Manosphere drama is always a bit surreal. You may recall my post the other day about the feud developing between two sites that are regular sources of material for us here at Man Boobz: MGTOWforums and A Voice for Men. As you may recall, the folks at MGTOWforums were working themselves into a lather because AVFM was committing the cardinal sin of allowing women – sorry, “cunts” – to post articles and comments. The horror!
Now AVFM has fired back. In a thread on AVFM’s relatively new forum, head cheese Paul Elam lashes out at the “MGTOW Forum Fuckwits,” declaring them a bunch of shit-stirring “piss ants” and announcing his plans to turn the AVFM forum into MGTOW central.
I see an opportunity here, This forum is very user friendly to MGTOW’s. MGTOW Forums is the largest one of its kind, but it is run by children. I will happily siphon off as many of the men they ban and shame for not measuring up to their cliquish little band of alpha wannabe’s as I can.
God knows [MGTOWforums admin] Nacho and his bootlickers run them off as quick as they come in.
AVfM is already a more traveled site than their forum, and as time passes the MGTOW presence here will eclipse their little circle jerk.
Speaking of circle jerks, here’s Paul, in an unrelated thread on his forum, banning a dude for having the temerity to suggest that “Reddit, not avoiceformen.com, is the most important online resource for Men’s Rights Activism.”
BANNED! Nothing must challenge the supremacy of PAUL ELAM!
Naturally, I found out about this by reading about it on MGTOWforums, where A Voice for Men is now being dismissed as — I kid you not — “A Vagina For Manginas.”
Still, the strangest development in this civil war is this: some MGTOWers who’ve been banned from AVFM’s forum have set up an alternative forum of their own, which they’ve rather confusingly named “AVFMforums.” Yes, that’s right, it’s a battle between the AVFM forums and … AVFMforums. How can you tell them apart? Well, when the latter group uses the acronym AVFM they mean “Alternate Voice for Men” rather than the original “A Voice for Men.” Also, the dudes at AVFMforums think that AVFM’s Elam is “a lying hippocrite [sic] with no credibility.”
If this is all a bit confusing, perhaps this brief video clip will help elucidate some of the issues here:
Also, for no particular reason, here are two new pictures of Sweetie Pie Jonus, one of my kittens:
Actually, the combatants in this latest mansophere civil war could learn a thing or two from my kittens. They fight, but always seem to end up licking each other’s heads. The kittens, that is. I’d love to see Paul Elam and his critics doing the same.
Could it be……..misandry?
Could it be……..misandry?
Could it be……..misandry?
(I’m sorry. Steelebutt amuses me to no end.)
OMG, you can totally claim a word that has nothing to do with your movement in order to imply that it has a way broader reach than it actually does? This is a thing we’re doing.
OK. I rename feminism “humanity,” to reflect the goal that all humans will one day be feminists.
Tulgey, that My Dick Is A Block one is totally Steele.
AHA! So you admit that feminism should have been called humanism all along! This is a great day for men’s rights.
Meanwhile, in the future.
That’s no moon ….
…that’s MISANDRY!
Varpole: I don’t know why I keep posting here;
Because nowhere else does anyone pay attention to your incoherent ramblings, viz Anti-Manboobz.
Yet the chair issue is laughed at. Why is this?
Could it be…….. that calling is misandry is bullshit?
Who made the chairs?
Hard chair, hard chair, painful might,
In the classroom of the night
What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?
MISANDRY!
(with massive apology to Blake)
Does this count as misandry too?
Varpole: Elam informed me that Tom Martin was on the level – I was incorrect, in other words.
I see, you came to an opinion on Martin, based on what you saw him say… but Elam told you differently, and your opinion ceased to matter.
What a man of principle you are.
Well… That happened.
//i50.tinypic.com/5beiac.jpg
I am never, ever going to be able to read anything Steele writes again without picturing this.
Grr, broken link. Trying that again:
http://i50.tinypic.com/5beiac.jpg
“Yeah… the rights of people in those states to own slaves. They made a big deal of it in the months they spent campaigning for secession while Buchanan (the worst president in the history of the US) failed to do a damn thing to stop them.
And no, after the war there was no slavery allowed in the US. It was made part of the constitution, and everything.”
