(cont 2) Of course, that, perhaps, doesn't speak to the mindset of the soldiers -- but consider this… in 1861, more than half of the officers in the Army of Northern Virginia owned slaves, and 36% of all soldiers came from households with slaves.

*The number ascribed to Confederate soldiers as a whole varies—two percent, five percent—but the message is always the same, that those men 150 years (ago) had nothing to do with the peculiar institution, they had no stake in it, and that it certainly played no role whatever in their personal motivations or in the Confederacy’s goals in the war. But such a blanket disassociation between Confederate soldiers and the “peculiar institution” is simply not true in any meaningful way. Slave labor was as much a part of life in the antebellum South as heat in the summer and hog-killing time in the late fall. Southerners who didn’t own slaves could not but avoid coming in regular, frequent contact with the institution. They hired out others’ slaves for temporary work. They did business with slaveholders, bought from or sold to them. They utilized the products of others’ slaves’ labor. They traveled roads and lived behind levees built by slaves. Southerners across the Confederacy, from Texas to Florida to Virginia, civilian and soldier alike, were awash in the institution of slavery. They were up to their necks in it. They swam in it, and no amount of willful denial can change that.*

source: http://deadconfederates.com/2011/04/28/…

I don't know if Mississippians beat out the Confederate average or not when it came to whether their soldiers and officers came from slave-holding households; but if Mississippi had the highest percentage of such households, it seems likely.

(cont.) Meanwhile, I went back to your original post and tried to parse your argument -- I don't get it.

You don't want to defend the confederate battle flag, but rather you want to defend people's reasons for defending it, I guess because so many outsiders are so wrong about why the Confederate soldiers went to war, even if their leaders proclaimed it rather clearly.

But what if **you're wrong** even about that?

Your original comment in this thread asserts that the actual soldiers of the Confederacy, on balance, didn't go to war over slavery... because only the "rich" owned slaves. The rest were "dirt poor farmers." You may be confusing two Mississippis -- one that had the highest per capita ownership of slaves prior to the Civil War to the one that was burned to the ground in the process of losing that war, obliterating a great deal of wealth and forcing the to start over again without the economic benefits of 100% free labor. (Try as they might to somehow recover that advantage. )

The pre-war 1860 census shows that nearly 50% of Mississippi's households owned slaves -- around 30,000 families. And around 60% of those families -- call it 20,000 -- owned fewer than 10 slaves.

What that suggests is that a *lot* of Mississippians we affected by and benefited from slavery every day.

So how much a part of life in 1860 Mississippi was slavery?

It's a crude comparison, but according to <a href="http://www.tvb.org/media/file/Cable_UEs…">this link (PDF)</a>, about 43% of Mississippi households in 2012 had cable TV.

In other words, a higher percentage of 1860 Mississippi households had slaves than 2014 Mississippi households have cable.

Another quick comparison -- roughly 47 percent of adult Mississippians say they are Republicans (vs. Democrats and third-parties or unaffiliated voters).

So if half of the households in Mississippi owned slaves in 1860 -- and half of adults in Mississippi in 2014 are Republicans -- then could we imagine the notion of the virtues of the institution of slave ownership in 1860 Mississippi would probably have been at least as prevalent as Republican politics in 2014 Mississippi?

This doesn't take into account the fact that slaves outnumbered free people in Mississippi, or that the ratio of slaves to households in Mississippi was 7-to-1. Or that slaveowners would lend or hire out their slaves to non-slaveowners. Or that non-slaveowners might work for slaveowners in capacities above the slaves. Or that non-slaveowners might work for the state, or in law enforcement, or in industry, where they had leadership over or otherwise encountered slaves and compared their station in life to that of the slave.

*And now you're coming at me with the entire family reunion as though that should really show me what a vict... I'm sorry "survivor" you are. I could really be an ass here Jess....*

@Scott1964 I would have to submit that you're already being an ass.

I don't see anything in Jess' earlier comment that accused you personally of anything -- and, meantime, you're the one labeling people "victims" and then switching sarcastically to "survivor" to make fun of someone else's argument.

It sounds like your brother-in-law's story is truly tragic. But I also don't see where anyone, anywhere has said "he deserved it." You're the one putting those words into other's mouths.

