My family has been in Alabama since before 1800. My great-great grandfather, his father, his brother, and his uncle all enlisted in the Confederate Army in Jasper, Alabama in 1862. By the end of the war, 3 of the 4 were dead. None of them owned slaves. They did what they thought was right. The past is a foreign country to us.
I got branches of the tree been in Ohio since 1790’s…branches that been in eastern Tennessee since 1810’s…still more branches in other places.
Eighteen grandparents/uncles of mine served in ‘61-‘65. Nine Johnny Rebs and nine Billy Yanks. One dead uncle on each side. Not one of the 18 owned slaves…some served because they were forced to through conscription. Whatever bill was due for slavery from my family was paid long ago.
The sins of America are universal…those freedoms we are supposed to have are not.
My great great grandfather and his brother enlisted in Montgomery in 1861. The brother was wounded during the Seven Days. My GGF got a brief medical leave in early 1863 (he had tuberculosis; my great grandfather was conceived during this leaveand retuned in time for Gettysburg, where his brother lost a leg on the second day. My GGF fought through all the 1864 battles - Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, the Crater and died of tuberculosis at a hospital in Richmond in January 1865. I honor their memory and of all my people who fought for the South. They served in Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana regiments.
As do I. My people were subsistence farmers, who knew nothing of politics and certainly never benefited from slavery. They fought because their state asked them to do so, and they responded as people now would do if their country asked them. Their state WAS their country.
And just maybe they had a idea that the centralized state created by Lincoln — that was what he fought for, an all-powerful federal government- would turn out to be an absolute shitshow. Aggressive abroad and despotic at home, as General Lee said.
Enoch - Charles Dickens begins the "Tale of Two Cities" - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . " I think you are going overboard on the "worst of times." Have some perspective.
Did slavery keep Brazil backwards for centuries? Brazil didn't abolish slavery until 1888. Was everyone in Brazil harmed by slavery? Losing the war harmed the South and Southerners far more than slavery ever did. Nevertheless, losing the war was the correct outcome of that conflict.
The smarter Confederates recognized that one of the Confederacy’s biggest problems was that it had few railroads that went east to west. Its railroads mostly went north to south, designed to carry agricultural products north and bring back factory goods. There were few factories in the South, many more in the North.
P.S.: Like the rest of Latin America, Brazil is backward compared to North America; though I am sure there are many causes aside from a heritage of slavery.
Many Confederates and their slaves were recruited to Brazil to grow cotton (their community in Brazil still exists today). They quickly replaced their slaves with more exploitable peasants, as did the North with indentured servants (which existed in Virginia before slavery-- started with John Punch.)
There are more slaves today globally than at any time in history:
I do think about families such as yours and not fir nothing a hell of lot of their descendants fought tooth and nail in the 20 century against regimes that were abominations
Men of my family fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, WWI, WWII (my grandfather), the Korean War (my father), the Viet Nam war, Desert Storm, the Iraqi War, and in Afghanistan. I think we've paid our dues.
I often think about Simon bucker who surrender to grant at Donaldson, his grandson died along with a lot of other people on a little island called Okinawa.
Lol , when I was younger and to this day I am a blue dude! I was a boy from queens I was as happy to see the confederacy crushed as I am to see the Germans or communists defeated !
The confederacy was never crushed; otherwise the relatively recent events in Charlottesville, the one year anniversary of Charlottesville (I was there), the removal of Lees image from Richmond, etc. would not be occurring---and we would not be responding to this blog report by Matt Taibbi regarding the memorial in Georgia.
Problem is the 1861 succession of the CSA was never about slavery, per say, but is commonly painted today as such---always without historical context. Read your history regarding events surrounding the 1850 compromise (before that, too, is canceled). The other fact is, as someone else accurately posted here, most Confederate soldiers that fought and died for the real cause of the U.S. Civil War were not from slave owning families. I seriously doubt the bulk of them died on their swords over the issue of slave abolition. Meanwhile, the author of our Declaration of Independence, who died less than 40 years previous, owned over 600 slaves during his time at Monticello, VA. He freed NONE of them during his lifetime. Yet his image remains on our nickel, 2 dollar bill, in the halls of Congress, and stands within a memorial set on the conspicuous grounds of the U.S. Capital tidal basin.
Historical context would be too inconvenient as the illusion of social "equity" is currently being sold to the lower class in return for votes for those wishing to postpone another, upcoming revolution. History will prove that the lower class will always be with us. To paraphrase the late, great George Carlin: the lower class exists "to scare the shit out of the middle class" who "do all the work and pay all the taxes....keeps 'em showing up to those jobs".
BTW, communists comprise over half the world's population. When, exactly were they "crushed" or "defeated" that led to your current state of delusional glee? Do your 'revisionist' history books or talking circles in Queens remain ignorant of the fact that communist Russia was our ally during the defeat of fascist Germany in WWII? Ukraine would likely not be an issue today if that were not part of actual history that is ignored by you and the village idiots (literally) calling the shots today.
Charlottesville is nothing compared to the copious inventory of violent, racist and divisive acts unleashed on the country by the left over just the last few years. We should ban about 2/3 of the universities if we are to stamp out modern purveyors of racial hate. We should ban the Democrat party if we are to stamp out the history of racial hate. We should ban much of the left media if we are to stamp out the only real material institutional racism that exists today… that of the neoracist postmodernist Marxist steeped in the toxic mind virus of critical theory and committed to making sure that blacks and other minorities be herded into virtual identity plantations where their handlers make lots of cash off their continued exploitation and misery.
We absolutely have an economic class problem that justifies revolt. The problem is that you people have been simply manipulated by the Wall Street-powered billionaire boys club that owns the world to attack regular Americans suffering the negative impacts of fucked up globalism so that they, the billionaires, can continue to loot while the little people are at each other’s throats. YOU are the problem because you are not yet awake. You are stuck in a media feed fog of rage against an enemy in your head that is not your enemy, but has become your enemy because of your ignorant adoption of their narratives.
The fucking statues are part of that media narrative of distraction. They mean nothing real about anything today. But you buy into it like a puppet. Wake up dude.
You’re obviously manipulated too, based on this comment. We all are to different degrees. Hopefully you can wake up too instead of trying to cuss people out. I sense some rage in you as well!!
