descendant of a Confederate and by your own words the descendants are no better than the original participants. Actually, how is calling a southerner names for what his or her ancestors did different from calling Obama a racial slur since his father was Kenyan? In fact using your- ahem- logic, calling him a spearchucker would be too right since his father in fact chucked spears (one very muchlike this) in ceremonies.
A pity you don’t paint Jews or blacks or Asians or others with the same brush you use on the monosyllabically styled villain South as you’d then get the pitting you deserve. Best I can do is to quote Heinlein. (Well, not the best I can do certainly, but the most I am willing.)
Again, no ambrotypes, but it’s where you get into the “Should ‘I love you dearly’ and ‘yearn for your embrace’ of a 19th century letter be read in today’s context?” argument and to what extent is “shyness around girls” a euphemism, but even in the 19th century there were rumors that he and his aide (Captain Irving Ashby Buck) were lovers. The Episcopal bishop and general Leonidas Polk, who cordially hated Cleburne and it was quite mutual, referred to him as a “dandy” and “fob” and something that he crossed out in one of his angry letters about him. (Much of their animosity was borne of Cleburne’s proposal that blacks be enlisted in the C.S. army and the fact that Judah Benjamin and Cleburne were allies- Polk and Benjamin also despised each other.) After Cleburne (the Irish born general who fought hard for the enlistment of blacks into the CS army for those not familiar) was killed Captain Buck married a much older well to do widow who supported him while he spent the rest of his life writing glowing articles and books about Cleburne.
Then nothing must be. Nobody, not Jefferson Davis, not Robert Lee (both indicted but never tried) was convicted for treason after the Civil War. Earlier in our history, former Vice-President Aaron Burr, a traitor if ever there was one, was acquitted. It’s not an easy bar to cross.
So… even though the Constitution explictly permitted slavery, and the south wished to preserve that, they were being unAmerican and not following the Constitution?
Apart from the stunning blindness inherent in that view, the fact of the matter is: you have the historical awareness of a mollusk. In 1865, the concept of states’ rights was much different, much stronger than it is today, largely as a result of the Civil War. Robert E Lee famously vowed to follow Virginia, because in his mind and heart, he was a Virginian first, and an American second. That attitude is craxy today; in 1860, it was not uncommon.
But enough about that. Tell me this: how about the guys like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, who rebelled against their lawful authority? Are they equally contemptible? Why not?
Jefferson was the author of our justification for breaking free from England. He said, in effect, that it was simply necessary the colonists to dissolve the political bands which had connected them with England and to take on a separate and equal station as their own rulers, “…which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them.”
Wasn’t that treason? Wasn’t that exactly the sort of behavior you inveigh against from Davis and Lee?
The thing is, McDonnell doesn’t give a damn about all that. The SCV got pissed that Warner and Kaine didn’t make proclamations when they were governor, and McDonnell promised during the campaign that he’d make the proclamation if he got elected. So his supporters are happy. Blacks aren’t, but with the exception of Shelia Johnson, blacks didn’t vote for him anyway.
Silly me, I thought that " all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" was an American ideal.
Conservative Christians sure turn into a bunch of moral relativists when it comes to American slavery.
It is, of course, completely ludicrous to say that people didn’t understand how evil it was. Of course they did. Why do you think Uncle Tom’s Cabin resonated so much? Can you read Huckleberry Finn and say that Mark Twain didn’t get it?
Why do you think there were abolitionists? Why do you think people risked their lives on an underground railroad? Are you kidding me with this bullshit that people didn’t appreciate how evil it was? If Harrier Beecher Stowe and mark Twain could get it, then why couldn’t Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee?
Fuck those assholes. They knew what they were doing. I reject the conceit that there was anything honorable or “heroic” about them. They were racist, terrorist insurgents fighting to presve an appalling institution that they full well knew was appalling. They don’t deserve to be honored and if they “sacrificed,” then so did the Nazis.
These guys were nothing but Timothy McVeigh in Colonel Sanders drag.
You don’t get to pick only the good bits and says these are American values, and cast the rest out, though. That’s painting a false picture, that actually devalues the entire American experience.
Just because you follow certain values, doesn’t make them American values. And just because (arguably) certain values are American at the current time doesn’t mean those were always the American values. And racial equality in particular is a very modern American value (much as it is modern throughout the Western world - I simply don’t know enough history of other countries to comment on its prevalence there).
This country was built on slavery, and slavery was enshrined in its constitution from the get go. It was also built on the concept of the inferiority of the native population. To deny those as American values is to whitewash American history to a ridiculous degree.
I think it is probably true that the majority of those who fought for the South did not fight to preserve slavery as such, just as the majority of those who fought for the North did not fight to end it. This doesn’t alter the fact that the Confederacy was an evil regime, designed overwhelmingly to perpetrate slavery. As I have siad, I have no time for the leaders, either political or military. But as I can feel for the Afrika Korps conscripts my grandfather lobbed shells at, so I can feel for the Tennessee dirt farmer. Such sympathy doesn’t negate my abhorrence for the Confederacy as an institution any more than it negates my abhorrence for Hitler’s regime.
The guy that wrote those words was a slaveowner.
So it’s pretty clear he didn’t mean “all men” when he wrote “all men.”
So, yes: silly you. Very silly.
You hit it on the button. Anyone who defends the Confederacy ranks pretty close to a “Third Reich” defender in my eyes.
Addendum: I suppose that he could have meant “all men” as a wise government policy, but not felt he personally should follow it.
But he, and his compatriots, went on to approve two different government systems that explicitly permitted slavery, so based on THAT evidence, he didn’t mean “all men” when he wrote “all men.”