I don't see where he gets "hundreds of thousands" unless he's thinking Syria/Russia are going to use WMDs....
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2018
80 comments:
What makes you think he's telling the truth? All the evidence suggests he's lying as usual.
According to the UN's Special Rapporteur there are at least 10,000 jihadi terrorists ("foreign fighters", to use the euphemistic term that becomes terrorist if in the West). Instead of helping to annihilate these wackos, Trump and the whole Washington power elite are doing everything they can to stop the Syrians from freeing the country from jihadi terrorists and even to rescue them. If Washington is pained by the ordeal of these misunderstood psychopathic religious nutters, perhaps they should offer them "asylum" like they did with the Shah.
Probably what his neocon and military advisers are telling him so as to keep the US in Syria.
The US strategy is either to get compliance or create chaos until it does. Typical of empires.
Tom, there are two possibilities:
1. He doesn't believe what he's been told, but he says it anyway because they've got him by the short and curlies.
2. He believes the stupid gibberish he spouts because he's a stupid goon.
Either scenario is scary.
People who have followed Trump say that he doesn't have any real principles or beliefs. He's an unprincipled and cynical con-artist. There's a YUGE amount of evidence for that. Having said that, the new Bob Woodward book has Mattis, McMaster and Kelly all pulling their hair out at the unbelievable idiocy of the Orange One and how he has the geopolitical and national security knowledge of a "ten-year-old". So perhaps he isn't a cynical shyster but a dumb lunatic.
Again, either scenario is scary.
Does anybody really believe that Trump is an evil (or well intentioned) genius playing 9 dimensional chess? It seems likely to me that he's stupid, and that this could probably be measured with an IQ test. He just doesn't seem to grasp the most basic logic.
Bob Woodward book has Mattis, McMaster and Kelly
Who is president? Not any of the above or any of the wannabes that Trump put away.
You don't get to be billionaire and become US president by luck, especially opposing the Clinton machine.
Ok, there's aways luck. Just maybe DJT was lucky that the Dems ran HRC rather than Bernie.
Maybe. We'll never know.
Does anybody really believe that Trump is an evil (or well intentioned) genius playing 9 dimensional chess? It seems likely to me that he's stupid, and that this could probably be measured with an IQ test. He just doesn't seem to grasp the most basic logic.
Follow Scott Adams. He explained why Trump was going to win and just about everything else that Trump has done through the persuasion filter.
The foundations of the world are shaking right now, and ironically, Trump is the guy with his finger in the dike. And he is alone.
Parlous times.
As Pat Lang recently said, DJT just has to say, "NO."
But will "they" take "no" for an answer. Lang is sure they will, and he has a lot more close-up experience than I do.
On the other hand, there were people Allen Dulles and presumably still are.
I read the tweet as Trump saying the thing is in the hands of Syria/Iran/Russia... so whatever happens up in that Province they own it...
“Instead of helping to annihilate these wackos, Trump and the whole Washington power elite are doing everything they can to stop the Syrians from freeing the country from jihadi terrorists”
Trump is only committed to destroying ISIS... that is going on in the east ... this latestvthing is on the whole other side in the NW right?
We’re not getting involved.... we’ll be outa there soon...
I read the tweet as Trump saying the thing is in the hands of Syria/Iran/Russia... so whatever happens up in that Province they own it...
Russia and Iran are in Syria at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government, which is its sovereign. Why is the present government legitimate? It occupies Syria's seat at the UN, for instance.
The US has no such invitation or any UN mandate to be in Syria or to attack Syria. There is no other legal justification under recognized international law.
R2P is based on Western liberalism as a justification for "liberal intervention" as a euphemism and facade for neo-imperialism and neocolonialism.
US actions are further based on American exceptionalism and also Western superiority resulting in "the white man's burden."
It's pretty clear to anyone with ears that can hear that Trump's desire is to get out of Syria, which he views rightly as a quagmire for the US. He was clear about this in the campaign emphasizing American First.
The US deep state including the military is unwilling to do so. They also know that Trump is somewhat impetuous. So to maneuver him into taking action, they are creating the conditions for it, including engineering a false flag chemical attack, for which Russia has already provided evidence fo the OPCW.
The plan of the US deep state including military is to remain in the Syria, where they occupy the oil fields until the Assad "regime" falls and US puppet can be installed. Trump may be on board with this because of the oil.
And Syria is only one of the flash points.
Trump is only committed to destroying ISIS... that is going on in the east ... this latestvthing is on the whole other side in the NW right?
We’re not getting involved.... we’ll be outa there soon...
What do you based this "analysis" on?
Quite evidently not the sources I read.
Of course, DJT only knows what his advisers in the bubble tell him, as well as Bibi when they talk on the phone, along with what he sees on Fox News.
Apparently Matt thinks this is analysis.
"You don't get to be billionaire and become US president by luck, especially opposing the Clinton machine. Ok, there's always luck." [Tom]
There are other alternatives besides luck (which is undoubtedly a big factor for even the smartest of candidates) and intelligence. It seems to be possible for a stupid person (as measured, say, by IQ tests) to succeed on the basis of bombast and delusional confidence. In this case, it was because people wanted a change in the status quo and Trump represented that against Clinton and the Republican primary contenders (e.g. the latest Bush).
Perhaps Trump is an idiot savant whose one trick behavior was good for a career as a real estate impressario and one-term presidential candidate. Now, the Republicans are likely to lose the House of Representatives and Trump will soon be banished to the Sarah Palin branch of historical curiosities.
Or it could be that he's on an entirely different plane than you and me, and that's why nothing he says makes sense to us. Or do you actually claim that what he says is coherent?
Perhaps Trump is an idiot savant whose one trick behavior was good for a career as a real estate impressario and one-term presidential candidate.
Odds of that? If this is the case, then the US political system is failure and the Constitution needs revisiting.
Now, the Republicans are likely to lose the House of Representatives and Trump will soon be banished to the Sarah Palin branch of historical curiosities.
538
Election Update: Democrats Are In Their Best Position Yet To Retake The House
Nate Silver
The numbers don't look good for the GOP right now, and Labor Day is an indicator, but as Nate says, it's too early to tell.
Or it could be that he's on an entirely different plane than you and me, and that's why nothing he says makes sense to us. Or do you actually claim that what he says is coherent?
According to Scott Adams, he has been saying the right things from a persuasion POV. On his persuasion index, gut feeling and identity, which are closely related, are highest, analogy is second, and reason is last, and especially arguing over definitions of words. Most people are irrational when it comes to matters that are close to them. They lack the distance to do logic.
Trump has obviously read the books on persuasion and studied the master persuaders. Other politicians are clueless about this, especially highly educated ones toward the center. So they bring knives to a gunfight.
Trump has kept his base against an onslaught from the media aided by the deep state. This is important politically, since it is very difficult to impossible to win without a highly energized and active base. HRC turned a significant portion of her base off, and it likely cost her the election more than any of the other significant factors — of which "Russian interference" was not one.
The GOP cannot hope to win general elections without the Trump base, which appears to be mostly non-college educated white Evangelicals based on Pew.
But if the Dems don't energize their base, they will have a tough time with turn out come the election. Right now, they are running against Trump rather than for anything. That's a huge handicap too, even if they win and start impeachment proceedings as they have implied strongly they will do.
"Trump has kept his base against an onslaught from the media aided by the deep state." I would say that Trump keeps people behind him because of the media. I watched CBS "news" last night and they spent around 6 or 7 minutes at the beginning just attacking Trump and advertising a new book against him. Anybody with any intelligence could tell what they were doing. I am an independent and have been for fifty years. I am not energized to vote for the Dems or the Republicans.
“non-college educated”
As if a college education is homogenous ...
Guaranteed the person who wrote this is Liberal Art trained .... GUARANTEED....
Silver has been completely discredited ... he had Hillary in a landslide...
“Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes.
In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond)
Therefore these 5 counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote of the entire country.
These 5 counties comprise 319 square miles.
