150th Gettysburg Address

[Wolfshade]

Ah yes, the government of the people, rather than the government of the toffs who are looking at bringing them back...

But yes free university was brilliant, the new system is still good and indeed it would have cost me less to be on the new "more expensive" system than the old one, but still not as good as my other sisters who had the free one.

Social mobility is always a problem in times of less affluence so the coming gneration will be interesting to see.

[Mr Mystery]

Disagree on Grammar schools completely.

On their own, they were an elitist institution. Very few kids from less privleged backgrounds got in, as those from better to do families got private tuition for the 11 Plus.

And, you know, they were caught out many times turning down poorer pupils.

Now, Grammar and Technical schools together? Yes. Please. Academia for the Academics, Technical for the Technically minded (carpentry, electricals, network design etc), and then your comprehensives for those without a particular leaning or interest.

Boom. Everyone catered to.

[Nabterayl]

Didn't the emancipation proclamation not include freeing slaves in union states though? Only in confederate ones?

I ... don't see what the Gettysburg Address has to do with freeing slaves, DL.

And yes, Psycho, the Emancipation Proclamation applied to Confederate states only (not that there were many slaves in Union states by then). But even with respect to Confederate states ... well, it's really not clear what, if anything, it did in terms of law. Practically speaking, of course, the Confederate states to which it purportedly applied were not under Union control at the time. In terms of political wartime theater it was significant, but ... well, this quote from Lincoln puts it pretty well:

I decided that the Constitution gives me war powers, but no one knows just exactly what those powers are. Some say they don't exist. I don't know. I decided I needed them to exist to uphold my oath to protect the Constitution, which I decided meant that I could take the rebels' slaves from them as property confiscated in war. That might recommend to suspicion that I agree with the rebs that their slaves are property in the first place. Of course I don't, never have, I'm glad to see any man free, and if calling a man property, or war contraband, does the trick... Why I caught at the opportunity. Now here's where it gets truly slippery. I use the law allowing for the seizure of property in a war knowing it applies only to the property of governments and citizens of belligerent nations. But the South ain't a nation, that's why I can't negotiate with 'em. If in fact the Negroes are property according to law, have I the right to take the rebels' property from 'em, if I insist they're rebels only, and not citizens of a belligerent country? And slipperier still: I maintain it ain't our actual Southern states in rebellion but only the rebels living in those states, the laws of which states remain in force. The laws of which states remain in force. That means, that since it's states' laws that determine whether Negroes can be sold as slaves, as property - the Federal government doesn't have a say in that, least not yet. Then Negroes in those states are slaves, hence property, hence my war powers allow me to confiscate 'em as such. So I confiscated 'em. But if I'm a respecter of states' laws, how then can I legally free 'em with my Proclamation, as I done, unless I'm cancelling states' laws? I felt the war demanded it; my oath demanded it; I felt right with myself; and I hoped it was legal to do it, I'm hoping still. Two years ago I proclaimed these people emancipated - "then, hence forward and forever free." But let's say the courts decide I had no authority to do it. They might well decide that. Say there's no amendment abolishing slavery. Say it's after the war, and I can no longer use my war powers to just ignore the courts' decisions, like I sometimes felt I had to do. Might those people I freed be ordered back into slavery? That's why I'd like to get the Thirteenth Amendment through the House, and on its way to ratification by the states, wrap the whole slavery thing up, forever and aye. As soon as I'm able. Now. End of this month. And I'd like you to stand behind me. Like my cabinet's most always done.

The Thirteenth Amendment is what ended slavery in America. The Emancipation Proclamation was a bold statement of intent, and once a historically significant thing has happened there's a tendency to focus on the bold moment where somebody announced their intent to make it happen, rather than the nuts and bolts of making it happen, but ... it's really not clear that the Emancipation Proclamation had any legal effect.

[DarkLink]

I think you missed no 7 where you allowed black people the right to sit anywhere on a bus...

Yeah, I skimmed recent history, that would be there, too.

While not strictly related I was thinking about republicans (not The Republicans, just republicans, as in those who believe that a republic is a better governmance system). One of the things that they proclaim is that the monarchy is wrong as a person through no merit of their own inherits a position and it is this inherited inequality which is wrong. Sentiments that I would agree with, but I am quite happy to have our big tourist attraction and apolotical figure head. Because they come from wealth and power they start of life with an inherent advantage. So, if we were to remove the monarchy and landed gentry then what, would that make us all equal? No.
Rich parents have more resources than poor and so the children of the rich also have a distinct advantage over their poor equivalents. So you end up with rich clique, and the thing is that people socialise with their socio-economic peers and pick mates from that circle so you end up with a privelidged elite again who have better chances just because of a fortune of birth.

I've heard people here promote the idea that monarchies are good because the authority of the government is vested in them, granting other parts of government limited authority to do their jobs, but keeping them from overstepping their bounds. They usually seem to use it to claim our President is a bad idea (in general, not to single out Obama).