Between January 1, 1863 and December 18, 1865 it was still legal to own slaves. The popular tide had turned and yes, two of the three states had made it illegal in the meantime, but the idea that the war ended slavery is simply not true. What’s three years in the grand scheme of things? Not a whole lot. What was three years to the families held in captivity while everyone else around them were free because their side, which had gone so far as to allow blacks to serve in the military? A lot.
In 1902, a man by the name of Thaddeus Alonzo Benjamin Hunter died. In his will, he freed his slaves. The family had simply not told their slaves about the Civil War or the new laws. (http://www.landoverbaptist.org/thestaff/emeritus/hunter.html). He had broken the law, obviously, and what he was doing was very illegal, but it continued. In California, some slave owners didn’t give up their rights until 1872 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/2713792?seq=12). It’s also mentioned on the wikipedia article of the history of slavery in California, but it’s wikipedia. A baptist minister illegally owning slaves against the law is one thing, but Ulysses S. Grant didn’t free his slaves until the 13th Amendment passed in December 1865 and he absolutely, legally, had to. (http://www.rulen.com/myths/ and http://www.american-presidents.org/2007/02/grant-was-slave-owner.html) General Lee released his slaves in 1862. Delaware didn’t ratify the 13th amendment until they did it symbolically in 1901. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Delaware)
The emancipation proclamation was an incomplete document that did not end slavery. The last shots fired at Gettysburg did not end slavery. Slavery continued for two years after the war was over. The war was fought over the economic imbalance a slaver economy creates over a non-slave economy. While most of the people did eventually come around to the idea that owning people was wrong, it was not being able to leave the union once the disagreement over slavery had come to a head that caused the war.
I don’t want to muddy the water. It was a dark, horrible time and the casual racism of the era should turn anyone’s stomach. I recently watched a TED talk that said that the cost of slaves today ranges between approximately $4000 dollars in North America to $150 in Thailand and India. The cost of “freeing” someone (approximately $150 USD) isn’t the cost of purchasing them, but the cost of educating them to be able to support themselves in a trade. So much of today’s suffering wouldn’t be here today if people had wanted to actually end the environment that allowed one person to subjugated another.
Angela: And no, after the war there was no slavery allowed in the US. It was made part of the constitution, and everything.”
Show me where this is false.
Yes, it was not the split second Lee surrendered the Army of Virginia at Appomatox, then again the war didn’t end at that point either, so…
In 1902, a man by the name of Thaddeus Alonzo Benjamin Hunter died. In his will, he freed his slaves. The family had simply not told their slaves about the Civil War or the new laws.
Yep… didn’t tell them about the new laws, i.e. he was in violation of the law; because slavery was illegal. Your quotation and citation say that very thing.
In California, some slave owners didn’t give up their rights until 1872
No, in Calif. some slave owners didn’t start obeying the law. I have no “right” to keep slaves. In fact the US Constitution explicitly says I have no such right, just as the gov’t has no right to quarter troops without consent, nor to compell me to testify against myself.
You are using the word right as if it means, “something someone chooses to do”.
The emancipation proclamation was an incomplete document that did not end slavery. The last shots fired at Gettysburg did not end slavery. Slavery continued for two years after the war was over
Who here said the Emanicpation Proclomation ended slavery? Show your work.
Who said the Battle of Gettysburg ended slavery? Who said the moment the war ended so did slavery?
When do you think the war ended?
The general consensus for, “the end” is June 2nd 1865, when General Edmund Smith surrendered the Confederate Army of the West.
So 6th months after the war was over, a constitutional amendment was passed. That’s hella fast. It might even imply the cause for the amendment was something the nation thought worth, oh; I don’t know, fighting a war over.
But I never said the North went to war to free the slaves. Lincoln very plainly said that, if he could keep the Union together by keeping slavery legal, he would. What I said was the war was fought because of slavery, since the South thought it was that important.
This is the speech of the Vice-President of the Confederacy, speaking BEFORE THE WAR on 21 March 1861.
But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other-though last, not least: the new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.”
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is, forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics: their conclusions are right if their premises are. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man…. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the Northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery; that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle-a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of man. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds we should succeed, and that he and his associates in their crusade against our institutions would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as well as in physics and mechanics, I admitted, but told him it was he and those acting with him who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
In the conflict thus far, success has been on our side, complete throughout the length and breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.
