r/facepalm Jul 11 '24

🇲​🇮​🇸​🇨​ Mom needs to go back to school.

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764

u/Rakkuken Jul 11 '24

The funny thing about the States Rights argument is that the Confederacy considered itself to be its own nation and not states in rebellion and made their own constitution. Surprise! States had fewer rights granted to them by the Confederate government than the one they'd just left.

114

u/blaimjos Jul 12 '24

The first thing they did was copy-paste the US constitution, add more protections for slavery, and prohibit secession from the confederacy. It's almost as if they wanted all of posterity to know without doubt that it was all about slavery. Because they did, and it was, and they had no shame.

324

u/Similar_Disaster7276 Jul 11 '24

I didn’t realize the Leopards Eating Faces Party had been around for so long!

79

u/Surfer_Rick Jul 11 '24

It’s as old as the first populist in the first democracy that ever existed. 

Edit: That would be the Athenian city-state of Ancient Greece for anyone curious. 

3

u/Bored_Amalgamation Jul 12 '24

Tbf, Caesar was one of the first.

6

u/Alarmed-Constant9154 Jul 12 '24

Caesar was many things, but I don't know if he would qualify as a leopard necessarily.

The issue was that while he was a genocidal, dictatorial megalomaniac with kingly ambitions, his legislation was altogether extremely popular.

Which is one of the reasons that his assassins couldn't fully declare him a tyrant, as all his legislaion would then be null.

2

u/ZootAnthRaXx Jul 12 '24

Which Caesar?

2

u/Alarmed-Constant9154 Jul 12 '24

Gaius Julius Caesar, the adoptive father of Gaius Julius Caesar.

4

u/iRonin Jul 12 '24

The leopards are always around, and somebody always thinks (THIS TIME, for sure!) they will be the ones to safely sick the leopards on their enemies.

And then the leopards do what they always do- eat faces indiscriminately. The best we can hope for is to see the look of awareness when they realize “oh no, I too have a face…”

2

u/rydan Jul 12 '24

Not really. They weren't using the states rights argument. That's like laughing at people 2000 years ago for thinking the earth is flat.

2

u/bighadjoe Jul 11 '24

you're kinda missing the point, they didn't mind a central government. They wanted a different (more slaveryfriendly) central government. so no, they did not mind having less stat rights.

-1

u/NeoMo83 Jul 12 '24

Those democrats are wild

-33

u/hardware1981 Jul 11 '24

The southern states were 100% led by Democrats.

31

u/hvdzasaur Jul 11 '24

At the time, Democrats were the conservatives. In 1964, with the Civil rights act, they began switching ideologies and by the 1980s they had fully switched and there came a hard north/south divide between the parties.

So what are you saying with your comment here? That you don't know history? Or you are insinuating your party isn't racist now because the other one was racist 160 years ago?

5

u/SuperGeek29 Jul 12 '24

1964 was closer to the end of the transformation of the Democrats into being the solidly liberal party than the beginning. The Democratic Party had slowly been adopting more liberal positions (especially economic policies) since the early 1900’s. FDR’s presidency was a huge transformation for the Democratic Party. In 1932 FDR actually got around 71% of the black vote, so the shift started earlier and on a longer timeframe

2

u/hvdzasaur Jul 12 '24

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't know the realignment started that early, as I was under the impression it was solidly tied to the civil rights platform initiated by Truman and finally the civil rights act by Johnson. Upon further reading it started with the onset of the great depression. My bad!

15

u/Xaero_Hour Jul 11 '24

Uh huh. And remind me who was flying the CBF today and complaining about statues of Confederate "heroes" being taken down?

16

u/Strange-Initiative15 Jul 11 '24

And what’s your point? People bring this up expecting the rest of us to skip about 200 years of history.

4

u/MODELO_MAN_LV Jul 11 '24

Well they are working really hard to erase the last 200 years of history, can't blame them for hoping it'll work.

13

u/amogussnek Jul 11 '24

Yes, at the time, the Democrats were a party polluted, if not nearly entirely overtaken, by hatred, irrational fear, and bigotry. I hope that statement you made was just as a fun tidbit, and not something shoehorned in bad faith to make some sort of jab at Democrats.

It is also important to note that some time after the Civil War, the two parties essentially swapped in their ideologies- the Democrats becoming Liberal, and the Republicans becoming Conservative.

-14

u/hardware1981 Jul 11 '24

So when Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act 100 years later with much pushback from Democrats - had they switched then? Or was it later?

16

u/Turius_ Jul 11 '24

I know it’s difficult for you but try to think about why all the southern states are republican strongholds now. I’m sure you aren’t this stupid because nobody is buying your semantics. Pick up a book and learn something about American history.

9

u/Ok_Recording_4644 Jul 11 '24

Wait, do you mean the civil rights act of 1963? Is that what you're saying Republicans passed?

7

u/prey4mojo Jul 11 '24

In a nationally televised address on June 6, 1963, President John F. Kennedy urged the nation to take action toward guaranteeing equal treatment of every American regardless of race. Soon after, Kennedy proposed that Congress consider civil rights legislation that would address voting rights, public accommodations, school desegregation, nondiscrimination in federally assisted programs, and more.

6

u/Reshi_the_kingslayer Jul 11 '24

Are you arguing that Republicans are not conservatives? Or what? I don't understand 

3

u/ElectronicControl762 Jul 12 '24

So the southern republicans with all those confederate flags that claim it as their heritage are just defending the ideological opposition? They arent spouting the same values as the democrats of civil war ere? Its the same values in the same place.

9

u/the-real-macs Jul 11 '24

What's your point?

5

u/girafa Jul 11 '24

That he was homeschooled

22

u/Tripping-on-E Jul 11 '24

The Confederacy had the first conscription act in U.S. history!

10

u/Effective-Luck-4524 Jul 12 '24

So I teach this and I love when my middle school students can pick out the hypocrisy in that. States rights is born out of the nullification crisis and states like SC saying if they don’t like a law they can say the hell with it. But then the south went and cried over how the north refused to listen to the heightened fugitive slave act. Always have a kid that will be like didn’t they say that was okay to do?

22

u/Jumpy89 Jul 11 '24

Didn't their constitution literally forbid member states from banning slavery?

5

u/JMEEKER86 Jul 12 '24

Yep, which is why I hate when people use the "to do what" gotcha because it's just flat out wrong. The South wasn't fighting for states rights at all. They were explicitly fighting against states rights. So the correct gotcha when someone brings up "it was about states rights" isn't "to do what" but instead pointing out "yeah, the South was fighting against states rights".

5

u/El-Kabongg Jul 12 '24

My personal belief is that if the CSA had been successful, within three years, those states would have been at war with each other.

2

u/Sassy_Scholar116 Jul 12 '24

States’ rights to do what? STATES’ RIGHTS TO DO WHAT, MOMSPLAINING

2

u/weed_cutter Jul 12 '24

The Confederacy never even mentioned states' rights at all until much after the war as revisionist history.

It's like if Hitler were allowed to live after WW2 and claimed the whole thing was population-reduction to prevent Global Warming.

Uh ... no, no it wasn't dawg.

2

u/Penguator432 Jul 12 '24

They banned the act of banning slavery, lol