Now here’s the big question:

Will they try to play the good Secesh/bad Secesh game with Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee as the Good’Uns and Nathan Bedford Forrest, John Wilkes Booth and Quantrill as Bad’Uns? Or do they want to go all the way and claim them all to be heroes and Lincoln as a traitor?

The South needed some de-StatesRightsification after the Civil War, as was done in Japan and Germany after WWII.
We didnt let Japan have an army and we didnt let Nazi’s fly their flags and kill the few Jews that were left. ( think strange fruit)
But deals got cut so that Tilden wouldnt become president and Reconstruction ended.
The Republicans of those days didn’t realize how tenacious and unreconstructed their opponents were.
Now, those opponents are running the Republican Party. They give no quarter and they hold grudges forever.

The ultimate irony is that it is most likely Republicans doing this. The Radical Republicans of the 1860s must be turning over in their graves. Actually I wish they’d come out of their graves and haunt these modern southern Republicans, carpet bags and all.

Because Texas just wants to succeed for the nation./s

When does “the KKK as an example of effective community organisation for freedom” presented by Eric Cartman, make it into the curriculum?

There’s more to it than that.

The corporate funders of the GOP were getting their butts kicked in the 1960s by LBJ and the Great Society. They had to do something.

Their solution: Piss on the GOP’s own origins as the Party of Lincoln and Anti-Slavery Action, and openly court guys like Strom Thurmond. Push tax cuts as a means of hurting blacks and other groups. Dress it all up as a return to old-fashioned Christian family values, as dictated by the Southern Baptist Convention (which exists because they broke with the rest of the Baptists over slavery: They favored it).

Result: Continued control of the US at the expense of our brains, our well-being, and our moral fiber.

Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, is to be listed as a role model for effective leadership.

Gen’l Jackson was one seriously f’d up dude when it came to his religon. His biogrophy states he once was given a slice of bread with fresh butter on it. He enjoyed the taste of the butter so much he forebade himself from ever indulging in it again.

And, were the conferates Democrats?

while Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, is to be listed as a role model for effective leadership

This is PC stuff for Racists. Livy’s Hannibal still sells because he marched through Spain, Mountains and France with elephants to get to Rome Stonewall at best was determined. Jefferson Davis hmmm whats next Texas a few Hitler speeches?

It has begun. To the victors go the spoils. Throughout history events have been rewritten to make the victors look like the things that they did were for the good of the country. I sit back and observe what has happened since GWB got elected in 2000 and now the election of Barack Obama and it seems like everything that has been worked for all the years is going backward. Let’s face it, Obama is a weak president and as long as he is considered to be such then people like these Texans will consider that they can do anything they want. For all you minorities out there, we are screwed.

The Texas School Board is close to overtaking George W. Bush as the single most embarrassing thing about the state.

The lust for state sponsored murder should be an embarrassment but apparently is not.

Yeah, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. Because George W. Bush and his war that killed half a million people are at the top of my mind, that means I’m pro-state sponsored murder.

Did not mean to you but to the state of texas. You, I would assume, or I would hope are opposed to the murder.

Texas almost seems to be inviting the Feds to step in and take over their school board I expect other states to follow its lead.

Well Blue, I went to UT Austin in the glory years (”64-’68), lived in Austin from ’72-’75, and I can assure you that the state board responsible for determining textbook content & policy was a huge embarrassment way back then. Nothing has really changed in that regard. My “countrymen” (fellow Texans), as I used to call them, have always been decent but blindingly stupid. It’s a combination found almost everywhere.

I don’t care about Phyllis Schlafy, the Moral Majority but yes, the NRA is important in history.
Oh, speaking of history and such…..did anyone see a small article regarding Henry Louis Gates a few weeks back? It seems he’s donated the handcuffs used on him during his arrest last year outside his home to the Smithsonian. When I heard this I immediately called the Smithsonian and asked when the public would be allowed to view such a treasure. They first thought I was interested in seeing the Hope Diamond and they assured me there would be no wait to see that but when I explained I wanted to see those famous handcuffs they said the wait would probably be several hours. They explained the cuffs would be in a glass case and protected by armed guards.
Then I got to thinking. Why did Hank even have these handcuffs? Weren’t they city property? I’m thinking Gates should put the cuffs back on himself and turn himself in to the authorities.
Why would he give these to the Smithsonian? That’s simple: A big tax write off. I have clients who have given and they get a certified receipt showing the value they place on it and this produces a big, fat tax deduction.
In any event just stay out of my way when you see me in line to see those handcuffs. I ain’t lettin’ no progressive cut in front of me.

