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Are Doc Rich & Thomas Sowell right about slavery & reparations?

Are Doc Rich & Thomas Sowell right?


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I did, the conversation is about your absurd rationalization of why southerners made slaves....slaves. It wasn't because they could take the heat, it is because they were viewed as inferior......a racist belief that remains to this day. You can't handle that fact, and need to deal with it by arguing they were lying (making a specious comparison to a an imagined lie you created).


Who the **** cares? Who told you that you need to come up with absurd, stupid argument to justify their slavery? Pro tip: NOBODY. The only reason anyone comes up argument to "humanize" Confederate slavery....to find "practical reasons" why the slaveholding bastards engaged in this abomination......is to excuse them.



The "motive" was profit, to turn black skin into gold, and no amount of specious rationalization about "practical reasons" can erase that mark.

Your repeating your dopey refrain makes it no more true than before. I know Libs can’t deal with any commentary on slavery that doesn’t involve racism, but the fact remains that if there hadn’t been a monetary reason for having slaves, Southerners wouldn’t have wanted them in such quantities. Similar reasons played into Blacks being used as slaves both by African Blacks and North Africans.

I bet you thought that “black gold” thing was clever, but not only was it dumb, it contradicts your point that pure racism was the only motive. You also misread my point about “prestige,” which was directed to Northerners who didn’t have big plantations to run.
 
Your repeating your dopey refrain makes it no more true than before.
I know Libs can’t deal with any commentary on slavery that doesn’t involve racism,
LOL....the enslavement of blacks in the US....and the subsequent effects (lingering racism, discrimination caused economic barriers, etc) are....wait for it....all about race.
but the fact remains that if there hadn’t been a monetary reason for having slaves, Southerners wouldn’t have wanted them in such quantities. Similar reasons played into Blacks being used as slaves both by African Blacks and North Africans.
I know that there are economic "reasons" for slavery......you dramatically lower your labor costs, it increases your assets, yadda yadda......but that wasn't your argument (yours was "they can take the heat"), and that was not the argument the Confederates made in their Declarations of Confederacy. Again, it is all totally absurd, it is all an attempt to white-wash the worst chapter in our history.
I bet you thought that “black gold” thing was clever,
Actually, it is a line from XTC's "Human Alchemy".
but not only was it dumb, it contradicts your point that pure racism was the only motive.
I never said ANYTHING about "the only motive" or implied there is one singular cause as to why the Antebellum South turned human slavery into the mega machine that it built. More importantly, I was never trying to justify it or defend it or deny the stated racism that underlined it all.
You also misread my point about “prestige,” which was directed to Northerners who didn’t have big plantations to run.
LOL...there you go again, another excuse, "The plantations were sooo big, of course they needed slave labor!"
 
LOL....the enslavement of blacks in the US....and the subsequent effects (lingering racism, discrimination caused economic barriers, etc) are....wait for it....all about race.

I know that there are economic "reasons" for slavery......you dramatically lower your labor costs, it increases your assets, yadda yadda......but that wasn't your argument (yours was "they can take the heat"), and that was not the argument the Confederates made in their Declarations of Confederacy. Again, it is all totally absurd, it is all an attempt to white-wash the worst chapter in our history.

Actually, it is a line from XTC's "Human Alchemy".

I never said ANYTHING about "the only motive" or implied there is one singular cause as to why the Antebellum South turned human slavery into the mega machine that it built. More importantly, I was never trying to justify it or defend it or deny the stated racism that underlined it all.

LOL...there you go again, another excuse, "The plantations were sooo big, of course they needed slave labor!"

If slavery was all about race as you say in your first paragraph, then you’ve contradicted your second paragraph statement that there were economic motives.

Not surprised that you’re still missing the point that dark skin is part of the economic equation as far as the desirability of African slaves. The longer a man can work in the fields, the more he harvests. This is not as hard to understand as you pretend.

The irrelevance of the Confederate Declarations is exceeded only by that of Lincoln’s declarations about his reasons for going to war.

Didn’t say big plantations excused the South; said that Northern slave owners had no comparable motive. Why do you think Northern Whites kept Black slaves? Did they use them for any purpose beyond prestige?
 
