Who Would You Have Supported In the American Civil War

[angus]

I voted neutral, but I agree with Dead0man.  It would depend upon factors such as where I live, how I earn a living, how my parents raised me, etc. 

At the time all my ancestors were poor European White Trash who had not yet immigrated to the United States, and I doubt any of them could read or write well enough to know what wars were currently being waged, and were probably too busy scraping a living from the earth to care one way or the other, so I have to imagine that they were all neutral on the issue. 

[angus]

paranoid, xenophobic empire

It is well known that South Carolina, the first state to secede, was also the first among the British American colonies to elect a Jewish member to the colonial legislature.  In fact, outside Poland--another place which, like the American South, often finds itself the butt of politically incorrect jokes--it was the first place in the Western World to elect a Jew to public office.  Louisiana, another secession state, was the only region outside to welcome several thousand French-speaking refugees from the region of Acadia--now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island--after having been expelled from their homelands by the British during the French and Indian War.  The Texas legislature welcomed Germans and Czechs in large numbers in the early days after their independence from Mexico.  We could go on and on along these lines, of course, and it's not that any of this history has any more relevance to the thread than your bizarre post, but it seems that you might benefit from just a little historical education.

[angus]

though the Civil War has never been a main area of interest for me I find it absolutely impossible to believe "freeing the slaves" was the actual motivation for the Northern/US invasion.

I always thought it was preservation of the union that was the main motivator.  Anyway, I think it depends upon your line of income.  I'd imagine that if you were an insurer in Hartford, Connecticut that last thing you'd want is abolition of slavery.  If, on the other hand, you were a large-scale farmer in Ohio and you have to pay your laborers, then you would probably be pretty keen on the idea.  If you're an industrial manufacturer in Boston, then surely you support the tariffs on imported English plowblades and the like, and that alone might be reason enough to support the Republicans.  I agree that for the overwhelming number of northern Republicans, abolition was not a major factor.  And for the majority of northern Democrats, the war was never very popular at any stage.

I don't think any of us can honestly say which side we'd support without first making some assumptions about these sorts of things.  I'd say the same thing about the American Revolution, the Boxer Rebellion, the French Revolution, and the series of rebellions in Russia 1917.

Of course it's easy in hindsight to say oh yeah I think Lincoln and the Republicans did the right thing.  I do that all the time.  He's a big hero.  Preserved the Union.  But in situ it must be a harder call, and depends upon many factors.  I guess that's mainly why I voted neutral. 

[angus]

Me encanta como Benito Juárez y quien lo apoya,

Ya lo creo que debe ser y quien lo apoyaba

(Juárez está muerto, ¿no?)

[angus]

Me encanta como Benito Juárez y quien lo apoya,

Ya lo creo que debe ser y quien lo apoyaba

(Juárez está muerto, ¿no?)

I don't actually speak Spanish. Lo siento, mama.

vale.  arurú mi amor 

[angus]

Read Rousseau and get back to me:

Lisez-vous français aussi?  Français et espagnol!  Un homme du monde, n'est-ce pas?

Yeah, there's deep irony in saying "fcuk the constitution" in the same breath as defending the Republicans' successful attempt to squelch the rebellion.  I'd agree with that.

You gotta wonder, WTF are they teaching the kids in school, nowadays?  I'm no traditionalist--yes, I admire Lincoln and his big dick, and even though I think he was a tyrant who suspended habeus corpus, I still think the Republicans were in the right; however, I generally appreciate the irreverent--okay, I'm no traditionalist, per se, if one is going to debate, then one should at least act like he knows what he is talking about.  

As for you, I think you're probably more of a progressive at heart.  Sadly, I'm the same way.  Of course, you want to be a radical revolutionary.  Your level of commitment to both liberty and equality is tantamount to that of the revolutionary, but your recognition of other principles makes you hesitate.  Your lifestyle simply cannot accommodate the commitments of a full-time insurrectionist, even though you're pretty keen to lend your spare time to all kinds of subversive behavior.  You may try to model alternative ways of living, but in the end you have neither the time nor the inclination to put your efforts and fortune into the cause.  For this reason, you're really not a radical, but rather a progressive.  I can appreciate that.  It's nothing to be ashamed of, but it's really nothing to brag about either.