I am one of the nicest and most caring people you would ever meet... but I am easily irritated with displays of blind ignorance masquerading as some alternative truth.
Your entire first paragraph could potentially be classified as "blind ignorance masquerading as some alternative truth" in my opinion. Maybe take a pause and try to delay your irritation, see if that calms you down. I don't doubt you are nice and caring, but it's very easy to be mean online when you can't see people's faces.
True, the democratic party was the party of slavery and Jim Crow. LBJs "War on Poverty" was a modern tool used to keep black people down by making them dependent on the State (and thus destroying the black family unit by denying welfare if there was a man in the household). Do the math from there.
Take it easy Frank - maybe you aren't so much awake as being hyper carried away. Do you think revolution will bring about a utop[ia? how do you know it won't make things worse?
There is no utopia. There is only the terribly flawed system of the Great Experiment that happens to be the best system ever devised by great men. The pursuit of a utopia will always lead to a dystopia. A system of open access to opportunity that results in unequal outcomes based on the skills, efforts and successes of men (and women) is the only system that survives.
The establishment of the U.S. Constitution was about white supremacy--unless you ignore the words Article one, section two of the Constitution of the United States declared that any person who was not free would be counted as three-fifths of a free individual for the purposes of determining congressional representation.
I don't look at people as being good or bad. That are issues to waste time on discussing on Church Sunday. All people, IMO, are capable of doing both good and bad deeds.
I’m from Philly. No roots in the South. When people wanted to ban the Confederate flag I said sure, go ahead. Now those same people are flying LGBTQ flags at state departments and overseas. I was wrong. Never, ever give an inch to the disgusting fascist left. To coin a phrase; “y’all go fuck yourselves”.
Remember when The Taliban blew the ancient Buddhist engravings and statues off the walls and temples at Bamiyan? Yeah... that was awesome. I still don't understand why the British Christians haven't destroyed Stonehenge commemorating those damn pagans they fought for centuries
I had many interesting experiences in my years living and working in the USA. Mostly good. So.. I took a job on a shut down of a truck plant, interesting and with lots of overtime. The general foreman asked if any of us wanted to work together. Rick asked to work with me; I thought because we'd talked at the Union Hall. He was from OKC and we got along great and did a lot of work and had a lot of fun. I asked him one day why he asked to "buddy up" with me. The answer.. ah don't mind working with a Canadian but ah won't work with a Yankee... this was ~25 year's ago and I couldn't have asked for a better "tool buddy"! I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. Never did I hear anything remotely racist from him and in fact, it was very rare when I did in the country.
Speaking of Antifa, I heard Lara Logan say that some Antifa have been trained by the Azov n-a-z-I-s at one of their training camps in Ukraine. Does anyone here know if this is true?
I couldn’t say if it is specifically true or not, but it wouldn’t shock me if a few nutty 20something searcher-Vice junkie types hung out w/ Azov in Ukraine and then drifted into Antifa’s orbit back home in the USA.
I think we should let the confederates and antifa meet there every day and fight until they are all gone. Put it on pay tv and donate the money to mental health charities. Let them come from far and wide. Every night a pause to remove bodies.
Keep them on private property and you can have all the Confederate statues you want. Seriously, have a million on your own land. Public property, the entire public gets a say, and city councils and state legislatures are removing statues and/or moving them to less prominent places.
Except for those statues and monuments that were erected decades after the conflict and for the express purpose of proclaiming white superiority as part of a political program to put the Blacks back in their “place”. For the most part, these statues represent an attempt (still not completely quashed) to - pardon the expression - whitewash the reasons for the failed secession, reasons that are prominently and unashamedly expressed in each state’s declaration and so shouldn’t just be wished away. History does matter.
I’m not going to get into an argument with you over this, except to suggest that you read at least some of the Confederate states statements on their reasons for secession. You may also want to think on why these statues and monuments started being erected for the most part decades after the war and why Lee himself thought such things were a bad idea.
The concept of the chivalrous “Lost Cause” was a romanticized way of making the unpalatable truth acceptable through disingenuous reframing. For the most part, the common soldiers on either side were rarely fighting for grand principles - were the case otherwise, conscription would have been unnecessary.
There is nothing “woke” in a realistic examination of the facts. Facing and accepting what our nation’s forbears did is neither a sign of weakness or acceptance of guilt. It should, instead, be seen as a sign of strength and self-confidence as we all move forward to better a better future for all.
Please get your head into the present. It is a sign of mental weakness to profess a modern moral overlay of historical events and existence. Those that do it either are ignorant of history, or else are pushing a modern agenda void of interest to really understand.
There are many, many, many historical atrocities of collective human behavior that resulted and perpetuated war against another collection of humans based on some identity. Do I need to list them all? Years from now we will likely look back on your political ilk as having done terrible things as justified by their feeling of moral superiority. Do we then prosecute your ancestors and wipe out all historical reference because some find it upsetting in their nor moral superior posturing?
History is history. You don't solve anything by attempting to cancel it. But we can solve things by canceling the cancelers.
What precisely in my comments do you think you are responding to? I am not overlaying a 21st century conception on those who justified secession or those who erected the various monuments to commemorate Confederate figures. I am relying on what they said at the time and, in the case of the “Lost Cause” crowd, comparing the evidence to their narrative.
I said nothing about canceling anyone or anything, let alone procuring our ancestors, whatever you may have meant by that. Instead, these should all be teachable moments. Understanding doesn’t imply passing judgment (though each person is free to do whatever they wish with information), and I remember when the sin of “presentism” was - quite properly in my view - denounced; now, we seem to live in a world where “presentism” has become a virtue. We will see when that wheel turns once again.
A bit closer to home, by way of example, I think the American Museum of Natural History made a huge mistake when it caved in and removed the equestrian statue of TR from the front entrance. I find nothing wrong in explaining that what people saw as normal in their time is seen differently in a later period and how few (and often marginalized) were those whose dissenting views became over time the norm.
How else to teach those alive today the very lesson you suggest: we are part of a chain and have not reached a state of moral (or any other) perfection, that we have is a delusion we share with all those who came before and very likely all those who come after.
My head, often to my chagrin, is firmly in the present so I'll make a slight effort to help you extract yours from your ass:
Do you ever read your comments before hitting the little "post" button?
