Will the Civil war be back?

[wilt the stilt]

If Newt wins it is truly the Civil war again. Newt winning is SC is firing the first shot again. The heat and hateful rhetoric was on display at the debates. First, he basically called Juan a n****r and then we get the women the next day complimenting him that he put Juan in his place. Then he bashes the news(North and Washington) in the second debate.

It was pugilistic and brought back the feelings that embody the south(I live here and can't wait to leave).
In other words "You can't tell us we can't own people".
It's been brewing for a long time and electing the black man brought it out.

[Kingofalldems]

1. Newt called it 'The war between the states' yesterday

Another dog whistle.

[JustAnotherGen]

5. That makes me livid

They were a foreign country with their own currency and President - no different than Germany during World Wars I and II.

[Honeycombe8]

11. Oh, pleeeezzzzz. The South wasn't a foreign country and it wasn't like Germany was...

later on. The South and the North were countrymen, both belonging to the same country. Until the war, when some states tried to secede. Then the two halves became like separate countries. From the south's point of view, it was the north that was "foreign," using your reasoning.

The people in the two halves were sometimes related biologically, they traveled to each other's states, they did business together. The north profited much from the low prices of the products in the south from the awful slavery business. Most people in the north and the south weren't involved in the politics of the war, and didn't care. They were just ordinary people trying to eek out a living. In the south, the working poor and farmers were drafted. In the north, the wealthy people paid immigrants and other poor people to replace them in the draft.

Another President and Congress may well have let the southerners secede. Who can say how that would've worked out? Canada is another country, and we get along fine with it.

[mzteris]

12. Not sure how "fine" we'd get along with

the type of "Country" that would have probably evolved had the South been allowed to secede.

They (we) were awful enough during reparations and the Civil Rights Movement. Even now, they are racist, sexist, ignorant. (NO - NOT ALL! But the overwhelming majority.) Can you IMAGINE what it would have been like if slavery had continued? OMG...

And just so you know, I was born in GA, raised there and Alabama. Spent a few years in KY, a number of years in SC, and over 25 in NC.

[JustAnotherGen]

16. ITA

And what of those 2/3 people? Were they just sooooo happy having their children sold down the river? I descend from one of those VA slaves who wouldn't just go along to get along who was ripped from his family and sent to Alabama in 1842.


It wasn't all huggy kiss let's just be friend and be free for some. . . Well for the 2/3 of a person "things" it wasn't.

[JustAnotherGen]

14. I call bs

And I don't believe that. Foreign country, own currency, own President and own army. Uh was DC collecting taxes for their war effort? Nope.

Every time we believe that lie we keep letting them win the peace. That lie is why my father grew up under Jim Crow. It's a lie that we were one country. It's god damned lie and stop lying to me!

[redqueen]

17. +1

I'm sick of all the lies about that war. Way too many of them are way too popular.

[Odin2005]

22. They were TRAITORS, fuck them.

[jwirr]

35. I always found it interesting the Harry Truman said that if we had let the south secede Alaska and

the NE area of the US would now belong to Russia. I never did look into what he meant. But it was something that stuck in my mind.

[Odin2005]

20. Yup.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. They are having a Civil War between themselves (GOP)

and each time they try to hurl their bigotry at the President, another of their kind hurls something back at them. And this is because each and every one is a hypocrite of a different stripe and their opposition will continue to point that out as long as they are all in the race together. And the teabagger monster that they created is feeding this frenzy.

This is why the establishment wants to torpedo all but one so that they can THEN (and only then) be able to try to start the nonsensical racial civil war.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. One can make an academic argument that it never really ended.

You have the surrender in Appamatox and the Reconstruction, but there are large pockets in the South that feel the humiliation of having not won The War Between The States. And Newt, being the history professor, is acutely aware of these sentiments and is using it with gusto in his campaign.

Gringrich's MO has been division. He did it in the Nineties with dividing democrats and republicans in the House who used to disagree and debate but were still friends at the end of the day. Until Newt. Now there is such a schism, it's hard to imagine how to re-meld the political process.

If Gringrich's campaign really starts to pick up steam, it won't just be rich-vs.-poor, or fundamentalist Christians-vs-everyone else: it will North-vs.-South.

[wilt the stilt]

6. Newt is from Columbus,GA

I have been down there many times and that is the old south. He knows it well.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. Newt was BORN and RAISED in Harrisburg, PA

He didn't go down to GA until his teens.

He is a YANKEE in the South's clothing!

[wilt the stilt]

8. I always maintain where you went to high school

is where you are from because those are the true formative years.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. IMHO, I disagree

Children form their first impressions very early on. What might be different in high school is perfecting the ability to adapt to surrounding circumstances, and with respect to Gingrich, he learned to be an opportunist who knew both. Where he lived in PA was that famous "T" (often dubbed Pennsyltucky), and it's quite easy to apply that to the south as it's rural and conservative (i.e., anyone in rural areas had to learn early on to fend for oneself).

Yet the same man hurling epithets at blacks was the same one going around the country with Al Sharpton (as the Rev Al will point out) and Arne Duncan, "preaching" the word of "education". He was suckled on the Government teat and that is his upbringing - a somewhat artificial universe.

In a word, his tactics aren't really "southern" (at least not "old south&quot . The "dog-whistle" is "northern racism" personified and he's trying to push it over into something that those in the south can recognize. He is sloppy but generally as convincing a "performance artist" as anyone out there.

He's worse than a weather vane, he's a windsock (as I saw the term used for him I believe).

