What the article doesn’t say, however, is that there are two very different bases for opposing public appearances by white supremacist and similar groups. One is dangerously wrong, the other, which Bray presents, makes much more sense.
First the wrong approach, that groups should not be permitted to express themselves in public if they cause emotional distress to me or other people I care about. You hear this one a lot: speech that I find demeaning is a form of violence, and there can’t be freedom for it. There’s no difference between saying something horrible to me and punching me in the face. No freedom for one, no freedom for the other.
This argument has its roots in a mindset that has become popular in much of the left, that the ultimate political goal is equal well-being for all, that well-being is essentially having a positive emotional state (or not being in a state of stress/despair/fear/etc.), and that actions should therefore be judged by the emotional response they engender, especially among marginalized groups. It’s a deeply subjectivist conception of life and politics, one that puts feelings above “objective” conditions like economic status, access to social or institutional networks, risk of physical harm, or other measurable outcomes. In fact, the primacy of subjective feelings is often asserted by denying the very possibility of “objective” anything. (Objectivity is said to be a tool of knowledge/power to silence the oppressed.)
From a logical point of view, the identification of personal well-being with a series of transitory positive emotional states is indefensible. First, there’s more to life than that. Second, and crucially, one’s subjective emotions at one moment are weak predictors of future happiness; those much-derided objective conditions do a better job on that front. As a teacher, I sometimes engender frustration in students, temporarily lowering their emotional hedonometer. If I’m doing my job well, this is more than compensated by increased learning, which will be of more benefit down the road than an extra hour of emotional ease. Feelings matter, a lot, but not at the expense of everything else. And speech that causes negative feelings can’t be evaluated just on that basis; you have to think about the other consequences, direct and indirect, of listening to it, allowing it but not listening, or not allowing it at all.
Politically, the ideology that subjective feelings are everything is catastrophic. It’s a claim with a long history on the repressive right: if students don’t recite the pledge of allegiance each morning at school my feelings are insulted, or if they burn a flag, or if professors denounce America, or if athletes take a knee. It’s the same argument, just a different group’s feelings being hurt. The only counterargument of the left is that some people’s feelings (people of color, gender nonconforming, etc.) count more than others’ feelings, but really, do you want to hang your politics on this?
At the deepest level, the struggle for social change butts up against the force of cognitive dissonance. People have made commitments to the existing order. They have dedicated their lives to getting a job and moving up, if they can. They or their parents or children have served in the military, exposing themselves to horrific risks of violence (and not just speech) with often horrific results. They have supported politicians hoping to get a better break on some government policy. Then a social change activist comes along and says, these commitments were wrong, or fruitless or not good enough. You should make different commitments, to a different economic or political system. Whatever else activists may say, they are asking the people they are talking with to absorb the psychic costs of seeing their past actions in a harsher light—to cope with cognitive dissonance. In the extreme case, imagine trying to convince the parent of someone who has died in a war of aggression that this death was in vain. It’s not easy.
Serious activism can’t elevate subjective feelings to an all-important position. You’d have to hang it up before you even get started. Activism always confronts denial, a defense mechanism of the emotions. It’s based on a view of the world that there really are objective conditions that need to be changed, whether that makes you psychically comfortable or not.
But the second argument, the one that Bray seems to embrace, comes from a different place, the paradox of tolerance. If we want a free society, at some point we may have to restrict the freedom of those who want to get rid of it. Fascists, religious fanatics and other extreme authoritarians are what we have to worry about. Complete, unlimited freedom for these groups to organize and express themselves exposes the rest of us to a serious risk, one that has resulted in tyranny in countries that were once freer. This is Bray’s point, and he has in mind the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1920s and 30s. Of course, since it’s a paradox we’re talking about here, it’s important to keep both ends of it in mind: intolerance for the intolerant is also a form of intolerance. This should lead us to keep the “good” intolerance close to its necessary minimum.
