Comments | jrittenhouse: Let me get this straight:

jrittenhouse

Let me get this straight:

Sep 07, 2009 14:26

( Read more... )

islam, i'm-not-making-this-up-you-know, taxes, theocons, government, history, endless-snark, women, jfk, 2008_elections, signs, propaganda, finance, hacks, security, racism, immigration, tech, doctors_nurses, great-depression, democrats, food-safety, delusions, meredith, sexism, patriotism, dictators, weird, soviets, gop, greed, peeve, guns, adoption, judaism, sep_reality, ww2, civility, sex, corruption_govt, peeves, inflation, political_science, 2012_elections, stalin, environment, communism, us civil war, health, 2010_elections, wretched-excess, urban_legends, goo_goos, ww1, j-c-on-a-pogo-stick, money, usa, politics, personal, friends, sad, games, united nations, obama, orphans, religion, secrecy, police

Comments 21

aries_jordan September 7 2009, 19:50:04 UTC

They fought slavery,

Typo?

docstrange September 7 2009, 20:13:21 UTC

If by "nutball" Jim means "extremist, fringe minority" then, alas, Jim's right. The anti-slavery movement was extremely small for most of the country's history until the brink of civil war, the vast majority - even in the North - happy to just let things ride.

jrittenhouse September 7 2009, 20:46:23 UTC

The first black slaves in this country came in in 1619 or so in Jamestown, but the real numbers of 'servants' early on were British serfs who were bought and sold as 'indentured servants'. Wiki says that about 80% of British-types came over here as such, and we're not about to get into the indentureships of the whole apprenticeship system.

John Brown and various radical abolitionists were violent, radical characters, and they were fanatics for our age or theirs. Same is true of the mindless thugs who push hard for Southern secession in the period just before the Civil War, and made Lincoln out as a monster.

I have revised the text to make my meaning clearer.

aries_jordan September 7 2009, 21:55:25 UTC

Thank you.

Thread 18

barondave September 8 2009, 06:50:10 UTC

Good, wide-ranging, essay. From Britain, America was largely populated by economic criminals and religious fanatics. We saved the UK much in the way of poorhouse expenses and potential civil unrest.

the US has always had about 15% of the populace who were clinically insane. The people who used the Bible to justify slavery; the percentage of Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats. What I don't forgive is Gingrich/Reagan's handlers/conservative news media for increasing the percentage of nutjobs to 20-25%. They went out of their way to fan the flames of idiocy.

Bush's complete failure as a president and as a human seems to have turned back the clock to the old days, but that still leaves the original 15% who don't live in the world G_d created. Any election has to deal with them.

Arguing both sides dalecoz September 11 2009, 05:28:15 UTC

I have a somewhat different perspective in all of this. Jim, I don't talk about this much, but back in another lifetime I was in high school and college speech and debate--a total of seven years. We had to argue both sides of an issue and we had to do a MASSIVE amount of research to be competitive ( ... )

Re: Arguing both sides jrittenhouse September 13 2009, 18:15:15 UTC

Well, there's different levels on this, true, but I try not to talk about this sort of thing unless I really feel confortable debating something...and understanding where both sides are coming from.

In this case, most of the screechers have only the very most cursory knowledge of any of this stuff, and they don't think much of anyone telling them to get a better understanding of the matter.

The deeper debate does indeed circle around Cui Bono, and it's pretty obvious to me about that end of things, and very disgraceful to see various pols serve that end of the universe, irregardless of their party affiliation ( ... )

Re: Arguing both sides dalecoz September 13 2009, 23:50:59 UTC

I don't argue politics much because I find that it tends to be pointless and because my views tend to get both traditional sides (Republicans and Democrats) angry at me. For example, I think that both parties routinely betray their most loyal 'foot soldiers', giving them table scraps while buying the temporary loyalty of people who know how to play the political game more effectively ( ... )

Re: Arguing both sides jrittenhouse September 14 2009, 00:04:11 UTC

Very well put! ...and true...