Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 16, 2015

It was ALL about slavery.

Few things are all about just one thing (even if they are 98.186% about one thing).

@DavidHuieGreenNations do not breakup or go to war over 1.814% things.

Texas…it’s whole ’nother country. :)

I’m grateful to be able to see this here. The print version in my Sunday paper leaves off the first two panels, which really is important to the context.

And the Confederate Battle Flag is about HERITAGE!

Same problem as with the Boer War. The Boers seem in some ways to be attractive – they were brave, ingenious, they were fighting for their freedom against a larger state (the British Empire) which they saw as an oppressor – it’s easy for people to forget that one of the main “freedoms” they were fighting for was the right to oppress their black neighbours.

Not an official Declaration?http//gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/txordnan.htm

“Our Man in Charleston” by Christopher Dickey is about Robert Bunch, the British consul in South Carolina 1853-1863. It’s a surprisingly sympathetic treatment of the two-faced behavior of diplomats—he hated slavery and everything that went with it, but had to pretend he was okay with it to not offend his hosts. The book emphasizes that for South Carolina, the secession was 99.9% about slavery. http://www.skjam.com/2015/08/02/book-review-our-man-in-charleston/

Whenever I hear someone say the Civil War was about states rights, I agree. It was about the southern states right to continue the institution of slavery. If they say it was economic, again I agree. I was about the southern states slave based economy.

This comic is ridiculous! How can he suggest that there is a high-school student that would do independent research for a history class!

Lethea, you might be surprised. Happens more often than you might think. My only problem with this is that the classroom isn’t racially diverse enough. I may have three Caucasians in a class room of 30.

..white man speak with forked tongue…everyone knows that..like the NFL is a sport…or ..Ted Cruz will become our first gay president…it is amazing how Obama has made being opening racist,cool..see how easy it is to play…guns don’t kill people,people kill people…that is why we stop every attempt at keeping evil and crazy people from having guns ,,because ..sssh..it isn’t the crazies that kill..it’s the guns…

@leftwingpatriot

It was all about economics. Slavery was the major factor in that but not the only one.

Conservatives are afraid that reality has a liberal bias, as we know.

While it is an amusing way to put it “reality has a liberal bias” it’s more like ‘anyone with a grasp on reality is likely to be liberal’.

So the North had to get over 600,000 Americans killed sending an army of occupation to the South to free the slaves, destroying the Republic in order to save it, which led to a century of Jim Crow before MLK created a peaceful way out. Importation of slaves had ended many years before the war, to the distress of the Muslim slavers who sold them, and industrialization was at least on the cusp of making slavery economically unviable. Curious time to start a war.

A Declaration is not a law or ordinance.I believe men fought the war for States Rights to secede.My bad for omitting the colon in my earlier link.http:gen.1starnet.com/civilwar/txordnan.htm

So that’s why Fort Sumter attacked Charleston? To start the war? Read the Articles of Secession and find out why the confederates believed they were seceding. Of course, you may know better, TechnoJunkie.

A little help please. I wanted to find that document so I googled: Texas “declaration of secession” . The only authoritative source in three pages of Google hits was: https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html and https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/1feb1861.html. Another interesting website is http://www.constitution.org/csa/ordinances_secession.htm#Texas. Problem, I could not find the document where the word “slave” appears 18 times? RSVP if you can find the document referenced in this strip.

In their minds giving slaves freedom is how ranchers, zoos, farmers look upon animal rights activists giving freedom to four legged animals.

Well, duh!

Slavery, slavery, slavery: That’s what the Civil War was about.

This only goes to show that history is written by the living with a vested interest in “the truth”.

Dang the truth!

The next time some one tries this BS line that the Civil War was fought for other reasons than to perpetuate slavery, please show them this video by Col. Seidule, the head of the history department at West Point: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/12/9132561/civil-war-slavery-video

Until the flap over the Confederate flag flared up, many, if not most historians agreed with the teacher. Slavery was merely an “epiphenomenon,” a surficial movement hiding the REAL cause, which of course was economics. Because moral forces played no serious role in history, it was all economics.

