Look, I get why right wing figures want to talk about anything except why Dylann Roof shot up a black church in Charleston. There is just no way a functioning human being can lament people taking the ideals of the old Confederacy a bit too strongly to heart, while literally working under the Confederate battle flag and sticking little decals of it everywhere the NHTSA will let you, without feeling like the world’s biggest asshole. It would be irresistibly tempting to turn this from an embarrassment to another chance at the glorious victim card, if you could just stretch the story into some general attack on Christianity.
Too bad for Lindsey Graham, Erick Erickson and FOX News the guy came one small step short of tattooing his racist agenda on his forehead.
[T]he document allegedly written by Roof is a sickening diatribe against people of color and Jewish people. Black people are referred to with racial slurs, as “lower beings,” and are described as “stupid and violent.” Hispanics are described as a “huge problem for Americans,” and the author speaks of a desire to “destroy the jewish identity.” The author speaks frequently about white people being victimized by blacks. “Every White person is treated as if they had a slave owning ancestor,” it reads.
Ever flown the confederate flag for heritage, hate or any other reason? He’s your boy. Just sign the slip and deal with it.
khead
3:55 and Fox still has not mentioned the manifesto.
gogol's wife
I like the connection with the clip. I thought maybe you had struck the wrong key or something, but it works, it works.
beltane
As we speak, the evil elves at Fox News are scurrying about, desperately searching for a way to put Roof on Team Blue.
Baud
Looking forward to when Mr. Roof testifies in his own defense.
Baud
Hmm. The badge says three comments, but I see four comments.
NotMax
Graham has now irremediably shown that he really, truly is a cracker.
pamelabrown53
Heres’ what I don’t get: how can the white people lack any empathy so that they are clueless to the black population that has to live under that symbol of slavery?
It’s beyond my ken.
Baud
Hey, can folks see me? My comments aren’t been counted in the comment number box?
Chris
I’m surprised they haven’t latched onto the Jew-hating part to say that he was obviously a left winger, because everyone knows Republicans are the Jews’ best friend, because Israel.
Heck, have Bibi come over and give a speech about that; I’m sure he’d be happy to do his right wing friends a solid.
01jack
@pamelabrown53: No, they see the suffering. It’s just that they’re OK with that.
Baud
Testing. Can folks see this?
ETA: I’ve got three comments on the mobile site that aren’t marked for moderation, but that seem to be invisible to everyone else. I used my computer to post this comment.
ETA2: I now see that I had my email address typed incorrectly in the mobile site comments.
beltane
It’s really something. The RWNM gave this guy his talking points and now they’re refusing to take ownership of him. The crap in that manifesto is standard fare in conservative circles-Erickson in particular could have written the thing himself.
greenergood
If Mr. Roof had murdered 9 white people in a synagogue, there’d be no problem with releasing the manifesto, and Fox would be all over it in a non-mentally-challenged, certainly-terrorist murderer sort of way. As an ex-pat US-ian, I despair, and have difficulty explaining this to my furriner friends.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Yes, this comment is visible.
ETA: And I see you figured out your problem.
Baud
Almost related
beltane
@Chris: I guess this guy isn’t such a big fan of Bill Kristol or Sheldon Adelson. What a shock.
The only reasons the Republican party supports Israel in such a slavish manner are: 1) Lesser races of humans killing each other in the Middle East is seen as an unqualified good; 2) A hope that all American Jews will eventually go live in Israel, far, far away; and 3) Jesus, or at least Aryan Jesus.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
Thanks. The problem was the mistyped email address. Usually when that happens, my comment doesn’t post or I get a note that my comment is awaiting moderation. If I hadn’t noticed the comment numbers not advancing, I could have stayed invisible for a while.
chopper
as i said in another thread they have to keep fucking this chicken. they can’t rationalize new voter suppression laws without going all-in on the roberts ‘post-racial america’ shtick, a shtick which doesn’t jibe with ‘white power asshole shoots nine people over white power beliefs’.
so it’s gotta be something other than racism, and when that no longer works it’s time to switch to something else entirely.
beltane
@greenergood: If Roof, as a Christian white supremacist, killed 9 people at a synagogue, Fox News would try to avoid covering the story any more than was necessary. If Roof were a Muslim, or non-religiously affiliated person they could pretend was a liberal, they would be all over the story.
gbear
@beltane:
He burned a flag! He’s a liberal!
