"Oracle's clout will come in part from the presence of its CEO, Safra Catz, who did not join the pro-Hillary Clinton chorus of other Silicon Valley honchos, and who is now working on Trump's transition team. " (http://fortune.com/2017/01/17/oracle-trump/)
I wondered, "Why does GFK_of_xmaspast feel so strongly about this person?" I hadn't known (or recalled) anything about John C. Calhoun.
Calhoun himself writes in 1837:
> But I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good–a positive good.
...
> Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe–look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse.
The Lost Cause tries to paint the Civil War as about States' Rights rather than slavery. This reinterpretation began immediately after the war, arguably by Robert E Lee himself. The War of Northern Aggression et cetera tries to paint the South as the victims.
This revisionism avoids the text of the Constitution of the Confederate States, the writings of Calhoun, the 1860 census of South Carolina, the secession of the Southern States and the firing on Fort Sumter.
I'm not sure why that's relevant to the parent comment.
It's also not particularly surprising if you consider the history of the Cherokee specifically (compared to other Native American tribes). The Cherokee tried to have diplomatic relations with the Union (the United States), and the US stabbed them in the back. Of course they'd want to break up the Union - it was the only shot they had at reclaiming their sovereignty.
He mentioned the lost cause narrative being something that was created after the war. That document goes into detail about a whole lot that was going on at the time that fit the "narrative".
Civil War history is a hobby of mine that developed after the flag stuff a couple of years ago. There were so many factors that went into the conflict it's hard to even know where to begin.
Snag a book on the economics of it sometime if you're interested though.
It's pretty easy to know where to begin: slavery. Just look at the constitution of the CSA, which requires all member states to have slavery. How is that promoting states' rights? Or look at the ordinances of secession: https://www.google.com/amp/s/aliberalthinker.wordpress.com/2.... To say the CSA was mainly formed on any issue other than slavery requires conspiracy theorist contortions.
It doesn't. It requires nuance and a whole lot of historical context. Slavery was certainly a factor, but it was one of many.
Two small points to get you started.
1. The causes of secession and the cause of the war were not the same thing. The former had many, the latter was entirely economic.
2. Only 4 states even issued declarations. 3 of them were heavily about slavery. The rest require historical context to understand. Slavery wasn't even under threat if states had just hung around. You need look no further than Lincolns inaugural speech to verify that.
If slavery was one of many factors for secession, why weren't any of those other factors mentioned in the ordinances of secession? Why were all of the seceding states slave states? Of the states who didn't mention a reason for secession in their ordinances of secession, all their governors made statements explicitly naming slavery as the reason (see previous link).
> Slavery wasn't even under threat if states had just hung around.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act threatened to tip the balance of slave states vs. free states, and Lincoln's and the Republican Party's platform of not allowing the creation of any new slave states effectively put an expiration date on slavery in the US. That is why the ordinances of secession mentioned the threat against slavery. Lincoln only stated that he wouldn't directly abolish slavery because the slave states had already threatened to secede if he were elected, citing the belief that he would.
You keep harping on the cause of secession, not war. Again, there were different causes for each state.
I've been down this discussion road many time before and it goes on for a while with a lot of back and forth. The simplest thing for you to do is to go and grab a couple of books on the civil war, read them and when you get to something that seems impossible based on what you currently know go and look up the citations. The digitized Library of Congress and Google's efforts to scan historical documents make it really easy to read while verifying.
Since you're harping on the causes for secession, I'm going to go ahead and provide you a couple of quick links to refute your stance to get you started though:
This includes the declarations of Georgia, Texas, South Carolina and Mississippi. Georgia, Texas and Mississippi were almost entirely about slavery. South Carolina's was partially about slavery. You can see a graph here with a breakdown of each document (http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/secession/).
That first link also includes Virginia's secession ordinance at the bottom, which isn't a declaration of causes but merely the bill passed to secede. You'll notice no mention of slavery, but instead the perversion of federal power. The only mention of the word slave is the oppression of not only Virginia "but the southern slave holding states".
Now, hop on over to timeline of events on Wikipedia:
Jump down to 1861, then look at Feb 4, April 4, April 15 and then April 15-16, April 17-19 (really most of the "Aftermath 1861" section).
To summarize, you'll see Virginia unwilling to secede (... only 32 of 152 are immediate secessionists...), Virginia again reject secession, Lincoln bypass congress to request troops from each state. Following this request for troops is when the remaining states secede (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee).