As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are, and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo-it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not therefore look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first Government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved, were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, [note: A reference to Genesis, 9:20-27, which was used as a justification for slavery] is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite-then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them. For His own purposes He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another in glory.”
The great objects of humanity are best attained, when conformed to his laws and degrees [sic], in the formation of Governments as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders “is become the chief stone of the corner” in our new edifice.
In their own words, slavery was the cornerstone, and they were, “fighting a war on principle” to maintain it. That’s what they said. There was a long campaign to cause the secession; because they are gonna take away our slaves!!!!!!.
I don’t want to muddy the water.
Then stop spouting nonsense.
I’ve showed my work. And you’re being deliberately insulting. You seem to think this is something I’ve come up, by myself, at the spur of the moment. I’ve shown all my documentation. Calling it nonsense (and your rant about nobody believing it) is untrue. What I’ve shown through all the links I’ve provided is that slavery was the hot-button problem that caused the splits between the states and the federal government. It could have been any issue that would have split the states in half. Yes, it was illegal, but those who continued owning slaves continued to do so. I can’t find the link now, but one of the people who owned slaves in California was a senator until 1870. He died, freeing his slaves in his will, but no one was going to tell a senator that maybe he shouldn’t be owning slaves.
You can look for the four or five comments that either insist that the emancipation proclamation freed all the slaves or that the war ended slavery. Neither statements are true. I’ve had to read up on a horrible, horrible subject for the past couple days and I’m so sick of it.
The one point you seem to have completely avoided though is why wasn’t anything done to give the freed people any ability to help themselves. What a noble sacrifice, sending a quarter of a million people off to die just to free the slaves, and yet pass laws that immediately back into a quasi-legal slavery. Men and women could still be legally beaten for not doing their work just like before. (see the Black Codes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States) ) Passed in 1866, they reaffirm that just because people are no longer slaves, they’re not like, equal, or anything. They could be murdered for practically anything, and the chances of their murderers actually being convicted and sent to jail wouldn’t happen until the 20th Century. I’ve posted that link already. The Black Codes led to the Jim Crowe laws.
I get that slavery is the ultimate evil, and better to be free than a slave, but the racism of the day was still hell.
I’m getting the feeling that you haven’t read any of the links I’ve put up, but if you’re going to read a single post, read this one: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/26/1068168/-The-lie-about-when-slavery-ended
And then watch http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/watch/
I respect the opinion you hold. You obviously don’t respect mine, but please try. Whether you like it or not, it is a common opinion. I said nothing that was off the cuff. Good luck to you, I’m done here.
You don’t respect my opinion, and you don’t respect the facts. I am not going to try to respect yours because, in a word, they are wrong.
We didn’t ignore the aftermath of the war.
1: You said the war wasn’t about slavery.
1a: You were wrong. The war happened because the South fought to keep their slaves.
2: You said slavery was legal after the war.
2a: You said it in a dishonest way, which ignored the facts (a constitutional amendment at the end of 1865), and then obfuscated with people who violated the laws; as if that somehow invalidated them.
3: You moved goalposts and pretended that changed 1, and 2.
4: I believe you when you say nothing was off the cuff. I believe you when you say you continue to believe untrue things.
5: Yes, I was insulting. I did it intentionally, because you were insulting the people here.. You insulted our intelligence from the get go. It’s not going to go down well, there is not enough sugar in the world to make that spoonful of medicine go down.
Ciao.
You obviously didn’t watch the video. Let me repost it in youtube, just in case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEM6Mvg9YmU
1. The war happened because there was a disagreement between the south and the federal government. The South said they didn’t like what the federal government was heading, but instead of being allowed to quit the union and go their separate way, they went to war. Any hot button item that had split the country in such an obvious geographic way would have done the exact same thing.
