Sorry. Not sorry.

[Natalya]

I live in a slave state. Those monuments mean exactly what the rioters are saying they mean. The monuments are the last dying breath of the confederacy. "Remember us! We weren't so bad!" They submit their appeal to history. Well history remembers what they ****ing did. They bought and sold people. Generations of lives subjected to absolute terror. Whippings, beatings, brandings with hot iron. Runaways hunted down like dogs. So that the few rich men in whatever county they were in could profit without doing any work themselves. They were traitors to America and to humanity. The rebel flag only deserves to be shown if it's being burned.

There was no southen valor, the great "lost cause" was slavery. Get over it.

The confederacy was evil and they do not need to be deified. The monuments need to be destroyed. Maybe a handful can stay in museums as a reminder of the white-washing PR campaign conducted around the turn of the century, but they do not need to be displayed in public. All of y'all who don't live in the USA and who haven't lived in a slave state don't get to decide right from wrong on this matter. The black people where I live are tired of revisionist history painting their oppressors as valiant heroes who ought to be mourned. **** that. They confederacy stood for evil.

And stop complaining about the unrest. People have a right to be upset. Y'all weren't listening or taking notice until they started burning down police stations and fast food joints. Now you're being forced to listen. Quit being babies and open your ears to the pleas from the people who have been trodden upon for far too long.

[Natalya]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Statues exist to remind us of important moments in history and to preserve certain ideals. They are symbols that we give meaning to, not that they impart meaning on us.

The ideals being preserved by these monuments are absolutely ****ed.

If we decide they are symbols of something negative, then that's what they are. That said, a few idiots don't get to decide for everyone else if that's what we agree they represent. If statues are torn down without a vote, I say lock those hooligans up and give them time to think about the violence done to democracy and the rule of law.

A few idiots? Are you ****ing kidding me? Anyone who has read a book about the civil war knows what these things stand for. If there are any idiots its the people who think we should keep around stone sculptures emblazoned with the rebel flag waxing poetic about the noble sons of the south who gave their lives. No. Those people died protecting a horrible institution that deserved to be abolished. Their way of life needed to end.

You're the one who needs to learn something about slavery in the US and the terrible inhumane atrocities inflicted upon the slaves over the centuries.

Rule of law?
Running away was illegal
Helping runaway slaves was illegal
The law is not the same as justice.

Violence done to democracy?
What about the violence done to the people who were dragged by chains and crowded into boats and sent across the ocean?
What about the violence done to the people who were lynched in the decades following the war?

Any angry mob comes to tear anything of mine down, and they will be the only things to go down.

Wow. Just wow.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by DDG

Quote by Lewis Carroll: "When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty ...
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/126...said-in-rather
"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Natalya

And stop complaining about the unrest. People have a right to be upset.

People have a right to complain.

Y'all weren't listening or taking notice until they started burning down police stations and fast food joints. Now you're being forced to listen. Quit being babies and open your ears to the pleas from the people who have been trodden upon for far too long.

I see you're against slavery. It's Okay to be against slavery.

But realize that while slavery was bad, it also didn't 'build this country'. It held the South back until it was ended. It was a blight all round. Reparate that.

The USofA was instantiated during a time of universal slavery save the UK homeland and [maybe] Mexico. The rule that all men were created equal was perfected a hundred years later. ...a hundred and fifty years ago.

Did you notice that CHOP/CHAZ immediately built a wall and instituted segregation?
_______________

No. Those people died protecting a horrible institution that deserved to be abolished. Their way of life needed to end.

Only 10% of Southerners held slaves. The other 90% experienced a war of Northern aggression.

Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas. The conflict was characterized by years of electoral fraud, raids, assaults, and retributive murders carried out in Kansas and neighboring Missouri by pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" and anti-slavery "Free-Staters".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas

The fuse was lit in Lawrence, Kansas in 1856 and burnt all the way to Fort Sumter.


edit:
Wow, I just noticed this:

I live in a slave state.

Free your mind and your *ss will follow.

Georgia isn't special. You do know that that 1619 stuff is all about Massachusetts?

Did Maine allow slavery A long ago? - Answers
https://www.answers.com/Q/Did_Maine_...ery_A_long_ago
Slavery was legal in Maine until 1783 because Maine was a part of Massachusetts until 1820. Although slavery was not as widely practiced in the north, first slaves in Massachusetts and what is now ...

U.S. Slavery: Timeline, Figures & Abolition - HISTORY
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery
Slavery was a dominant feature of the antebellum South, but it was also pervasive in the pre-Civil War North—the New England states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut ...

[MeteorGray]

Quote: "...And stop complaining about the unrest. People have a right to be upset. Y'all weren't listening or taking notice until they started burning down police stations and fast food joints. Now you're being forced to listen. Quit being babies and open your ears to the pleas from the people who have been trodden upon for far too long."

Perhaps when the mob comes for you and yours some day, you will be less "upset" than the black-and-white entrepreneurs in tears and terror who lost their life's investments to looting, burning and utter destruction.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Natalya

I live in a slave state.