I wish I was kidding…
greenergood
@beltane: Yes, sorry Beltane, you’re right – I hadn’t caught the nuanced perspective here – obviously it’s my lack of FOX viewing on a day-to-day basis. I still despair …
If Mr. Roof had murdered 9 white people in a synagogue, there’d be no problem with releasing the manifesto, and Fox would be all over it in a non-mentally-challenged, certainly-terrorist murderer sort of way. As an ex-pat US-ian, I despair, and have difficulty explaining this to my furriner friends.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Doesn’t your mobile platform (phone or whatever) save your nym and e-mail address in the “Leave a Reply” form? Or did you get messed up switching among your many sockpuppets?
Gimlet
Love to see one of the other news sources like the Guardian print a painful interview from one the Faux blondes over this.
John Revolta
@beltane: @beltane: They got pictures of him burnin’ a (US) flag!! Therefore, liberal!! QED to the ipso fatso, libs!!!
JPL
@chopper: You’re correct. Ridding our country of affirmative action laws and
and voting rights laws are on the platform of the Republican Party. It’s a more difficult sale in some parts of the country, if they also discus racism.
The Republic of Stupidity
@beltane:
Give them another 72 hrs… they’ll find their way there…
ThresherK
When it comes to manifestos, I’m gonna leave this here.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
Normally, but I’ve been using private browsing on Balloon Juice recently because the mobile site has been redirecting to some site called Vindico Suites. When you close a private browser, nym info is lost and has to be reentered.
JPL
Authorities confirmed that the manifesto belonged to Roof, so I guess it’s no long alleged.
beltane
Too bad Roof will be likely be spending the rest of his life in jail, he would have made an outstanding CPAC speaker.
Baud
I wonder how much money his legal defense fund will raise?
beltane
@Baud: His supporters-and he will have many of them-will claim the liberal media is acting as a lynch mob. They will go there, have no doubt about it.
JPL
@The Republic of Stupidity: steve doocy.. “Is it possible, since he harbored hatred against Jewish people, that he supported Muslims?” ‘
Pretty easy huh!
Gimlet
@Baud:
At the trial or hearing, will Roof mention his influential mentors like Hannity, Glenn or Rush by name?
Baud
@beltane:
They will go a lot of places.
I can see the black-on-black crime statistics now.
ETA: And the New Black Panthers.
Mike Furlan
Why then keep a link to Daniel Larison, the “proud member of the League of the South?”
Even people in Alabama can understand it:
“Two cops in Anniston, Alabama, have been suspended after being outed as members of the neo-Confederate hate group the League of the South. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog identified Lt. Josh Doggrell and Lt. Wayne Brown as members of the white secessionist group Wednesday, and the city wasted little time in getting them off the street and putting them on administrative leave Wednesday afternoon. Not that there’s anything racist about the League of the South — they only want a white homeland, and while they don’t necessarily hate blacks, they don’t consider them actual Southerners.”
Read more at http://wonkette.com/588884/alabama-cops-suspended-just-for-being-in-neo-confederate-hate-group-how-is-that-fair#4XMIf7sVVXasWp8u.99
Elizabelle
Per young Roof, one of the Jews’ sins is agitating the blacks.
I would take that as a point of pride.
Baud
@Gimlet:
Who knows what he’ll say? He seems to have not gotten the dog-whistling memo. He wants to talk.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
I switched over to using the desktop site on my cell phone (Moto X) a few months ago when there was some weirdness going on with the mobile site, and I haven’t switched back. The desktop site is quite readable. Plus comment numbers!
RSA
@beltane:
I think this is basically it. Conservatism has become so much about tribal identity (despite nods toward “principles”) that it’s too painful for a lot of conservatives to admit that someone with all the right markers could go so far wrong.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
Agreed. I’ve used the desktop site occasionally, and it’s very usable. I’ve stayed with the mobile site mostly because I’m used to how it scrolls.
