Did you celebrate Nathan Bedford Forrest Day?

[Heloin]

It's too hot and has a higher then average number of crazy people. Then there's me down in Florida which is like the super south.

Eeeeeeeh. Most southerners don't consider Florida as the south - well, not all of it anyways.

And I call all Americans Yankees. Doesn't make either of us right.

[Kannap]

Like any chain restaurant, some locations are good and some are shit.

Except Chick-fil-A. I've never been to a bad Chick-fil-A.

I've been to a lot of bad Chick-fil-As.

[Yawkland]

Would an American mimd explaining to me why there’s still people who honour and openly praise traitors to the Union? Especially persons as vile as this? I mean, I know there’s still a lot of neo-nazis who idolise Hitler, but this seems a lot more widespread and strangely accepted than that.

Probably because

1) They don't identify with the Union
2) They may identify with the Union but dislike it for whatever reason, and by honoring someone who fought against said government, they are expressing their disatisfaction
3) They don't really care that he was against the Union and just think that he led a fascinating and impactful life and as such want to remember him for the contributions he made to their state

[Telconi]

>Nathan Bedford Forrest Day.

Excuse me Tennessee, but what the fuck?

[Tombradyonia]

Except Chick-fil-A. I've never been to a bad Chick-fil-A.

I've been to a lot of bad Chick-fil-As.

I've never been to one, nor do I plan to do so. They're trying to shove their agenda down my throat (besides the chicken). I don't go to chicken restaurants in order for them to be able to tell me about their favorite imaginary friend.

[Griemvarant]

Would an American mimd explaining to me why there’s still people who honour and openly praise traitors to the Union? Especially persons as vile as this? I mean, I know there’s still a lot of neo-nazis who idolise Hitler, but this seems a lot more widespread and strangely accepted than that.

For those who don't just focus on the slavery aspect and think it'd be a great idea to go back to slave-owning, the Civil War was still an important point in our history. The fact is, the vast majority of those who fought for the Confederacy did so out of loyalty to their home states in a time before the federal government was as all-encompassing as it was now. Most Confederates believed themselves to be taking a stand against the tyranny of the ruling class in a similar way that the colonists stood against the British and, indeed, many who celebrate the Confederacy today are staunch patriots who stand behind the US for better or worse. They celebrate the Civil War for the ideology on both sides, of fighting to keep the republic intact and fighting against a perceived tyrannical state.

Forrest was a genius in the strategy of mounted combat, easily arguable as one of the greatest cavalry commanders to ever live.

Robert E. Lee was a staunch abolitionist who believed that slavery was evil but also believed that his personal morals didn't outweigh the morals of the people of Virginia whom he'd sworn to serve. He was outright hostile to Jefferson Davis but, when Virginia called on him to lead the army, he answered. Lee believed that a military commander was beholden to the people, not to push his own morals.

The major figures of the Confederacy were far more nuanced people than just a legion of cartoonish slavery-obsessed bigots.

[Yawkland]

Would an American mimd explaining to me why there’s still people who honour and openly praise traitors to the Union? Especially persons as vile as this? I mean, I know there’s still a lot of neo-nazis who idolise Hitler, but this seems a lot more widespread and strangely accepted than that.

From some stupid ba reason of "tHeY'rE sTiLl AmErIcAnS!1!1!"

This begs the question, do people who take up arms against the US government forfeit their status as Americans and should therefore be treated as foreign combatants?

There's a problem with this (besides it being authoritarian as fuck). By treating the rebels as foreigners, you are essentially recognizing them as a separate nation, which is what they want. And if they are a foreign nation, then you have no right to conquer them and forcibly keep them in your country.

However, if you treat them as still Americans, then they are still part of your country and the government still has jurisdiction over them.

[Yawkland]

I've been to a lot of bad Chick-fil-As.

I've never been to one, nor do I plan to do so. They're trying to shove their agenda down my throat (besides the chicken). I don't go to chicken restaurants in order for them to be able to tell me about their favorite imaginary friend.

Is Chick-fil-A really trying to shove their owner's beliefs down your throat? If you go into a restaurant, you will see they are secular and apolitical.

Like when you go there do you tremble in fear of a revivalist preacher standing next to you in line reading from Leviticus?

[Heloin]

From some stupid ba reason of "tHeY'rE sTiLl AmErIcAnS!1!1!"

This begs the question, do people who take up arms against the US government forfeit their status as Americans and should therefore be treated as foreign combatants?

There's a problem with this (besides it being authoritarian as fuck). By treating the rebels as foreigners, you are essentially recognizing them as a separate nation, which is what they want. And if they are a foreign nation, then you have no right to conquer them and forcibly keep them in your country.

However, if you treat them as still Americans, then they are still part of your country and the government still has jurisdiction over them.

Neither. You treat them as traitors.

[Yawkland]

This begs the question, do people who take up arms against the US government forfeit their status as Americans and should therefore be treated as foreign combatants?

