Actually RP used that phrase in an interview, I think about some over-zealous supporters he was like "that's not how we win friends and influence people"

is that a racist catch phrase or somethin.???!?

Are you slurring your words already? Dude it's Monday.


...

FDR wasn't a party to that treaty AFAIK, but I don't even remember what I got on my AP US history exam. I didn't take any history classes in college, neither.

The point is that you've obviously developed this "no war, even when the other side starts it, you should try to change social norms and avoid at all costs provoking conflict" principle of morality like right now to retroactively make the Confederacy the good guys for God only knows what reason*.

I'm interested in how you'd apply that to other wars. Do you believe we should've stayed out of WW2? Millions of people died. The Holocaust was bad but clearly social norms at the time weren't as clear cut on when you could genocide undesirables out of the gene pool.

The American Revolution is another good example. Sure the British were tyrannical in some respects, but going to WAR just to stop them from seizing caches of arms at Lexington and Concord really seems drastic. Couldn't the Founding Fathers have worked within the democratic process?

*Tehehehe, j/k I know too. We all know.

It's a famous book written by Dale Carnegie.
http://erudition.mohit.tripod.com/_Influence_People.pdf

it's a really good read too, imo.

This.

Right, and just like the other guy in this thread arguing this same position, maybe racism historically was a root cause both of slavery then and racism today. Isn't that more plausible?

Also "the government" included (well, up until the point they entered violent revolt) the slaveholders of the South. It wasn't some abstract entity which caused slavery to be enshrined in the Constitution and persist for those 100 years. It was the same people. It's bizarre that you try to divorce the two.

Well RP believes in the inherently intolerant "ideal" of libertarianism, he advocates racists policies, he cashed in mega-$$$ pandering to racists with his newsletters, and he is BFF with racists like L.Rockwell... so it would make perfect sense to imagine that racists use "how to win friends" as one of their catch phrases.

But LOL, you never cease to deliver the LOLZ my General: Here is the full text. I mean seriously, do youz guyz have a L.Ron-Safe-Surf filter installed on your 'puters that only allow you to go to the racist sites like misers.orgy or something ??

Can it help ugly guys get laid more? If so I'm interested.

Yeah, some reason I missed that word when my son pulled down a flashlight on his head. I'll be sure to fix that before I get this peer reviewed. But U GOT ME GOOD!

Obviously FDR wasn't a party to it, but the die was cast before he even came to power. The entire situation was set up by the same type of thing that caused problems with the South with the civil war.

The US was far from innocent in starting WWII, they had plenty of acts of war during the early stages, but that's another debate for another story, which you brought up for who knows what reasons.

I don't view the Confederacy as "the good guys". I look at both sides fairly unfavorably. Both sides were making power plays for what they thought was in their interests. I certainly understand why both parties did what they did. But they both are in the wrong, the North for trying to achieve domination over the South (not to end slavery, but political dominance), and the South for having terribly barbaric and inhumane treatment of people. Both are in the wrong. Southerners more-so for supporting slavery, but that doesn't automatically make their enemies the good guys. Both parties are quite in the wrong. It isn't the case that one needs to be good just because the other is evil.

War is rarely about such noble things you claim- preventing the deaths or suffering of innocents. But that makes sense, since you just make things up yourself, like WWII was to stop the Holocaust. Social norms were not really a factor in the Holocaust anyway, perhaps you should try reading up on it.

I'm all for resolving things peacefully when they can be resolved peacefully. When they can't, the cost of not going to war is great enough, and the cost of going to war is not too great, then go for it. WWII was a colossal blunder for those involved, the deaths of 60+ million people.

I grew up in the south...well Texas. From my unscientific observations, Boston/Cambridge and London/Cambridge have just as much issues with racism as "the south", and I woud say it's actually worse there....but population density makes straight comparisons unfair. Assigning the causality of racism in the south to the civil war is one of the funnier things I have read on this forum...so thanks for that .

This is actually the core sophistry behind the whole libertarian "ideal". Its the Lizard Men, or the "cronies", or whatever...

You'll learn important life lessons like...listening when people speak...taking an interest in other people...seeing things from someone else's point of view...etc.

So, yeah, it probably won't hurt.