For these states, they were not seceding "because slavery" they were seceding because the Federal government was bypassing Congress to start a war and had no intention of taking up arms against the south. The way in which the war was fought did not help the case.
Now, that should put most of the idea of a single cause of secession to rest. What I would suggest next is for you to grab a book on the economics of the civil war (because there are many).
Just to give you a hint of exactly how big of an issue this was...
March 18, 1861 the Philadelphia Press wrote: "Blockade Southern Ports. If not a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Ohio Rivers, will be subject to Southern tolls."
March 22, 1861 the economic editor of the New York Times wrote, "At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate states."
That's before we even get into why John Brown is famous, because he never actually accomplished anything. The only reason we know his name is that he lit a match on a lot of southern fears and northern sentiments. You can even see this played out in the Emancipation Proclamation because it was issued twice - the first time as a warning.
I'm not even pretending that slavery wasn't a major factor, just refuting the idea that it was the only factor. The war was about money and fear, from both sides for different reasons.
Again, there is no debate among historians about why the states seceded. See the final link in my previous post.
> You'll notice no mention of slavery, but instead the perversion of federal power. The only mention of the word slave is the oppression of not only Virginia "but the southern slave holding states".
The perversion of federal power mentioned is the new government's coming actions to eventually kill slavery. Again, the governor of Virginia said as much (“The Northern States must strike from their statute books their personal liberty bills, and fulfill their consitutional obligations in regard to fugitive slaves and fugitives from justice. If our slaves escape into non-slaveholding states, they must be delivered up.”) Again, no other cause is mentioned by any of the states.
> For these states, they were not seceding "because slavery" they were seceding because the Federal government was bypassing Congress to start a war and had no intention of taking up arms against the south.
They didn't like Lincoln's call for volunteers to bring the seceding states in line, yet they had no qualms about immediately raising troops via draft (via the first conscription law in the United States) to fight against the Union. Why is that? You noticed that your Wikipedia link about the timeline of events leading to secession is all about the history of slavery regulation in the United States, right?
Your quotes are proposals of what to do with Southern states that seceded, not the cause of secession.
You're going into mental contortions to disagree with historians. Why?
I'm not going to overinvest my time here because this is a long road. All my above points stand, but you need to reread them.
The quotes were to provide you with context on the economic impact secession was going to have on the northern economy (which would have been devastating). I'm well aware of everything left out of the Wikipedia timeline, but it's a locked topic with 15,000 plus edits.
If you want a better understanding of the subject, there are a lot of books to satisfy your curiousity.
I hope I have not been misunderstood through my lack of clarity here: I am completely in agreement with CalChris (if you don't like what I wrote for other reasons, fair enough.)
That's the point, GP was wondering why some one would suggest nameing a sewer after Calhoun and found a quote from Calhoun himself (as opposed to some third party that could be accused of drinking haterade) showing him to be a human sewer.
I hope that history judges us more kindly than we judge history.
There's no question that today, and for the best part of the past 150 years, we find Calhoun's views absolutely abhorrent and reprehensible. For us, there is no question about it.
Calhoun, and most everyone else in human history, lived in a different time. We now "know" that slavery is inherently wrong, but Calhoun, for example, didn't see it that way. He literally believed he was doing a good thing. We now find that paternalistic, condescending, and abhorrent. Even in his own time, Calhoun's views were becoming outdated.
But there is not, and never has been, an oracle anyone could consult to find the Truth about what is Good and Right. Even seemingly objective religious oracles of the Truth About Morality are subject to interpretation. We all had to muddle our own way through it. Our consciences were all formed by the society we lived in and, no doubt, by our self interest.
I have no doubt that hundreds of years from now, when social norms have evolved in ways we can't imagine, people will find our views abhorrent and reprehensible too. I hope they do not dismiss us human sewers on that basis alone.
At any rate, I think that when you dismiss figures of the past as human sewers, you overlook just how past atrocities happened, which makes it easier for them to happen in the here and now.
All one needed to do was ask the slaves whether they liked being slaves. Looks like some people did listen to the slaves and they found themselves on the right side of history. So you don't need to consult an Oracle. Listening helps.
Even today, we don't care that much for people's stated preferences. They only matter if they don't conflict with something we regard as wrong, if the person is capable of informed consent, if it doesn't create excessive positive obligations on other people, et cetera.
