that touch on Virtue Signaling (vis-a-vis Frank Clark and the incessant stream of 'domestic violence is BAD, BAD, BAD STUFF!' every time an article focuses on him) as well as a guest post at a friend's blog regarding the US Civil War. I *never* claim to know everything about a given subject, and I don't claim to know everything about Frnak Clark or the Civil War. But I can, with modest effort, uncover dogma-busting truths via inquiry and I think it's important to consider those truths.
Truth #1: The North did not fight the US Civil War over slavery. Neither did the south. The best piece of evidence in support of this thesis comes from Honest Abe's own lips:
Truth #2: "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." Courtesy of George Santayana. Recently I came to the USA for a couple months to deal with some personal matters, and while I was there I had to leave my wife and children at home in the Philippines. While I was there, I could not once--not ONCE--recall the face of my year-and-a-half old son. The rest of my family's faces were vivid, but it was like someone had hit the delete key on my boy's face in my memory warehouse. Harrowing stuff.
The purpose of my retelling that little story is this: how are we supposed to remember history if we don't keep important symbols of it front and center? How are we supposed to learn that slavery and racism are *EVIL* if, instead of discussing the reality of slavery and how it was perpetuated, we simply cover it all up and remove imagery/icons which *to some people* represent that horrible institution? How are we to avoid another Civil War if we don't honestly, clearly, and rationaliy discuss how the first one came to be? No more demagoguery, no moore vilification, no more moral condescension--if we want to avoid a conflict like the bloodiest one in our nation's history, we *HAVE* to speak honestly and openly about the REAL causes of the US Civil War (hint, it wasn't slavery--it was economics, much of which orbited the issue of slavery certainly, but only a couple percent of Southerners even OWNED slaves--why would the rank and file, outnumbered 4:1 by the North, send their best and brightest off to a war they knew they had extremely long odds to stalemate, let alone win?)
Gah, I'm getting worked up. This issue infuriates me from about twelve different angles--and my forebears didn't come ot the USA until *after* the Civil War's conclusion!