Tell me how would Texas feel if Mexicans started voting their own into school board positions and started putting out school books which argued Texas is part of Mexico?
The shoe does not like being on the other foot.

Is there any line that can be crossed, any fabrication big enough, for the publishers to say, sorry, but we are in the business of printing History textbooks and not pure fiction? Will the publishers do anything that’s asked of them? Can they be asked to say that WWII was a complete vindication of Aryan superiority and that would be okey-dokey?

In terms of competition between states for the title ‘most mentally challenged’, South Carolina has been playing a blinder recently. So perhaps Texas feels the need to produce something really special to once more claim that mantle for themselves.

One tiny silver lining-most of the history teachers I know, including myself, use their textbooks very little.

I seem to recall that in my Chicago public H.S. during the late 1960s, our history classes used paperback books like those by Nevins and Commager, and a few specialized ones, instead of standard textbooks.

The teachers didn’t harp on the reasons with us, but it was clear that they thought the prescribed texts were bad enough to go to the trouble of getting permission to deviate. (I’ll bet that Zinn’s book was not allowed, as it was discreetly recommended as a supplement.) Guess we’re headed back to those days.

Because Texas just wants to succeed secede for the nation./s

Fixed.

What’s the logical extension of this secessionist ethic that seems so strong in Texas? If I were in the Chinese government, I would be trying to sell weapons to Texas, like the US does with Taiwan.

Get tired of pickin’ lint outta yer navel?

See?

(Not having kids, I wasn’t sure whether things had changed much since ’68 or ’69. Guess not.)

The worship of the slave holding culture is alive and well in the south.

There are all kinds of places and things named for Forrest in North Georgia, Longstreet is a local hero in Gainesville, GA. The Confederate Memorial in the Gainexville Town square is dedicated to the heroes who fought for “Confederate” principles..

If the Confederacy had won the war Jeff Davis would be George Washington and Lincoln would be King George. History is just the luck of the draw.

Over the years, if you did a lot of reading (as I’ve always done), you discovered real quick that most school history books were quite sanitized at best. Leading to the publication of books such as Lies My Teachers Told Me.

I had enough sense to be careful when I challenged the teachers through high school. Then I was fortunate enough to luck into a professor for my US History to 1865 and US History since 1865 classes in college who didn’t give a damn about dates so much but wanted us to understand WHY things had happened rather than just parroting back rote memorizations.

And I followed him with the Military History professor who, shall we say, was not a fan of most of the US generals who had great public relations.

I’m not sure I’d call the north’s industrial advantage “luck.”

The books alternate between irrelevant, simplistic, and incomprehensible. I use my textbook for the table of contents, and that’s about it. That way the kids can use the book as a supplement if they wish.

Look, there should be nothing wrong with seceding from the union, whether it’s the USA or the Federation of Yugoslavia or the USSR. Czechoslovakia split peacefully, Scotland got power reverted to it, Catalonia is almost independent, etc. Lincoln had a bug up his ass, and it wasn’t about slavery.

the Military History professor who, shall we say, was not a fan of most of the US generals who had great public relations.

I have that one right now. He’s awesome.

If anybody went to see “Gods and Generals” (2003), Stephen Lang’s uncompromising portrayal of General Jackson was true to life but hard to watch. Not the kind of leadership that’s admired in the 21st Century.

Of course, hardly anybody saw “Gods and Generals,” so you may know Stephen Lang as Colonel Quaritch in “Avatar.”

Leadership…hmmm.

I was reading some Civil War history recently and it was pointed out that no Confederate state held a referendum or any public vote on secession. The Confederate “leaders” were afraid to face the voters.

My son has been following this effort. As a high school student, he is extremely offended.

