Teabaggers like confederate soldiers?

[GKirk]

Just a thought I had. Teabaggers defend giving tax breaks to the very wealthy even though they have no hope of ever being that rich and confederate soldiers fought for slave owners even though they had no chance of ever being a plantation owner.

[EC]

1. Many of the confederate soldiers had no choice,

They were conscripted and threatened with death as traiters if they didn't fight. But yeah, many of the tps come from those very same families.

[LynneSin]

3. I remember reading about that too

If you were male and upright you were forced to fight the war.

I remember that was one of the major storylines behind the book/movie "Cold Mountain"

[nykym]

2. I lkie this quote

John Dickinson: "...don't forget that most men without property would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich, than face the reality of being poor."

[demosincebirth]

4. You're right, 90% of southern whites didn't own slaves.

[eallen]

8. No, but the greater part of wealth in the south was its slaves.

And the vast majority of southerners depended on the slave economy for their livelihood. The number that actually owned a slave is as irrelevant as the number in Nantucket who owned a ship, during its whaling boom. Whether they owned a ship or not, they benefited from the whaling economy. Nantucket shipwrights, coopers, chandlers, sailors, and their children, wives, and mates all had a financial stake in whaling, all had a personal attachment to it, and most would have fought for it been politics threatened it.

I say that not to excuse the southerner. But to show the hollowness of the Lost Cause argument that most southerners could not have fought for slavery, because they didn't own a slave. They didn't have to own a slave to have a stake in the system.

:hippie:

[demosincebirth]

11. Southern politicians (also slave owners) fired up the population with rhetoric about

freedom and liberty cannot be possible without slavery..and that sort of talk. Can you imagine that? Leave out the word slavery and a lot of the rhetoric, then, sounds almost like what we have today from the TB'ers

[Dogtown]

13. Well written.

Compelling argument.

[era veteran]

5. No

apples/oranges

[GKirk]

6. Not really

it seems most CSA soldiers and most teaparty members come from the same lower socio-economic class.

[era veteran]

12. As well as the Union conscripts.

As I said. Apples/Oranges.

[MatthewStLouis]

7. They are the poor white folk who wish they had slaves...

So they fought for the wealthy plantation owners rights to cheap labor (slaves) and unfettered capitalism. It really is history repeating itself. Now it's poor white folk fighting for the big corporations right to cheap labor and unregulated capitalism.

(Of course, the industries of the north already had their cheap labor (poor immigrants) so they didn't really have their reckoning until the rise of the labor movement...)

[Mnpaul]

9. More like the torries

who sided with Britain. If you want to make a teabagger's head explode, make the comparison. It fits:

Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada. Historically it also had exponents in former parts of the British Empire, for instance the Loyalists of British North America who sided with Britain and Crown during the Revolutionary War. The Tory ethics can be summed up with the phrase 'God, King and Country'. Tories generally advocate monarchism, are usually of a High Church Anglican or Recusant Catholic religious heritage, and are opposed to the radical liberalism of the Whig faction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tory

They want to undo all the things that the REAL TEA PARTY PATRIOTS fought for.

[NAGAUEL]

10. Republicans will turn on the Tea Party

With the Tea Party intact Republicans will continue to lose elections!

[AlinPA]

15. The republican party=the tea party. They are one and the same. The party is controlled

by the teabaggers now.

[Tom Ripley]

14. The southern rebel myth is so strong because it is a MYTH

there is nothing rebellious about dying for the economic interests of wealthy slave-breeders.