If slavery was all about race as you say in your first paragraph, then you’ve contradicted your second paragraph statement that there were economic motives.
Uh, thats a stupid conclusion. Any race could be used as a slave (and probably has somewhere in the world), the point of slavery IS to lower your labor costs. The Confederate states all argued the same MORAL REASON for WHY they enslaved Blacks, because the Bible said it was OK.
Not surprised that you’re still missing the point that dark skin is part of the economic equation as far as the desirability of African slaves. The longer a man can work in the fields, the more he harvests. This is not as hard to understand as you pretend.
Show me where in the various declarations of confederacy that was the stated reason.
The irrelevance of the Confederate Declarations is exceeded only by that of Lincoln’s declarations about his reasons for going to war.
Another empty "argument", you are apparently incapable of arguing why the declarations are "irrelevant".
Didn’t say big plantations excused the South;
Neither did I, I said you are excusing them because....."they were big". Try "reading".
said that Northern slave owners had no comparable motive.
There is no following you at all, you make no sense. In your argument, somehow, in the North, "prestige" (which you can't define) is more important than economics.
Protip: Try sourcing from reputable authors on the subject, and stop making it up as you go along.
Why do you think Northern Whites kept Black slaves?
Because the Bible told them it is OK to enslave inferior beings.
Did they use them for any purpose beyond prestige?
This is such a weird claim, again, I have no idea where you got the idea that this was significant influence upon slaveholders. It is so absurd to be wasting any time discussing it.

You still have not come to terms with the fact that there is zero reason in this day and age to be trying to normalize, rationalize, slavery in the US.
 
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Gee bud, if you didn't read the post then your response has automatically become meaningless drivel. Congrats, you exposed your latest desperate attempt at defending slavery to be nothing more than a load of garbage within the first sentence 😂

You have been frantically trying to defend the South's war to defend slavery for weeks now bud, which makes your sobs of "but the canyon floor" not just as insipid as ever, but laughably false. But gee, I certainly will always remember you crying yourself to sleep every night over the failure of your heroes to save it ;)

So here's the facts on slavery-- despite your frantic and downright comical efforts to pretend that states like Missouri were "northern" it was the South which wholeheartedly embraced slavery, the South which centered its society around it and the South which fought to the death to try and save it. Tearfully trying to make excuses and sobbing "but the practicality" because Southerners saw nothing wrong with buying and selling other human beings is pathetic.

Gee bud, congrats, you managed to get it ass backwards as usual. For example, Georgia was originally intended to be a free state, but the settlers there threw a massive tantrum at the thought of not being able to have plantations like their neighbors in the Carolinas and Virginia.

Oh we already know you are frantic to make excuses for slavers and downplay their actions---as you did repeatedly throughout the thread, and this very post--calling buying and selling human beings "some shitty things" is like calling the Holocaust "an unpleasantness"-- while tearfully sobbing about the people you hate for crushing slavery.

But what's really pitiful is how you keep crawling back to try and defend the "peculiar institution" and those who fought to defend it....over, and over, and over again.


More of your usual chickenfeed, I'm sure, and the fact that you haven't expressed an original thought in two months means that you're not saying anything new, just moving around the words in your fetid hate speech.

It still amazes me, though, that you can become incensed at the thought of slaveholders "buying and selling human beings"-- that is, imposing their will on the slaves-- but you have zero problem with all the dozens of crimes Your War Criminal Heroes committed against their fellow citizens, all of which had no greater motive than to impose the North's will upon the South. I suspect that you have some personal grudge that you work out in your genocidal fantasies about murdering White Southerners who sought to exercise their right to secede.

BTW, since you can't brush off crimes against Native Americans as easily as you do crimes against White Southerners-- or for that matter, crimes against free Blacks who suffered at the hands of the Northern Black Codes-- I'm sure you'll be fascinated to know that one of your idols, General Sherman, advocated the total slaughter of all Native Americans:

“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux … even to their extermination, men, women, and children.” In a phrase that should give every modern-day reader a hard chill, he referred to this extermination of the Plains Indians as “the final solution of the Indian problem.”
 
Uh, thats a stupid conclusion. Any race could be used as a slave (and probably has somewhere in the world), the point of slavery IS to lower your labor costs. The Confederate states all argued the same MORAL REASON for WHY they enslaved Blacks, because the Bible said it was OK.

Show me where in the various declarations of confederacy that was the stated reason.

Another empty "argument", you are apparently incapable of arguing why the declarations are "irrelevant".

Neither did I, I said you are excusing them because....."they were big". Try "reading".

There is no following you at all, you make no sense. In your argument, somehow, in the North, "prestige" (which you can't define) is more important than economics.
Protip: Try sourcing from reputable authors on the subject, and stop making it up as you go along.

Because the Bible told them it is OK to enslave inferior beings.

