Right. Have you made even one post in this thread in which you have not called me a name? I'm such a troll. Get lost.
You guys should get together and start a "nicephoras isn't nearly as unintelligent as Nicky says he is" Skype chat or something.
I didn't say you were a movement conservative, just that you are applying movement conservative thinking (not to mention that your approach to logic isn't too unlike that of a movement conservative's). I made zero mention of your actual ideology, which I couldn't give a flying frick about. Either that, or you're just being obtuse, unwittingly or not.
You said... I just don't understand what you mean. I definitely do not (ever) assume that everyone thinks like me. I think that anarchists are in a super-minority worldwide but I'd be glad to hear how apply movement conservative thinking. Honestly, you've completely lost me there.
The first one, actually. And your last post was either stupid or you were trolling. All you're doing in this thread is regurgitating quasi-Marxist dogma about civil wars. Marx did it better than you, even if the last 50 years have shown conclusively that Marxist analysis of history leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you're basing your thinking solely on that. Simply stating that civil wars are fought by the elites doesn't remotely begin to answer the issue being discussed here. I'm not sure why anyone should take your view of anyone else's intelligence seriously. I'm only sure why they shouldn't. That's the polite way of putting it.
And you claim to be able to pass upon the intelligence of others? He's saying that your thought process in this regard is the same process that movement conservatives use. To go further, TPH's ultimate point is that only a small group of people (mostly movement conservatives such as Karl Rove) believe that the fundamental underlying goal of any action or conflict is to accumulate and hold power, but those people (like you) tend to assume that everyone thinks that way.
I thought you were not interested in my thoughts on the matter. Again.... I definitely do not assume that people think as I do. That's absurd. And (also again) I think that the way the American government was constructed (without any real central power) was always doomed to fail as someone was always going to try to unite them all. Slavery was the primary issue they latched onto but I do believe that you're missing the forest for the trees in saying that slavery was the cause.
I'm not. Just pointing out that you trying to call me "not smart" is like Jessica Simpson claiming that Stephen Hawking isn't smart, just well read. As for the rest of that post, you did exactly what TPH accused you of doing again, while claiming you weren't. You argued that civil wars are caused by power struggles, which completely misses the point. But, again, you don't appear to be smart enough to figure that out.
Isn't this whole thread about the nature of causation according to Aristotle/Aquinas? State rights are the formal cause and slavery is the efficient cause? This says more about the poor education of Americans than anything else.
Maybe you can teach me something here. I've always thought that the Tariffs were for protecting domestic producers, and that they were not directed at, nor even applied to cotton. Also, I thought that the anti-tariff faction was essentially winning the political debate in the years leading up to the Civil War, and that the U.S. had about as low as a Tariff as it had ever had at that point. Of course, back then the federal revenue was primary generated through tariffs on imported goods. The income tax, even on rich folks, came later. I'm pretty sure you're right about the North favoring Tariffs. They wanted to do more than just cover federal expenses; they wanted to protect nascent industries. But I don't think they had been successful at that until after the Civil War began.
They are, if you take Confucius at face value (which, admittedly, nobody has in the last 300 years except for the Koreans).
The threatened tariffs that were sparking the regionalism were against crops that the northern industries could use and did not want to compete for in a free market. Not too surprisingly, they wanted to be able to control the cost of the input to their process. Cotton was prime among these crops. England and France were willing and able to pay far more for these resources than the northern industry that was just starting up. It is simple math that if one can control the cost of inputs and sell at the same price then the margins are much higher. At the same time, the cotton producers, who were among the richest people in the country, wanted the revenues due to higher cotton prices to continue to flow to them so they wanted to continue to have an open market that included foreign buyers. To the best of my knowledge your statement is correct and that is why I have said that the tariffs were often threatened. These tariffs were perceived to have been likely to pass if the northern states were to acheive a majority in both houses (they already had a majority in the House). This was just one more of the many regional issues that were dividing the country prior to war breaking out.
Yoss was right though; any arguments which seek to downplay the centrality of slavery as the cause of the Civil War must ignore the elephant in the middle of the room--the fact that the primary actors behind secession overtly explained that the protection of the institution of slavery was the reason for their actions. The notion that war was not really about slavery because most white Southerners were not wealthy plantation elites and nearly all Northerners were racists too fails on both counts. There are two faulty premises here: 1) The only reason to support slavery was if you personally owned slaves; 2) In order to oppose slavery, one most be opposed to institutionalized racism and regard African-Americans as deserving equal rights. Neither assumption holds up.
That's a pretty convincing argument. It just has the slight problem of being completely wrong. Tariffs were not against crops, they were against goods coming in from foreign countries, especially textiles. It had nothing to do with northern industry paying less - rather the South did not want to have to subsidize the northern textile industry by paying more for English textiles (which were, at the time, vastly cheaper). This resulted in a reduction in exports because the Europeans had less money from imports to pay for them, but the reduction was in the neighborhood of 20% at most - hardly drastic. Except that we have specific evidence to show that these tariffs did not precipitate similar crises. The so called "tariff of abominations" led to South Carolina's attempt to nullify a tariff in a bout of political posturing that no other state supported. And, of course, political infighting insured that tariffs changed constantly. In 1857 the Walker tarif was actually the lowest of the 19th century, until the Morrill tariff raised it precipitously 4 years later as a respone to the panic of 1857 - these were political games that never threatened secession. In addition, lets remember why the tariffs were so key - because the south's economy depended so much on large plantation farming which was heavily dependent on.......you guessed it, slavery. There's a good reason why the south never developed much industry - slave plantations were too profitable. Also, tariffs were most certainly passed, repeatedly, to protect northern industry - its not accurate to say they were "attempted".
