He was on last Friday. He expressed his view (happen to be correct) that the civil war wasn't fought for the abolition of slavery, and it shouldn't have been fought. Interestingly, Maher wasn't well educated on the subject (although he usually is) and just didn't get it. RP pointed out that all other countries abolished slavery WITHOUT a civil war in those decades, so a war wasn't necessery. The war was done for preserving the union of the states...
It's funny that Bill Maher considers himself "politically incorrect" but never discusses anything really politically incorrect. He should have David Duke on his show. Now that would be entertaining.
Lately I have been thinking of the same. When they discuss Iraq, they never mention oil. The show still has problems of getting Republicans on the show. Most of the guests are also recycled...
Iraq has nothing to do with oil. All the money spent on the Iraq war means we've paid about $1000 a barrel for every drop we've got out of Iraq.
The only other country in the Western Hemisphere that abolished slavery by violent means is Haiti. And look at the state it's in. In all other countries, the population comes in various shades of brown. Many of them still have racial friction with their Indian peoples, but this black vs. white thing is virtually unique to the U.S. Here, 140 years after the abolition of slavery, black people still have a separate parallel community with their own music and slang, while third-generation Mexican- and Chinese-Americans become thoroughly assimilated. Furthermore, although the Civil War may have preserved the union in some political way that only a civil service bureaucrat can appreciate, it created wounds that have never healed. Enmity between the North and the South is still strong. If they had been allowed to go their own way, relations between the two countries would now be as matter-of-fact as they are with Canada. And slavery would have ended by sheer force of economics within a generation, as it did everywhere else, so race relations in the Confederacy would probably be about like they are in Brazil, the last country to abolish it in the 1890s. States must be as free to leave the Union as they are to join it. Forcing them to stay was an act of despotism. Lincoln should rot in hell.
Surely, you jest. Let me guess, WMD? Idiots like you give Sciforums a bad name... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
One shouldn't lose sight of the fact of the domestic political realities. People always seem to want to make political comparisons across nations without considering local conditions or specifics. The geopolitical structuring of the US was condusive at the time to such a war. In other nations, I don't know that it was.
We've spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq. We could have bought a ton of oil with that money instead and not lose 3000 guys. Why do you think we went into Iraq?
You do realize that printing money is incredibly cheap? It is not just access, but the CONTROL of the oilflow (denying it to US competitors) what is important. Whoever controls the reserves controls the future. There were quite a few reasons for the Iraq war, none of them Iraqi freedom or WMDs: 1. Access and control of The Great Prize, aka oilfields. 2. Iraqi oilbourse in Euros was a danger to the petrodollar monopoly. 3. Saddam was a danger to Israel, and they like the US fighting proxy wars for them. 4. War is also good business, specially for special interest groups and private companies whom have influence on the administration.
That's better! 4 Good reasons instead of one lame "for the oil". Control is overrated though. If they don't sell to us, they sell to someone else which means another supplier needs us as a consumer. For example, Iran doesn't sell to the USA but to Japan. Therefore, Saudia Arabia sells less to Japan and more to the USA.
Control can never be over rated: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1270414,00.html Bush has almost admitted as much: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/08/31/bush_gives_new_reason_for_iraq_war/
I totally disagree with your stance on Lincoln, although I understand why you say it. I think this may be the first time I have basically agreed with you on all the salient points. Good Post.
I imagine current American propaganda in education is that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves and not to force people who wanted to separate back into a country that they didn't want to be in.
The Civil War was fought because Lincoln was overcome with hubris. He wanted to be hailed as a "great president" and he was. Unfortunately he died before he could bask in the adulation and we've been cleaning up his mess ever since. You have to join the Libertarian Party to find people who teach this version of history to their children. Everybody else grows up thinking Lincoln was a hero despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The American Civil War was arguably the bloodiest war in human history. It killed off a full three percent of the country's population. I'm not sure the Russian death toll from WWII was significantly higher than that, normalized as a percentage, and you can quibble that most of those deaths were second-order effects of infrastructure failure caused by war. Absolutely. And it's hardly "current" propaganda. I was taught that in the 1950s and my parents were taught that in the 1910s. Talk about cognitive dissonance, they lived in a Northern city (Chicago) where the children and grandchildren of slaves were excluded from schools, businesses, parks, housing, and medical facilities. For the record most people here know full well that I am hardly a Confederate sympathizer and find their culture repugnant. I just don't believe the situation was handled properly. If it had been, we wouldn't even be classifying ourselves as "Yankees" and "Rebels" 140 years later.
Great posts in this thread, Fraggle Rocker. Not sure if you have read "The Real Lincoln" or not, but it is a brilliant (and truly politically incorrect) account of his presidency. I rank him as one of the worst presidents we have EVER had. He led to more American deaths than all other wars combined! Only FDR comes close to doing as much damage as Lincoln did, and oddly enough, these are the examples that Republicans and Democrats both use to proudly demonstrate the glory of their own parties! http://www.amazon.com/Real-Lincoln-Abraham-Agenda-Unnecessary/dp/0761536418
I bet it doesn't even make the top ten even if we go by population %. Here is one way bloodier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Shi_Rebellion "The toll of dead and missing caused by the rebellion according to various sources, including suppression and famine, is estimated at 36 million, which was 2/3 of the total taxroll population." The Cambodian killing fields were I bet also more than 3% deathrate of the population.... Also: "Nevertheless the Taiping Rebellion stands as the second bloodiest conflict in history, greater than World War I and behind only World War II. It happened at roughly the same time as the American Civil War, and yet it was much more bloody." At that time China's population was estimated at 400 million and the low estimate of the deathtoll is 20 million, making it 5% of the population... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
I have no idea where you get that "bloodiest war" idea for the civil war. 3% population loss is more like a little feud. Consider the Mongols in Europe: "After the withdrawal of the Mongol troops, who were never again to score a victory in Hungary, the country lay in ruin. Nearly half of the inhabited places had been destroyed by the invading armies. Around a quarter of the population was lost, mostly in lowland areas,..." "One of the more successful tactics employed by the Mongols was to wipe out urban populations that had refused to surrender; in the invasion of Kievan Rus', almost all major cities were destroyed; but if they chose to submit, the people were spared and treated leniently."
Part of the reason for the civil war was the right to declare the new states as slave states or free states, so I don't buy that the civil war was not about slavery. Certainly, many free blacks joined the north thinking that they could earn freedom for their families and other blacks. I agree that the civil war should not have been fought. If the south wanted to leave the union, I couldn't care less, we would be better off without those hicks. As far as oil being the reason for our interest in Iraq, it's pretty obvious. But the price to individual consumers was not Bush's concern- it was the right of oil companies to get a piece of Iraq's oil business. They are thinking long term.
I must have had a libertarian teacher. Maybe not though, because my teacher always talked about Lincoln holding the union together like it was a good thing.