And what is that? It’s complicated. And people can disagree. Which specific speakers should not be given a public forum at universities? Which rallies should not be permitted? The answer is not none, and it’s not “everyone who pisses me off”. It depends on how we assess the risk to our future freedom if these events take place. The paradox of intolerance gives us a framework for talking about it rationally.
It also gives us a basis for discussing the role of direct action—what aware citizens ought to do when their institutional authorities fail to act. But that discussion is fundamentally political: what’s right is what has the best chance of protecting and extending our freedom in light of its consequences. That’s the context for thinking about direct action tactics.
Peter:
Would you restrict a Yiannopoulos or Spencer on campus or from certain areas to avoid a reaction? Do we need to hear their words in person and to learn from it?
Yes, well put, and you put the finger in the narbe. We need to re-establish the importance of objectivity. Do we really want for instance, a judiciary based on subjective values?
(But lots of things follow from this. For instance, why the presidency is not a good idea.)
jim:
Welcome to AB. First comments go to moderation to weed out spammers and advertising.
Sounds awful slippery slopey.
The old clear and present danger doctrine at least drew a bright line, though there was still much subjectivity in assessing the actual danger/effect of particular speech.
If we decide that whether certain speech is protected or not “depends on how we assess the risk to our future freedom if these events take place” we have moved the bar quite a bit, and added more subjectivity while inviting the slippery slope argument from the naysayers as justification for shutting down opposing views.
I am all in favor of the First Amendment and I do not see any basis to deny the fascists, white supremacists or Republicans, but I repeat myself, a soapbox to spew their drivel. It is unfortunate but if not actually fomenting violence, they have a right to speak and those who would violently stop them are wrong.I think Universities who allow such folks to use their facilities have an obligation to prevent protesters from preventing the speech. I was a participant many years ago in what I believe is the proper response to speech you abhor. In 1972 George Wallace was running for the Democratic nomination for president and was given a forum at the Chapel of Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in Appleton Wisconsin. Appleton Wisconsin was the home of Joseph McCarthy and although it only has a small non white population has a virulently racist portion of its population. See Trump’s win in Wisconsin this year. The vast majority of the students at Lawrence were not openly racist and I believe a majority were not racist. Certainly the 100 or so African American students were not Wallace supporters. The speech was to begin at 8:00 pm and students had filled every seat in the place by 5:00 pm–no tickets it was first come first seated. The African American students filled the first rows. As a result none of Wallace’s supporters gained admittance and during Wallace’s speech you could have heard a pin drop. There was no heckling or shouts of “you lie” and there was not a single sound of applause. After about 45 minutes the African American students left and when no townspeople came to take their places, I left too. I recall absolutely nothing that Wallace said–he was shot by another Wisconsin resident 6 weeks later–but it was a completely non violent protest which in no way prevented Wallace from speaking but did prevent his message from reaching its intended audience. I doubt whether Wallace thought much about his wasted speech, but I would like to think that he was disappointed. Similarly, when folks like Spencer or Coulter or Yiannopolous speak they want to be recognized–applause or heckling are the same–their message of hate is being heard and is provoking a reaction. If met with stony silence–as if they were practicing in front of a mirror– they have failed and their speech is irrelevant. Of course to do that those opposing the speech have to organize and make the time commitment to deny supporters of the hate speech a seat, which is not as much fun as running around and throwing rocks.
Has to be allowed, the hard part is what speech classifies as yelling fire in a crowded theater.
Hard call.
I think this post is brilliant and am proud to share a platform with Peter Dorman. I agree entirely that we can’t base our actions on people’s feelings right now (especially as they are poor predictors of future happiness but also because John Stuart had a lot to teach James Mill about how pleasure minus pain isn’t everything).
I draw a different practial conclusion about which fascists should be denied platforms and when direct action is a wise strategy. My view is that the best approach to obnoxious student groups inviting racists and fascists to campuses is to hold a peaceful counterdemonstration which is not so noisy as to drown out the hate speech. I don’t call that direct action (it has too little action in it).