"...It is a sign of mental weakness to profess a modern moral overlay of historical events and existence."
Pray tell, how does one go about professing a modern moral overlay of historical events and existence? One can no more profess a modern moral overlay of events then one can go dancing with a modern moral overlay of events.
And while we're on the subject, precisely just what the hell, anyway, is a "modern moral overlay of events." Is there any meaning here crying out to be rescued from this grammatically crippled sentence? I see none so we'll move on.
Next!
"....There are many, many, many historical atrocities of collective human behavior that resulted and perpetuated war against another collection of humans based on some identity."
I just read this for the fourth or fifth time and remembered that I have a long day tomorrow and that I'm a grammarian not a lumberjack and the threat that followed it--"Do I need to list them all?"--got my attention, so I'll leave this one for some other commenter's chainsaw, should they dare.
Next!
"...Years from now we will likely look back on your political ilk as having done terrible things as justified by their feeling of moral superiority."
Here you nicely insert a gratuitous insult that is apparently birthed by an assumption of the commenter's political affiliation, not-so-coyly deploying the cowardly (sign of mental weakness!) second person "we."
"Terrible things."
Such as purchasing season tickets for the 2022 Reds? I manifested no moral superiority when making this decision. And I justified the decision easily: reasonably good seats. But now it appears attending a Reds home game will be the equivalent of being coerced into attending your brother-in-law's beer league slow-pitch softball game. This is just the sort of situation that suggests that there is NO morality in the world, let along moral superiority. Do you understand this?
Next!
"...Do we then prosecute your ancestors and wipe out all historical reference because some find it upsetting in their nor moral superior posturing?
Here I have a mental image of you, a Peter Lorre-like figure, hovering in a darkened corner of a seedy hotel lobby, cigarette pinched between thumb, index finger, middle finger, cigarette held out and straight up, delivering this line to someone sitting in a chair who you've mistaken for a chap who rubbed you the wrong way at last week's Mason's Society meeting. The stranger quickly gets up and leaves.
Yes, history is indeed history. And not only do you not solve anything by attempting to "cancel" it, you certainly don't contribute to the conversation by being ignorant of it.
Outside of the first sentence and part of the second one, I agree 110% with everything that you've written here. The racial b.s., which includes the obsession about Confederate monuments, is just a way to divide the peasants from uniting against our putative masters.
Jolly do you have an example outside the US where the losing side erected monuments inside of the nation they lost a war in? Are there Romanov statues in Russia? Japanese monuments in the Philippines? French monuments in Waterloo?
Yes, there are Japanese memorials in the Philippines as well as other places in Asia. I was stationed in the Philippines and Okinawa, where there are monuments and memorials all over the island.
Careful. On most social media sites, even asking that question will get you deplatformed. Let's hope Substack survives the Disinformation Governance Board.
Well, the Russians keeping The Winter Palace /Hermitage in tact and all the Romanov treasures on full display is not a memorial but certainly a reminder of why people revolted.
Most countries in the world in the very least honor those lost in loosing battles. The British and most European countries have memorials to battles lost or whatever. Even the hunter gatherer tribes I visited in South America have this sort of thing. In the Marine Corps we are taught to Revere those who fought to the death in loosing battles and it's a badge of honor for us. Like Sam I was also stationed in east Asia and have visited monuments all over the place. I was even apart of a joint ceremony between the Japanese and the US for the 63rd anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima on Iwo Jima Infront of a memorial that commemorated both the Japanese and the American lives lost. Both the US and Japan come together to remember.
Yes, there are palaces and statues and memorials throughout what was once the USSR commemorating the Czars. I was particularly impressed with Cathrine's Palace that Peter built in answer to Versailles. Of course, many Soviet era heroes still have statues and monuments celebrating their reigns of blood and terror - e.g., Lenin's Tomb.
If you travel through India, you'll find monuments to Queen Victoria and the British Empire, including named train stations, cities and statues. When you get to Hong Kong, you'll see all kinds of tributes to the United Kingdom as you will throughout the United States.
Travel - it can be your friend and provide a magnificent education while expanding world views and diminishing intolerance.
No, but I also don't have an example of another nation with freedom of speech.
Civil Wars don't tend to have, as an end goal, an attempt to bring the nation together at the end. They are usually held to destroy another set of politics, ethnic group, or religion. We know that Lincon and the North didn't fight the war over slavery, as Lincon had the Compromise of 1860, and slavery wasn't outlawed until 1862, with the 13th amendment. No, it was fought to preserve the union, and it is rather hard to preserve that if you don't allow the other side it's freedoms, although Reconstruction put a huge burden on that.
Russia didn't memorialize the Romanovs, as they wanted to destroy every last trace of them in the quest for Communism. You could compare the US civil war to the Russian Civil War that followed the Revolution, but freedom of speech isn't he communists strong point. The Philippines weren't Japan, and it wasn't a civil war. Waterloo is in Belgium, a country that has someone else kick out an invader. The point being, with all of the examples you give, not one is a war of unification. And, again, not good examples of freedom of speech, nor of private property.
....slavery wasn't outlawed until 1862, with the 13th amendment" Jolly Swagman.
No, it was not.
The 13th amendment was ratified in 1865, after the end of the U.S. Civil War. You appear to be confusing Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation with a Constitutional Amendment. Not the same. Get your facts straight. This is enough misinformation going around these days without you adding to the pile.
Again, an outside force came to destroy an ideology. Remember, it isn't the US that outlaws any references to Nazism, it is Germany. And, further, that outlawing hasn't irradicated anything. There are still underground Nazi groups, former Nazi's as leaders, and so on.
As I said initially, not many examples of freedom of speech out there.
I am just trying to grasp your point here. You mentioned “healing a nation” and “free speech” but how does that lead to the commissioning of a marble statue of a political/military leader in the middle of town. Clearly this is not a free speech thing.
Romanov statues in Russia? Putin erected a giant Orthodox cathedral on the site of the execution of Tsar Nicholas and his family in Ekaterinburg.
Also, on a more local note, there is Confederate monument in Middletown, Ohio-kind of obscure-I never heard of it until a couple years ago despite living in the area most of my life-but it was there-not sure if it was removed or not-it wasn’t very big.
