Point – From the Christian Science Monitor, “Stone Mountain to get new monument: MLK memorial will join Confederate heroes“:
State authorities’ decision Sunday to erect a monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the site of a Confederate memorial on Stone Mountain, Ga., has again underscored rising tensions over the Confederacy’s role in US history.
The announcement, which faces mixed reactions from locals, is emblematic of an increasingly divisive discourse taking place across the South in the wake of the mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., in June. The shooter, a self-professed white supremacist, had published a racist manifesto and unfurled the Confederate battle flag in photos.
Since then, a nationwide debate has raged over symbols of the Confederacy, which some have insisted are a vital part of the country’s history and others decried as a relic of the South’s racist past….
In some ways, the new project in Georgia epitomizes the discourse. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association, with Republican Gov. Nathan Deal’s approval, plans to build a tower with a replica of the Liberty Bell just beyond the carvings of Confederate heroes Gen. Robert E. Lee, President Jefferson Davis, and Gen. Stonewall Jackson to celebrate Mr. King’s reference to the site in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech: “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”
“It is one of the best-known speeches in US history,” said Bill Stephens, the association’s CEO, to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We think it’s a great addition to the historical offerings we have here.”…
Counterpoint – From Roll Call, “Cruz, Gohmert Want Bust of Planned Parenthood Founder Removed“:
Two Texas lawmakers are leading a call for a bust of a Planned Parenthood founder to be removed from the National Portrait Gallery.
“We the undersigned Members of Congress demand that the bust of Margaret Sanger be immediately removed from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and not be displayed in or on any Smithsonian-operated property. The fact that her bust has been included as a part of the Gallery’s ‘Struggle for Justice’ exhibit is an affront both to basic human decency and the very meaning of justice,” wrote 26 GOP lawmakers led by Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Louie Gohmert. “Ms. Sanger was an avowed advocate of eugenics and the extermination of groups of people she deemed as ‘undesirables.’”
The signatories, other than Cruz all socially conservative House Republicans, seek an immediate response from Kim Sajet, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The lawmakers clearly state that their letter comes as part of the current debate about Planned Parenthood’s practices…
If he were capable of self-awareness, how do you suppose Ted Cruz would reconcile his college-day refusal to study with people from “the lesser Ivies” with his current status soliciting support from people like Louie Gohmert, who would lose an argument to a reasonably advanced philodendron?
Gimlet
Court be worse. Gohmert could be deciding your fate using “gut logic”.
In 2002, Gohmert was appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry to fill a vacancy as Chief Justice on Texas’s 12th Court of Appeals
Arclite
Is this how they describe “pro choice?” Or did she actually say, “You’ve got TB. You need to be hung from the neck until dead.”
raven
When I was at Stone Mountain for a conference last year I climbed that sucker for sunrise. The vast majority of people there, and on the park trails, were African American.
OzarkHillbilly
Was listening to a black preacher on NPR yesterday. He said it was an insult to MLK to put a monument to him along side the likenesses of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. The man had a point.
Amir Khalid
Putting a memorial to Martin Luther King in amidst a memorial to heroes of the Confederacy seems like an insult to MLK.
@Arclite:
Well, here‘s what Wikipedia has to say about it. Not the most enlightened opinion by 21st century standards, I have to say.
Gimlet
He said it was an insult to MLK to put a monument to him along side the likenesses of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson.
Perhaps that’s the point.
Gimlet
The US government is deporting undocumented immigrants back to Central America to face the imminent threat of violence, with several individuals being murdered just days or months after their return, a Guardian investigation has found.
The Guardian has confirmed three separate cases of Honduran men who have been gunned down shortly after being deported by the US government. Each was murdered in their hometowns, soon after their return – one just a few days after he was expelled from the US.
Immigration experts believe that the Guardian’s findings represent just the tip of the iceberg. A forthcoming academic study based on local newspaper reports has identified as many as 83 US deportees who have been murdered on their return to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras since January 2014.
Outrageous.
We should monitor this and minimize our responsibility for it.
raven
About the premier of Gone With the Wind in Atlanta:
EconWatcher
@Arclite:
No, Sanger really was a eugenicist, although not the nastiest kind.
She condemned Nazis and others who advocated killing alleged “inferiors,” but she did favor compulsory segregation and sterilization to “assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger#Sexuality
Some of her views really don’t look so good today.
ETA: I see Amir beat me to it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gimlet:
I thought that was the whole point of deporting them: “Not my problem now.”
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Got the mirror installed.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Nice. That must have set you back a bit. I like the wainscoting, always have, don’t understand why it fell out of style. The screen in the window in the mirror… Looks interesting. Got a better pic?
Thoughtful Today
MASHUP!!
“symbols of the Confederacy” are “an affront both to basic human decency and the very meaning of justice”.
/fixed
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: The girl got them at a salvage joint. They came in sets of 2 but she had them mounted in 3 panels and they look good. She also has a set in her closet. You know, the one with the massive Ikea thingy that I put together!
She got the mirror back in the spring. That was the time she was complaining to the ladies in the antique store about how I was not involved in her purchases. They told her she was! nut!
Gimlet
@OzarkHillbilly:
I guess that’s why we set unwanted pets free on country roads.
BillinGlendaleCA
Guess what the first topic Morning Joe got to about the debate?
ETA: CLICK!!!