I don’t think you face a practical actual paradox of tolerance over there in the USA. My argument is simple, the right wing extremist haters seek confrontation. If they were seeking converts, they wouldn’t be in Berkeley so often. My suggestion is to not give them what they seek.
They want to face direct action. This is obvious. They do everything they can to provoke a violent response or, failing that, a loud response.
I think the way to defeat them is — first to stand silently and be counted — to show that there are more of us than there are of them. Direct action only becomes necessary when there are more of them. Then yes try to assassinate Hitler and I bow down to you. Second, vote damnit. The real danger is Trump not Yiannopoulos.
Now this does raise a problem for students. It is easier to protest on campus than to go door to door nagging people to register to vote. But I think the second is the kind of direct action the US need.
Fine. Let’s brass tacks this. Many religions have problematic aspects to one or another doctrine. These days, Islam is one that is often used as an example, and since it hasn’t been prominent in the US for most of the history of this country, it makes for an interesting case. There are passages in Islam that deal with subjugating non-Muslims. Now, there are also those who point out that those passages require context. But the flip side is that many people who claim to act in the name of Islam take those passages seriously and don’t seem to think they require context. They do seem to feel those passages require action – from 9/11 to the Bataclan to car bombs in the Middle East to any number of vans mowing people down.
So… are the phrases that motivate this behavior something that should be banned?
“But that discussion is fundamentally political: what’s right is what has the best chance of protecting and extending our freedom in light of its consequences.”
People differ on what’s “right” however, and for whom it is “right”. And that differs with time, place, and circumstance. Thus if freedom of speech is unrestricted in the political sense the system of government gaining power can run the gamut from one extreme to the other.(say from chaos to Pol-Pot for example.
It seems to me therefore that speech has to be restricted such that it cannot be allowed to undermine or take root to undermine a nation’s fundamental principles of a government’s reason for being.
With that said then why is racism or rasist agenda topics allowed in the U.S.? it’s allowed I think because the nation and thus the gov’t is split on whether it wants to be a white supremacy nation with northern European cultural and religious traditions & values or to be a multi-i-cultural, racially, religiously, and values mixed & homogenized nation.
The nation and gov’t has never addressed this question and so it’s remains yet today an open debate — largely responsible for much of the current “freedom of speech” issue of which this post is an example.
Waldman, whom I greatly respect an almost invariably agree makes I think a critical assumption about people — that they cannot be persuaded (in massive and political powerful numbers) to abandon, unknowingly or by overriding emotional concerns that which changes the entire nation and gov’t to one completely different than what it’s original (or evolved?) reason for being is in the first place.
Communist China uses their central “Marxist-Leninist” foundation as it’s fundamental reason for being. A democratic Germany was persuaded to invoke a dictatorship (fascism). A politically powerful segment of the U.S. was persuaded that “their feudal slave system” would serve their interests more than an established democratic nation.
At present a politically powerful segment of the U.S. was persuaded to restrict non-whites from entry, to restrict non-Christians from entry, to round-up and deport non-citizens on the basis of their religion and race.
So don’t think the U.S. is “special” with it’s virtually unrestricted freedom of speech, or it’s 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, or it’s Civil Rights Act, or it’s Freedom of religion clause as a nation immune to speech used to persuade it to be a nation completely different than one some people think it is or should be.
Peter Dorman
thank you for this. you have said much better than i could what i have been trying to say to the left for years.
i would point out that suppressing “shouting fire in a crowded theater” was the rationale for jailing people who called for protests against WW1.
but I see there are people here still desperately looking for a way to justify shutting up people they don’t want to hear.
Pol Pot and Hitler did not succeed on the basis of “speech.” Neither, I think, do racists today in America or even ante bellum. suppressing speech, on the other hand, may have helped them succeed once they had the power to do that… by sowing real fear.
maybe our friends here can see the difference.
btw: statues don’t hurt anybody. but you can sure rouse up the marginal (and most of us are marginal on some issues) by attacking their symbols of patriotism and religion.