This is such a weird claim, again, I have no idea where you got the idea that this was significant influence upon slaveholders. It is so absurd to be wasting any time discussing it.

You still have not come to terms with the fact that there is zero reason in this day and age to be trying to normalize, rationalize, slavery in the US.
You can't refute my argument, so you take refuge in lame irrelevancies. Americans imitated the Europeans, who had been using Black slaves in other colonies until the latter "got religion" in the early 1800s. If the color of the Black slaves' skin was so irrelevant, why bother buying slaves? Why not capture and enslave Native Americans? The Spaniards tried it but couldn't make a go of it. But the Southern Americans didn't even try, because they knew they'd get a lot more work out of Black workers.

Yeah, yeah, the Biblical interpretation of Ham. A handful of preachers used it, so you want to believe every plantation owner believed it. How convenient; means you don't have to think about complicated motives.

You Mad Libs want to take everything the Southerners said as gospel for the same reason: it reduces them to a bunch of super-villains, enslaving innocents for pure pleasure. Well, Honest Abe said in his first inaugural that he'd make sure the South could keep their slaves forever as long as they stayed in the Union and paid their taxes. Do you take that as gospel? How about his claim that the South had no right to secede, even though he couldn't cite any legal precedent to support his assertion? Could there have been any hidden motives in that statement? That is why the Declarations are irrelevant; politicians say a lot of crap for reasons that aren't always on the surface. I've addressed all this in the earlier discussions of the tariff war between North and South; read the posts or don't.

Your reading skills are still deficient. I stressed that plantations in the South were big and that therefore they needed a lot of labor, no matter what you think of their solution to the problem. In contrast, there weren't as many "big" farms in the North, so that when Northerners started slowly divesting themselves of slaves, they weren't giving up that much. In fact, Charles Adams records that a Pennsylvania law about emancipating the children of slaves backfired, because slave-sellers ended up selling more of their slaves in the South, where no such law existed, because Southern slaves fetched a higher price than the ones in the North following said law. So a lot of Northern laws didn't necessarily end up benefiting Black slaves, much less the free Blacks who were excluded by Northern Black Codes in Oregon, Iowa, and Illinois.

I've no idea where you got the "prestige is more important than economics." I merely said that the Northerners didn't have as strong an economic investment in slaves. When it became less prestigious to own slaves in the view of their European forbears, then Northerners began to de-emphasize their use of slaves.

Your last paragraphs still show your inability to read. But I will state that understanding the rationales behind slavery, beyond fatuous super-villain motives, is an important element of history, and not only American history. If you don't care about it, that's not on me.
 
More of your usual chickenfeed, I'm sure, and the fact that you haven't expressed an original thought in two months means that you're not saying anything new, just moving around the words in your fetid hate speech.

It still amazes me, though, that you can become incensed at the thought of slaveholders "buying and selling human beings"-- that is, imposing their will on the slaves-- but you have zero problem with all the dozens of crimes Your War Criminal Heroes committed against their fellow citizens, all of which had no greater motive than to impose the North's will upon the South. I suspect that you have some personal grudge that you work out in your genocidal fantasies about murdering White Southerners who sought to exercise their right to secede.

BTW, since you can't brush off crimes against Native Americans as easily as you do crimes against White Southerners-- or for that matter, crimes against free Blacks who suffered at the hands of the Northern Black Codes-- I'm sure you'll be fascinated to know that one of your idols, General Sherman, advocated the total slaughter of all Native Americans:

More meaningless sputtering from the slavery apologist who just can’t get over his seething hatred of the North for putting an end to the South’s buying and selling of other human beings. It’s always amusing watching you blather on about how “bored” you are, or how you aren’t reading, or yadda yadda yadda, and yet you keep crawling back day after day, week after week, month after month, desperate to defend the CSA and slavery....and failing every single time 😂

Oh look, even more meaningless whining about imaginary “war crimes”....which in your world, is the north defending itself against your slaver heroes in the first place 😂

It’s almost as comical, in fact, as watching you wet yourself and sob about “genocide” at the very thought of your slaver heroes being held accountable for their treason.

Btw, it’s always funny watching you pretend to care about Native Americans when your heroes were the ones to commit the most egregious violations.

But then again, what else can one expect from someone still seething over slavery being destroyed?
 
You can't refute my argument, so you take refuge in lame irrelevancies. Americans imitated the Europeans, who had been using Black slaves in other colonies until the latter "got religion" in the early 1800s. If the color of the Black slaves' skin was so irrelevant,
On the contrary, I am saying the color was significant, it is cited Biblically by Southerners.