Gimlet
by this point, we know conservatives aren’t racist. With every qualifier, preceding or following every statement we might otherwise interpret as bigoted, and sometimes completely randomly, they inform us of this bit of information we sometimes might miss when they are talking about “the blacks” or, in the case of some more prominent right-wing figures, “the Negro.” But it’s time that you learn about something of great import, America. The state of Georgia is going to allow something terrible to happen: “Confederate Mount Rushmore” is about to become just a few shades darker, and the “not-racists” have leaped to its rescue like a hood-wearing A-Team (You know, minus Mr. T for obvious reasons).
Reuters recently reported that the state’s Stone Mountain Park, home to mountainside engravings of some of the most famous crackers in the South — Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, and General “Stonewall Jackson,” three heroes of the oppressive slave-loving group of traitors who seceded from the Union and waged war on their own countrymen. Of course, to the modern conservative, these people are heroes. If it would not conflict with their alleged love of Jesus, these pillars of the Confederacy would be gods.
Often, appearing as a thinly-disguised protestation based on their love of their Southern Heritage™ or whatever, the “not-racists” of America will protest the removal of a hate symbol, or demand that white people be elevated anytime anyone of another race catches a break in any way.
The memorial sounds very nice. It will feature a replica of the Liberty Bell with the inscription “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia,” — a line from his “I Have a Dream” speech. All in all, it sounds like a wonderful addition to a national landmark. The plans also include a memorial to black Confederate soldiers
Ray McBerry, spokesman for the Georgia division of The Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is totally not a hate group at all, says that his group is not at all fond of the plan to honor black people at the nice, white, pristine bigot holy ground. According to Mr. McBerry, honoring anyone aside from heroes of the sedition fetishists’ approved list of white folk is a sin and is contrary to the purpose of the park: celebrating “Southern heritage,” a.k.a slavery and hate.
“It’s akin to the state flying a Confederate battle flag atop the King Center in Atlanta against the wishes of King supporters,”
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/10/13/not-racists-furious-that-mlk-memorial-will-be-built-at-confederate-mount-rushmore-screenshots/
OzarkHillbilly
@raven:
I like. It’s a nice little detail that adds a lot without distracting. I am more than a little jealous of people who have the ability to find things while “junking”, and then months later bring it together with other disparate items they have found and have it all work to perfection. It’s a real talent your wife has.
Mudge
You left out the part of Gohmert’s letter where he also insists that all portraits of slave owners be removed.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gimlet: You got it.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Reading her that at 6:15 got me some points for today !
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Chafee’s breakout performance?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: What about me? Don’t I get any points for the day?
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh yea, there is the transom window going into the bedroom too.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh yes, you’re off the chart. She’s not too sure about this whole Balloon Juice thing though.
Baud
@raven:
Wise woman.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Of course not, Hillz email.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I hope he’s not hosting any of the D debates. What a loser.
Mustang Bobby
Anne, a little typo.
Sorry; it’s tough to kick the English teacher habit.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Shmoe started out complaining about how shitty infrastructure is. Gee, how did infrastructure get so shitty Joe? This stuff cost money, public money. You assholes don’t want to pay for anything so you get shit, deal asshole.
Mustang Bobby
@BillinGlendaleCA: This is an old song for him. Right after some infrastructure collapse a while ago he made the same complaint, and one of his guests suggested that we needed to have the federal government chip in to rebuild the bridges and highways. Joe scoffed, “That’s your answer for everything! Raise taxes!” Well, yeah, you big dumb pink thing,
Matt McIrvin
@EconWatcher: Correct, though this has also been twisted into false claims that she wanted to eliminate black people. Imani Gandy’s essay on Sanger and early-20th-century eugenicism is excellent:
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/08/20/false-narratives-margaret-sanger-used-shame-black-women/
The most interesting detail: Sanger was anti-abortion!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mustang Bobby: I know, I hear it from that dickhead every month or so.
Satby
@Mustang Bobby: Of course, road crews and suppliers work and take payments in the form of trickle down magic pixie dust, so why should we need to raise taxes and take desperately needed money from the struggling 1%?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Very nice too. And you can tell her none of us are too sure about this whole Balloon Juice thing.
BGinCHI
Good luck with your asparagus, assholes.
bemused
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I very briefly watched Mad Joe. Re: Bernie “I don’t care about your damn emails”: Mika interpreted that to mean that Bernie said HRC shouldn’t have done that.
Mustang Bobby
@OzarkHillbilly: Why am I always the last to find out that Balloon Juice is a thing?
Cervantes
In law school, not in college.
Anyhow, given that attitude, maybe his fling with Gohmert is tearing him up inside. Poor lad.
bemused
@BillinGlendaleCA:
And his solution to fixing our infrastructure was?
Baud
@bemused:
Cut Medicare and Social Security.
bemused
@Baud:
Of course. Nothing new there. That would kill SS/Med as intended. No doubt Wall Street would get their hands on the money instead and we’d still have crumbling infrastructure.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby: Because you are one of the people that make it a thing.
Elizabelle
@bemused:
It was to laugh.
Concerted effort from all to pull Hillary down. They know she did well last night.
Thoughtful Today
I’ve a friend who watches a lot of MSNBC.
…
I didn’t know what to say.
OzarkHillbilly
Urban Photographer of the Year 2015 – winning images
Great portrait– that eye….
“I have the best job in the whole world!!”
and more great photos.
PurpleGirl
@bemused:
Of course. Nothing new there. That would kill SS/Med as intended. No doubt Wall Street would get their hands on the money instead and we’d still have crumbling infrastructure.
Feature, not a bug.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
He has a hell of a camera phone.
