Washington & Jefferson Statue Get Pulled Down

[An-Tanwir]

This is an excellent point.

is it okay if the slave is a trotskyist

might as well use em if you got em

[Esotyrica]

is it okay if the slave is a trotskyist

might as well use em if you got em

what if they're also black

[Salus Maior]

is it okay if the slave is a trotskyist

might as well use em if you got em

Well, at least you're honest about your hypocrisy.

[Kowani]

Gulags, famines, and mass purges and murders came with that too. And no, it wasn't merely aimed at guilty people.

The gulag system was actually super progressive even by today's standards, including communal living, two weeks vacation, etc. Even if they weren't, at its peak, the gulags incarcerated fewer people than the czarist regime, and fewer people than the United States. Don't pretend we don't have political prisoners and purges in the US, especially with all those Ferguson protesters "committing suicide".

Also, famines are natural occurrences for non-industrialized agricultural civilizations, and the famine you're referring to was made worse by the hoarding of grain by the wealthy, and subsequent burning of said grain when they realized it would be redistributed.

I see historical revisionism is back in vogue.

[Purpelia]

The gulag system was actually super progressive even by today's standards, including communal living, two weeks vacation, etc. Even if they weren't, at its peak, the gulags incarcerated fewer people than the czarist regime, and fewer people than the United States. Don't pretend we don't have political prisoners and purges in the US, especially with all those Ferguson protesters "committing suicide".

Also, famines are natural occurrences for non-industrialized agricultural civilizations, and the famine you're referring to was made worse by the hoarding of grain by the wealthy, and subsequent burning of said grain when they realized it would be redistributed.

I see historical revisionism is back in vogue.

To be fair he is right about the famines. The Soviet famines are often blamed on the government but in reality they were simply the unavoidable result of a country that already had severe food shortages before WW1, most of its breadbasket burned during WW1, a revolution BECAUSE of food shortages during WW1 and than a bloody civil war that saw what was left of its rural population conscripted and its fields burned again and again and again for basically half a decade. By the 1920's their agriculture was ruined to the point that short of divine intervention famines were inevitable. The only thing the communists really did was shift the suffering from their urban and industrial centers where people would start a revolution over food riots into the rural regions where they, for the above mentioned reasons couldn't. If anything it's a miracle that the Soviet Union managed to bounce back its agriculture as good as it did in time for WW2 instead of collapsing under its own hunger the way the old empire did.

[Ethel mermania]

our founding fathers are mostly morons

They were much better educated, and wrote more intelligently than you do

[Ethel mermania]

This was my favorite.

https://www.wcvb.com/article/shaw-54th- ... /32733306#

Why...........why would they vandalize Shaw?

And the entire regiment. Because this movement is about tearing down, not fixing.

Which is a shame, there are things that do need fixing.

[Luminesa]

Yeah, among Quakers. A minority whose reasons for immediate emancipation was religious, and so was not shared by...well, most of America at the time. Immediate emancipation wasn't popular at the time, and it would take a couple decades for that idea to grab widespread interest.

As for the notion that the Founding Fathers "sent" the common people to fight for them is laughable and demonstrably false. In many ways, the independence movement was grassroots, especially in the beginning when the upper classes were still agonizing about whether they could compromise with Britain. This can be demonstrated by the opening battles of the Revolution at Lexington and Concord which was conducted by spontaneous militias not commanded by actual officers nor Congress. And before that, during the Powder Alarm, rumor had spread that the British had bombarded Boston in retaliation to the Tea Party and approximately 10-30 thousand New Englanders had armed themselves and formed militias and marched to Boston. Again, without commands from the upper class. This was a popular movement.

A popular movement spurred by upper-class ideology, specifically liberalism. I'd argue that, in the middle ages, most uprisings to replace one lord with another were popular movements. Neither those movements nor the American revolution culminated in the liberation of all people from oppression, rather, they liberated them from a particular oppressor.

Considering how much power serfs had over who was ruling them and who was not? No. Democracy as we know it did not exist in the Middle Ages.

It’s fair to say, however, for the same reasons, that classical liberalism was a movement largely pushed by upper-middle-class and upper-class people, but that is not to say that lower-class people did not support these movements. After all, there’s a rather stark difference between whose opinions were allowed in Clovis’s Gaul and whose opinions were allowed in Washington’s Virginia.

Now of course slavery was still a problem, but as has been stated in previous pages, Washington wanted to get rid of slavery, and freed the slaves on his plantation when his wife died. He had the issue of considering federal power versus state power, and while he was someone who preferred that the federal power was strong and centralized, he wanted states to follow his lead and instead encouraged that they follow his example. Unfortunately, they did not want to in many places.

