What if Jefferson had gotten the agrarian country he wanted?

[Speaker to Animals]

Basically, the cities in the north locked down trade so that the South had to purchase their manufactured goods at higher cost, and the raw materials for those goods were bought from the south at a substantially lower price than the South could have gotten overseas, but they couldn't sell overseas because the northern states locked down trade via the legislative branch.

Then the north used the southerners as a kind of janissary population to fill the federal armies and fight all their wars for them. This is why, when the south seceded, they took a huge portion of the federal army with them, leaving the federal government shit out of luck and having to train totally new units from scratch.

The antebellum situation mirrors a little of what is happening today, but that kind of exploitation of the rest of the nation has narrowed to a few very large metropolitan areas exploiting everything else.

All the people who live in Illinois, but not in Chicago, are pretty well fucked by the city of Chicago now, as one example. These cities are fucking up even the states in which they reside.

I think Jefferson at some level realized that the urbanization of the north (and it's particular form of budding industrialization) would become a lethal threat to the southern culture and way of life (which was true). I don't think he realized all the longterm ramifications of this, and I certainly don't think he realized that the slave-lord culture of the deep south was just as fucking destructive of most southerner's lives as the yankee culture of exploitation.

[TheReal_ND]

Basically, the cities in the north locked down trade so that the South had to purchase their manufactured goods at higher cost, and the raw materials for those goods were bought from the south at a substantially lower price than the South could have gotten overseas, but they couldn't sell overseas because the northern states locked down trade via the legislative branch.

Part of the reason planters constantly racked up a debt. All those cash crops looked great on paper.... for the fucking yankees

[Speaker to Animals]

For example, Jefferson had ZERO problem with importing millions upon millions of African slaves that would setup the entire south (and really the entire nation) for racial conflicts that last to this very day, including a horrific civil war. So fuck that guy. I am not defending him.

But his assessment of the cities was correct, nor was it his idea. Intellectuals have long identified a trend of increasing urbanization with the eventual decay of a civilization. At first cities provide a lot of culture and dynamism. But eventually they produce degeneracy and stagnation and social decay. The Roman government, for example, realized this and totally abandoned the proles in the city of Rome to setup a new city at Byzantium. We are not far behind them.

The founders were all for one reason or another completely obsessed with the cycles of civilization and what had destroyed the previous classical civilization. They identified the republic as it's high mark (mistake number one, in my opinion), and sought after a system of government that would mimic it to some degree but have safeguard to stave off the eventual Principate they knew would follow (and failed).

[TheReal_ND]

You won't catch me defending slavery at any point in history. It was a bad idea to begin with but I'm saying there actually were some temporary benefits that the yanks refuse to acknowledge they took any part of. They just left it at our feet like it was just a hot potato.

[Speaker to Animals]

Furthermore, his assessment that truly free men must own their land and the means to satisfy their necessary consumption each year was essentially correct. It's also a pivotal point in the distributist philosophies (and Catholic economic doctrine since the 19th century).

After the war, it became a pivotal slogan in the reconstruction: Forty Acres and a Mule became the slogan to represent independent free men. But because the north locked out all southern states from the legislative branch in the aftermath of the war, what we got instead was a deliberate policy of wage slavery and servitude.

A similar idea emerged in England when the horrors of capitalism became so stark that people began to demand land reforms: Three Acres and a Cow was their slogan which meant essentially the same thing. This was the beginning of distributist politics as well, with G.K. Chesterton advocating it.

What really galls me about this conversation is the utter arrogance of these people from the cities who look down upon everybody else as rubes who must be dominated and told how to live their lives. This isn't some hick notion that has to be educated out of us ignorant red state flyover rednecks.

[Speaker to Animals]

I mean.. these fucking people..

They sit there and demonize the south for slavery, which they helped established and capitalized upon, and then when chattel slavery was abolished, they fucked everybody over with wage slavery, debt slavery, and welfare plantations. And they are telling me the time of day. Ridiculous. Go back to your cube farm, work for the next fifteen years to pay off your massive student debt, and pay your 40+ percent taxes to keep that welfare plantation running..

[TheReal_ND]

Well that's just it.

We are the foil to their morally superior high ground. We are the shock troopers for their empire and we are the ignorant backward folk that need to be eradicated.

Same as it ever was.

[Okeefenokee]

12 acres and an 8n. It could be made catchier.

Twelve n' ate'n. We could be the twelvinaters.

wooo

[Speaker to Animals]

12 acres and an 8n. It could be made catchier.

Twelve n' ate'n. We could be the twelvinaters.

wooo

That would be awesome.

[Okeefenokee]

all this goes back to the first college class i ever took.

pretty sure that was right before i joined up here. back in 2010.

us history until the civil war.

i came out of it thinking, "so all these people debating slavery vs states' rights are pretty much both wrong. it was all about the economy."