I'll remind you, your argument was based on their ability to work in the fields. Every culture, including Anglo-Saxons, went through a manual agricultural period. It wasn't as if there were no poor white tenet farmers in the South.
why bother buying slaves? Why not capture and enslave Native Americans? The Spaniards tried it but couldn't make a go of it. But the Southern Americans didn't even try, because they knew they'd get a lot more work out of Black workers.
You already established that there was a slave trade in the Caribbean.

We know the economics of it already, that is not a debate. The morality of it is.
Yeah, yeah, the Biblical interpretation of Ham. A handful of preachers used it, so you want to believe every plantation owner believed it. How convenient; means you don't have to think about complicated motives.
I never argued there exists one reason for slavery, the argument is that it is irrational morally and on a macro economic standpoint.
You Mad Libs want to take everything the Southerners said as gospel for the same reason: it reduces them to a bunch of super-villains, enslaving innocents for pure pleasure.
Again, I never said there is one reason, and I never said anything about "pleasure", but we can add it to a list if you insist. But, no one forced Stephens, or any other member or proponent of the Antebellum South to produce their documents. It is so weird to see anyone claim they are irrelevant and not to be believed.
Well, Honest Abe said in his first inaugural that he'd make sure the South could keep their slaves forever as long as they stayed in the Union and paid their taxes. Do you take that as gospel? How about his claim that the South had no right to secede, even though he couldn't cite any legal precedent to support his assertion? Could there have been any hidden motives in that statement? That is why the Declarations are irrelevant; politicians say a lot of crap for reasons that aren't always on the surface. I've addressed all this in the earlier discussions of the tariff war between North and South; read the posts or don't.
You are moving the goalpost and trying to base the validity of what the Southern leaders declared against what some other entity said or did.

That does not devalue what they said and did.
Your reading skills are still deficient.
 
I stressed that plantations in the South were big and that therefore they needed a lot of labor, no matter what you think of their solution to the problem.
Gee, didn't I already say that what size they became doesn't JUSTIFY the use of slave labor.
In contrast, there weren't as many "big" farms in the North
There certainly could have been, but nearly any size farm could utilize slavery, so again, this argument fails, it , agriculture, was not limited to the use of slavery because of farm size.

The south needed large number of workers because of the crop, cotton. Without a lot of hands, pre-gin, cotton production was time consuming.

That still doesn't justify the use of slave labor, it was the choice of Southern land owners what they were going to do with their properties. I
, so that when Northerners started slowly divesting themselves of slaves
Slavery was never at the levels in the North as seen in the South, false premise.
, they weren't giving up that much.
Because, there wasn't much to give up. Why was slavery so non-prevalent in the North to begin with?
In fact, Charles Adams records that a Pennsylvania law about emancipating the children of slaves backfired, because slave-sellers ended up selling more of their slaves in the South, where no such law existed, because Southern slaves fetched a higher price than the ones in the North following said law. So a lot of Northern laws didn't necessarily end up benefiting Black slaves, much less the free Blacks who were excluded by Northern Black Codes in Oregon, Iowa, and Illinois.
This is irrelevant to your original argument, doesn't impact mine.
I've no idea where you got the "prestige is more important than economics." I merely said that the Northerners didn't have as strong an economic investment in slaves.
Thats a lie, you claimed the North held slaves for prestige reasons.....which is neither here nor there, it is just pointless noise.
When it became less prestigious to own slaves in the view of their European forbears, then Northerners began to de-emphasize their use of slaves.
There you are again, a nonsense "prestige" argument that is totally pointless
Your last paragraphs still show your inability to read. But I will state that understanding the rationales behind slavery, beyond fatuous super-villain motives, is an important element of history, and not only American history. If you don't care about it, that's not on me.
I do care about it, as I stated, the attempts at rationalizing it by economic argument ("reasons") while simultaneously denying the moral crime, that was understood at the time (abolitionists in the north)...... is wrong.

Further, it allows the same sorts to deny the lasting legacy of racism in the US. Racism today is still directly connected to the ideology of the Antebellum South.
 
On the contrary, I am saying the color was significant, it is cited Biblically by Southerners.

I'll remind you, your argument was based on their ability to work in the fields. Every culture, including Anglo-Saxons, went through a manual agricultural period. It wasn't as if there were no poor white tenet farmers in the South.