TheMightyTrowel
@Cervantes: I believe Cruz did his BA at Princeton so, speaking as a Yalie, I find his willingness to label other schools “lesser Ivies” a little ironic. We all know princeton doesn’t matter. #SARCASM SO MUCH SARCASM
Mustang Bobby
@PurpleGirl:
In the same way a realtor describes a condemned building as a “handyman’s special” or that potholes add “country charm” to the streets.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe not enlightened, but then Sanger didn’t have the knowledge base of the 21st century. Read some of the accounts of the women raising “broods” of children and the abject misery of their living conditions. View the photographs of Jacob Riis. Consider this to be the context Sanger was working in.
Elizabelle
@debbie: Thank you, Debbie. I get real tired of seeing people judge historical figures by contemporary standards that could not even exist at the time. Not speaking of Amir, per se (beloved commenter to me), but I see it a lot and wince.
Margaret Sanger was seeing women dead of childbirth and families on the edge. She was trying to do better by them.
Plantsmantx
@EconWatcher:
Some of her views look like this guy’s:
One difference is that this guy actually is the racist that conservatives falsely accuse Sanger of having been. Yet, those same conservatives celebrate Charles Murray.
bemused
@Elizabelle:
I almost choked on my coffee.
Baud
@Plantsmantx:
White support for Trump confirms this theory.
WereBear
This is how I will think of Morning Joe from now on.
Well, the nicest.
Manyakitty
Way to win the internets already, AL! Thanks for the laugh!
greennotGreen
Sanger was not perfect: she supported eugenics. Washington and Jefferson were not perfect (Jefferson was way not perfect): they owned slaves. Martin Luther King was not perfect: he was an unfaithful husband. However, these people are not famous and are not revered because of their shortcomings, but in spite of them.
Lee, Davis, and Jackson are honored by some because of their treason in support of slavery which most contemporary Americans would consider to be…a shortcoming.
I don’t expect some conservatives to have the mental capacity to understand the difference.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Damn, but Mika is not the brightest light.
I don’t know if this has been discussed here or not, but has anyone else seen the President’s Rolling Stone video about climate change? I read the article and watched the accompanying video yesterday and was impressed. Of course our media would rather discuss years old emails than an unprecedented catastrophe that will impact every living creature on the planet.
Plantsmantx
@greennotGreen:
W.E.B. DuBois also supported eugenics.
bystander
Plus, why would MLK want to be enshrined next to that kitschfest monument?
Peale
@Mudge: or n portraits of other eugenics supporters of the time.
Iowa Old Lady
Re Sanger. On the ISU campus, there’s a building called Carrie Chapman Catt Hall. Catt campaigned for women’s suffrage, which I trust we all think is a good thing. But she also said some racist stuff, which I equally trust we all think is bad. So we’d periodically have this discussion about renaming Catt Hall. It was never going to happen because the university would have had to give back some donor’s money, but it’s the same sort of situation.
Only the discussion was more honest because people really did think women’s suffrage was good. In Gomhert’s move, he’s looking for an excuse to dismiss the good Sanger did, so he seizes on the bad.
greennotGreen
I am moving to a rural county (if my house is ever finished!) in my bleeding red state. Huge Confederate flags flying from pickup trucks are not that uncommon. Driving out there yesterday I saw a truck with two flags – one a Confederate flag and the other a U.S. Army flag. So, that guy supports the U.S. Army and the people who fought against the U.S. Army?
This is why Congress gets nothing done. Half of it are made up of people who embrace cognitive dissonance as a healthy life style.
Iowa Old Lady
@bemused: Mika could not possibly have watched the debate that interpreted Bernie’s comment to be critical of Hillary’s email practices. It must have been after her bedtime.
sherparick
I went by Real Clear Politics to check out the MSM debate coverage summary. Hilary must have had a real good night when even Ron (Boy do I hate the Clintons, almost as much I hate Obama) Fournier grumpily states she won (even with a big BUT) of course). RCP is put together by the WSJ and you can see the “Center-Right” editorial methods of Rupert’s Borg at work. I saw two articles from Prager and National Review and a guy at the Federalist defending Dr.Carson from “Liberal hate” for his adoption of the lunatic meme that “if German Jews had guns, then would have gone all Terminator on the Nazis.” Basically, one non sequiter after another about at how unfair it was for liberals to point out that a few hunting rifles and handguns in the hands of Jews would have defeated the Gestapo,the SS, and the Wehrmacht, something that only took the combined might of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the British Empire accomplished. Reading the articles reminds me that basically we are dealing with school yard kids.
Frankensteinbeck
@greennotGreen:
Look up cognitive dissonance in a textbook, not on Wikipedia. It does not mean what the Internet thinks it means.
sherparick
Mika and Joe really don’t understand the e-mail issue, probably because they don’t want to understand it accept that “Hilary is bad and is doing something underhanded when she did this (by the way every e-mail she sent as Secretary on the unclassified system shouted out loud in @hrc.com e-mail address that she was not using a Government server). As she says, not using state.gov system was a mistake from an archiving standpoint, but not a particularly big one.
Elizabelle
RE Mika: I didn’t stick around long, but she seemed to be interpreting Sanders’ email quip in view of a Sanders campaign email sent out after the debate. Might have been for fundraising. I think that’s what she said; would have to look at the email, but it’s entirely possible for the email to have had it wrong. Also entirely possible Mika is misspeaking, through stupidity or to dissemble.
Watching Morning little dumb pink shouting Joe this morning reassured me.
