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Talking politics around the campfire


ianwilkins

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Preston Brooks



Preston Brooks beats Charles Sumner with a cane. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was an avowed Abolitionist and leader of the Republican Party. After the sack of Lawrence, on May 21, 1856, he gave a bitter speech in the Senate called "The Crime Against Kansas."

 

The Republicans have been taking it on the chin since day one.  And here we have a REPUBLICAN speaking out for the freedom of the slaves being beaten by a DEMOCRAT on the Senate floor.  Looks like the same-old, same-old from here.

Edited by Stosh
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The Republicans have been taking it on the chin since day one.  And here we have a REPUBLICAN speaking out for the freedom of the slaves being beaten by a DEMOCRAT on the Senate floor.  Looks like the same-old, same-old from here.

"Here", 160 years ago?

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"Here", 160 years ago?

 

Aaaah, here as "from here point of view"  After 160 years, nothing's really changed. Except today the blacks vote for the party that wanted to keep them slaves and against the party that worked to free them.....

 

Go figure.

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Aaaah, here as "from here point of view"  After 160 years, nothing's really changed. Except today the blacks vote for the party that wanted to keep them slaves and against the party that worked to free them.....

 

Go figure.

I think most people choose a party, or a candidate, based on what they stand for now, not what some long-dead people did 160 years ago.

 

I have to wonder what Abraham Lincoln would have thought of Donald Trump. Of course, if Lincoln were running today, he probably would have come in 14th or 15th in the primaries. Trump would have belittled Lincoln for his somewhat homely appearance and (by contemporaneous accounts) rather high-pitched voice, and that would have been it for Lincoln. He would have gone down in history as a one-term congressman from the Whig Party.

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The most recent posts are very similar to the discussions that I hear among the scouts.  I try to turn them away from the politics of personality, blame and attacks toward the politics of values and ideals.  Sometimes, simple questions of "what should we do?" and "how would that work?" and "what do you think the other side values?" generates some critical thinking.

 

I know, it's a losing battle but maybe, just maybe, the next generation will vote not based on personality but based on policy and ideals.

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Promise more free stuff next time?

 

Perhaps voting for the best smile is not a good idea.

 

Excuse me if this is a repeat.

 

I had a 17-year-old in a Philmont crew.  He cried every day.  No skills.  One night, I asked him out of genuine curiosity how he came to be elected a PL the previous year.  Seems he promised a video game to every member of the patrol who voted for him.  His mom (Yes; one of those) supplied the funds to buy the games.  He won 7-0 (counting his own vote for himself).

 

Shortly after we we got back to town, I was asked to train the leaders in winter camping techniques.  Two of the learners were from the patrol that had elected my guy.  During a break I asked them how he had worked out at the PL.  Their responses were emphatically negative.  He had been useless.  I asked if it was true they had voted for him out of greed.  After an examination of shoe tops, they admitted it was so.  I asked what they had learned.  They said they ;learned they should vote for the guy who seemed best able to do the job.

 

We learn from experience.  Some of the experience is bad experience.

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The voting was rather close between the three factions   39% is only a tad above 1/3rd of the votes.  It would seem that the Democrats split their party north and south  No northern Democrat is going to support a slavery Southern Democrat.  The Whigs simply got blown out of the water by the up-and-coming abolitionist Republican party. 

 

The south seceded more because of the Republican abolitionist platform than because any fear of this country bumpkin Lincoln.  Lincoln's only concern was to preserve the union and his solution for the slave issue was to send them all back to Africa.

 

The Civil War was a slavery issue.

 

The racial aspect didn't come about until 100 years later in the 1960's.

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