On Jul 1, 2007, at 10:33 PM, Anne Pemberton wrote:

> Lyle,
>
> In retrospect, I was probably thinking of John Brown as the  
> uprising slave who was supported by a number of northerners,  
> Quakers, and abolitionists. It was a point made in a book about  
> Robert Gould Shaw entitle "Blue Eyed Child of Fortune The Civil War  
> Letters of Robert Gould Shaw" edited by Russell Duncan with a  
> forward by William S. McFeeley.
The only John Brown I know of in the antebellum south was neither  
black nor a slave. Is there another with that name?
>
> But, the point I was making could be applied to either Nat Turner  
> or John Brown. They both took the same risks as the leaders of the  
> American Rebellion against Britain.
In a very, very narrow strict constructionist view that may be  
argued. In a larger context it cannot.

> The charge of Mass Murder could be laid equally against Nat Turner  
> or against the presidents who ordered the bombs dropped on  
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Viet Nam, or Baghdad, just to name those in  
> my lifetime.
No, it most certainly could not. Were you aware that the Purple  
Hearts made up for the anticipated invasion of Japan are either still  
being handed out or were just exhausted? The decision to drop the  
bomb on those two cities was made after much careful and apparently  
anguished consultation at the highest levels of government in the USA  
with two objectives: 1) to end the war and 2) to save American lives.  
Viet Nam had as it's overriding concern stopping the spread of  
communism, that delightful political movement that made Hitler look  
like minor potatoes by comparison, that would have had you shot, had  
you lived under it and so on. Baghdad by which I presume you mean the  
war in Iraq had its genesis in several areas. Deposing a brutal  
dictator who had caused the killing of millions of people would in my  
view be reason enough to unleash the dogs of war. My own view on the  
subject was formed by "The Day The Earth Stood Still" wherein the  
citizens of Earth are told to put their house in order or it will be  
done for them. In specific, I would have it that once a certain  
threshold had been achieved in the number of deaths under that  
person, that one more would cause a cruise missile to come through  
the bedroom window and explode. That would continue until  
enlightenment came about.

> It is all "mass murder",
That, I submit, is absolute tripe and a wonderful indictment of the  
hyper-relativist viewpoint.

> and the numbers are not so severe in the case of either Nat Turner  
> or John Brown, as in the ones listed above.
ditto above comment.
> Nat Turner led an army of insurrection.
As Gen. Schwartzkopf famously said of Saddam Hussein "That was no  
army and you are no general". Turner had no army. What he had were  
followers. There is a major difference.

> How many armies of insurrection have we supported over the decades  
> just in the 20th century?
With the view of killing folks due to their color? None.

> How is Nat Turner's "crime" so different?
OK, so you passed your college history courses. But you either  
flunked completely your ethics courses or you never took them. That a  
shame that you could in all apparent seriousness ask such a question.

Lyle