The difference between the policies of the Republican and the Democratic parties are minimal. They are just two branches of the same party representing the privileged few, managing the country for their mutual benefit at the expense of the subservient majority.

It is no wonder that the President and the Congress have such poor approval ratings. No wonder that people have come to hate their own government.

Both parties endorse the idea that government is supreme. Instead of protecting freedom, they attempt to manage our personal and economic lives. More government has come to mean less freedom. The public has been duped and scammed, but many support the system out of ignorance. Many have become dependent on government and are unwilling to cut the umbilical chord. Many are frightened and distrustful of freedom so are unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives. Many people are totally confused about freedom, and have come to believe that democracy and freedom are the same thing, which they are not.

The sentiment against government will increase as the 4T crisis develops. Whoever is the next president will become a hated person. Whoever is next after he/she will be even more hated. This is because people expect government to take care of them and make things right. It is as much the fault of people who want a nanny state, which cannot possible work, as it is the fault of those who take advantage of this desire of many to be taken care of.

While we're on the subject of Congress, I have picked up another news source which seems to be worth skimming from time to time. Speaker Pelosi is publishing a web blog called The Gavel.

It is definitely spun blue. It will provide ammunition for any of you still feeling compelled to go in your face against the administration and its supporters. It will give balance for those who think the main stream media is too close to the administration's spin machine. As an example of how objective and neutral it is, one of the sections on reform and oversight is titled 'Draining the Swamp.' It's very inside-the-beltway, with coverage focused primarily on Congress. Not for everyone, but it's there.

Henry Waxman, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform has another similar web page which is even narrower in focus.

Originally Posted by Odin

The "inevitable disastrous crash" scenario is an insult to human ingenuity based on the bone-headed assumption that elevates oil is a moronically high, irreplaceable, pedestal. It will go down in history in the same trashbin of ideas as the notions 150 years ago that heavier-then-air flight was impossible and 60 years ago that we would never get to the moon. 100 years from now we will have a society that is both ecologically sustainable and has more energy available then we can ever imagine.

We can even have a serious lowering of the world's population without the disaster scenario everyone is so fond of. Just continue with the urbanization, more freedom and higher status for women outside of family roles, prolonged higher education, and other Western trends a lot of traditionalists are decrying, and it will happen of itself. If Japanese young adults are not marrying or reproducing because they can't get housing at a decent price, then Malthus and Darwin are having their way in a very easy and non-disastrous fashion.

The transition (a lot of elders supported by far fewer younger workers) is going to be tough, though - however, the Japanese are again solving that in a fashion foreseen in the novels of Isaac Asimov.

Originally Posted by Odin

Peakoil.com has become the home base for apocalyptic nutters and wacko survivalists of many shades. They are so nutty that one of the mods (MonteQuest) doesn't even understand the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Well absolutely man. MQ is a flaming jerk, and much of the board is, shall we say, fertilizer. It is why I rarely post there anymore. But alas, I do read it because fertilizer can be useful.

When reading PO, one needs to keep in mind that where we are saecularly. A lot of the doom and gloom they see results from linear thinking. They don't see the social psychological trends that take twenty years to pan out.

When reading it with PO in mind, you see all the condemnation of selfishness, growth at all cost, and SUV hating as deep frustration with 3T trends. Further, a lot of their uber-doom comes from not realizing that there will be a point deep into a crisis where ppl do make the sacrifices to right a situation.

One of the biggest problems over there is that these guys have no respect for the epistemology of their evidences. Even if they're right, they've deluded themselves into thinking they know everything - MQ especially. This is not good thinking, this is god thinking.

At any rate, divorcing oneself from either the conrucopians' or the crazy doomers' views is necessary when looking at this infrastructure. And if we take it as an infrastructure problem, well then, what can we do to fix it? How can individuals live within the parameters set by these infrastructural realities?

Originally Posted by antichrist

At any rate, divorcing oneself from either the conrucopians' or the crazy doomers' views is necessary when looking at this infrastructure. And if we take it as an infrastructure problem, well then, what can we do to fix it? How can individuals live within the parameters set by these infrastructural realities?

We need to:

Get electric cars on the road ASAP.
Build an interstate, electrically-powered, high-speed rail system.
Enact carbon taxes.
Work on ways of getting biofuels that minimize the impact on the food supply.
Start new building nuclear, wind, and solar power stations ASAP in order to replace coal and natural gas stations and to make the energy for the electric cars.
Massively increase spending on Fusion research.

Originally Posted by Odin

Massively increase spending on Fusion research.

I am with you and Cat & Cod on that.

Originally Posted by jeil

So far it has not proven to work. The major government funded project is just a welfare program for engineers according to some top researchers.

You are correct about ITER; it is producing large amounts of phenomenal physics, but (at ten gigabucks per year) is not being very productive. Ditto for the second largest project on laser-catalyzed fusion, which is a deliberate dual-use program aimed more at producing high-powered laser beams.

However, a recently declassified DARPA research program holds out the promise of a much cheaper and more reliable fusion method. The Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor has long been known as a practical fusion device for neutron generation (but not for power generation). A twenty-year effort led by atomic energy legend Robert Bussard has achieved breakthroughs in fusor efficiency. Now it's all right to be a bit skeptical of claims of breakthroughs just as funding ends -- but in this case the funding was yanked for a totally different purpose, the Iraq War.

Bussard claims he can build a working fusion generator -- not a scaled-down test reactor, but a production ready generator -- in three to five years at a cost of $300 million. He's been declassified and is hunting for the money the government is too embarrassed to give him -- from Google or anyone else.

I can't tell if he's right or not but for 3% of what we are already spending it seems worth the risk... if you have $300 million to risk. Of course the list of people and organizations who have that much money to risk on a single project can probably be listed on, at most, two sheets of paper.

If intelligently applied, we have plenty of excess resources to devote to improving matters. We should do so. I concur with you that I don't like the ethanol push. Ecologically, making our machines competitors for the same resources that we ourselves consume is very stupid.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I've seen that opinion many times, but it is pure revisionist history.

On the eve of the war, Senator Crittenden of Kentucky propose the "Crittenden Compromise," in a last gap effort to defuse the crisis. It is 100% slavery related. There is no clause that in any way raises the question of uneven taxation. While many southern revisionist historians are attempting to minimize the importance of slavery to the south, if one reads the documents written at the time by southern politicians it is absolutely clear that slavery was the dominant issue of the time.

My personal opinion is that the conflict would not likely have come to open war had there not been a problem with balance of political power.

Taxation is indeed a red herring, but it is true that economic factors caused the Civil War. It is also true that political factors caused the Civil War. It is also true that western expansion caused the Civil War, and that the saecular and business cycles caused the Civil War.

The Southern economy was inextricably based around the "peculiar institution". Much of the capital of the South was bound to the soil in the form of the plantation slaves. Slaves were not very "liquid" in economic terms, because someone had to purchase the slave -- and that only made economic sense if the slave were to work someone else's land. Thus, little capital was available for industrialization. Moreover, industrialization was discouraged in the South because slaves in factories would of necessity be better educated, and thus become the nucleus for slave revolts. (Think of what late-19th c. union strikes would have been like under plantation owners.)

Moreover, the agrarian economy of the South was geared for export, and thus very sensitive to market conditions. In the antebellum 3T, this led to tremendous wealth -- "King Cotton" -- as textile bases were shipped north and to Great Britain. After the crash of 1857, the economy got very bad very quickly. The taxation issues you mention were a side effect of that dependency, and were a symptom, not a cause, of the problem.

Yet a third problem of the agrarian economy was its requirement for extremely high crop yields, necessitating areas of rich soil. This was not a problem for any state along the Eastern Seaboard or Gulf Coast; the interior Southern states were well served by the richness of the lower Mississippi valley. But further extension westward was proving difficult. The Great Plains required irrigation, and the massive power-driven irrigation that would make the Plains into one of the planet's breadbaskets was decades away. Slavery and cattle ranching were incompatible, but the climate of west Texas, Oklahoma, and the other areas designated for southern expansion could not be turned into plantations -- and in a horrendous tactical error, California (which could have been made into plantations) had been designated a free state. Bleeding Kansas was a direct result of the dire need for any place at all to make plantations in -- for the Southern economy was designed in such a way that growth was mandatory. The South had to grow or die.

The need for new slave states was not merely to maintain the tactical balance of power in the US Senate. Were that the problem, the slave states could have merely subdivided in order to maintain the balance of power. Indeed, the charter of annexation for Texas provided for just such a (never-used) contingency. The other pressing need was to send more slaves west -- because the slaves were breeding faster than the masters. The slaves' children were soaking up more and more resources, and the imbalance of population made a slave revolt increasingly likely. That such a revolt could not succeed at that time was irrelevant; it would endanger plantationers' lives (particularly their women and children) and their profits.

The final problem was the South's "democracy deficit". The northern states were founded mostly by religious minorities (ME, MA, CT, RI, PA) or ethnic minorities (NY, PA again). The franchise was more readily extended there to those not "propertied". The struggle for control of state governments was more troubled in the Southern states, which were mostly founded by gentry (VA, NC) and lower nobility (MD, SC). Georgia, founded by criminals, had a government less inclined towards upper-class power -- but this was soon amended when Carolina families migrated west and south.

The Southern states were generally controlled by a few powerful and wealthy plantation owners. The weaker, opposing power were the small farmers, generally Scots-Irish stock whose ancestors settled the Appalachians, the Ozarks, and the Piney Woods. They opposed the power of the plantation owners for class reasons, and while not always above owning a slave or two themselves, generally disliked the effect the "peculiar institution" had on their society. Later, in the War, these areas were Unionist holdouts.

One state was -- peculiarly, one might say -- devoid of this counterbalance towards what abolitionists termed the "Slave Power". South Carolina had no uplands, no Appalachian territory or poor-soiled area, no region in which plantations were impractical. As early as 1820, SC established the theories and made the secessionist threats eventually enacted in 1861. SC was also the center of the slave trade (while it was operational) and, thanks to its unusually high density of plantations, maintained its position as the center of slave dealing. Indeed, by the 1850's South Carolina was making as much off of selling slave children to the western states as it was from its agricultural production. Thus SC had the most to lose from the end of the western expansion of slavery, and was in the most precarious political, economic, social, and security situation. To put it succinctly, they were furtherest out on the limb.

