Your video, CGP Grey: NOT the Confederate Flag, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I sincerely apologize for my ignorance, and thank you for setting the record straight. (really)

My incorrect understanding of that (education about the war in Germany) came from about 40% being presented with bad information (or interpreting information incorrectly), and 60% drawing the wrong conclusions based on the censorship of Nazi imagery there.

Before commenting, I did quick web research to support the information I had heard about the censorship side of things there. When that basically confirmed what I thought, I neglected to do the same due diligence with regards to how the war is taught in schools.

...Pretty shitty on my part, especially considering that my opener in my previous comment was that it would be "interesting" to compare how education handles history in both countries, and then apparently I wasn't actually interested enough to actually fact-check.

So again, I apologize.

With regards to the issues in the Daily Show video, ie. the Confederate flag, I think it is probably reasonable to say that in my opinion it would be a good idea to remove the flag from use for Government / State purposes. The way Germany handles Nazi imagery goes beyond that. I'm not sure that I would agree with that extent of what amounts to censorship in handling it, but that is just my opinion.

So I guess in summary, it really *is* interesting to consider both countries approaches to handling uncomfortable bits of our past. I just should have actually done it properly when I said it the first time.

Might be interesting to compare and contrast how we in the US have handled our laundry list of "bad things we've done in the past" compared to, say, Germany.

I know that the Nazi flag and other imagery are outright banned / censored in Germany. From what I understand, WW2 history taught in schools in Germany is handled very carefully, if not largely glossed over.

In the US, the only bit of history that gets treatment similar to that (in my experience/opinion) is the Vietnam war. I know my High School history classes definitely glossed over it and didn't want to get into any details about why, how, or whether or not we should have been in the war at all.

Compare that to WW2, which was covered in pretty great detail. Very much including actively encouraging students to consider their own thoughts on controversial things like dropping not just one but two atomic bombs on Japan.

The Civil War is also covered much more openly and honestly. I don't think I can recall anyone ever seriously suggesting that the single, most important root cause of the Civil War wasn't slavery. Other umbrella labels like "states rights" might be referred to as the impetus, but yes, any and all of those things really boil down to slavery.



One thing that scares me about the German approach (sweep under the rug and don't talk about it) is that it sort of all too conveniently ignores the reality that these terrible things were done by people who were (disturbingly) not very different from us. OK, Hitler himself might have been a 1 in a million or 1 in a billion combination of evil, crazy, and powerful. But Joe Average from today ... not so different from Hans Average from 1930s Germany.

Celebrating one's heritage and past is OK, sometimes even good. Especially when one can honestly own and try to understand the bad along with the good. I think it is OK to appreciate the Confederate flag, along with historical figures like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It is possible to accept that their core motivations were done in support of a very bad and evil institution (slavery), but to still respect or even admire their accomplishments as human beings. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves too, but we are willing to look beyond that when considering his legacy.

Maybe the Confederate flag is tied too closely to the institution of slavery for it ever to be uncoupled from that. Maybe a government that prides itself on being democratic should consider that that connection creates a conflict with many of its constituents. But I hope we never sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened.

Ta-Nehisi Coates had a good piece about the flag the other day:

The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it

I have noticed it, but most of the time it is tied to economics. IE taxes, jobs, fees, etc they feel they are being burdened with. The racial component is there, but it is just a part of overall disdain for the poor. They don't like paying taxes, perceive that 'others' are not paying their fair share and tie it to a racial comment. Yet, most of the people I hear complaining live an outstanding lifestyle with an abundance of free time and money.

That said - the speaker in this video confuses me. While his explanation of 'White Fragility' makes sense he doesn't tie it to Treyvon, Ferguson, Charleston, in a very convincing way.

What I keep seeing in the media and online is a constant battle about details and phrases. 'Thug', 'Terrorist', 'Racist', and confederate flags. They want to talk ad nauseam about these things instead of the overarching long term effects of economic disenfranchisement, gun control, and a broken criminal justice system that is difficult for both the police and the general public (e.g. drug prohibition and criminalization).

Online I see people figuratively shouting at each other and "picking sides". Some people have nothing but disdain for the police and some have nothing but disdain for minorities and poor people.

Instead we need to have disdain for bad ideas, policies, and actions.

President Obama's speech was very insightful. He recognizes the multiple obstacles to reducing violence and the limited political will to really effect change.

I found this article interesting:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071634/

I'm actually very liberal. So much so that I consider Democrats too conservative.

