I have always had a problem with the idea of removing Confederate symbols and statues of Confederate generals, in the United States, because the stated reason for doing so is they represent slavery and racism. That is a very simplistic and wrong view of the Confederacy and the Civil War.
The Civil War in the United States was not about slavery. You would not know that when you look at the superficial analysis of that war that dominates public discourse. However, if you look deeper you would understand that slavery was a symptom of the causes of the US Civil War not the actual cause. The reasons for the Civil War are the usual reasons why humans go to war, power and money. The third reason why humans go to war, religion, was not a factor for the Civil War.
Let's look at power first. The United States was formed by taking a bunch of former British colonies and forming them into a federation. A federation is a strong central government governing a group of states or provinces. The states have their own governments and their own powers but the power relationship between the states and the central government greatly favours the central government. The powers of the Federal and State governments for the United States are outlined in the US Constitution and at the time leading up to the Civil War the US federal government was pushing the limits of its powers quite hard. Many at the time believed that the US federal government was overstepping its boundaries and that sentiment was present in both the northern and southern states. As originally written the US Constitution left it up to the STATE GOVERNMENTS to decide whether slavery should be legal or not within their states. So one of the causes of the civil war was the power conflict between the US government and the state governments.
This is important because it had a great potential impact on the economies of the southern states. The economies of the northern states were largely based on industry and manufacturing. Certainly agriculture was an important sector of their economies but those states did not depend on it for most of their economic activity. In the industrialized north black slaves taking jobs away from white wage workers would have been a recipe for insurrection. So the northern economies did not need slavery to function well and had the luxury of abolishing it. However do not believe that its abolition came out of some altruistic impulse to help blacks in the northern states. If the northern states would have needed slavery for their economies to operate they would have maintained it and they would have had all sorts of legal precedent to allow them to do so. Just looking at a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1857 (four years before the beginning of the Civil War and six years before the Emancipation Proclamation) proves that. That decision indicated that the Constitution regarded blacks as “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” (Dredd Scott vs Sandford, 1857). As well, keep in mind that abolitionists did not believe that slavery should be abolished because it oppressed blacks. They believed that slavery, as an institution, was wrong and needed to be abolished. The fact that slaves in the US were black had no bearing on their beliefs.
The economies of the southern states were more based on agriculture. Certainly they had some industry but the balance between industry and agriculture greatly favoured agriculture. For a time in the mid 1800s cotton was all the rage in Europe. Europeans could not get enough of it and the southern states were a great source of it. However, they were not the only source. Egypt and India both produced large quantities of cotton and were in direct competition with the southern states. Unfortunately for the southern states their agricultural economies were very dependent on slave labour in order to remain competitive with the other cotton producing regions. If they would have abolished it they would have been at a disadvantage in the cotton market which would have resulted in some serious economic hardship in the southern states.
The southern states found themselves up against a federal government they believed was infringing on their rights to regulate slavery and many believed that this was an actual strategy to impoverish the southern states so that rich northerners could swoop in and buy up the choice bits of the south that would suddenly become available. Which is exactly what happened after the end of the Civil War.
So the southern states broke away from the United States and formed their own country, the Confederacy. A confederation is similar to a federation except the power relationship between the central government and the state governments favours the state governments. This new country did what all new countries do, including creating an official state flag, the Confederate flag. And that is all it was, a flag to represent the new country. It was no different from the Union Jack, the french Tricolour or the Stars and Stripe, although the north regarded it as a flag of treason.
The northern states, the Union, did not accept the breakaway of the southern states and decided to reverse it by force but make now mistake that they did not do this to abolish slavery, they did it to prevent the breakup of the United States. So the people of the southern states had a choice. Surrender their newly founded country or fight for it. They chose to fight.
Which brings us to Confederate generals and officers who are commemorated by statues all over the southern United States. These men answered the call to fight for their country. They were not evil. They were men of good conscience who believed they were fighting for a worthy cause, the Confederacy and what it represented. Slavery was a blight on this new country but no other country in the world at that time or since as been totally free of serious blemishes so saying the cause they fought for was particularly wrong is just proof that the victors write history. As well, to state these men were racists and should not be commemorated is to ignore that their counterparts on the other side were just as racist. If you are going to pull down statues because the people represented by them were racist then you should be pulling down all statues from that time because racism was endemic during the early histories of the countries of North America. In fact, that is the primary reason why racism is still a problem today. Racism is not a recent phenomenon only our greater awareness of it is recent.
As a student of history I am offended that the symbols of the Confederacy have been stolen by bigoted and racist yahoos to represent their hateful beliefs but I am just as offended by those who let them do it. Maybe instead of surrendering them to the hateful bigots they should be taken back from them.
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Tuesday, June 02, 2020
Some Thoughts
First I am quite impressed with the quiet competence of the Liberal government.
Their efforts have kept the infection and death rates down to manageable levels and when this virus escaped China that is all that could be expected of any government. In addition, the financial assistance that the government has provided is assisting most Canadians in weathering the storm, at least for now. This thing could go on for a long time so we will have to see how the government continues to provide assistance.
I just read today that the government has finalized a contract to buy millions of syringes for when a vaccine is available. That is forward thinking during a crisis and it is these little things, away from the big headline events that indicates their competence.
For certain they have not been perfect but they have been good enough that none of the errors they have made have been sticking to them. The government's opponents have been trying to find fault but all they can do is rant and rave about things on the periphery, such as renovations to Harrington Lake or bringing forward the summer recess of Parliament by a couple of weeks. Although a new one is Mr. Trudeau's long pause before answering a question about the troubles currently gripping the US. Mr. Trump is becoming increasingly unhinged, as his re-election chances seem to be slipping away, so Canada has to tread lightly and Mr. Trudeau did that today while making a point.