SFAW
@RSA:
Right Wing Treasonous Motherfuckery cannot fail, it can only be failed?
Mike Furlan
@RSA:
“I think this is basically it. Conservatism has become so much about tribal identity (despite nods toward “principles”) that it’s too painful for a lot of conservatives to admit that someone with all the right markers could go so far wrong. ”
Exactly.
The link on this page to Eunomia is to Daniel Larison a member of the hate group League of the South.
I guess it would be too painful to remove that link.
Debbie
@beltane:
Don’t forget the evangelicals: The Jews are caretakers of the Holy Land until the End Of Days.
JPL
Fox news might blame the massacre on Obama, because he did say Treyvon Martin could be his son.
West of the Cascades
@Baud: but, but … Uber’s drivers are all independent contractors. How can Uber control whether or not they have guns in their cars?
I’m glad Uber did this, both for the safety of its drivers and passengers and because it’s one more piece of evidence to show that they really control what their drivers do and should treat them as employees.
Debbie
Is Rick Perry still on drugs? Did he confuse the words “accident” and “incident”?
scav
@Debbie: That must be why some really really religious Jewish Israelis seem to be setting afire churches (and mosques, oh dear, messy narrative again) as a sign of their respect for ree-ligious freeeeedums and care taking of the Holy Land ‘n’ all. Same day even (given some time zone and reporting uncertainty and all).
JPL
F..k.. They are now trying to reform the terrorist..
link
Internet evil is what got Tsarnaev the death penalty, btw
Starfish
@West of the Cascades: The California Labor Commission has ruled that Uber drivers are employees.
Ruckus
@West of the Cascades:
CA says they are employees.
Keith G
Can someone explain to me the utility in spending time looking for or reporting on what FOX News is doing with this story?
Shit.
Why don’t you just stick red hot forks in your eyes and be done with it. #FutileMasochism
Debbie
@scav: @scav
Oh, dear. John Hagee will not be amused.
bemused
@JPL:
How long before Fox and mob try to make Roof the victim as they did with George Zimmerman?
sharl
@Mike Furlan: I’m glad you brought up Daniel Larison.* I was just wondering if he had offered any opinion about Charleston. I found nothing on the tragedy at his twitter feed, nor his postings at The American Conservative (TAC). Judging from both sites, he sticks almost exclusively to U.S. foreign policy matters these days – smart career decision, Mr. Larison! – weighing in, unsurprisingly, with a distinctive libertarian bent.
In my searches, I was surprised to see just how often that it was conservatives who attacked him for his League of the South membership, like the odious James Kirchick mentioned in the footnote below. In hindsight I shouldn’t have been surprised, since his wingnut critics almost invariably turned out to be of the neocon variety.
*From the concluding paragraph of a January 2008 personal blog entry, shortly before that site ceased activity when he moved his musings to TAC exclusively:
That entry follows a block quote of Jim Webb – currently considering a run for Preznit – that is favorably cited by Larison. More on former Senator Webb in a subsequent comment, so as not to exceed the three-link limit.
JPL
@bemused: It’s not racism, it’s internet evil. Of course, they won’t mention
Tsarnaev and others who are indoctrinated.
At least now we know, they are good christians.
schrodinger's cat
@sharl: I have never understood all the fangirling that Larison gets on this blog and others like it.
beltane
It’s also a good time to give a hearty F-U to Charles Murray and his ilk. They were the teachers, Roof the student.
sharl
@sharl: Here is the block quote of Jim Webb included by Larison at his old blog (the link provided by Larison goes to the same Webb URL, i.e. it doesn’t redirect, but the site appears to have been scrubbed of Webb’s “Confederate Memorial” speech…hmm, wonder how recently THAT happened?):
Also, over at dKos, a now-former Webb supporter has abandoned him over this very thing.
Gene108
@pamelabrown53:
Why should the white man have empathy? It is the Negro that is unjustly ungrateful.
After all the white race,“took idle, unmoral, barbarous blacks and gradually rooted out their savage traits, giving to the instead the white man’s superior civilization – his religion, his language, his customs, his industry”
Or as Pat Buchanan opined 100 years later, in 2008, “First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American. Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.”
