If Mort Divine ruled the world

[CiG]

Point taken of course, but would that have been the only states' right at risk?

 

[CiG]

Groening always seemed ahead of his time and he's a Democratic Party supporting liberal.

 

[daisy2er]

Just Goblin?

 

[Einherjar86]

Point taken of course, but would that have been the only states' right at risk?

Certainly not, if the central conflict concerns the South's secession. So yes, you're correct that it would have affected states' rights.

But the emphasis on states' rights has emerged in the years since the Civil War, mainly as a rhetorical tool. In other words, the Civil War has become a kind of clarion call, especially for twentieth-century conservatism, to organize political support on the right (hence why you see pickup trucks sporting the Confederate flag in the name of "states' rights"). In the years leading up to the Civil War, and during it, slavery was actually seen as a primary motivating factor in going to war. If you read statements and writings from southern politicians or the secession statements from individual states, not to mention the Confederacy's own Constitution, you'll see that slavery was a major focus. The South worried not only about slavery being illegal, but they worried about the possibility of slave insurrections. They saw the North as fomenting unrest among slaves.

Of course, this needs to be clarified. While the abolitionist cause was growing in the North, the reason for opposing slavery wasn't necessarily ethical in nature. The North knew that slavery was an economic powerhouse, and a cornerstone institution in the South. As the southern states grew impatient with Northern interventions and other political disagreements, the more they threatened secession; and the North was concerned over a "free" South as a slave-holding nation.

This is just one of those historical occasions in which economic motivations happened to correspond with an ethical project.

 

[CiG]

hence why you see pickup trucks sporting the Confederate flag in the name of "states' rights"

Is that really why they do it? Thought it might have more to do with probably having family that died fighting for the south or something.

Anyway, I take most of your points, but for some reason I remember hearing or reading somewhere that the slave industry was actually unsustainable economically, has anybody you know of put this concept forward or am I just tripping?

 

[rms]

slave industry was insanely profitable for like 3 centuries, how could you believe that?

but yeah, it's 'states' rights' aka fuck yankees

 

[CiG]

Something being profitable doesn't mean it will remain profitable forever. Not a hard concept to grasp.

But thinking back it might have actually specifically been that the slave/cotten industry wasn't sustainable.

 

[Einherjar86]

Is that really why they do it? Thought it might have more to do with probably having family that died fighting for the south or something.

That is really why they do it - it's a contemporary political statement in favor of states' rights.

This weekend’s Ku Klux Klan rally outside the South Carolina capitol building highlights the poignancy and divisiveness inherent in flying the Confederate battle flag, a symbol often associated with racial intolerance. Predictably, Confederate apologists have trotted out the “states’ rights” explanation for the Civil War as the race-neutral reason for the South’s rebellion—thus the flag represents something other than racism. Indeed, a recent Pew Research Center poll found that, 150 years after the Civil War, 48 percent of Americans (a plurality) still assert it was mainly about states’ rights.

http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/20/what-many-americans-get-wrong-about-states-rights/

Anyway, I take most of your points, but for some reason I remember hearing or reading somewhere that the slave industry was actually unsustainable economically, has anybody you know of put this concept forward or am I just tripping?

I think that slavery is unsustainable if we're talking long-term; but that doesn't mean its abolition wouldn't be disastrous for individual plantations. From the perspective of nineteenth-century landowners, slavery was absolutely essential to their way of life and financial stability. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century economics were unequipped to deal theoretically with the long-term effects of slave-labor. The historian Richard Slotkin writes that the

antimythologists of the American Age of Reason believed in the imminence of a rational republic of yeomen farmers and enlightened leaders, living amicably in the light of natural law and the Constitution. They were thereby left unprepared when the Jeffersonian republic was overcome by the Jacksonian Democracy of the western man-on-the-make, the speculator, and the wildcat banker; when racist irrationalism and a falsely conceived economics prolonged and intensified slavery in the teeth of American democratic idealism; and when men like Davy Crockett became national heroes by defining national aspiration in terms of so many bears destroyed, so much land preempted, so many trees hacked down, so many Indians and Mexicans dead in the dust.

 

[rms]

financial stability

do you think stability is the right word choice here? something like massive financial profit seems more applicable

 

[Dak]

The South was in the process of overtaking the North in economic clout prior to the war. New Orleans surpassed New York etc.

I think it's possibly more acccurate to say that the South seceded over slavery, but that the war was not over slavery.

 

[Einherjar86]

That's fair, if we're getting into the specifics of how slavery played a part in the war.

The North knew how crucial slavery was to the South's economy, and so it became an important element of wartime rhetoric. Ethically or morally speaking, of course, many northern businessmen and politicians were indifferent toward slavery.

 

[rms]

The South was in the process of overtaking the North in economic clout prior to the war. New Orleans surpassed New York etc.

I think it's possibly more acccurate to say that the South seceded over slavery, but that the war was not over slavery.

it's probably true that the south was economically stronger until the industrialization began though

 

[rms]

something more Mort-y

 

[Einherjar86]

do you think stability is the right word choice here? something like massive financial profit seems more applicable

Yes, I agree; but I think the southerners probably perceived it as stability.

 

[Dak]

That's fair, if we're getting into the specifics of how slavery played a part in the war.

The North knew how crucial slavery was to the South's economy, and so it became an important element of wartime rhetoric. Ethically or morally speaking, of course, many northern businessmen and politicians were indifferent toward slavery.

This is all more or less correct. Obviously the abolitionists in the North were putting pressure on the South, and had little resistance in the North because of the indifference (no direct economic relevance = don't care). There was also significant indifference broadly regarding the secession of the South. Prosecuting war still requires, even if less obviously today, a "just cause", and slavery was seized on once the North began to lose. The South seceded in large (although not total) part to protect a significant part of their economic engine (slavery). However, the North prosecuted war in response using slavery as the public moral cause, while the reality was also purely economic. The South controlled the raw material export in demand at the time, and New Orleans could more easily ship even mining products from the Rust Belt at the time because of Miss. river > over-mountain transit.

it's probably true that the south was economically stronger until the industrialization began though

The North was stronger and more developed at the outset of the war. However, had they not prosecuted war immediately, they would have rapidly been supplanted.

 

[CiG]

something more Mort-y

That was so cringeworthy. It must really hurt her fat heart to know that she has to bring up ancient African civilisations because there really isn't anything more contemporary she can cite to make her asinine point.

If white civilisation is so inferior, she has to explain why white civilisations surpassed the rest, even Asian civilisations eventually. Of course she'll say "by exploiting the non-white civilisations" well hey, though that may be a valid point, truly great civilisations don't allow themselves to be exploited so it just strengthens the rebut.

 

[Dak]

great civilisations don't allow themselves to be exploited

Therefore trump amirite?

 

[CiG]

Therefore trump amirite?

Hold on let me rephrase that.

Great civilisations don't allow themselves to be exploited from the outside.

 

[rms]

That was so cringeworthy. It must really hurt her fat heart to know that she has to bring up ancient African civilisations because there really isn't anything more contemporary she can cite to make her asinine point.

just think this development is strange in pro-black discourse. When is it going to become "well, we taught all y'all whitey's how to walk"

Great civilisations don't allow themselves to be exploited from the outside.

 

[The Ozzman]

I've heard black people saying that blacks are actually the white people and the white people are something I don't remember. I've also seen things where black people say that only why people descended from neanderthal/cro magnon and black people evolved separately.