Had to look it up. You’re right but think about it. There’s a statue of a captured, imprisoned and tortured American soldier. Not exactly glamorizing him. That would be akin to all monuments depicting Lee signing his official surrender to the North.
Apparently you are unaware of what Lincoln said at the end of the Civil War...With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish as just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
Here is your word of the day...equivocation. The point was that Lincoln knew that to bring the country back together the North had to be charitable toward the South. Of course, he was assassinated, that didn't happen and we suffered through decades of strife.
But hold on a second here... did Lincoln direct local and state governments to erect monuments of Civil War military and political leaders? Saying something with your first amendment rights is one thing, memorializing it in stone in the public square as part of the fabric of society is another.
The monuments were paid for by the relatives & community donations to honor & remember the dead. That’s why a number of years passed before any were erected — the people were impoverished after the war. Think of it in this way — the soldiers in Iraq fought for the United States & the way of life they considered valuable (no matter if others believe this to be misguided) and the Confederate soldiers did the same. They had no stock in oil companies. The majority of Confederate soldiers did the same as most did not own slaves. It’s not 1860 or 1950 it’s 2022. Enough.
Godwin's Law is when someone likens someone else (e.g., Donald Trump, Saddam Hussein) to Hitler. So, in a tribute to your use of a sports' adage: You fumbled.
At other times when you're at a loss on how to respond, do you pull, "You're a Putin Puppet" from your notebook of saved replies?
Imo, they’re not bothering anybody and it’s a part of this country’s history. The groups that came to protest them come off as extremely bored, annoying and hypocritical to me.
What a waste of a beautiful day. And the work was completed in 1972? Ha, clearly an important piece of history. They should sandblast for aesthetic reasons as much as anything else.
Both sides were losers in the Civil War. That war was far and away the worst thing that ever happened to our country. An entire generation of young men were killed and injured. The follow up was almost as bad with the abject poverty and stranglehold enforced by Democrats with Jim Crow laws. Slavery was a terrible thing and all Americans are glad it is gone. Some time we need to get past it and get over it. I have waited my entire life to see racism disappear, but some people just keep fanning the flames to keep it going.
Weimar Germany indeed - where you really needed uniforms/symbols to be able to tell the combatants (Nazis and Communists) apart. Otherwise they all looked and acted pretty much alike.
That’s what Hitler said-it was easy to recruit Communists to become Nazis b/c they possessed the same mindset, outside of ideology. Not so with middle of the road Germans.
My family has been in Alabama since before 1800. My great-great grandfather, his father, his brother, and his uncle all enlisted in the Confederate Army in Jasper, Alabama in 1862. By the end of the war, 3 of the 4 were dead. None of them owned slaves. They did what they thought was right. The past is a foreign country to us.
I got branches of the tree been in Ohio since 1790’s…branches that been in eastern Tennessee since 1810’s…still more branches in other places.
Eighteen grandparents/uncles of mine served in ‘61-‘65. Nine Johnny Rebs and nine Billy Yanks. One dead uncle on each side. Not one of the 18 owned slaves…some served because they were forced to through conscription. Whatever bill was due for slavery from my family was paid long ago.
The sins of America are universal…those freedoms we are supposed to have are not.
The sins are universal the freedoms aren't. Damn straight. I m booking this one .
And Freedom is often ugly but the alternative is even worse.
It’s what I tell my grandkids…try and keep it simple
I also had members of my family who fought for the Blue. It truly was a war of brothers.
My great great grandfather and his brother enlisted in Montgomery in 1861. The brother was wounded during the Seven Days. My GGF got a brief medical leave in early 1863 (he had tuberculosis; my great grandfather was conceived during this leaveand retuned in time for Gettysburg, where his brother lost a leg on the second day. My GGF fought through all the 1864 battles - Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, the Crater and died of tuberculosis at a hospital in Richmond in January 1865. I honor their memory and of all my people who fought for the South. They served in Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana regiments.
As do I. My people were subsistence farmers, who knew nothing of politics and certainly never benefited from slavery. They fought because their state asked them to do so, and they responded as people now would do if their country asked them. Their state WAS their country.
And just maybe they had a idea that the centralized state created by Lincoln — that was what he fought for, an all-powerful federal government- would turn out to be an absolute shitshow. Aggressive abroad and despotic at home, as General Lee said.
For a hill to die on, they picked the wrong one.
Indeed. In the end, they were not fighting for freedom, but the subjugation of others.
Enoch - Charles Dickens begins the "Tale of Two Cities" - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . " I think you are going overboard on the "worst of times." Have some perspective.
I didn't say "the worst," I said "absolute shitshow" which i don't think necessarily implies "the worst."
Except for the slaveowners themselves, _everybody_ was harmed by slavery. It kept the South backward for centuries.
Did slavery keep Brazil backwards for centuries? Brazil didn't abolish slavery until 1888. Was everyone in Brazil harmed by slavery? Losing the war harmed the South and Southerners far more than slavery ever did. Nevertheless, losing the war was the correct outcome of that conflict.
The smarter Confederates recognized that one of the Confederacy’s biggest problems was that it had few railroads that went east to west. Its railroads mostly went north to south, designed to carry agricultural products north and bring back factory goods. There were few factories in the South, many more in the North.
P.S.: Like the rest of Latin America, Brazil is backward compared to North America; though I am sure there are many causes aside from a heritage of slavery.
Many Confederates and their slaves were recruited to Brazil to grow cotton (their community in Brazil still exists today). They quickly replaced their slaves with more exploitable peasants, as did the North with indentured servants (which existed in Virginia before slavery-- started with John Punch.)
There are more slaves today globally than at any time in history:
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2012/10/23/more_slaves_now_than_at_any_other_time_in_history.html#:~:text=There%20are%2027%20million%20people,Africa%20during%20the%20slave%20trade.&text=There%20are%20more%20people%20in,does%20not%20include%20bonded%20labour.
I do think about families such as yours and not fir nothing a hell of lot of their descendants fought tooth and nail in the 20 century against regimes that were abominations
Men of my family fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, WWI, WWII (my grandfather), the Korean War (my father), the Viet Nam war, Desert Storm, the Iraqi War, and in Afghanistan. I think we've paid our dues.
I often think about Simon bucker who surrender to grant at Donaldson, his grandson died along with a lot of other people on a little island called Okinawa.