You're looking in the wrong place for cause. Lincoln went to war to preserve the Union. But the only reason the union split in the first place was slavery. Alexander Stephens, Jeff Davis and even the Confederate constitution make that abundantly clear. Lets turn it into an analogy. You're in a bar, and someone punches you. Why did the fight start? Well, from your perspective, it started because you got punched. But that's not the real reason - for the real reason, you'd have to ask the person who punched you. In this case, the Confederacy punched the North, so asking the North why the fight started is the wrong way around it. If the Confederacy hadn't seceded, the North certainly wouldn't have attacked the south. Except that depending on who held power in Washington, the tariffs changed. Lets not forget, the South did things that hurt the north financially - ending the slave trade, for instance, was a direct benefit to southern slave-owners and a direct economic loss for northern shipping interests. Also, see my note on the Virginia constitutional crisis below. Wouldn't disagree with that, although its largely moot since the war was never about tariffs. Even if that were true, its also clearly not the reason for war. For instance, the South pushed through the passage of the fugitive slave act, which could certainly considered federal overreach and which angered the north to no end. Taney's decision in Dred Scot was also the imposition of federal authority over the states. This went in both directions, and the desire for "more government" that we attribute to our current time is inappblicale 200 years ago. There was no real regional ideological distinction - it was a matter of policy decisions. The North benefitted from tariffs and wanted them. The South did not and didn't want them. When the South ended slave-importation, it certainly used federal power to help themselves. And lets not forget that for the vast majority of the first 60 years of the US, the Federal government was dominated by the south. Hard to dominate a government which you supposedly decry. However, all of these points are largely illusory, because we have the perfect test case of what the war was about - West Virginia. West Virginia was a southern state at the outbreak of the war, but its now little remembered that it was rent apart by constitutional debates for 50 years. The rich plantation owning East held much of the power, especially due to slavery and voting mechanics. The far less slaveholding west, although largely made up of similar people and also almost entirely agrarian (coal was not yet mined in quantities), was constantly attempting to change the contitution to counterbalance slavery. And, lo and behold, West Virginia did not chose to side with the South in the civil war. Now, their decision to join the north was hardly overwhelming, but if this crisis was not precipitated by slavery and instead by common ideas about government, tariffs and the like.......why would West Virginia secede? Especially after 50 years of constitutional debates that were largely shaped by slavery and its implication on taxation and voting? That would make absolutely no sense.
West Virginia is the most obvious case, but there were many hotbeds of Unionism in the Confederacy. Areas where slaveholding was lower, and the local population didn't support the institution nearly as much.
Specific to the bolded part above of your response; ever consider that most of the common soldiers of the Confederacy, as well as the officers, never owned slaves yet gave their lives for the South in the War? Which "primary actors behind secession" are you referencing here? General Robert E. Lee? In a letter dated December 27, 1856, Lee acknowledged that "slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil..." Lee later released and compensated the slaves that worked at his farm and home Arlington. General James "Pete" Longstreet? He was a a lifelong opponent of slavery yet headed one of the Confederacy's and Gen. Lee's largest infantry fighting Corps. President Jefferson Davis? While Jefferson supported slavery he, as president of the Confederacy, Davis fully believed that slavery was a temporary necessity in order to develop the cotton trade in the South since the New England's textile industry capitalized unfairly on child labor and any study of Jefferson's writings reveal that states rights of the South formed the major impetus for the Confederacy and its rebellion against the North, not slavery. How about General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson? As an evangelical Christian, General Jackson was very much against slavery and before the war established one of the first black Sunday schools in Lexington, Virginia. So which "primary actors behind secession" are you referencing here? Because any analysis of the war and its key players in the Confederacy (I steer you to the historical writings of Shelby Foote and more recently James McPherson] will reveal that most of those sons of the South that fought for the Confederacy - the common soldiers and field officers - never owned slaves. They fought for Southern independence; more clearly, they fought for states rights. While slavery may have been an issue for secession it was not the issue for the war. Nonetheless, please explain your contention and explain which "primary actors behind secession" you reference deferring to slavery as prompting their actions?
Well, what does the Confederate Constitution say? Surely if the Confederacy was all about state rights, it'd have been more like the Articles of Confederation, right? Well......
Or, lets see what Alexander Stephens, who almost certainly can be considered the Confederacy's chief of ideology said about the Confederate Constitution in his famous cornerstone speech. On the matter of tariffs: Clearly then, its not states rights itself, its that the South thought tariffs unfair. Stephens then uses the same argument against using federal funds for constuction of improvements - its not fair to take more from the south to give to the north. So what then, is the real improvement in the Confederate Constitution? You guessed it: I've quoted the entire Stephens passage to demonstrate just how much of his speech was on this subject - nearly a full third of it. Yet he spent more time talking about how the new system is an improvement because cabinet members can speak in Congress than he did about tariffs! And he then EXPLICITLY stated that the very founding principle of the Confederacy is slavery and that it was slavery that caused the breach in the Union. I know, it was only ITN that made this point, and he's an irrelevant moonbat, but I see it all the time. The Confederacy was created to preserve slavery and it saw itself in that light. No matter how nicely Robert E. Lee felt about it, just like Rommel being a decent man didn't spare the Third Reich from condemnation.
I really can't see how this argument still goes on, I don't see what other proof you words out of the mouths of the men of the CSA themselves, not to mention the CSA Constitution.
Thanks for the snarky response. Only you could say that a 20% drop is "hardly drastic"? You just nullified your own argument. You say that it didn't precipitate a similar crisis and then you point out where it did precisely that. Wow. Just wow. Thanks for keeping things simplistic.