SENATE BILL: Holidays Act (Law'd)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor: Napoleon

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The sponsor has 24 hours to begin advocating for the bill.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Nappy don't forget about your other bill that you need to post about.


A motion to table has been filed bt Senator Nix and seconded by Senator Snowstalker, a vote is thus open on the motion to table the bill. Senators please vote Aye, Nay, or Abstain. This is a 48 hour vote and will require two thirds of those voting to vote in the affirmative to pass the motion.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

NAY

Second descive nay vote (4th one on a 2/3rds vote) tonight.

If you wanted to kill this, you should have jsut waited for a final vote, then you only need six nays instead of seven Ayes. I lean towards nay on the final vote.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Vote on Motion to Table the Holidays Act:

Aye (4): Αverroës Nix, HagridoftheDeep, sbane and Snowstalker
Nay (5): Ben, Kalwejt, MaxQue, Napoleon, and NC Yankee

The motion has failed.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor Feedback: None Present
Status: Vote tomorrow if no feedback.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Status: Withdrawn

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Sponsor Feedback: None
Status: Vote Tomorrow if no feedback is given.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Why? We have other occasions to remember how slavery and treason have scarred our past (including Veterans Day, Emancipation Day, Memorial Day Civil Rights Day). Section 3 would only prevent federal money from going to revisionist bigots waving confederate flags. I'm confused about Ben's opposition to this, too.

We are far more in danger of our history being altered for the sake of political correctness, then Lost Cause Mythology at this point. But that is a side issue from the real problem here.

If one journeys back through the History board, you will my credentials in opposing such neo-confederate tripe are well established. With that placed firmly in your minds, I must oppose your amendment as long as it contains Section III. The Confederacy as I have stated again and again, was the fruit of a long process of southern politics, opinion and religion being degraded and throughly sold out for the sake of preserving the institution of slavery, everything was dancing to its tune and when they could no longer impose ever increasingly outrageous demands on the country as a whole, they engaged in an illegal act of treason. I have stated this in various posts over the last two years and can be found scattered throughout my posting history.

That said, I don't think it right, even while acknowledging who founded the confederacy and why, to deny a Tennessee farmer who fought an died for what he thought was the defence of his rights, some degree of rememberance. Misled and lied to by outrageous nonesense in firebrand newspapers about evil Yankee Republicans coming to deprive them of their rights, they then did what they thought duty compelled them to do. I don't think we should deny funding for schools because their happens to be a Confederate private with a musket standing in the town square. The guy probably couldn't even read, more or less care about whether or not some rich Plantation owner could continue to live high on the hog by means of stealing labor from humans in bondage. He might even have been drafted as the confederacy did have that beginning in 1862. I frankly don't see the problem with celebrating the bravery of a common soldier in such fashion.

I can't stand Nathan Bedford Forrest for instance and wouldn't mind if everyone of his statues were torn out; however, I could not support the same being done to Lee or Longstreet. Lee tried to temper emotions and restore unity after the war. Longstreet became a Republican and supported Grant's policies, thus earning him the hatred of most of these same neo-confederates. There in lies the reason why this should not be foisted upon the regions in such manner. I don't see a problem with a region, state or town honoring either of the latter two, provided they did it with utmost in historical accuracy and didn't skip over the darker side. That is afterall the best way to combate Lost Cause mythology, not political correctness. This amendment would make that impossible.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Why not rephrase it to prevent the use of Federal funding for such recognition? That way if the IDS wants to spend its own money on such, that is up for its people and their representatives to decide and tax payers from other parts of the country won't be funding it.

That makes more sense then putting a whole region's education funding at stake or its whole highway funding, simply because a single town has a statue where an elaborate ceremony is held that may or may not be considered offensive by some bureaucrat in Nyman.

That is why inserting the political correctness is the worst possible way to combat ignorance, it is just sanctioning an abridged version of the events satisfactory to the political leanings of the day. It is the other side of the same coin of ignorance. If we truly want to avoid repeating the events of the past, then my philosophy is give it completely and by the facts as best as we know them. Every human being in the world is flawed, that is where slavery came from and that is where the Civil War came from. Unless people learn to recognize their own dark sides, then we will see the same stories being repeated over and over again and you will not achieve that kind of awareness by hiding from it. It must be acknowledged, accepted as it is and learned from.

I know what your intent is but this is perhaps the worst possible way to pursue it. A kneejerk politically correct demand to follow an arbitrary line, on penalty of loss of all Federal funding for everything if they fail to comply. Too often, it will be the case that agencies, and local governments will just avoid it period as to not take the risk and then you will lose any rememberance of Washington (slave owner), Lincoln (racist), TR (Imperialism), FDR (Japanese Internment) and Truman (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Fairly soon, you don't have a history anymore, then you have the perfect breeding ground for oppression and intollerance.

I find this section of the amendment far more dangerous if you ask me.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

That last post had three more paragraphs removed for purposes of concission.

Perhaps I've been a bit abrasive about this. (For that, I apologize.) Yankee is correct that the issue of Confederate holidays is peripheral to the primary focus of this legislation. If the amendment fails, I'll reintroduce it without Section 3.

