Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 3:03 pm
Some perhaps professed to be. That's possible. I can't speak for them. They have their own answers to make.
Naturally, predictably, you missed the point. No, that's not right. You side-stepped the point through a typical action. If you can't speak for them you cannot speak for anyone. But if you cannot speak for anyone this means you cannot really see and assess anyone.
My point was merely this, though: despite seeds' presuppositions, it was never the Republicans or Trumpians who created slavery, or the KKK, or served as the Segregationist governors, or the thugs that beat up freedom marchers. They were Democrats, almost to the very last man. In the Civil War, who was the grey and who was the blue? What party did Lincoln the emancipator lead? To what political party did every last slave owner in all of America belong? And when the KKK marched down the main street in Washington, for what party were they campaigning?
It is a most ridiculous assertion to say that *Democrats brought slavery to the Americas*. What you are doing here is more or less what the Progressive set does: you are engaging in revisionism. You mention historical amnesia below. Yet the perspectives that you bring out here detail your basic ignorance of the real facts of the case and certainly not amnesia.
The United Staes was founded by men with a specific anthropology and that anthropology was supremacist. It was common
everywhere. It was part of the way people saw the world and definitely how they saw 'inferior cultures'. Those who engaged in slavery did not *invent it* they employed it, made us of it. The supremacist attitude was just as common in the North as it was in the South. The issue can be seen with clarity when the ideas and attitude of Lincoln himself are examined. He was absolutely and completely racist (to use a modern term that did not exist then) and did not support in any sense living together socially or politically with Africans. He explained that these races were incompatible and that each race did harm to the other by being thrust into proximity. He advocated and worked for years to expatriate those of African race and to set up colonization projects in different parts of the world.
The War Between the States was not a war about slavery or its abolition. It was a military and a social-political operation to keep the South from seceding. The essential reasons were political and economic. The propaganda that supported the war against the South to keep it from seceding provides a picture of the sort of policy that the North developed as it shifted the United States from an idealistic republic to one dominated by a political and military establishment which also become, rather quickly and decisively, neo-imperialist.
The reaction by the South to the invasion by the North and the conquest of the South can be looked at similarly to the invasions and occupations that become common at the turn of the century. The Philippine occupation, the Cuban invasion and occupation. Elaborate and 'righteous' reasons were defined and became part of propaganda presented to the population of the States but these were false. The object itself was conquest, occupation, control, domination. These are the essential motives.
Just as with invasions and occupations we can reference in our present (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan), these tend to invoke
reaction on the part of those who suffer invasion and occupation. The reactive forces are always brutal. This has to be considered when examining the ways and means that the South used to protect their *interests* and, in this sense, their sovereignty. This tendency can be examined judiciously. They did not have overt power to oppose the North and its policies, so their opposition took indirect forms. To resist the arrogations the North all sorts of clandestine tactics were used. This is not a
defense of the segregationist culture that developed, it is an explanation. And explanations serve us far better than *idealistic lies*.
The American Civil War, in my opinion, must be considered and thought about within the context of an analysis of the present events. But it cannot (again in my opinion) be thought about through the images and interpretations that are presented and wielded by the American civil religion:
American civil religion is a sociological theory that a nonsectarian quasi-religious faith exists within the United States with sacred symbols drawn from national history. Scholars have portrayed it as a cohesive force, a common set of values that foster social and cultural integration. The ritualistic elements of ceremonial deism found in American ceremonies and presidential invocations of God can be seen as expressions of the American civil religion. The very heavy emphasis on pan-Christian religious themes is quite distinctively American and the theory is designed to explain this.
The concept goes back to the 19th century but the current form of this theory was developed by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967 in the article, "Civil Religion in America". According to Bellah, Americans embrace a common civil religion with certain fundamental beliefs, values, holidays, and rituals in parallel to, or independent of, their chosen religion.
Bellah's article soon became the major focus at religious sociology conferences and numerous articles and books were written on the subject. The debate reached its peak with the American Bicentennial celebration in 1976.