My relatives on my dad's side were from Jasper. Fought in the Battle of Seven Pines.
My great-great-great grandfather surrendered with Lee at Appomattox Courthouse. The only one who survived the war.
Do you have any letters or stories? Their is a wealth of knowledge to be gleaned from those before us.
I do. The Hamilton/McDonald family tree is constructed on Ancestry.com and contains a host of original source materials.
Bad battle , in a smart world elites would have negotiated. On the real world it becomes a slaughter
The Confederacy was made up of brilliant Generals and idiot politicians. Fortunately!
I hate the fact that I support confederate memorials almost exclusively because of what opposes them.
Lol , when I was younger and to this day I am a blue dude! I was a boy from queens I was as happy to see the confederacy crushed as I am to see the Germans or communists defeated !
Wow. You were alive during the Civil War and the other great wars. A miracle!
Yeah I read lots of books
The confederacy was never crushed; otherwise the relatively recent events in Charlottesville, the one year anniversary of Charlottesville (I was there), the removal of Lees image from Richmond, etc. would not be occurring---and we would not be responding to this blog report by Matt Taibbi regarding the memorial in Georgia.
Problem is the 1861 succession of the CSA was never about slavery, per say, but is commonly painted today as such---always without historical context. Read your history regarding events surrounding the 1850 compromise (before that, too, is canceled). The other fact is, as someone else accurately posted here, most Confederate soldiers that fought and died for the real cause of the U.S. Civil War were not from slave owning families. I seriously doubt the bulk of them died on their swords over the issue of slave abolition. Meanwhile, the author of our Declaration of Independence, who died less than 40 years previous, owned over 600 slaves during his time at Monticello, VA. He freed NONE of them during his lifetime. Yet his image remains on our nickel, 2 dollar bill, in the halls of Congress, and stands within a memorial set on the conspicuous grounds of the U.S. Capital tidal basin.
Historical context would be too inconvenient as the illusion of social "equity" is currently being sold to the lower class in return for votes for those wishing to postpone another, upcoming revolution. History will prove that the lower class will always be with us. To paraphrase the late, great George Carlin: the lower class exists "to scare the shit out of the middle class" who "do all the work and pay all the taxes....keeps 'em showing up to those jobs".
BTW, communists comprise over half the world's population. When, exactly were they "crushed" or "defeated" that led to your current state of delusional glee? Do your 'revisionist' history books or talking circles in Queens remain ignorant of the fact that communist Russia was our ally during the defeat of fascist Germany in WWII? Ukraine would likely not be an issue today if that were not part of actual history that is ignored by you and the village idiots (literally) calling the shots today.
Charlottesville is nothing compared to the copious inventory of violent, racist and divisive acts unleashed on the country by the left over just the last few years. We should ban about 2/3 of the universities if we are to stamp out modern purveyors of racial hate. We should ban the Democrat party if we are to stamp out the history of racial hate. We should ban much of the left media if we are to stamp out the only real material institutional racism that exists today… that of the neoracist postmodernist Marxist steeped in the toxic mind virus of critical theory and committed to making sure that blacks and other minorities be herded into virtual identity plantations where their handlers make lots of cash off their continued exploitation and misery.
We absolutely have an economic class problem that justifies revolt. The problem is that you people have been simply manipulated by the Wall Street-powered billionaire boys club that owns the world to attack regular Americans suffering the negative impacts of fucked up globalism so that they, the billionaires, can continue to loot while the little people are at each other’s throats. YOU are the problem because you are not yet awake. You are stuck in a media feed fog of rage against an enemy in your head that is not your enemy, but has become your enemy because of your ignorant adoption of their narratives.
The fucking statues are part of that media narrative of distraction. They mean nothing real about anything today. But you buy into it like a puppet. Wake up dude.
You’re obviously manipulated too, based on this comment. We all are to different degrees. Hopefully you can wake up too instead of trying to cuss people out. I sense some rage in you as well!!
I am one of the nicest and most caring people you would ever meet... but I am easily irritated with displays of blind ignorance masquerading as some alternative truth.
Your entire first paragraph could potentially be classified as "blind ignorance masquerading as some alternative truth" in my opinion. Maybe take a pause and try to delay your irritation, see if that calms you down. I don't doubt you are nice and caring, but it's very easy to be mean online when you can't see people's faces.
True, the democratic party was the party of slavery and Jim Crow. LBJs "War on Poverty" was a modern tool used to keep black people down by making them dependent on the State (and thus destroying the black family unit by denying welfare if there was a man in the household). Do the math from there.
I beg to differ. The statues are nothing more than part of the media of those artists wishing to work in bronze.
Thanks for the info. I'm voting republican from now on.
Take it easy Frank - maybe you aren't so much awake as being hyper carried away. Do you think revolution will bring about a utop[ia? how do you know it won't make things worse?
There is no utopia. There is only the terribly flawed system of the Great Experiment that happens to be the best system ever devised by great men. The pursuit of a utopia will always lead to a dystopia. A system of open access to opportunity that results in unequal outcomes based on the skills, efforts and successes of men (and women) is the only system that survives.
The Confederacy WAS about white supremacy, unless you choose not to take Confederate VP Alexander Stephens at his word from the Cornerstone Speech.
Both sides were for white supremacy. But the North wanted to contain slavery and preserve the empire.
The establishment of the U.S. Constitution was about white supremacy--unless you ignore the words Article one, section two of the Constitution of the United States declared that any person who was not free would be counted as three-fifths of a free individual for the purposes of determining congressional representation.
Straw man response-we’re talking about the motives of the Confederacy, not the admitted hypocrisy in the framing of the US Constitution.
We're talking about the truth. You just don't happen to like it.
Were there bad people on both sides? I ask this seriously based on what you saw. ( ( I am not always in snark mode - )
I don't look at people as being good or bad. That are issues to waste time on discussing on Church Sunday. All people, IMO, are capable of doing both good and bad deeds.
A bit of an equivocation for sure, but I respect your Sunday wishes.
"most Confederate soldiers that fought and died for the real cause of the U.S. Civil War . . ."
What is that "real cause," may I ask?
Queens - that explains so much
I’m from Philly. No roots in the South. When people wanted to ban the Confederate flag I said sure, go ahead. Now those same people are flying LGBTQ flags at state departments and overseas. I was wrong. Never, ever give an inch to the disgusting fascist left. To coin a phrase; “y’all go fuck yourselves”.