He has stated, “If Texas wants to secede, do it peacefully by repaying all federal funds received historically.”

Lincoln had a bug up his ass, and it wasn’t about slavery.

Right.

I’m sure “that bug” explains why he didn’t win a single Southern state after he ran on a platform of keeping slavery out of the western territories.

The South didn’t care about slavery, just Lincoln’s ass bug, whatever that was.

It’s not so snarky if you fix it..)

I’m not sure that’s right — they had one (I believe) in Texas, and secession won the popular vote.

Some Texans like to point out that the majority of Texas counties opposed secession, but the population at large did.

banderson2 wrote- “Throughout history events have been rewritten to make the victors look like the things that they did were for the good of the country”

For a current confirmation of same, just look at Rove’s new book!

Texas playing it’s part in the dumbing down of the country. Does the state fund time machine research? Here’s one more thing the U.S. is missing out on besides the Enlightenment and universal health care.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/8-of-the-worlds-most-popu_n_491951.html#s73050

The history books will be kind to me, for I will write them.

Mine detested MacArthur “Only Medal of Honor awarded for losing” He did like Lee though and respected him. I remember the 2 greatest generals in history (in his eyes) were Napoleon and Alexander.

I take it that Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” is not on their reading list.

It wasn’t actually Jefferson Davis that triggered the first Civil War but rather the Teabaggers of that day.

Mine detests Patton and JEB Stuart. He likes Alexander,Lee, Chuikov, and von Manstein.

It would be extremely interesting to consider what might happen if there were a Constitutional mechanism in place by which a state could peacefully choose to leave the Union.
Especially since that’s the way Texas seems to be heading.

I wonder whether discussion of Jackson in the Texas history book will include discussion of the book “My Great-Grandfather was Stonewall Jackson” by David Jonathan Sawyer.

About 10 years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Sawyer, a charming, elderly African-American gentleman

I wonder whether discussion of Jackson in the Texas history book will include discussion of the book “My Great-Grandfather was Stonewall Jackson” by David Jonathan Sawyer.

Survey says…..BZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

What’s the deal with JEB Stuart? His faux pas was riding around the countryside while Lee/Longstreet were gettin’ their butts kicked at Gettysburg.

And pull all our military bases and port protection out of the state before midnight of the first day of independence.

All international airports in Texas will need their own Texas version of TSA and FAA employees. All US paid personnel at post offices, airports, ports and FBI offices and services closed. All Federal employee services in Texas pulled out.

No more Federal transportation funds.

No more federal $$$ for colleges or schools.

But more truthful.

Lincoln’s “ass bug” was keeping the Union together, even if it meant accepting slavery in the South. When he saw that was useless, he doubled down-keep the Union together AND abolish slavery-and won, though it did, of course, cost him his life.

We might need to build a tunnel or something that will allow the folks in Austin who so desire to stay in the Union. Or airlifts or something maybe.

A whole lot of folks do not understand that the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to those slaves in the rebellious states, rather than to the entire US.

Sorry, my mistake.

Still, the old Confederacy is a rather strange place to go looking for role models in effective leadership.

So, when Texas secedes, will they try to keep any nuclear weapons located in Texas?

I just saw one of the pithiest descriptions of the world as we know it over at Naked Capitalism by commenter NotTimothyGeithner:

Sometimes I feel like we are in the Middle Ages and whenever there is a problem we call an alchemist or a priest, and no one ever notices their only solution is to drown a cat or something equally insane.

Works in the context of Texas school books as well.

I would like to point out that with the computerization of how these texts are put together, there is no reason why multiple editions are not available. You know dumbass ones for Texas and sane ones for the rest of the country.

RonD:

They will not be able to keep them. They can buy them from the United States.

dakine: should someone not want to secede but unfortunately lives in Texas, then Texas should have to buy the individual’s house at the fair market value and pay two year’s compensation of said person’s salary and benefits for needing to relocate as a political refugee. Should the individual not have a home, then two years worth of the rent the
individual currently pays out.

(Note: they cannot buy them if they do not agree to adhere to UN protocols.)