But Calhoun would have claimed, as implied in the quote upthread, that slaves were essentially incapable of 'informed consent'; they were like children, slavery was better for them regardless of their stated preferences. Calhoun would have considered that as ridiculous as asking a child whether or not they liked their vegetables. Obviously, given our values today and our knowledge of biology, that's not only wrong in every sense but absurd. But when you grow up in a culture of normalized racial inequality, that's what you get.
Not only that, he would have pointed out that many slaves liked their position in life.
I only wish right and wrong were so simple.
Incidentally, one of the proximate causes of the Civil War, and one of the most persuasive voices for abolition was John Brown, who died a martyr after being hanged for taking up arms to free slaves. It was his dedication to the cause even up to the gallows that convinced many people of its rightness. His speech at his trial should be read by everyone.
> we don't care that much for people's stated preferences
I strongly disagree. The foundation of democracy and liberty is self-determination. Civil rights protect their stated preferences and other limits to the law and government. The philosophical foundation of the U.S. is individual liberty.
Calhoun would make lots of claims; people always have justifications. The people doing evil don't stand up and say so; they give rationalizations to sway the gullible and lull others into confusion or not caring. Hitler, Stalin, Putin, and the rest did the same.
"At any rate, I think that when you dismiss figures of the past as human sewers, you overlook just how past atrocities happened, which makes it easier for them to happen in the here and now."
i disagree. how past atrocities happened is less (probably not at all) from name-calling the victimizers of the past and more from wiffle-waffling intellectual obfuscation of pure self-interest as something more than what it is. what could justify kidnapping people, putting them in mortal danger by shipping them across the ocean against their will, selling them to masters who had liberty to anything they liked with them?
flip it around: there're plenty of horrible things happening right now, and lots of people proffering up weak-ass justifications for them. i have a low opinion of them. why should i have a higher opinion of their counterparts for 150 years ago?
> Calhoun, and most everyone else in human history, lived in a different time.
Your attempt to seem wise and clever might come across a bit better if you had even the slightest aquaintence with the topic of history, about which you seem to be almost entirely ignorant. By 1837 slavery had been abolished in the countries the US would consider itself a peer of. Slavery was not some mainstream idea; it had, for decades in the civilised world, been on the run.
Appealing to the notion we are unreasonably judging the slavery advocates of the mid-19th century by their own standards shows either complete ignorance or a frankly creepy desire to propogate their philosophy.
Not only was I fully aware of it, but I had just read Emerson's speech on the subject of the end of the British slave trade yesterday.
That is why I was careful to point out that Calhoun's views were already becoming outdated; and at any rate, Calhoun lived in the US, not in, say, England. I'm not arguing that Calhoun was some kind of progressive for his time. I'm sure you don't mean what you seem to be insinuating with your other claim - obviously nobody who isn't mentally ill supports any philosophy of slavery in 2017. That said, I don't think it's 'creepy' to understand how people who did things we regard as abhorrent justified their deeds to themselves and to others.
> obviously nobody who isn't mentally ill supports any philosophy of slavery in 2017
I look forward to the day when mental illness isn't universally equated with negative things. I try to be forgiving of people who do this, but a lot of them are like people who supported slavery and segregation (mean, hateful, etc).
Mental illnesses are ethically neutral. People with them span the range of human experience.
That argument suggests there can be no judgment about anyone, and everyone is helpless to judge good from bad. I'm not willing to abandon the idea of good and I hold people responsible, including myself, for their judgment.
Yes, we need to have some mercy too; I certainly make mistakes, but then I am responsible for them.
Calhoun's peers fought a war to end slavery; it wasn't as if he had to imagine quantum physics in the 19th century to figure it out.
America is built upon the idea of cheap labor and fat profits. Everyone for themselves. Unions won't do much. Automation will only make things worse for poor and uneducated.
Humans are selfish by nature driven by financial rewards.
If it's a lot smaller and serves their purpose, it's not implemented poorly. And if it compiles 10x as fast, which it probably does (I'm not a heavy Go user.)
Also I think this representation is different architecturally. Go now uses an SSA representation apparently, which would be the equivalent of LLVM IR AFAIK. This assembly language is more toward the backend where as the IR is more like the "middle end".
"Oracle's clout will come in part from the presence of its CEO, Safra Catz, who did not join the pro-Hillary Clinton chorus of other Silicon Valley honchos, and who is now working on Trump's transition team. " (http://fortune.com/2017/01/17/oracle-trump/)