Martin Luther King could see the difference.
And the over indulgence? Europe Will Be White,” one sign carried by marchers read
“Right-wing racists flew in from Slovakia, Hungary, and Spain to join tens of thousands of Poles at a white supremacist rally in Warsaw on Saturday where marchers bore signs with messages like ‘Europe Will Be White’ and ‘Clean Blood.’
Reporters on hand said the crowd numbered roughly 60,000, citing police estimates. A polish neo-nazi group called The Radical Camp, borrowing its name from a 1930s fascist movement in the country, organized the march.
‘A number of people in the crowd said they didn’t belong to any neo-fascist or racist organization but didn’t see a problem with the overall tone of what has become Poland’s biggest independence day event, the Wall Street Journal noted.
Counter protesters also showed up in far smaller numbers. One small group in the square held a sign reading ‘We are Polish Jews’ and stood encircled by police. Nearby, a group of 2,000 anti-fascists rallied in opposition to the massive hate march.
Poland’s resurgent fascist youth movement has embraced President Donald Trump, whose campaign manager Steve Bannon worked for years to exploit white ethno-nationalist political energy in western Europe as well as the United States from his position leading Breitbart.com.
The Radical Camp made the slogan of this year’s rally “We Want God,” a line Trump quoted from an old Polish folk song during a state visit to Warsaw in July. In prior years, ”
It looks like our presidential idiot can influence more outside of the country than inside the country. This is going well beyond Jews in Europe with its new culture to prey upon being Middle Easterners whether Muslim or not. Our own president Trump having an influence amongst the Poles and right wing ethnic groups.
PreWWII, the Germans came to the US to learn from our race laws which they found more detailed than anything they had seen before or had. It appears, some Europeans are also taking the lead of our president. When does some one speak in opposition or will it to come too late.
I did the riot duty in the cities and quite a few times we were confined to base in case we had to be called out. This is far different than those times in the late sixties and early seventies. They were mostly kids like us with the except we were hardened from overseas tours.
Silence is never an answer to racism and intolerance. Somewhere and sometime it must be answered.
Run,
Thus far it’s been 152 years already and still counting despite no lack of silence on the subject of racism and intolerance. LBJ sacrificed the Democratic party’s Dixicrats to pass the Civil Rights Act which simply shifted their racial intolerances to the other party which accepted them and promoted their move with enthusiasm and glee..
And yet here we are just 52 years since LBJ’s coup as if the whole issue hadn’t been addressed. We have as much racial intolerance and racism as we’ve ever had…. I would be more direct: racial intolerance is a euphemism for White Supremacy — which has always been the actual issue..
Trump isn’t the problem here — it’s the nation’s public that hasn’t decided what kind of a nation it wants to be —-or maybe more to the point, a people who are completely split with an irreconcilable difference a on what kind of a nation they want..
Evidence that Trump isn’t the problem is that we have a conservative majority congress that does nothing to reverse or inhibit the course the nation is now on… and Congress is the supposed “voice of the people”.
So I don’t think the lack of silence or silence is at issue — it’s a by-product. Racism and cultural intolerances are a religion .. in fact espoused and promoted by religions — both factions within and factions without.
This will be resolved only when human’s gods are no more than foot-notes in human history — so don’t hold your breath.. In the meantime it rests on emotional persuasions — propaganda and all, which rests largely on which societal group wields the most power — which nearly always comes down to which group has the most wealth. Something the U.S. deems to be a fundamentalist religion as well… at least according to the soothsayers that constitute a majority of 5.