When the right wingers talk about 'the civil war not being about slavery', that's part of the rhetoric that 'the south was not racist'.

I'm not making that statement.





I am saying that :

- Both the south /and/ the north were racist.

- Neither cared about the fate of black people.

- The war started over secession (to which slavery was only a contributing factor, among many much more important [to the people in authority] factors).

- After the war was on, the north used the subject of slavery to their benefit.
A) Freeing slaves in only the rebelling states, in order to incite slave revolts and use that to military advantage. (if the northern authority wins, then the emancipation becomes southern law. If the confederate authority wins, then the emancipation is meaningless. So confederate slaves were given a personal incentive to help the northern authority win)
B) Paint the south internationally as 1 dimensional caricatures of evil (war propaganda), to cut off the south's supply of foreign made arms (because they didn't make their own).

- After the war was over, most of the slave owning states had been emancipated, and the north had claimed to be champions of liberty, so in order to save face they had to emancipate slaves in the remainder of the south (plus it was no skin off of their back, so it was easy to do).

(The southern states that had been allowed to keep their slaves could not then protest their emancipation, for they were few and weak - and would get no help from the other southern states that they themselves hadn't helped during the civil war (resentment/reciprocity)).

- When writing schoolbooks at that time, the rhetoric/propaganda was repeated, and generations of people grew up repeating it, perpetuating it for future generations (like religion).

-scheherazade

Which is why no one should be bringing evidence from their high school textbook to this debate. However, there are thousands of serious academics who have studied the war in detail, and are quite intelligent enough to tell government propaganda from reliable sources.

The irony of course is that many "I don't trust the government" takes on the civil war, instead put their trust in the public statements of the Confederate government. In reality, the confederates had as much incentive as any other government to lie about their motives. Moreso in fact, since they saw European recognition as central to their survival, and the English disgust with slavery was the primary obstacle to that.

More accurately, somewhere between and including those two endpoints, lies the truth.

There are several Confederate States whose Declarations of Succession and/or Constitutions explicitly state that they were primarily in response to the need to enshrine slavery as an economic way of life. I think it's pretty clear that "the middle" implies a false equivalency between the claims.

Let me quote the Vice President of the Confederate States, March 21st, 1861:

"The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."

(...)

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone 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 normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

That's white supremacy. That's white supremacy and then some.

Idiot. Should have painted a Confederate Flag on the roof. Improves the ballistic properties.

He totally screwed up the part were River gained or had her "powers" naturally (she was only naturally/gifted mentally, that is, she was a genius or prodigy). That came from the experimenting FROM the Alliance... Same with her fighting abilities, that was also an Alliance "gift" (to use her as a "psychic weapon"). But I think Joss already made the point IN the show that Mal was indeed a very shady person, if you didn't get that you are an idiot!

You were supposed to know that the Alliance brought a lot of great things with them, but they also stole your freedom...essentially (in exchange for a world with lots of rules).

But, what the Alliance was up to "behind the scenes" is what was really everyone's main concern--which they covered in Serenity a bit... In Serenity we found out that they had been up to a LOT more terrible things than just taking individuals like River--they were in the business of thinking they knew how to make all people "better" people...and one day they would try to institute it in force, en masse...

It seemed like the show was more a story about the civil war had the wrong side won--to some degree; I think you could make an argument for both. But it was obvious from watching that "Mal's side" was the "Confederacy", but they didn't stand for the same things, it was just that the history of things were playing out the same in many ways...and that was the point.

If The Union had been lying about a huge amount of things and started to institute policies that you went into action then they'd seem so very much like the Alliance in the show (BUT, some actions are exactly like what The Union did to Confederate "states" after the war; which DID leave them in states of welfare were citizens were left to fend for the most basic of necessities on their own--the Wild Wild West didn't just appear from comic books... Even the citizens had to fight off Indian attacks here and there and most of these attacks were born from the legacy of military campaigns and other actions via The Union (or before the States went to war--but, it's easy to see what the "Reavers" were based on, at least I assume that is what he had in mind).

Ironically, right now in our government it's doing the things that Mal was so concerned over that many that HAD lived in the Alliance regions hadn't been as worried about: slowly eroding our civil liberties, our regular freedoms are being taken away or one-by-one being hamstrung, and regulation is being destroyed allowing the corrupt to make this circle all that much worse (of course one day this cycle will just feedback on itself and create a revolution--as it always has). That is what The Alliance was doing, especially to the planets that didn't join immediately...so it does have a lot in common with our history. As The Union did do some pretty annoying and considering all of the people that needed help and were not getting anything, they actually directly killed a large amount of completely innocent people...just to punish some wealthy land owners and other people that had something to do with the Civil War. They should have taken the matter directly into their hands, but there is a lot on that as well (just like the show...why the Alliance never intervenes in the outer planets...).