It was thus predictable -- and predicted -- that South Carolina would be the first to secede. Once secession was started, there was a positive feedback loop that was guaranteed to split the nation: once the balance in the Senate was broken, there was less chance that unfavorable bills would fail to be filibustered or blocked. Once several states had left, cloture was no longer a possibility and only a direct filibuster could stop the tide. Eventually, even a presidential veto override because impossible to stop, at which point Southern power in the Senate was dead and there was no reason not to fight.

The Crittenden Compromise was far too late, and Lincoln's legalist compromise far too small. Only a massive plan to secure at least partial emancipation coupled with a plan deliberately and obviously designed to minimize or even expand the profits of the Southern upper class could have stopped the war. The control of the Southern governments by the plantation owners was too complete to attempt other forms of compromise. But the Northern abolitionists had decreed that the plantation owners had committed unpardonable sins in the course of their economic activity -- which, objectively, it is hard to deny -- and could not be accomodated without punitive measures, either economic or sanguine.

The Southern governments chose blood over treasure and tradition; to die rather than to give up their way of life or to confront the poor choices they and their ancestors made. Some made that choice honorably -- Robert E. Lee comes to mind -- and others less so -- again, Nathan B. Forrest comes to mind.

The Northern governments, in turn, chose to pursue jihad but did not want to pay the price of occupation or bother to learn how to achieve the social engineering supposedly desired. The story of Reconstruction is parallel in many ways to our occupation in Iraq -- both brought to you, I might add, by Republicans of the same type; paid for by Big Business, corrupt, loud, supposedly devoted to high Christian morals and ideals but mostly out for themselves. We have not very nice epithets for them in the South, like "carpetbagger" and "scalawag". We were de-Baathified, too, for a time, and had our own holy-warrior guerillas harassing the inept and incompetent occupation government. Perhaps you've heard of them -- they were called the Ku Klux Klan. And eventually the Federal troops were withdrawn, because Washington tired of paying for the occupation, and the bad old days reasserted themselves. It was another century before the North finally figured out how to save the South, and the "Negro", from oppression and exploitation... a century in which the South wallowed in ignorance and economic depression.

So much for "nation building"... we barely know how to do it even to ourselves.

Originally Posted by catfishncod

Taxation is indeed a red herring, but it is true that economic factors caused the Civil War. It is also true that political factors caused the Civil War. It is also true that western expansion caused the Civil War, and that the saecular and business cycles caused the Civil War.

The Southern economy was inextricably based around the "peculiar institution". Much of the capital of the South was bound to the soil in the form of the plantation slaves. Slaves were not very "liquid" in economic terms, because someone had to purchase the slave -- and that only made economic sense if the slave were to work someone else's land. Thus, little capital was available for industrialization. Moreover, industrialization was discouraged in the South because slaves in factories would of necessity be better educated, and thus become the nucleus for slave revolts. (Think of what late-19th c. union strikes would have been like under plantation owners.)

Moreover, the agrarian economy of the South was geared for export, and thus very sensitive to market conditions. In the antebellum 3T, this led to tremendous wealth -- "King Cotton" -- as textile bases were shipped north and to Great Britain. After the crash of 1857, the economy got very bad very quickly. The taxation issues you mention were a side effect of that dependency, and were a symptom, not a cause, of the problem.

Yet a third problem of the agrarian economy was its requirement for extremely high crop yields, necessitating areas of rich soil. This was not a problem for any state along the Eastern Seaboard or Gulf Coast; the interior Southern states were well served by the richness of the lower Mississippi valley. But further extension westward was proving difficult. The Great Plains required irrigation, and the massive power-driven irrigation that would make the Plains into one of the planet's breadbaskets was decades away. Slavery and cattle ranching were incompatible, but the climate of west Texas, Oklahoma, and the other areas designated for southern expansion could not be turned into plantations -- and in a horrendous tactical error, California (which could have been made into plantations) had been designated a free state. Bleeding Kansas was a direct result of the dire need for any place at all to make plantations in -- for the Southern economy was designed in such a way that growth was mandatory. The South had to grow or die.

The need for new slave states was not merely to maintain the tactical balance of power in the US Senate. Were that the problem, the slave states could have merely subdivided in order to maintain the balance of power. Indeed, the charter of annexation for Texas provided for just such a (never-used) contingency. The other pressing need was to send more slaves west -- because the slaves were breeding faster than the masters. The slaves' children were soaking up more and more resources, and the imbalance of population made a slave revolt increasingly likely. That such a revolt could not succeed at that time was irrelevant; it would endanger plantationers' lives (particularly their women and children) and their profits.

The final problem was the South's "democracy deficit". The northern states were founded mostly by religious minorities (ME, MA, CT, RI, PA) or ethnic minorities (NY, PA again). The franchise was more readily extended there to those not "propertied". The struggle for control of state governments was more troubled in the Southern states, which were mostly founded by gentry (VA, NC) and lower nobility (MD, SC). Georgia, founded by criminals, had a government less inclined towards upper-class power -- but this was soon amended when Carolina families migrated west and south.

The Southern states were generally controlled by a few powerful and wealthy plantation owners. The weaker, opposing power were the small farmers, generally Scots-Irish stock whose ancestors settled the Appalachians, the Ozarks, and the Piney Woods. They opposed the power of the plantation owners for class reasons, and while not always above owning a slave or two themselves, generally disliked the effect the "peculiar institution" had on their society. Later, in the War, these areas were Unionist holdouts.

One state was -- peculiarly, one might say -- devoid of this counterbalance towards what abolitionists termed the "Slave Power". South Carolina had no uplands, no Appalachian territory or poor-soiled area, no region in which plantations were impractical. As early as 1820, SC established the theories and made the secessionist threats eventually enacted in 1861. SC was also the center of the slave trade (while it was operational) and, thanks to its unusually high density of plantations, maintained its position as the center of slave dealing. Indeed, by the 1850's South Carolina was making as much off of selling slave children to the western states as it was from its agricultural production. Thus SC had the most to lose from the end of the western expansion of slavery, and was in the most precarious political, economic, social, and security situation. To put it succinctly, they were furtherest out on the limb.

It was thus predictable -- and predicted -- that South Carolina would be the first to secede. Once secession was started, there was a positive feedback loop that was guaranteed to split the nation: once the balance in the Senate was broken, there was less chance that unfavorable bills would fail to be filibustered or blocked. Once several states had left, cloture was no longer a possibility and only a direct filibuster could stop the tide. Eventually, even a presidential veto override because impossible to stop, at which point Southern power in the Senate was dead and there was no reason not to fight.

The Crittenden Compromise was far too late, and Lincoln's legalist compromise far too small. Only a massive plan to secure at least partial emancipation coupled with a plan deliberately and obviously designed to minimize or even expand the profits of the Southern upper class could have stopped the war. The control of the Southern governments by the plantation owners was too complete to attempt other forms of compromise. But the Northern abolitionists had decreed that the plantation owners had committed unpardonable sins in the course of their economic activity -- which, objectively, it is hard to deny -- and could not be accomodated without punitive measures, either economic or sanguine.

The Southern governments chose blood over treasure and tradition; to die rather than to give up their way of life or to confront the poor choices they and their ancestors made. Some made that choice honorably -- Robert E. Lee comes to mind -- and others less so -- again, Nathan B. Forrest comes to mind.

The Northern governments, in turn, chose to pursue jihad but did not want to pay the price of occupation or bother to learn how to achieve the social engineering supposedly desired. The story of Reconstruction is parallel in many ways to our occupation in Iraq -- both brought to you, I might add, by Republicans of the same type; paid for by Big Business, corrupt, loud, supposedly devoted to high Christian morals and ideals but mostly out for themselves. We have not very nice epithets for them in the South, like "carpetbagger" and "scalawag". We were de-Baathified, too, for a time, and had our own holy-warrior guerillas harassing the inept and incompetent occupation government. Perhaps you've heard of them -- they were called the Ku Klux Klan. And eventually the Federal troops were withdrawn, because Washington tired of paying for the occupation, and the bad old days reasserted themselves. It was another century before the North finally figured out how to save the South, and the "Negro", from oppression and exploitation... a century in which the South wallowed in ignorance and economic depression.

So much for "nation building"... we barely know how to do it even to ourselves.

This qualifies for one of the best posts written anywhere on the internet.

Thank you, C&C.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

http://blogs.usatoday.com/gallup/200...o_hmos_an.html

14% approval really boggles my mind.

To partly amplify and partly contradict catfishncod's dissertation on the causes of the American Civil War, here is an article by someone other than myself with a bias from a Southern perspective:

Historians have long debated the causes of the war and the Southern perspective differs greatly from the Northern perspective. Based upon the study of original documents of the

War Between The States (Civil War) era and facts and information published by Confederate Veterans, Confederate Chaplains, Southern writers and Southern Historians before, during, and after the war, I present the facts, opinions, and conclusions stated in the following article.

I respectfully disagree with those who claim that the War Between the States was fought over slavery or that the abolition of slavery in the Revolutionary Era or early Federal period would have prevented war. It is my opinion that war was inevitable between the North and South due to complex political and personal differences. The famous Englishman Winston Churchill stated that the war between the North and South was one of the most unpreventable wars in history. The Cause that the Confederate States of America fought for (1861-1865) was Southern Independence from the United States of America. Many parallels exist between the War for American Independence (1775-1783) and the War for Southern Independence.

There were 10 political causes of the war ---one of which was slavery-- which was a scapegoat for all the differences that existed between the North and South. The Northern industrialists had wanted a war since about 1830 to get the South's resources (land-cotton-coal-timber-minerals) for pennies on the dollar. All wars are economic and are always between centralists and decentralists. The North would have found an excuse to invade the South even if slavery had never existed.

