Why isn't this murder?

[kentonio]

The problem with that Proteus is that while yes in theory you are completely right, in practise it just ends up being used by apologists of the original crimes. 'Yes slavery was bad, but look our people were treated terribly too!' etc etc.

Obviously any crime against an innocent person is horrific, but the most important thing after things like WW2 and the Civil War was to ensure that it never happened again, and that the kind of thinking that led to war would not happen again. When even today minority rights are being subtly attacked in the south, its still not the time to let the moral waters be muddied.

[Guynemer]

Outstanding threadjack, gentlemen.

[Proteus_MST]

The problem with that Proteus is that while yes in theory you are completely right, in practise it just ends up being used by apologists of the original crimes. 'Yes slavery was bad, but look our people were treated terribly too!' etc etc.

I agree that this can be a problem ...
we have a wide range of this behavior with our rightists ...
on the one hand thematizing the crimes of allied soldiers against the german civilists (and soldiers)
with at the same time downplaying the crimes german soldiers/the state commited
(and of course with the always favored claim, that the concentration camps were just a lie, invented by the allied propaganda machine to let german people appear in a bad light and justify whatever measures the allieds wanted to do with germany )

I think with regards to crimes commited by the "good side" in the distant past it is a catch-22 ... they cannot be punished anymore, as the people who commited them usually aren´t alive anymore ... and if you thematize it, as you said, it can be used by the losers of the war to justify their own crimes ... but on the other hand, if you don´t thematize, they still can use this, by constructing conspiracy theories with regards to the cover-up of war crimes commited by the "good side".

IMHO the best lection that these past wars teach us is, that war crimes should be punished as soon as possible, even if it is your own side that commits them ... if they don´t they might haunt you in the future (well, nowadays this might be no too big problem anymore, as thanks to internet and rather free press in the western world, such crimes most of the time are uncovered very fast)

Obviously any crime against an innocent person is horrific, but the most important thing after things like WW2 and the Civil War was to ensure that it never happened again, and that the kind of thinking that led to war would not happen again. When even today minority rights are being subtly attacked in the south, its still not the time to let the moral waters be muddied.

I agree with regards to the situation in the american south (at least during the past century) ...
to be honest, when I in younger years, learned that even during the 60s there were still (mostly southern) states within the USA that had racial segregation (some even with regulating marriages between blacks and whites) I was, mildly expressed, a little bit surprised.
I would have expected that at least the western allied states would have learned from WW2, to what evil it can lead if one race considers itself to be different/superior to other races

[Dr Strangelove]

Sherman was a war criminal pure and simple. That seems to be your type. The scars of the Union's actions remain with the South even today. The county that I grew up in did not achieve its 1860 level of economic output again until 1980.

Don't blame the Union for the post-bellum economy of the South, blame Great Britain, France and the Suez Canal. By 1962 it was apparent that the Civil War was going to last for awhile and that the Union blockade was going to become nearly 100% effective, so investors in Great Britain and France looked for other sources of cotton and tobacco. They invested in plantations in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. By 1864 imports from those sources had replaced nearly 2/3rds of the average previous imports from the USA. When the war ended the investors didn't want to lose their shirts, so the governments of Great Britain and France levied customs duties specifically on American cotton and tobacco to give cotton and tobacco from European owned plantations in the Middle East an advantage. After 1870 Great Britain began subsidizing cotton and tobacco plantations in India in order to help prop up the Suez Canal.

Where my family is from, I grew up hearing stories from the children of the victims. Horrible truths of gang rapes and pillaging that you don't read in the history books...willful destruction of innocent people's means of survival...murder of children to "punish" their parents.

Simply put...take your hard on and f#*k yourself.

Most of the rape and pillage in the South that came near the end of the war was carried out by deserters - from both sides. Oh, and let's not forget there were also the stories about how "happy" the slaves were and how much better off they were. How much love and care they were given by their Christian masters, Why lordy, lordy, you'd have to wonder why any of them would ever run away or raise a hand against their rightful owners. It musta been them lies spread by them Yankee abolitionists. That's right, it's a matter of fact. My point here is that stories carried on by word of mouth from over a century ago but which lack substantiation may be somewhat less than factual. What we do have a great deal of substantiation of are numerous incidents in which after the war northern abolitionists came south and tried to teach blacks what their rights were murdered and of course the fact that plantation blacks were forced back into a type of de facto slavery. Something tells me that the people who tell you stories about rape and pillage during the Civil War don't talk much about the ways blacks were treated before and after - including child murder.