Once anyone is out that wants to leave there will be a need to build a wall to keep the rest of them from soiling the country.

Yep, or a big 30 foot electric fence and super militarized border zones. All Texans will need to replace their US Passports for Texas passports.

If the right wing doesn’t like how history went down, they’ll just create a revisionist version to their liking, and continue to indoctrinate their youth with said version.

They can buy them from the United States.

Violation of the NPT. And I know the last thing I want is an independent Texas, governed by the likes of the Texas School Board, armed with nuclear weapons. Although, if I were an official in the export wing of the People’s Liberation Army, I would extend Texas a fat line of credit.

The truth has a left-wing bias. It’s only fair to let the right have history. Very few people confuse truth with history, anyway.

It certainly was about slavery.

Won the war in what sense?

Overwhelmed the Union? Fat chance.

Been allowed to secede? Somewhat more likely, but if it had happened, 150 years later, they’d have what? A decent agricultural base, maybe, but widespread poverty of the meanest, most hopeless sort, the kind you see in underdeveloped countries–which is what they’d be. Revenue from the main natural resource–oil–would have gone entirely into the pockets of a few @-holes. What little industrial investment there was attracted at the expense of any worker or environmental protection, even minimum wage. Beautiful scenery (although dwindling from the pollution), but no tourism, for the same reason South Africa didn’t get much tourist trade.

Meanwhile, the United States would be richer and stronger, having shed the need to prop up its poor relation to the South, or to involve its ignorant, bigoted religious nuts in policy-making.

More rewriting. All educated, north and south knew it was impossible for the nation to expand westward as long as slavery was permitted. Most, even in the south knew it had to go if the union held.

Must respectfully disagree. I see truth and history as inseparable, and try to communicate that to my class everyday.

The War of Northern Aggression as my southern friends still call it. No shit these mouth breathers believe that with all their catfish eating, grits grinding, tobacco chewing hearts.

I was talking specifically about Lincoln, not “all educated.” Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment, which would have protected slavery where it was already established, if it would stave off secession. Needless to say, it did not.
No rewriting necessary.

The less fire breathing southerners say “The War Between The States”

Edit: But for the record, ain’t nothin’ wrong with fried catfish or grits either one.

ain’t nothin’ wrong with fried catfish or grits either one.

add in a little tomato gravy, with bacon, and some cornbread…

I tend to follow the lead of my father and make cream gravy most of the time

I wonder what the sales numbers are for Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of America’ in TX.

Whats up Texan? Who is the greatest hero? Abe Lincoln or Jeff Davis? Well, it might depend on where you were born. But not always. I fought in Vietnam on the American side. But I think HoCheMin was a patriot and a freedom fighter and Richard Nixon was a war criminal. I’m just trying to caution Y’all about being to smug and condescending about your personal version of history.

I said it once and I’ll say it again, they are rewriting history. Pretty soon in a textbook near you it will be written that blacks enjoyed being slaves and if only that pesty Lincoln and Grant hadn’t won the Civil War they would be doing a lot better for themselves now. As a matter of fact you would be hard pressed to find any distinct mention of the history of slavery in the history books. Thank goodness for the internet. Oh, I forgot they are trying to censor that too.

Maybe these new history books will actually bring out the actual facts about slavery in the USA, e.g. that it only lasted about 75 years and not the 300-400 years that keeps being taught. Maybe they’ll even point out that less than 700,000 slaves were ever sent to Colonial America. Who knows, maybe they will even mention the Arab-Islam Slave Trade, which still goes on, and far surpassed the Atlantic Slave Trade…

Not sure what your point is here. Are you saying if you grow up in Germany, it’s okay to think Hitler is a hero?

Back then, the textbook publishers would publish special editions for Texas schools; I taught intro psych at Texas A&M and discovered there was no chapter on human sexuality as advertised; reason was too many colleges in Texas object and the printed a Texas edition.

I didn’t say that truth and history were separable. I said that they were not easily confused with each other.

tee hee

Hi Ron. I live in Louisiana. If Louisiana seceded from the union would its citizens still be responsible for the national debt? Because if the answer is no, we would all secede and our creditors could just suck on it. Sounds like a plan.