[newfie11]

9. Damn Yankee!!

Carpetbagger, there must be more but can't think of them.

[coalition_unwilling]

24. And he's a Roman Catholic trying to appeal to Protestant

Fundies. Got to love all the cognitive dissonance at play

[GoneOffShore]

32. Harrisburg is the heart of Pennsyltucky.

It's only 45 minutes from the Maryland line.

And has never really been "The North" - the attitudes in PA have always been sharply divided. We have significant pockets of racism and bigotry here worthy of anything you would find in Alabama in the same way that you could find small pockets of progressives there. Unfortunately the bigots and racists thrive out there in mid PA.

[mfcorey1]

4. As long as the South waves the confederate flag, the thinking that the

war has ended will never happen.

[Fawke Em]

19. LMAO at you thinking only Southerners wave that flag.

Seriously?

I've seen it on cars from Alabama to Michigan.

[AlinPA]

27. And a lot of them in S.W. PA.

[jwirr]

36. You may be right about that but the only confederate flag I have seen in our area was on a car

owned by a pipeliner who had come up for Texas for the job putting in the pipeline.

[coalition_unwilling]

26. Sherman's army burned SC to the ground in

1865. You'd think the South Carolinians would have learned something from it.

Yesterday's results just ratified for me my belief that Sherman should have salted the earth of South Carolina and left it a desolate wasteland for the next millennium.

[DeathToTheOil]

13. No

Just this guy:

[cordelia]

15. No

[Fawke Em]

18. No - because people in the South don't talk about

the Civil War as much as people on this board either do or think we do.

Honestly, no one I interact with daily ever brings it up.

Racism is still alive and well, but it's not limited to region.

[cordelia]

38. Thank you.

[Odin2005]

21. SC better watch out, unless they want another General Sherman on their asses.

And I will have no fucking sympathy for them.

[boxman15]

23. A civil war on the scale of the one we had in the mid-1800s won't happen,

but I'd argue we are possibly at the beginning of a Cold Civil War, if that makes any sense. This country hasn't been so divided since the Reconstruction era, and it looks like it's only going to get worse. Our military is far too powerful to allow any major revolt to ever happen, but this country is really dividing itself, which is a damn shame.

EDIT: And this has little to do with region, but more to do with political ideology. We seem to be perfectly happy with demonizing people we disagree with nowadays.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. "South Carolina is too small to be a republic, too big to be an insane asylum." James Pettigru 1860

[RZM]

28. Gingrich is a world class prick. But how is him saying 'Juan' a racial slur?

I'll bet they have known each other for many years. For as long as Juan Williams has been covering politics and working for Fox in particular, they have probably crossed paths dozens of times. I'll bet they've been on a first-name basis for years. It's not uncommon for politicians to refer to journalists by their first names in public.

Don't get me wrong, I think Gingrich is the worst of the entire Republican field. But I don't think his tone towards Juan Williams had much to do with race. He was even meaner with John King the other night. It's part of his shtick. He's throwing red meat to the base by going after the MSM.

Ironically it's just the kind of thing many DUers argue Democrats should do more of. You hear a lot of calls here for Democrats to be tougher and more aggressive with their enemies (and Republicans certainly consider the MSM to be an enemy).

[randome]

29. Yeah, the civil war is back.

Back in the 19th century. Those who dwell on the past are forever doomed to misinterpret the Present.

[QED]

30. I think we're in the midst of a civil war now -

an undeclared class war with the Koch Brothers and their ilk on one side and the rest of us on the other.

[Lizzie Poppet]

33. Agreed...and this time, it's not really a regional thing.

Our current, ongoing civil war is essentially a class war, and it's not one in which the sides can be cleanly demarcated by region. For the most part, even the staunchest "red" or "blue" states only swing one way or the other by single-digit percentages in Presidential elections. Basically, the warring factions are all mixed together, geographically.

Recipe for chaos, disintegration, and societal collapse? You bet'cha...

[Fawke Em]

37. Thank you.

As a Southerner and a liberal who lives in a pretty liberal part of town, I can say that it's not a regional thing. Statewide, Democrats are only about 8 to 10 percentage points away from turning the state blue, so it's not like the entire state is Republican (it just seems that way).

[GeorgeGist]

31. Perhaps Lincolns greatest mistake ...

was stopping them from leaving in the first place.

[Lizzie Poppet]

34. A strong argument can be made that it wasn't even legal to force them back in.

That is to say, the argument can be made that there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents secession. The Confederate states each went through a legislative process to draft and approve their respective articles of secession. Frankly, I can't imagine the Founders approving of preventing (by force of arms) a state from voluntarily leaving the Union. For all the lofty rhetoric attached to the Union's actions, they can be reasonably viewed as an act of conquest against a sovereign nation, one that was created via a democratic process.

FWIW, no dog in the old Civil War fight: I'm an Oregonian...and frankly, a lot of us Pacific Northwesterners would like very much to secede, ourselves! =P

[Progressive dog]

39. It Never Left

Lincoln did not attack the south.
He prevented a later war which the south might have won. Private armies tried to foment insurrections in Latin America countries, in order to make them safe for slavery. The massacre at Lawrence, Kansas took place before Lincoln was president. Slavery was expanding into the territories.
After the Civil War, legal discrimination continued for more than 100 years, much more in the traitor states. Until the voting rights act, the south was solidly democratic. Now they vote for the Republicans.
The war so far has been mostly political, punctuated by acts of violence on the part of the southern inheritors.
Electing a black man as President has some of these inheritors of hatred frothing at the mouth.