2. It’s too bad you didn’t watch that last video. It was heart-wrenching. But according to it, though it was UNCONSTITUTIONAL to own slaves, it wasn’t actually ILLEGAL, as no actual laws had been passed to make it illegal to actually do it. Not until WWII when the propaganda writers asked their bosses if there was anything they should be aware of to head up what the Japanese would say about them, someone pointed out that they weren’t exactly great in regards to the “treatment of the negro”. When they looked into it, they tried a test case in 1941 about a father and daughter who had kept and owned a black man for 15 years. People had been writing in for decades saying they knew where their relation was, but that the authorities couldn’t exactly do anything BECAUSE SLAVERY WASN’T TECHNICALLY ILLEGAL. It wasn’t until 1941 THAT IT WAS ACTUALLY ILLEGAL TO OWN SLAVES. Thousands of black men were arrested on trumped up charges of vagrancy and sold to commercial interests to pay for their finds (which happened to be between 40-50,000 dollars, the exact same price it would have cost to own a slave in the antebellum south. Black people in the south prayed that their friends in the north who had gone to war to stop slavery would come back if they only knew how badly they were being treated, but no one cared.
3. Nope. States rights, and the economic/political imbalance of owning slaves. Representation by population doesn’t work as a government if slaves counted as population.
4. Nothing I’ve said is untrue. Up to and including that you haven’t read any of the posts I made. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEM6Mvg9YmU What I can’t do is make anything I’ve pointed out be more palatable. It’s sick and disgusting, but true.
5. Believe all you want that people actually gave went to war over the ideals behind freedom for all. It’s a wonderful fairy tale, but as soon as the civil war ended, people continued to own slaves, both through the chain gang or just flat out taking people for use. You’d think passing a law actually criminalizing would have been the first thing that would have been done after the war fought for SLAVERY would have been done, but for eighty-five years states left it non-constitutional but not actually illegal.
To restate your argument: SLAVERY! You’re stupid! No one believes you even though it’s actually a fairly well accepted theory, la-la-la!
And my counter to your argument : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEM6Mvg9YmU
It’s an hour and twenty four minutes out of your life, but it would stop your believe that slavery somehow stopped in the US as of 1865 rather than has always been here, in one form or another. I’ve tried to be as polite as I can, but you can’t obvious be polite to a bully and expect like kind.
The irony is, I wish you were right. I wish people in the mountainous regions who had never actually seen a slave had been so moved by the plight of people forced to live and work for someone else and had been driven to fight and die to fix the solution. Maybe if people had actually cared about the plight of people and less on how representation by population is affected by slaves counted as actual people with regards to number of seats in parliament and the rights of a state to secede from a union. Maybe, if you were right, people would have cared a rat’s ass when it came to people and businesses who didn’t care if the black man was innocent or guilty of his trumped up charges because whether he had to pay the fines or just the court costs of the charges, he was in debt so far he had to go work for the next white man who paid his fees for him. Even after he paid off his fines he was still kept in his work detail. His family knew where he was, they knew how badly he was beaten and starved, and worse, they knew that no matter how many letters they wrote or officials they involved, they lived in terror that it could happen to them because it wasn’t illegal to own a slave.
Prove it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEM6Mvg9YmU
Angela: Any hot button item that had split the country in such an obvious geographic way would have done the exact same thing.
Could, but the one that did was slavery.
And it wasn’t state’s rights, if it were state’s rights than the South wouldn’t have been all about the Fugitive slave act, which was fundamentally an intrusion on the rights of other states; if a horse broke free, and wandered away in Virginia, no one in New Jersey was required to hunt it down and return it.
2. It’s too bad you didn’t watch that last video. It was heart-wrenching. But according to it, though it was UNCONSTITUTIONAL to own slaves, it wasn’t actually ILLEGAL
The fuck? Are you saying it’s not illegal to grant a title of nobility in the US, merely unconsitutional? Arguing that the “chain-gang” was actually slavery is bullshit. Yes, it was an exploitation of blacks. Yes it was tantamount to slavery, but it was done precisely because slavery was illegal. If slavery weren’t illegal (merely contrary to the Constitution, whatever the fuck that nonsense is supposed to mean) then there wouldn’t have been the need to manaufacture a charade of blacks breaking the law before putting them to forced labor.
Your argument disproves your case.
To restate your argument: SLAVERY! You’re stupid! No one believes you even though it’s actually a fairly well accepted theory, la-la-la!
There are a lot of people who say the same thing about Global Warming… lot’s of, “dispute”, even though the expert consensus is overwhelming, that man made climate change is happening.