A war almost occurred during 1828-1832 over the tariff when South Carolina passed nullification laws. The U.S. congress had increased the tariff rate on imported products to 40% (known as the tariff of abominations in Southern States). This crisis had nothing to do with slavery. If slavery had never existed --period--or had been eliminated at the time the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 or anytime prior to 1860 it is my opinion that there would still have been a war sooner or later.

On a human level there were 4 causes of the war--New England Greed--New England Fanatics--New England Zealots--and New England Hypocrites. During "So Called Reconstruction" (1865-1877) the New England Industrialists got what they had really wanted for 40 years--THE SOUTH'S RESOURCES FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR. It was a political coalition between the New England economic interests and the New England fanatics and zealots that caused Southern secession to be necessary for economic survival and safety of the population.

1. TARIFF

-- Prior to the war about 75% of the money to operate the Federal Government was derived from the Southern States via an unfair sectional tariff on imported goods and 50% of the total 75% was from just 4 Southern states--Virginia-North Carolina--South Carolina and Georgia. Only 10%--20% of this tax money was being returned to the South. The Southern states were being treated as an agricultural colony of the North and bled dry. John Randolph of Virginia's remarks in opposition to the tariff of 1820 demonstrates that fact. The North claimed that they fought the war to preserve the Union but the New England Industrialists who were in control of the North were actually supporting preservation of the Union to maintain and increase revenue from the tariff. The industrialists wanted the South to pay for the industrialization of America at no expense to themselves. Revenue bills introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives prior to the War Between the States were biased, unfair and inflammatory to the South. Abraham Lincoln had promised the Northern industrialists that he would increase the tariff rate if he was elected president of the United States. Lincoln increased the rate to a level that exceeded even the "Tariff of Abominations" 40% rate that had so infuriated the South during the 1828-1832 era (between 50 and 51% on iron goods). The election of a president that was Anti-Southern on all issues and politically associated with the New England industrialists, fanatics, and zealots brought about the Southern secession movement.

2. CENTRALIZATION VERSUS STATES RIGHTS

-- The United States of America was founded as a Constitutional Federal Republic in 1789 composed of a Limited Federal Government and Sovereign States. The North wanted to and did alter the form of Government this nation was founded upon. The Confederate States of America fought to preserve Constitutional Limited Federal Government as established by America's founding fathers who were primarily Southern Gentlemen from Virginia. Thus Confederate soldiers were fighting for rights that had been paid for in blood by their forefathers upon the battlefields of the American Revolution. Abraham Lincoln had a blatant disregard for The Constitution of the United States of America. His War of aggression Against the South changed America from a Constitutional Federal Republic to a Democracy (with Socialist leanings) and broke the original Constitution. The infamous Socialist Karl Marx sent Lincoln a letter of congratulations after his reelection in 1864. A considerable number of European Socialists came to America and fought for the Union (North).

3. CHRISTIANITY VERSUS SECULAR HUMANISM

-- The South believed in basic Christianity as presented in the Holy Bible. The North had many Secular Humanists (atheists, transcendentalists and non-Christians). Southerners were afraid of what kind of country America might become if the North had its way. Secular Humanism is the belief that there is no God and that man, science and government can solve all problems. This philosophy advocates human rather than religious values. Reference: Frank Conner's book "The South Under Siege 1830-2000."

4. CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

-- Southerners and Northerners were of different Genetic Lineages. Southerners were primarily of Western English (original Britons), Scottish, and Irish linage (Celtic) whereas Northerners tended to be of Anglo-Saxon and Danish (Viking) extraction. The two cultures had been at war and at odds for over 1000 years before they arrived in America. Our ancient ancestors in Western England under King Arthur humbled the Saxon princes at the battle of Baden Hill (circa 497 AD --516 AD). The cultural differences that contributed to the War Between the States (1861-1865) had existed for 1500 years or more.

5. CONTROL OF WESTERN TERRITORIES

-- The North wanted to control Western States and Territories such as Kansas and Nebraska. New England formed Immigrant Aid Societies and sent settlers to these areas that were politically attached to the North. They passed laws against slavery that Southerners considered punitive. These political actions told Southerners they were not welcome in the new states and territories. It was all about control--slavery was a scapegoat.

6. NORTHERN INDUSTRIALISTS WANTED THE SOUTH'S RESOURCES

-- The Northern Industrialists wanted a war to use as an excuse to get the South's resources for pennies on the dollar. They began a campaign about 1830 that would influence the common people of the North and create enmity that would allow them to go to war against the South. These Northern Industrialists brought up a morality claim against the South alleging the evils of slavery. The Northern Hypocrites conveniently neglected to publicize the fact that 5 New England States (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New York) were primarily responsible for the importation of most of the slaves from Africa to America. These states had both private and state owned fleets of ships.

7. SLANDER OF THE SOUTH BY NORTHERN NEWSPAPERS

-- This political cause ties in to the above listed efforts by New England Industrialists. Beginning about 1830 the Northern Newspapers began to slander the South. The Industrialists used this tool to indoctrinate the common people of the North. They used slavery as a scapegoat and brought the morality claim up to a feverish pitch. Southerners became tired of reading in the Northern Newspapers about what bad and evil people they were just because their neighbor down the road had a few slaves. This propaganda campaign created hostility between the ordinary citizens of the two regions and created the animosity necessary for war. The Northern Industrialists worked poor whites in the factories of the North under terrible conditions for 18 hours a day (including children). When the workers became old and infirm they were fired. It is a historical fact that during this era there were thousands of old people living homeless on the streets in the cities of the North. In the South a slave was cared for from birth to death. Also the diet and living conditions of Southern slaves was superior to that of most white Northern factory workers. Southerners deeply resented this New England hypocrisy and slander.

8. NEW ENGLANDERS ATTEMPTED TO INSTIGATE MASSIVE SLAVE REBELLIONS IN THE SOUTH

-- Abolitionists were a small but vocal and militant group in New England who demanded instant abolition of slavery in the South. These fanatics and zealots were calling for massive slave uprisings that would result in the murder of Southern men, women and children. Southerners were aware that such an uprising had occurred in Santa Domingo in the 1790 era and that the French (white) population had been massacred. The abolitionists published a terrorist manifesto and tried to smuggle 100,000 copies into the South showing slaves how to murder their masters at night. Then when John Brown raided Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859 the political situation became inflammatory. Prior to this event there had been five times as many abolition societies in the South as in the North. Lincoln and most of the Republican Party (64 members of congress) had adopted a political platform in support of terrorist acts against the South. Some (allegedly including Lincoln) had contributed monetarily as supporters of John Browns terrorist activities.. Again slavery was used as a scapegoat for all differences that existed between the North and South.

9. SLAVERY

-- Indirectly slavery was a cause of the war. Most Southerners did not own slaves and would not have fought for the protection of slavery. However they believed that the North had no Constitutional right to free slaves held by citizens of Sovereign Southern States. Prior to the war there were five times as many abolition societies in the South as in the North. Virtually all educated Southerners were in favor of gradual emancipation of slaves. Gradual emancipation would have allowed the economy and labor system of the South to gradually adjust to a free paid labor system without economic collapse. Furthermore, since the New England States were responsible for the development of slavery in America, Southerners saw the morality claims by the North as blatant hypocrisy. The first state to legalize slavery had been Massachusetts in 1641 and this law was directed primarily at Indians. In colonial times the economic infrastructure of the port cities of the North was dependent upon the slave trade. The first slave ship in America, "THE DESIRE", was fitted out in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Further proof that Southerners were not fighting to preserve slavery is found in the diary of an officer in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. He stated that "he had never met a man in the Army of Northern Virginia that claimed he was fighting to preserve slavery". If the war had been over slavery, the composition of the politicians, officers, enlisted men, and even African Americans would have been different. Confederate General Robert E. Lee had freed his slaves (Custis estate) prior to 1863 whereas Union General Grant's wife Julia did not free her slaves until after the war when forced to do so by the 13th amendment to the constitution and court action. Grant even stated that if the abolitionists claimed he was fighting to free slaves that he would offer his services to the South. Mildred Lewis Rutherford (1852-1928) was for many years the historian for the United Daughters Of The Confederacy (UDC). In her book Truths Of History she stated that there were more slaveholders in the Union Army (315,000) than the Confederate Army (200,000). Statistics also show that about 300,000 blacks supported the Confederacy versus about 200,000 for the Union. Clearly the war would have been fought along different lines if it had been fought over slavery. The famous English author Charles Dickens stated " the Northern onslaught upon Southern slavery is a specious piece of humbug designed to mask their desire for the economic control of the Southern states."

10. NORTHERN AGGRESSION AGAINST SOUTHERN STATES

-- Proof that Abraham Lincoln wanted war may be found in the manner he handled the Fort Sumter incident. Original correspondence between Lincoln and Naval Captain G.V. Fox shows proof that Lincoln acted with deceit and willfully provoked South Carolina into firing on the fort (A TARIFF COLLECTION FACILITY). It was politically important that the South be provoked into firing the first shot so that Lincoln could claim the Confederacy started the war. Additional proof that Lincoln wanted war is the fact that Lincoln refused to meet with a Confederate peace delegation. They remained in Washington for 30 days and returned to Richmond only after it became apparent that Lincoln wanted war and refused to meet and discuss a peace agreement. After setting up the Fort Sumter incident for the purpose of starting a war, Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to put down what he called a rebellion. He intended to march Union troops across Virginia and North Carolina to attack South Carolina. Virginia and North Carolina were not going to allow such an unconstitutional and criminal act of aggression against a sovereign sister Southern State. Lincoln's act of aggression caused the secession of the upper Southern States.

On April 17th 1861, Governor Letcher of Virginia sent this message to Washington DC: " I have only to say that the militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers of Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern states and the requisition made upon me for such a object-an object in my judgment not within the purview of the constitution or the act of 1795, will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war; having done so we will meet you in a spirit as determined as the administration has exhibited toward the South."

The WAR BETWEEN THE STATES 1861-1865 occurred due to many complex causes and factors as enumerated above. Those who make claims that "the war was over slavery" or that if slavery had been abolished in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed or in 1789 when The Constitution of the United States of America was signed, that war would not have occurred between North and South are being very simplistic in their views and opinions.