[Hauldren Collider]

So I think truthfully, there are three relevant, correct points here:

1. Slavery was bad.
2. The way the south was treated after the war was bad.
3. 1 was worse than 2, but that doesn't excuse 2.

[flash9286]

I agree with regards to the situation in the american south (at least during the past century) ...
to be honest, when I in younger years, learned that even during the 60s there were still (mostly southern) states within the USA that had racial segregation (some even with regulating marriages between blacks and whites) I was, mildly expressed, a little bit surprised.
I would have expected that at least the western allied states would have learned from WW2, to what evil it can lead if one race considers itself to be different/superior to other races

And now the South has the most integrated communities and the most integrated schools in the USA. While the North and Midwest remain incredibly segregated, but nobody ever mentions that.

[Hauldren Collider]

I get hard when I think about Sherman's March.

You are a monster. Do you also get a hard-on over the firebombing of Frankfurt? Oh right, you're a Nazi sympathizer. I forgot.

Other things Al probably gets a hard-on for: The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[Aeson]

So I think truthfully, there are three relevant, correct points here:

1. Slavery was bad.
2. The way the south was treated after the war was bad.
3. 1 was worse than 2, but that doesn't excuse 2.

3 is actually 2 points.

[Dinner]

Given that all of the deep south are welfare queens which get far more Federal tax money than they pay, that this has been true for at least the last century, I find it very curious that Plato would say the deep south hasn't gotten any financial help from the central government. Tax payers in big urban states have been footing the bill for everything from freeways to schools to stop signs. I'd say you folks have gotten a huge amount of financial help for a very extended period of time so please stop your endless whining and start accepting responsibility for your own bad policies.

[Dinner]

Good Lord...you have got to be kidding me. Are you really that ignorant?

Jon Miller isn't the ignorant one. You should watch this truly excellent PBS documentary "Slavery by another name" which documents how the south continued defacto slavery for almost 100 years after the end of the civil war. They'd literally criminalize being black and periodically have these sweeps where they'd trump up charges and arrest every black male in sight. Why? Simple, they figured out that slavery might officially be illegal but convict labor wasn't so they criminalized simply being black and created a vast prison labor system which they'd then rent the labor out to southern companies. States like South Carolina were getting 60% of their revenue via this system by 1880.

http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/watch/

So, yes, Jon Miller is right, and the south's race crimes continued long after the civil war was over.

[Dr Strangelove]

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20...-2-experts-say

Voice experts have examined the 911 tapes and concluded that it was not Zimmerman who was crying for help as Zimmerman had claimed. So, if the experts are to be believed, we have a young teen boy on the ground crying out for help over and over again as he was beaten by Zimmerman and then shot. It's hard not to see this as murder.

According to the funeral director there was no sign that Trayvon was in a fight, so it doesn't look like Trayvon was being beaten up by Zimmerman, nor was there any sign that Trayvan had used his fists on somebody. Maybe Zimmerman screams like a little boy.

[Al B. Sure!]

Sherman was a war criminal pure and simple. That seems to be your type. The scars of the Union's actions remain with the South even today. The county that I grew up in did not achieve its 1860 level of economic output again until 1980.

Where my family is from, I grew up hearing stories from the children of the victims. Horrible truths of gang rapes and pillaging that you don't read in the history books...willful destruction of innocent people's means of survival...murder of children to "punish" their parents.

Simply put...take your hard on and f#*k yourself.

What goes around comes around:

[Hauldren Collider]

Al, it doesn't even matter what some southerners were doing. You're a completely ****ed up human being if you think the level of suffering caused by Sherman's March was anything but horrible. Maybe it was necessary (and I think it probably was), but to derive pleasure from the thought of it suggests something rather unfortunate about your character.

[Al B. Sure!]

Al, it doesn't even matter what some southerners were doing. You're a completely ****ed up human being if you think the level of suffering caused by Sherman's March was anything but horrible. Maybe it was necessary (and I think it probably was), but to derive pleasure from the thought of it suggests something rather unfortunate about your character.

I don't literally get an erection from thinking about it. I only say that to get under the skin of Sloww and others.

[BlackCat]

I don't literally get an erection from thinking about it. I only say that to get under the skin of Sloww and others.

Al, that is probably the most pathetic and unbeliveable excuse ever made on poly.