Link to to Pat’s website where he penned this verbal diarrhea”
When one segment of society views another as little more than spoiled children, at best, who are ungrateful for the bounty their authority has given these “children” empathy is hard to come by. At worst they view blacks as well trained animals, who sometimes forget their training and need to be put down.
schrodinger's cat
@sharl: Webb’s speech sounds like a more polished version of Roof’s diatribe.
opiejeanne
@schrodinger’s cat: So disappointing to hear that drivel from Webb, but I lost enthusiasm for him about the time he was elected.
I first heard this nonsense from a distant shirttail relative in the Ozarks about 20 years ago, and I was stunned. Boy, he had the whole thing down pat, that it wasn’t about slavery and that slaves (or ex-slaves) fought alongside their masters for the Confederacy.
Mike Furlan
@schrodinger’s cat:
@sharl: I have never understood all the fangirling that Larison gets on this blog and others like it.
Which completely undermines the OP.
Hard to complain about the “right wing” when the same thing is going on here.
beltane
This probably isn’t going to go over well, but Corey Robin sees Roof’s “you have to go” to his victims reflected in the words of Thomas Jefferson himself: http://coreyrobin.com/2015/06/19/you-have-to-go-dylann-roof-in-historical-perspective/#comments
We are always told the country needs to have a “conversation about race”. Maybe what the country really needs is to have an honest conversation about white people.
Valdivia
@sharl: Civil War was about fighting for Constitutional Liberty? Next they will say it was all about taxation. Truly repellent. Never liked Webb, now I know why.
Behold The National Review, doing what it usualy does. I can’t even be surprised, though I am, like I said above, repelled.
schrodinger's cat
Where is DennisG? He hasn’t posted in while, has he?
Mike Furlan
@sharl:
“Judging from both sites, he sticks almost exclusively to U.S. foreign policy matters these days – smart career decision, Mr. Larison! – weighing in, unsurprisingly, with a distinctive libertarian bent.”
Never admitting error also seems to be a smart career decision.
Maybe I expect too much in a nation in which all the presidents in the first 3 score years but the Adams had been slave owners, and a nation that kept building monuments to White Supremacy as late as 2007. (In Delaware!?)
That is a lot of “Heritage” to repudiate.
MazeDancer
Things we don’t know are:
– Did Dylann think this attack up by himself or was he a pawn of a larger group?
– Is race war really the goal of Dylann, or the larger group? Or, if there is no group, is Dylann acting out for his warped, violent father. (Not a mental health excuse, just a well-established behavior mode possibility)
The particular church and time and the particular targets, like valued community leaders and those too old to knock him down, seem too well chosen for an angry young man. And no kid in SC is ordering Rhodesia patches off the internet without someone first telling him what they are. So group seems likely.
If he’s part of a larger group and what they want is race war, Dylann is still a useful pawn. If he killed himself, he would not be a mouthpiece. At a trial, he can say things. Or at the very least, trial prolongs the attention.
Question is, if it is a group wanting race war, who were they thinking they could provoke into what? All those people forgiving the murderer were not very warlike. Are they doing their Christian thing, or doing what the Rev Pinckney would have counseled, or are they making sure no war on their count.
opiejeanne
@MazeDancer: I think the reason for their forgiveness is that they are Christians and take the exhortation to turn the other cheek quite seriously.
I just don’t get people who seek to start a war. I think they lack imagination.
Suzanne
My in-laws are visiting, and both my FIL and my 11-year-old Spawn are behaving like petulant children.
lamh36
So the killer had a manifesto…and now the family is blaming the internet, FauxNews/Conserv/RWNJ are still trying to blame Obama, or war on Christians (but wait the killer is a Christian aint’ he!)
Like I said last night…It too much for some white folk to handle, that this killer has the same or close to the same attitude and views as they themselves have expressed or someone they love or “respect” has expressed. But hey, no way would their family do what this killer did…
But hey, what about that grandson or nephew or young cousin who’s listening at pop-pop’s knee, or who’s playing with their toys on the floor as ole cousin Raymon’ spouts off about “heritage and the Confederacy”…
Hate begets hate. Racism is learned/taught.
