Posted on 09/09/2012 1:33:24 AM PDT by neverdem
All the liberal Jews I talk to seem to believe that the age of anti-Semitism is over. That is often true, in countries that have mature, democratic political systems. The United States, which all good liberals learn to sneer at, has the single most mature political system in the world -- 230 years of a solid Constitution, which liberals don't much like.
Most of the world lacks a mature, time-tested and tolerant political system. Even the European Union is governed by an unelected ruling class today.
So the United States is the world home of political tolerance today. No other major country (except maybe Switzerland) has had that kind of stability and tolerance for 230 years. Naturally, the left has decided to import hundreds of thousands of the least tolerant people in the world today, so that today in London there are cases of children being sacrificed in witchcraft ceremonies; and there are cases of home-grown Muslim terrorists bombing civilian targets like the London Underground. Britain has now turned itself into a fearsome Big Brother state, with tens of thousands of CCTV cameras all over the cities. They put video cameras in garbage cans over there.
Jewish liberals are just as ignorant of history and politics as all the other liberals you know.
Vast deserts of political ignorance makes liberalism possible.
Liberal Jews love the tolerance they enjoy in this country, and they often harbor a nasty case of guilt and anger against orthodox Jews, who don't assimilate the way liberals do.
Liberalism is a species of mental conformity. It makes thinking unnecessary.
Thinking is scary.
All you need to do is believe the 24/7 media, and you feel like a member of the herd. The herd protects. At least, it protects until it turns against you. The biggest fear...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Well, now you know how to get out of ever having to visit his house ever again...lol!
****yet we’re supposed to believe an overbearing federal government was the cause of secession?****
Would you agree that an overbearing federal government was the result of secession?
Secession was one of the causes, certainly.
But to assert the steps taken to keep the Union intact were “the” cause of an overbearing government makes the somewhat silly, IMO, assumption that none of the trends that have resulted in expansion of government power worldwide would have occurred had secession and its crushing not happened.
IOW, does anybody seriously contend that had there been no secession and no WBTS something very similar to the Progressive Movement wouldn’t have started up in the late 1800s?
It seems to me those who make this argument are committing the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
X preceded Y, therefore X caused Y, and without X Y would not have happened.
As stated, I think this claim is to some small part true, but it is largely a fallacy. Which can be seen in the fact that for several decades after the War the federal government reverted to a relatively minor role in the country. In fact, the truly massive growth of the government didn’t start till the 20th, and didn’t really get going till WWI.
****In fact, the truly massive growth of the government didn’t start till the 20th, and didn’t really get going till WWI.****
I agree that in the US, the government began its ballooning in the very early 20th century, the primary example being that of the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913(although from what I understand not really a Federal agency). These issues were festering in our government long before then, and only finally became possible by enough people in power taking over.
It seems true freedom is hard to come by, and the only country in the world to truly achieve it didn’t keep it for long.
You are correct, of course. I was restating it in the way the pro-secessionists use the argument.
“Our present increasingly oppressive government could not have arisen had we stuck to the pre-WBTS system, therefore the WBTS caused our present increasingly oppressive government to come into existence.”
As I believe Winston Churchill said in another context, often a preceding event is necessary but not sufficient.
Would the Nazis have come to power had the Germans won WWI? Nope. Though popular movements of a similar nature were visible in the years before and during the war. Victory might certainly have encouraged their expansion.
Does this mean the German loss caused the Nazi rise to power? Nope again. Their loss was just one of the many factors necessary to bring it about.
.
And our "leaders" would do the same to us - it's only a matter of time unless the People speak out and put their collective foot down.
Actually, Marx explained at great length that the American CW was about slavery, and that the idea that it was a war of free trade vs. protectionism was originated by London salons. He gave the example of the American sugar industry, based in the South but very dependent on high tariffs to keep cheaper imports out.
The republic of our Framers ended on July 4th, 1861 with Lincoln’s Message to Congress in Special Session.