Nevertheless, I couldn't disagree with defenders of these holidays more strongly. All that Section 3 would accomplish would be to prevent organizations that receive federal funding from spending money celebrating the legacy of the Confederacy. I don't think that's an unacceptable limit on freedom of speech; if you want to celebrate the slavers' rebellion, you are, of course, free to do so on your own dime. The idea that this mild restriction would be met with "violence," as Jbrase insinuates, is extremely disturbing.

Atlasia has an interest in preventing these celebrations because romanticizing the leaders of the Confederacy is dangerous and insensitive. Lee, Longstreet, and the rest were the leaders of a rebellion of slaveholders against our country. Whatever else they might have done in their lives, whatever their personal character, none of it can outweigh that shame. Willful self-deception may be a popular tradition, but there's no reason for us to sanction it.

Yankee, the anonymous Tennessee farmer whom you describe is a tragic figure; he deserves to be remembered on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and, more generally, whenever we recall the horrible costs of war. Associating our remembrance of him with nostalgia for the awful cause for which he fought is both improper and disrespectful.

But that is not what your amendment does. It speficially calls out a specific event and group for being so horrible as to demand exclusion. Meaning they can't be included by an agency or a region in those broader holiday's either lest they be risking their education budgets or whatever.

What about the troops that fought in the Mexican war? That was a war of expansion to gain territory for the purposes of increasing the number of slaves states. What about he War of 1812, started as an imperial land grab against Canada, with other legitimate motivations of course like seizing ships of course, but they wanted Canada and tried to get it during the war. Or the troops that fought down in Cuba in the Spanish American War?

Nix, you can't address this issue by denying funding. The only reason you deny funding is to keep taxpayer dollars from going to something they might not want them going towards. If that is the case, then my offer in the previous post solves. If the IDS wants to do the same, it can pass the same prohitibition on tax dollars being used for such thing, but that is their choice and not to be dictated by the Federal Gov't, which your present wording does with "any government..." coming after "The federal Gov't", and cosnidered in conjunction with the supremacy clause. Unless of course your term limits on the court get adopted and one of the Justices is running for the IDS Senate seat and the other for Emperor, then such things become more flexible obviously.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Damn, I can't start a vote yet b/c of 24 hour debate time.


Senator, would you care to opine on the rest of the amendment as either friendly or hostile in the remaining hours. Not that it matters because we have objections lodged.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Civil War is the single most important event in American history, so I don't think that singling out celebrations of the Confederacy for censure is inappropriate. We should be ashamed of many parts of our national history, but nothing diminishes our moral stature more than the fact that we built our nation on racial slavery and had to fight a bloody war among ourselves to get rid of it.

This disgrace is compounded by the numerous government-sanctioned celebrations of that rebellion. We don't have states in Atlasia, of course, but in real life nine states celebrate Confederate Memorial Day; in several states this holiday occurs on the birthday of Jefferson Davis. These occasions mark Confederate leaders as heroes to be admired or worshiped rather than as men who embraced, or at least fought to preserve, an evil institution.

You accuse me of taking the side of political correctness, but I believe that I am doing precisely the opposite. The politically correct view is that these holidays are harmless celebrations of national heritage that ought not to be criticized or disrupted. Refusing to take action would be more comfortable and less offensive to some of our sensibilities, but I am not prepared to give up so easily.

The classic sign of a case of political correctness is when someone feels he must alter or ignore the points his critic has made and replace them with his own strawman to beat down.

How many times do I have to repeat myself? I don't care one damn bit abotu the confederace nor do I find it anything less then a complete disgrace to humanity that you or anybody else would like to attest to believing it is. Stop trying to beat a dead horse on something that is not the issue here It is easy to bash up on the confederacy because most sane people share that view thus it is just so damn easy to ignore the praciticalities of what you are doing.

This is a restriction that is being applied to every level of government, as I have established and will deny to them the right to spend their own taxpayer's money as they see fit and as their representatives determine for no other reason then because the gov't in Nyman has made a determination one way or another on the matter. Local governments will not take the risk with the funding for schools and highways and will thus abandon not only what you want trashed but numerous other celebrations of historical significance the minute a lawyer or a Nyman bureaucrat comes sniffing around. A concern you have completely ignored once again in favor of beating the dead horse yet once again. And then you wonder I am labelling this as a politically correct effort. This is not the RL US as you say and thus we don't have states trying to claim in textbooks that blacks fought for the Confederacy or any of the other stupidity in VA, TX or wherever. So why is it necessary to pursue federal policies as if such was the case? Why does this have to be dictated in such a manner to lower levels of Govermnet? It doesn't. I say it is political correctness because you are using the justified righteous indignation towards the Confederacy to justify an unnecessary dictate by the Federal Goverment to the Regions and to local goverments, and ignoring some very reasonable concerns in the process. The end result of this will be the centralization of all celebratory occassions, since no local or Regional Gov't will dare risk the funding and thus they will retreat from these altogether as lawyers and subsequent amendments expand its scope, covered events and figures.