The United States is comprised of 3,797,000 square miles. “
You believe Silver you might as well sign up for the Bob Woodward new book...
"Trump has obviously read the books on persuasion and studied the master persuaders." [Tom]
Is there any evidence to support this? He doesn't seem to have the discipline for that.
According to Scott Adams, either Trump trained himself in persuasion, or else he is a natural master persuader. That's possible too.
Most politicians and parties hire expert persuaders but the candidates still get it wrong, e.g., in answering questions about the messages they are given to read. Trump just intuitively gets it right in in the view of Adams.
Norman Vincent Peale back in Queens:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/donald-trump-2016-norman-vincent-peale-213220
Received via didactic methodology... then applied practice...
Thanks for the responses, Tom and Matt.
I am familiar with Scott Adams take on Trump, and he makes some good points. The Politico article on the influence of Norman Vincent Peale and The Power of Positive Thinking is convincing, although not in terms of Trump being intelligent.
Basically Trump's success is founded on tunnel vision -- "tireless self-advertisement... impervious to criticism, self-doubt, or self-reflection". I see in Wikipedia that Peale was politically and personally close to President Richard Nixon. "He continued calling at the White House throughout the Watergate crisis, saying 'Christ didn't shy away from people in trouble.' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Vincent_Peale] Also, "President Ronald Reagan awarded Peale, for his contributions to the field of theology, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian honor in the United States) on March 26, 1984."
Peale seems to have been loose with the truth:
"One major criticism of The Power of Positive Thinking is that the book is full of anecdotes that are hard to substantiate. Almost all of the experts and many of the testimonials that Peale quotes as supporting his philosophy are unnamed, unknown and unsourced. Examples include a "famous psychologist",[15]:52 a two-page letter from a "practicing physician",[15]:150 another "famous psychologist",[15]:169 a "prominent citizen of New York City",[15]:88 and dozens, if not hundreds, more unverifiable quotations. Similar scientific studies of questionable validity are also cited."
"A second major accusation of Peale is that he attempted to conceal that his techniques for giving the reader absolute self-confidence and deliverance from suffering... Psychiatrist R. C. Murphy writes 'Self knowledge, in Mr. Peale's understanding is unequivocally bad: self hypnosis is good.'.. Murphy describes Peale's understanding of the mind as inaccurate, 'without depth', and his description of the workings of the mind and the unconscious as deceptively simplistic and false"
"Psychologist Albert Ellis... has documented in several books the many individuals he has treated who suffered mental breakdowns from following Peale's teachings... Ellis contends the Peale approach is dangerous, distorted, unrealistic... 'In the long run [Peale's teachings] lead to failure and disillusionment'"
"A third major criticism is that Peale's philosophy is based on exaggerating the fears of his readers and followers, and that this exaggerated fear inevitably leads to aggression and the destruction of those considered 'negative'... Mr. Peale refuses to allow his followers to hear, speak or see any evil. For him real human suffering does not exist; there is no such thing as murderous rage, suicidal despair, cruelty, lust, greed, mass poverty, or illiteracy... The belief in pure evil, an area of experience beyond the possibility of help or redemption, is automatically a summons to action: 'evil' means 'that which must be attacked ... '"
"The mastery Peale speaks of is not the mastery of skills or tasks, but the mastery of fleeing and avoiding one's own "negative thoughts". Meyer writes this exaggerated fear inevitably leads to aggression"
Tom: "Who is president? Not any of the above or any of the wannabes that Trump put away."
The answer to that is that it was a combination of fluke (because Killary was just about the worst Democratic candidate to win over desperate working class people in the rust belt), a brainwashed public (decades of work by genocidal "Christian" fanatics, rightwing capitalist propaganda and Washington scaring the hell out of the public by creating artificial threats). It is to be predicted that a late empire would eventually vomit up a maniac in the image of a mad Roman emperor, although it was perhaps a surprise that Caligula made an appearance this soon. When you add a Democratic party that takes for granted the working class vote and never misses an opportunity to spit at them, kick them while they're down and then laugh, why do we pretend to be surprised? It has been this way since time immemorial. The way things are going, someone much worse will soon sit in the Oval Office. If Trump doesn't run in 2020, and because the Democratic Party is in the hands of zombies like Pelosi and Schumer, it's a sure thing Pence will win. Mirroring the insanity of all late empires, a large chunk of the population has been driven mad or desperate. The Democrats are too timid and corporatised to do anything to help tens of millions of the religiously insane, war-hungry nationalists and bloodthirsty nativists, and a larger, but more amenable, population of working people driven to irrational desperation.
Tom: "You don't get to be billionaire and become US president by luck, especially opposing the Clinton machine."
No one now seriously denies that he inherited his wealth, so that is luck: the luck of being born to a rich property developer. And according to leading business magazines Trump would be some twenty times richer had he put Daddy's money in an index fund, rather than managing it himself down the toilet. Given all the evidence, it's hard to take seriously any stories of his business acumen. Trump is a fantastically bad businessman. That's pretty well documented, and why almost no serious and established company or bank will do business with him. Moreover, I think it's safe to say that he saved himself by laundering billions of dirty Russian oligarch/mafia money.
As for the Clinton machine, Killary ran just about the worst presidential campaign in living memory. I followed it, believing she'd wipe the floor with him. It's almost impossible to do anything to change the minds of hardcore Republicans. Voting for someone very strongly thought to be a paedophile says a great deal, as does voting for geriatric racist senators for decades. In most elections, essentially the battle is for the independents. At the last general election, the independents weren't the swing factor. It was working class, formerly unionised working class voters in BLUE states! Yet Killary was fantastically incompetent in winning people who pretty much always vote Democrat. Trump didn't win the election. Killary threw it away because she barely hides how narcissistic, self-indulgent, arrogant to the point of reckless complacency, and phenomenally self-important, self-satisfied and self-righteous she is, dismissing anyone who wouldn't vote for her as "deplorable". She thought the presidency was hers by right, and ran a campaign in that vein. No wonder she lost, although one can question an election in which the candidate with far more votes is the one who loses. But that's by the by, since everyone knows and pretty much accepts, grudgingly or not, the electoral college system.
Matt: "I read the tweet as Trump saying the thing is in the hands of Syria/Iran/Russia... so whatever happens up in that Province they own it..."
And the tweet that warns of serious repercussions if Syria, Russia and Iran attack the terrorists?
"Trump is only committed to destroying ISIS... that is going on in the east ... this latestvthing is on the whole other side in the NW right?"
That's been the problem! Washington's policy has been to attack ISIS if they attack anyone BUT the Syrian army! Washington has been trying to ensure that ISIS and the other terrorists they're financing, training and arming limit themselves to murdering Syria's army and then turn Syria into a client of jihadi Saudi Arabia.
Matt: "We’re not getting involved.... we’ll be outa there soon..."
Do you live on planet earth? The only way "we'll be outa there soon" is if the Syrians, Iranians and Russians push us out, just as the Iraqis pushed us out of their country. The sooner we lose the better.
US is killing ISIS and holding the East that is where the oil is...
So US “takes the oil” to defray costs and then nobody else gets the munnie either... #winning !
Maybe we’ll stay as long as it takes to get the munnie back from the oil...
The Politico article on the influence of Norman Vincent Peale and The Power of Positive Thinking is convincing, although not in terms of Trump being intelligent.
The Politico folks don't like Trump and have presented a one-sided view of Peale, too. Par for the media, which is about persuasion rather than news and inquiry based on evidence and deliberation. So I call BS.
The so-called "power of positive thinking," hypnosis, and auto-suggestions are admittedly controversial, depending on the story about mind that one buys into. This is a grey area to say the least. Regardless of the actual worth, which is undetermined scientifically (but absence of evidence is not proof of absence), positivity is a huge factor in a lot of self-help systems and sects of Christianity. Magical thinking? Yes, but often magical thinking works practically. All but the most hard nosed rely on it, and the foundations that the hard nosed assume are also, well, assumed (postulated, stipulated) rather than proven.