(1) Do any of us know people in our day to day lives who watch the thing? I sure don’t. And people here avoid it like the plague.
(2) They were very obviously lying and dissembling this morning, and putting up ridiculous polls. They’re on the ropes and they know it.
The 20-something Sanders supporters I sat with last night don’t watch politics or news on television and neither had ever heard of David Brooks.
Seth Owen
Bell tower! Brilliant concept.
We have a Freedom Bell right here in Norwich CT. It’s s great community gathering site. Celebrates the Emancipation Proclamation.
BR
@Elizabelle:
I haven’t watched MSNBC, CNN, or any of the other networks in about 6 years — not since Obama’s first year in office. I realized how idiotic their commentary was at that point and stopped watching and never turned back. I don’t get why people watch Morning Joe or any of the other cable news programs out there — seems only worthwhile to get pissed off and become less rather than more informed.
Elizabelle
Here’s the post-debate email I got from Bernie’s campaign: pertinent part:
Could this even remotely be what Mika was riffing off?
Another Holocene Human
Cruz attacking the Smithsonian on political grounds is more than a few shades of Newt’s 1990s rampage.
Cruz: Go fuck yourself.
And what a bunch of Stalinists these Republicans are.
BobS
@greennotGreen: My wife and I recently spent some time in Georgia, first in Savannah (one of the nicest cities in the US) and then a meander northwest through rural parts of the state for several days of hiking from Amicalola Falls through Springer Mountain north (there’s not a ton of activity on the south end of the Appalachian Trail this time of year). We were very pleasantly surprised by the very few Confederate flags we saw — frankly, I think I see more here in Michigan.
JMG
@BR: That’s the choice offered by the media in 2015. You can be uninformed, or misinformed.
Punchy
@greennotGreen: If you’re confused/frustrated by merely observing what your new neighbors fly in terms of flags….whoa, boy. I highly suggest you take ample blood pressure meds before attempting to talk to them. And avoid politics if at all possible.
Elizabelle
@BR: You’re right. They’re there to misinform. We are lucky to be able to communicate via blogs and social media and read a lot of newspapers and commentary critically.
The youngs have seen through them.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
I think we should all fully expect that they will throw all manner of scandal accusations at the Clintons before this election is over. It’s going to be a bumpy ride so we will all have to prepare ourselves for the inevitable fights.
The Republicans cannot win a fair fight because they are not selling what people want to buy. This is why they lie, spin, cheat, fear monger, tell conspiracy tales, dog whistle (lately so loud everyone can hear it), and beat dead end “scandals” to death.
bystander
@BR: It’s that or Matlock. Matlock usually wins. Glad I didn’t watch them the first time around.
Duke of Clay
@raven: Stone Mountain — the town — is majority African-American and has been for a decade or more.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle:
Well, considering the fact that the GOP is now broken*** where as when Obama first got elected it still retained at least a semblance of function, I agree with Bernie.
*** 30 or so ideologues seem to be holding the HoR hostage, and the GOP doesn’t seem to have the courage to cut their balls off.
Another Holocene Human
@Arclite: These people are so ridiculous. The lobby of the Natural History Museum in New York City has a vast mural of the peoples of the world, images of Teddy Roosevelt (and if you missed the point I think there’s a bronze of him too). It’s ENORMOUSLY racist. Just poke you in the eye racist (and colonialist). Hanging out there for everyone to see.
Racism and eugenics infused the politics, culture, and discourse of the turn of the century, especially among educated people. It’s to Sanger’s credit that when Black activists reached out to her to school her, she actually listened. A lot of white feminists did not. By working so intimately with Black communities instead of engaging in bull-in-a-China-shop paternalism (which still has its defenders today!) she committed heresy against the dearly held beliefs of the very people smearing her now. The smear is “you once thought as we do,” as learning, growing, changing, being humble and curious, are anathema to conservative authoritarians.
MazeDancer
if Jim Webb got offered a billionaire backing to troll the Dems for the primary season, and stay in the race, would he take it? Was thinking last night, that if he were a Repub, he might be getting sugar daddy action.
He’s a hawk, a whiner, doesn’t come off as totally crazy. And, eventually, the media will need someone at least pretending to be sane, with some actual experience, to use to shore up both sides.
Of course, the GOP primary voters want a hater, but even whiny Webb was more impressive than any GOP running. If he, heaven forbid, decided to turn on the Dems and run GOP on Dem-hating, well, then he would definitely be a VP contender to shore up whatever lightweight they pick.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
If that is what she is riffing off then I still say she’s not the brightest light. He is saying that the emails are inconsequential especially compared to the challenges people are facing.
Elizabelle
For the Sanger discussion: TL, DR, but this might be of interest:
And from the biographical sketch (under “About Sanger”):
From NYU’s The Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Looks like a great website.
SFAW
@Plantsmantx:
IOKIYARW(T)M
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: I agree, it reminds me of Virginia’s “Lee-Jackson-King Day”. No, fuck you.
OTOH, there’s a sort of unintentional hilarity in that it reminds me of conquering armies each leaving their monument, with the only difference that usually armies smash up the old works. Would it be wrong to suppose that nature will eventually take back that mountainside in any event?
debbie
Listening to Glenn Beck’s minions (sadly, the man himself took the day off) condemn the Democratic party for not being diverse. They are confident this is the worst field of candidates in any party ever
greennotGreen
@Frankensteinbeck: My definition for “cognitive dissonance” is from my degree in Sociology, not Wikipedia. As I remember from sociology and psychology classes (decades ago,) “cognitive dissonance” is the caused by believing two inharmonious things at the same time. The particular example I recall served as an explanation for hazing rituals. Bob just joined a frat. As part of initiation he has to get drunk, dress in a tutu and dance in the middle of the women’s quad. He’s very embarrassed by this. He cannot accept that he did a stupid thing for a stupid reason (joining a silly social group), but he can tell himself that the frat must be GREAT because look what he had to do to get in!