Mike J
Reagan
opiejeanne
@Mike J: During the Watts riots a lot of those “jockeys” got white faces painted on real quick.
wuzzat
@JPL:
Well, since Roof’s family has now made a point of saying that the boy comes from God-fearin’, church-goin’ folk, can we at least use that to put the “it was an attack against Christians” tack to rest?
MattF
@lamh36: Yeah, I find the whole right wing reaction just… hard to believe. They can’t say the words “It’s racism.” Even though it obviously is. And then they wonder why minorities won’t vote Republican.
opiejeanne
@wuzzat: Don’t forget how well-educated they were was mentioned.
Baud
@lamh36:
Yep. And don’t let up the gas.
opiejeanne
@lamh36: I remember noticing an uncle’s racism for the first time when I was a kid. He lived in Missouri so we only saw him once in a while, but when I was about 10 or 11 I remember how much all my cousins despised him (except for his own daughters), how embarrassing it was to be in public with him when he’d make a remark. He seemed to mellow a bit late in life, until Obama was elected, and then he was suddenly no longer a Democrat. Oh yeah, he was a Dixiecrat and late to leave for the Republican fold, but by then he was living in Texas most of the year.
scav
Poor dears had him twenty and a tad years, supposedly instilling all that God-fearin’, church-goin’ folkishness presumably both by both careful instruction and their own necessarily perfected and upright pious personal examples and the “boy’s” still not apparently adult enough enough, have enough humanity and self-guided moral compass in him not to be “lead astray” by a little interwebs exposure. “Don’t look at us! We’re ineffective but perfect parents! Our product is perfectly sound so long as it’s kept in a confined space, perfectly isolated from any hint of a larger complex world!”
lamh36
Good!
JPL
@lamh36: That is good. Yesterday, I had read that he would not oversee the trial, anyway. Maybe the court just wanted to insure, he wasn’t near the trial. When I saw that Fox news just happened to be able to talk to him right after the hearing, I knew. Later yesterday it was revealed that he had used racist words.
On Fox he said it was important to have these people speak. Not as bad as the others but pretty close.
sharl
@Valdivia: In my mostly segregated upbringing in my former Rust Belt community, what I heard – and in fact what one can hear to this day – are phrases about our nation’s founding such as “Genius of the American System/People/Way”, with approving citations of the fact that the creation of Our Glorious Union could not have happened without compromise; overall, this is likely true, I’m guessing, but who can ever know without finding an alternate universe where other scenarios have played out?
One of those compromises involved slavery. Along with schrodinger’s cat at #66, I wish DennisG (aka dengre) were here to address it, and others elsewhere (e.g., Ta-Nehisi Coates) do an excellent job of that as well. In the meantime, from a quickie search, here is something on what happened during the Constitutional Convention (that whole site is worth a read; it ain’t long):
Even with my history of posting what feel like War-&-Peace–length comments, I could never hope to include all the discussions and viewpoints that have covered those times, including decisions that today appear laudable and noble, but upon further examination were motivated by anything but honorable and noble intent.
One thing is for certain to me, though, is that they damn well knew even back then that slavery was evil, and allowed it anyway. The Union must be preserved and all that, and hey, it’s in the Bible, y’know, so it’s allllll okey-dokey!
Keith G
@lamh36:
I imagine that racist propaganda found online played a part, though it was probably only fertilizing seeds that already were planted.
If we admit that online communities can radicalize young men and women to join Islamic extremists, the same can happen with extremist racists. As the investigation unfolds, it will be very instructive to see what all the vectors of his racism were and what pathologies/dysfunctions he has that allowed such behavior to take root.
Hopefully we can learn and be better for the new information.
fuckwit
Roof is going to jail for the rest of his life. The Ayran Brotherhood is already waiting there to welcome him and put him in a position of authority and prominence. He was doing their work.
The right wing media has already exhausted every single bullshit excuse and spin they can. They’re hoping they can keep spinning long enough for the story to disappear before the truth becomes well known.