I have been acquainted with psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists that have used it in their professions and think highly of techniques that focus on the sub-conscious and managing it. Psychiatrist Milton Erickson was a famous proponent of hypnosis and made it a respectable modality in the profession.
Anyway, Adams was alone in calling it for Trump and providing an explanation. Luck in thinking magically, or did he know something based on his own experience?
@ John
Shows the gapping hole in the US political system.
@ Matt
How many trillions has the US sunk into Afghanistan, Iraq, LIbya, and Syria? How much oil and gas has been forthcoming? Looks like a lot of red ink to me — and to DJT. He is no fool. He knows this is about empire-building and he says he is into America First. Is he BSing about that?
"The Politico folks don't like Trump and have presented a one-sided view of Peale, too. Par for the media, which is about persuasion rather than news and inquiry based on evidence and deliberation. So I call BS" [Tom]
Tom-- All the Peale quotes I provided were from Wikipedia, not Politico. Sorry if that was not clear. I thought the Politico article was unbiased (as is Wikipedia).
Peale apparently advocated abandoning critical thinking in favor of positive thinking.
Here's my opinion: A lot of successful people are bad people and should not be admired or emulated. Trump falls into this category.
Their success can be explained by positive thinking and self-delusion. As Scientific American put it: Living a Lie: We Deceive Ourselves to Better Deceive Others
Peale apparently advocated abandoning critical thinking in favor of positive thinking.
That is true with a big qualification. In a lot of such matters, critical thinking is either not possible or not practical. In which case, magical thinking is the fall back.
For example, probably a majority of people are incapable of critical thinking, because they don't have the skills, the intellectual ability, or the relevant data, or they just get it wrong for whatever reason, usually having something to do with cognitive-affective bias.
I am actually a big proponent of magical thinking depending on circumstances, which is much of real life in the world, where humans are "condemned to be free" in an environment where uncertainty prevails. Philosophers since Nietzsche, especially, have been occupied with this conundrum. It's the basis of existentialism in some ways. Magical thinking inoculates the absurdity of life.
If you study philosophy and take it seriously, then if you are hard nosed about "critical thinking, you are likely to end up a mess psychologically. Ergo, Kierkegaard and the necessity for "the leap of faith" (magical thinking).
As Adams points out, critical thinking is death politically when the vast majority of the population of voters thinks magically as they now do. And even those capable of critical thinking don't have the relevant data.
The only people that actually know what's going based on access to data on are those that make up the deep state, and deep state is divided by silos, with different silos isolating data associated with its turf.
So one has a choice among positive thinking ("hope"), just ignoring what's happening (the ostrich maneuver), or thinking, "We're fucked."
I’ve seen some pretty good results with positive affirmations (ofc in other people)
I think when Trump is out there saying things like “jobs are moving back” (and then btw today we see trade deficit sky high...). he doesn’t react to the facts he still says “jobs are coming back” in order to lead the thinking of the decision makers...
“So one has a choice among positive thinking ("hope"), just ignoring what's happening (the ostrich maneuver), or thinking, "We're fucked."
Don’t discount our knowledge Tom... they might be in the decision making roles but imo we know more than they do... a lot more...
“How many trillions has the US sunk into Afghanistan, Iraq, LIbya, and Syria?”
Yes but not on his watch Tom... he probably wants to run a break even on his watch... “take the oil!” Etc...
He’s probably telling the theater commanders to confiscate the oil “so Isis doesn’t get the money!” and then sell it off to defray costs of the operation...
We won’t go over into ibril or wtf this new area is called as there is no way to make munnie over there...
A lot of successful people are bad people and should not be admired or emulated.
As I have said previously, show me one that is not a thug. It's nigh impossible to be a good person and rise in a capitalist society owing to the institutional arrangements that select good people out and this is ever more the case the higher up one goes.
IIRC, Jesus had some words for this. There's nothing new under the sun.
If you want to admire someone, look to perennial wisdom and those committed to living the good life in the classical sense rather than the contemporary one.
The reason that many are enraged at Trump is that he is up front about what they do not admit about themselves even to themselves. It's projection.
It may seem that I am approving of Trump. That is not the case at all. He is symptom of a deep malaise and it doesn't have all that much to do with the personality that this gets focused on. It's not going away when Trump goes away. This society as run its course on the present trajectory.
Matt: "Maybe we’ll stay as long as it takes to get the munnie back from the oil..."
Yet again Matt's mainlining fantasy from the imaginings of a unicorn in cloud cuckoo land while high on fentanyl and dancing with Elvis, I see. It's an eventful life you lead. Meanwhile back on planet earth...
Their success can be explained by positive thinking and self-delusion. As Scientific American put it: Living a Lie: We Deceive Ourselves to Better Deceive Others>
This is what I was thinking of. It boils down to the stories we tell ourselves, tell others, agree with affiliates on and disagree with opponents over.
Don’t discount our knowledge Tom... they might be in the decision making roles but imo we know more than they do... a lot more...
But in a very narrow band.
“It's nigh impossible to be a good person and rise in a capitalist society owing to the institutional arrangements that select good people out”
Well then why is the left so jealous of them?
F them....
You guys are exactly like evangelists... what are you trying to “save them!” ???
F them...
“It boils down to the stories we tell ourselves,”
I’ve seen this happen via daily affirmations (in others)....
https://www.freeaffirmations.org/what-are-positive-affirmations
Ive personally seen this work in people... (again not me...)
If Assad was smart he would propose the one golf course in Syria to be converted over into a Trump National Damascus and Trump would then be his biggest supporter ...
I am pretty certain that Trump wants out of Syria and is willing to cut a deal if he can be seen as winning. That is not possible with the US losing on the ground. So Trump can't get a deal yet. It's possible he could choose to escalate to improve the barganing position of the US.
In addition, I see trump as being in a group of one in the circles of the elite. He has his bae behind him and has warned that if he is ousted, there will be blood in the streets. That may not be hyperbole.
It's very difficult even for the president as the world's most powerful person to maneuver the ship of state, which is an extremely heavy deep-draft vessel that only turns slowly. Therefore, his power lies mostly in the ability to say no, as well as to fire
subordinates. Otherwise, he has to fit his agenda to what others are willing to support and execute.
"A lot of successful people are bad people and should not be admired or emulated." [me]
"As I have said previously, show me one that is not a thug. It's nigh impossible to be a good person and rise in a capitalist society owing to the institutional arrangements that select good people out and this is ever more the case the higher up one goes." [Tom]
Not all successful people / people who have risen in a capitalist are equivalent in terms of their leadership qualities. While positive thinking helps to some degree, in excess it brings tyrants and idiots. So I would say that FDR, Bernie Sanders, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and many others are superior to Trump in terms of leadership ability. Churchill was superior to Hitler and Stalin. Gorbachev as wsuperior to Churchill and Reagan.
Machiavelli wanted his princes to know what they were doing, even as they intimidated and blustered their way through the political scene. But the best leaders have a social goal in mind as opposed to solely power for power's sake. This may be magical thinking, but if so it's the kind of magical thinking I can support. Trump is a narcissist, and has no societal goals, in my opinion.
Corection: "Magical thinking inoculates the absurdity of life" should be "inoculates against the absurdity of life."
The greatest leaders have been thugs. Churchill was a thug and in many ways a nut case, for example, but without him Britain may have been lost. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were thugs (slaveholders), and even Abraham Lincoln was a thug in forcing the union in order to end slavery.
FDR, Bernie Sanders, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and many others are superior to Trump in terms of leadership ability.
Too early to write the history of this. History has dealt Trump a particularly challenging hand and if he is deemed to have played in well in hindsight, he will be regarded more highly that all the above, other than FDR, who was dealt a particularly tough hand to play and he managed it reasonably well. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan were all involved in wars of choice.
Trump is a narcissist, and has no societal goals, in my opinion.
Trump ran a on a very positive social program for his base, which is the base that FDR sewed up for Democrats until Lyndon Johnson promoted civil rights followed by Richard Nixon launching his Southern strategy that flipped "the solid South" since Republican Lincoln ended slavery. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton finished the job with their move to the right, followed by the Democrats emphasis of identity politics.