And you are correct semantically (if being a bit disingenuous with your statement) as the US had only existed for roughly 75 years at the time of the Civil War.

But slavery itself existed in the American colonies that became the United States pretty much from the beginning days of settlement.

But nice try at obfuscating things.

Maybe they’ll even point out that less than 700,000 slaves were ever sent to Colonial America.

Uh, even if that number is accurate, which I doubt, what’s your point?

I worked at a community counseling center in Brenham, Texas in 1974; everyone knew blacks were second class; the race issue was between those of German descent or Chech decent.

you know, this text book craziness from texas might get some local publishers some action, publishing is simple now, it can be done from the desktop, I think we need to push for that so the rest of the country doesn’t have to study texas fundamentalist crap, let the texas kids have to compete with people who have learned their history

That maybe these new history books will actually bring out the truth about slavery in the USA.

Then again how many of the “non-rebellious” states were slave states?

I’m saying that historians decide which facts to include and which to exclude from their written histories. They also decide how to interpret the facts that they include. So a southerner and a northerner could write very different histories of the civil war working from the same set of facts. Personally, I prefer American history as written by Howard Zinn. From Zinn’s point of view a working class soldier is a working class soldier whether he fights for the north or the south.

It was most certainly about slavery. Licoln was part of a Republican party that was a) intent of stopping the spread of slavery into new US territories and States, and b) incorporating those “Free States” into the Union.

That would have, and the South recognized this, created a situation in which the votes in Congress would have been sufficient at some point to end slavery. Rather than reform their economy to something like share-cropping, or low salaried wage/debtor dependency…they opted for rebellion.

The Civil War had already started being played out in Kansas and Missouri. It just wasn’t official.

IIRC at least four – Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware.

Kentucky was especially split. Lincoln was born in Hodgensville, KY and his family went north. Jefferson Davis was born in Hopkinsville, KY and his family went south. Lincoln’s wife was from Lexington and at least one of her BIL was a Confederate General.

You’d have to leave out a sh**-load of facts to tell the story from a “modern Southerners” view. They’d likely have to leave out the fact that there was even slavery at all.

So a southerner and a northerner could write very different histories of the civil war working from the same set of facts

.

But this is what I’m criticizing the Texas School Board for. Of course one can distort history any way one wants, but I reject your notion that all history is by definition, inherently distorted.

Actually, the first black slaves didn’t arrive until 1600+ (maybe it was 1619), though there was plenty of white Indentured Servitude going on. Most slaves of the Atlantic route were brought over by Spain and Portugal, and taken to nightmare places like Brazil. England was involved for a short time, but eventually helped to put a stop to importing slaves…

And the truth is — it wasn’t so bad?

WTF?

How did these states vote regarding the 13th and 14th Amendments. Was slavery a substantial issue within them, economically? Or was it something that was fading (except for perhaps Missouri…which was odd that it stayed in the Union given it was the source of most of the rebellion in Kansas).

That’s why I added my “note”. UN protocols would be NPT.

And should Texas receive a fat line of credit from the PLA, I think it would be fair to move for total economic divestment of Texas along with our allies standing by us.

According to this Kentucky and Delaware both explicitly rejected the 13th and 14th when they were first proposed (but eventually ratified them in the 1970s)

As far as slavery itself, there was still a fairly robust economy in Kentucky up through the war.

(Note: My Great-Grandfather fought in the Confederate Army and spent 18 months in a Yankee POW camp in Indiana. He was the one who researched years later and discovered through records that one of my 3 great grandmothers had freed her slaves during the early 1830s as it was “not right for one person to hold another in involuntary servitude)

The practice of ethical historiography is to minimize the distortion that is inevitable given limitations of source material and the historians themselves.

It was a lot worse in Africa, Middle East and South America…especially worse in the Middle East, e.g. males were immediately castrated and it got worse after that…

And Bush was trying to preserve freedom by invading Iraq.

It would certainly be fair…and it would also drive them even further away. Just one of the same problems China faces with Taiwan, which is why China would be stupid to not do it to us, should something as weird as actual Texan secession happen. Would other states follow, you think?