Run
let’s try to make some fine distinctions here. no one, i hope, certainly not me, advocates silence in the face or resurgent racism.
but denying them “free speech” is not the answer. it only hastens the day when we are all denied free speech. and taking away their symbols is not the answer. it only gives them an excuse to act out.
racism is as old as biology. it can be tamed. i doubt it can be expunged. meanwhile MLK showed us a way to tame it. he had some help from LBJ.
i will say i don’t know if this fits the European situation. I hope it does. But they may feel that they are too close to the tipping point back into pernicious racism and can’t afford to take the chance. But my guess is that if they suppress free speech, they will not suppress racism… it will just explode on them without warning.
when i am called a racist… and i think i am farther from being one than anyone else here… what i hear is the voice of racism coming from the mouths of people who get too much satisfaction from hating to let go of it.
it sounds like racism to me. will we get to the point where because some (not all i am sure, probably not many) person who feels bad because he sees something that reminds him his ancestors were slaves realizes that just seeing a white face makes him feel bad… because as we know all white people are racists. right?
“yet here we are just 52 years since LBJ’s coup as if the whole issue hadn’t been addressed”
Not at all. The fringe is farther from the center because the center has moved while the fringe has not.
We are seeing the fringe more now because social media has allowed them to get together. Crowd psychology can be fearful. Trump may have been right that there were some “good people” wanting to protest the removal of their symbols, but the mob convinced them that carrying torches was a good idea. But screaming in the face of someone carrying a torch probably also requires having your own mod to help you ignore your survival instincts.
It takes a special kind of leadership to get a group to quietly allow someone else’s right to free speech to roll off with no effect.
Upon reflection, the rule about not yelling fire also comes because the theater mob cannot be counted on to react with reason.
Arne
again, it is worth remembering that the “shouting fire in a crowded theater” analogy was used to justify jailing people for distributing flyers opposing the draft in WW1.
it doesn’t take much imagination for a Justice to justify anything he wants.
Arne,
I think you’re living a popular belief that the fringe is the problem. I don’t think so .. the fringe as always gets the attention, but the general pubic (a politically very large even near majority segment of it) lies silently in the wings with the same beliefs. They express them behind closed curtains.
It’s not possible that the center has moved much or at all in the last 52 years when there have been no significant laws or constitutional amendments to reflect this shift since LBJ’s coup.. If a shift had occurred Trump could never have even come close to being the front runner in the GOP, much less a serious (and winning) contender in a national presidential election.
“It’s not possible that the center has moved much or at all in the last 52 years when there have been no significant laws or constitutional amendments to reflect this shift since LBJ’s coup.”
Bah!
My grandmother’s attitudes were far different from what my daughter’s are. There are more black Senators now than 50 years ago. Multi-racial relationships are part of mass market entertainment. The center has changed.
I constantly see this right wing talking point on “hurt feelings” being parroted. It is a disgusting and unhelpful comment on the level of “cuck.” A statement that sums up the approach and attitudes of a certain predominantly white supremacist faction. This isn’t about hurt feelings. This is about the systematic suppression and disenfranchisement of, in particular, minorities and women over decades, and what steps are needed to get those voices into discussions so that we can stimulate the cultural change necessary to have a functioning public sphere that all residents can participate in.
People don’t need to “toughen up” and “pull themselves up by the boostraps.” We need a functioning society that isn’t full of bullies who get their way by toting AR-15s on the backs near polling places, demanding IDs at the ballot box, and insisting that their right to speak means they should be allowed to do so without anyone standing across the street saying they don’t agree.
The right to speech isn’t the right to speak alone.
You really think things have changed?
“To appreciate the tenacity and enduring political constancy of Trumpism, George Wallace’s story is the essential text. Soon after Trump started running in 2015, commentators started to clock the uncanny parallels with his southern predecessor. As Trump’s path into presidential politics was greased by birtherism, so Wallace commandeered the national spotlight by playing the race card, showboating before television cameras to try to block black students from attending class at the University of Alabama in 1963. As Trump’s followers came for the racism but stayed for the nationalism and populism, so had Wallace’s. His presidential campaign slogan was “Stand Up for America.” He inveighed against “pointy-headed professors,” the “filthy rich in Wall Street,” and Washington’s “briefcase-totin’ bureaucrats” while supporting big-government programs like Social Security and Medicare that benefited his base. Wallace, again anticipating Trump, decried the two parties as interchangeable while refusing to offer anything beyond anger and complaints as an alternative. Wallace was “interested in exploiting issues, not solving problems,” as the Times put it in 1972. He “has no real policies, plans, or platforms,” observed the contemporaneous journalist Kirkpatrick Sale, perceptively adding that “no one expects them from him.” That he lost all his crusades against the federal government, including his signature battle against desegregation, didn’t faze his followers either. “What matters is that he fought and continues to fight,” wrote the early Wallace biographer Marshall Frady.