Trump's base and the GOP rank and file continue to be satisfied with his performance on what they view as their behalf economically. The America Firsters are disappointed that he has not withdrawn from Syria though. They would like to see a more American homeland-centric foreign policy than a far-flung imperial one.
Tom Hickey:Abraham Lincoln was a thug in forcing the union in order to end slavery.
Well, if that's being a thug, we need more thugs, some thugs are the best of humanity then. Using the word thug normally, it is absurd, self-contradictory to call slaveholders thugs - correctly - but also people who use force to end slavery, thugs .
If I kept a slave in my basement, would the police be thugs if they used force to arrest me?
The civil war was a "moral war," that is, deeply ideological.
The only just war is a defensive war.
If he were a moral person and not a thug, Lincoln should just have let the South go their own way. Instead, Lincoln chose to play God.
The argument the the war was just and necessary because slavery invites the liberal interventionist principle, "This war is just and necessary because …. (fill in the blank).
That principle is BS through and through. As we are now seeing with endless war based on "human rights."
See Paul Robinson, Double Standards and the Rules-Based Order
I agree with you Tom. Confederates were "bad" because they fought for their independence and lost. American colonists were "good" because they fought for their independence and won.
"History is the lies that the victors agree on." ~ Napoleon
"The civil war was a "moral war," that is, deeply ideological." I disagree. The Civil War was fought over money and not started by Lincoln but by bankers who were intent on keeping the US as a supplier for British manufactures and finance. The Confederates were bad because they fought FOR SLAVERY. The people of the South were foolish because they defended a system that opposed their own welfare. The salve kept the price of labor down. Had it not been for people like Lincoln the US would have become another India.
Yes, I agree that the civil war was a moral war.
Just because some wars fought on the basis of human rights are BS, that doesn't mean all are. Intervention can be the moral, as well as pragmatic, thing to do, in my opinion.
"The civil war was a "moral war," that is, deeply ideological." I disagree. The Civil War was fought over money and not started by Lincoln but by bankers who were intent on keeping the US as a supplier for British manufactures and finance.
I agree with this, too. Economics and finance are always the deeper cause. It was not just the Northern bankers and industrialists though. The bulk of the capital of the South was in slaves, permitted under the US Constitution at the time. The South was facing not only economic ruin but the end of their way of life.
Read the Robinson article I cited above about the complexification of this issue in general and wrt to the Civil War.
That said, the rationale of the Civil War was "moral war" on the part of the Hamiltonians, who held a different view of the US Constitution from the Jeffersonian Confederates. Robinson explains this.
The South was fighting for its existence, while the North was fighting on the basis of it Hamiltonian viewpoint and selling the war on moral grounds rather than self-defense.
Why was Lincoln a thug. Add up the carnage in pursuit of an ideology and, of course, follow the money.
Just because some wars fought on the basis of human rights are BS, that doesn't mean all are. Intervention can be the moral, as well as pragmatic, thing to do, in my opinion.
I agree with this, but it is complicated and there is a lot of nuance involved, which is already on the table in the circles that discuss this kind of thing.
Consult the Robinson article I posted above and get back. This deserves an informed discussion. It's a big deal.
“Economics and finance are always the deeper cause.” ~ Tom Hickey
Yes. Lincoln simply wanted to prevent the Confederacy from gaining independence.
Many of America’s “founding fathers” had slaves, e.g. Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, James Madison, George Washington, etc. – but these people were “good” because America won its war of independence. The Confederacy was “evil” because it lost. People who think the U.S. Civil war was about slavery are ignorant and self-righteous.
Slavery was irrelevant to the Civil War. Lincoln himself didn’t care about slavery. Lincoln wrote the following...
“If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.”
https://www.quora.com/Did-Abraham-Lincoln-say-If-I-could-save-the-union-without-freeing-any-slave-I-would-do-it
Most Northerners and Southerners were racists. Consider the New York draft riots of 13-16 July 1863. The U.S. government allowed rich people to avoid military conscription by paying a fee of $300 (equivalent to about $9,000 today). New Yorkers rioted against the draft, but instead of attacking rich whites, they attacked poor blacks, lynching 120 of them, burning down their houses throughout the city, and permanently driving them out of Manhattan. White rioters also destroyed the homes and churches of abolitionists and black sympathizers.
Yet, they claimed that only the South was racist.
This b.s. continues today.
Tom:The civil war was a "moral war," that is, deeply ideological.
Sure, if you want to call it that - imho the word "ideological" does a lot more harm than good.
Yes, a moral, good morality, a good ideology. Pro-Good ideology is Good.
"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong" (Lincoln)
The South was fighting for its existence, while the North was fighting on the basis of it Hamiltonian viewpoint and selling the war on moral grounds rather than self-defense.
Hogwash. The white Southerners were fighting for their purported "right" to enslave, murder, rape, torture etc black Southerners. If I go to do the same to you and yours, the thugs are those who stop me from murdering and raping. Yeah, right. Listen to what you are saying!
Why was Lincoln a thug. Add up the carnage in pursuit of an ideology and, of course, follow the money.
Tom, to this extent, these ignorant and historically inaccurate beliefs show that you do not understand what your are saying. You do not understand the word "morality" or "thug". Lincoln was a great man, a fucking saint as much as any human being ever has been. Almost all of humanity has always seen him that way. Accurately. Most white Southerners probably do now and many did back then even. People who propagate such pseudointellectual nonsense deserve the obloquy implicit in the word "thug" not Lincoln.
You should try to learn some history and apply some common sense, like GLH's & Detroit Dan's.
Mr. Nonviolence Gandhi had some choice things to say about this kind of nonviolence, this kind of criticism of "violence".
Konrad:People who think the U.S. Civil war was about slavery are ignorant and self-righteous.
Slavery was irrelevant to the Civil War. Lincoln himself didn’t care about slavery. Lincoln wrote the following.
No, the war was about slavery, and basically nothing but slavery. Everybody knew it at the time.
Read Confederate VP Alexander Douglas's Cornerstone Speech. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate General and founder of the Ku Klux Klan: "If this war ain't about slavery, then what the hell is it about?" If you want a highly intelligent and insightful intellectual defense, cheerleading for slavery, read George Fitzhugh.
Lincoln, as everyone knew and knows, cared deeply about slavery. For starters, read the rest of that edited quote. Always that same mangled quote, that people who bring up the neo-Confederate, Dunning School "The Civil War was not about slavery" nonsense.
Tom:Lincoln should just have let the South go their own way.
Do people even know how the war actually started? Who shot first? North or South?
One well-known "left" historian, Howard Zinn, repeatedly answers this wrongly. He is so fervent to slander the good guys like Lincoln that he is more neo-Confederate than the neoConfederate revisionists!
Southron die-hards actually know the history though and would crack up if they heard Zinn. Airhead northern liberal audiences of Zinn didn't, so he got away with presenting in places a Martian, not a People's History of the Civil War.
In the other direction, Marx criticized Lincoln as an ultra-legalistic "trimmer" - passively reacting, accommodating the South and rather than acting. Only at first until he realized and said he was the great "Hegelian hero" of the age and the US Civil War the great world-historic event of the age.
@ Calgacus.
Read the Robinson artical I cited about and then we can talk.
Your argument is pretty much the same as the idealists vs. the realists, both the liberal interventionists and the neoconservatives. It is grounded not in absolutes criteria but American and exceptionalism and Western values (in a particular interpretation of them) as moral absolutes.
Yes, a moral, good morality, a good ideology. Pro-Good ideology is Good.
You are aware that this is the basis for justification of liberal internationalism and liberal interventionism, as well as neoconservatism?
"When we do it, it is right and just, because we are good. When they do it, it is wrong and unjust, because they are evil."
Again, read the Robinson piece, which summarizes the various aspects of ethical and political thinking on this.
BTW, this all hinges on those pesky "enduring questions." It's complicated and nuanced, and eludes definitive answers based on universal precepts because it is situational.
