Monday, April 12, 2010

Who Is Roland Martin

...And (per NewsBusters) why should I listen to his opinions on the Late Unpleasantness? Would he, perhaps, be a scholar investigating the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts? A writer addressing the socioeconomic conditions that made the war possible, let alone so bitter? An expert on terrorism?

Um, no. He's some guy on the radio, like Rush Limbaugh but way far the other way. And he might be at the bottom of a hole but he sure does keep right on diggin'!

War's over, Sir. Been over. Reconstruction and backlash? Also over. So's the Civil Rights fight that followed that. Last man I heard tell of standin' athwart the door to a polling-place with an ax-handle in his hand wasn't wearin' a sheet or even a Governor's suit, he was in New Black Panther regalia. And -- I guess you didn't notice? -- the current President of the Yew-Natted States is Af-, Af-, well, gee, I don't wanna give the surprise away, but you're gonna be delighted when you find out.

And in the meantime, there is a mountain of dead men -- Americans; kids, a lot of them -- from that bloody war who are gonna stay dead, no matter what you do or say. You can call all or some of them names if you like but it won't make any difference. They're still dead.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow I got all excited for a minute there. I thought you were going to talk about Roland Martin the fisherman. I loved his TV show.

http://www.fishingwithrolandmartin.com

Stranger said...

Rollie Baby has the "advantages" of a superior ten-to-a-class modern education.

We had 41 juniors in HS history, and spent a week on the "abomination tax" and its successors that made the War of Southern Secession inevitable.

But Rollie Baby saw a couple of one minute clips on the idiot box and now he's an "expert."

Even if Rollie Baby never stopped to think the price of an African just off the ship was above $10,000 in 1850 money; while you could hire an Irishman or a Scot who required nothing more than payday for $0.25 a day at that time.

Slavery was very much on the way out in 1860 - because it was uneconomic.

Stranger

Drang said...

And there I was thinking you were gonna write about Laugh-In...

Anonymous said...

O.K., war's over, but then why rub his (Gov. of VA) racism in people's faces?

Why kick that sleeping dog with both feet?

"Slavery was very much on the way out in 1860"

Slavery was the polestar of Southern politics from 1820 on. It was THE issue in all U.S. politics, heck, we even formed a political party just to abolish slavery, the Republican party I think it was called, and remained up until Bobby Lee gave up his sword. Heck, slavery was even enshrined in Southern petitions as well as the CSA Constitution.

After the War the Klan dressed as the ghosts of Keebler elves, no, wait, the ghosts of Confederate soldiers to become the brownshirts of the Democrat party to restore White Supremacy to the South.

General Early's inane Revisionist notion that the War of Southern Treason was not about Slavery and White Supremacy is foolhardy and dangerous.

Only when we acknowledge that the South was wrong, yet we forgave them and did not seek true justice for their crimes, can we move on.

Shootin' Buddy

Tam said...

So you're agreeing with this guy that CSA soldiers were, and I quote, "terrorists"?


WV: "floompt" The sound respect makes when it craters in.

tjbbpgobIII said...

Hey Shooting Buddy,what would true justice for their crimes be? Was the reconstruction period not enough for you? The man's name was General Robert E. Lee, I don't think you knew him well enough to call him Bobby or Bob. What if we just called you "shooting" or "bud', hell we don't know you well enough, do we? We down here in the Glorous South feel like we've been fighting terrorism since 1865.

Anonymous said...

Tam, no, outside of war crimes, the CSA was not a terrorist organization. The CSA was treasonous, but not terroristic like John Brown or the like.

However, Confederate flags are used by terrorist organizations like the KKK.

Why he did not accurately describe the Gov. of VA as being a sympathizer of a terrorist group like the KKK, I cannot fathom.

Shootin' Buddy

Anonymous said...

"what would true justice for their crimes be? Was the reconstruction period not enough for you?"

I believe true justice would have been in line with what the Radical Republicans sought. Hanging the leaders of the CSA and all officers of the CSA Army, Navy, and every member of the Southern slave patrols, disenfranchisement of the CSA for 100 years, and the establishment of pro-Union politicians (there were many) in Southern governments which would serve as military regents until the 100 year parole period expired.

As the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 1871, the 14th Amendment, the formation of the KKK and Southern revision to the Civil War makes clear, and the continued presence of federal election monitors in the South, Reconstruction was not enough.

Shootin' Buddy

Drang said...

SB/Tam: Slavery is as morally reprehensible as terrorism. That does not mean that any randomly selected rebel was the moral equivalent of a homicide bomber, or that Bobby Lee=Usama Bin Laden.
Stranger: Not many African slaves "just off the ship" in 1850, the import of slaves had been banned in 1808. The internal slave trade was very much alive and well, however, and at least some of it's viability had to do with Southern reaction to Northern contentions that owning other human beings as chattel property was a sin.

Anonymous said...

"That does not mean that any randomly selected rebel was the moral equivalent of a homicide bomber, or that Bobby Lee=Usama Bin Laden."