G. K. Chesterton once wrote that nobody has ever written a 13 volume history of cows because cows ARE purely economic creatures, driven solely by physical needs.

I have just retired from a 40-year career as an educational writer/editor. I can attest to the truthfulness and accuracy of this strip—you would NOT believe the things that are either omitted or “carefully worded” for Texas textbooks. It’s always amazed me that Texas has any accredited institutions of higher learning. My colleagues and I held a huge party when textbook publishers finally refused to put creationist “theories” in the Texas science books. And the one Texas history book I worked on had text that intimated that Texas was the only state in the union that sent guys to Vietnam. Right after that text, I went free-lance, so I wouldn’t have to work on any more Texas texts.

The “neighbors” of the Boers came in looking for work. That land had been human free for many generations. The took and held thier land as they saw fit. They may not have treated the migrants fairly, by 20th and 21st century thought, but they were well within thier rights at that time. You can not be so naive to think that the British fought for the rights of the oppressed.

No, it wasn’t ALL about the perpetuation of slavery – even the South was intelligent enough to include other things to cover their butts.

@Scratchy18It isn’t a joke; it is the TRUTH. That is the exact wording of the Texas Declaration of Causes.Try to stay on subject.

A Texas GOP Platform Statement goes like this " We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills".

@SKJAM!No one involved in the illegal importation of slavery was ever indicted by a Southern court or grand jury if they were caught in the act.

@bawanaGreat job backing up your statement with facts and evidence.

Hang in there, GOWEEDER, you are bound to find one with reading comprehension willing to help you. Remember to assume respective relationships unless told otherwise. The first part regards “a grasp on reality.” the second part regards political leaning.

Steve, for concepts like “What is white?” you might use a definition other than “100% reflectivity” because that is common usage. “All”, on the other hand is more restricted to not include anything else.

Illegal, others took their place, and then some. The goal is to accuse southerners of being completely evil, That We Are All Racists and ONLY us, to pretend racism is never found elsewhere. The goal of Texas is to downplay slavery’ role. Folks in New York understood. When Lincoln announced the need to draft more for the fight, they lynched black orphans. (Contemplate concept of draft to end involuntary servitude. )

True that, Gauntsy!

Today’s Tampa Bay Times (:-{ – formerly St. Petersburg Times ) is running an investigation on how five largely-black Pinellas County schools suddenly became the worst schools in Florida after the school board abandoned integration and failed to make good on promises they’d made to these schools.

I live in a part of south St. Petersburg that has been affected by white flight. Businesses that have been here for years have fled en masse.

I should have said “Businesses that had been here for years . . . ,” but don’t feel like going through all that correction process.

It will be about Debt Slavery to the Corporations who are trying to Buy Up all the “Water Rights” in the world as we debate this issue..They have already inspired Riots in other countries by trying to Gouge people for Fresh Water..

@DavidHuieGreenAnd I thought we were friends. Do you think I would be friends with a racist?The point is that the text books are not telling the truth about one the most — if not the most important — event in American history.

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.—John Stuart Mill

When my daughter was in 9th grade, she was in fact required to do independent research for her History class. Off to the Truman Library we went so that she could learn about the Korean Conflict. It can be done by high school students. I am sure that she is just one of many.

Texas as an entity has never threatened to secede. There are factions within the state who wave that flag periodically, but they know that we the electorate won’t ever go along them. The reason slavery was such a hot issue for the south was simple: our entire agrarian economy was based on slave labor. The north never had a problem with making use of our slave-produced commodities, I might add. While the immorality of slavery is unquestionable, to say that the south made their choices based solely on racism is to miss an important point. America’s founding fathers were mostly slave owners as well. The north had a much broader industrial base due to the presence of iron ore and coal; had they been as dependent on plantation agriculture as the south they might have had a different attitude toward slavery. Does any of that justify or excuse slavery? Of course not. The south went to war out of fear: fear that its fundamental economy would collapse utterly were slavery as an institution revoked. Fear makes men irrational and unreasonable.