Yes, the causes were of course the same. The difference is the lingering effects. When someone attacks you, you are far more likely to hold onto positions longer and get defensive than when it's done in a non-confrontational way. Racism will always exist (until everyone mixes together that we all turn the same race, of course). But you can lessen it. You lessen it by giving people experiences that make them figure out it's ******ed on their own, not by forcing them against their will to believe it. It's basic psychology.

Yes, the government did include the slaveholders. It included a considerable number of people. But I'm in favor whenever government creates a new law that harms a party that was obeying the law, that they compensate that party for their losses. It seems reasonable to me. Sure, we can look back now and say how obviously wrong it was, but that doesn't mean it was as obvious back then. It was to some people, but the same can be said about any controversial issue that exists today.

Texas definitely doesn't have the same feel (although IIRC you were in East Texas... which is more closely related). I've lived in Texas, backwoods Georgia, and Ohio for significant periods of time, and backwoods Georgia was significantly different than the rest by a longshot. In Georgia, people openly told us that they were shocked that we bought the house we did because it was next to *whispers* black people *whispers*. Of course the guy was a doctor, it's not like he was some undesirable. We would have neighbors have their dogs purposely crap on our lawn and leave it because "it's just those damn Yankees that live there". Southern hospitality ends when you are an outsider. The racism was just plain brutal and completely open. They had separate proms for white and black students. Virtually no integration with respect to people. I grew up a lot in Ohio, and there was minor stuff, but it was small potatoes compared to that. Obviously there were racial issues (Cincinnati had quite a few), but it didn't compare to the cultural differences. Texas (Austin and suburbs at least) it's much more similar to Ohio in terms of racial culture, especially with the high proportion of Latinos. People are just more used to being in a multicultural society and that tends to make them less bad. Obviously racism still exists here, but it's night and day compared to what I saw in Georgia.

When I refer to The South, I typically stop the border at Louisiana, although some of East Texas certainly fits. I forget your exact background, but Texas is a big enough state, you can get quite a different experience in different spots.

You are Missiledogging this thread if you think that was the *cause* of racism. It was *a* cause of prolonged extensive racism, not the root cause. Racism has existed since the dawn of humanity, and probably will always exist in some form. It's not unique to certain areas (just look at European soccer for some real racists).

And, on the balance, the laws harmed slaveholders more than slaves? Really interested in hearing your plan for reparations, post-13th Amendment.

Slaveholders didn't want compensation. They wanted slavery. Hence the revolt.

Ok, I'll put it on my reading list. Hopefully I'll get to it sometime this decade.

Emancipation would harm slaveholders far more than slaves, yes. Slaves would be better off by emancipation. Reparations would have been very reasonable at the time for slaves.

There becomes a point where slavery itself was less valuable than a specific dollar amount. It didn't have infinite value, as you claim. Such a claim is silly and a clear misunderstanding of economics. They not only wanted slavery, but they also wanted power and not to be dominated by Northerners. It wasn't a single-issue revolt. It happened that the power blocs were united by their stances on slavery, but there were cultural similarities and economic similarities between both blocs deeply embedded. It was a very complex event and it's entirely simplistic to define it as a single issue.

You think it was a big deal when Missouri became a state because slave holders *really* wanted for Missouri to have slaves? Or were they concerned about the power structure?

I didn't make that claim...but you go ahead and figure out how you're going to "buy all the slaves".

Or how you put a value on slavery. Really interested in seeing that calculus.

And they were concerned about the power structure because...
If you had to guess what the most important issue was, what would that be? You seemed proud of that 5 on the AP US History exam, so I'm rooting for you to get this one right, really I am.

The dollar amount of the most concern is not strictly the dollars that would be lost as potential revenue for the slave owners, though (and still, lol, no one compensated the mob when Prohibition ended). The slave owners, in a world where the US government has to negotiate and purchase off the slaves, the owners would be rational to demand a total sum from the government equal to a dollar less than the estimated sum cost of going to war. Because, hey, then it's still cheaper to buy off the slaves than go to war, right?

I think using the word cause was a poor choice a couple posts earlier ITT when talking about the civil war being the cause of southern racism, but the civil war and the subsequent treatment really ****ed them up for a loooong time. A lesson we should all take into consideration when we think about how long the effects of our foreign policy may actually end up being. Sherman's march to the sea is pretty out there imo. I don't think they deserved to be light on fire for 300 damn miles.

