Definitely Dodged a Bullet There

It's surprisingly late and anonymous but JJV has weighed in on my previous post. I'd like to address a couple of the points raised: first, that I treated Karimov and Schlafly with "moral equivalence"; and second, that the ERA represents "cultural Marxism".

Regarding the first point, I suppose I should clarify that I consider both of the recently deceased very bad people, but for different reasons. One fought to deny basic rights to 30 million people, while the other fought to deny basic rights to 150 million people. To her credit, Schlafly probably never wanted to boil anyone, so I get that there are nuances here.

As for the second point, behold, in its awful entirety, the cultural Marxism of the Equal Rights Amendment:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

My. God.

My greatest joke ever is below, but you have to read JJV's comment first. No peeking!

Ready?

OK, here we go.

 Q: How did the ranks of pinkos get serried?

 A: Pinko shears!

Thank you and good night.

Nine Bloggers for the Site Doomed to Low Pageviews

The more perceptive of you will have noticed a new name on the masthead. In true P4500 fashion I belatedly yet warmly welcome Beastybunny to the fold. Beastybunny hails from the Bay Area (how they deal with the continuous massive fireballs and frenetic jump cuts is beyond me) and has a background as a chef and web guru, most prominently for the City of San Francisco. Some of us know her through her online combat skills, but the rest of you will get to know her through her contributions here, assuming she does not continue the magnificent P4500 tradition of posting in the low single digits then going into the Witness Protection Program.

At any rate, I believe we now have more bloggers on staff than actual readers of the site, so yay us.

Coming Soon to the Witness Protection Program

I am pleased to report that I have promoted Nick C to the masthead from the ranks of commenters/freelance contributors. His debut post is a good one and I highly recommend checking it out, because if he follows the time-honored tradition of my other co-bloggers we might never hear from him again. On the other hand, if he posts at least twice more I believe he'll beat JCF out of the cellar.

Anyway, regardless of posting frequency he's a good guy and knows his way around a beer or a game mapboard, sometimes simultaneously. Welcome to the -- hey, where'd he go?!

A Hanukkah Present for All of Us

No sooner has the sun set than a new contributor joins the award-disdaining* P4500 team! Please welcome the blogger known as Deadly Spoons to the masthead. I am sure there is a story behind that nom de blog.

His Blogger profile gives little away, so out of respect for his privacy and, of course, fear for his spoons, which I am assured via grainy YouTubes that they most certainly are deadly, I will withhold what I know about him in lieu of his first post, which he has rashly promised to produce by Christmas. He cleverly did not specify a year, so he might be safe for now.

*should anything remotely like a nomination come our way, in an as-yet unimagined category

I Intend to Blog on This Line If It Takes All Summer

In a comment to my previous post on the Civil War, friend and frequent commentor Dave P. asserted that "the war wasn't about slavery until it was politically expedient." No sooner had I drafted a response (which had to wait until now to be posted) than another friend and frequent commentor JCC weighed in with a better version of my response:

If you read the actual secession documents passed by the Southern States attempting to leave the Union, it's very clear that the was was about slavery. South Carolina, Mississippi, etc - they knew what the war was about.

Was the North fighting to free the slaves? Nope. They were fighting to defend the Union (short for "the United States of America"). But the reason the Union was threatened? The Southern states seceded to defend the right to own slaves. It wasn't even States' Rights, because among the things that they objected to was the actions of non-slave states to impede slavery (slavery transit, blocking the recovery of runaway slaves, etc).

To expand briefly on this, I would also refer readers to the Cornerstone Speech of Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens. "States rights," meanwhile, was the 19th century's version of "activist judges," in that the slave states were more than happy to use the Federal government for their own ends (Fugitive Slave Act, Dred Scott decision).

So, to recap (and in so doing I do not ascribe any particular view to anyone else):

1) The cause of the Civil War was slavery.
2) The right side won.

I'm glad we had this little talk. And Mr. P., I will see you tomorrow!