The Union victory in 1865 destroyed the right of secession in America, which had been so cherished by America's founding fathers as the principle of their revolution. British historian and political philosopher Lord Acton, one of the most intellectual figures in Victorian England, understood the deeper meaning of Southern defeat. In a letter to former Confederate General Robert E. Lee dated November 4, 1866, Lord Acton wrote "I saw in States Rights the only available check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. I deemed you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization and I mourn for that which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo (defeat of Napoleon). As Illinois Governor Richard Yates stated in a message to his state assembly on January 2,1865, the war had " tended, more than any other event in the history of the country, to militate against the Jeffersonian Ideal (Thomas Jefferson) that the best government is that which governs least.

Years after the war former Confederate president Jefferson Davis stated " I Am saddened to Hear Southerners Apologize For Fighting To Preserve Our Inheritance". Some years later former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt stated "Those Who Will Not Fight For The Graves Of Their Ancestors Are Beyond Redemption".

James W. King
Commander Camp 141
LtCol Thomas M. Nelson
Sons of Confederate Veterans
Albany, Georgia

So now maybe we could talk about the current Presidential election and how we will march toward Civil War II over the next decade or two.

What will be the causes listed by future historians?

My list would start with slavery; the enslavement, control and plunder by government and those privileged few controlling the politicians of the subservient majority. If you understand what the distribution of wealth on a Southern plantation you might recognize that the current system of laws brings us closer and closer to that same skewed distribution.

Next would be taxation far in excess of even that pre American Revolution.

Next would be the collapse of the economic system, end of the industrial age, and massive death associated with inadequate food and shelter, simply from lack of oil and any suitable substitute to fuel even the minimum production upon which life is dependent.

Racial divisions which in good times were tolerable, but which when survival becomes an issue will become the basis for group alliances and rivalry. Look at the division in Iraq today.

Basic political division between those who want personal independence and those who desire to give up freedom in favor of being taken care of by collective actions of rulers.

So I guess I can't get to ten reasons, but my first three are so powerful that I doubt others will be necessary.

The only difference that could possibly come out of the 2008 election would be that if someone like Ron Paul (Republican) or Kent McManigal (Libertarian) by some miracle happened to win. Neither could likely erase the energy future, but could possibly unwind the current system of slavery and high taxation in time, both of which now make survival more difficulty for the majority. All other candidates advocate essentially an continuation of the current system or worse.

And while highly unlikely from a science point of view, it is very remotely possible that, if we set loose the free market, someone might discover or invent something that would substitute for the absence of sufficient oil. With government solutions we don't stand much of a chance; let me remind you of Katrina and FEMA or the war in Iraq if you are thinking government will solve the energy dilemma.

"Racial divisions which in good times were tolerable, but which when survival becomes an issue will become the basis for group alliances and rivalry. Look at the division in Iraq today."

Interestingly enough, I was in a long post office line ahead of a woman who had been a paramedic in the service until she was wounded in Iraq. She said the Iraqis had one thing in common - down to the smallest children, they hated the Americans.

At any rate, she kept being asked "How can you, a Native American, fight for the people who took your land away? Why don't you go back and rise up?" Which angered her enormously. "My father was a Vietnam veteran," she told me indignantly. "My husband's family was all military, every man, woman, and child, they couldn't wait to join." And a lot more on the same lines. She's Laguna Pueblo; her husband was Sioux.

Whatever divisions there are between Native Americans and others - and I listen to their 11-noon radio program on NPS which will give you an earful when they're on the subject - they'll be there in the 4T serving proudly. If you ever get out to New Mexico on Veteran's Day or Memorial Day, you'll see a similar attitude among every identifiable group except the Raging Grannies.

Pat, reporting from Albuquerque

P.S. The radio program, Native America Calling, gets a lot of call-ins on Veterans Day and Memorial Day and a lot of the callers boast that their tribe went from warrior to soldier immediately and stayed that way. Those who don't are simply more matter of fact about it.

"Southern perspective". You mean the Confederate perspective. My viewpoint is as Southern as Mr. King's, I just recognize that my ancestors were morally wrong. (They were honorable, though, and I honor them in return. It is better to fight for the wrong cause with honor than to disgrace yourself for the right -- because someone who fights for the wrong cause with honor can admit his mistake with honor, but the disgraced zealot has nowhere else to go.)

I'm sorry, jell, but I just can't let it lie.

I respectfully disagree with those who claim that the War Between the States was fought over slavery or that the abolition of slavery in the Revolutionary Era or early Federal period would have prevented war.

It would have been equally unthinkable then. Much of the construction of the Union was expressly designed to prevent the Civil War from erupting immediately upon independence -- for abolitionism was already being invented in Massachusetts in the 1790's, and the Southern economy was already too bound up with slavery to extract themselves easily.

The famous Englishman Winston Churchill stated that the war between the North and South was one of the most unpreventable wars in history.

And he was right for the reasons I described above.

The Northern industrialists had wanted a war since about 1830 to get the South's resources (land-cotton-coal-timber-minerals) for pennies on the dollar.

Kleptocracy is nothing new. However, the author is confusing the war's aftermath with its cause. This was the Republican priority during Reconstruction, and particularly targeted plantation owners, so as to destroy their economic and political power. It was implemented in a far more extensive manner than "freeing the slaves" -- which shows you what true Republican priorities were. But, like Halliburton, the profits were only a pleasant side effect to the true goal: destroying political enemies.

All wars are economic and are always between centralists and decentralists. The North would have found an excuse to invade the South even if slavery had never existed.

Laughable. So which side of World War I were the decentralists on?

A war almost occurred during 1828-1832 over the tariff when South Carolina passed nullification laws. The U.S. congress had increased the tariff rate on imported products to 40% (known as the tariff of abominations in Southern States). This crisis had nothing to do with slavery. If slavery had never existed --period--or had been eliminated at the time the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 or anytime prior to 1860 it is my opinion that there would still have been a war sooner or later.

You have to be deliberately ignoring important data to say something like this. As I noted before, the tarriff hit the upper classes of the South -- the slaveowning plantationers -- much harder than the lower classes, who produced food and internal trade items. So the nullification laws had to do with class issues, as I described above... but since class correlated to slaveowning, and class differences were so stark in the antebellum South the two issues are linked.

On top of this, the first attempt at nullification was in 1822, not 1828 -- over the status of free blacks suspected of organizing a slave revolt. So don't tell me nullification had nothing to do with slavery.

On a human level there were 4 causes of the war--New England Greed--New England Fanatics--New England Zealots--and New England Hypocrites.

Didn't I tell you that there were parallels to Iraq? Substitute "neocon" for "New England" and you get exactly what the Left says about the war today.

During "So Called Reconstruction" (1865-1877) the New England Industrialists got what they had really wanted for 40 years--THE SOUTH'S RESOURCES FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR. It was a political coalition between the New England economic interests and the New England fanatics and zealots that caused Southern secession to be necessary for economic survival and safety of the population.

And this is the Civil War equivalent of "NO BLOOD FOR OIL".

Abraham Lincoln had a blatant disregard for The Constitution of the United States of America. His War of aggression Against the South changed America from a Constitutional Federal Republic to a Democracy (with Socialist leanings) and broke the original Constitution.

They said the same thing about Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, who also championed the rights of the smaller farmer against the interests of the slaveholding plantation owner. This is why the charge of being a Commie resonates so well in the South -- because class, race, and loyalty are still residually held to be in concert with one another. The counter-reaction among blacks is why 90% of all blacks vote Democrat, and why many blacks despise those who succeed as "whitey sell-outs".

This has nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with the upper class bemoaning the loss of their gerrymandered, rigged oligarchy. Cry me a river.

3. CHRISTIANITY VERSUS SECULAR HUMANISM

-- The South believed in basic Christianity as presented in the Holy Bible. The North had many Secular Humanists (atheists, transcendentalists and non-Christians). Southerners were afraid of what kind of country America might become if the North had its way. Secular Humanism is the belief that there is no God and that man, science and government can solve all problems. This philosophy advocates human rather than religious values. Reference: Frank Conner's book "The South Under Siege 1830-2000."

Easily demonstrable bullshit. The abolitionists were justifying their crusade using the exact same Bible as the secessionists were using to justify slavery; they simply didn't read the others' quotations. There was indeed a higher proportion of "freethinkers" in the North; that was a consequence of the more egalitarian social and political situation and the greater class mobility there. Xenophobic suspicion of anyone not preaching "that old-time religion" is, again, endemic in the South and always has been. You will note that these charges are the same ones leveled today on FOX!!!! News by creationists against "godless heathen Democrats" trying to "destroy America's Christians".

-- Southerners and Northerners were of different Genetic Lineages. Southerners were primarily of Western English (original Britons), Scottish, and Irish linage (Celtic) whereas Northerners tended to be of Anglo-Saxon and Danish (Viking) extraction.

This is out-and-out racism, and I'm ashamed to see it. The uplands small farmers were indeed more of Scots-Irish lineage; the plantation owners were as Anglo-Saxon as the Northerners. And how do you explain the Irish Brigades on either side?

This is the writer trying to justify his eugenic theories by altering the facts to fit the theory.

5. CONTROL OF WESTERN TERRITORIES

We've been over this. Of course it was about control -- control of the Senate, control of the land, control of slavery's spread, control of resources and political power.

The Northern Hypocrites conveniently neglected to publicize the fact that 5 New England States (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New York) were primarily responsible for the importation of most of the slaves from Africa to America. These states had both private and state owned fleets of ships.

This is true, and the first thing out of this idiot's mouth worth repeating. The North had its own karmic debt to pay off. I didn't realize that let the South off. It certainly doesn't prove "NO BLOOD FOR COTTON"...

They used slavery as a scapegoat and brought the morality claim up to a feverish pitch. Southerners became tired of reading in the Northern Newspapers about what bad and evil people they were just because their neighbor down the road had a few slaves.

Oh yes, this was building for decades. Any idiot could see the war coming, yet few wanted to and so few did.

The Northern Industrialists worked poor whites in the factories of the North under terrible conditions for 18 hours a day (including children). When the workers became old and infirm they were fired.