As for “sending” the troops, Washington did not send them and then sit in his office. He was the general of the Revolutionary Army and he, notably, road out into battle with his men. That is why the Revolutionaries loved him. Sure, most were poorly-trained, at least in the beginning, but with the right kick in the pants (Baron Von Steuben) they managed somehow.

All in all, however, due to the problem of fed v state, slavery ended-up going in the US a lot later than it should have, though this is not a problem that should fall entirely on Washington and Jefferson, both of whom fought for provisions against slavery but never got them due to other people. This is not to say either man was a saint, but the burden falls on others for allowing slavery to persist as well.

[Luminesa]

I see historical revisionism is back in vogue.

To be fair he is right about the famines. The Soviet famines are often blamed on the government but in reality they were simply the unavoidable result of a country that already had severe food shortages before WW1, most of its breadbasket burned during WW1, a revolution BECAUSE of food shortages during WW1 and than a bloody civil war that saw what was left of its rural population conscripted and its fields burned again and again and again for basically half a decade. By the 1920's their agriculture was ruined to the point that short of divine intervention famines were inevitable. The only thing the communists really did was shift the suffering from their urban and industrial centers where people would start a revolution over food riots into the rural regions where they, for the above mentioned reasons couldn't. If anything it's a miracle that the Soviet Union managed to bounce back its agriculture as good as it did in time for WW2 instead of collapsing under its own hunger the way the old empire did.

Daily reminder that Holodomor was not an accident.

[Ifreann]

our founding fathers are mostly morons

Whatever you say you commie.

Americans, generally speaking.

Despite their flaws, we did gain self rule due to them. That is a benefit.

Did you? Seems to me you traded one system in which the American people had very little representation for another system in which the American people had very little representation. And even now you have huge numbers of Americans disenfranchised, you have widespread voter suppression, and you still have an electoral system designed to take away your ability to rule yourselves.

[Luminesa]

Gulags, famines, and mass purges and murders came with that too. And no, it wasn't merely aimed at guilty people.

The gulag system was actually super progressive even by today's standards, including communal living, two weeks vacation, etc. Even if they weren't, at its peak, the gulags incarcerated fewer people than the czarist regime, and fewer people than the United States. Don't pretend we don't have political prisoners and purges in the US, especially with all those Ferguson protesters "committing suicide".

Also, famines are natural occurrences for non-industrialized agricultural civilizations, and the famine you're referring to was made worse by the hoarding of grain by the wealthy, and subsequent burning of said grain when they realized it would be redistributed.

Oh yeah, the murders of millions of people, including poor people who were not “bourgeoisie” was very progressive. While this number will never be known for certain, the most agreed-upon number is about ten million, though some will suggest that number is much, much higher.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Gulag

Considering also that there were a LOT of czars, you’d have to be specific about which one. If we’re talking about the last czar of Russia, Tsar Nicholai II, the number of people he incarcerated is not something I can find, though Russian prisons are not meant to hold more than a million people at a time it seems. Currently, the US is holding about 2.3 million people in prison. While this is a large number, and the US has more people incarcerated than any country in the world, this number still pales in comparison to how many people were sent to gulags.

As for “famines are natural occurrences”: The Great Leap Forward was planned for what was supposed to be a massive agricultural civilization, and resulted in the deaths of anywhere between 15-45 million people. https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Leap-Forward

[Fahran]

Did you? Seems to me you traded one system in which the American people had very little representation for another system in which the American people had very little representation. And even now you have huge numbers of Americans disenfranchised, you have widespread voter suppression, and you still have an electoral system designed to take away your ability to rule yourselves.

We have much more representation than we did under British rule. Parliament didn't need to engage in voter suppression or in the disenfranchisement of prisoners because we didn't really get a say in its proceedings at all. We had more local governance that got overruled by Parliament and that's what made the supporters of the American Revolution do what they did. It's still a marked improvement all things considered.

The gulag system was actually super progressive...

No.

See: all the other arguments presented above.

Also, we should probably at least attempt to tie this into the thread's subject matter. Do you favor erecting statues of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin? Why would we do that if they're all Euros who never set foot over here? Wouldn't Eugene Debs or Emma Goldman be better choices?