The problems with this are multitude. For one, it requires that the rights of the people come from this one person. Implicitly, I am only a human being with rights because arbitrary random monarch says I am, and the logical extension is that that monarch can take those rights away. That's an inherently immoral stance.

In America, our symbolic ideals are that the power is vested in the people, because people all have inherent rights. Not the right to be rich or anything, but the right to work and live and be free and pursue a business to get rich if you choose. That's what I mean by equal. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't asking for every single black to be filthy rich in order to be equal, he was asking that they would be free from racial persecution. There's a distinction there, and it's an important one. You have the right to work and go to any public place and live free of fear of being attacked and the like, but you don't have the right to have other people just give you money to make you rich. Unless you do business. If rich people tend to socially clump together and create an economic elite, that may or may not be acceptable, which is why stuff like insider trading and economic regulation is a thing, but that's a different issue from human rights.

So the people hold the ultimate authority in our government, even if the actual power is vested in our governmental institutions. And while having a figurehead to hold symbolic power theoretically prevents other politicians from overstepping their bounds, we have a system of checks and balances to do that. Whether or not either system works is purely execution.

[Psychosplodge]

Disagree on Grammar schools completely.

On their own, they were an elitist institution. Very few kids from less privleged backgrounds got in, as those from better to do families got private tuition for the 11 Plus.

And, you know, they were caught out many times turning down poorer pupils.

Now, Grammar and Technical schools together? Yes. Please. Academia for the Academics, Technical for the Technically minded (carpentry, electricals, network design etc), and then your comprehensives for those without a particular leaning or interest.

Boom. Everyone catered to.

Just like anywhere the rich were at an advantage. but as a general rule its grammar schools that gave greatest social mobility.
But its the privately educated champaign socialists that did away with them.

I ... don't see what the Gettysburg Address has to do with freeing slaves, DL.

And yes, Psycho, the Emancipation Proclamation applied to Confederate states only (not that there were many slaves in Union states by then). But even with respect to Confederate states ... well, it's really not clear what, if anything, it did in terms of law. Practically speaking, of course, the Confederate states to which it purportedly applied were not under Union control at the time. In terms of political wartime theater it was significant, but ... well, this quote from Lincoln puts it pretty well:



The Thirteenth Amendment is what ended slavery in America. The Emancipation Proclamation was a bold statement of intent, and once a historically significant thing has happened there's a tendency to focus on the bold moment where somebody announced their intent to make it happen, rather than the nuts and bolts of making it happen, but ... it's really not clear that the Emancipation Proclamation had any legal effect.

So for it to actually apply he was implicitly accepting them as a separate state, despite that being what the the war was over?
Just another greasy politician.

[ElectricPaladin]

Disclaimer: I believe that Abraham Lincoln was a heroic figure who saw the US through a terrible time, managed to fail-forward into wining the war that would have torn us apart, and ultimately freed our slaves. Whatever I say next, he did run on an abolitionist platform and had long written and spoken from that point of view.

The Emancipation Proclamation was basically a PR move. It freed the slaves in the southern states for the express purpose of making the war even more about slavery and - consequentially - less about culture, economics, and politics. Lincoln did this in order to deprive the rebels of assistance from other countries (like, say, you guys) who supported the South because of economic ties, because they wanted to see the US reduced as a rival, or both. By making the war more about slavery, Lincoln was able to put the South's potential allies into an untenable position. They might be able to ally with a slave-holding country and then turn around to their own people - remember that the US was, at this point, the last slave-holding anglo nation and widely despised for it - and argue that they were supporting the rebels for other reasons. Once the Emancipation Proclamation focused the war largely on slavery, this became much harder, and all the South's potential allies backed out.

Of course, the rebels could have issued their own statement condemning slavery and releasing their own slaves. If they had, you guys probably would have come in on their side. But, the fact is that the war was enough about slavery that, to them, doing so would have felt too much like losing.

Oh, and also they were terrified of the just and righteous vengeance of the humans they had bought and sold as property, beaten, and raped for almost two hundred years. So there was that.

So was the war about slavery? Among other things, yes. Did Lincoln always intend to free the slaves? Almost certainly, though of course we can never know his mind, and he did get around to it later.

But was the Emancipation Proclamation the way it was done? No, that was a clever PR move. The political work of freeing the slaves came a year later.

[Wolfshade]

Mystery: I do agree with the issue of coaching, I was a grammar school boy and by the time the GCSEs rolled around it was quite clear which of us got there under our own merit and those who were coached. I received no coaching in them before I took mine, though I did see sampler papers to see what they looked like. I did resent those coached to get in as they took places of others who could have got in in their own merit. When I took the exam I don't recall them asking about my parents financial background. As an aside, this is personal experiance, so may be an exception rather than the norm, our PTA had set up funds and a school "shop" so that the specific clothing required could be acquired second hand at a very reduced price to help those less affluent.

