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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28234 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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I'd like to ask you (and anyone else who cares to answer) a few questions about Robert E Lee and the civil war in general. And none of these are intended to be gotcha questions. I'd just like to know and engage with what you (and others) think. What do you believe to have been the primary cause of the civil war? What is the legacy of the confederacy? What is important to learn/remember about Lee and the confederacy? What do you know about Lee's personal beliefs regarding the institution of slavery?

It's often best to build a reputation in a community before asking questions like this, because saying "not a gotcha, honest" is the third fastest way to make people suspect it's a gotcha (the first two will shock totally own you!)

Short of having an established reputation, I just figured I'd try and be candid about my intention behind asking these questions. I guess it might have been naive of me to expect that the folks here would believe me but as a bit of a longtime lurker of this community I had some hope that people would at least engage on some level with these questions.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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