Did you see this cartoon that was apparently removed from 400 US papers?

[goaded]

Doonsbury 18 Feb 2024

Updates

+1 y

Apparently, it wasn't because of this particular strip. My apologies.

www.cbr.com/.../

[Anonymous]

Sounds like its was just not very good. I can tell just by reading it its entirely incoherent jumping from one factually incorrect bad idea to the next.

Basically modern democrat talking points which frankly isn't funny and is far too commonly know to be interesting.

[goaded]

So, the civil war wasn't fought over slavery (specifically the expansion of slavery to new territories)? White Southerners didn't fight for the Union? Alabama cavalry didn't flank Sherman?

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded
Technically the reason any war is fought is as varied as the people who choose to go and fight it. Given The North decided to ignore the inalienable right of the people of the South to self-determination. Their reasoning for doing so is also the reason why the war was fought. They made it very clear again and again this was NOT slavery.

The reasons the South left given that did not start any war naturally is not relevant, although that too is as varied as the people who voted to leave. If you think the South started the war by firing on Fort Sumter then the war about control of that fort and thus the right of the independent south to trade with other nations.

It is also true as with most wars the people who actuary fight on both sides are not necessarily originally from that side. Many southern whites and blacks fought for the north just as many Northerns like Generals Samuel Cooper fought for the south.

[goaded]

No, that's bullshit. Freeing the slaves in the South came after the war, not before it.

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded
Yes we agree Freeing the slaves in the north came AFTER the war not before, not sure why you think that is in conflict with what I said rather than in support of the fact that the war was in fact NOT fought over slavery.

The last states to have slaves were the northern States of Kentucky and New Jersey.

[goaded]

Of course it was about slavery, seven of the states mentioned it. That cartoon is more accurate than you.

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded You don't seem to be addressing what I said and instead feel you need to try and insult me personally.

We have already discussed the issue the cause of a war being the reason it was started, not the reason the side that started the fight gave for the other side doing whatever it was that they did not like leading them to decide to fight. But the reason they personal decided to fight. Otherwise we can go back to the beginning of time pointing fingers at each other.

Unless you want to say the attempt of a forign nation to tax your imports is not an act of war, the South Did not start the war, the North did.

Therefore the war started over the north's choice to do that which was the North's desire to govern the south without their consent.

If however you regard the first act of war to be the south's firing upon Fort Sumter then again it is over the same Tax on imports. Either way the South had already left and its reasoning for doing so is not relevant.

But if you want to take this back down the chain and say the South's exercising of its inalienable right of self-determination, then there is no one "Cause" among 11 not 7 States composed of around 6+ million people but many different causes. This is like saying the American revolution was only about taxation without representation when in fact there were many grievances, taxes alone were not enough.

fought, not the reason the side that started the fight gave. of a vote of the people has as many reasons as people give it, and we

[goaded]

The war started because some states illegally decided to seceed from the Union without modifying the constitution first. (That's still an option, by the way., and a legitimate democratic way to leave the Union.) Why they decided to do that was because they wanted slavery to spread to new territories.

They literally said they wanted to leave because they wanted to keep slaves.

States gave up what you call their "inalienable right of self-determination", when they joined the Union. They weren't being forced to give up slaves before the war, they were just being restricted in their desire to spread slavery west. Do you think slavery was a good thing?

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded Our federal Constitution unlike European 'constitutions' is not restriction on the people but rather the Federal Government. This quite explicitly means all rights and powers not explicitly ceded to that goverment in the Constitutions are reserved to the people or their states. In fact we even passed a 10th amendment to make this fact perfectly clear.

Since the right to withdraw is not only a inalienable (cannot be ceded) right foundational to the existence of theses untied States but no where mentioned in the same Federal Constitution. That right is in fact reserved to the people and their states.

As such not only is there no need to modify the Constitution to create a regulating process unnecessary, but the right being inalienable simply makes any attempt to do restrict it via such regulation illegitimate.

Regarding your nonsense focus on the institutional slavery Im going to ignore you because now your contradicting yourself in claiming they left simply to protect a non-threatened institution. Having previously pointed out only 7 out of the 11 even bothered to mention it in their official withdraw declarations, never-mind the fact that 3/4th of the people voting to withdraw had no slaves.

All of that isn't even the cause of the war, because NOTHING FORCED the union to go to war. The Confederacy and union under James Buchanan were at peace in 1860.

[goaded]

Crap. It's a contract. Part of that contract is that states have to follow federal laws in exchange for all the advantages of being in the Union.

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded It is true States do have to follow the legitimate federal law for the Advantages of being in the union. In 1860 and 1861 11 southern states decided that union had become soo destructive to the ends of those "Advantages" that they were better off leaving and forsaking what few real advantages there were left in continued membership.

Unfortunately the remaining northern States decided to wage a war of bloody imperial conquest.

[goaded]

The federal law, then and now, had a legitimate and democratic route to secession, those states refused to follow it, breaking the law even you admit they were bound by.

It was not "a war of bloody imperial conquest". And it was about the right to own people.

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded
In 1860's just as now the Federal goverment of theses united States had no right to make any such law restricting the inalienable right of secession nor did they prior to 1860 even attempt to make such a law.

What your proposing is the power of a employer to dictate the terms by which you leave their employment, that is called slavery. This power was never given to any free goverment for good reason. No matter how that goverment prepossess to be itself governed it would with such power to ignore the consent of the govern become a ever more abusive and dreadful master.

In the long run It would have as little reason to honor any terms as its victims would have realistic recourse and as such no matter what rules it claims to operate under at the beginning it would by the end at best pay them lip-service at worse acknowledge the reality there is nothing to stop them from doing whatever they want.