And what the hell does "concepts" mean? If it wasn't bad enough, now we are throwing some added vagueness into text as well.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor Feedback: Hostile
Status: Withdrawn

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Sponsor Feedback: Origination
Status: Objections entered by NC Yankee and I think Ben, but his text doesn't show clear intent. Vote to after amendment has been on floor for required 24 hours.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would support section Three if it was limited to just federal Govt', its agencies and the use of federal funds for these purposes on the part of Regional or local govt's. I would also support withdrawing federal education fudning for the any local education authority that purports Lost Cause Mythology in place of honest and factual history. That is the proper way to achieve this and the proper way to restrict the use of Federal funds in this matter. IF you educate the children properly, then these holidays will be abolished by the Regions and local goverments themselves.

Anyway, it is time for a vote on this amendment.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor Feedback: Origination
Status: Objections entered by NC Yankee and I think Ben, but his text doesn't show clear intent. A vote is now open on the above amendment please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain. I expect this to be done by tomorrow.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

NAY

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

We do not have Adolf Hitler Day celebrated as a holiday, we do not honor the British monarchy and Mussolini doesn't get honored with a day in his name anywhere in this nation. We do, however, have locales that believe that a man such as Robert E. Lee deserves a day in his honor. A traitor, a racist, a killer. These areas have the nerve to celebrate a man who fought to preserve slavery instead of Martin Luther King Jr Day. What does this say about our country?

I have no issue with defunding "Robert E. Lee Day", I even said that in the previous communication. I just want a clear list of leaders, so it can't be used to defund various Confederate soldiers which just had the bad luck to live in the wrong area of the World during that War.

Also, it doesn't consider at all the actions made by men after the War, when they may have redeemed themselves. And what is a "Confederate concept"? Are Line item vetoes and regional autonomy are Confederate concepts? It's in the Confederate Constitution, after all.

It's so badly worded than it's way overreaching.

If it just defunded Lee Day of federal money, I wouldn't care either. The problem is that it doesn't just defund that but everything that receives federal support that such gov't entity is doing. It is excessive and I don't think that such conditions have ever been placed on federal funding in such a broad sweeping way for such a trivial matter really. Typically it is a condition of a related funding mechanism (highway funding - speed limit, and I think dringing age; education funding - curriculum changes). A system I find rather reasonable because it is narrowly within that issues spending and basically says if you use our education money then you better follow these speficied standards for education. It is a system I have utilized in bills before. In a similar fashion is denying funds to a region that abuses the money or misappropriates it, that is a reasonable standard as well. However, this setup is basically going back and saying, "You know all that money we been giving you, you betterlet us dictate your holidays, unless you are prepared to deal with out it, any of it".

It gets worse then that, and opens the door to the very things I warned about on the previous page. So if a gray uniform is a "confederate concept" that anyone who celebrates the cadets at West Point and VMI (the origination of the gray uniform if I am not mistaken) is going to lose all their federal money? Not to mention the MA regiment at First Manassas who arrived on the field in grey (and yes they paid for it immensly), just because some bureaucrat with a blank check to do what whatever he wants under this text can now shut down evey school in MA or maybe even the Northeast should they choose to celebrate this unfortunate regiment. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

4-3-0-2

I think Hagrid and sbane haven't voted yet. I can't see all the votes on the page of the post box, because of the ongoing debate. Which is good of course, I mean good that the debate is occuring.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I am fine with section III of course of your amendment, Nix. As I said before, I wouldn't mind preventing of the use of federal funds by regions to pay for holding such a holiday as well since that is federal money being used directly for such purposes as I detailed in a post a few days ago.

I will process your amendment just as soon as I figure out what all of you have introducedo n what bills, since it seems to be al ot.  

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor Feedback: None Given
Status: Vote tomorrow if none is given. Pending completion of previous amendment. VP and Dean may open the vote once 24 hours have passed since offering with no feedback and the previous vote having concluded. Your sparkling flower distracted me, Nix.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Kalwejt, you already voted on the present vote.


3-4-0-3 


Hagrid, sbane and Gass (has he swore in yet?) have yet to vote.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Vote on Amendment 55:18 by Napoleon:

Aye (3): Kalwejt, MaxQue, and Napoleon
Nay (5): Averroës Nix, Ben, HagridoftheDeep, NC Yankee, and Snowstalker
Abstain (0):

Didn't Vote (2): Gass and sbane

With five votes in the negative, three in the affirmative and time having expired, the amendment has been rejected.

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Sponsor Feedback: Hostile
Status: A vote is now open on the above amendment, Senators please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

AYE

Vote on passage of Amendment 55:22 by Averroës Nix:

Aye (6): Averroës Nix, Ben, Gass3268, MaxQue, NC Yankee and sbane
Nay (1): Napoleon
Abstain (0):

Didn't Vote (3): HagridoftheDeep, Kalwejt, and snowstalker

With six votes in the affirmative, the amendment has been adopted.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A vote is now open on the underlying bill, Senators please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.