Slavery + other issues. The country was quite different in different regions, and what benefited one side would often harm the other. Not just in slavery, but in industries, tariffs, taxes, wealth, etc...

How do you value it? You negotiate.

You do the negotiations far before it gets to the state of imminent war. Obviously once it looks likely that war will occur, you are past a point of no return. You can still disrupt things fairly well, though, even without war. You can lead economic boycotts of the Confederacy, for example. If it was so morally reprehensible to the rest of the world, should be pretty easy to do it.

But you are wrong because negotiations do not work like that. War is not a zero sum game. If war occurs, not only is the North worse off, but the Southerners also will be. The North could just as easily employ the same strategy- you pay us $X or we go to war and you'll be out $X+1! Wonder why that doesn't work either? You make an offer that they would be better to take than not to take. They refuse, they are worse off right there, even without a war. The decision to go to war would be another decision that could be made after that. Perhaps you let them think about it for a little bit first. Perhaps you give some other concessions related to making them keep some level of power or equality. Or hell, you even let them break away, but require that they outlaw slavery, and ship all the slaves to the North! Tons of different strategies.

This happened peacefully in so many other places, but somehow the US is so incredibly different, it could not have happened otherwise! If it weren't for that Civil War, we'd still be having slaves.

Prohibition made selling alcohol illegal. I would be very much in favor of compensating breweries when Prohibition was created, though. You have it backwards. As morally reprehensible as it is, they were obeying the law. The mob was not.

Also, your assumption about the racial animus in the South that persists to this day somehow being ameliorated overnight after a buyout is dubious at best. I mean, the savages who owned slaves because they thought the slaves were savages are, after the buyout, now rich savages, but they're no less savages. I'll grant that there is excess resentment against Northern states, but Jim Crow laws still go onto the books.

Hey, sweet, lets look at history and see what happened.



And then the decision to start a war was made...

I've lived outside Austin and outside Houston. Texas certainly has a ton of different environments and being in High school vs being college aged/adult makes a big difference. I'll just say that I personally was shocked at the sort of causal racism that I saw in Boston (and to a lesser extent Jersey) and the UK, that I really hadn't seen before which was surprising because it wasn't what I expected leaving Texas. Of course I went from being a kid to a young adult, the places I moved to involved public transportation and more time being forced to interact with strangers etc


You said "a root cause. The claim is obv pretty crazy...racism existed before the civil war...places without civil wars still have plenty of racism etc. You (or anyone) simply have no idea what the south would be like without a civil war. You can make the exact opposite case....that no civil war means the south (and all of the US) progresse at much slower rate and things are like the 1900s there now. Dumb argument? Sure...but not any less dumb than yours.

This was where I saw the worst of it in the UK. American sports is way more family oriented so that makes a big difference as well.

Again, Tom appears to be working backwards from Saint Ron of Lake Jackson's Palinesque ramblings. Clearly we can't admit that Paul was just wrong because he's not a very bright man and his intellectual inner circle is riddled with neoconfederates...

The abolition movement didn't start in 1859. The entire history of the country was an endless series of Northerners compromising with Southerners, negotiating in good faith and all that. Do you think that banning importation of slaves was something THE SOUTH wanted?

You act like they were slave owners due to some huge religious belief. They were businessmen who justified to themselves their profits through stupid logic. It's not like they were so deeply committed to it out of some "noble cause", but out of making money.

A lot of the Jim Crow law type stuff is basically taking it out on someone else (cannot come up with the proper term for this for some reason). It's like the father who beats his son, then the son goes and beats up someone else at school. The Southerners would view the North as the aggressor, then take it out on the blacks, who they at least can control. You are probably right that some type of segregation occurs and a decent number of Jim Crow laws, however, it's probably much less severe. It takes a lot to go from thinking that someone literally is the equivalent of a farm animal to that of an equal human being. It's quite a transition, and of course it won't be sudden and will take generations to overcome.

I do wonder how much of the anti-Northern resentment that has occurred plays a factor in this. There's a part where standing up against the "threat" gets support, even if you are standing up for something dumb. Remove the threat of the North, and perhaps it goes away faster. However, it could have been a lot worse if the treatment of the South was even harsher than it was during Reconstruction, so there is some credit for that.