There are other elements that would have to be considered, too. The South made its arguments in defense of the institution of slavery by referring to the Bible and to the New Testament. So the fact of the matter is that what is more central to Christianity, and certainly to American Evangelical Protestantism, and definitely to the American republic when it was conceived, is a permissive attitude about subjugation and slavery -- again based on quotes from the Bible itself. When one reads the defenses of those ideologues of the South in defense of their segregationist system the Bible figures predominantly.
The Abolitionist movement, and its philosophy, has to be examined also within a religious context. Lincoln was an abolitionist of the first order and had views deeply informed by religious ideas. He believed with all his soul that "if anything is wrong slavery is wrong". But he was absolutely committed to a racist outlook and a racist political and social philosophy. And if one believes that the abolitionists generally were integrationists one is wrong indeed. African Americans suffered tremendously in the North in the decades after the Civil War. It is an absolute (and a rather disgusting) fallacy to present the North as being righteous in this regard.
To then go on to present the notion that all these *evils* are the responsibility of the Democrat Party is an outrageous and really a vile lie. This does not mean that the present Democrat Party in its battles cannot be examined critically. But the idea that Immanuel is putting forth is ridiculously simplistic.
Check it out: these things are not historically doubtful at all.
You are
totally ignorant of the history which you reference.
Historical amnesia is very widespread in America, it seems. The Left, in particular, often rewrites their history to serve their present prejudices. How else can we explain their forgetting of all this, or their inexplicable total amnesia about all the debacles Socialism has caused and is still causing?
Everyone 'rewrites history' and revises history to suit their projects and ambitions. The post-Civil War epoch is case-in-point. The dominant power controls the narrative when it controls how the history (pseudo-history) is presented through the State history books. Consider an NPR article reflecting on Robert Bellah's ideas about the American civil religion:
America, unlike some countries, is not defined by a common ancestry, nor is it tied to an official faith tradition. But it does have a distinct identity and a quasi-religious foundation.
Americans are expected to hold their hands over their hearts when they recite the Pledge of Allegiance or stand for the national anthem. Young people are taught to regard the country's founders almost as saints. The "self-evident" truths listed in the Declaration of Independence and the key provisions of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights have acquired the status of scripture in the U.S. consciousness.
More than 50 years ago, sociologist Robert Bellah argued that such facts of American life suggest that the country adheres to a nonsectarian "civil religion," which he defined as "a collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity."
For these beliefs and principles to give definition to a nation, scholars argue, they may need the power that a religion holds for its believers. Characterizing them as a faith system elevates them beyond mere personal philosophy.
This blurb is, in fact and in truth, an example of an expression of post-Civil War American civil religious doctrine! The early states were, in fact, autonomous regions that did not follow a federally established political and social doctrine. The Pledge of Allegiance is an example of an effort by a federal North to create a unified political ideology.
In fact America was founded by men who thought very much in terms of 'common ancestry'. Americanism has, in this sense, been taken over by an entirely different assertion about *what America is* which, substantially, runs against what it was and had been.
The way the American civil war is defined and presented is 'religious' in quality. The noble North sacrificed itself in a 'just war' against the evil demons of the South. This is a very ingrained picture. It still operates, and strongly so, within American politics and society today.
But as for however many pseudo-religious Democrats may have campaigned for slavery or Segregation, I think that's your continual problem, AJ. You don't know how to tell the difference between somebody who says they're something, and somebody who really is. So you think that people who did things that are utterly unchristian and are condemned by Scripture and the example of Jesus Himself should be regarded as Christians in every sense that somebody who actually follows Christ is.
Well, I am not closed to examining my *continual problem* [::: laughs :::] but at the same time I heartily suggest that you do the same. But here is the key: you cannot examine yourself. You cannot examine your biases and your prejudices. A false sense of who and what you are, seemingly driven by idealisms that you can't or don't live up to, dominates your perception. This results in a *skewed* outlook generally.
As if that justifies vivisection in the womb for all those others further along in their inevitable development, which are much more than a few. Oh no, of course not. I mean ... science. Yeah, that's it. Science!
