/r/TIL about Ole Miss's Confederate past has OP asked to calm down; he chooses to get personal instead (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
63 ups - 20 downs = 43 votes
82 comments submitted at 18:39:17 on Nov 3, 2013 by Clemenstation
/r/TIL about Ole Miss's Confederate past has OP asked to calm down; he chooses to get personal instead (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
63 ups - 20 downs = 43 votes
82 comments submitted at 18:39:17 on Nov 3, 2013 by Clemenstation
http://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1pt8n5/tilin1861theentirestudentbodyofthe/cd5tgc3
> Fighting for their god given right to own slaves.
Somebody give this guy a medal.
Ever since libertarianism became more mainstream, neo confederate sentiments have as well since the two ideologies are intertwined. The sad result is a bunch of historical revisionists that think the South somehow held the moral high ground in the Civil War.
Neither side had the moral high ground. The South wanted to keep their power over the slaves, and the US wanted to keep their power over the South.
Just as the slaves had the right to be free, the South had the right to go their own way, just as the US did less than a century earlier.
The south had the right to secede from the union so they could continue to own people as property?
They had as much of a right to secede from the US as the US did from England.
That doesn't mean that they were justified in doing so, when the cause was less of wanting to become an independent state and more of wanting to retain the ability to own people as property and maintain vast fortunes based upon said ability.
Whether a people should be free to rule themselves is a separate issue from whether what they do with that freedom is good or bad.
I believe they were just as justified in going their own way as any other nation has been throughout history. I don't believe they were justified in owning people.
To use an analogy on a personal level, I think you should be free to drink yourself to oblivion, but I do not think it's right or good for you to do so.
> I think you should be free to drink yourself to oblivion, but I do not think it's right or good for you to do so.
Extra credit question: children, can you tell me the difference between drinking oneself to death and holding another as a slave?
One is a "necessary evil", the other is slavery?
i find you acceptable
they were literally taking away the rights of people to rule themselves. The whole slavery thing cannot be separated from the secession.
Do you think nations have the right to rule themselves only when they do things you approve of?
Yes
If those nations seek the expansion of an activity that will threaten the economic, political, and moral stability of my nation, then yes
> To use an analogy on a personal level, I think you should be free to drink yourself to oblivion, but I do not think it's right or good for you to do so.
Perhaps you should choose a less-ridiculous, semi-relevant analogy.
The principle behind the analogy is the right to self determination. Both on the individual level and the national level.
You rule yourself as nations wish to rule themselves.
This is the dumbest shit I've ever heard. You're saying drinking is equivalent to owning slaves. You're fucking trolling, there's no other explanation.
Drinking oneself to death affects one person; the idiot who's doing it.
Owning slaves affects at least two people; the asshole who thinks it's okay to own a person, and the poor soul who's owned by the asshole slaver.
What about the slave's right to self determination?
Fuck you.
Doesn't matter the south got beat, end of story.
Most of the southern states fought explicitly for the right to own people as property, it's right in their constitutions.
And in most of their documents explaining the reasons for them seceding.
I wouldn't say the south had "the right" to go their own way over slavery.
They had the right to be their own nation. To say they did not is to say no other country, including the US, had the right to rule themselves.
yeah everyone has a "right" towards self-determination, but when that determination that distinguishes them from the society they want to break away from revolves mainly around preserving a slave based economy I'd say it's highly immoral.
Slavery was highly immoral, ruling themselves as their own nation was not.
you're missing the connection that the main reason they wanted to form their own government was slavery. The south did not have the moral high ground. Let's say I want to start a colony for child rapists on a farm in upstate new york, would forming my own nation for this cause be moral?
The South had no such right - they were being treated justly according to the laws in which they agreed upon by entering into the Union.
What right did the colonies have to make their own nation?
The colonies were not being represented fairly so they had a moral right. Legally, it is ambiguous. What is clear is that the South lacked both a legal and moral right unless one's morality is divergent from basic human norms.
Many people in America today make a strong case for not being represented fairly. Gerrymandering, bought-out politicians, the Senate giving low-population states way too much weight, etc. Would those states be justified in leaving the US now?
>What is clear is that the South lacked both a legal and moral right
And what, the slave-owning, native-murdering colonies were somehow better in this regard?
None of those things you list are illegal according to what each state agreed upon when becoming a state. You can view them as negatives, but that doesn't make them illegal.
And no, I don't actually have much respect for the founding fathers or the American Revolution. However the revolution can still be justified by simple fact that the colonies were forced into union rather than it being an agreement. The South by the 1860's had all agreed to be a part of the United States. They noticed that they no longer were able to maintain political dominance due to the expansion of non-slave states and the massive population growth in the North so they decided to commit treason.
The colonists were subjects of England from birth, just as those in the South were US citizens from birth; they didn't have a choice in the matter.
If the southern states were traitors, so were the northern states and any other nation whose people choose to go their own way.
The colonies never independently joined Britain - they were colonies. The southern states that seceded did choose to join the new United States of America. No agreement was broken to warrant secession. I don't understand why this is such a difficult thing to grasp.