A situation technically equivalent to sharecropping. Not very nice by our standards but still better than slavery -- because you could keep your own children, for one thing; because you could try to find a different employer, for another. This is a sad attempt at moral equivalency.

In the South a slave was cared for from birth to death. Also the diet and living conditions of Southern slaves was superior to that of most white Northern factory workers. Southerners deeply resented this New England hypocrisy and slander.

Oh, save me the platitudes about how a black was better off as a slave. I've heard them all before. Would you like to live in a golden cage? Your every need will be cared for....

Most Southerners did not own slaves and would not have fought for the protection of slavery.

He admits it!

However they believed that the North had no Constitutional right to free slaves held by citizens of Sovereign Southern States.

Any idiot could see what an absolute government would lead to, and the North was getting increasingly impatient at the intransigence of the Southern governments' refusal to consider any emancipation at all.

Virtually all educated Southerners were in favor of gradual emancipation of slaves. Gradual emancipation would have allowed the economy and labor system of the South to gradually adjust to a free paid labor system without economic collapse.

And yet no such measures were contemplated by the Southern governments in the years leading up to the war. I wonder why that was? Could it be because they were all controlled by reactionary upper-class interests??

Of course this was about economic interests. The Northern industrialists didn't mind the "Slave Power" being not only militarily destroyed but impoverished, no no. The terms of emancipation obliterated 80%+ of the capital of the South, leaving the North in complete control of the economy -- a situation that persisted for a century plus.

But it was the Southern refusal to contemplate reform that gave the kleptocrats their opening.

It was politically important that the South be provoked into firing the first shot so that Lincoln could claim the Confederacy started the war. Additional proof that Lincoln wanted war is the fact that Lincoln refused to meet with a Confederate peace delegation.

Lincoln's stated aim was to preserve the Union. Unlike the plantation owners, he'd read the Federalist Papers and knew that the Union was designed to prevent the breakup of the American colonies and the initiation of war as a regular part of the saecular cycle in North America... something as regular as summer and winter in Europe, and something the Founders were eager to avoid.

Allowing Fort Sumter to fall, or accepting a Confederate peace delegation, would have made this impossible, as it would mean accepting the principle of secession. If the South wanted to negotiate it should have done so before seceding. The South wanted the war as badly as the Republicans did -- or, rather, the plantation owners wanted the war that badly. Remember, in South Carolina there were no significant numbers of small farmers; no one to stop the plantation owners from being as radical as they chose.

Some years later former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt stated "Those Who Will Not Fight For The Graves Of Their Ancestors Are Beyond Redemption".

I will fight long and hard to defend my ancestors' honor. And I will likewise spit upon the graves of the avaricious bastards that sent them to die. The two purposes are, to me, one and the same.

Roosevelt, by the bye, was a Yankee.

Originally Posted by jeil

To partly amplify and partly contradict catfishncod's dissertation on the causes of the American Civil War, here is an article by someone other than myself with a bias from a Southern perspective:

That is fairly typical of the revisionist history. The problem is finding anything written in the years leading up to the start of the war that supports it. Again, the Crittenden compromise, the last attempt to stop the war, addressed slavery related issues only. Nothing about centralization of power. Nothing about tariffs. Western expansion was part of the comprimise, as Crittenden and company drew a line that divided the west into a slave south and a free north.

You are providing revisionist history written after the Lost Cause was lost, when shifting morality tainted the original Cause, and the southerners had to create lies to preserve a pretension of honor. I'd really like to see pre war period writings written by southerners promoting war for tariff or war for decentral control. I haven't seen any examples from the years immediately before the war. The revisionists only quote other post war revisionists. I can give you lots of examples of southern politicians talking about slavery just before the war.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I'd really like to see pre war period writings written by southerners promoting war for tariff or war for decentral control. I haven't seen any examples from the years immediately before the war.

Strictly speaking, you won't. The South didn't go into the thing intending war, so you wouldn't see much in the way of them threatening it. The understanding of the day was that a State, having voluntarily entered into the compact-among-equals that was the US Constitution, was free to leave if its needs dictated.
The question of war was one imposed by the North when some among the States attempted to follow through on that line of reasoning.

Originally Posted by jeil

To partly amplify and partly contradict catfishncod's dissertation on the causes of the American Civil War, here is an article by someone other than myself with a bias from a Southern perspective:

LOL, typical right-wing southerner revisionist BS.

Originally I said that the South succession was based on economics; tariffs.

As distinguished from the cause of succession, I said Lincoln decided unilaterally (like Bush and Iraq) on the war without the consent of Congress and deliberately took action to prevent the Congress from having the opportunity to act by calling them into session at a time that would first give him a chance to pursue his war, and that a factor was the immediate loss of federal revenue from Southern ports. I did not mention other factors, but the view of Lincoln on federal supremacy over states rights certainly contributed to his actions.

This is distinguished from the popular view that the war was fought to free the slaves.

I am accused of revising the history written by the victors. Maybe they should have analyzed it correctly to begin with instead of writing propaganda.

But on the point of this thread as to why the Congress is now so hated, the Northern victory in the civil war laid the foundation for the huge expansion of the federal government and the destruction of the states which we have seen since then. In a free society self government is ideal, which means we each govern our own lives and act to not commit acts of aggression against others. But there are those who fail, hence we must defend ourselves. Local government is best suited to act in this mutual defense effort, and states have a role. The federal government was authorized to effect national defense. The further away from home government is, the less one has control. You can influence you local City Council much more than your federal Representative.

The federal government has extended control over so many things that they were not authorized to do (most of what they do) and we have no control over them. The federal government has managed the economy so that wealth is shifted out of the pockets of the subservient majority into the pockets of the privileged few. The reason that they are so hated is that these controls on our personal and economic lives and the related plunder are objectionable, cruel, and unconstitutional. If you want to believe the Civil War was fought to free the slaves, is not it ironic that the majority now live as slaves, the eventual legacy of Mr. Lincoln.

I will give it another try on the Civil War, not that it really matters to us as much as will the next Civil War as suggested as the capstone of the 4T crisis period. This essay, by the way, should be particularly appealing to you socialist liberals since it quotes your hero, Karl Marx as identifying the American Civil War as being based on tariffs, not slavery.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/miller1.html

Originally Posted by Donald W. Miller, Jr.

A Jeffersonian View of the Civil War

In the schoolbook account of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln rose to the Presidency and took the steps needed to end slavery. He led the country in a great Civil War against the slaveholding states that seceded, restored these states to the Union, and ended slavery. Accordingly, historians rate Abraham Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents.

People in the South, like my great-great-grandfather Louis Thomas Hicks, had a different view of the war. Louis Hicks fought in the Battle of Gettysburg in the Army of Northern Virginia, commanding the 20th North Carolina Regiment (in Iverson’s Brigade of Rodes Division in Ewell’s Second Corps). He led his regiment into action on the first day of the battle and was forced to surrender after losing eighty percent of his men (238 out of 300) in two-and-a-half hours of fighting. In his personal account of the battle, he wrote, "[As a prisoner] I lied awake, thinking of my comrades and the great cause for which we were willing to shed our last drop of blood." His daughter, Mary Lyde Williams, echoed similar sentiments in her Presentation Address given at the Unveiling of the North Carolina Memorial on the Battlefield of Gettysburg on July 3, 1929. She began her address with the words, "They wrote a constitution in which each state should be free." Four children, including her granddaughter, my mother, who was then 10 years old, removed the veil that covered the statue.

Today American children are taught in the nation’s schools, both in the North and South, that it was wrong for people to support the Confederacy and to fight and die for it. Well-intentioned, "right thinking" people equate anyone today who thinks that the South did the right thing by seceding from the Union as secretly approving of slavery. Indeed, such thinking has now reached the point where groups from both sides of the political spectrum, notably the NAACP and Southern Poverty Law Center on the left and the Cato Institute on the right, want to have the Confederate Battle Flag eradicated from public spaces. These people argue that the Confederate flag is offensive to African-Americans because it commemorates slavery.

In the standard account, the Civil War was an outcome of our Founding Fathers failure to address the institution of slavery in a republic that proclaimed in its Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." But was it really necessary to wage a four-year war to abolish slavery in the United States, one that ravaged half of the country and destroyed a generation of American men? Only the United States and Haiti freed their slaves by war. Every other country in the New World that had slaves, such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, freed them in the 19th century peacefully.

The war did enable Lincoln to "save" the Union, but only in a geographic sense. The country ceased being a Union, as it was originally conceived, of separate and sovereign states. Instead, America became a "nation" with a powerful federal government. Although the war freed four million slaves into poverty, it did not bring about a new birth of freedom, as Lincoln and historians such as James McPherson and Henry Jaffa say. For the nation as a whole the war did just the opposite: It initiated a process of centralization of government that has substantially restricted liberty and freedom in America, as historians Charles Adams and Jeffrey Rogers Hummel have argued – Adams in his book, When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession (published in 2000); and Hummel in his book, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (1996).

The term Civil War is a misnomer. The South did not instigate a rebellion. Thirteen southern states in 1860-61 simply chose to secede from the Union and go their own way, like the thirteen colonies did when they seceded from Britain. A more accurate name for the war that took place between the northern and southern American states is the War for Southern Independence. Mainstream historiography presents the victors’ view, an account that focuses on the issue of slavery and downplays other considerations.

Up until the 19th century slavery in human societies was considered to be a normal state of affairs. The Old Testament of the Bible affirms that slaves are a form of property and that the children of a slave couple are the property of the slaves’ owner (Exodus 21:4). Abraham and Jacob kept slaves, and the New Testament says nothing against slavery. Slaves built the pyramids of Egypt, the Acropolis of Athens, and the coliseums in the Roman Empire. Africans exported 11,000,000 Black slaves to the New World – 4,000,000 to Brazil, 3,600,000 to the British and French West Indies, and 2,500,000 to Spanish possessions in Central and South America. About 500,000 slaves, 5 per cent of the total number shipped to the New World, came to America. Today slavery still exists in some parts of Africa, notably in Sudan and Mauritania.

