pecunium | (no subject)

(no subject)

dKos has some scary stuff.

Cary Christian

Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using "Southern Slavery, As It Was," a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people think.
Principal Larry Stephenson said the school is only exposing students to different ideas, such as how the South justified slavery. He said the booklet is used because it is hard to find writings that are both sympathetic to the South and explore what the Bible says about slavery.

"You can have two different sides, a Northern perspective and a Southern perspective," he said.

Which makes one wonder what the, "Southern" side is? (pace to those readers from the South who take offense, this is the way they paint you, not the way I do).

Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence...
...Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.

Makes me wonder what all those damned abolitionists were against?

Oh that's right, they were moralising do-gooders, and Puritans, who wanted to force a narrow interpretation of the Bible on the poor South. Heck, it's worse than that, they were liberals.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

War of Northern Aggression.

'nuff said.

And yes, I have actually *heard* that term come out of people's mouths in the Deep South - with no irony or sarcasm.

They seem to be having "technical" second thoughts.

http://carychristianschool.org/NewsAndEvents/default.cfm

Go and look at

bellatrys for the real problems. IT isn't that they did, or didn't use the pamphlet.

Rather it is the mindset which thinks this is acceptable. No one got that and said, "Whoa... I didn't know that. My eyes have seen the light."

Because a close (heck even a loose) reading of the historical record shows it for what it is, revisionism on a grand scale ("to be sold down the river" is still a cliche. It ain't about cotton going south). So it served an agenda. The agenda isn't gone.

Bellatrys goes on, at some length about memes, and that is the problem. Memes. There are a lot of them. Social security is in immidiate danger of failing, so we have to act now to "save it".

The most conservative estimates of the point at which it starts to be a net loss (not bankrupt, but going into deficit) is some 50 years from the present. If we'd actually kept the reserve as a trust, that wouldn't be until some 70 years.

Does it need tweaking, probably. Is it doomed? By no means, but the meme is. The debate is being framed. That's what this thing was about. The kids who are taught things like this are not stupid, but they will be misguided. If they get the skill wih words of a Buckley, or the audience of an O'Reilly, or the pulpit of a Limbaugh, they will reshape the debate.

And this isn't the only thing being reshaped.

TK

I agree with you. The current climate in the US is making things like this more prevelant and less likely to be spoken about. I am actually impressed that this has become an issue.

I can only hope that we, the losers in this election, let it act as Goldwater's loss in '64 did.

If we are a minority, it is a small one (and the majority is not monolithic, so we probably aren't a real minority, in most things).

Which is part of why we see the trends to supression, and sore winning.

If we, the loyal opposition (and a large one) feel so pressed, we can only hope that we become more vocal, more in the world.

Silence = death.

Maybe not ours, but perhaps the Republic's.

TK

This was the first time in my life of 47 years that I have felt we were moving in a direction that could remove us from the position we hold as a super power. We have chosen a path of oppression and supression that extending to the world stage. I hope that we can rein in the backbiting on both sides of the aisle and get something accomplished. I don't see that happening without some sort of major change of the players.

er.... "but the meme is out there."

Well, there goes my appetite.

Do I need to post some food porn about last night's supper? Not much to say, some steak, some red-leaf, with spinach; Potatoes with butter and chopped parsley (the extra of which I tossed into the salad) a loaf of bread (TJ's carries baked, but not finsished [which means it can be eaten without a quick trip to the oven, but it's better if you do] breads from Il Fornaio; restaurant/bakery. Great stuff, this was filone, sweetish, dense crumb, with medium eyes, and a chewy crust) and a sauce.

Sauce. Beef stock, dried montmorency cherries, healthy splash of Cab Sauv. white pepper, teaspoon of dried chanterelles; powdered, and (for 20 minutes) about 4 in of fresh rosemary.

Reduce by 1/3rd to 1/2, make a roux, thicken and dress the meat.

Did that help?

TK

You're a good soul.

I console myself with vegetarian dolmas and oolong.

It's just one of those days when I feel like I'm stanging on the siding watching a train wreck about to happen.

Hey, that's better than many of my days, when I think I'm on the train.

TK

You and me both.

"And Jesus wept."

Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence...
...Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.

As a Southerner, all I can say is--NOT

It was bad. It was wrong. And Jim Crow was both wrong and stupid. Get over it.

I note there's no mention of the laws against teaching slaves to read and write, or the state laws requiring freed slaves to go and live someplace else, or...well, damn. I suppose all of the justifications of slavery based on the inferior qualities of the African race I've read were just figments of my imagination, right? I guess Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner were hallucinating, along with Harriet Tubman, right? Because armed rebellions against and smuggling escaped slaves out from such a benign system were just plain stupid.

