Unless you'd hang their wives and daughters as well, the Lost Cause myth would still be around, possibly even stronger than ever with Davis as a martyr instead of as a disgrace who lost the war for the South.
Is the Myth of the Lost Cause a myth in of itself?
- Thread starter Jack Douglass
- Start date
No, but we are members of a society which can see has a lot of flaws that will cause future generations to harshly judge us, perhaps more harshly than we judge the Confederacy and with as much justification. But most of us wonder if we can really change things or we simply too busy living our lives to face the failings of our society. Maybe we do something half ass to soothe our conscience, like Stonewall Jackson did pre war teaching black Sunday School along with literacy (yes, it was illegal but it was done).
Yet most of us would defend our society warts and all if push came to shove, and excuse and justify it's flaws.
This is just what many or even most Confederates did.
So when I see people excusing things like starving civilans, even rape and essentially saying they deserved because they supported the Confederacy, I say look in the mirror, and ask, just how different are you?
That is what I'm trying to get at.
I didn’t actively participate in the subjugation and trade of people on the basis of race, so I feel like I’m a lot different from the Confederates.
Admiral Fischer
Banned
Do you think mourning for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an act of sympathizing with the Japanese imperialism?
When one thinks of it, the argument can be made that the South no longer being assured the ability to dictate to the Federal Government and other states with outright impunity had nearly as much to do with the abrupt demand for succession as Slavery itself. Trying to pass the former off as "fearing lack of representation" remains a white-wash attempt though.
OP in this chain of posts pointed out that we live in a society that is causing uncontrolled global warming, knows it's doing it, and knows on some level it at most cause our extinction and at least create millions of refugees, wars, and devastation of the natural world, which realistically, could lead to a very harsh judgement of our society.
Most of us don't lift much of a finger against the wrongs of our society which we know is happening and would probably defend our society very self rightously, like most Confederates, if society was to come under threat.
I, a person who came of age post-Katrina, judge my parents and their predecessors for their role in my current future.
I again don’t see any relation to us judging the absolutely awfulness of chattel slavery in the nineteenth century, the Confederates who sought to perpetuate it, and the same former Confederates who made life awful for my ancestors post-war.
Well none of that makes sense to me. The soldiers and women who supported the South were upholding white supremacy and chattel slavery. I have no sympathy for them. Their deaths were unfortunate, but I have no sympathy for their cause or their sacrifice.
Admiral Fischer
Banned
I'm not sure if this wording make sense in English, but one can have sympathy for the other's suffering without sympathizing with their deed. Do you disagree?
In this case, I cannot sympathize for the suffering of those who volunteered.
Indeed there is a disturbing amount of fantasising that if the north went full Paraguay on the south America would end up becoming nice wise and mature just like Europe. Instead it would become a broken wreck on par with post opium wars China.
You do know that quite a lot of Chinese and Koreans (among others) find it hard to sympathize with the Japanese over the atomic bombings, right?
Not that I excuse them, but...
Admiral Fischer
Banned
About a hundred thousand of Koreans fell victim to the atomic bombing and about two thousands are still alive, just in the case you haven't noticed already.
StephenColbert27
Banned
Sherman's quote reflects what I feel about the secessionists who brought on the war and supported it.
I might empathize with them, but I have no sympathy for them, no more than I have sympathy for those Germans who supported the Nazis during their rise to power and after. The war was fought for (and often by) slavers. It is good that they lost, and shameful that more was not done to ensure that African Americans were not better treated and afforded the same rights.
Except the confederacy was less like Nazi Germany and more like Imperial WW1 Germany.
Sure, they didn't cause the same level of destruction, but considering that the Confederacy was almost purely built around the ideologies of racial superiority and mass slavery of perceived racial inferiors with a healthy dose of western hemisphere lebensraum thrown in for good measure, I'd think that the Nazis are a fairly reasonable comparison. Not that Imperial Germany is really a high bar to aspire to either.
I know that, but it doesn't stop stuff like the BTS T-shirt controversy from happening...