Britain heralded the end of slavery, in the Western world at least, with its Bill of Abolition, passed in 1807. This Bill made the African slave trade (but not slaveholding) illegal. Later that year the United States adopted a similar bill, called the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves, which prohibited bringing slaves into any port in the country, including into the southern slaveholding states. Congress strengthened this prohibition in 1819 when it decreed the slave trade to be a form of piracy, punishable by death. In 1833, Britain enacted an Emancipation Law, ending slavery throughout the British Empire, and Parliament allocated twenty million pounds to buy slaves’ freedom from their owners. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer rightly described this action as one of the greatest acts of collective compassion in the history of humankind. This happened peacefully and without any serious slave uprisings or attacks on their former owners, even in Jamaica where a population of 30,000 whites owned 250,000 slaves.

The Constitution of the Confederate States of America prohibited the importation of slaves (Article I, Section 9). With no fugitive slave laws in neighboring states that would return fugitive slaves to their owners, the value of slaves as property drops owing to increased costs incurred to guard against their escape. With slaves having a place to escape to in the North and with the supply of new slaves restricted by its Constitution, slavery in the Confederate states would have ended without war. A slave’s decreasing property value, alone, would have soon made the institution unsustainable, irrespective of more moral and humanitarian considerations.

The rallying call in the North at the beginning of the war was "preserve the Union," not "free the slaves." Although certainly a contentious political issue and detested by abolitionists, in 1861 slavery nevertheless was not a major public issue. Protestant Americans in the North were more concerned about the growing number of Catholic immigrants than they were about slavery. In his First Inaugural Address, given five weeks before the war began, Lincoln reassured slaveholders that he would continue to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

After 17 months of war things were not going well for the North, especially in its closely watched Eastern Theater. In the five great battles fought there from July 1861 through September 17, 1862, the changing cast of Union generals failed to win a single victory. The Confederate army won three: First Bull Run (or First Manassas) on July 21,1861; Seven Days – six major battles fought from June 25-July 1, 1862 during the Union army’s Peninsular Campaign that, in sum, amounted to a strategic Confederate victory when McClellan withdrew his army from the peninsula; and Second Bull Run (or Second Manassas) on August 29-30, 1862. Two battles were indecisive: Seven Pines (or Fair Oaks) on May 31-June 1, 1862, and Antietam (or Sharpsburg) on September 17, 1862. In the West, Grant took Fort Donelson on February 14, 1862 and captured 14,000 Confederate soldiers. But then he was caught by surprise in the battle of Shiloh (or Pittsburg Landing) on April 6-7, 1862 and lost 13,000 out of a total of 51,000 men that fought in this two-day battle. Sickened by the carnage, people in the North did not appreciate at the time that this battle was a strategic victory for the North. Then came Antietam on September 17, the bloodiest day in the entire war; the Union army lost more than 12,000 of its 60,000 troops engaged in the battle.

Did saving the Union justify the slaughter of such a large number of young men? The Confederates posed no military threat to the North. Perhaps it would be better to let the southern states go, along with their 4 million slaves. If it was going to win, the North needed a more compelling reason to continue the war than to preserve the Union. The North needed a cause for continuing the war, as Lincoln put the matter in his Second Inaugural Address, that was willed by God, where "the judgments of the Lord" determined the losses sustained and its outcome.

Five days after the Battle of Antietam, on September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a "war measure," as Lincoln put it. Foreign correspondents covering the war recognized it as a brilliant propaganda coup. Emancipation would take place only in rebel states not under Union control, their state sovereignty in the matter of slavery arguably forfeited as a result of their having seceded from the Union. The president could not abolish slavery; if not done at the state level, abolition would require a constitutional amendment. Slaveholders and their slaves in Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, Tennessee, and parts of Virginia and Louisiana occupied by Union troops were exempt from the edict. Slaves in the Confederacy would be "forever free" on January 1, 1863 – one hundred days after the Proclamation was issued – but only if a state remained in "rebellion" after that date. Rebel states that rejoined the Union and sent elected representatives to Congress before January 1, 1863 could keep their slaves. Such states would no longer be considered in rebellion and so their sovereignty regarding the peculiar institution would be restored. As the London Spectator put it, in its October 11, 1862 issue: "The principle [of the Proclamation] is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."

Regarding slaves in states loyal to the government or occupied by Union troops, Lincoln proposed three constitutional amendments in his December 1862 State of the Union message to Congress. The first was that slaves not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation be freed gradually over a 37-year period, to be completed by January 1, 1900. The second provided compensation to owners for the loss of their slave property. The third was that the government transport freed Blacks, at government expense, out of the country and relocate them in Latin America and Africa. Lincoln wrote that freed blacks need "new homes [to] be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race." For Lincoln, emancipation and deportation were inseparably connected. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells wrote in his diary that Lincoln "thought it essential to provide an asylum for a race which he had emancipated, but which could never be recognized or admitted to be our equals." As historian Leone Bennett Jr. puts it in his book Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (2000), "It was an article of faith to him [Lincoln] that emancipation and deportation went together like firecrackers and July Fourth, and that you couldn’t have one without the other."

Congress refused to consider Lincoln’s proposals, which Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune labeled whales’ tubs of "gradualism, compensation, [and] exportation." None of the Confederate States took the opportunity to rejoin the Union in the 100-day window offered and the war continued for another two years and four months. Eight months later the 13th Amendment was ratified, and slavery ended everywhere in the United States (without gradualism, compensation, or exportation).

Black and White Americans sustained racial and political wounds from the war and the subsequent Reconstruction that proved deep and long lasting. Northern abolitionists wanted southern Black slaves to be freed, but certainly did not want them to move north and live alongside them. Indiana and Illinois, in particular, had laws that barred African-Americans from settling. The military occupation and "Reconstruction" the South was forced to endure after the war also slowed healing of the wounds. At a gathering of ex-confederate soldiers shortly before he died in 1870, Robert E. Lee said,

If I had foreseen the use those people [Yankees] designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.

Why were business and political leaders in the North so intent on keeping the southern states in the Union? It was, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, solely a fiscal matter. The principal source of tax revenue for the federal government before the Civil War was a tariff on imports. There was no income tax, except for one declared unconstitutional after its enactment during the Civil War. Tariffs imposed by the federal government not only accounted for most of the federal budget, they also raised the price of imported goods to a level where the less-efficient manufacturers of the northeast could be competitive. The former Vice-President John C. Calhoun put it this way:

"The North had adopted a system of revenue and disbursements in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed upon the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the North… the South, as the great exporting portion of the Union, has in reality paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue."

In March 1861, the New York Evening Post editorialized on this point:

That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.

Given the serious financial difficulties the Union would face if the Southern states were a separate republic on its border engaging in duty-free trade with Britain, the Post urged the Union to hold on to its custom houses in the Southern ports and have them continue to collect duty. The Post goes on to say that incoming ships to the "rebel states" that try to evade the North’s custom houses should be considered as carrying contraband and be intercepted.

Observers in Britain looked beyond the rhetoric of "preserve the Union" and saw what was really at stake. Charles Dickens views on the subject were typical:

Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils. The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.

Karl Marx seconded this view:

The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty.

The South fought the war for essentially the same reason that the American colonies fought the Revolutionary War. The central grievance of the American colonies in the 18th century was the taxes imposed on them by Britain. Colonists particularly objected to the Stamp Act, which required them to purchase an official British stamp and place it on all documents in order for them to be valid. The colonists also objected to the import tariff that Britain placed on sugar and other goods (the Sugar Act).

After the enactment of what was called the "Tariff of Abomination" in 1828, promoted by Henry Clay, the tax on imports ranged between 20-30%. It rose further in March 1861 when Lincoln, at the start of his presidency, signed the Morrill Tariff into law. This tax was far more onerous than the one forced on the American colonies by Britain in the 18th century.

Lincoln coerced the South to fire the first shots when, against the initial advice of most of his cabinet, he dispatched ships carrying troops and munitions to resupply Fort Sumter, site of the customs house at Charleston. Charleston militia took the bait and bombarded the fort on April 12, 1861. After those first shots were fired the pro-Union press branded Southern secession an "armed rebellion" and called for Lincoln to suppress it.

Congress was adjourned at the time and for the next three months, ignoring his constitutional duty to call this legislative branch of government back in session during a time of emergency, Lincoln assumed dictatorial powers and did things, like raise an army, that only Congress is supposed to do. He shut down newspapers that disagreed with his war policy, more than 300 of them. He ordered his military officers to lock up political opponents, thousands of them. Although the exact number is not known, Lincoln may well have arrested and imprisoned more than 20,000 political opponents, southern sympathizers, and people suspected of being disloyal to the Union, creating what one researcher has termed a 19th century "American gulag," a forerunner of the 20th century’s political prison and labor camps in the former Soviet Union. Lincoln denied these nonviolent dissenters their right of free speech and suspended the privilege of Habeas Corpus, something only Congress in a time of war has the power to do. Lincoln’s soldiers arrested civilians, often arbitrarily, without any charges being filed; and, if held at all, military commissions conducted trials. He permitted Union troops to arrest the Mayor of Baltimore (then the third largest city in the Union), its Chief of Police and a Maryland congressman, along with 31 state legislators. When Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote an opinion that said these actions were unlawful and violated the Constitution, Lincoln ignored the ruling.

Lincoln called up an army of 75,000 men to invade the seven southern states that had seceded and force them back into the Union. By unilaterally recruiting troops to invade these states, without first calling Congress into session to consider the matter and give its consent, Lincoln made an error in judgment that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. At the time, only seven states had seceded. But when Lincoln announced his intention to bring these states back into the Union by force, four additional states – Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas – seceded and joined the Confederacy. Slavery was not the issue. The issue was the very nature of the American union. If the President of the United States intended to hold the Union together by force, they wanted out. When these four states seceded and joined the Confederacy rather than send troops to support Lincoln’s unconstitutional actions, the Confederacy became much more viable and the war much more horrible.