There's a problem with this (besides it being authoritarian as fuck). By treating the rebels as foreigners, you are essentially recognizing them as a separate nation, which is what they want. And if they are a foreign nation, then you have no right to conquer them and forcibly keep them in your country.

However, if you treat them as still Americans, then they are still part of your country and the government still has jurisdiction over them.

Neither. You treat them as traitors.

Then by treating them as traitors, you are recognizing they are still Americans (because if they weren't Americans to begin with then they wouldn't be traitors).

[The South Falls]

Why does a US States have a holiday celebrating a traitor? General Sherman would be rolling in his grave.

I don't give a Da*n what that piece of Sh** would think, he tourched my State and sent Carpetbaggers and other curupt invadors to "Rebuild" or state.

>still unironically using "carpetbaggers"


Nah but I say the feds didn't go far enough "your state" still most likely had black codes, that restricted the human rights of nonwhite folks, essentially reenslaving them to a world of liens, furnishing agents, and sharecropping in an area where vagrancy laws would put you back into a legally-sanctioned slavery, toiling for mine owners in terrible conditions.

[Heloin]

Neither. You treat them as traitors.

Then by treating them as traitors, you are recognizing they are still Americans (because if they weren't Americans to begin with then they wouldn't be traitors).

No. This ain't a binary question here. You don't treat them as Americas but they're not foreigners. This isn't as complicated as you want to make it out to be.

[Yawkland]

Then by treating them as traitors, you are recognizing they are still Americans (because if they weren't Americans to begin with then they wouldn't be traitors).

No. This ain't a binary question here. You don't treat them as Americas but they're not foreigners. This isn't as complicated as you want to make it out to be.

If they're not foreigners then what are they? Treason isn't a nationality.

[The South Falls]

Neither. You treat them as traitors.

Then by treating them as traitors, you are recognizing they are still Americans (because if they weren't Americans to begin with then they wouldn't be traitors).

They are unequivocally traitors, which renders them un-American. There is no ambiguousness about it.

[Heloin]

No. This ain't a binary question here. You don't treat them as Americas but they're not foreigners. This isn't as complicated as you want to make it out to be.

If they're not foreigners then what are they? Treason isn't a nationality.

There nationality doesn't matter. They were Americans who turned traitor.

[Yawkland]

If they're not foreigners then what are they? Treason isn't a nationality.

There nationality doesn't matter. They were Americans who turned traitor.

I don't think US law makes that distinction. If you look at all the times in US history where someone was tried for and convicted of treason, they were still treated as American citizens the entire time.

[Heloin]

There nationality doesn't matter. They were Americans who turned traitor.

I don't think US law makes that distinction. If you look at all the times in US history where someone was tried for and convicted of treason, they were still treated as American citizens the entire time.

This whole line of logic hasn't made sense at any point. They are US citizens therefor US States making holidays and monuments celebrating them is good despite the fact that they were openly traitors to the United States.

[Yawkland]

I don't think US law makes that distinction. If you look at all the times in US history where someone was tried for and convicted of treason, they were still treated as American citizens the entire time.

This whole line of logic hasn't made sense at any point. They are US citizens therefor US States making holidays and monuments celebrating them is good despite the fact that they were openly traitors to the United States.

This has nothing to do with whether or not having a Nathan Bedford Forrest Day is a good idea. It was in reply to another poster who questioned whether the Confederates should be considered Americans.

[Tombradyonia]

For those who don't just focus on the slavery aspect and think it'd be a great idea to go back to slave-owning, the Civil War was still an important point in our history. The fact is, the vast majority of those who fought for the Confederacy did so out of loyalty to their home states in a time before the federal government was as all-encompassing as it was now. Most Confederates believed themselves to be taking a stand against the tyranny of the ruling class in a similar way that the colonists stood against the British and, indeed, many are also staunch patriots who stand behind the US for better or worse. They celebrate the Civil War for the ideology on both sides, of fighting to keep the republic intact and fighting against a perceived tyrannical state.

Forrest was a genius in the strategy of mounted combat, easily arguable as one of the greatest cavalry commanders to ever live.

Robert E. Lee was a staunch abolitionist who believed that slavery was evil but also believed that his personal morals didn't outweigh the morals of the people of Virginia whom he'd sworn to serve. He was outright hostile to Jefferson Davis but, when Virginia called on him to lead the army, he answered. Lee believed that a military commander was beholden to the people, not to push his own morals.

The major figures of the Confederacy were far more nuanced people than just a legion of cartoonish slavery-obsessed bigots.

Many may well have claimed to fight for some idea that the federal government was tyrannizing them. But they were hypocrites. They loved the federal government, and used it with a frenzy seeking to entrench and protect slavery.