England was involved for over 100 years, including slaves to Jamaica as well as slaves that went through Massachusetts. Look up Bristol slave trade.

As military invasion and occupation is the preferred tactic of freedom preservationists everywhere, it follows.

BT, you live there, right? What’s the attitude of the man in the street about this kind of thing?

Depends upon whether you live in Austin or not.

Most people I know in Austin are embarrassed by it, but then, this is Austin.

“the KKK as an example of effective community organisation for freedom” presented by Eric Cartman

BTW, that’s funny.

I think it’s pretty odd to have a sliding scale of bad to worse when it comes to the buying and selling of human beings. To think that way at all is fairly fucked up.

Yep, freedom loving liberals choose invasion and forced association when it suits their purposes. As do freedom loving conservatives. Makes you wonder about that pesky word “freedom”. If libertarians weren’t such crazy muddled assholes I might become one. Should Gandhi (well, Nehru) have declared war on Pakistan for splitting from the union? Should we support China in trying to invade Taiwan to get it back? Since Texas illegally seceded from Mexico, will we push to return it?

The south had peacefully seceded, and then Lincoln sent the ships to protect the union fort still sitting in the middle of a southern harbor. Kind of like our right to hold on to Guantanamo or the British right to hold on to Gibraltar. He didn’t declare war when the south seceded – it was only that union property thing that set him off.

This isn’t an apologia for slavery. It’s simply humans should have the right to join and abrogate unions. France thought Algeria was an inseparable part of the Republic. The Algerians thought different.

I think it’s a way of thinking that allows people to feel a little bit better about themselves: “At least we weren’t as bad as ______”. Of course, this ignores the principle that there are lines one does not cross, and once crossed, it doesn’t really matter that much how far over the line one goes.

Nah, I’m cool with “freedom”. It makes me wonder about that pesky word “Imperialism”, applicable to both liberals and conservatives. If we supported China’s reunification with Taiwan, instead of selling Taiwan weapons as fast as they can unload the ships, there would be no question or need of an invasion.
France still considered themselves a great Empire, long after their sun had set. As the Algerians demonstrated.

Ah, so many conservatives and Southerners become moral relativists once the issues of slavery and the civil war comes up.

Suddenly black and white issues become gray.

GregB!
Good to see you! Long time no see!

I think it is a mistake to underestimate the community organizing the KKK actually did. My great grandfather was a KKK member and had a KKK funeral–I have the pictures as well as the obit, complete with the documentation the music for his funeral was by the “Ku Klux Klan Quartet.”

Addendum. And this was in Oklahoma, not the Deep South.

While Lincoln was likely racist it does not follow that his agenda was to retain slavery. The timing of the EP can be debated but I just don’t htink history supports your contention. If you have some historical reference to support your claim please post it.

They were very effective, in an SA stormtrooper kind of way, by combining organizing sympathizers with terrorizing dissidents.

You should know this is classic propaganda by association. Obama was a community organizer. The KKK was an effective community organizing institution.

What’s a LOT fucked up is the way the American Left tries to blame the USA for all slavery, which simply isn’t true at all, and not even close. Fortunately, the rise of the internet has produced a lot of unknown facts about the USA’s brief history of slavery, e.g. you didn’t even know that less than 700,000 African slaves had been brought to Colonial America.

Who is rewriting things? I did not say Lincoln was racist, nor did I say his agenda was to retain slavery. I said that, in the end, he was willing to accept the continuance of slavery in the South to preserve the Union.
Wiki on the Corwin Amendment

Do your figures include numbers for those born into slavery here?

Promise me that in the next Civil War that the North will fight to keep Texas out of the Union.

Is anyone trying to organize pressure to avoid the use of these “textbooks”? A boycott?

If not, why the hell not? Why do we simply let a small bunch of well-organized yahoos dominate the education system of the country? Yet pervading this whole discussion is a bunch of snark and an assumption that nothing can be done.

I actually agree with your larger point. And there is a case, I think false on the basis of human rights, that the South claimed it was the Northern states that abrogated the Union by refusing to enforce southern states’ fugitive slave laws.