Why so angry, Simple Jack?
“Just because it says Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean it’s only about black lives”. Really? So now all lives matter?
As many have pointed out during the height of the BLM movement, the more accurate statement is that "No lives matter."
Even yours Ed, even yours.
You had me at hello…
Always did.
Somehow I’m over these conflicts. And from the sparse crowds, I think most are.
Remember when The Taliban blew the ancient Buddhist engravings and statues off the walls and temples at Bamiyan? Yeah... that was awesome. I still don't understand why the British Christians haven't destroyed Stonehenge commemorating those damn pagans they fought for centuries
I had many interesting experiences in my years living and working in the USA. Mostly good. So.. I took a job on a shut down of a truck plant, interesting and with lots of overtime. The general foreman asked if any of us wanted to work together. Rick asked to work with me; I thought because we'd talked at the Union Hall. He was from OKC and we got along great and did a lot of work and had a lot of fun. I asked him one day why he asked to "buddy up" with me. The answer.. ah don't mind working with a Canadian but ah won't work with a Yankee... this was ~25 year's ago and I couldn't have asked for a better "tool buddy"! I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. Never did I hear anything remotely racist from him and in fact, it was very rare when I did in the country.
I hope we someday get over calling Antifa “antifacists”. They are simply “communists”, or at minimum “socialists”. And they are truly “Anti-American”.
Speaking of Antifa, I heard Lara Logan say that some Antifa have been trained by the Azov n-a-z-I-s at one of their training camps in Ukraine. Does anyone here know if this is true?
I couldn’t say if it is specifically true or not, but it wouldn’t shock me if a few nutty 20something searcher-Vice junkie types hung out w/ Azov in Ukraine and then drifted into Antifa’s orbit back home in the USA.
I think we should let the confederates and antifa meet there every day and fight until they are all gone. Put it on pay tv and donate the money to mental health charities. Let them come from far and wide. Every night a pause to remove bodies.
This x 50,000
The toxic psychology of nutcases is dividing this country far more than substantive policy differences….
I'd subscribe. Especially if it's for a good cause.
Generally speaking, when you lose a war, you don't get statues and monuments. Right? This is so weird.
Specifically speaking, to heal a nation you let the losers of a war have statues and monuments. It only seems weird now, 150 years later on.
Also, freedom of speech and private property cover a lot of ground.
Keep them on private property and you can have all the Confederate statues you want. Seriously, have a million on your own land. Public property, the entire public gets a say, and city councils and state legislatures are removing statues and/or moving them to less prominent places.
Amen to that.
Except for those statues and monuments that were erected decades after the conflict and for the express purpose of proclaiming white superiority as part of a political program to put the Blacks back in their “place”. For the most part, these statues represent an attempt (still not completely quashed) to - pardon the expression - whitewash the reasons for the failed secession, reasons that are prominently and unashamedly expressed in each state’s declaration and so shouldn’t just be wished away. History does matter.
BS. What is the statute of limitations for modern woke moralization of history? I would say 20 minutes.
I’m not going to get into an argument with you over this, except to suggest that you read at least some of the Confederate states statements on their reasons for secession. You may also want to think on why these statues and monuments started being erected for the most part decades after the war and why Lee himself thought such things were a bad idea.
The concept of the chivalrous “Lost Cause” was a romanticized way of making the unpalatable truth acceptable through disingenuous reframing. For the most part, the common soldiers on either side were rarely fighting for grand principles - were the case otherwise, conscription would have been unnecessary.
There is nothing “woke” in a realistic examination of the facts. Facing and accepting what our nation’s forbears did is neither a sign of weakness or acceptance of guilt. It should, instead, be seen as a sign of strength and self-confidence as we all move forward to better a better future for all.
Please get your head into the present. It is a sign of mental weakness to profess a modern moral overlay of historical events and existence. Those that do it either are ignorant of history, or else are pushing a modern agenda void of interest to really understand.
There are many, many, many historical atrocities of collective human behavior that resulted and perpetuated war against another collection of humans based on some identity. Do I need to list them all? Years from now we will likely look back on your political ilk as having done terrible things as justified by their feeling of moral superiority. Do we then prosecute your ancestors and wipe out all historical reference because some find it upsetting in their nor moral superior posturing?
History is history. You don't solve anything by attempting to cancel it. But we can solve things by canceling the cancelers.
What precisely in my comments do you think you are responding to? I am not overlaying a 21st century conception on those who justified secession or those who erected the various monuments to commemorate Confederate figures. I am relying on what they said at the time and, in the case of the “Lost Cause” crowd, comparing the evidence to their narrative.
I said nothing about canceling anyone or anything, let alone procuring our ancestors, whatever you may have meant by that. Instead, these should all be teachable moments. Understanding doesn’t imply passing judgment (though each person is free to do whatever they wish with information), and I remember when the sin of “presentism” was - quite properly in my view - denounced; now, we seem to live in a world where “presentism” has become a virtue. We will see when that wheel turns once again.
A bit closer to home, by way of example, I think the American Museum of Natural History made a huge mistake when it caved in and removed the equestrian statue of TR from the front entrance. I find nothing wrong in explaining that what people saw as normal in their time is seen differently in a later period and how few (and often marginalized) were those whose dissenting views became over time the norm.
How else to teach those alive today the very lesson you suggest: we are part of a chain and have not reached a state of moral (or any other) perfection, that we have is a delusion we share with all those who came before and very likely all those who come after.
My head, often to my chagrin, is firmly in the present so I'll make a slight effort to help you extract yours from your ass:
Do you ever read your comments before hitting the little "post" button?
"...It is a sign of mental weakness to profess a modern moral overlay of historical events and existence."
Pray tell, how does one go about professing a modern moral overlay of historical events and existence? One can no more profess a modern moral overlay of events then one can go dancing with a modern moral overlay of events.
And while we're on the subject, precisely just what the hell, anyway, is a "modern moral overlay of events." Is there any meaning here crying out to be rescued from this grammatically crippled sentence? I see none so we'll move on.
Next!
"....There are many, many, many historical atrocities of collective human behavior that resulted and perpetuated war against another collection of humans based on some identity."