Historian Henry Brooks Adams (grandson of "Slave-Power" theorist and former president John Quincy Adams) explained that the Slave Power was a force for centralization:

Between the slave power and states' rights there was no necessary connection. The slave power, when in control, was a centralizing influence, and all the most considerable encroachments on states' rights were its acts.
The acquisition and admission of Louisiana; the Embargo; the War of 1812; the annexation of Texas "by joint resolution" [rather than treaty]; the war with Mexico, declared by the mere announcement of President Polk; the Fugitive Slave Law; the Dred Scott decision —all triumphs of the slave power— did far more than either tariffs or internal improvements, which in their origin were also southern measures, to destroy the very memory of states' rights as they existed in 1789.

Whenever a question arose of extending or protecting slavery, the slaveholders became friends of centralized power, and used that dangerous weapon with a kind of frenzy. Slavery in fact required centralization in order to maintain and protect itself, but it required to control the centralized machine; it needed despotic principles of government, but it needed them exclusively for its own use. Thus, in truth, states' rights were the protection of the free states, and as a matter of fact, during the domination of the slave power, Massachusetts appealed to this protecting principle as often and almost as loudly as South Carolina.

Forrest was many things, and one of those things was that he was a traitor, and another was that he was a war criminal.

Lee was definately not an abolitionist, certainly not a staunch one. His army, when invading Maryland in 1862 as well as Pennsylvania in 1863 captured free blacks and sent them south into slavery. Would a staunch abolitionist do that? Would a staunch abolitionist allow that? Mind you, Lee's authority at the time was so great, that a mere word from him forbidding his soldiers from aiding and abetting Davis government agents to do so would likely have sufficed. Yet he failed to do it and continued to fail until the bitter end and even then he only supported extremely gradual emancipation.

Those in charge of the southern state governments as well as those in charge of the confederate government as well as most of the generals were very much in favor of slavery, exceptions like James Longstreet duly noted (Longstreet suffered decades of vilification by the same crowd).

[Ifreann]

Do you think? I would imagine that black Americans might be rather put off by their state government officially celebrating the men who wanted them kept in chains, and fought to achieve that goal.

They should try and motivate change within their own community-or just move to somewhere different.

So you agree that it does affect people in a meaningful way.

Not all states or cities or counties are the same. A referendum is the fairest way to get over issues like this, and if the referendum isn't in your favor then it won't matter. People's opinions aren't going to change because you forbid a holiday-it may even cause resentment and backlash onto African Americans-in the case of possibly banning Nathan Bedford Forrest day for example.

Why should people need to win a referendum before their state government respects them?

If the people in Tennessee wanted this holiday then we should abide by the majority's decision.

When was the referendum?

As long as there isn't actual discrimination, then it will just have to be something that the minority will have to deal with.

Or they can have the law repealed without a referendum.

[Heloin]

This whole line of logic hasn't made sense at any point. They are US citizens therefor US States making holidays and monuments celebrating them is good despite the fact that they were openly traitors to the United States.

This has nothing to do with whether or not having a Nathan Bedford Forrest Day is a good idea. It was in reply to another poster who questioned whether the Confederates should be considered Americans.

Then you jumped off the logical deep end with a line of reasoning that just doesn't make sense. The Confederates are un-American, that doesn't make them not American Citizens. These two things aren't mutually exclusive even if you think they are.

[Alien Overlord]

Then by treating them as traitors, you are recognizing they are still Americans (because if they weren't Americans to begin with then they wouldn't be traitors).

They are unequivocally traitors, which renders them un-American. There is no ambiguousness about it.

Ironically America was born from traitors to the British Crown. If we had lost, then it's likely the founding fathers would be looked down upon with far more disdain.

[Yawkland]

They are unequivocally traitors, which renders them un-American. There is no ambiguousness about it.

Ironically America was born from traitors to the British Crown.

Treason in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. We'd have statues of Benedict Arnold everywhere had the British won.

[Heloin]

Ironically America was born from traitors to the British Crown.

Treason in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. We'd have statues of Benedict Arnold everywhere had the British won.

Doubtful. He wasn't really liked by either side after going turncoat.

[Yawkland]

This has nothing to do with whether or not having a Nathan Bedford Forrest Day is a good idea. It was in reply to another poster who questioned whether the Confederates should be considered Americans.

Then you jumped off the logical deep end with a line of reasoning that just doesn't make sense. The Confederates are un-American, that doesn't make them not American Citizens. These two things aren't mutually exclusive even if you think they are.

Well definitions matter, and does clarity.

I do not think it is fair to say that the Confederates were un-American. Un-American means that they were not Americans, even though we both agree that they were. They cannot both be Americans and not Americans at the same time.

It is more accurate to say that the Confederates were anti-American, because Americans can be anti-American, and we have a long history of many Americans being anti-American.

And now, for as to why this should matter in regards to honoring them, the US honors tons of anti-Americans already, so it seems like an arbitrarily applied standard. If everyone who took up arms against the US government is an anti-American and a traitor, then this includes a lot of people from all over the political spectrum.