First they tried spinning it as an attack on christianity, then on religion, then desperately to make it sound just like a mentally-ill Manson-ish nihilist “trying to start a race war”, and now they’re trying to blame the internet. Weak sauce.
The truth is that Roof remains alive, left a paper trail of his plans and views, was lucid at the time he committed the murders (even felt hesitation because his victims were so nice to him!) and will be deemed competent to stand trial, and will testify in court. And there will be no way to deny the obvious truth any longer.
Roof is a racist white supremacist, and his massacre was a politically-motivated and right-wing-ideology-motivated terrorist attack.
The racists, the right wing media, the nativists, the white nationalists, the anti-immigrant bigots, the anti-semites, the neo-nazis, all have to own this. Roof was their guy, doing their work.
If they want to back away from him, I hope they also back away from their ideology, because I think history already has too much proof that hate taken to its logical conclusion ends in war and murder.
shell
movies tonight:
On PBS. “The Barefoot Contessa”
ABC Family: “Knocked Up”
TCM; “Here Comes Mr. Jordan”
And on NewsMaxTV” ‘Reagan: The Legacy Endures!’
beltane
@fuckwit: The things that strikes me most about Roof is that his views, though not his actions, are quite mainstream in conservative circles. The murderer with the bowl haircut is truly the face of movement conservatism. They will never own him, of course, but how many of them are saying to themselves in private “Maybe he took it too far, but he did have a point.”? The fact that Mitt Romney is the only nationals Republican to come out and say something unequivocally decent tells me everything I need to know about the true agenda of the Republican party.
Valdivia
@sharl: Thanks for the link and touching on all of this, since I have a limited knowledge of that period (being an immigrant I am trying to catch up!) I just do not udnerstand how anyone can with a straight face argue that the Southern states seceded because of constitutional issues when they spelled out very clearly it had to do with slavery. Still stunned Webb could say those things.
Gene108
@Valdivia:
The NRO article you linked is the sort of thinking that drives the South to continue to try and justify their role in the Civil War; I am a good upstanding, law abiding, patriotic American as my father before me and his father before him, so how dare you say they stood up for something evil? You just do not get who we are and what we went through. You just do not understand my heritage and culture.
It is very illustrative.
Dan
@Mike Furlan: Holy carp! I read him all the time regarding foreign policy. But he is a proud member of the League of the South. Too proud.
SFAW
@shell:
Can’t be that long – I mean, how many shots of homeless people, underemployed workers, off-shored jobs, and incipient poverty can they show?
NotMax
@Valdivia
By necessity a broad overview, but still informative – a composite of scenes (minus the related song) regarding slavery from 1776.
Mike Furlan
@Dan: Yes Dan, maybe he joined not really knowing what he was getting into. Stupidity is usually the best explanation. And then got stubborn and just kept digging when he was caught out. But, what interests me isn’t just another member of League of the South, but that a member of the League of the South is considered worthy of a link on this page. Especially when the OP in this thread is castigating the “Right Wing” for doing the “stupid act” on racism.
MazeDancer
So, we have an answer of sorts.
The Southern Poverty Law Center – btw, a great follow if you’re on twitter – reports that Dylann Roof’s manifesto reveals group behind his thinking http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/charleston-shooter-s-manifesto-reveals-hate-group-helped-to-radicalize-him
No surprise, new version of White Citizen’s Council. Who say “God” a lot.
Valdivia
@NotMax: Thanks!
@Gene108: I pushed myself to read because I wanted to see what their defense argument was. As you summarize.
KS in MA
@sharl:
I think you might find it was about how many votes they could muster.
redshirt
Skin color trumps religion, apparently. Good to know.
sharl
@KS in MA: Tru dat! But how many kids see that in a history class, or if they see it, how long do they remember it, after the onslaught of Corporate Media’s message that confers almost deity-like status on our Founding Fathers? The gritty, grim, and cruel compromises – made to win votes from people who owned their fellow humans* (*whether they acknowledged that or not) – necessary (probably) for ratification of the constitution is a reality that runs counter to the rather popular myth of a wise and benevolent group of white-wigged dudes putting that document together.