In reference to conservatives, I just mean that generally they can believe conflicting things that don’t cause discomfort because they never examine them. So, really, I guess you’re right. If it doesn’t cause them discomfort, I guess it can’t be cognitive dissonance. I should have realized that when I typed the “cognitive” part.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: Just like Haiti during the 1990s.
US Americans don’t care. Listen to the shit being fear mongered about Syrians right now. I know some Syrians here in Florida and while I haven’t asked, I’m sure they feel just great about what is being said on Fox News about them. (A bunch of them in the family are still conservative Catholics and Republicans, but the younger generation not so much.)
Churches couldn’t even provide sanctuary to children. CHILDREN. Our fellow Americans SUCK.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet:
Wut.
Elizabelle
MomSense: is this the Rolling Stone link? Looks good; will check it out tonight.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-takes-on-climate-change-the-rolling-stone-interview-20150923
PS: with Playboy doing away with its famous nudes: do you think they’re aiming for Rolling Stone territory with their makeover? They’ve already done some excellent interviews and articles over the years ….
Patrick
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Then why doesn’t Joe S tell his viewers that the Republican party is solely responsible for our crappy infrastructure. They are the ones that have blocked any attempts by President Obama to improve it.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
That’s the one. It is good.
Another Holocene Human
@Plantsmantx:
Exactly. They hate Sanger because she apostatized from everything they hold dear. I have been using ABL’s essay as a source. But the things she did and the life she lead explain exactly why they hate her so much.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
There were a few.
Elizabelle
Your hourly New York Times Clinton Derangement update: top of their webpage right now:
a Night? One?
Fuck the fucking New York Times.
Satby
@MomSense: Good stuff, thanks for mentioning it!
Another Holocene Human
@Punchy: You think you’re being funny, but Black males living in the South have low life expectancy due to … (drumroll please) … heart disease.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: Thank you for the Imani Gandy link on Margaret Sanger. Bookmarked it.
Chris
I assume “modernity” was more on the order of “in most people’s lifetimes” – which is how most people seem to think of as “modern.” That frame of reference varies wildly, but I assume Sanders was trying to exclude the kind of massive crises most of us only know about through history books, like World War Two or the Great Depression or the Civil War. I don’t think he was thinking as recently as 2008.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cervantes: As I recall, most (if not all) were slaves that were promised their freedom should they actually survive the hostilities.
Davebo
@Gimlet:
Outrageous that there’s a major gang crime problem in those countries? I’m not sure what should be done about it.
If you request asylum claiming there are dangerous gangs in your home country every immigration judge is going to reply, correctly, that there are dangerous gangs in the US as well and that every resident of the home country is facing the same danger.
eric
We are all fallen creatures, who inevitably turn away from the good and the light to the bad and the dark. What merits remembrance is the whole of the person, but with a greater understanding as to how that person’s goodness pushed a collective “us” to a better place. With that as a touchstone, when we look back on historical figures we should look at the push they gave and the “us” they pushed, all the while understanding that how and whom they affected will always be impacted by their historical setting. Thus, we need not remove the remembrances of Plato and Arisotle, or Caesar and Constantine, or Moses and Paul, but what we celebrate about those historical figures need not be the same as what celebrate about their full selves. Too often, our culture relies on the “Great Person” theory of historical and political change, such that tempering is seen as defiling a legacy, when it is merely a recognition of the human condition.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: The eugenicists had an intuition that you couldn’t create good citizens by a woman having too many children, too close together, too early. (Some attention was focused on the urban Irish, who had a distressing habit of dying in childbirth as well.) The racial and social Darwinist (class as race, basically) reasoning they came up with was total nonsense. But part of that intuition has been proven correct.
It turns out that children born to mothers that have not completed schooling and are in poor economic straits do worse in terms of educational attainment and staying out of the clutches of the criminal justice system than children born to older, more financially secure mothers, and not only that, the genetic component can be mostly sorted out by comparing siblings (!) from the same mother. This research really vindicates the “social improvement” goal of birth control, as it shows that birth control, by allowing women to delay first pregnancy until they are physically, emotionally, and financially ready to have children, results in better citizens.
Redshift
@MazeDancer: Nah, I don’t think so. Whatever his other faults, Webb is nobody’s puppet.
He seems to be in the thrall of Mudcat Saunders, who had made a career of telling Democrats they can win by getting all of those working-class white voters if they just abandon some of their principles, which totally won’t lose them a lot of the Democratic base. It worked once to get Mark Warner elected governor, and he’s been riding it ever since.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: Boring nudes, is more like it. Nobody buys Playboy for the spreads any more so they may as well accept reality.
Another Holocene Human
@Cervantes: What to you say to Ta-Nehisi Coates, who studied the subject in depth and concluded that Black Confederate Soldiers is so much Confederate fan fiction?
Redshift
@Patrick: Because that would require telling them that government does good things for people, and would disturb their certainty that Government Is The Problem (in the holy and infallible words of St. Ronnie.)
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: Do slaves on the battlefield carry loaded weapons?
Cervantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes, there were a few — a very few — of those, towards the end of the war, via a policy requested by R. E. Lee and granted by Jeff Davis but much too late to make any military or societal difference whatsoever.
But there were also a few free African-Americans serving the CSA, among the most notable being the 1st Louisiana Native Guard (1861-1862) in New Orleans.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
I am comforted to know that you still love me. Margaret Sanger did a great deal more good in this world than most of us, and she meant well when she allied with pro-eugenics people. But like all of us, she was a product of her times — she came of age at the turn of the 20th century — and so had beliefs about race and society that most people would not accept today. I intended no criticism harsher than that.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
I don’t particularly need to say anything to him, but thanks for asking.
OzarkHillbilly
@Davebo:
One of these is not like the other.
Another Holocene Human
@Davebo: No, the immigration judge is going to reply that US law does not allow for refugee status on the back of criminal threats on your life, only political. (In case of Haiti, they then tie themselves in knots claiming the violence at that time was not political.)
Of course Hondurans know there are criminal gangs in the US, including the gangs who impressed Hondurans into slave labor on Florida farms.
But there’s a big difference between being marked for death in your home city and taking your chances somewhere else. And even Louisiana does not have the murder rate of Honduras right now (you can look it up).
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
I think for most conservatives, it’s simpler than that, it’s just the “I know I am but what are you?” trolling that gave us Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism.” They simply can’t admit that their side of history was guilty of massive, unspeakable crimes,* so they convince themselves that it was all the liberals/left that committed these crimes, with the added benefit that you then get to pillory the people you hate forever and ever as Nazis. Did you know fascists were really LEFT wing extremists? Oh, and the Ku Klux Klan were Democrats, so, them too. Margaret Sanger is just another example of same (you get to diss Planned Parenthood and abortion as a eugenicist conspiracy! … despite the fact that, as I just learned, Sanger didn’t actually approve of abortion?)
(*Which is weird, because it should be obvious that any general worldview can “go bad,” so to speak, and that that doesn’t necessarily invalidate yours. Every left winger I’ve ever met recognizes the crimes of Stalin, Mao, the Kims, the Khmer Rouge, etc: but I’ve never met one that tried to offload them onto the other side of the aisle. There’s no liberal version of Jonah Goldberg’s brain fart called “Conservative Communism” or “Capitalist Communism” and trying to explain that no, no, Mao we really a balder Ayn Rand. You could simply say “yes, fascism was terrible, and yes, it was right wing, but that doesn’t mean all right wing politics are terrible; I don’t believe…” etc. Except, they can’t do that, because for whatever reason the entire world is a binary equation to them. You’re Either With Us Or You’re Against Us).
Cervantes
@Chris:
That’s how I took it.
Then again, I’m not always looking for slights against President Obama (and neither is he).
Another Holocene Human
@Cervantes: Wikipedia says they never saw action, in fact they were not even allowed to answer a call to guard prisoners, and they were disbanded a few months after they were formed.
It further goes on to say that a number of its former members WENT ON TO FIGHT FOR THE UNION ARMY.
Go Rebs.
NotMax
Couple of minor stories which caught the eye.
Egyptian news anchor got game.
“It was difficult to hold my hors d’oeuvre plate” not a compelling argument.
Another Holocene Human
@Cervantes: Because you’re peddling ahistorical tosh and he’s a historian with reason to know?
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: Right, and because they’re conservatives, they think this taunt is devastating.
WE see someone whose views evolved and whose actions spoke louder than words. We also see someone we can differ from, because we accept that things change. They can’t deal with change, with evolution, with the state of mind that you need TO grow and change, and they think that liberals worship their “heroes” the way that they worship Reagan or Oakshott (? ask Andrew Sullivan) or Burke (froggy froggy Frenchie froggie).
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
If you’re referring to the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, I did say it was in existence only in the period 1861-1862 — for about nine months in total. About a thousand free African-Americans volunteered; this would have been about 10% of the total population of free African-Americans in Louisiana at the time — not an insignificant fraction.
As for their never seeing battle, yes, that’s true — but who said otherwise?
Yes, roughly one hundred out of that thousand went on to join the Union ranks (so to speak).
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
If so, it should be a simple matter for you to quote him saying something different from what I said above.
Patrick
@Redshift:
I swear, these idiots must think our military is run by a private corporation in the free market…
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Holocene Human: I have no idea in what capacity those few served, but soldiers in general do an enormous amount of drudge work- digging, ferrying supplies, filling sandbags, etc- so a slave digging a trench** frees up a Reb soldier to do other things more injurious to Union troops.
** I have also read somewhere that it was not at all uncommon for Confederate officers to press slaves into these exact duties while paying the owners for their services in Confederate script.
Patrick
@Elizabelle:
I would have no idea how Mika remotely could think that Bernie meant his comment as criticism. Instead, it sounds like Mika is projecting her own feelings about Hillary Clinton.
Heck, the way Sanders said it, one would have to from another planet to think Sanders didn’t mean what he said.
Cervantes
@Patrick:
The people you’re talking about are superficially intelligent but deeply stupid.
They aren’t alone, either.
Thoughtful Today
@Elizabelle:
Bernie: “This country faces more serious problems today than at any time in modern history…”
It sounds like hyperbole but Bernie’s longer speeches indicate what he means:
We’ve done very little at all to combat climate change, that ticking clock is reaching a tipping point, and there’s growing evidence that it’s accelerating in ways we don’t understand: Weather currents, ocean acidification, more extreme weather events, etc..