The same is true about evolution, with people “teaching the controversy”, even though the only controversy is being caused by those teaching it, because they have an agenda.
You seem to be confusing one thing; the horrors of present day slavery, with some oddball theory the US didn’t 1: fight a war about maintaining/ending slavery, and 2: that people breaking a law = that law not existing.
You also seem to think that if you just keep repeating an argument I rejected I will somehow see, “The Truth” in the same way the militantly religious think merely reading their sacred text will make the scale fall from the eyes of the non-believer.
I’ve read I don’t know how many works on the subject. I’ve quoted the people who were arguing that war was needed, to protect the right to own slaves. We’ve made reference to the issues; which for 40 years were making it plain that, as Lincoln said, the nation couldn’t endure, “half-slave and half-free”, and you keep repeating the apologists explanation.
One of the interview questions for prospective history teachers at the University of Texas is about how to deal with a student who comes up and asks about this very topic. The primary curricular goal of the History Dept. is making sure the students leave the course with a decent understanding of the actual causes of the war, because the arrant nonsense you keep repeating is both false and pernicious.
Read “Debt, A history”. It goes into how the Triangle Trade worked. It also explains how the modern versions of slavery function.
Read 1861. Read the primary sources (there are on the web, I linked/quoted some).
Don’t think, because I am saying you are wrong about this (you are) that I am denying there is modern slavery. There is. I’ve seen it (that’s one of the things an active career in the Army will do for you, broaden your experience). I’ve seen it in Ukraine. I’ve seen it in the US. It’s not formal, and it’s illegal, but it’s not something the person being enslaved is really in a position to fix, is it? And it’s not something most people want to admit is happening on their very doorstep.
But it’s modern existence 1: doesn’t change history, and 2: isn’t (in the West) a formal arrangement, with “Slave” a recognised legal status.
You keep confusing several things, and then try to impute a conflation of them on me, so I will lay out the facts, in bullet point again.
1: The South seceeded because they saw the writing on the wall; they were wrong that Lincoln would have moved to directly end slavery, but slavery was doomed.
2: The South went to war as a result of that; they did both because they wanted to keep slaves.
3: The Union went to war to preserve the Union,
4: By the time the war was half-done the cause was also ending slavery. The South, by making it their, “bloody shirt” had made it so (see, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Read the last verse in particular. Ponder that it was sung in Union Campgrounds”).
As to this “The irony is, I wish you were right. I wish people in the mountainous regions who had never actually seen a slave had been so moved by the plight of people forced to live and work for someone else and had been driven to fight and die to fix the solution. ,” I’m going to be very blunt.
You don’t have a clue what you are saying. I am so glad that wasn’t the case. I’ve been a soldier. I’ve been a soldier in combat. The last thing you ever want to see is someone who went to war for that sort of cause. Be very glad the Union troops were in it for something prosaic. Moral Crusades, where someone joins to do that sort of thing lead to the most heinous of things, and the most crushing of victories.
I weep at the failures of reconstruction. I curse that business interests made it impossible to keep the reforms of the immediate years after the war. I am sad to the point of embarrasment for the evils of Jim Crow, and the horrors of lynching.
But none of that changes that I am glad a Holy Crusade was not the driving force of the war, because a Spartacus based line of Crosses from Austin to Washington is the sort of thing that leads to, and I don’t want to think of that (and there were hotheads who said just that, kill everyone who ever owned a slave, and their families too).
But go ahead, stew in your ignorances; go and feel superior, because you think the War wasn’t about Slavery and the end was a sham. Confuse an evil penal system with legal slavery, and be certain that you know the truth; it was about an asbtruse idea; States’ Rights” and slavery wasn’t ended.
I wish I could merely mock you, tell you to enjoy your delusions, and cuddle them to your breast, where the heat of your self-righteos indignation can keep it warm and healthy.
But you aren’t harming just yourself. You are fanning the flames of the idiots, and maniacs, who keep that raging cesspit stoked. The people who say it was, “The War of Northern Aggression”, where the “peaceful South” was trying to mind it’s own business, and the North just wouldn’t let them, they depend on people to buy into the idea (for whatever reason). It gives them cover; and lets them absolve themselves; and say things about how Slavery was good for blacks (got them “civilised” and all), and how it wasn’t really the white man’s fault (because it was other blacks in Africa who sold them).