One of the "situational problems" is that leaders (claim they are) are privy to information in their decision-making that "they cannot tell anyone," so we have to trust them.
On the other side, opponents understand the framing of the argument differently and where one side sees good, the other side sees evil. It's "dialectical". The aporia is resolved by one side "winning," although when it is over, both sides of the battlefield are strewn with corpses that were mostly cannon fodder.
II am told that in the Russian Orthodox Christian tradition, there is no "just war" doctrine. All wars are unjust but sometimes necessary, e.g., self-defense. But the winner still emerges with bloody hands.
Disclosure: I admit to having been affected personally in my views on such issues by Vietnam. In my view, those that don' t know war should just STFU about the morality of war and being on the side of the good and righteous.
Of course, those that lost buddies or dear ones will disagree with this, because then they would have to admit the folly and futility of it all, which they cannot bring themselves to do.
From Lincoln’s inaugural address: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Even the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 left slavery intact in border states that hadn't seceded.
But…whatever. You are entitled to your opinion, however childish it may be.
Next you’ll be righteously crowing about the mythical holocaust.™
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Did Lincoln have a "lawful" right or obligation to defend "the Union"?
For Hamiltonians, yes. For Jeffersonians, no.
Again, if you haven't yet and are interested in this question, read the Robinson piece I cited above for the background and details.
"All wars are unjust but sometimes necessary, e.g., self-defense. But the winner still emerges with bloody hands."
Agreed. Anyone who claims otherwise is insane.
The people who crow loudest for war are always those who have never experienced any aspect of war.
“Again, if you haven't yet and are interested in this question, read the Robinson piece I cited above for the background and details.” ~ Tom Hickey
I’ll read it, but my central point is that I reject all claims that during the Civil War the North was 100% righteous and good. The only reason why people claim that the North was “good” is that the North won.
In the run-up to the war, the South felt that Northern politicians were steering all the nation’s resources to the North.
Anyway, if average Northerners cared so much about slavery, then why did they have to be drafted? Why did draft rioters attack poor blacks instead of rich whites who were screwing them?
Death to childish self-righteousness.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Incidentally my comments do not mean I am a Confederate sympathizer. It's just that I am not a fan of war, or of sanctimonious self-serving rationalizations for war.
This whole thread seems to overlook that there was no state of peace preceding the civil war. Slavery was war. A one-sided, bloody, murderous war on black people. What happened in 1861 was not the outbreak of hostilities it was the culmination of them.
This whole thread seems to overlook that there was no state of peace preceding the civil war. Slavery was war. A one-sided, bloody, murderous war on black people. What happened in 1861 was not the outbreak of hostilities it was the culmination of them
BS. That's a purely moral argument not backed by the facts of law.
Slavery was legal under the US Constitution. All the signatories agreed to it as the law of the land.
Lincoln a lawyer, admitted that it was unlawful to suppress it without a constitutional amendment, which, of course, the South would not agree to.
The states were also sovereign in the US Constitution, and conceded some sovereignty to the federal government. This is spelled out in the document. There was no provision in the document prohibiting the right of sovereigns to exercise their sovereignty by seceding. The South had the law on their side, in their interpretation of their constitutional rights under the doctrine of enumerated powers, to which they believed to have agreed at the signing.
Lincoln was winging it on political grounds, that is, enforcing a Hamiltonian interpretation, and the war was conducted propagandistically on moral grounds.
This is what clever and cunning thugs do.
Did Lincoln think he was acting like a thug? I am not a mind-reader.
But a lot of thugs are either in denial or justify their thuggery on various specious grounds. e.g., based on ideology.
Was Hitler a thug. Of course. Did he think he was acting thuggishly? Again, I am not a mind-reader, but it is entirely possible that he BSed himself into believing that he was "saving the world," or was even off his rocker. But the facts of what he did remains.
Same with all wars, which almost always involve many factors, other than the "good old" days of wars or conquest for "glory," and of course, territory. And to get the troops to fight there was booty. Now things are more complicated but the result is the same — a lot of dead and wounded.
"BS. That's a purely moral argument not backed by the facts of law." [...] "Same with all wars, which almost always involve many factors, other than the "good old" days of wars or conquest for "glory," and of course, territory."
That's an argument steeped in Lost Cause revisionism, papering over a state of war with self-declared "legality". An argument that rests on negotiating away the humanity of black people to frame the war as a thing that only with whites spilling each others' blood with black people as mere props and spoils to be fought over.
Drawing at length from this piece from Ta-Nahesi Coates, I strongly suggest clicking through to read the whole thing:
"For African Americans, war commenced not in 1861, but in 1661, when the Virginia Colony began passing America’s first black codes, the charter documents of a slave society that rendered blacks a permanent servile class and whites a mass aristocracy. They were also a declaration of war.
Over the next two centuries, the vast majority of the country’s blacks were robbed of their labor and subjected to constant and capricious violence. They were raped and whipped at the pleasure of their owners. Their families lived under the threat of existential violence—in just the four decades before the Civil War, more than 2 million African American slaves were bought and sold. Slavery did not mean merely coerced labor, sexual assault, and torture, but the constant threat of having a portion, or the whole, of your family consigned to oblivion. In all regards, slavery was war on the black family.
African Americans understood they were at war, and reacted accordingly: running away, rebelling violently, fleeing to the British, murdering slave-catchers, and—less spectacularly, though more significantly—refusing to work, breaking tools, bending a Christian God to their own interpretation, stealing back the fruits of their labor, and, in covert corners of their world, committing themselves to the illegal act of learning to read. Southern whites also understood they were in a state of war, and subsequently turned the antebellum South into a police state. In 1860, the majority of people living in South Carolina and Mississippi, and a significant minority of those living in the entire South, needed passes to travel the roads, and regularly endured the hounding of slave patrols.
It is thus predictable that when you delve into the thoughts of black people of that time, the Civil War appears in a different light. In her memoir of the war, the abolitionist Mary Livermore recalls her pre-war time with an Aunt Aggy, a house slave. Livermore saw Aggy’s mixed-race daughter brutally attacked by the patriarch of the home. In a private moment, the woman warned Livermore that she could “hear the rumbling of the chariots” and that a day was coming when “white folks’ blood is running on the ground like a river.”
Should read "...a thing that only began with..."
@ geerussell
That's one way of looking at it. There are always many others and where compromise cannot be reached, there is conflict.
Look, in my view the conquest of the America was morally unjust. To rectify this injustice, everyone other than the descendants of the indigenous peoples should be required either to leave the Americas and go back to their ancestral lands or else pay restitution with compound interest. Admittedly, this involves genetic issues and determining percentages, but that is an institutional matter to be resolved.
OK, I am half-joking, since that is so impractical it will never be considered. But the principle of restitution stands and it is recognized in custom and law almost universally.
Leaving out the indigenous people of the Americas, the slave labor that was imported was grossly unjust and deserves compensation. Much of that happen prior to the Civil War, but since restitution was not made then, it is now required at compound interest. Moreover, the suppression of people of color did not end with Emancipation, and the conditions have not been corrected yet. More compensation due.
In addition, feudalism and capitalism also involve slavery to some degree in my view and compensation for that is required, as well as overhauling the system to eliminate wage labor, which, in effect, ends capitalism and institutes socialism as public ownership of the means of production.
As a libertarian, I subscribe to the non-aggression principle. At the same time, I recognize that governance is required although not a modern state or government. This is a debate worth having. Murray Rothbard has presented such a model, for example.
I don't subscribe to Rothbard's model or other right libertarian models for reasons I am willing to discuss. But essentially, I don't think that individual sovereignty is absolute. I think that the individual, all of whom are unique hence diversity, must be distinguished from the person, personhood being universal and identical. Humans in society have limited individual rights but universal human rights. BTW, this also reconciles liberalism (individual liberty) with traditionalism (universal values).