[goaded]

Nobody had to write a law, the states all freely joined a union without any direct mechanism to leave it. I love the way you want to pretend that the slave states were the ones being enslaved.

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded When they joined the union, nobody questions their inalienable right to leave, they had after all just fought a war over the same right to leave anther union.

Clearly your having trouble accepting what happened in the American Revolution which only ended the prior decade.

[goaded]

Nobody mentioned an "inalienable right to leave", which is just something you made up, either. By the same token, they knew first hand that a revolution is treason against the country they're part of, and they created a country that intentionally allowed for the laws to be changed democratically. They did not include a leaving mechanism, just the potential to create one.

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded Maybe you should read this document:
www.archives.gov/.../declaration-transcript

"--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

This is how America was founded.

[goaded]

Yeah, and they could all still vote in 1860. That's well short of the "absolute Despotism" they talk about. The southern states seceded because they wanted to expand slavery to new territories and the democratically elected government of and by the people said they couldn't. They didn't even demand that slavery should be abolished until the end of the civil war.

[Opinion Owner]

I'm starting to wonder if you lost your common sense @goaded
On the one hand you acknowledge they could all still vote and they did indeed vote to leave the same way they voted to join.

On the other hand you claim they wanted to expand slavery into the new territories which the Confederacy mostly didn't even claim to control after leaving. The Concern about the new western States was the repression of Northern orientated states using their superiority in the Senate to further oppress the south. This is why they felt it necessary to leave knowing they would not be able to defend their rights going forward at all.
The South had no reason to care about the territories after they left.

Your right, the north didn't try to end slavery until after the war started, which is why the South had no reason to leave on that account specifically but rather the more general basket of associated polices to repress southern intrest.

[goaded]

They made a commitment to follow the laws of the Union when they joined, there was a legal path to seceding, they chose to simply ignore it (and the proposed 13th amendment which would have enshrined the right to keep slaves in the constitution).

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded It was the union that proposed the original 13th amendment (Corwin Amendment) not the south which had already left by that point. This fact really just reinforces the original fact, the union did not fight the war over slavery.

[goaded]

Yes, as a sop to keep the idiots from sedition. They tried to leave because they wanted to keep owning people and expand that to other places. They literally say that in their articles of secession.

[Opinion Owner]

@goaded By your own count only 7 of the 11 states listed slavery as a cause, one of many. Just like Malcontent congress's deceleration listed around 27 such Grievances.

[goaded]

So, did those seven states that explicitly said they were seceding because of slavery lying?

[DryGermanGuy]

Are you sure about this? Apart from appeasing a few radical book burners in Florida that seems rather implausible. Its Wikipedia entry also makes no mention of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doonesbury

[goaded]

See update.

[monorprise]

@DryGermanGuy Florida didn't burn any books, the State goverment simply doesn't want to use its legal force to pay teach topics they find unhelpful or incorrect.

Even if you disagree with what the State thinks is true. Its very hard to see how A state Government is wrong to demand such. it is after all THEIR money, and THEIR political authority that puts said kids in sad classrooms and pays the teacher's salary to teach them. The State is entirely entitled to limit what they pay for and what they are allowed to teach in such state forums.

I don't think you Germans appreciate how dysfunctional and bad the American education system is the result of a tangled web of Federal usurpation inhibiting State innovations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qkadx_x02U

This system should have long ago been reformed or abolished but its not practical to do so given Washington's strings basically pay every state to remain with their failed model.

[goaded]

@monorprise He said: "radical book burners in Florida", not that Florida burns books.

I suspect any reformed education system would leave poor areas without access to education at all, just like school vouchers just give wealthy people money to give to the wealthy schools their children attend anyway.

[DryGermanGuy]

@monorprise
"Florida didn't burn any books, the State goverment simply doesn't want to use its legal force to pay teach topics they find unhelpful or incorrect."
Okay, I did not mean book burning in the literal sense. These dubiously-led schools removed books from libraries, including the inauguration poem from Amanda Gorman. If they don't want to actively teach books, it's one thing (and bad enough), but removing them from libraries is disgusting censorship.

"I don't think you Germans appreciate how dysfunctional and bad the American education system is the result of a tangled web of Federal usurpation inhibiting State innovations:"
Trust me, I have seen enough TV segments and YouTube videos with young Americans (school and university) to be absolutely aghast about the lack of knowledge and the apparent lack of curiosity. As someone wrote it in a YouTube video comment (series "What's the dumbest thing an American ever said to you?"), American schools are more a daycare institution than an educational institution.

[monorprise]

@DryGermanGuy
Best not to believe everything you hear particularly from enemies. In Florida like most states there are 2 separate library systems the public one and then many large schools host their own library only for the students.

One can debate the waste of schools maintain their own separate library system, but the argument in favor was provide exclusively educational books appropriate for children of that school unlike the general system for everyone.

So the question is not why are theses non-educational non-child appropriate books being taken out of school libraries but why were they ever added in the first place. What is increasingly apparent among parents and people who actually attended theses schools is the relative unaccountably of said schools has allowed its employees to betray the people who fund them and give them access to their children in following their own agenda with said kids rather than do as they claimed.

This is why the State is not only reducing said autonomy with many laws like this but giving voucher to allow Parents to choose other schools if there are other options. No information or books are being banned from the State, you can still buy this information ourselves or even get most of it for free online.

This of course does not address the obsolete nature of libraries in general given the internet.

Given the lack of School accountable for their results w do indeed need reform and we are doing what we can to reform them within the complicated and entangled mess that is modern goverment educational system.

I actually agree with the video we should be free to look to reform more along the German model. Currently the privatization effort via vouchers is allow us to experiment with new systems in the private sector to find better systems.

[OtterMan68]

conservatives are snowflakes

[exitseven]

Garry Treudeau is a horses ass.

[laly520]

oh that one