I just read this for the fourth or fifth time and remembered that I have a long day tomorrow and that I'm a grammarian not a lumberjack and the threat that followed it--"Do I need to list them all?"--got my attention, so I'll leave this one for some other commenter's chainsaw, should they dare.
Next!
"...Years from now we will likely look back on your political ilk as having done terrible things as justified by their feeling of moral superiority."
Here you nicely insert a gratuitous insult that is apparently birthed by an assumption of the commenter's political affiliation, not-so-coyly deploying the cowardly (sign of mental weakness!) second person "we."
"Terrible things."
Such as purchasing season tickets for the 2022 Reds? I manifested no moral superiority when making this decision. And I justified the decision easily: reasonably good seats. But now it appears attending a Reds home game will be the equivalent of being coerced into attending your brother-in-law's beer league slow-pitch softball game. This is just the sort of situation that suggests that there is NO morality in the world, let along moral superiority. Do you understand this?
Next!
"...Do we then prosecute your ancestors and wipe out all historical reference because some find it upsetting in their nor moral superior posturing?
Here I have a mental image of you, a Peter Lorre-like figure, hovering in a darkened corner of a seedy hotel lobby, cigarette pinched between thumb, index finger, middle finger, cigarette held out and straight up, delivering this line to someone sitting in a chair who you've mistaken for a chap who rubbed you the wrong way at last week's Mason's Society meeting. The stranger quickly gets up and leaves.
Yes, history is indeed history. And not only do you not solve anything by attempting to "cancel" it, you certainly don't contribute to the conversation by being ignorant of it.
https://www.historyonthenet.com/reasons-for-secession
You have learned your lessons well, clown.
Put your Antifa mask back on and get back to your game console in mom's basement.
I agree that statues and monuments are a political message.
Bullshit. They were erected when the generation who fought the war was dying off. Yankee memorials were erected around the same time.
Monuments are generally erected a generation or two after the events.
Yes, and not as some part of some nefarious plan to oppress Southern blacks. That idea emerged around 2015, from the boiler room of the SPLC.
Statues oppressed blacks? Interesting phenomenon.
Don't tell obama, booker, oprah, joy reid, sharpton, et.al that...they have a soft spot in their hearts for blacksploitation
Outside of the first sentence and part of the second one, I agree 110% with everything that you've written here. The racial b.s., which includes the obsession about Confederate monuments, is just a way to divide the peasants from uniting against our putative masters.
Exactly.
Jolly do you have an example outside the US where the losing side erected monuments inside of the nation they lost a war in? Are there Romanov statues in Russia? Japanese monuments in the Philippines? French monuments in Waterloo?
Yes, there are Japanese memorials in the Philippines as well as other places in Asia. I was stationed in the Philippines and Okinawa, where there are monuments and memorials all over the island.
Sam isn’t that weird? The Imperial Japanese committed massive atrocities in the Philippines.
Let me clarify that I am specifically referencing memorials that glorify a specific human being.. not memorials to commemorate the dead.
Were you a Marine? I was stationed in Oki and traveled east Asia as a Marine. I got to go to Iwo for the anniversary of the battle.
No, I was Air Force, stationed at Naha Air Base.
That was a few decades before my time in Oki. Lol My first year in Oki was 2010. Naha had already been returned to the Japanese Self Defense Force.
How about the glorification of Stephan Bandera in Ukraine?
Careful. On most social media sites, even asking that question will get you deplatformed. Let's hope Substack survives the Disinformation Governance Board.
The UPA fought everyone! Red Army, Nazis, every Polish organization under the sun…
Well, the Russians keeping The Winter Palace /Hermitage in tact and all the Romanov treasures on full display is not a memorial but certainly a reminder of why people revolted.
Lenin was a monster , but even he knew when to back off , is why he succeeded
Most countries in the world in the very least honor those lost in loosing battles. The British and most European countries have memorials to battles lost or whatever. Even the hunter gatherer tribes I visited in South America have this sort of thing. In the Marine Corps we are taught to Revere those who fought to the death in loosing battles and it's a badge of honor for us. Like Sam I was also stationed in east Asia and have visited monuments all over the place. I was even apart of a joint ceremony between the Japanese and the US for the 63rd anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima on Iwo Jima Infront of a memorial that commemorated both the Japanese and the American lives lost. Both the US and Japan come together to remember.
Yes, there are palaces and statues and memorials throughout what was once the USSR commemorating the Czars. I was particularly impressed with Cathrine's Palace that Peter built in answer to Versailles. Of course, many Soviet era heroes still have statues and monuments celebrating their reigns of blood and terror - e.g., Lenin's Tomb.
If you travel through India, you'll find monuments to Queen Victoria and the British Empire, including named train stations, cities and statues. When you get to Hong Kong, you'll see all kinds of tributes to the United Kingdom as you will throughout the United States.
Travel - it can be your friend and provide a magnificent education while expanding world views and diminishing intolerance.
Well, yes. There are a lot of Romanov statues in Russia. Most erected inside the last 20 years.
No, but I also don't have an example of another nation with freedom of speech.
Civil Wars don't tend to have, as an end goal, an attempt to bring the nation together at the end. They are usually held to destroy another set of politics, ethnic group, or religion. We know that Lincon and the North didn't fight the war over slavery, as Lincon had the Compromise of 1860, and slavery wasn't outlawed until 1862, with the 13th amendment. No, it was fought to preserve the union, and it is rather hard to preserve that if you don't allow the other side it's freedoms, although Reconstruction put a huge burden on that.
Russia didn't memorialize the Romanovs, as they wanted to destroy every last trace of them in the quest for Communism. You could compare the US civil war to the Russian Civil War that followed the Revolution, but freedom of speech isn't he communists strong point. The Philippines weren't Japan, and it wasn't a civil war. Waterloo is in Belgium, a country that has someone else kick out an invader. The point being, with all of the examples you give, not one is a war of unification. And, again, not good examples of freedom of speech, nor of private property.
....slavery wasn't outlawed until 1862, with the 13th amendment" Jolly Swagman.
No, it was not.
The 13th amendment was ratified in 1865, after the end of the U.S. Civil War. You appear to be confusing Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation with a Constitutional Amendment. Not the same. Get your facts straight. This is enough misinformation going around these days without you adding to the pile.
