Opinion of the Confederate States of America

[Escape Pod Zero]

I swear if you answer freedom nation, you immediately go on my ignore.

[S019]

Obvious HN, and anyone who defends it is a clear HP too. Let's just hope Yellowhammer doesn't find this thread...

[HillGoose]

HN, the North didn't go far enough either, slave owners should have been guillotined by their former slaves for violating the NAP.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

HP and Dixiecrats like Jefferson and Jackson werent liberal, they were states rights Dems that kept Jim Crow laws and slavery

[SWE]

In general, history is mainly shades of grey. Very rarely will you find something or someone completely good or evil.

This is a noteworthy exception. The CSA was completely evil.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Starting out with a plantation-derived monoculture export and a captive labor force is just a greeeeeeat idea in terms of economic development.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The Ignoble Cause.

[SevenEleven]

Racists, traitors, losers, deplorables.

[TPIG]

Horrible nation founded explicitly to preserve slavery.

[TDAS04]

Nothing good about it or what it stood for.

[ηєω ƒяσηтιєя]

Racists, traitors, losers, deplorables.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

When we speak about the pitiful nostalgia for the times before and after the civil war, it should be noted that the ruling Southern elites not only oppressed the slaves (and then ex-slaves after the Reconstruction), but also did everything to ensure that the white folks that did not belong to their narrow caste had as little power as possible. In fact Jim Crow laws, though designed mostly to keep the Black folks from voting, also disenfranchised a large portion of the white population, which means that voting rights legislations gave thousands of white folks a right to vote as well.

At the same time ruling elites perpetuated their hold on the political and economic power by helping to foster and exploiting racial tensions to steer the poor whites' resentment away from them and against the Blacks, both before and after the Civil War. Truly one of the greatest tragedies was the failure to ensure that coalitions of freed ex-slaves and working class whites, that emerged in many places during the Reconstruction, ended due to the federal government dropping the ball and the local elites playing their "divide and rule" games. Some progressive Southern politicians like "Big Jim" Folsom of Alabama openly wanted to create such a coalition in the 40s and 50s, but we all know how it went.

So, statistically speaking, a white southerner nostalgic about the "old times", doesn't realize that if he or she were alive during said times, he'd probably be continuously screwed over and manipulated by the "big mules". Nor how s**ty his life would be in the present had the Confederacy won.

[Saint Milei]

Well obviously the confederacy was trash but the Northern apologists are worse than confederates.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Well obviously the confederacy was trash but the Northern apologists are worse than confederates.

Yes, clearly defending the legacy of the Union Army is worse than waging a war in the name of slavery.

[TDAS04]

Well obviously the confederacy was trash but the Northern apologists are worse than confederates.

The North was flawed, there were some bad things about the Union side.  There were no good things about the Confederate side.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

HP and Dixiecrats like Jefferson and Jackson werent liberal, they were states rights Dems that kept Jim Crow laws and slavery

Jefferson is the father of American liberalism. His opposition to the power of speculators, business interests and financial elites, opposition to religions establishment and support for religious tolerance and freedom, as well support for egalitarian democracy over the aristocratic dominance of wealthy interests all mark him down as a liberal in most every incarnations of term, and especially during the era of Classical Liberalism.

The fact that people cannot understand that race can cloud people's judgments and leave people to be unable to see the inconsistencies when such comes into practice, is both a flaw in analysis of history and of contemporary events for it fundamentally fails to account for the imperfections of human nature. Cleveland was a rapist, still a classical liberal. Wilson was a racist, still an economic progressive. FDR was an adulterer, still a New Dealer Progressive. JFK was JFK, still a liberal. Bill Clinton is a rapist, still a liberal. One's ideology is not determined by one's character flaws.

Andrew Jackson was a populist, who opposed financial elites and institution power in favor of expanded democracy (for its time) and all the wild excesses and extremes this meant for politics in such an era with people such as they are. When you expand the vote to include a bunch of racist farmers, you get racist policies. It is no different than the George Carlin line, stupid ignorant people are electing stupid ignorant politicians. Still this makes him a liberal populist.