I am going to put in a small bit of expansion, from Federalist 78
There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.
In short, the Constitution is law. It’s impossible for something to be legal, if unconstitutional.
I was going to wade into this mess when I saw that Angela had cited Landover Baptist Church. Lemme just go peruse The Onion for some counterarguments, and I’ll get back to y’all…
Yes. I’m sure that was very comforting to all the people who wrote in to the government who asked for help getting the loved ones out of the slavery that existed until 1941 that what the people that were doing to their loved ones was unconstitutional. I’m sure that meant a great deal.
Too bad there weren’t any actual laws that the people held in bondage and dying in mines and in dangerous mills that you can’t actually arrest someone for breaking the constitution. Sure, at any point in those 80 years or so the states could have actually passed the laws to make what the convict gangs were doing actually *be* illegal and get mostly black people out of the bondage they were in. Unless you think vagrancy is such a crime it really does deserve over tens of thousands of dollars in fines. A third of the men sent down to one of the coal mines died. Many people died working out in the fields before their “sentence” (which was a meaningless thing, they worked until they were broken or dead) was up. People could be arrested for not asking permission for their cruel employer if they could go look for work down the road for someone who wouldn’t beat and starve them. Except, that was against the law and they’d usually end up back at the same farm that had starved them to begin with, only now instead of receiving an itty-bitty wage, they received no wages at all.
Call me stupid (I know, you already have, just, call me it again for the cadence) I really think that sounds like slavery. Every black person in the south knew that for any reason, they could be picked up by the cops, and their “fines” would be “paid for” by white people and suddenly they’d have to work for the rest of the lives for no pay for someone else. When they wrote to the government for help, they got no help at all, because slavery, which was this thing they were suffering from, wasn’t actually against any law in the books you could actually arrest someone for.
Something can be unconstitutional without actually being illegal, and without it being actually illegal you can’t really arrest someone for that thing. It was called slavery. It created a state where lots of bad people could continue on doing a lot of bad things while sheriff departments raked in a massive amount of money selling black people (and some white, but mostly they were black) back into slavery rather than actually arresting the people who had paid them off to continue to own slaves.
Yes, you’re right. It was a bad website that listed slave owners in modern day. Here’s a much better example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ROwKq3kxPEA that outlines all of that and, as a bonus, is narrated by Lawrence Fishborne.
So that war that was fought by the 90% of the south that didn’t own slaves and the 90% of the north that didn’t actually care about slaves didn’t actually end slavery. The men in the north that fought for slaves didn’t actually free their slaves until after they absolutely had to (despite it being so wrong that that was the reason they were sending their children to die) The three states that owned slaves actually fought for the federal government that was fighting “for slavery” didn’t have to give up their slaves when slavery was “proclaimed” over, and one of them (Delaware) didn’t ratify the 13th Amendment until 1901.
After the war, for a couple years it was good, but then more and more laws passed in the south making it more and more possible for people and businesses to go back to the way things were because there weren’t any laws in the book to stop them. Any value the worker had at his high cost of purchase was now gone and anyone could and did own a black person’s labour for as long and as much as they wanted, well after the forty-fifty-thousand dollars that wasn’t actually paid out was paid back.
From housekeepers to highly industrial mining, people worked for their employer for life sometimes because without permission from their employer, they couldn’t look for work elsewhere. To do so risked arrest and work-gangs. People were beaten, raped, starved and died after 1865 and the federal government didn’t lift a finger to help them until doing so would make them look bad to a country they were getting ready to fight, almost a century later.
Those are facts. They’re not opinion. You can love them or hate them, but you can’t deny their existence. You can look at all of them and still think that people dug deep down in their hearts and still thought slavery was so bad the whole country stopped and tried to root it out, but by god, how did they fuck that up. It’s true the very first step is freeing slaves. The very next step is to make owning a person illegal and then set up education to give them a hand up, and people just stopped at step one and leaving well enough alone for over 80 years.
There were court cases periodically regarding involuntary servitude.
Baily v Alabama was one of those cases in 1911.