This discussion reminds of something I read yesterday: Thoughts on Samuel Pepys:
I've been listening to the diary of Samuel Pepys on audio. He wrote it between 1660 and 1669 while living in London and working in the British government. He’s unusual among diarists in that he was interested in everything from politics to fashion to music, spared no detail even about his own faults, and witnessed some major historical events.
At first I was enjoying the details about daily life and their similarities and differences with daily life now — What he thinks of his new wig! The argument he and his wife had about whether the dog should sleep in their room! Boy, there are a lot of public executions!
Maybe the most striking thing to me is how much he writes about sex... The fastest way to find the sex passages is to search for the phrase “God forgive me,” which basically always means the rest of the sentence is him trying to figure out how to get it on with his servants, his friends’ servants, his friends’ wives, or random strangers... Maybe the nerviest episode is where he tries to grope a woman in church, she threatens to stab him, and he just moves on and tries another woman in the next pew instead...
Another (literally) striking aspect of the diary is the casual attitude toward physical violence. He routinely complains about injuring himself while beating his employees... “I sent my boy home for some papers, where, he staying longer than I would have him, and being vexed at the business and to be kept from my fellows in the office longer than was fit, I become angry, and boxed my boy when he came, that I do hurt my thumb so much, that I was not able to stir all the day after, and in great pain.” ... He has a similar approach to his wife. After giving her a black eye, he does admit to being “vexed at my heart to think what I had done, for she was forced to lay a poultice or something to her eye all day, and is black, and the people of the house observed it.” It’s unclear how much of the vexation is due to the black eye and how much is due to the servants noticing. ...
At one point she gives him a letter asking for him to hire her a female companion so she won’t be so lonely during the day while he’s gone (working/drinking/wenching). He burns the first copy without reading it. When she reads him a second copy, he’s afraid it will become an embarrassment to him. What’s a husband to do? Destroy her documents... The scene reminded me of literature-class debates about The Taming of the Shrew. Surely Shakespeare didn’t really mean the happy ending (Katherina abandons her pride and submits to her husband’s every whim) unironically? He wasn’t really celebrating the breaking of a woman’s will, was he? After reading this passage, written about 70 years after The Taming of the Shrew, I find it a lot more likely that the answer is no. A 17th-century audience may have just found this good comedy...
I come away with both a sense of disappointment about human nature (this is how powerful people treat less powerful people if they can get away with it) and also a sense of progress.
If it’s no longer acceptable in developed countries to beat your employees until your arm is sore, if destroying someone else’s documents is now considered abuse rather than a husband’s right— maybe there’s hope...
One of the main reasons animal advocacy doesn’t appeal to me at an intuitive level is a sense that the power imbalance here is eternal and intractable. The economic change involved would be staggering. To teach my children that animals are not there for us to use would require a lot more critical reading of most of our books. (“Why is there a pig on Old MacDonald’s farm?”) In short, it wouldn’t be easy.
But the idea that Pepys’ wife could earn her own money or choose her own friends was likewise unthinkable to him in 1663. A lot has changed, and it wasn’t easy.
"That's one way of looking at it. There are always many others and where compromise cannot be reached, there is conflict."
Respectfully, I want to pick away at that in the specific context of the civil war because when you invoke compromise I go back to this, quoting again from Coates:
"Burns also takes as his narrator Shelby Foote, who once called Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave-trader and Klansman, “one of the most attractive men who ever walked through the pages of history,” and who presents the Civil War as a kind of big, tragic misunderstanding. “It was because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise,” said Foote, neglecting to mention the Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the fact that any further such compromise would have meant the continued enslavement of black people."
In 1861 these were not abstract questions of compensation for past injustice. Slavery was a continuing enterprise in that moment. For black people with literal skin in the game what is the acceptable compromise where the institution of slavery remains? White northerners and white southerners haggle out a compromise on how to divvy up the territory & profits while black people concede to accept chattel status?
Slaves and land were the chief sources of capital for the South. Without the slaves and lacking modern technology, the land was relatively worthless.
Emancipation was the largest single destruction of capital the world had seen up until then, and its' probably still the largest overnight.
This is why slavery was written into the US Constitution and agreed to by the signers.
Where did the land come from? It was stolen by conquest from the indigenous peoples.
The same thing with capitalism. What would happen if private ownership of property and wage labor were declared illegal with the stroke of a pen?
Slavery was a one-issue matter, like abortion now (conservative Catholic Kavanaugh includes birth control under abortion). In the view of those opposing abolition, compromise would just be abetting the incremental strategy for total abolition.
The US is now involved in another conflict over "the right to life" in which there is no permanent compromise since the moral cohort will continue to push from more and more restrictions on abortion and its availability.
These are incompatible views, one based on morals (ideology) and the other on economics and law (commerce).
Is abortion worth fighting another civil war over?
I'm going to reject the analogies and comparisons because specificity is humanizing. Analogies and abstractions are de-humanizing. Black people aren't drill presses, or tractors, or animals, or patches of land, or embryos, or fetuses. The claim asserted by whites on black bodies was not legitimate because blacks are people. Emancipation destroyed illegitimate capital claims and liberated black people from human chattel slavery.
There is no legitimacy in putting black humanity up for debate as if there's some gray area or a slippery slope. It's not an open question where reasonable people can agree to disagree.
Yes, I keep emphasizing people. It's non-negotiable. A simple, self-evident fact irreconcilable with the wealth, privilege, and status conferred on whites by the institution of slavery. Actual humanity--morals (ideology) in your terms--is neither separable from nor subordinate to how humans organize their activities (commerce).
Quoting again from the previous source:
"For realists, the true story of the Civil War illuminates the problem of ostensibly sober-minded compromise with powerful, and intractable, evil. For radicals, the wave of white terrorism that followed the war offers lessons on the price of revolutionary change. White Americans finding easy comfort in nonviolence and the radical love of the civil-rights movement must reckon with the unsettling fact that black people in this country achieved the rudiments of their freedom through the killing of whites."
You've made it clear you fully grasp the economic stakes of slavery and I'm not disputing that. I'm asserting that the human stakes, the rudiments of freedom for black people, are a superior claim and further that blood was the only away to achieve it.
It's not hypothetical, white southerners declared in their own words witholding these rudiments of freedom for black people as their casus belli and followed through on that in blood and treasure.
Are the rudiments of freedom for black people worth fighting a civil war over? Yes.
Well said, gee!
Of course, I agree with you and if you follow my comments, you realize that I am as radical or more radical than anyone else here, and I haven't even told you the whole story of my story.
The point is that my view is my view. I would imagine that not many would agree with what I have put out there here, and I know that almost no one would give credence my whole story.
The point is that we live in a world of different world views. When they come into contact, they often clash wrt to frameworks, criteria, assumptions, etc. Usually, this defines "cultures" as social systems.
Liberalism is about tolerance of alternative views and compromise where they conflict.
This is not always at option for various situational reasons but also owing to cognitive-affective bias.
When this is happens, conflict emerges. If conflicts cannot be resolved based on institutional arrangements to which the parties subscribe, or a arrangement they come to, such as arbitration, the options remaining are exclusion and violence.
My position is that violence is only permitted in self-defense and never to advance policy or ideology. This raises questions over when it is justified to come to the aid or others, or give assistance, or intervene in other ways.
Percepts like non-violence other than in self-defense are generalities. They need to be adapted situationally, as Robinson points out in his summary of the issues.
At what point does war become the option? Self-defense is pretty well-agreed upon, and as a practical matter is it supported by evolutionary theory and history.
That again is situational. The problem with being situational is that many factors are involved and justifications generally focus on one or a few, and also tend to ignore self-interest, group interest and conflict of interest.
For example, did the native have the right to resist conquest of their territory. It would seem obvious to most that they did. But looking at the history, that was rejected by the colonists, who held that the original inhabitants had no rights since ….. (they were not civilized, were pagans, were savages...)
Did the slaves have the right to revolt. Many people would say yes. But they had no such right under the US Constitution and the states had the right to put down revolts as a matter of their sovereignty. Moreover, the slaves were not revolting en masse and so the North was not coming to their aid, but rather acting on their behalf as a matter of choice. What was the justification. It was moral (ideological).
