It's actually "tense," but you've got a mulligan on that one.
Chuck, I'd love to see your elaboration.
This is going to be a rambling mess so I'll try to do the short version. It's easier for me to explain it verbally than with written word, but here goes.
Before I start I want to make sure that everyone knows that my opinion is that slavery is wrong. That is one of the reasons that I vote against democrats every chance that I get. I do, however, have an opinion about the past and potential past (if the south would have won) that differs from a lot of other people.
Just keep in mind that most of what I'm about to say is speculation. It's speculation based on what I know about people. It's speculation based on what I know about farmers and farming. And finally, though I'm not a trained historian like nads, it's speculation based on what little I know about the past.
The first thing I want to do for the lurking DUmmies is address one particular issue that always bothers me. There have been several occasions when I've seen interviews with black individuals discussing slavery during which the individual would say something along the lines of "we were kings and queens in Africa, and the white man captured us and put us in chains." That statement is both stupid and incorrect. There can be only so many kings and queens. In most cases the white man did NOT capture anyone in Africa. Africans enslaved other Africans and sold/traded them to the white man. I believe the last time I checked there are still, to this day, more slaves in Africa than any where else in the world.
With that off my chest, let me now ramble about slavery, the south, and the civil war.
Regardless of whether or not the war had happened or the south had won, slavery, as it was known back then, would have died out within 60 or 70 more years because of the advancements in farm equipment in general and the tractor in specific. While there were slaves who served as servants, the most prominent use of slaves was as workers doing manual labor and toiling on farms. The new farm equipment and tractors that were developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s would have done away with the need for slaves on the farm. The dems, as they did in the 60s and still do now, would have treated the former slaves as somewhat subhuman, but they would not be slaves as it was known in the 1800s.
Since I'm rambling I may as well veer a bit off subject and give my opinion on whether the Civil War was fought over slavery or state rights. I say that state rights was the cause and slavery was the catalyst. Imagine a barn full of hay. You sit a burning kerosene lantern on one of the hay bales. Then someone throws a baseball that breaks and knocks over the burning lantern. The barn burns down. So what caused the barn to burn? It wasn't the baseball. It was the lantern. The baseball being thrown in just helped insure that there would be a fire. The burnt barn would be the civil war. The lantern would be state rights. The baseball would be slavery.
You'll remember that in my second sentence I mentioned that my opinion about slavery is why a vote against democrats. I want to try to explain that now.
The history books like to claim slavery is evil because the slaves had to work hard. That doesn't make slavery evil. The white people (men, women, and children) who worked the factories in the north and the small family farms in the north and south during the 1800s had to work just as hard or harder than the slaves. The history books like to claim that slavery is wrong because the living conditions of the slaves were bad. That doesn't make slavery wrong. The white people who worked the factories and small family farms during the 1800s had the same or much worse living conditions. The history books like to claim that slavery is evil because the slaves got beat as punishment. I'm not so sure how often that even happened. To a slave owner a slave was an expensive piece of farm equipment. How many times today do you see a farmer trying to destroy an expensive piece of his farm equipment?
The first sentence of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence states:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That is either true or it's not. I choose to believe that it is true, and that is why I am of the opinion that slavery is wrong. Slavery is the denying of a person's unalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is what makes slavery evil. That is what makes slavery wrong. And that is why I vote against dems. Pay attention to what the DUmbasses at DU and many of their dem leaders say and do. If you break it down they are for slavery. Instead of one group of people being slaves with the slave owner being in the plantation house, they want the slave owner to be federal government and the slaves to be everyone.