I'll let Jess defend herself, but what I'll say is this as an owner of this site: please disagree more agreeably and characterize only your own arguments and opinions, not others.

I think you just made his point for him.

It's not just a Jackson thing… Donna and I were at a Bowery Ballroom (I think… somewhere on the LES of NYC) show with the Mighty Blue Kings (that part I KNOW… one of my favorite rockabilly/Chicago-style Blues bands) sometime in the late 1990s and we'd seen them in Denver before -- maybe twice.

The difference with this show was that -- in the intimate venue -- you could barely hear the band over the conversations in the crowd.

Finally, to get the crowd under control, Ross Bon (lead singer) went off mic and hovered over the crowd from the stage singing his heart out until everyone started to shut up and those of us there to hear him started to clap and cheer. It was a *little* better from there to the end.

It's always a pleasure when the room pays attention to the talent!

*Low minority turnout doesn't prove that any voting rights are being infringed.*

(a.) That's not what the story says. It's talking about a Voting Rights Act violation within such a political subdivision -- it doesn't say the fact that such a subdivision exists IS a Voting Rights Act violation. You're conflating to the two.

*Someone please tell me who would determine what would qualify as persistent and extremely low? Would demographics of that particular area be considered?*

(b.) You seemed so worried about this that I asked The Google for an answer, and The Google told me "Try Internet." Cool, huh? :)

http://www.leahy.senate.gov/download/1-…

‘‘(4) determination of persistent, extremely low minority turnout.—For purposes of paragraph (1)(B)(ii), a political subdivision has persistent, extremely low minority turnout with respect to a calendar year if any of the following applies:
‘‘(A) With respect to the general elections for the office of President which were held in the political subdivision during the previous 15 calendar years—
‘‘(i) in the majority of such elections, the minority turnout rate in the political subdivision was below—
‘‘(I) the minority turnout rate for the entire Nation,
‘‘(II) the nonminority turnout rate for the entire Nation,
‘‘(III) the minority turnout rate for the State in which the political subdivision is located,
‘‘(IV) the nonminority turnout rate for the State in which the political subdivision is located, and
‘‘(V) the nonminority turnout rate for the political subdivision; and
‘‘(ii) the average minority turnout rate across all such elections in the political subdivision was more than 10 percentage points below the average non minority turnout rate for the entire Nation.

‘‘(B) With respect to the general elections for Federal office which were held in the political subdivision during the previous 15 calendar years—
‘‘(i) in the majority of such elections, the minority turnout rate in the political subdivision was below—
‘‘(I) the minority turnout rate for the State in which the political subdivision is located,
‘‘(II) the non minority turnout rate for the State in which the political subdivision is located, and
‘‘(III) the non minority turnout rate for the political subdivision; and
‘‘(ii) the average minority turnout rate across all such elections in the political subdivision was more than 10 percentage points below the average non-minority turnout rate for the State in which the political subdivision is located.

You're absolutely correct. I even had "mention Midtown" on the brain when I was writing this and should have made the same point. Lessons learned in Midtown would definitely apply in and around Farish and downtown.

@Scott1962 Herein lies the risk you assume when you try to make other people's arguments for them. When you say "JFP wants a closed case reopened because he's black" … this is an complete mischaracterization.

Editorially, we're on the record on this individual case as saying we're concerned that there was no actual investigation into what happened, and that the Castle Doctrine may have been inappropriately applied in this case given the circumstances. The ethnicity of the parties involved might be interesting sociologically, but it has nothing to do with our argument in this individual case.

The fact that you happen to know that a grand jury wouldn't indict this case is… interesting... but I respectfully suggest that decision might be better left to the actual grand jury. Their decision (as opposed to yours) would be based on a careful investigation... that didn't happen. We lament that fact and hope to affect change.

It's convenient to your argument to suggest that we're incapable of understanding that people are individuals; however, your crystal ball is fuzzy when it comes to seeing what's in our heads -- much less actually comprehended what's been written.

Here's the takeaway: Make your argument, certainly, but maybe let other people characterize their own? That's part of disagreeing agreeably.

Your last paragraph literally started with "stop with the Nazi references" and ended with "cleans the gene pool." Just sayin.

Fortunately, Times-Picayune says [Lewis participated fully in practice][1] on Wednesday.

[1]: http://www.nola.com/saints/index.ssf/20…