(05-28-2019 05:31 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(05-28-2019 04:44 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(05-28-2019 11:16 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(05-28-2019 11:07 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  I don't see what your problem is is with what I said, but I will say it again, in different fashion:

The people of 150 years ago could display compassion for the dead of both sides, recognizing that they fought valiantly, even if for a side one did not agree with. The people of today, cannot.

Pulling down monuments to Confederates, whether the monuments are individual or collective, for the dead or for the survivors, fails to display this. Therefore it is something we have lost. Compassion? Empathy? A willingness to see the other side? A willingness to lover the sinner while hating the sin?

I do not understand your complaints about 150 years ago, especially when you quote supposed attitudes from 120 years ago.

I think we should honor the dead. All of them. Not just the ones who fit some modern template of what is acceptable now.

How you get omnipotence and arrogance out of an honest expression of opinion, I don't know, although I am impressed with the arrogance and omnipotence you two are expressing. I am glad y'all stepped down from your pedestals to castigate this wrong-thinker. I might have gone on thinking courage and valor, even in a bad cause, should be recognized.

I quoted a self-professed liberal. I guess y'all think she is arrogant too. Oh, and omnipotent.

You do not "honor the dead" by memorializing the leaders of an insurrection and rebellion...

You honor the dead by memorializing them or the places they died. You notice how there is no concerted effort to remove historical markers at Antietam?

Again, look at how Germany handled WW2. You don't see statues of Hitler or Himmler, commemorating their valor for fighting for what they thought was right. You see monuments dedicated to those who lost their life and were persecuted. You see small remembrances of historically significant areas. You see places like the rally grounds at Nuremberg kept in place, or concentrations camps maintained. All of that is done to remember what happened, honor those that died, but explicitly NOT glorify those who fought for something evil.

I 100% agree that memorials honoring those who died and were scarred by the gruesome war should remain. And that we should keep in place protections that preserve historical places. But I see no reason to leave standing in public memorials of the leaders of a rebellion.

PS - give this persecuted conservative bit a rest - "glad y'all stepped down from your pedestals to castigate this wrong-thinker" - ehgads. Sorry I think your opinion is bad and have told you.

leader of an insurrection or rebellion.....

Can you cite to me the portions of the Constitution or any Supreme Court cases pre-bellum that categorically denied a state (any state) the right or ability to leave the Union?

I will say that undoubtedly the victors wrote the history books (not to mention the subsequent law) on that question, considering that you take that factoid as set in stone.

Funny thing, is that there was just as good precedent for the states to secede at that time as there was for them remaining inviolate in the Union..... much to the contrary of your inference above with the terminology of 'insurrection and rebellion'.

But hey, why let little facts like that get in the way of some rhetoric. Bummer that.....

No, you're nitpicking and intentionally trying to obscure the big picture.

Plus, while I cannot point to a portion of the Constitution that denies a state that right, can you point to a portion of the Constitution that does establish that right? So what does the absence of a right to secede or right to deny secession mean?

And what was the precedent for that existed at that time for states to secede?

Big picture - portion of the US at the time wanted to secede from the federal government and form their own country. That is a textbook definition of rebelling...

Not obscuring at all. Just commenting at your 'after the fact' characterization of a rebellion or insurrection.

No I cannot point to a 'get out free portion'. I can point to a *lot* of drafters of the Constitution that espoused that in later works.

The absence or presence of a right to secede means that there was just as much 'right' to secede as there was that the states, once entering into the Union, were shackled inviolate in eternity (i.e. an open question, just as I characterized it.)

That question was absolutely answered in total by force. And only later enshrined into the law, mind you.

So, one can just as easily, with exactly the same legal basis that you blindly charge off into, change *your* knee jerk final statement to:

Quote: Big picture - portion of the US at the time wanted to secede from the federal government that they had every right to leave and form their own country. That is not a textbook definition of rebelling...

It only becomes a 'rebellion' with an ex post facto application of a law and legal regime that never actually existed at the time of the issue.

lad -- words matter.

I will agree with you twenty times to Sunday that should Missouri decide to leave the Union without overriding permission today, you would be absolutely correct in noting that an 'insurrection'.

And I will agree with you twenty times to Sunday that if the same actions the Southern States undertook in 1861 happened today it would be an insurrection under the law.

But, applying the legal regime enacted in the 1870s to actions that occurred 10 years earlier and calling the previous actions 'illegal' is just mind boggling stupid.

The simple fact remains that the Southern States had just as much legal basis at that time to claim that they could leave as the carpetbagging states to, again, at that time, claim that they couldn't. And no amount of applying ex post facto legal bases to that situation changes that calculus.