[Purpelia]

To be fair he is right about the famines. The Soviet famines are often blamed on the government but in reality they were simply the unavoidable result of a country that already had severe food shortages before WW1, most of its breadbasket burned during WW1, a revolution BECAUSE of food shortages during WW1 and than a bloody civil war that saw what was left of its rural population conscripted and its fields burned again and again and again for basically half a decade. By the 1920's their agriculture was ruined to the point that short of divine intervention famines were inevitable. The only thing the communists really did was shift the suffering from their urban and industrial centers where people would start a revolution over food riots into the rural regions where they, for the above mentioned reasons couldn't. If anything it's a miracle that the Soviet Union managed to bounce back its agriculture as good as it did in time for WW2 instead of collapsing under its own hunger the way the old empire did.

Daily reminder that Holodomor was not an accident.

Accident no. But definitively unavoidable. By that point in time Russia was going to starve one way or the other. The Communists only did the pragmatic thing and diverted the starvation in such a way that least harmed their rule. Its basically the trolley problem only in communist and with grain instead of a railroad.

[The Two Jerseys]

Its basically the trolley problem only in communist and with grain instead of a railroad.

Is it wrong that I laughed at this?

[Atheris]

Its basically the trolley problem only in communist and with grain instead of a railroad.

Is it wrong that I laughed at this?

No, it's pretty funnny.

[An-Tanwir]

The gulag system was actually super progressive...

No.

See: all the other arguments presented above.

Also, we should probably at least attempt to tie this into the thread's subject matter. Do you favor erecting statues of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin? Why would we do that if they're all Euros who never set foot over here? Wouldn't Eugene Debs or Emma Goldman be better choices?

There aren't a lot of arguments, per se, just a lot of people making claims with no sources. I guess it comes down to whether you trust the USSR or the USA, and I doubt I'm going to convince a neomonarchist of leninism. Not really worth my time.

I definitely don't support putting up statues of Stalin, he was a pedophile. Marx had some pretty racialist and antisemetic beliefs that I've seen a lot of really good arguments about, and Trotsky was a traitor. I'd accept statues of Lenin, but only really in monuments to communism. The only Soviet statue I think would fit in a regular American town would be Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who visited the US and toured with Elanor Roosevelt.

There are plenty of Americans who stood for freedom that deserve statues, including (but certainly not limited to) John Brown, Huey P. Newton, Sylvia Rivera, etc.

[Ifreann]

Did you? Seems to me you traded one system in which the American people had very little representation for another system in which the American people had very little representation. And even now you have huge numbers of Americans disenfranchised, you have widespread voter suppression, and you still have an electoral system designed to take away your ability to rule yourselves.

We have much more representation than we did under British rule. Parliament didn't need to engage in voter suppression or in the disenfranchisement of prisoners because we didn't really get a say in its proceedings at all. We had more local governance that got overruled by Parliament and that's what made the supporters of the American Revolution do what they did. It's still a marked improvement all things considered.

You're better off now, yes, but the difference between living in a colony and living in a state was probably minimal for most Americans.

[No State Here]

The gulag system was actually super progressive

So this is why the foe list exists

[Ifreann]

Renegade Cut's new video seem especially relevant to this thread. Though I haven't finished watching it yet.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

The gulag system was actually super progressive

So this is why the foe list exists

You said it now you've got to do it.

[Northern Davincia]

We had the articles of confederation first, so we would still be a country even if that didn't happen. We would just have a different government structure.

I know. I'm an antifed.

It's strange that we align on this issue.

[Kowani]

Did you? Seems to me you traded one system in which the American people had very little representation for another system in which the American people had very little representation. And even now you have huge numbers of Americans disenfranchised, you have widespread voter suppression, and you still have an electoral system designed to take away your ability to rule yourselves.

We have much more representation than we did under British rule.

This isn't really true at the National level, though perhaps it is for the local.

Why...........why would they vandalize Shaw?

And the entire regiment. Because this movement is about tearing down, not fixing.

Which is a shame, there are things that do need fixing.

And there are things that need tearing down as well.

[The Black Forrest]

We have much more representation than we did under British rule.

This isn't really true at the National level, though perhaps it is for the local.

And the entire regiment. Because this movement is about tearing down, not fixing.

Which is a shame, there are things that do need fixing.

And there are things that need tearing down as well.

If the fixing part is not addressed, the tearing down solved little.

[Kowani]

This isn't really true at the National level, though perhaps it is for the local.


And there are things that need tearing down as well.

If the fixing part is not addressed, the tearing down solved little.

A system cannot be fixed until the rot is burned away.

[The Black Forrest]

If the fixing part is not addressed, the tearing down solved little.

A system cannot be fixed until the rot is burned away.

Ok *waves magic wand* *POOF* Statues are gone. What effort is being done of the "real" issues?