Gerrymandering: a tribute

[giblets]

Why doesn't Germany start a "Nazi History Month"? Only idiots would get riled up by that, right?

[Imran Siddiqui]

We still announce confederate history month....who cares? Is that inherently racist?

Yes.

[Ben Kenobi]

I don't see how, seeing as Margaret Sanger is honoured too.

[Lonestar]

Actually, Allen tried to hide the fact that his mother was Jewish. His mother taught him to hide it because she was afraid of discrimination. He doesn't identify as Jewish.

You've clearly been to the same fundraisers that he as been.

(I'll lay it out for you, my Dad IS Jewish and is a big time conservative GOP person who has seen Allen hustling and identifying with his Jewish heritage when it suits his needs)

No, I don't. I think it's a non-issue that pleases some idiots on the right and angers some idiots on the left who literally get paid to be upset at things that could theoretically qualify as offensive.

McDonnell has never done anything to "turn back the clock", as you say, on civil rights.

Interestingly, I've never once mentioned McDonnell in this thread, you have.

But declaring "Confederate History Month" in Virginia is similar to Germany declaring "Nazi History month". It's a tribute to a regime built on white supremacy.

And because I know you're going to try to claim otherwise...

Declaration of Causes of Seceding states

Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

Georgia

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic

The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state.

Texas

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

South Carolina

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River

So, at least 4 of the states specify slavery and anticipation of the Republican Abolitionist platform as reasons to secede. They also whine about the Feds *not* cracking down on States Rights...specifically in the case of the Fugitive Slave Act.

The Confederacy came into existence because of Slavery and White Supremacy. The Confederate leadership knew it. The counties that broke away in West Virginia and tried to break away in the Smokies knew it(the # of slaves in both regions being far below in the rest of the state). Much of the lower class knew it, the first Draft Riots in North America were in Southern Cities once it was discovered that overseers and slaveowners were exempt from the conscription law.

Idiots gonna idiot though, and do their best to pretend that the Confederacy was about anything other than slavery and white supremacy. That you're sitting there going "herp, well how could anyone but idiots on the left who get paid to be upset at things find that offensive?" is a tribute to the quality education that the Thomas Jefferson magnet school provides.

[Aeson]

A Gerrymanderer's worst nightmare

[Hauldren Collider]

Lonestar, your point might actually be salient if I actually believed that the Confederacy was about state's rights. I don't, and have in fact repeatedly bashed others on this site for promoting it. So why don't you put your strawmen away, you idiot.

I can also see you are still butthurt from getting rejected from TJ all those years ago. Are you trying to turn into Alby, repeatedly bringing up high school in some absurd attempt to claim that I am not actually well-educated?

[Lonestar]

It isn't a strawman, dickmilk. You're acting as if the setting up a month for tribute to a regime built on white supremacy isn't a adversarial stance towards minorities, and there's no reason for anyone to get worked up for it. The only possible reason I can think of as to why you'd think this way is if you're one of those "states rights" retards.

Because otherwise, it'll just be you not caring about the coloreds to begin with. In which case, go ahead and admit it and stop pleading ignorance.

[Lul Thyme]

I have some possibly naive questions about this whole gerrymandering business.

I assume they are trying to maximise the number of districts won in each state by redrawing borders, and each district is won on a winner takes all basis? (Correct me if I'm wrong here.)

The optimal strategy is then clear : draw the districts so that some you win by a hair's breadth, while making some extremely easily won districts for the opponent (so that votes are wasted).
My first question is : is this what is happening?

What I find strange though is that the optimal strategy is very fragile, very sensitive to the conditions. If a few voters change their mind, then the optimal solution you crafted might become the optimal solution for your opponent and the election turns into a landslide for the opponent. It seems to me this should reduce the incentive to gerrymander somewhat, but I've heard that it is still more common than ever.

How do they avoid this problem? Do they get to change the map every election?

[Zevico]

It isn't a strawman, dickmilk. You're acting as if the setting up a month for tribute to a regime built on white supremacy isn't a adversarial stance towards minorities, and there's no reason for anyone to get worked up for it. The only possible reason I can think of as to why you'd think this way is if you're one of those "states rights" retards.

Because otherwise, it'll just be you not caring about the coloreds to begin with. In which case, go ahead and admit it and stop pleading ignorance.

The study of history, Confederate or otherwise, is a means of educating the public. If Confederate history months successfully teaches its students about the causes of the Civil War, Southern Culture and the brief history of the Confederation it will have been a success. It seems to me as if it is misguided to rail against teaching history, particularly of such a momentous event. It seems to me that you would be better advised to rail against actual cases in which history is ignored and replaced with propaganda rather than the teaching of history as such.

[Dinner]

Gerrymandering is a problem to be sure and it steals the power of choice from every voter. Short of shooting all the politicians and starting over I don't see what can be done though as it would require a constitutional amendment passed by the very people who have a vested interest in maintaining the gerrymandered status quo.

[Elok]

No on Question 5

[Average TV-watching MD Voter]You mean there are other questions on the ballot besides 7? Oh yeah, there was that gay marriage one too. What does that have to do with districts?[/ATWMV]

Elok seems to be saying that Virginia isn't heavily gerrymandered except to the amount required by federal law. It's a pretty big state.

No, I'm saying its districts aren't as comically, obviously rigged (from a glance at a map) as some of MD's, let alone that Illinois masterpiece.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

The study of history, Confederate or otherwise, is a means of educating the public. If Confederate history months successfully teaches its students about the causes of the Civil War, Southern Culture and the brief history of the Confederation it will have been a success. It seems to me as if it is misguided to rail against teaching history, particularly of such a momentous event. It seems to me that you would be better advised to rail against actual cases in which history is ignored and replaced with propaganda rather than the teaching of history as such.

The idea of a confederacy based upon the concept of inherent inequality and more over a denial of the basic humanity of a portion of its consituent population is repugnant. That should be the overall lesson learned. That being said components and individuals within the confederacy and the union are worthy of study as intriguing human examples with both flaws and virtues. But to make a month commemorating (as opposed to say a month commemorating the civil war as a whole) the confederacy is akin to tacit approval of what the confederacy was about.

[regexcellent]

It seems to me to be making mountains out of molehills really.

[Barnabas]

what do you do if the congressional districts are supposed to have 600.000 inhabitants each and a State has 1.500.000 inhabitants, do you create 3 districts, one with only 300.000 inhabitants, or two with 750.000 inhabitants each.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

It seems to me to be making mountains out of molehills really.

Not really. It is an advocacy of one side of the conflict. Again people may admire the genius of Rommel in WWII or Lee (civil war) and even attempt to portray them as men of ethic and conscience through anecdotes, but to embrace the entirety of the side/movement in a commemorative month of reflection is wrong.