You already established that there was a slave trade in the Caribbean.

We know the economics of it already, that is not a debate. The morality of it is.

I never argued there exists one reason for slavery, the argument is that it is irrational morally and on a macro economic standpoint.

Again, I never said there is one reason, and I never said anything about "pleasure", but we can add it to a list if you insist. But, no one forced Stephens, or any other member or proponent of the Antebellum South to produce their documents. It is so weird to see anyone claim they are irrelevant and not to be believed.

You are moving the goalpost and trying to base the validity of what the Southern leaders declared against what some other entity said or did.

That does not devalue what they said and did.

Not surprised you have to falsify an opponent's statements to make your imagined points. I clearly was referencing your express statement that you didn't buy the idea that the sun-resistancrovided by melanin-rich skin could have in any way influenced early colonists to make heavy use of Black slaves in the South. That's what I'm elaborating on, and if you're honest, you know that, since I've expressly rejected your tired falsehood that they just picked on Black slaves to be EEE-vil.

There was a slave trade in the Caribbean because Black slaves were more useful working plantations than any other potential victims, and their utility had already been demonstrated in various other climes. Try a little harder, if possible. It would still be cheaper to plunder slaves from local populations than to buy them from foreign sources, so why do you imagine no one made any serious efforts to use Native American slaves? Not that I expect you can imagine much.

You alluded to religious beliefs about slavery; I demolished your position by pointing out that not all Southerners were as religious as you like to suppose.

Even in Civil War times some of the more competent observers, including Dickens and Marx, realized that on both sides the eyewash about slavery was an excuse to motivate soldiers against one another. Such causes were more emotionally satisfying than admitting that they were fighting over money.

I'm giving you examples of other politicians who made broad hyperbolic statements, which all politicians are wont to make. I'm sure that you'll continue taking the Declarations at face value, though, since that makes your position simpler.
 
Gee, didn't I already say that what size they became doesn't JUSTIFY the use of slave labor.

There certainly could have been, but nearly any size farm could utilize slavery, so again, this argument fails, it , agriculture, was not limited to the use of slavery because of farm size.

The south needed large number of workers because of the crop, cotton. Without a lot of hands, pre-gin, cotton production was time consuming.

That still doesn't justify the use of slave labor, it was the choice of Southern land owners what they were going to do with their properties. I

Slavery was never at the levels in the North as seen in the South, false premise.

Because, there wasn't much to give up. Why was slavery so non-prevalent in the North to begin with?

This is irrelevant to your original argument, doesn't impact mine.

Thats a lie, you claimed the North held slaves for prestige reasons.....which is neither here nor there, it is just pointless noise.

There you are again, a nonsense "prestige" argument that is totally pointless

I do care about it, as I stated, the attempts at rationalizing it by economic argument ("reasons") while simultaneously denying the moral crime, that was understood at the time (abolitionists in the north)...... is wrong.

Further, it allows the same sorts to deny the lasting legacy of racism in the US. Racism today is still directly connected to the ideology of the Antebellum South.

I emphasized the irrelevance of your moral qualms because the decision to keep slaves was rooted in what Southerners believed to be the best practical solution to their problems. It's always easier to tell the other guy what moral course to take when you (or in the case, Northern politicians) have no skin in the game. To give you a modern comparison, it's like Eric Adams lecturing Greg Abbott about how Texas ought to welcome all the illegals let in by Joe Biden, followed by Adams crying to BIden when Abbott puts some of the illegals in Adams' back yard, and Adams has to divert resources to care for the illegals.

The lack of large, profitable farms in the North meant that it was easier for Northerners to de-emphasize slavery-- though they'd had some help from the British during the 1812 war, when the Brits liberated hundreds of slaves from their Northern masters, Without that exigency, there might have been more slaves in the North when the politicians made noises about abolition-- and they might have had to worry about compensating owners, which is something that Great Britain did for slave-owners in their colonies.

Right, and slavery was more pronounced in the South because the sun was hotter and more punishing, and Black slaves were more necessary to the economy.

Answered the non-prevalence question above.

Since my purpose is to show that the North committed its own share of sins regarding both Black slaves and free Blacks, it's not irrelevant except to your side of the argument.

I don't really think you understand the "prestige" argument, so your judgment doesn't mean much. However, even for the South it makes more sense than just the idea that Southerners kept slaves because they thought Blacks were inferior, which was your original argument.

You care about the Liberal narrative, not about history in the larger sense, which is why you over-react to anything that challenges your narrow interpretation.
 
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