What Wallace did have was a pugnacious and charismatic persona. He loved baiting protesters and courting violence against them at raucous gatherings like his 1968 rally at Madison Square Garden, where visiting members of alt-right precursors like the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party turned up to cheer him on. In his canonical Wallace study, 1995’s The Politics of Rage, the historian Dan T. Carter describes his speeches as “stunningly disconnected, at times incoherent, and always repetitious,” but adds that “his followers reveled in the performance” and “never tired of hearing the same lines again and again.” Like Trump, Wallace knew his audience. His “genius” was “in his ability to link traditional conservatism to an earthy language” rather than the lingo of Republicans like Goldwater who “parroted the comfortable platitudes of the country club locker room.” Wallace was also brilliant at “constantly manipulating television’s infatuation with visual action, dramatic confrontation, and punchy sound bites.” The editor of The Nation groused that “without any conscious bias, the television cameras automatically focus on him.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/frank-rich-trumpism-after-trump.html
I’m not sure that it is correct to say I think that the fringe is the problem. The center has moved, but it is also apathetic. Some of the feelings that a mob can stir are not buried very deeply, but if parents mostly keep them buried, they are deeper still in the next generation.
Goodwin
I think it was me here who mentioned hurt feelings. I am not a racists or a right winger. And I didn’t get the hurt feelings meme from right wing publications but from my old friends on the far left who seem to feel that a black man should not have to walk down the street and see a statue of Robert E Lee because it makes him feel all bad inside about the injustices against him for all these years.
Of course the white ringers should be answered, and protested. But that is a very different thing from running around demanding that statues of Robert E Lee be removed.
The Lee statue issue isn’t really one of free speech. Rather it’s a governmental statement of values and such statements are subject to the consent of the governed. Lee supported a treasonous insurrection in support of slavery. Rejecting governmental erection of statues to him isn’t hurt feelings. It’s outrage.
Jack D
i am sorry you feel that way. Apparently it is not only Justices who can use a little imagination to justify whatever they want for political reasons.
The power of rationalization is unlimited.
and “treason” is a word loved by facists of both the left and the right to make themselves feel justified in doing terrible things to people for political reasons. Or, in this case, so far, just stupid things that foment violence and the wider spread of stupidity which some people hope will provide them political advantage.
Even if Lee were a traitor and a racist, which he certainly was not, what good would it do to take down his statues now? Other than to ease the hurt feelings (outrage) of those sucking on the juices of hatred.
You ought to notice that the people who object to taking down the statues maintain that Lee was not a racist, and the war was not about slavery. That should tell you “racism” has become a bad word in this country and no one “supports” slavery. We won those wars. One in 1865 and the other in 1965. Who profits from working up the same passions that made them necessary in the first place?
The answer is politicians of both stripes who rely on the stupidity of people to fuel any fire they can start for their own purposes.
And just in case… I know that the Civil War was “all about” slavery. And I know that what Lee probably believed would be called racism today. But it was neither racism nor treason by the lights of the time.
Maybe it’s time for us to move on.
Or stew in your own borrowed self pity and see if you can provoke the other guy to imagine he is the victim of some outrage.
Fun for all.
Especially
When I was a child in Chicago many many years ago I lived near McKinley Park where there was a stature of William McKinley. I knew nothing about President McKinley and never thought about it one way or the other. The statue just was. A place for pigeons and broken glass.