As similar thing is now transpiring in Syria and the parallels should be obvious without my drawing them. Again, we stand on the brink of war.
Some lines have to be drawn and there are no absolute criteria other than those that human stipulate as being absolute, unless one believes in some holy book — but which holy book is the correct one? How to know for sure?
If these were simple, there would be no such issues that arise as enduring questions.
The bottom line is that either everything goes and might makes right, or lines have to be drawn somewhere and somehow. Is there are compelling argument that applies universally about how this is to be done based on a justification that everyone accepts as evident.
No? I didn't think so.
I am drawing a line. No violence other than in self-defense. But I admit this is situational, too. Moreover, what constitutes violence is ambiguous and there is disagreement over this.
Is your heading starting to hurt thinking about all this? Well, just maybe if people seriously debated these issues before taking action, there might be less violence in the world. Some people might even change their already made up minds.
"I am drawing a line. No violence other than in self-defense. But I admit this is situational, too. Moreover, what constitutes violence is ambiguous and there is disagreement over this." [...] "My position is that violence is only permitted in self-defense and never to advance policy or ideology. This raises questions over when it is justified to come to the aid or others, or give assistance, or intervene in other ways."
Quoting again, slavery is violence:
"[Frederick] Douglass is a masterful narrator, and one of the things he communicates is that slavery is not a sanitized form of forced labor, but first and foremost, a system of violence, an assault on black bodies, black families, and black institutions. This all gets lost in the talk about economics and robbing people of their work. That robbery was abetted by the destruction of people. For me no book better captures this then Thavolia Glymph's Out of The House of Bondage. Glymph is specifically interested in the violence that allegedly mild slave-mistresses visited upon their slaves. By focusing on what people think of us as the mildest form of slavery (the domestic) Glymph reveals that enslavement is not violent sometimes, but is, itself, a form of violence."
I get that you're anti-war. So am I. I don't want the next war and would happily abdicate the various and several perpetual military conflicts we're currently engaged in. That said, it's not OK in service of anti-war philosophizing to throw black people under the bus as "others" recasting slavery as anything other than the violent war of aggression that it was.
The universe is a very violent place.
We humans understand violence the same way we understand hunger or thirst. We know when it is happening to us. I don’t think anyone needs to define violence to us.
What we do not understand is peace.
We think peace is some quiet place, in a forest with a tranquil stream. Or peace is when there are no wars. You could be sitting in a forest, in between the wars, and still there is a war raging inside of you. You don’t even need anyone else to be caught up in violence.
Peace is a feeling – that comes from the heart. In modern terms it is energy, a vibration, a presence. When it is absent there is no peace. Peace needs to be experienced in its infinite depth, to understand peace; to accept and understand a human being. This ability to feel peace, gives to a human being their sovereignty. It is the basis of respect; universal personhood; significance. A warrior is someone who defends peace.
Why is there domestic violence? If a person cannot feel peace inside of themselves, be at peace with themselves – then it is not possible to be at peace with anyone else.
Peace is not a matter of the issues. Peace is a matter of experience and being. Peace brings clarity to a human. When the mind flares up, greed flares up, the ego flares up, and a human being is not seen as a human being any more. Then we become less than who we truly are.
When a human being understands the self, there are no slaves and there are no masters – there is a human being and the beautiful possibility, of being fulfilled.
In the US if someone steals something and sells it to someone else what happens if it is found by the authorities, is it left in place or is it returned by law to its rightful owners. The way Hickey is talking those slaves volunteered to be slaves. But, the truth is they were stolen by the British and shipped to America. They were stolen goods and should have been returned. I am really surprised that Hickey is justifying slavery and condemning the people who opposed it. This is an eye opening revelation.
The way Hickey is talking those slaves volunteered to be slaves.
Show me where I have said that explicitly or implied it. Thinking that this is my position or implied by my view is erroneous.
I am previously on record here arguing against the any concept of individual sovereignty that permits "sovereign individuals" to surrender their sovereignty by becoming slaves. It is one of the reasons that I strongly oppose wage labor were persons even rent their time to become means for others.
To paraphrase Kant, that is which is end in itself, the human person, shall never be treated as a means. This is a key fundamental of liberalism strictly conceived. That is to say, a final good, a free will, shall never become the instrument of another will in a truly moral system.
Here is a short summary of Kant's political philosophy, which is based on the level of collective consciousness reflected in a society's culture and as a consequence in its institutions and their arrangements.
Thus, while Kant accepted the sovereignty of the individual will, he recognized that this posed a problem in groups. The challenge is to preserve freedom of one and all. He was a aware of the tyranny of the majority and therefore opposed direct democracy in which the majority of votes prevailed in favor of a constitutional democracy where the rights of the individual and minorities were constitutionally guaranteed.
For Kant, there were grades of constitution based on their moral stance, and this would be determined by the level of consciousness of the society as reflected in its culture and institutions. The higher the level of collective consciousness, the higher the level of universality exhibited, that is, the higher the level of "rationality."
BTW, failure to understand this about Kant and German liberalism leads to a failure to understand Hegel's philosophy of right, and failure to understand Marx, since he was responding in this context, which would be well known to the intelligentsia of the time.
German liberalism stand in contrast to the British classical liberalism of Locke, Bentham, and J. S. Mill. Anglo-American liberalism developed from British classical liberalism.
Hayek, an Austrian who was familiar with German liberalism, worked chiefly in the context of Anglo culture at the LSE. His world view can be seen as an attempt to combine German and Anglo-American liberalism, in addition to taking French liberalism into account. After all, "laissez-faire" is a French term. The Constitution of Liberty is his definitive statement of a position.
The matter of agreement among all these positions was that true liberty is constitutional liberty rather than individual license or the tyranny of the majority. While there were differences, the overall debate was in terms of constitutional governance in order to mediate the clashes among sovereign individuals in their exercise of individual liberty and to facilitate the emergence of a "common will" as the rule of law and equality of persons before the law so that justice would be distributed equally.
The context in which this debate began and took place was the historical dialectic between the cresting wave of authoritarian monarchical and aristocratic political system and the rising wave of liberal governance as government of, by and for the people based on popular sovereignty, grounded in the sovereignty of individuals as persons.
Marx attempted to take this debate to its logical conclusion but never produced even an outline of the envisioned outcome, for the simple reason that he assumed it would be the result of emergence in a complex adaptive system, hence unforeseeable. He simply attempted to lay out the logic that would lead from the present historical moment — capitalism, in which ownership is dominate — to the next moment —socialism, where people and the environment are dominant.
But, the truth is they were stolen by the British and shipped to America. They were stolen goods and should have been returned.
No moral need to return them (deport then) to their ancestral homeland. The moral need for restitution was to compensate them for unpaid labor plus damages and give them the choice of staying or returning.
Technically, those who stayed would have become citizens and entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizens. Practically, this was the case legally but practically it was denied to many of them at least until the Civil Rights Act, and in many case they are still not accorded fully status.
The case of the indigenous natives is more interesting. Restitution involves abandoning ownership of land owned by them and return to one's homeland, which is, of course, not practical since they now lack foreign citizenship. Therefore, the land should be return to the ownership of the rightful owners and the rest should pay rent on it, e.g, as land tax. The other option is to cut a deal that the original owners are willing to agree to.
Peace is not a matter of the issues. Peace is a matter of experience and being. Peace brings clarity to a human. When the mind flares up, greed flares up, the ego flares up, and a human being is not seen as a human being any more. Then we become less than who we truly are.
As usual, jrbarch gets to the heart of the matter. My head is starting to hurt from thinking about this because well-intentioned people keep reverting to a framing (capital, land, stolen goods) where instead human beings at parity with everyone else black people are implicitly stripped of humanity to be the thing negotiated over by different factions of white human beings.
Tom, that's exactly what happens in your analogy here:
The case of the indigenous natives is more interesting. Restitution involves abandoning ownership of land owned by them and return to one's homeland, which is, of course, not practical since they now lack foreign citizenship. Therefore, the land should be return to the ownership of the rightful owners and the rest should pay rent on it, e.g, as land tax. The other option is to cut a deal that the original owners are willing to agree to.