Lighten up, Francis.
Totally. Don't make it personal.
You write: "No, but I also don't have an example of another nation with freedom of speech."
Help me out here. I'm not coming up with the name of a country with freedom of speech.
Ok what about post WWII Germany then.
Again, an outside force came to destroy an ideology. Remember, it isn't the US that outlaws any references to Nazism, it is Germany. And, further, that outlawing hasn't irradicated anything. There are still underground Nazi groups, former Nazi's as leaders, and so on.
As I said initially, not many examples of freedom of speech out there.
I am just trying to grasp your point here. You mentioned “healing a nation” and “free speech” but how does that lead to the commissioning of a marble statue of a political/military leader in the middle of town. Clearly this is not a free speech thing.
Romanov statues in Russia? Putin erected a giant Orthodox cathedral on the site of the execution of Tsar Nicholas and his family in Ekaterinburg.
Also, on a more local note, there is Confederate monument in Middletown, Ohio-kind of obscure-I never heard of it until a couple years ago despite living in the area most of my life-but it was there-not sure if it was removed or not-it wasn’t very big.
Russia has restored many Romanov palaces and houses....
Where is it? I'm not far from there and now I want to see if it's still there. Lol
I think it is on Cincinnati-Dayton Road, in Blueball, but I’m not completely sure. I only saw it on Channel 5 news.
That sounds familiar. I believe I saw something about a protest now that you mention it. I guess I could just Google it. Lol
I'll wager there are French monuments in Waterloo
So remove the Vietnam war memorials?
Yeah Frank. If there are American memorials in Vietnam, that's weird too. Troll.
There are groomer.
actually I believe there are including the Hanoi Hilton
Had to look it up. You’re right but think about it. There’s a statue of a captured, imprisoned and tortured American soldier. Not exactly glamorizing him. That would be akin to all monuments depicting Lee signing his official surrender to the North.
Apparently you are unaware of what Lincoln said at the end of the Civil War...With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish as just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
"with malice toward none, and charity for all." So, is that how your BLM and Antifa friends behave?
It is fucking amazing how some people are so blind to their one-sided moralization while claiming to be the better person.
Here is your word of the day...equivocation. The point was that Lincoln knew that to bring the country back together the North had to be charitable toward the South. Of course, he was assassinated, that didn't happen and we suffered through decades of strife.
But hold on a second here... did Lincoln direct local and state governments to erect monuments of Civil War military and political leaders? Saying something with your first amendment rights is one thing, memorializing it in stone in the public square as part of the fabric of society is another.
The monuments were paid for by the relatives & community donations to honor & remember the dead. That’s why a number of years passed before any were erected — the people were impoverished after the war. Think of it in this way — the soldiers in Iraq fought for the United States & the way of life they considered valuable (no matter if others believe this to be misguided) and the Confederate soldiers did the same. They had no stock in oil companies. The majority of Confederate soldiers did the same as most did not own slaves. It’s not 1860 or 1950 it’s 2022. Enough.
Look SW, Don is making the point that Lincoln somehow commissioned these statues, which seems disingenuous. Stay on topic.
I made no such point. You don't seem to even know what the topic is.
Lincoln was a moderate and looking to reincorporate the south. His death and mlks were catastrophic.
Blame Lincoln and his "with malice towards none, with charity for all" riff
The antifa of today were the Radical Republicans of Lincoln's.
Um, no. https://ngo.locals.com/post/2106530/ngo-interview-antifas-lust-for-violence-criminality-and-making-people-suffer
Apparently people don't study the Civil War much - look up the Wade-Davis bill, that Lincoln vetoed.
The bill has nothing to do with beating up journalists covering stories.
Or defending child molestation for that matter: https://ngo.locals.com/upost/2109742/transgender-pedophiles-who-trafficked-child-for-sex-abuse-video-sentenced-to-prison
If you want something more contemporaneously comparable with regard to antifa look up the Ku Klux Klan Act which Grant signed.
The Klan and antifa are terrorist organizations led by evil people. Neither care squat about civil liberty.
LOL. Sure.
Generally speaking Rick you might consider boning up on real American History.
Educate me, Mac. Rather than trolling the thread, why don't you try to say something intelligent.
Not my job.
Yeah, I don't think they'd allow Hitler statues in Germany.
Non sequitur
Sequitur
A swing and miss while proving Godwin's law.
Godwin's Law is when someone likens someone else (e.g., Donald Trump, Saddam Hussein) to Hitler. So, in a tribute to your use of a sports' adage: You fumbled.
At other times when you're at a loss on how to respond, do you pull, "You're a Putin Puppet" from your notebook of saved replies?
Hitler statues are explicitly illegal in Germany.
Right
What jolly said
An OUTSTANDING new interview:
Scott Ritter; Ukraine, Finland and Nato, a Warning to the People of Finland – May 8, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciUNBIKNxMw
Imo, they’re not bothering anybody and it’s a part of this country’s history. The groups that came to protest them come off as extremely bored, annoying and hypocritical to me.
What a waste of a beautiful day. And the work was completed in 1972? Ha, clearly an important piece of history. They should sandblast for aesthetic reasons as much as anything else.
Why not just reform the monument by adding statutes of Lincoln and MLK to the top?
Both sides were losers in the Civil War. That war was far and away the worst thing that ever happened to our country. An entire generation of young men were killed and injured. The follow up was almost as bad with the abject poverty and stranglehold enforced by Democrats with Jim Crow laws. Slavery was a terrible thing and all Americans are glad it is gone. Some time we need to get past it and get over it. I have waited my entire life to see racism disappear, but some people just keep fanning the flames to keep it going.
You mean: some people just keep being racist to keep it going.
Exactly lucrezia and feathering their bed while at it. No matter their color.
Weimar Germany indeed - where you really needed uniforms/symbols to be able to tell the combatants (Nazis and Communists) apart. Otherwise they all looked and acted pretty much alike.
I remember reading about communist street fighters from Germany who ended up becoming Nazis because it was all the same stuff.
They recruited from the same subgroup of the population - that's why they competed so viciously.
That’s what Hitler said-it was easy to recruit Communists to become Nazis b/c they possessed the same mindset, outside of ideology. Not so with middle of the road Germans.
Be thankful that monetary theory has been proven so wrong, otherwise...