@zippy06Paul’s epistle to Philemon when Paul returned the slave Onesimus to him:.I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. (Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.) I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord. For this is perhaps why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord..

This was long before 640 AD. Slavery has existed for a long time. The question before us is, was it the cause of secession of the Southern states from the Union?

The manner in which Americans kept slaves was unique. It was an inherited position, if your mother or father was a slave, so were you. There was no longer a need to import them, just breed them and separate them- it could have gone on forever.

@@LeftWingPatriot@DavidHuieGreen“And I thought we were friends. Do you think I would be friends with a racist?”.We are friends, good friends..And, yes, I imagine you are. You probably have some friends who have irrational fears, likes or dislikes based on race, ethnicity, religion or some other superficial difference. I know you limited if to race but it is all the same..We can like flawed people. (“Flawed” usually means “unlike me” but can mean many things.)

@DavidHuieGreenI love people who are “deeply flawed,” but I have no choice; they are family members.I have gotten to know you well enough to know you are not a racist, nor do I believe all Southern whites are racists. I have also met, more than I would like to admit, racists, anti-Semites, homophobes, and other assorted bigots in the big liberal city I live in. I probably also hold certain “irrational” fears.The two characters in today’s strip are both victims; one is forced to teach and the the other learn something both know is not true. Neither one of them is a racist.

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.”Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. 1859..Just for fun, let us contemplate the above statement as given, not as probably intended..If you knew someone intended to kill you but nobody else, according to that statement, you would not be justified in using power to defend yourself.(Not that anyone would be foolish enough to let the killer kill them. Come to think of it, many are exactly that foolish, or so trained.)

http://www.egs.edu/library/john-stuart-mill/quotes/.

“He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.”.Note here his assumption apes are incapable of thought.Prejudice..He also implied any who didn’t ignore other labors to “think for himself” in planning his personal life path was equivalent to an unthinking animal.Prejudice..In some ways, he reminds me of Socrates who effectively sneered at those who couldn’t manipulate language well after dwelling for decades on other pursuits.Egocentric prejudice..“Only what I decide is important is important,” type of “thinking”..Just something to think onOr not.

@DavidHuieGreenI think in that case, you become the “other” at least in relationships to the person who wants to do harm, and you have every right to defend yourself.

@@leftwingpatriot@DavidHuieGreen“I think in that case, you become the “other” at least in relationships to the person who wants to do harm, and you have every right to defend yourself.”.You and I think so — and he probably thought so — but his words as given reject that idea..Possibly poor wording or possibly insufficiently quoted..

Obviously if the choice is between letting oneself be killed or harming the one wishing one harm (notice the double use of “one”? That can certainly cause confusion), then nobody can punish one if one is killed. He wasn’t directly talking punishment for wrongdoing but philosophical concept of right and wrong..Punishment — if any — would follow acceptance of the concept.

@Sandy67“The manner in which Americans kept slaves was unique. It was an inherited position, if your mother or father was a slave, so were you. ".It couldn’t have been unique since it was done by Egypt to the Hebrews and IS done to non Muslim slaves by Muslim slavers..Those who deny it happened and happens are even ignoring recent reports — with many corroborating witnesses — of the Doctors Without Borders aid worker, taken into slavery, raped repeatedly by her “owner”, now dead after his torture. .This doesn’t justify anybody else doing likewise, but shouldn’t be ignored. Modern slavery is currently committed primarily by Muslims and/or pimps. What happened in the past can’t be undone, but what is being done today, RIGHT NOW should be opposed..Or so I believe.If any believe otherwise, they are in league with the slavers.

minimum wage is difficult, but you get to make decisions, such as flipping the bird and leaving without fear of violent retribution, and your boss cannot sell your children