But on the basis of human systems history or whatever,the fact is by 1850 war had became inevitable

FWIW, one of the most active areas for the Klan in the 1920s was Indiana, so the deep south component had faded somewhat at the time.

Thanks. I had forgotten that tidbit.

It actually was an initiative of the Buchanan administration that Lincoln inherited. I think most historians see his (it’s already law) consider his support more political than from conviction that it was possible to sustain?

Good point. It seems to me the only real answer is political organizing at the local school-board level, like that strategy which has worked so well for the wingnuts. Of course, secularists don’t have anything like the churches as a power base.

Who said the “American left” blames the U.S. for all slavery? Any slavery is to be condemned and one’s political bias has nothing to do with the issue. At least I hope that you would concede that, although by your tone, that is in doubt. BTW, before the internet, there were strange little items called books. A lot has been written about the South’s reliance on cheap slave labor. If you would like a mind opening treat, try reading Slavery and the Making of America by the Hortons. It has pictures.

I wonder that, too.

And, I wonder what’s in Eastern European text books re: American History. Can’t be much worse… might even be better than the Texas version. It might be worth importing a few to find out.

Yeah. He didn’t like it, but was willing to swallow it if it meant secession and war could be avoided.

Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address are to be laid side by side with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.

Well, that’s kind of cool. Can we ask for a side by side comparison of Gore/Bush and Kerry/Bush convention speeches?

Maybe a side by side of McCain 2000 and McCain 2010 speeches?

I too would like to meet this Voice of the Monolithic American Left.

A better question would be, “Why isn’t that info in our public school books now?!?”

Lincoln was only trying to be bipartisan in the name of keeping the Union together. Sound familiar? The lesson Lincoln learned, and Obama has yet to learn, is that you cannot be bipartisan alone. War came for Lincoln; Obama will net the same fractious divisions.

Agreed. In the end, he needs to govern whether they want him to or not.

The problem is the compliant media. They don’t do anything. I am still waiting for some good old fashion reporting from these individuals and unfortunately that is not happening.

I’m not talking about distorting history Texan. Thats what you are talking about. I’m talking about interpreting history. If the Texas School Board, presumably elected by your fellow Texans, decides that the Moral Majority is more important than the New Deal, then that is the local standard and I am fine with it. I just think you are a bit overwrought. I would have your back if your rant was about holocaust deniers. Or that rat-bastard Cheney who wants to replace facts with lies. You could really get me going with a discussion of the 9/11 Commission Report as an historical document.

I’m signing off for today. Thanks for the conversation B.T. and keep up the good work.

And, you point would be?

We come to agreement.

My point is. in creating a connection, powerfully through words “community orgainzing”, between Obama and the KKK is aimed to create an association in people’s minds that makes them think of Obama as bad and evil, like the KKK>

Well, that is something you created in your mind, and was not in my mind. I think if you would go back and read my posts on FDL, you would find I have been one of the few ardent defenders of Obama.

But, it does illustrate well how one having a particular mind-set can draw inferences and conclusions that aren’t there.

To see the KKK as unidimensional is a major mistake, and my primary point in posting about my great-grandfather’s funeral was to illustrate the social need the KKK apparently provided outside of the overt racism and violence it promoted.

Just as we on the left cannot dismiss the tea-baggers, as ridiculous as they are. They are serving a social need. We dismiss that rather than understand that at our peril.

LOL

What was that couple’s name, Gabler or something?, who had escaped the booby hatch back in those days and were the precursors of McLeroy? Weren’t they just a scream?

England didn’t end their slave trade until after the Revolutionary War…as an effort to weaken the French colonies in the Caribbean. They certainly were involved for almost two centuries – it helped build the “City of London” as a financial investment center.

Interestingly though, many slaves in North America were initially treated as “indentured” and worked off their terms. There was a period of confused status. The status started becoming codified later…and after the importation of slves diminished the plantation states introduced lifetime enslavement, and restricted manumission, and also.

You are right. I am guilty of sloppy reading. I should not have implied that you were intending to make the connection. I did assume you were referring back to some right wing statement making that conflation.

I do stand by my opinion that such is used as a tactic by the propagandists.

