Posts Made By: James Lacey

Originally Posted by Darian Rachal

James, do you think that the 300,000(?) Confederate soldiers that died(very few I suspect owned slaves) gave their lives so that slavery could be maintained in the South? That seems like a rather odd cause to sacrifice one's life for, wouldn't you agree?

 Of course, I don't believe that. I have relatives who fought in the Civil War on the side of the South, who did it not because of slavery, but because they felt like they were being invaded according to first-hand documents my father uncovered when he was still alive and actively doing genealogy research. Many factors contributed to the civil war, and there were, of course, a myriad of motivations for why individuals fought in the civil war, but there was only one cause of the Civil war, and that is slavery. All you have to do is ask yourself one simple question, and that is, "If slavery had not existed in North America, would the Civil War have ever happened?" The obvious and only correct answer is no.

Originally Posted by Mel Maki

A politician spouting "...nonsense and lies..." is tolerable if that is what it took to get the changes Trump has made and will make. It does boggle a mind but almost half of the voters disliked Hillary and her politics that much.

From my point of view though, all of Trump's chaotic and irrational governance style has done is make any semblance of rational governance impossible. I don't even think his "management style" or whatever you want to call his particular brand of pathological narcissism is much good for anything. He panders to those who feed his ego and the people he needs to be building alliances with he alienates instead. He's not a great deal maker; he's not a good negotiator; he's not a good leader; he's not a self-made man, he is, however, the least qualified person to ever hold the office of POTUS. If current trends continue, he may be the first POTUS ever to be indicted while in office too.

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

You obviously haven't listened to Fox News in awhile...

Not to worry. I"m sure the President can tweet his way out of this one.

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Well the Democrats didn't pay did they?  

Actually, didn't Trump swear that Taco Bell was going to pay for the hamberders?

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

 
Not too smart, but then I guess they don't care about their customers who are Trump supporters.  Just think how many former BK customers will decide that being disrespectful to the POTUS is enough to make them never go to BK again? 

No one has done more to fill the public space with disrespect and common bile than Donald J. Trump. Besides, that Gillette razor shaves both ways; how many Trump detractors might now consider a Whopper over a Big Mac?

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Probably very few. And if they did, they most likely wouldn't be regular customers of BK for very long.  What do you think is the more likely scenario, for BK to gain a bunch of NEW customers who will continue to patronize their restaurants long after the giddiness of the derisive twitter post wears off, or do you think that the average regular customer, such as myself who patronizes BK on a regular basis, 2-3 times per week will decide they don't need lunch at BK any longer and instead will from now on take their business to places like Chik-Fil-A?

My guess is that once it gets around the Internet, how BK decided it would be fun to Mock the POTUS, a good number of Trump Supporters who DO patronize BK on a regular basis will decide to never step foot in a BK restaurant ever again.  

I'm thinking that those who were insulted by their mocking, derisive twitter post will outnumber the new arrivals to BK.  

As I said, a stupid move on the part of BK management to do something like that IMO.  All it can do is hurt their business in the long run.  I'm sure there are probably hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters who will not go, nor take their families to BK ever again.   

Nah, they will be just fine. Nike is fine. Gillette is fine. And so forth and so on. No large corporation ever suffers long term consequences for these kinds of actions.

Originally Posted by Greg Shaffer

Here we go rewriting history again.....Slavery didnt become an issue until after the civil war started.....when Lincoln saw support for the war was waning he used slavery to gin up support.....he wrote about it, look it up in his own words. The war began primarily over money....the south had it and the north wanted it.....Lincoln even wrote that he wanted to pack all the blacks up and send them elsewhere. I am not saying slavery wasnt evil, it was.....but at least be honest about it.....and the north's hands were definitely not clean on the slavery issue either. The south had no slaving ships....that was the north that was bringing them in TO SELL.....

Greg,

By the time slavery became an issue between the North and the South, the Atlantic slave trade had ended mainly except for illegal smuggling. The slave trade act of 1794 banned the building of ships in the US for use in the slave trade. In 1808 importation of slaves into the United States became officially illegal. Of course, these did not stop the illicit slave trade, which continued mostly through Spanish Florida and Texas before they became part of the Union. It is true that slavery started in New England and had been part of the North's legacy, but by the time of the Civil War, wholesale importation of slaves via the Atlantic slave trade had primarily gone extinct. However, some antebellum pro-slavery extremists calling for the reestablishment of the slave trade as morally acceptable practices. This desire by the South to not only preserve but expand slavery in the South was a crucial ingredient in tensions between the North and South. 

There is no doubt that the South wanted to continue and expand slavery, and I'm confident they would have had no qualms importing slaves via Southern ports had they been allowed to do so. Have you ever heard of the Kansas-Nebraska Act for example? It and countless other examples unequivocally establish the South motivation to not only preserve but expand slavery into new territories. What about the actual declarations of secession written by Southern states? Have you ever read them? All of them explicitly state that the defense of slavery is their primary objective. Most of them argue slavery should be expanded. 

I concede the war was about money in one respect, and that the abolishment of slavery was a threat to the Southern economy. Cotton was the South's primary export, the basis of its economy, and required slave labor. However, the idea that the North somehow wanted to steal the South's wealth is not supported by the historical evidence. 

I think removing the plaque was the right thing to do. The Texas Board of preservation agrees with me, as do countless other professional academics and historians. Didn't even Georgia for example recently strike down its law protecting Confederate monuments? It seems to me that to believe your line of reasoning; I would have to invalidate the conclusions of a lot of academics and experts that think differently. I think I will stick them.

Originally Posted by Darian Rachal

James, it's interesting the effect that the evil of slavery had on the United States, manifesting itself in the War Between the States. Essentially what you had at the time was the idea that the Negro was somehow "less than human"; that the life of a Negro didn't warrant the same degree of respect and protection afforded a white man; that a Negro's life was dispensable. In the minds of a great many people, that was a totally justifiable position.

There is no doubt in my mind that without slavery in North America the Civil War would have never happened, and hence it is the primary cause of the Civil War. This idea is a conclusion that many professional academics, historians and politicians agree with and can fully support with overwhelming evidence from primary source documents. Among historians, this is not even a controversial idea; it's accepted as fact just as scientists accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution as fact.

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

You even become indignant that anyone else would have the gall to suggest that there were OTHER factors involved as you did in your first posting regarding the plaque.  

That's not what I said, I was not indignant, and this is just another prime example of you arguing with straw-men all the time. I completely acknowledged there were other factors. You must have missed the part where I said, "Many factors contributed to the civil war..." My advice Richard is, instead of arguing with yourself all the time, slow down and try and read and understand what someone said, instead of what you think they said.

Originally Posted by James Lacey

That's not what I said, I was not indignant, and this is just another prime example of you arguing with straw-men all the time. I completely acknowledged there were other factors. You must have missed the part where I said, "Many factors contributed to the civil war..." My advice Richard is, instead of arguing with yourself all the time, slow down and try and read and understand what someone said, instead of what you think they said.