So go on quoting Rousseau, or the English translations thereof, but admit to yourself that you enjoy your three-car garage with remote-control openers and the quiet suburban neighborhood and the weekly private piano lessons for your child and the fact that you don't support Obamacare and the whole PPACA fiasco precisely because you're better off without it.  You can still support same-sex marriage and gay rights and abortion rights.  It's okay.  That's what I do.  But let's be honest with ourselves.  All things considered, we got it pretty good.  I won't tell you not to rock the boat too much, because I know that deep in your heart you know that you won't.  Good for you.

[angus]

keep in mind they don't teach kids about europe in public school, the more coherent parts of my political philosophy are products of the canon promoted by the liberal arts tradition.

sure they do.  It's a collection of islands and peninsulas hanging off the Asian continent, and it gets to be called a continent for historical reasons or whatever.  For all its faults, I think our school system gives the average gringo that much information.

What it probably doesn't teach is that that the majority of slaves brought here were brought by the dutch and the portuguese, and not by the English.  We beat ourselves up over it all the time.  So do the English.  Do you think the Netherlanders or the Portuguese do?  Bet again.  I worked in Amsterdam for a semester and had this conversation with many a Dutch nationalist.  (yes, there are some fairly nationalistic Dutchmen, believe it or not.)  They don't apologize.  In the end, they gave Surinam, Aruba, and all the rest full Dutch citizenship (which is why you see so many long-haired black men in Amsterdam trying to sell you coke on the streets.  Be careful, for all you stereotypes, their penalities for cocaine possession are actually stricter than ours.  I don't tell you how to run you life, mind you, but I do caution you to use a little common sense.)  The Dutch found practical solutions, not Lockean ones.  A nation of only 16 million people needs to leave that navel-gazing sort of stuff to others.  The Portuguese, of course, have bigger economic problems and don't really have time to bask in the warm glow of White Man's Guilt.  Good for them.

Anyway, yeah, I'm with you on the issue of our government:  Our constitution is flawed.  Frankly, I don't think any reasonable person disagrees with that.  Have you ever noticed that governments are organized according to whatever principles were in fashion at the time they were founded?  Why do the USA, France, and Mexico have Republics, while Germany and Italy have democracies, and UK has a "constitutional monarchy" and others have different forms?  It's just what was in fashion at the time.  The US ratified its constitution in 1787, the French shortly thereafter, and the Mexicans won independence from Spain not long after that.  Those three came about at a time when the Republic, with its president and separation of powers was all the rage.  To be sure, those three republics are very different in many ways, and culturally the USA is probably more different than the other two, but governmentally they represent the pinnacle of state evolution at the time they were founded.  Then, later, Germany gets unified under Bismarck--who is, according to this forum, about half Freedom Fighter and half Horrible Person--and Italy gets unified, etc., then you get another form.  

Political fashions come and go.  We're probably stuck with ours, just the same way that everyone else is stuck with theirs.  Occasionally you get a big change--I'm not talking about the "Arab spring" because I don't think that will turn out to be the big change that our newsmedia is making it out to be--but you get some big change as a result of some bloodshed.  The French Revolution, the American Revolution, and World War II are examples, but the communist takeover of South Viet Nam by the North was not, since in the end the American Way endured and propagated in that nation, so we have to be careful how we judge these things.  I don't think any major internal rebellions in the US will happen within our lifetime and I'm not even sure that they are needed, and I think that you'd agree.  I would agree that big changes are in order:  we have discussed on this forum the US Senate and the Electoral College system, for example.  Those could be changed by amendment.  Amendments are uphill battles, but not impossible.  I think that it is highly probable that those two institutions will go away or change significantly, not within my lifetime, but within yours.  The deeper questions about how we go about living with each other in an increasingly pluralistic society will remain unsolved forever.  There is really no precedent for a nation such as ours, and that's okay too.