My reading of history and anecdotal conversations do agree with your notion that the KKK considered themselves to be serving some community purpose. In the deep south it formed itself as a secret shadow government to enforce moral law as the southerners saw it.– purity of women, segregation, Christianity etc.Indeed most public officials and prominent business leaders were Klan members into the 60s and likely still in more loosely formed groups in rural areas.

There was a great stimulus and expansion of th e Klan in the 20s Birth of a Nation spurred much of that. And as someone noted Indiana was a hotbed and involved both major parties but more flamboyantly the Republicans.

These are usually major publishers. And the “content” of the Texan textbooks influences what is put into the textbooks elsewhere (i.e. Science textbooks downgrading evolution…which had far superior coverage when the BSCE texts were produced in the 1960′s).

Perhaps publishers should face general boycotts when the effect is downgrade the quality of texts in other states rather than submission to the “lowest common denominator”. And this should also extend to boycotts of those publishers college level texts, and non-textbook areas.

And I think that we seriously have to begin looking at the qualifications of students from these states (and home-schoolers) to see if they are, indeed, qualified and have taken the necessary course-work in credentialed areas. Their parents awarding them “A’s” in an open-book and assisted test should be a “no go”.

I was actually a walk-on footballer at UT (TU to you) when Texas won the national championship is 1969. Got my BA there, but my MS at TAMU, and then back to Texas for my Ph.D. Don’t know it is true today, but back then, I would give the Aggies ten I.Q. points on the average over my Longhorn folk. Sad to say, but true then.

You do realize that in 1770 the population of the American colonies was 2,210,000 persons. If 770,000 slaves were TRANSPORTED to colonial America (and not counting those born there) we are talking about a proportionately significant number of slaves in the population of Colonial America. Consider also the numbers that died in the Middle Passage.

Yes, slavery occurred elsewhere, and anyone that studied the institution would realize that it was a widespread phenomenon. The French, English, Dutch and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, Brazil, South Africa, the Arab World and elsewhere participated. And there was indigenous African slavery (relative low-scale and more like feudalism) that exploded after the introduction of European slave “factories”.

But to argue that this “fact” makes it reasonable to downgrade the mention of it in US History texts because “others were doing it to” seems to me to distort history.

Thanks. You are quite right on the point of how propaganda works in that respect. I never thought about the parallel you drew before I posted; indeed, in being an apologist for Obama’s attempt at bipartisanship, I have noted his being a community organizer, and therefore his need to build consensus. Just never thought of it in the context of the KKK.

Hopefully, he will pull his head-out–hey, I am an optimist–and become the leader I believe he can be.

No need to deluge me with raspberries, pups.

You know about the castrated male Janissaries? They were castrated as they served in harems and the Ottomans didn’t want “trouble”. At the same time they were given positions of great power and trust (because they had no family, and no sexual desire or capacity it was believed they were not corruptible). The were used as special regiments of the Sultans armies and given complete suzereignity over Egypt…when they rebelled. They themselves brought in slaves and then stopped castrating them. This eventually resulted in the factionalism and corruption associated with the older order. When the decay of the Turkish society is usually referred to it was some descendent of the uncastrated Janissary involved.

They would never have castrated the males in US slavery, simply because – after the Brits embargoed West Africa, and the Congress imposed an end to the importation of slaves (allowed by the Constitution in 1805, I believe…but not actually established for another 30 years)…one would never have cut-off one of your breeding stock.

You know you really have to wonder at the troll even being willing to take a stance defending slavery in America. Guess that’s what we call exceptionalism.

What’s a LOT fucked up is the way the American Left tries to blame the USA for all slavery…

Let’s see you back that claim up with some specific links and sources.

Karmi

Does some other country or group promoting slavery make it morally proper for Americans? The form it took in the deep south does seem particularly American entrepreneurial, sort of like how we do pig farms.

What is exceptional is the amazing grace, spirit and beauty of the descendants of those slaves who contribute so much to the joy of living for all of us.

Don’t forget Virgina and Tennessee.

Although they seceded, both were effectively split. Indeed, West Virgina was carved out as a separate state as a result.