From the time Lincoln entered politics as a candidate for state legislature in 1832, he championed a political agenda known as the "American System." First advocated by his idol and mentor, Henry Clay, it was a three-part program of protective tariffs, internal improvements, and centralized banking. This program "tied economic development to strong centralized national authority," as Robert Johannsen puts it in Lincoln, the South, And Slavery. Lincoln believed that import tariffs were necessary, at the expense of consumers. He believed that American industries needed to be shielded from foreign competition and cheap imported goods. The "internal improvements" he advocated were simply subsidies for industry, i.e., corporate welfare. Abraham Lincoln was the first president to give us centralized banking, with paper money not backed by gold.

The Constitution of the Confederate States of America forbid protectionist tariffs, outlawed government subsidies to private businesses, and made congressional appropriations subject to approval by a two-thirds majority vote. It enjoined Congress from initiating constitutional amendments, leaving that power to the constituent states; and limited its president to a single six-year term. When the South lost, instead of a Jeffersonian republic of free trade and limited constitutional government, the stage was set for the United States to become an American Empire ruled by a central authority. In starting his war against the Confederate States, Lincoln was not seeking the "preservation of the Union" in its traditional sense. He sought the preservation of the Northern economy by means of transforming the federal government into a centralized welfare-warfare-police state.

The failure of the South to win the War for Southern Independence was a blow to liberty....

Originally Posted by Odin

LOL, typical right-wing southerner revisionist BS.

Man. ad hom is just your specialty, isn't it?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Man. ad hom is just your specialty, isn't it?

Nah, just in a foul mood when I posted that.

Originally Posted by jeil

Originally I said that the South succession was based on economics; tariffs.

We've been over this. Yes, it was based on economics. Tariffs were just one symptom of the general problem: the North and the South were using fundamentally different economic systems, and the same system of federal economic regulation could not equably manage both systems at the same time. Either one system had to be used nationwide, or the Union had to split.

The problem with the Union splitting was that it was highly unlikely to remain peaceful. With separate economic systems (implying divergent economic interests), an unclear border, and expansionist beliefs, the inevitable results would be, not just one, but a series of wars between North and South.

That is the reason Lincoln was adamant to preserve the Union at any cost. Better to have only one Civil War than to have a First, Second, Third, Fourth, etc. War between the States. Better a national government than to fall into the same pit Europe had lived with for centuries, where, after a defeat and a respite, the shadow of war always took another shape and grew again...

The slaves were going to be freed. Economics dictated that they must be freed. The argument, had it ever taken place, was over how they were to be freed, over what time period, with what compensation.

But that argument never took place. The South insisted it was a "states' rights" issue and none of the Fed's or the Northern states' business, while adamantly sticking their heads in the sand in plantation-controlled state governments and refusing to discuss the matter. The North meanwhile became increasingly frustrated with Southern "fire-breathing", allowing "fire-breathing" abolitionists to gain increasing support. The banking interests, who had been stymied by Southern votes for decades, encouraged this; but Southern stubbornness and denial were equally to blame.

The reason I hate the Culture War so much is that it reminds me of how people acted in the 1850's.

As distinguished from the cause of succession, I said Lincoln decided unilaterally (like Bush and Iraq) on the war without the consent of Congress and deliberately took action to prevent the Congress from having the opportunity to act by calling them into session at a time that would first give him a chance to pursue his war, and that a factor was the immediate loss of federal revenue from Southern ports. I did not mention other factors, but the view of Lincoln on federal supremacy over states rights certainly contributed to his actions.

Didn't I say that Iraq and the Civil War were highly parallel? Too bad Bush hasn't one-tenth the brains or strategic vision of Lincoln...

This is distinguished from the popular view that the war was fought to free the slaves.

It became that over the course of the war, which you would know yourself if you bothered to read the article you pasted.

I am accused of revising the history written by the victors. Maybe they should have analyzed it correctly to begin with instead of writing propaganda.

And maybe you're both spouting propaganda. This is the same point I find myself making to Reds and Blues today; they never stop and think that maybe neither of them are right... or both of them...

The federal government was authorized to effect national defense.

I know libertarian sorts like to argue that, but it isn't true. At the risk of repeating myself:

Originally Posted by Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The "common defense" is only one of six ennumerated purposes of the Federal Government, and it is neither the first nor the last. It is true that the Civil War was hardly "domestic Tranquility", but as I argued above, one war was better than many; and while you may not think this is now a "more perfect Union" others disagree. It is hard to argue that the "Blessings of Liberty" were not better secured, although you may be willing to try.

The federal government has managed the economy so that wealth is shifted out of the pockets of the subservient majority into the pockets of the privileged few.

Ha! And the antebellum state governments were not doing the same, you think? I think you might want to take off your rose-colored glasses and stare hard at the economic structure of the Old South before you start making blanket statements like that. To the extent that the War was over economics, it was about which oligarchy was going to rake in the dough. It certainly was not about the little man.

This essay, by the way, should be particularly appealing to you socialist liberals since it quotes your hero, Karl Marx as identifying the American Civil War as being based on tariffs, not slavery.

Now you're being nasty. I am not a socialist, nor a liberal. I am a Southerner, of a family of historians. And you don't know what you are saying.

The Constitution of the Confederate States of America prohibited the importation of slaves (Article I, Section 9). With no fugitive slave laws in neighboring states that would return fugitive slaves to their owners, the value of slaves as property drops owing to increased costs incurred to guard against their escape. With slaves having a place to escape to in the North and with the supply of new slaves restricted by its Constitution, slavery in the Confederate states would have ended without war. A slave’s decreasing property value, alone, would have soon made the institution unsustainable, irrespective of more moral and humanitarian considerations.

If this is true, and was a deliberate plan of the Confederates, then why in the name of all that is holy did the South write, and lobby so hard, in favor of the federal Fugitive Slave Act, which would have permitted the exact same process to occur without a war?!

Answer: Because the Southern governments did not want the value of their slaves dropping. Because the governments had no plans to free the slaves. Because they had their heads in the sand and refused to consider the long-term economic situation the South was in.

In his First Inaugural Address, given five weeks before the war began, Lincoln reassured slaveholders that he would continue to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

One of his many rejected olive branches, the ones Confederate partisans don't like to think of as such.

Slaves in the Confederacy would be "forever free" on January 1, 1863 – one hundred days after the Proclamation was issued – but only if a state remained in "rebellion" after that date. Rebel states that rejoined the Union and sent elected representatives to Congress before January 1, 1863 could keep their slaves. Such states would no longer be considered in rebellion and so their sovereignty regarding the peculiar institution would be restored. As the London Spectator put it, in its October 11, 1862 issue: "The principle [of the Proclamation] is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."

Regarding slaves in states loyal to the government or occupied by Union troops, Lincoln proposed three constitutional amendments in his December 1862 State of the Union message to Congress. The first was that slaves not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation be freed gradually over a 37-year period, to be completed by January 1, 1900. The second provided compensation to owners for the loss of their slave property. The third was that the government transport freed Blacks, at government expense, out of the country and relocate them in Latin America and Africa. Lincoln wrote that freed blacks need "new homes [to] be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race." For Lincoln, emancipation and deportation were inseparably connected. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells wrote in his diary that Lincoln "thought it essential to provide an asylum for a race which he had emancipated, but which could never be recognized or admitted to be our equals." As historian Leone Bennett Jr. puts it in his book Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (2000), "It was an article of faith to him [Lincoln] that emancipation and deportation went together like firecrackers and July Fourth, and that you couldn’t have one without the other."

Another olive branch, you'll note. This was a plan to end the war by negotiation, but with an iron fist in the velvet glove: persist and we will crush you. Punitive measures against Southern territory only began in mid-'63, when these proposals had already been discounted.

But Lincoln was already too late. If they had been proposed in the mid-50's, the Transcendentalist Prophets of the time --on either side -- could have spent their belligerent energies wrestling each other to the ground on the compensation negotiations. But after two years of bloodletting, NO ONE was willing to compromise anything anymore. It was war to the knife, now, and nothing short of full independence or full emancipation would do. And so it was.

Why were business and political leaders in the North so intent on keeping the southern states in the Union? It was, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, solely a fiscal matter.

This is where the bullshit starts. Of course the kleptocrats moved in later, partly to "punish" the South for "starting" the war -- typical Culture War vindictiveness -- and partly to pay for it, since it was horribly expensive. That doesn't mean there was an evil plan afoot to do so from the beginning, and I've never seen plausible data to suggest such. Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if the South was supporting the Feds more pre-war, but again that was because they were exporting more. It's the two-economic-systems problem again; nobody could have written a regulation system that made both sides happy. If the South hadn't had an economic grievance, the North would have.

I'm not excusing the things Lincoln did in the course of the war, like Habeas Corpus suspension. I am saying that the war didn't have to happen, because a) secession was not and never was necessary; b) despite all the rhetoric, secession was not and never was in the long-term interest of the South; c) intransigence and inflexibilty on economic matters, not the economic matters themselves, were the proximate cause of the war; and d) the primary cause of the inflexibility of the South on economic matters was the institution of slavery.

From the time Lincoln entered politics as a candidate for state legislature in 1832, he championed a political agenda known as the "American System." First advocated by his idol and mentor, Henry Clay, it was a three-part program of protective tariffs, internal improvements, and centralized banking. This program "tied economic development to strong centralized national authority," as Robert Johannsen puts it in Lincoln, the South, And Slavery.

And this was in fact an evolution of an even older system first proposed by Alexander Hamilton. There's nothing new here; the ideas were as old as the Republic, and designed to make America the industrial power she eventually became. Southerners favored an agrarian society based around cash crops.

Now, knowing what you do of world history, which of the two systems makes for a wealthy, healthy, stable, defensible, and independent nation? Be honest.

He sought the preservation of the Northern economy by means of transforming the federal government into a centralized welfare-warfare-police state.

Welfare only in the sense of corporate welfare. Welfare for the masses was almost a century away. I do agree that the MIC had its origins in the Civil War, but the Southern plan was unworkable. Since the Confederacy would not be likely to accept the economic constraints associated with deep levels of commerce with the Union after the war, she would have become the trading partner of Great Britain... and, in time, Britain's pawn in world affairs. The Union, then surrounded on two sides by British interests (Canada and the Confederacy) would feel threatened, maintaining their army and building a stronger navy. An arms race would ensue. Border disputes would erupt over escaped slaves, cross-border marriages and property issues; hotheads on either side would forget the slaughter in time, and call for teaching their wrongheaded cousins a lesson...