Simply because something was not specifically codified in the US Code does not mean it was not illegal. The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land-which means if you do something that is considered unconstitutional it is illegal.
The South were treating blacks illegally from 1866 to the major civil rights legislation and court cases of the 1950s and 60s. The federal government never bothered to do much if anything about it until they had no choice (Congress did pass a Civil Rights bill in 1866 under the 13th). That is not the same as something being legal.
If you were arguing that lack of enforcement meant that something was in practice legal, you would have a point that is valid. But that is not what you are blathering on about.
Angela, you ignorant fool. No, it didn’t help that it was illegal. Being illegal was no comfort. My stepfather’s relatives, the ones who ended up on chain-gangs weren’t any less oppressed.
But that’s not what you said. You said it wasn’t illegal.
You are saying the war wasn’t about slavery.
You are wrong.
Full Stop.
You want to move the goalposts, fine. Dance to your ignorant delight. Amuse yourself. Cite Landover Baptist ’til you are blue in the face.
You will still be wrong.
The War WAS about slavery.
Slavery was made illegal.
That’s what you said wasn’t true.
You are wrong.
You said something being unconstitutional didn’t make it illegal.
I’ll be sure to tell the President he can quarter troops in my house (because there isn’t a law specifically against it).
You are wrong. You are doubling down on wrong. That makes you twice as wrong.
That you didn’t stick your flounce just makes you twice as foolish.
I get that you are upset that there is widespread social injustice. I agree with you that it’s wrong. I work to end it.
But lying about the nature of it. Lying about the history of it doesn’t help.
It makes it worse, because people (rightly) dismiss you as a crank.
If you go back and look, you will see that I (remember, the dude you are calling an ignorant fool, because I haven’t been convinced by the clip you linked to), made a direct reference to Prison Labor as a form of involuntary servitude, and by implication a moral wrong to be worked against.
I also pointed to the primary sources which said the South was fighting to preserve slavery. I said the North was willing to permit it to keep the Union.
You, in your dudgeon, speaking from your high horse, told me I was full of shit because the end of the war didn’t lead to rainbows and unicorns. You got upset when the facts were presented. You got offensive, and then took more offense when your attitude was returned. You flounced. You came back.
And at no time is there any evidence you actually read anything which was said to you (see above, re insulting our intelligence). This is not a board of people with no education, nor experience (again, see above, where I said I had seen de facto slave, in more than one country TO INCLUDE THE USA.
That’s why I’m not treating you gently (though I’ve not yet moved to treating you harshly).
I flounced because I’d just finished watching the video and it made me so sick I didn’t want to think about slavery ever again. When I couldn’t find a single person who’d actually been arrest for owning slaves after the war I thought maybe you had a point. The fact that thousands of people were reenslaved after the war. I had no idea it was so wide spread and so institutionalized. People knew where the slaves were kept, how badly they were treated, how many people died. I didn’t know no laws had actually been passed banning the process until after I started to do the research.
There were so many points in those eighty years that they knew the loophole existed, and yet no state actually went so far as to pass laws to make it illegal. Even just watch the first thirty minutes of the video. Within about twenty years, men were being arrested 15-20 at a time for vagrancy, then some business owner would come along, having been in need of 15-20 workers. Their family members went to every authority figure they could, and no one could help them. It wasn’t illegal and no one was interested in actually make illegal. Which was my very first point. The civil war wasn’t fought for slavery, and the civil war didn’t end slavery. The more I learned about just how much the war wasn’t fought for slavery and just how much slavery was still in place after the war changed with my new found, sickening knowledge.
It so goes beyond agreeing to disagree. Watch the video. Listen to the family of a woman who wrote her letter to the president, after trying all the other channels, that her 14 year old brother had been stolen a year ago. She knew where he was and that he was starving to death, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do because his “owner” hadn’t actually broken the law. And they could have used the case as a test case to set the law so that no one else could be abused in such a way, but no one did.
I’m not flouncing, and I shouldn’t have. You seem to think I’m spreading hate somehow, but the truth doesn’t include love or hate, it simply is. You may not like it, but nothing you say or do will change this opinion. It exists, it’s a real thing. You can’t “win” the argument against it because, as I said, it’s an actual, real thing that exists.