Many, many, years later I learned enough about McKinley to suppose, by my lights, he was a bad guy. But it never occurred to me to demand his statue be (re)moved.
I think by now both park and statue have been covered by an eight lane freeway. No one complained.
Maybe it would be more useful to put some energy (work) into doing something to actually improve the condition of black people left behind by the civil rights era.
rather than stroking your “outrage” until you feel better.
yeah, i know. you’d have to get out of your chair and find something better to do than give racists an excuse to stroke their outrage.
Not a traitor?
“I, _____, appointed a _____ in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States.”
Coberly; the persistence of racism in this country is really beyond dispute. Statues of civil war generals and the flying of confederate flags throughout the south and adorning the windows of pickup trucks and other vehicles are often contended to be statements of southern culture as they indeed are. The unspoken content of those statements is indeed racist. Some of us are old enough to remember the good old days yearned for with segregation throughout the south and plenty of it in your native Chicago as well. As I stated originally, governmental sponsorship of symbols of those days is objectionable. Private parties are free to be obnoxious as they wish. Governmental statements are another matter entirely.
Jack;
No one wandered into Bridgeport.
EMichael
does that apply after the officer resigns his commission? if so why did Lincoln not threaten Lee with treason when Lee turned down Lincolns offer of making him commander of Union armies? was any Confederate officer or soldier tried for treason? why did Grant send them home with their horses and sidearms?
whole list of questions you would have to answer to make a case for treason. whatever stupidity or malice (or honor or loyalty) motivated the Secession, they believed they were not committing treason but withdrawing from a union that threatened their way of life.
it’s why they call(ed) it the war of northern aggression. no doubt some of them would have tried Lincoln for war crimes if the South had won.
me, i’m only trying to stop the stupidity before it kills anyone else.
You and Jack can stand by whatever it is that motivates you. I hope you don’t mind what I think of it.
Umm, yes it does. Particularly when you take a commission in the army of another country that attacks the US.
BTW, not a racist?
Umm, did he own any white slaves? Not to mention the army he signed with was defending slavery.
well, let me know when you get any indictments.
Coberly,
You have consistently argued that removing the offensive commemorations of treasonous acts against the U.S. offends the present day southern whites who ‘s ancestors and heritage supported fought, and died for.
That the offense of removing these commemorations creates in the larger proportion of southern is detrimental to something.
The only thing you have stated it’s a detriment to are the feelings and beliefs of those southern whites who want to keep these memorials in the public sphere as legitimate public commemorations of the traitorous acts and their physical defense of a feudal slave system in which blacks were nothing more than a sub-human chattel in subjugation and service to the whites who owned and controlled them.
So let me surmise that your reasons for defending the southern white’s who want, prefer, insist these memorials to remain in the public sphere is to maintain cordial or seemingly cordial relations between the two sides of the issue. and the reason you want to maintain those relations is to prevent further animosities and the eventual fights and probably killings which will result if these cordial relations can’t be maintained.
I will remind only parenthetically that the KKK, Daughters of the Confederacy, and many other societal southern organizations that sprung from the loss of their beloved feudal economic slave system created the animosity against Blacks and any whites who actively supported the blacks in the South after the war.
What you are trying to do is what the congress and Presidents tried to do from the 1820’s to the 1860’s… find a compromise which would prevent wholesale insurrection and eventual break-up of the nation.
By this endeavor you place greater value on whites who are offended by removing their beloved traitors statues and memorials than on the southern and all other Blacks (and whites) who are deeply offended by their subjugation and continued subjugation at the hands of those very same southern whites who are offended by the statues being removed.
You are thus taking sides against blacks for racist reasons which makes you a racist.
There really isn’t a middle ground in fact … just as there was no middle ground in 1861… and no sustainable middle ground in 1850, or 1820 either. Just as there was no middle ground from 1865 to 1964/65 and no middle ground now. It is, pardon the pun, a black or white, heads or tails issue.
You want it both ways, which I clearly understand, but you’re dancing in la-la-land. Some day you might grow up and understand this.