All of this was forseeable, and indeed forseen by the Founding Fathers. Establishing two or more confederacies, rather than a single Union, was considered after the Revolution. The differences between North and South were known even then. It was rejected because it was obvious to the Founders that a divided continent would inevitably be manipulated into war, and not once only, but again and again by the then-greater powers of Europe. Harry Turtledove has written a series of alt-history novels detailing the likely course of events had the South won the War. You may decide for yourself just how much better affairs would have been...

Originally Posted by Odin

Nah, just in a foul mood when I posted that.

Uh huh, It's either this.

"
http://typelogic.com/intp.html
Extraverted Feeling

Feeling tends to be all or none. When present, the INTP's concern for others is intense, albeit naive. In a crisis, this feeling judgement is often silenced by the emergence of Thinking, who rushes in to avert chaos and destruction. In the absence of a clear principle, however, INTPs have been known to defer judgement and to allow decisions about interpersonal matters to be left hanging lest someone be offended or somehow injured. INTPs are at risk of being swept away by the shadow in the form of their own strong emotional impulses. "


Or this.

"
http://www.tuvy.com/entertainment/ho...fire_tiger.htm
FIRE TIGER Horoscope
Feb 13, 1926 to Feb 1, 1927
Feb 9, 1986 to Jan 28, 1987
Tiger people are sympathetic, kind, emotional, and sensitive. At movies, they can cry their eyes out! Despite their kindness, they can be extremely short-tempered. The rage of Tigers is terrible to behold but it also gives them the adrenaline needed for the sublimest of bravery. The Tiger is also a deep thinker and can make the most astonishing intellectual connections, with great mental agility. On the negative side, they tend to be suspicious and a bit self-centered, OK selfish, and indecisive. Above everything, however, the Tiger stands as a supreme emblem of protection over human life, admirable always."

FWIW,

I'm this one.

WATER TIGER Horoscope
Feb 8, 1902 to Jan 28, 1903
Feb 5, 1962 to Jan 24, 1963
Tiger people are sympathetic, kind, emotional, and sensitive. At movies, they can cry their eyes out! Despite their kindness, they can be extremely short-tempered. The rage of Tigers is terrible to behold but it also gives them the adrenaline needed for the sublimest of bravery. The Tiger is also a deep thinker and can make the most astonishing intellectual connections, with great mental agility. On the negative side, they tend to be suspicious and a bit self-centered, OK selfish, and indecisive. Above everything, however, the Tiger stands as a supreme emblem of protection over human life, admirable always..

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Uh huh, It's either this.

"
http://typelogic.com/intp.html
Extraverted Feeling

Feeling tends to be all or none. When present, the INTP's concern for others is intense, albeit naive. In a crisis, this feeling judgement is often silenced by the emergence of Thinking, who rushes in to avert chaos and destruction. In the absence of a clear principle, however, INTPs have been known to defer judgement and to allow decisions about interpersonal matters to be left hanging lest someone be offended or somehow injured. INTPs are at risk of being swept away by the shadow in the form of their own strong emotional impulses. "


Or this.

"
http://www.tuvy.com/entertainment/ho...fire_tiger.htm
FIRE TIGER Horoscope
Feb 13, 1926 to Feb 1, 1927
Feb 9, 1986 to Jan 28, 1987
Tiger people are sympathetic, kind, emotional, and sensitive. At movies, they can cry their eyes out! Despite their kindness, they can be extremely short-tempered. The rage of Tigers is terrible to behold but it also gives them the adrenaline needed for the sublimest of bravery. The Tiger is also a deep thinker and can make the most astonishing intellectual connections, with great mental agility. On the negative side, they tend to be suspicious and a bit self-centered, OK selfish, and indecisive. Above everything, however, the Tiger stands as a supreme emblem of protection over human life, admirable always."

FWIW,

I'm this one.

WATER TIGER Horoscope
Feb 8, 1902 to Jan 28, 1903
Feb 5, 1962 to Jan 24, 1963
Tiger people are sympathetic, kind, emotional, and sensitive. At movies, they can cry their eyes out! Despite their kindness, they can be extremely short-tempered. The rage of Tigers is terrible to behold but it also gives them the adrenaline needed for the sublimest of bravery. The Tiger is also a deep thinker and can make the most astonishing intellectual connections, with great mental agility. On the negative side, they tend to be suspicious and a bit self-centered, OK selfish, and indecisive. Above everything, however, the Tiger stands as a supreme emblem of protection over human life, admirable always..

Interesting! Because I'm a fellow INTP and also an Earth Tiger.

Jeil,

I'll give you a vote of support. That was a fantastic article. Here is one by Charley Reese which dovetails with it:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese325.html

(Usual disclaimers. Emphasis added.)



Jefferson Davis

by Charley Reese


Jefferson Davis, one of America's greatest statesmen, said that a question settled by violence would inevitably arise again, though at a different time and in a different form.

And so it has. Lovers and sycophants of the great empire on the Potomac must be feeling uneasy that at least some Americans are again questioning the efficacy of a gargantuan central government.

Perhaps the recent shift of control of Congress to the Democrats has made them nervous, though God knows there are precious few Jeffersonian Democrats in the modern Democratic Party.

And what, you might well ask, is a Jeffersonian Democrat? He's a person who hasn't forgotten that the sovereign states created the federal government, not the reverse, as some today seem to assume. He believes that what the Constitution created was a republic of sovereign states, and that the carefully limited powers assigned to the federal government were all the powers it had, in peace or in war. He believes the Constitution is a binding contract, not a rubbery document that can mean anything a judge or a politician says it means. He believes in a system of checks and balances. In short, he believes in the Declaration of Independence.

That document, you might recall, says that the only purpose of government is to protect rights already granted by God, and that when a government fails to protect those rights and begins to abuse them, the people have the right to alter or overthrow it. "Sounds communistic to me," grumbles old Jack Jingoist. "That guy Jefferson must have been some kind of a pinko."

Why else would Lord Acton, the great British philosopher of liberty, have written to Robert E. Lee, America's greatest soldier, that, "I grieve more for what was lost at Appomattox than I rejoice at what was gained at Waterloo." Lord Acton saw clearly what many American professors of history do not – that the defeat of the South was the end of America's experiment in liberty and self-government and a conscious choice to emulate the central governments of Europe.

H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore journalist, in his usually blunt way said the only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for government "of the people, by the people and for the people."

Davis had said, "I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it."

On another occasion, he said: "We feel our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of our honor and independence. We ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms."

A newspaper in New Hampshire said: "The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? We must not let the South go."

So to add to the definition of Jeffersonian Democrats, they were a majority of the Founding Fathers, a majority who fought the American Revolution, a majority who wrote the Constitution, and a majority who fought for Southern independence. No wonder the precious few still extant make big-government lovers so nervous.

December 13, 2006

Originally Posted by Mustang

And what, you might well ask, is a Jeffersonian Democrat? He's a person who hasn't forgotten that the sovereign states created the federal government, not the reverse, as some today seem to assume.

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was created by the states with specific instructions to modify the Articles of Confederation, a structure created by the sovereign states. It disobeyed, chucked the Articles and wrote our Constitution... then deliberately instructed that it be ratified, not by the state governments themselves, but by separately elected constitutional conventions called for the express purpose of approving or disapproving of the Constitution.

The Constitution was not a creature of the states. It was a revolt against them. That's why the state legislatures were not specified as the ratifiers of the Constitution: the delegates at the Convention had disobeyed, and the state governments, jealous of their power, were likely to disapprove of the Constitution. Indeed, anti-Federalist parties were often led by state governors.

The Feds are antagonistic to the states, and always have been, and rightly so-- it's yet another check and balance on the government as a whole. You may claim that the Feds are too powerful in that balance at the moment; in some areas I'll even agree with you. But don't pretend that the Constitution is something it's not. The State governments were forced into the Constitution against their will by their own people.

He believes that what the Constitution created was a republic of sovereign states, and that the carefully limited powers assigned to the federal government were all the powers it had, in peace or in war.

Believe whatever you like. The First Amendment guarantees you that right. The powers of the Feds are indeed limited; the Tenth Amendment guarantees you that right.

He believes the Constitution is a binding contract, not a rubbery document that can mean anything a judge or a politician says it means.

And what, pray tell, enforces binding contracts? If the government does not, you have only the resort Jefferson prescribed in such a case: the gun.

Oh, right, you already tried that.

Lord Acton saw clearly what many American professors of history do not – that the defeat of the South was the end of America's experiment in liberty and self-government and a conscious choice to emulate the central governments of Europe.

Hmph. We're still far more decentralized than Europe. Brussels is an abombination, and I'm cheering on the Brits, Danes, and Poles for keeping a lid on the Franco-German attempt to create the New Holy Roman Empire.

On another occasion, he said: "We feel our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of our honor and independence. We ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms."

And I wish they had made the compromises that would have made that possible. But they did not. Independence is not isolation. And libertarianism in the 21st century is not the states' rights of the 19th.

Originally Posted by catfishncod

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was created by the states with specific instructions to modify the Articles of Confederation, a structure created by the sovereign states. It disobeyed, chucked the Articles and wrote our Constitution... then deliberately instructed that it be ratified, not by the state governments themselves, but by separately elected constitutional conventions called for the express purpose of approving or disapproving of the Constitution.

That's right, it had to be ratified by the People ("We the People"). Nonetheless, the conventions representing the people were state conventions, and the Constitution was not in force until 3/4 of these state conventions ratified it (and it then only applied to the states whose conventions had in fact ratified it; it was not imposed on states whose conventions had not (yet) ratified it).

So the people's representatives, caucusing by state, ratified it. State is not necessarily synonymous with state government. The ratification count was kept according to state. As Reese correctly stated, "[T]he sovereign states created the federal government, not the reverse, as some today seem to assume." Indeed. The People of the sovereign states, meeting by state, created the federal government.