Is anyone willing to humor me?

[vy65]

Who's right?

But there’s a world of difference between being merely politically incorrect and being racist. The greatest mistake made by hardcore racists and anti-racists alike is that both tend to believe that race must mean absolutely everything or it must mean absolutely nothing. Both positions are as extreme as they are absurd. Race unquestionably matters; it’s just not all that matters and rarely what matters most.

This is particularly worth noting when discussing the Civil War. My entire adult life I have defended the Old South and the Southern cause in America’s bloodiest war. Not because I support slavery or racism, but despite it. The positive parallels between what the Confederacy was fighting for in 1861 and what the American colonists fought for in 1776 are many and obvious—republican democracy, political and economic freedom, national independence, defense of one’s homeland. But these causes are never obvious to critics who can only see the other parallel—that both the Old South and the thirteen colonies were dependent upon, and protective of, the ins ution of slavery.

In the United States today, the very concepts of states’ rights, nullification, secession and other examples of Jeffersonian democracy are routinely dismissed as racist double speak, even in their modern forms. When a number of states declared in recent months that they might attempt to nullify Obamacare, critics immediately put more emphasis on the fact that there seemed to be a high degree of hostility toward America’s first black president. Of course, this was coupled with the establishment’s permanent narrative that allowing states to make their own decisions is what the Old South was all about, thus eternally making America two steps away from segregation if not slavery.

This is not an exaggeration. When Virginia’s Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli appeared onHardball with Chris Matthews in December to explain that state’s proposal to possibly repeal uncons utional federal laws (as Jefferson and James Madison once explicitly encouraged Virginia and Kentucky to do in 1798), the reliable establishment spokesman Matthews chortled: “You know who’s going to like this? The old Johnny Rebs are going to love it. This is antebellum.” Matthews’ contention that the “old Johnny Rebs” would love a return to states’ rights is no doubt correct, but the liberal host’s obvious purpose was to attach the very concept to the issues of race and slavery.

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/04...the-old-south/

Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery.

On Dec. 24, 1860, delegates at South Carolina’s secession convention adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” It noted “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the ins ution of slavery” and protested that Northern states had failed to “fulfill their cons utional obligations” by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage. Slavery, not states’ rights, birthed the Civil War.

South Carolina was further upset that New York no longer allowed “slavery transit.” In the past, if Charleston gentry wanted to spend August in the Hamptons, they could bring their cook along. No longer — and South Carolina’s delegates were outraged. In addition, they objected that New England states let black men vote and tolerated abolitionist societies. According to South Carolina, states should not have the right to let their citizens assemble and speak freely when what they said threatened slavery.

Other seceding states echoed South Carolina. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the ins ution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its own secession declaration, passed Jan. 9, 1861. “Its labor supplies the product which cons utes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of the earth. . . . A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

The South’s opposition to states’ rights is not surprising. Until the Civil War, Southern presidents and lawmakers had dominated the federal government. The people in power in Washington always oppose states’ rights. Doing so preserves their own

http://www.washingtonpost.com/outloo...6jD_story.html

[Marcus Bryant]

There were other issues, yet the slavery question was preeminent and naturally the modern American seeks simplification and is too busy to be bothered with the details.

[vy65]

I think I was too subtle: for those who claim to believe in states rights (and all appended notions of decentralization, local autonomy, or whatever other buzz word you would choose) -- can you separate the history of slavery from your political stance? And if so, how?

[Marcus Bryant]

Not subtle, just simple.

[LnGrrrR]

There were other issues, yet the slavery question was preeminent and naturally the modern American seeks simplification and is too busy to be bothered with the details.

This, though many of hte other issues were tied up in the political/economic ramifications of slavery.

[DarrinS]

As long as you support a half-black socialist Democrat POTUS, and you have sufficient melanin and brown eyes, then you are not racist. Conversely, you are racist.

[Spurminator]

I've said it before... DarrinS doth protest to much.