God how I miss that show. I can only imagine what Joss could have accomplished in 7 or 8 seasons (maybe more). He could have made a show that could easily be written about in a college setting, about the civil war and the topics related to it. How grand the adventure could have been, except for one dickhead producer at Fox...

(*I take no responsibility for the parts of my comment I messed up on...* )


*nerd rant*

Same thing to me.
Constitution based republic...according to Bob's definition that's a bit redundant.
Strong democratic tradition/tendencies = representative democracy (in my eyes). Not a true democracy, because the founding fathers did not trust the masses to get it right every time because masses are reactionary, but did trust those educated gentlemen they elected to do the right thing (a mistake, but understandable considering the morals of the time).
I did ignore the 'federal' part, but I thought it didn't need saying, since we were only talking about the federal government. Of course, our government is a confederation/federation of the states. An important part of that is the agreement by all that that rules of the federation always override the rules of the constituent parts.

Sure thing...I learned some new things from that book. For instance, Franklin was often carried in by prisoners (on a kind of early work release program) in a 'sedan chair'. Not the picture I have in my mind of him.

I honestly don't know what you're referring to with regards to 'derision,' but i don't really care. Probably best for us to drop it since it now appears that you're turning to some rather irrelevant issues. The original point about the "border states" was not how to label or refer to them, but to show that Lincoln did not 'emancipate' or invade them, thereby showing his motivations had nothing to do with freeing the slaves.

I don't know who specifically 'shot first' but this is what happened:

"Ft. Sumter was located in the middle of the harbor of Charleston, SC where the U.S. forts garrison had withdrawn to avoid incidents with local militias in the streets of the city. Unlike Buchanan who allowed commanders to relinquish possession to avoid bloodshed, Lincoln required Maj. Anderson to hold on until fired upon. Jefferson Davis ordered the surrender of the fort. Anderson gave a conditional reply which the Confederate government rejected, and Davis ordered P. G. T. Beauregard to attack the fort before a relief expedition could arrive."

The Confederacy ordered an attack on a fort in what it saw as its territory and therefore under Union occupation. The Union saw it as their fort.
Again, a survey of the opinion of people you know about who 'started it' does not the same thing as that "most reasonable people" would see it like you do.

More irrelevant splitting of hairs: in the United Sates of 2014 practically no one openly advocates institutionalized slavery or openly argue their "right" to own slaves. So for practical purposes, (almost) everyone is openly against slavery.
That, in any case, is totally irrelevant to the Jon Stewart video and so your comments are far from relevant.

"I'm not going to comment on Jon Stewarts motives or morality, they are not germane to the subject I'm discussing."
It's all well and good that you're not going to comment on Stewart's motives or morality, but most of what you constitute your "arguments" are not germane to what I'm discussing here, or to any of my original points prior to your digressions and tangential discussions about which I frankly have little interest. No offense.

My argument about what? I thought we finished all the arguments when you started the derision, with you conceding the points by default.
That's why I asked what ELSE you need to know, for my arguments, re-read. They're there.

edit: to clarify (and not force re-reading of a wall of text) my arguments were
1. That border states are not considered confederate or union when discussing allegiance during the civil war, because they all supported BOTH sides.
2. that the first shots fired in the civil war were fired by the confederates, making them the one's that 'started the war' in my, and many others opinions.
3. that the blanket statement "everyone is against slavery in 2014" was incorrect, and remains so, no matter how you wish to modify it. Blanket statements are almost always incorrect on some level.

No, it is a statement of fact, or statement of an opinion based on asking many reasonable, educated people what they think. edit: and based on some internet investigating to see what the consensus seems to be. I'm glad you could at least see what it is not, now perhaps try to see things for what they are.
To me, when a debate moves from discussion of the ideas on to only simple derision, it's concession by the one doing the derision that he/she is out of ideas and has no legitimate response to offer. That's a loss of the debate. I'm not sure how your debate teacher taught you, that's how mine taught me.
It's not important for me for you to loose, or me to win, but that is how I see it when discussion stops and derision starts, as a loss. It is important to me that people understand that.
Coming to agreement, or at least true understanding is a win, for both sides.

EDIT: when one group declares itself sovereign and fires on another sovereign group, they have declared war. That is what the confederates did at Ft Sumter.