Scott McLarty and Mike Feinstein defend the Confederacy and oppose the philosophy behind the Nuremberg trials
Subject: Scott McLarty and Mike Feinstein defend the Confederacy and oppose the philosophy behind the Nuremberg trials
From: Jonathan Farley <lattice.theory@gmail.com>
Date: 10/17/09, 11:36
To: Scott McLarty <mclarty@greens.org>
CC: Donna Warren <ecottry@socal.rr.com>, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>

Scott,
I wasn't playing with words and I thought carefully about every sentence in my essay.  There was nothing reckless about the essay.

Treason is and was a capital crime, and the Confederates committed treason. John Brown was executed along with every slave who attempted insurrection, which was the law at the time. 

Your analogy with World War II is stupid since German soldiers were typically conscripts, whereas today's Klan supporting neo-Confederates are quite proud of the fact that their ancestors *volunteered* to defend slavery.  Moreover, it is not treason to take up arms against a foreign government.  It is treason to take up arms against your own government.

The real danger was that racist whites like yourself (oh, I am sure you have lots of black friends; that's not the point) would not defend a black person who was getting death threats and had his career threatened merely for reciting historical facts by people who outnumbered him.  If you really are so sure of your philosophical position, you live in Washington, D.C.  Go to the meeting of any black political organization alone and express your views as angrily as you expressed them below in a safe, white forum.


The US would have been better off if the Confederates had been executed, because then they and their progeny would not have been able to execute thousands of others---blacks, that is---up to and including Martin Luther King, whose existence may not even have been necessary had the Confederacy been, as I wrote in my essay, thoroughly destroyed.

And I would not have to live outside the country where I was born.

Jonathan Farley



---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Scott McLarty wrote:
>
>> Donna, the gist of your argument is "the soldiers
>> and leaders of the Confederacy all deserved to be
>> executed, but we're glad they weren't." This is
>> playing with words. The sentences are quite
>> clear, in their context and as isolated quotes.
>> If we oppose capital punishment, we don't believe
>> anyone "deserves" the gallows. Shall we tell
>> Texas that we agree that some of those criminals
>> deserved to die, but we wish Gov. George W. Bush
>> didn't sign their death warrants?
>>
>> Furthermore, it is also absolutely false that "by
>> the mores of [every Confederate soldiers'] age
>> and ours" that an entire army should be executed
>> for being on the wrong side, even if there are
>> precedents in which leaders were executed. (For
>> instance, some Nazi leaders were put to death;
>> rank and file German soldiers weren't.) Are
>> there any historical examples in which entire
>> armies were exterminated, whether for treasonous
>> rebellion or other reasons, and there was general
>> agreement that this was justified? Yet, this is
>> what Jonathan says quite clearly.
>>
>> These are reckless, unfortunate statements, and I
>> don't think Jonathan thought about them very much
>> before writing and submitting them for
>> publication.
>>
>> The danger here is that our pursuit of important
>> goals -- reparations; ending the glorification of
>> the Confederacy at taxpayers' expense and at
>> universities like Vanderbilt; racial and economic
>> justice -- will get derailed because someone who
>> represents the Green Party, which intensely
>> opposes capital punishment, threw in the argument
>> that all Confederate soldiers & leaders should
>> have been (or "deserved to be") executed and that
>> the US would have been better off if that had
>> happened.
>>
>> That's a debate I want no part of, and I'm angry
>> at Jonathan for potentially igniting it. Our
>> enemies -- from white supremacist ideologues to
>> weaklivered liberals who can't wait to see Greens
>> exposed as hypocrits -- will have a field day
>> with what Jonathan wrote.
>>
>> If you want to be in position of trying to defend
>> these two sentences publicly, be my guest. But I
>> don't see that it will serve you, the Green
>> Party, racial justice, reparations, etc. in any
>> positive way at all. On the contrary, defending
>> a statement favoring mass executions could turn
>> into something quite ugly and pointless, for all
>> of us.
>>
>> Scott
>>