A second thought is I am impressed with how well the Federal and Provincial governments are working together. The Federal government contributed a great deal to keeping infection and death rates down but they could not have done it without the full cooperation of the Provincial governments. Certainly, some of the Provincial governments have made some more pronounced missteps but by and large they have shown a high level of competence as well.
Canadians are interesting folks. They very much prefer competent governments over governments with "vision". In fact, a government in this country cannot advance their vision until they have demonstrated their competence in governing.
Donald Trump missed an opportunity. The COVID-19 virus was a golden opportunity to step up and demonstrate that he could handle an actual national crisis instead of just a self-inflicted political crisis. It would really not have been that hard to do. Justin Trudeau has demonstrated how it is done, along with a few other political leaders in the West. All he had to do was listen to the medical experts and calmly reassure Americans that they would get through this crisis. His base would have eaten it up because they take everything he says an does to be perfect but he would also have created alot of goodwill with non-aligned voters in the US as well.
No one should be surprised by the spreading unrest in the US. This has been building for sometime and it was only a matter of time before it exploded into a full blown national crisis. When you add the pressure of everybody living under the threat of a deadly virus then you are delusional if you believe something unrelated to the virus would cause some or all of that pressure to be expended in a totally different direction.
Donald Trump missed another opportunity with his handling of this crisis. Again, showing some empathy for people of colour and using his position to attempt to relieve the pressure would have put him in good stead with independents.
Usually, a sitting President does not lose their bid for re-election. Mr. Trump is in real danger of doing just that. The polls in the US show that Mr. Biden has a clear lead in the Presidential race. Yes, they said the same thing in the last election but in that last one Mr. Trump was the challenger up against a nominee for the incumbent party that had been in power for eight years. People were lusting for change as they often do after eight years of the same guy running the show. This time he is the incumbent. He is deeply unpopular outside of his base and he is widely perceived to have bungled the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and it is becoming more widely perceived that he is bungling the reaction to the current unrest in the US.
There is still six months until the November election and in normal times that would be plenty of time for him to recover and win it. However, these are not normal times. The COVID-19 virus is going to leave a permanent scar on the psyches of voters in the democratic world and how their governments have handled the crisis will be remembered when voters go to the polls. As well, the current unrest, in the US, is happening close enough to the election that it will not be completely forgotten by November. If the impression of voters remains that he bungled the handling of both not much could save him in November.
Their efforts have kept the infection and death rates down to manageable levels and when this virus escaped China that is all that could be expected of any government. In addition, the financial assistance that the government has provided is assisting most Canadians in weathering the storm, at least for now. This thing could go on for a long time so we will have to see how the government continues to provide assistance.
I just read today that the government has finalized a contract to buy millions of syringes for when a vaccine is available. That is forward thinking during a crisis and it is these little things, away from the big headline events that indicates their competence.
For certain they have not been perfect but they have been good enough that none of the errors they have made have been sticking to them. The government's opponents have been trying to find fault but all they can do is rant and rave about things on the periphery, such as renovations to Harrington Lake or bringing forward the summer recess of Parliament by a couple of weeks. Although a new one is Mr. Trudeau's long pause before answering a question about the troubles currently gripping the US. Mr. Trump is becoming increasingly unhinged, as his re-election chances seem to be slipping away, so Canada has to tread lightly and Mr. Trudeau did that today while making a point.
A second thought is I am impressed with how well the Federal and Provincial governments are working together. The Federal government contributed a great deal to keeping infection and death rates down but they could not have done it without the full cooperation of the Provincial governments. Certainly, some of the Provincial governments have made some more pronounced missteps but by and large they have shown a high level of competence as well.
Canadians are interesting folks. They very much prefer competent governments over governments with "vision". In fact, a government in this country cannot advance their vision until they have demonstrated their competence in governing.
Donald Trump missed an opportunity. The COVID-19 virus was a golden opportunity to step up and demonstrate that he could handle an actual national crisis instead of just a self-inflicted political crisis. It would really not have been that hard to do. Justin Trudeau has demonstrated how it is done, along with a few other political leaders in the West. All he had to do was listen to the medical experts and calmly reassure Americans that they would get through this crisis. His base would have eaten it up because they take everything he says an does to be perfect but he would also have created alot of goodwill with non-aligned voters in the US as well.
No one should be surprised by the spreading unrest in the US. This has been building for sometime and it was only a matter of time before it exploded into a full blown national crisis. When you add the pressure of everybody living under the threat of a deadly virus then you are delusional if you believe something unrelated to the virus would cause some or all of that pressure to be expended in a totally different direction.
Donald Trump missed another opportunity with his handling of this crisis. Again, showing some empathy for people of colour and using his position to attempt to relieve the pressure would have put him in good stead with independents.
Usually, a sitting President does not lose their bid for re-election. Mr. Trump is in real danger of doing just that. The polls in the US show that Mr. Biden has a clear lead in the Presidential race. Yes, they said the same thing in the last election but in that last one Mr. Trump was the challenger up against a nominee for the incumbent party that had been in power for eight years. People were lusting for change as they often do after eight years of the same guy running the show. This time he is the incumbent. He is deeply unpopular outside of his base and he is widely perceived to have bungled the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and it is becoming more widely perceived that he is bungling the reaction to the current unrest in the US.
There is still six months until the November election and in normal times that would be plenty of time for him to recover and win it. However, these are not normal times. The COVID-19 virus is going to leave a permanent scar on the psyches of voters in the democratic world and how their governments have handled the crisis will be remembered when voters go to the polls. As well, the current unrest, in the US, is happening close enough to the election that it will not be completely forgotten by November. If the impression of voters remains that he bungled the handling of both not much could save him in November.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)