There isn't a single line of people that has not descended from slave owners. That's the history of humanity. In that regard, all land is slave land, so that isn't unique, or interesting, or of note, or worth mentioning.

Now if slavery is still going on in that state, it is of note, and something should be done immediately.

And stop complaining about the unrest.

When the unrest comes to destroy any property I'm around, that unrest will become peaceful because I will make it so with minimum necessary force. Weak idiots (I mean that in every sense of the word) will be defeated by truth. Truth wins every time, because reality has a way of imposing itself in fantasy worlds.

My neighbor was crying yesterday as she conveyed how upset she is that her husband is on duty in Portland today. She said AntiFa has explicitly stated they will be killing cops today. Anyone who supports that is evil beyond belief, and there is nothing good in them.

Originally Posted by Natalya

The ideals being preserved by these monuments are absolutely ****ed.

To you. Not to me, and not to most people. We're celebrating independence day today. A celebration of the greatest, most just nation yet created. Millions will be participating. There is no holiday for self-loathing, because that's a dumb holiday and hardly anyone wants to be part of that.


I've got the US flag outside waiving proudly in the wind. I'll be saying God Bless the USA all day today. I will proclaim it until communists take over, hopefully not for hundreds of years.

[Xist]

Thanks for reminding me to put out my flag before working on my car.

Yes! I am working on my car! Am I taking apart the dash again?

No, why?

People have a right to be upset, even the Karens that got their name misspelled at Starbucks and demand to talk to the manager.

People do not have a right to destroy any property but their own.

If you don't like the laws, change the laws.

What did the elk ever do to anyone?!

[Fat Charlie]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Only 10% of Southerners held slaves. The other 90% experienced a war of Northern aggression.

In Georgia in 1860, over 43% of the population were slaves. Your 10% slaveowners and 90% war victims math apparently doesn't consider blacks to be people.

Under 600,000 white Georgians seceded to keep over 460,000 black Georgian slaves. That's a pretty aggressive act on its own. The number of southern white victims of the civil war is quite small- was a prosperous merchant who sold luxury goods to plantation owners an innocent victim of the war or an accomplice and a profiteer? You didn't have to own a single slave to have your fortune depend on slavery.

Read Georgia's declaration of secession. It's pretty representative of the other states' declarations, a tiringly long list of grievances about the fact that people who don't live Georgia refuse to enforce white Georgians' right to own people. While refusing to admit any problems with slavery or acknowledge that they have for decades been forcing slavery on the whole country, they whine that free states have stopped obeying federal rules requiring them to actively cooperate in enforcing slavery. At the end, in order to "seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security and tranquility", they secede. For the liberty to keep 43% of their population in the equality and tranquility of slavery.

[freebeard]

In Georgia in 1860, over 43% of the population were slaves. Your 10% slaveowners and 90% war victims math apparently doesn't consider blacks to be people.

Thank you for the fact check. That was a fallacy of the excluded middle. The middle 43% (some of whom might have also been victims?). Nice twist though.

Was anything else a misstatement? It was 150 years ago, and people feel like it's still happening today. Which it is, just not in the country celebrating today. It's worst in China and Africa.

edit:
Here's a picture of when hippies were peaceable:


justacarguy.blogspot.com/.../happy-4th-of-july.html

I slapped a John Prine flag decal on my Superbeetle.

[Fat Charlie]

Over 3.1% of the people in the south owned slaves. But since 32.1% of the people in the south were slaves themselves, that's not a reasonable number. 4.7% of the free people in the south owned slaves.

How you count is important, though- a plantation owner was most likely the one person counted as owning the slaves, but his wife, children and any hangers-on were just as much a part of the slaveowning population. Equally important was the free population that depended on the slaveowners- they may not have owned slaves themselves, but they had built their lives on the money that came from slavery.

Using the census data on that Wikipedia page I linked to, slave states (I include DC) had a total population of 12,315,406 and a slave population of 3,953,693. 32.1% of the people in the slave states were slaves. There were 393,967 slaveowners (see Table 4, sourced from Historical Statistics of the United States, 1970).

None of those people were victims of "northern aggression." Slaveholding interests were overrepresented in Congress from the beginning (remember the 3/5 compromise?)- Virginia's 490,865 slaves in 1860 gave Virginia representation in the House corresponding to 294,519 people- nearly the entire population of Vermont, and more than that of Rhode Island, Minnesota, Florida, Delaware or Oregon. Look at that again- Virginia alone had more seats in the House of Representatives than 5 states simply by counting its slave population. Which was not represented by these Representatives.

They used these seats earned by counting slaves to impose things like the Fugitive Slave Act on free states, denying them the right to decide who was free in their own states. When eventually the political winds shifted against slavery, slaveowners suddenly became fans of states' rights and seceded. If you haven't read Georgia's declaration, go back and look at it. It's disgusting, really. IIRC, Texas' was longer and worse, but this morning I read Natalya's post from Atlanta and stuck with Georgia.