In your construction, indigenous natives and colonists are two groups of human beings who can conceivably lay legitimate claims to ownership over land because the premise of human beings owning land is acceptable as a foundation for organizing society and commerce. It follows naturally then that from an anti-war point of view it is reasonable to draw a line and say compromise first. Negotiate something the owners are willing to agree to. Make war over this issue in self-defense having exhausted all other possibilities.
So far, so good... now apply that lens to slavery:
White southerners and white northerners are two groups of human beings who can conceivably lay legitimate claims to ownership over other human beings because... wait, what? No. It's wrong from first principles. The only way to salvage it is to implicitly strip black people of humanity instead speaking of people as things. Capital, land, goods that may legitimately be owned, where compromise over that ownership is desirable as an alternative to war between the owners.
This is where the ex-ante reasoning you lay out regarding the civil war leads and why "Lincoln was a thug..." strikes such a discordant note. It's not about post-emancipation compensation for the damages of slavery it's about the way you're arguing that before the fact it would be acceptable and preferable to engage in compromise allowing slavery to continue in perpetuity as a foundation for society and commerce with both northern and southern whites actively complicit in it.
@ geerussell
Good that you pointed that out.
There was method in my madness in the above positions about restitution.
I was waiting a bit to lay it out to see if anyone would pick up on it.
The point I was seeking to make is that what one argues for oneself is also applicable to others under distributive justice, which is a foundation of liberalism.
If the rules of classical liberalism are applied strictly to self-sovereignty and ownership of private property in terms of the concept of personhood, then many conclusions follow, not all of which are comfortable for all liberals, such as any restitution, let alone the extreme form I have suggested follows logically from liberal principles and which property owners insist on for themselves and their inheritors.
This is another paradox of liberalism.
Again, these matters boil down to enduring questions about ontology, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, which also have a bearing on social and political philosophy. Most people don't reflect on this or study what others have thought about it in the past, from ancient times to the present. Rather, they get presume the framework and particular models in that framework into which they were socialized, enculturated and educated and they do this uncritically.
So when the presumptions begin to lead to unanticipated results they are surprised and confounded.
Moreover, these enduring questions concern overlapping area that do not fit seamlessly.
It's not about post-emancipation compensation for the damages of slavery it's about the way you're arguing that before the fact it would be acceptable and preferable to engage in compromise allowing slavery to continue in perpetuity as a foundation for society and commerce with both northern and southern whites actively complicit in it.
Not at all. The question is whether it was justifiable to kill and wound that many people in prosecution of a moral war. Be careful here, since similar reasoning is used in justification of the Korean War and Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, LIbya, and Syria, and potentially Iran, Russia and China.
Approximately 620,000 soldiers died from combat, accident, starvation, and disease during the Civil War. This number comes from an 1889 study of the war performed by William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore. Both men fought for the Union. Their estimate is derived from an exhaustive study of the combat and casualty records generated by the armies over five years of fighting. A recent study puts the number of dead as high as 850,000.
Roughly 1,264,000 American soldiers have died in the nation's wars--620,000 in the Civil War and 644,000 in all other conflicts. It was only as recently as the Vietnam War that the amount of American deaths in foreign wars eclipsed the number who died in the Civil War. source
continued
continuation
Lincoln had a choice. Did he make the right one going to internecine war? I argue not, and that the intervention did not really solve the problem it was supposed to, so that we are left with the consequences today, consequences that are fraying the fabric of the republic because we haven't dealt with it properly yet. At the end of the Civil War, the slaves were free legally but in name only, since whites in both North and South refused to grant them equality of personhood and equal rights culturally and behaviorally.
The Native Americans tribes are still in a sorry state largely because American society's demand that they integrate into it, which many of the descendants of the aborigines refuse to do, as they believe is their right not only morally but also under liberal principles. The treaties their forefathers made were not honored, now society as whole is dealing with the consequences.
Different people will have different moral POVs on this based on different reasoning in frameworks that incorporated values, so no answer can be shown to be definitive.
I expressed a liberal point of view that takes liberalism to a logical conclusion based on liberal principles that most liberals subscribe to, even thought there is a range of position within liberalism as a higher level ordering.
Black and Native Americans were deprived of their freedom and possessions legally perhaps. But it has been pointed out that the US Constitution and the way that treaties were dealt with was authoritarian rather than liberal, introducing contradictions into the founding documents.
On the one hand, Western liberalism, both Continental and Anglo-American sets forth certain principles about human personhood, human dignity and distributive justice in terms of the rule of law and equality of persons before the law. On the other hand, the practice of liberalism socially, politically and economically often violates these principles or sets them in conflict.
I justify the position I put forward as following liberal principles as closely as possible but when principles come into conflict then a consequentialist position is required. In may view, war as mass violence perpetrated by states is to be avoided at all cost and the method of addressing the issue gradually and intelligently is to be preferred. In other words, liberal interventionism requiring violence of war is ruled out other than in very exceptional circumstances where the consequences justify abrupt violent intervention with war or revolution.
Another issue is what to do about the US Constitution as an 18th century documenet that was flawed from the outset.
end
Lincoln had a choice. Did he make the right one going to internecine war? I argue not, and that the intervention did not really solve the problem it was supposed to, so that we are left with the consequences today, consequences that are fraying the fabric of the republic because we haven't dealt with it properly yet. At the end of the Civil War, the slaves were free legally but in name only, since whites in both North and South refused to grant them equality of personhood and equal rights culturally and behaviorally.
[...]
I justify the position I put forward as following liberal principles as closely as possible but when principles come into conflict then a consequentialist position is required. In may view, war as mass violence perpetrated by states is to be avoided at all cost and the method of addressing the issue gradually and intelligently is to be preferred. In other words, liberal interventionism requiring violence of war is ruled out other than in very exceptional circumstances where the consequences justify abrupt violent intervention with war or revolution.
This leaves me with questions. Was the enslavement of millions of black people not mass violence? What is your counterfactual, that is to say what does a gradual and intelligent liberal intervention to end slavery look like given the historically documented dependence upon and commitment to the institution on the part of southern whites?
It all sounds so much like the sort of more-convenient-season incrementalism MLK described here:
"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
Except that maybe instead of talking about furthering progress on civil rights in 1963 we'd still have been dithering about the timetable and circumstances for ending slavery.
This is where the ex-ante reasoning you lay out regarding the civil war leads and why "Lincoln was a thug..." strikes such a discordant note. It's not about post-emancipation compensation for the damages of slavery it's about the way you're arguing that before the fact it would be acceptable and preferable to engage in compromise allowing slavery to continue in perpetuity as a foundation for society and commerce with both northern and southern whites actively complicit in it.
Fallacy of false dilemma or black-or-white fallacy.
The option is not either war or slavery in perpetuity but taking a gradualist approach that avoids the massive violence of war based on liberal interventionism.
BTW, there is a similar debate about the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution.
I wrote an MA thesis on this decades ago and have thought about the issues involved since then. The title was Revolution or Evolution: Toward a Theory of Social Change, in which I argued for peaceful evolution instead of violent revolution other than in exceptional circumstances similar to self-defense.
BTW, this suggests an interesting hypothetical. What should the non-slave states and the federal government done in the case of a massive slave uprising in the slave states? Follow the law of the land at the time and help put it down, or intervene on behalf of the slaves by engaging in civil war?
Different people will have different POVs. Liberal interventionists would, of course, intervene. Many conservatives would follow the law of the land.
What about Socrates, who was condemned to death for impiety and corrupting the youth with false teaching. It was clear to all involved that all Socrates had to do was to go into self-exile to avoid death, which would have solved the issue equally well. But Socrates argued that this would set a bad example about following the law, so he chose to be executed rather than flee, as his friends encouraged him to do, of course. The Platonic dialogues relating this used to be required reading in a liberal education, but today few educated people are aware of them.
Post a Comment