It should be common sense that by definition one cannot use force to enforce a contract. (A contract must be a voluntary agreement.)
Try reading: Judge Abel Upshur’s Commentaries on the Constitution.
Here: //www.constitution.org/ups/upshur.htm
It is in direct response to Judge Joseph Story’s Commentaries which was the fundamental hi-jacking of the Constitution by the Northern Confederacy (Essex Junto).
If you think that the National Government can punish the States.
Read Hamilton’s Federalist #21.
You are quite right. I don’t know where I got that recollection, but it was obviously wrong.
Here’s a Marxist article from October, ‘61.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/25.htm
With some minor quibbbles, such as his minimization of the number of slaveholders, it’s a quite accurate summation of the events leading up to the war. Which means I largely agree with Karl.
I hate it when that happens.
BTW, I haven’t looked into his more doctrinal type writings recently, but if this article is typical the guy was a hell of a writer.
You’re right about Marx being capable of clear thought and good writing. At other times, I suspect some mental illness and/or simply someone lost in mystical private revelation. Many of his writings on economics ignore obvious conclusions and simply fall back on mystical assertions.
In actual fact, the tariff issue tended to unite the NW with the South (both mainly agricultural regions) against the NE. This allowed the South to dominate national politics for decades before the War.
Then the South very foolishly alienated their otherwise natural allies in the NW by insisting they join them in imposing national policies that would encourage spread of slavery into all territories, if necessary against the wishes of the inhabitants of those territories.
IOW, the South got cocky, underestimated the opposition, and eventually got clobbered for doing so.
He gave the example of the American sugar industry, based in the South but very dependent on high tariffs to keep cheaper imports out.
Amazing how certain things are eternal, regardless of how idiotic they are, isn't it?
Are you calling my confederate ancestors cocky and stupid?
Sure. Just like my confederate ancestors. The atmosphere in the South just before the war is reasonably well portrayed in the opening scenes of Gone with the Wind. The whole “one southerner can whip 10 Yankees” and “all the blood spilled can fit in a lady’s thimble” bit.
If that isn’t being cocky and stupid, I don’t know what is.
Do you seriously contend the decision to declare war on the United States was intelligent and well-considered? One can somewhat reasonably argue that the southern course was the only one they could follow, that they were forced into it.
I don’t think one can reasonably contend that it was wise.one southerner can whip 10 Yankees
The real lesson of the Civil War is how easy it is for a group of states to re-form their own version of a Federal Govt. at will, in a short time, even under extreme duress of war mobilization.
Sorry about the typo.
Yes, there was every reason to believe that fighting a defensive war that eventually an armistice would be reached. The level of death tolerable to the Illinois Butcher ™, done in the name of the tyranny, is what was under estimated. By todays standards what was done then was a war where 4-5 million died(adjusted for population growth) Do you think we would have accepted that casualty rate in WWII? I doubt it. Let say the liberation of Africa in 1942 had cost a million GI's. How would it have turned out differently? I say things then would have been different. The only belligerent that would tolerate those casualty rates was the USSR. Even Japan gave up.
I know I’ve read somewhere that the CSA declared war on the USA between the attack on Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops, but I can’t find any documentation of that at the moment.
So I withdraw the assertion for now.
Death toll as % of population WBTS: 2%.
Death tolls in WWII by country:
USA .32%
Poland 17%
USSR 14%
UK .94%
Germany 8 to 11%
Japan 4 to 5%
Italy 1%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Total_deaths
Comparing numbers is complicated by numerous factors, such as which deaths should be classified as war deaths, which part of genocidal campaigns, etc.
What springs to the eye for anyone who knows anything about history is how low these percentages are compared to wars in earlier centuries.
Mongol conquest of Central Asia, Iran and Iraq: 50% to 90%.
Most of the “changes of dynasty” in Chinese history reduced the population by 1/4 to 2/3.
30 Years War killed 1/3 to 1/2 population of Germany.
English Civil War killed 10% of England, 20% of Scotland, 30% of Ireland.
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