You know, I'm descended from slave-owners and Confederate veterans. It was wrong. They shouldn't have done it. I can see how and why it happened, but it was wrong. Understanding it doesn't make it cool. Now, shall we just deal with the world we have, instead of lying to ourselves about the world they had, or shall we make things worse for ourselves.

And thank you for the food porn, even if I doubt I can get the exact same cherries around here.

Maybe not, but I might be persuaded to send you some.

I see, looking at the website TJ's locations that they plan to open one in Silver Spring, MD, which I can add to the best coffee in the U.S., and a whole foods, for when I am in that part of the world and want comfot foods.

If you want to make it, get a tart, not a sweet, cherry. Dried, of course, and add small handful.

As for Cary, well we know that it's evil, and that they are aiming at the fallacy of equivalence (that two views, if presented side by side much each have some validity) as a way to show how wicked the world is.

One of the parents said the pamphlet was a good thing, because in the public schools they only get one version of things, and that isn't education, it's indoctrination. The same arguement gets made in regards to the Intelligent Design argument (if one finds a watch there must have been a watchmaker, and life is far more complex than a watch, ergo... Q.E.D. evolution can't have happened).

And by teaching with this method, the ability of the students to reject obvious pap is decreased, but I am at risk of ranting, so I'll stop.

TK

TK

What happens if I use some frozen pie cherries, instead of dried ones? Aside from needing mor time for the reduction, I mean.

As for the rest-- *moan* *Sigh*

It won't work right. You need the concentration that comes from being dried.

Think grapes versus raisins.

TK

It's the gradual indoctrination that is so scary. Plant a seed here, put a wedge in there, and slowly amp it up to where you'll wake up one day, and evolution never happened, and having slaves is OK again.

I've read some of the Dominionist literature, and that is how they are going about it- they call it the 'one bite at a time' approach. If there's evil in the world, it's people like these. The only way to fight it is to spit out the bites, fill in the holes, and uproot the seedlings. Push back.

Sunfell

The only other option (which calls for the controlled application of swords and gunpowder) is less than effective, or palatable.

I am tempted to let them have thier Utopia, save that they wish to force me to reside in it, and we might get to those laws which need to be torn down.

TK

I was looking at some books at Amazon where they predict a civil war in the US within the next 10-30 years. I wouldn't be a bit surprised, but very saddened that our once great country had decayed to that level of interaction.

I feel the same way about this fake-Utopia they want to create: leave me out of it.

Sunfell

"You can have two different sides, a Northern perspective and a Southern perspective"

This conveniently ignores the fact that many Southerners did not support secession and in fact fought for the North. My great-great grandfather was such a one.

Ye gods in heavens. Or whatever one may believe in.

I've been to an antique auction in Ga. where slave chains were bought.

An unusual thing about visiting a plantation, the tour guides refuse to say the word 'slave'. I tried to make them say it and they wouldn't.

I'm a damn yankee accidentally living in SC. I've been in situations where retailers tried to serve me ahead of other folks because of the color of my skin. I always leave and tell them why. That I am offended by prejudice, even if it should favor me.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. ~Anne Lamott

Ooh, I may have to borrow your Anne Lamott quote!

I recall being taught that, in as much as you can compare various forms of slavery that have existed, American slavery was among the very worst. In most other societies, slavery was not heritable, for instance, and in most societies it was not necessarily lifelong, either.

Mmmm, dried sour cherries. I have a friend with a sour cherry tree in their garden that produces far more than they know what to do with. Maybe I'll look into getting them a fruit dryer for Christmas (I wouldn't suggest trying to sundry fruit in the rather unpredictable Bohemian summer).

Btw, funny you should mention the 'SS is DOOMED' meme. There's quite an argument (actually, quite a resurrected argument) about this on the Brunchma board (where myself and

mcduff are oft to be found, esp the latter). The fellow who is arguing the DOOMED side is dead smart, an actuary and one of the saner libertarians we know so I don't want to dismiss what he's saying out of hand, though indeed I think he's wrong on this one.

Incidentally, the Czech Republic has a pay-as-you-go system that really is in a lot of trouble. Net population decline, for starters, so there just aren't enough people paying into it. Wish I knew more details about it. The more right-wing party has been talking for ages about bringing in a mandatory private pension insurance scheme but my first thought is, hmm, the insurance company goes broke and then the government has to cover all the policies, anyway...

Sorry, I didn't mean net population decline, I meant negative birth rate.

What the fuck?!?! Has he ever read any slave narratives? FREDERICK DOUGLASS, LINDA BRENT, ETC.? For Christ's sake! Has he ever seen the POSTCARDS of the burning, mutilation, and lynching of African-Americans that took place in the South until the late 60's with NO PUNISHMENT for those that carried it out?!?!

Slavery wasn't that bad. Psh. Why don't YOU try being a slave, then? Why don't you get beaten for looking at someone wrong and stand by helplessly as your adolescent daughter or wife gets raped?

I feel like I'm going to explode.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only