Citizen’s United is a money tsunami that’s only just begun to surge, it’s possible that billions of ad dollars by right-wing billionaires will completely drown out sane approaches to our problems.
Accelerating polarization. I remember when Republican Joe Scarborough was a nasty far right-wing politician, he’s now the lead voice on the ‘librul’ channel. Republican Paul Ryan was considered by even some conservatives to be too far right for the 2012 election, he’s now seen by fellow Republican Tea’perps as too liberal, and there’s a nasty backlash undercurrent amongst right-wing extremists to being told that their slaver flag isn’t acceptable.
And there’s a genuine concern that our tepid recovery from the 2007/8 economic crash could still ‘crater’, not to mention that wages have at best remained flat for the bottom 80%, and for many have fallen, there’s still massive unemployment that’s underreported by the labor statistics, and that nearly all of the gains from that tepid recovery went to an insanely tiny minority.
tmi?
Davebo
@OzarkHillbilly:
They are under US Immigration law. @Another Holocene Human:
Actually there are 5 protected grounds, race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
But if your asylum claim amounts to basically “crime is rampant in my country and I’ll probably be killed” you’re out of luck. Which makes sense since that would allow almost all the countries population could apply for asylum.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: I would like a big sculpture of Outkast up there, pointing at Lee & Jackson with a big grin on their faces.
Paul in KY
@TheMightyTrowel: Isn’t Princeton the easiest Ivie to get into?
Paul in KY
@BobS: Lot more people in Michigan, although you would hope you would never see one up there, as Michigan lost a lot of men during Civil War.
Cervantes
@Paul in KY:
Impossible question. Most kids who get into Ivy League colleges have worked very hard for several years in order to achieve it. There’s really no telling which ones worked hardest.
On the other hand, if all you’re asking about is acceptance rates, then Cornell and Dartmouth are “easiest” (14% and 11.5% accepted, respectively) Harvard is the “most difficult” (5.9%), and the others are in between.
PS: The numbers are for the Class of 2018 specifically but the general pattern holds.
catclub
@bystander: Plus, the people who put the bell up there will claim that all the shortcomings
that MLK noted have now been fixed.
“Gosh, there’s a Liberty bell on Stone mountain, so FREEDOM is ringing from Stone Mountain!”
catclub
@Cervantes: My impression was always that Princeton was the one with the highest SAT
averages, for whatever that is worth.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Elizabelle:
As other people have said, I tend to think that, like many people of her era, Sanger was trying to base policy on what we now know was incomplete science. In her day, conditions like Down Syndrome or cerebral palsy were incorrectly believed to be genetic, plus they didn’t have the psychiatric medications we have today, so being diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder pretty much meant spending the rest of your life imprisoned in an asylum.
To me, the lesson to be learned from the bad actions of the eugenicists is not to rush into assumptions that congenital=genetic and not to make treatment decisions that will affect the rest of someone’s life based on statistics and assumptions rather than looking at the individual.
For example, we now know that African-Americans are more likely than other ethnic/racial groups to be incorrectly diagnosed as schizophrenic because they are more likely to be unable to get treated for depression in the earlier stages of the illness and so are more likely to experience depression with psychotic features, which has a completely different treatment and prognosis than schizophrenia.
Cervantes
@catclub:
Again, difficult to say, but in my experience kids admitted to Harvard tend to have the highest test scores, with kids bound for Princeton and Yale a very, very close second.
These, by the way, are the three Ivies that young Ted Cruz counted as being not lesser.
BobS
@Paul in KY: Georgia has nearly a million more people than Michigan. Not to mention Michigan had nearly 10000 men killed by traitors flying that flag.
I was driving ‘up north’ in Michigan awhile back — stopped for fuel at a station offering showers and parking for truckers, beer, ice cream (huge scoops), and … guns. At the check-out were also neatly wrapped confederate flags. I pointed the 10K Michigan Civil War dead to the young woman taking my money. Suggested she ask the station owner to start selling Nazi flags and Al-Qaeda flags since they also killed a lot of Americans (I felt a little sheepish when she replied she just worked there).
Cervantes
@BobS:
Bravo!
Frankensteinbeck
@greennotGreen:
You have described an example of cognitive dissonance, but not the mechanism. What you described is the ‘Ben Franklin effect’, where a person’s beliefs change to align with their actions. That is cognitive dissonance, not a dissonance between contradictory beliefs. People believe contradictory things easily, and it takes work even to make them aware.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Thank you for this. People just assume psychosis = schizeophrenia and this is completely wrong.
There isn’t a hard line between sanity and insanity. Sure, some people have organic brain disorders. But that line is one that ANYONE can cross.
Another Holocene Human
@Cervantes: Don’t be fooled by Cornell. They accept a lot of unwitting engineering students because the gorges are hungry for tender flesh.
(Fun fact, cornell.edu has a subdomain called “gorgesafety”.)
Another Holocene Human
@Paul in KY: Lots of white from the Deep South emigrated to Michigan during the time of the Great Migration. Hence the Michissippi we know today.
Another Holocene Human
@Davebo: Not really, there’s a bit of a difference between “crime is rampant” and “there are credible threats on my life”.
greennotGreen
@BobS: One of the carpenters working at the interminable project called my new house came flying huge Confederate flags from his truck. I asked the site manager to ask him to remove them since I didn’t want them displayed so prominently on my property. (I wouldn’t have asked if it had just been a license plate or a bumper sticker.) After that, I asked the site manager (who has worked for me for many years and whom I consider a friend) what the Confederate flag means to him. He said, “Well, it doesn’t mean killing black people!” Okay, granted. He said that it honors his ancestors who died in the war.