I concur.

There is a distinction between a traitor (Bobby Lee) and a terrorist (UBL).

Shootin' Buddy

Tam said...

I wish we'd got three million instead of what we got...

Justthisguy said...

And I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.

Justthisguy said...

P.s. to Shooby: Jeff Davis was indicted for treason, and charges were dismissed in Federal Court. God, I hate the Damnedyankees.

And that is the real reason all four of my great-grandfathers joined up and fought honorably against the United States: It wasn't about the Negroes, it wasn't about the Tariffs, it wasn't about what the rich planters wanted them to do; it was that the DYs are the kind of people, with their bad manners, their bad attitudes, their bad taste in music, their bad schoolmarmish tendencies to mind other peoples' business, their harsh braying midwestern accents, etc usw, no, it wasn't about any of those.

What it was about was that yer average DY is such an annoying person that, uh, well, um, let's just say that killing such would make one feel horrible, but not as horrible as one would feel after having killed a completely innocent person.

Roberta X said...

So, exactly which part of "...You can call all or some of them [Civil War Soldiers] names if you like but it won't make any difference. They're still dead," was unclear?

Lee-the-traitor: The US was, at the time, rather more of a Federal Union that it is to-day and men's loyalties generally followed their State.

How many cities did Lee burn? How many did Sherman burn? Which man waged war against armies, and which against populations?

Republicans may have been abolitionists but Mr. Lincoln wasn't especially good at it; slaves continued work on the Capitol dome through the war and he averred that if keeping men enslaved or freeing all of them would win the war, he'd do it; expediency over morality. He believed the races could not live in harmony and favored repatriation to Africa.

If the US had been, say, a European country or hacked-together empire, harsh reprisals and hanging all the rebellious leadership, including the officer corps, would undoubtedly have ensued. We are not and it didn't.

And no matter what anyone has done or said since peace broke out, not a single dead soldier, in butternut or blue, has risen from the grave to praise or condemn. Not a limb lost has been regrown and no living man can be lauded or pilloried for the causes and events of that war. They're all dead. They'll stay dead. If their descendant wanna weep over their graves, let 'em be.

Justthisguy said...

Sorry, misplaced a sentence, there. "no, it wasn't about any of those" should go after "what the rich planters wanted them to do" and before "it was that the DYs..."

Sorry. Yeah, preview is my friend. I just get really exercised on this subject, having to live in Southern Florida as I do, in a place filled with foreigners from Michigan and Michuacan, and Ohio and Oahaca, who just chap my Cracker Ass, as Acidman used to say. See y'all over at Vdare.

Anonymous said...

"It wasn't about the Negroes,"

It most assuredly was about them.

The reason for the war is spelled out on the wall of Southern museums, and it is all spelled "slavery".

The revisionist notion that the CSA was some kind of libertarian stand against government is incorrect and inane. All politics prior to 1861 revolved around slavery--Missouri Compromise, Kansas-Nebraska Act, folding of the Whig Party, Founding of the Republicans, Lincoln-Douglas debates, inter alia. For decades prior to the Civil War the South whined and bitched about their sacred right to own another human being and now, today, the Civil War is recast as an episode of Firefly.

Under the CSA slavery was forever and the only thing that a state could not have control over inside its own borders.

"let's just say that killing such would make one feel horrible, but not as horrible as one would feel after having killed a completely innocent person"

Perhaps by dragging them behind a pickup truck? It seems by your making stereotypical Southern homicidal tendencies so clear that you are giving Mr. Martin all the ammunition he needs.

Shootin' Buddy

Tam said...

"Perhaps by dragging them behind a pickup truck? It seems by your making stereotypical Southern homicidal tendencies so clear...

Being a Hoosier, perhaps you were too busy planning to attack bereaved families at a police funeral to remember that Indianans were making lynch mobs a lot more recently than most Southern states.

Anonymous said...

"How many cities did Lee burn? How many did Sherman burn? Which man waged war against armies, and which against populations?"

Lee burned a host of cities by his act of Treason. Lee made war against both the North and the South.

"Lincoln wasn't especially good at it; slaves continued work on the Capitol dome "

There were slaves in DC because DC was in the South. After 1863 not so much.

Pointing out the terrorism and racism associated with the Confederacy and its symbols has nothing to do with Lincoln. It does not matter that Lincoln did not like blacks, Lincoln was freeing them, not terrorizing them in the middle of the night dressed as a Confederate ghost as happened in Viriginia.

"If their descendant wanna weep over their graves, let 'em be."

Let them weep in cow pastures while wearing their dirty bedsheets but not by acts of law. We did not expend blood and treasure so that the peckerwoods can continue their awful culture. The federal government cannot allow this to be.

We must never let the South praise these monsters in public for if we do we risk allowing their evil to arise from the grave and walk again.

Shootin' Buddy

Roberta X said...

SB: yeah, that whole free speech thing, it was never meant to get in the way of politically-correct cultural remolding.

How many graves will you need to urinate on before you feel you have done your part?