And this fable in turn contributes heavily to the public acceptance of concepts like American Exceptionalism, as it also contributed to the belief of slave owners and their philosophical inheritors that the
Civil WarWar of Northern Aggression was just so unnecessary: hey, we made a deal in 1789, what’s the big problem now?I doubt that Daniel Larison and the membership of the League of the South would now say that slavery was or is OK, but I wonder – and they must surely have addressed this, even if ineptly – just how they think slavery would have ended in the absence of that war? Just wither away as public disapproval became more widespread, would be my guess. In the meantime, how many slaves would be worked to death? How many children would be ripped from their distraught mothers’ arms, sold away to be worked to death, raped/impregnated by Master,…? The compromise for votes that led to our nation’s founding document came at a really, really steep cost that some among us have paid a heavy price for, often without accruing the benefits that were accrued by other, less burdened folks. Yeah, sure, life is unfair, but it seems we should at least try to make it less so.
I think this was the sort of thing Ursula Le Guin was getting at in her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” [synopsis; full version here (4pp., pdf)], although I’m sure the much more well-read people here could come up with even more apt lessons from literature. But the real and rather well documented story of our founding would seem to provide plenty of lessons on its own without resorting to fiction.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat: “Enemy of my enemy” short-sightedness. Pat Buchanan hates neoconservative foreign policy too, and gets a lot of “hey, Pat Buchanan is making sense” when he goes off on them. But it’s coming from an even uglier place, and people need to watch him carefully.
boatboy_srq
@RSA:
Much more accurate.
TriassicSands
@Mike Furlan:
@Mike Furlan:
My understanding is that Larison is a former member of the League of the South. If it is true that he is no longer a member, then why he left and how he feels about the League now are important. Peoples’ pasts matter, but so do their reasons for changing (and the change itself).
Mike Furlan
@TriassicSands: anonymous man says he quit so it must be true.
Please point me to some proof that he quit and I can shut up about this issue.
sharl
@Mike Furlan: Well, I’m certainly not TriassicSands, but I got curious. I didn’t find a definitive answer to your question, which is probably no surprise to you, if my hunch – that you’ve been looking for an answer to this question longer and more assiduously – is correct.
However, there is some circumstantial evidence – not much, but some – that he left the LotS. There is this, from July of last year (bolding is mine):
And this, from Ryan Cooper in a May/June 2013 Washington Monthly article (scroll about half-way down to find his profile):
As evidence, both of these items are weak sauce IMO. But my guess is that not-totally-insane-conservative JeffB of Ace of Spades would have not used “frmr” if he didn’t believe it. On the other hand, he (and others), may have taken their cues from Ryan Cooper’s WaMo article. I see no evidence that Cooper actually interviewed his subjects. Rather I suspect he pulled much, if not all, of the information on his subjects’ profiles off the internet. In that case, it is possible he saw the old vintage of Larison’s last affirmation of belonging to LotS, and without confirming his current membership status, used the strictly true “was once a member” phrasing to play it safe. Now maybe Larison really did quit LotS, but neither of these items says that definitively, nor offer a clean quotation one way or the other. And fwiw, he didn’t answer a tweep who asked him this directly [twitter{dot}com/Snowman55403/status/288388656165707776]. That doesn’t say anything either; he may not have seen the tweet, or may just be sick of the question.
I did see a number of statements that imply current membership in LotS, but they come from neocons and scumbaggish bottom-feeding neocon-lurving “journalists”, often posting at the skeevy Free Beacon. I trust nothing from them.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
On a separate matter, in my comment at #55, I described Larison’s foreign-policy coverage and opinions as having a “libertarian bent”. In doing the research noted above, I came across a comment that said Larison would strongly reject this characterization: he is, rather, better characterized as a paleoconservative. That works for me, especially since there is significant intersection of paleocon and libertarian thought on matters of foreign policy.
I regret the error.
Mike Furlan
@sharl: I will see if it is possible to post that question on his blog.
Paul in KY
@sharl: The ‘sovereignty’ they wanted was the ‘sovereign’ right to own slaves.