I didn’t follow that up with “If you were German and your relatives died in WWII, would you fly the swastika?”
Another Holocene Human
@Thoughtful Today: And there’s a genuine concern that our tepid recovery from the 2007/8 economic crash could still ‘crater’,
“Some say”. According to whom? The Fed chair, Yellen, appears to be acting in good faith w/r/t working slobs, so what is the problem?
not to mention that wages have at best remained flat for the bottom 80%, and for many have fallen,
“and for many have fallen” will always be true, however, there is actually a slight uptick in wages THANKS TO THE HARD WORK OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT and the law of supply and demand, of course it’s not enough, but wages are NOT contracting!!! the ruling class would it were so! from your lips to gods’ ears!
there’s still massive unemployment that’s underreported by the labor statistics,
Bullshit.
and that nearly all of the gains from that tepid recovery went to an insanely tiny minority.
True, but the recovery is anything but tepid, which makes the theft, and that’s all it is, a theft that squeezes the economy with nothing–infrastructure, education–given in return, all the more galling. Lots of construction going on, you couldn’t have failed to notice. That’s men (mostly men) at work. That’s raw materials being bought. Leases being signed. Credit — flowing.
I see businesses all around me raising starting wages. Your picture of the economy is plain wrong.
greennotGreen
@Frankensteinbeck: I see the difference. As I said, it has been decades since those classes.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: This is a sensitive issue, though. Look at how they define women in combat, or not in combat. Plenty of women did physically demanding, dangerous jobs during WWII, but they did not serve in combat roles. And Black soldiers, sailors, and pilots had to fight for their right to join the battle in a meaningful way. The Massachusetts Colored Regiment was not sent into battle at first either.
The Crusades had a small army of camp followers including washerwomen, but nobody calls the washerwomen knights. The Continental Army had Molly Pitchers. The use of slaves and servants tells you a lot about the society that sends the army into battle. But it’s utter sophistry to equate a personal servant with a private.
Cervantes
@greennotGreen:
Nor with: “Is there a better way to honor your dead ancestors than to fly a flag that terrorizes other living people?”
Another Holocene Human
By claiming that there were Black Confederate soldiers they wish to advance two lies: first, that the slaves supported the Confederate cause. The truth is that many white people deep in Confederate territory did not even support the Confederate cause. A youthful personal servant traveling with a Confederate officer has little choice in his condition.
The second lie is that Blacks in the Confederacy had equal dignity to whites in that society. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whites did not want Blacks around loaded weapons period, so afraid they were of slave rebellions. For years they had systemically terrorized and enslaved free Black populations in the Deep South. Freedom, if preserved, still came with an inferior legal status, particularly in civil court proceedings, which served to impoverish and further force more Blacks into a servile condition.
This whole campaign to muddy the historical record is intended in the service of their mythical notion of the happy slave, the benevolent plantation. Let’s not assist them at it.
BobS
@Another Holocene Human: Actually, the “Michissippi” meme is relatively recent, a result of the Republican state legislature (itself essentially a product of gerrymandering and unenlightened white voters ‘punishing’ Detroit, Flint, etc.) and governor attempting to remake Michigan in the image of the Jim Crow south by rolling back public services, enacting Right-to-Work (for less), etc.
@greennotGreen: My sympathies for that “interminable project”. We built the house we live in about 25 years ago — every time I suggest doing it again my wife threatens to divorce me. Anytime someone tells me they’re about to embark on the project, I suggest they get a marriage counselor on retainer.
Cervantes
@BobS:
How often exactly do you make the suggestion?
greennotGreen
@Another Holocene Human: I will say this one thing in defense of my Confederate flag flying neighbors across the South. (Northern flag-of-treason-flyers, you’re on your own.) When we learned history in our southern public schools, we were taught that the “war between the states” was about the northern industrial states taking economic advantage of the agrarian South, and then trying to further the divide by suddenly removing the labor source, not giving the south time to adapt. If the North had just been less intransigent…
Some twenty years later I went to a public university for a second undergraduate degree and was required to take two semesters of U.S. history. At the college level, you read original sources. That’s how I learned that my earlier education had been so much revisionist propaganda, and in fact, the Confederates were utterly bug-nuts.
BobS
@Cervantes: Are you a marriage counselor? Anytime I think about doing it again with a bigger budget and better awareness of what we were getting into.
Paul in KY
@Cervantes: Thought Princeton had by far the biggest number of students, so (ipso facto & all that) it would be easiest. Thanks for info!
Paul in KY
@BobS: Found out you are correct. Evidently Michigan has lost a lot of population & Georgia must have gained it.
Paul in KY
@BobS: Good one on pointing out them selling the Dixie Swastika!
jl
A philodendron is smarter than an a lesser ivy? I didn’t know that.
BobS
@Paul in KY: Yeah, but I did feel like a bully afterwards — I’m guessing the 20-some year old woman I said it to didn’t give a shit whether it was gas, ice cream, or confederate flags she was ringing up while she was doing a job she didn’t seem to be in love with. I do plan on using the line again given the opportunity, which could be risky considering Michigan has become somewhat of a shooting gallery:
Execute the shoplifters and apple thieves.
Paul in KY
@BobS: Too bad you couldn’t have had the owner there. Well, hopefully she passed it on.
Cervantes
@BobS:
From time to time!
Aren’t we all?