DarkLink: One ruling elite will replace another. The only way to remove any inherited advantage is to seperate children from parental influence. I also think sometimes the views of a consitutional and absolute monarchy are mixed. The monarchy here has no power, or the power that they weild is arbitary, for instance they may apoint the primate of the Church of England, but only from the two possibilities that is presented to them. The open parliament, but on the day that they are told to. In a lot of ways, I think we see the power weilded by the President as being closer to that of a monarchy then that or a politician.

[eldargal]

I've heard people here promote the idea that monarchies are good because the authority of the government is vested in them, granting other parts of government limited authority to do their jobs, but keeping them from overstepping their bounds. They usually seem to use it to claim our President is a bad idea (in general, not to single out Obama).

Constitutional monarchies are good because political authority stems from the Monarch, while political legitimacy stems from the people. also worth nothing the American president is an elected constitutional monarch with far more power than even George III had let alone Elizabth II.

The problems with this are multitude. For one, it requires that the rights of the people come from this one person. Implicitly, I am only a human being with rights because arbitrary random monarch says I am, and the logical extension is that that monarch can take those rights away. That's an inherently immoral stance.

The problem is you mischaracterise it. The rights do not come from the monarch, our rights are inalienable, only we don't require a 200 year old piece of paper to tell us what ours are. The monarch cannot strip anyone of their rights, unlike the American government which can declare anyone an 'enemy combatant' and strip them of all their rights with little consequence.

In America, our symbolic ideals are that the power is vested in the people, because people all have inherent rights. Not the right to be rich or anything, but the right to work and live and be free and pursue a business to get rich if you choose. That's what I mean by equal.

Your symbolic ideal is that power is vested in the people, because all people have inherent rights. In practise power is vested in rich white men.

Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't asking for every single black to be filthy rich in order to be equal, he was asking that they would be free from racial persecution.

Hows that working out, what with that private prison system that makes vast profits through incarcerating black men for crimes white men don't go to prison for?

There's a distinction there, and it's an important one. You have the right to work and go to any public place and live free of fear of being attacked and the like, but you don't have the right to have other people just give you money to make you rich. Unless you do business. If rich people tend to socially clump together and create an economic elite, that may or may not be acceptable, which is why stuff like insider trading and economic regulation is a thing, but that's a different issue from human rights.

Unless you're a woman, in which case god forbid you walk the streets alone or after dark or socialise at night or drink alcohol etc...

So the people hold the ultimate authority in our government, even if the actual power is vested in our governmental institutions. And while having a figurehead to hold symbolic power theoretically prevents other politicians from overstepping their bounds, we have a system of checks and balances to do that. Whether or not either system works is purely execution.

We have a figurehead who denies power to politicians AND checks and balances. Execution is everything, though. Any system of government can aspire to lofty ideals, whether it delivers them is another matter entirely and is the real test. Does America, with it's people power, deliver better representation than the British system? No, it doesn't.

I'm not trying to bash America here*, no country is perfect and god knows Britain has some immense problems of it's own. But when it comes to political systems ours is no less democratic or representative than yours even if it is headed by a hereditary monarch.

*Having said that, I can't take American claims of a greater morality due to people power seriously. Slavery + native genoicde = **** your morality.

[DarkLink]

You're responding well beyond the scope of my intent, eldargal. I'm merely stating that monarchies inherently have unfortunate implications, and they shouldn't be wished on anyone. You might have your monarchy in check, but it is in spite of those problems, not because of them. There are enough nations out there without monarchies that are working pretty well to negate whatever argument you have about how monarchies are good because they symbolically blahblahblah.

That's not to say your actual government is bad, any more than you are saying ours is bad. Claiming our rights come from our constitution rather than being inherent is just as offensive to us as you seem to find the idea of a monarch determining your rights.

All I'm saying is that monarchies are inherently bad because they are fundamentally based on the idea that one person somehow has special privileges and rights for no real reason, just that they are somehow inherently better than everyone else. It doesn't matter if they have actual abusable political power, the fundamental idea is inherently immoral.

Not trying to say that America is better than Britain because we don't have a monarch, or that having an economic elite is a good or bad thing. I'm just saying, **** anyone who thinks they can make me bend the knee because they're wearing a crown.

So for it to actually apply he was implicitly accepting them as a separate state, despite that being what the the war was over?
Just another greasy politician.

Just because you play politics doesn't make you a bad person. If he hadn't, then the union would have split and the south would still have slavery. I wouldn't call that the goal of a greasy politician.

Edit: I'd be more thorough and clear in what I'm trying to say, but I'm posting from my phone so I don't really have an opportunity to properly address everything.

[DarkLink]

Also, I know the Gettysburg Address itself wasn't about slavery. Like I said I was skimming over stuff. The Gettysburg Address was a pivotal moment the Civil War, and the civil war itself, while strictly speaking about States seceding from the union, slavery was right at the core of the issue for multiple complex reasons. That's why I listed the two of them together.