You need to stop defining everything by modern terms and by race politics, otherwise, that is just as bad as the "Louis XIV/Hitler was a socialist" argument from the right, instead now it is Jackson, Wilson and FDR are Conservatives.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

When we speak about the pitiful nostalgia for the times before and after the civil war, it should be noted that the ruling Southern elites not only oppressed the slaves (and then ex-slaves after the Reconstruction), but also did everything to ensure that the white folks that did not belong to their narrow caste had as little power as possible. In fact Jim Crow laws, though designed mostly to keep the Black folks from voting, also disenfranchised a large portion of the white population, which means that voting rights legislations gave thousands of white folks a right to vote as well.

At the same time ruling elites perpetuated their hold on the political and economic power by helping to foster and exploiting racial tensions to steer the poor whites' resentment away from them and against the Blacks, both before and after the Civil War. Truly one of the greatest tragedies was the failure to ensure that coalitions of freed ex-slaves and working class whites, that emerged in many places during the Reconstruction, ended due to the federal government dropping the ball and the local elites playing their "divide and rule" games. Some progressive Southern politicians like "Big Jim" Folsom of Alabama openly wanted to create such a coalition in the 40s and 50s, but we all know how it went.

So, statistically speaking, a white southerner nostalgic about the "old times", doesn't realize that if he or she were alive during said times, he'd probably be continuously screwed over and manipulated by the "big mules". Nor how s**ty his life would be in the present had the Confederacy won.

People want to compartmentalize slavery as this separate side issue that was irrelevant because 1) It only harmed the blacks and 2) "It could have been dealt with another way/died out on its own".

Slavery harmed everyone as I have said multiple times:
1. Necessitates the restriction of:
A. Freedom of Speech
B. Freedom of Religion
C. Freedom of Assembly
D. Freedom of Press
F. Right to Keep and Bear Arms

2. It also
A. Requires massive Gov't support to maintain
B. Distorts the free labor market and undercuts wage earners
C. Ties down investment capital making entrepreneurship and economic diversification impossible
D. Creates a political class that desires only its own interests and opposes anything else (root of opposition to internal improvements)

3. It corrodes over time
A. Standard Legal interpretations and history
B. It corrupts and distorts the Courts
C. Necessitates the violation of state's rights to ensure capture of runaways
D. Empowers the Fed Gov't over the state's to protect traveling Southerner's "property rights".

4. Its continued presence
A. Causes a constant security threat that causes society to drift towards authoritarianism
B. Works to undermine domestic stability
C. The growth in population of slaves opens the risk of servile insurrection, thus necessitating the drive for constant expansion
D. These expansions dictate the waging of elective wars to forcefully expand slavery into the areas that already banned it.

I decided to go with outline format.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Horrible on every conceivable level. Would have been a failed state if it had won, and the fact that the ideology that spawned it was allowed to fester in America for centuries after its defeat is currently leading the whole country into becoming a failed state.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Horrible on every conceivable level. Would have been a failed state if it had won, and the fact that the ideology that spawned it was allowed to fester in America for centuries after its defeat is currently leading the whole country into becoming a failed state.

In a way the Confederate history was being written by losers, romanticizing the so-called "Lost Cause" and "muh bravery", poisoning the historical discourse for well-over one hundred years. Kind of similar to the military history of WWII, as long accepted in the west, largely being written by losers (former Nazi Generals and officers).

[Antonio the Sixth]

Horrible on every conceivable level. Would have been a failed state if it had won, and the fact that the ideology that spawned it was allowed to fester in America for centuries after its defeat is currently leading the whole country into becoming a failed state.

In a way the Confederate history was being written by losers, romanticizing the so-called "Lost Cause" and "muh bravery", poisoning the historical discourse for well-over one hundred years. Kind of similar to the military history of WWII, as long accepted in the west, largely being written by losers (former Nazi Generals and officers).

Yeah. I've always thought "history is written by the winners" was a moronic thought-terminating cliché and this is perhaps the best example. There are a lot of complicated processes that end up determining which perspective on a historical event people end up remembering, and military victory is only one factor.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Horrible