Still want to be a pirate? On which end of the plank do you place yourself? [Walking the Plank, Howard Pyle, 1887]
So, let me be out front with it – I don’t like pirates.
Let’s be honest here, that for all of the “Arghhh!” whooping good-time grog drinking and hearty sea chanty singing, pirates and the act of piracy are still nothing that any modern person should want to share the same planet with. If I press the point I think you will have to agree with me – so I will.
The Scars of Slavery, A man named Peter, Louisiana 1863 - source Wikimedia
I had a very kind comment from The Chiefio, regarding my previous post, A Comment on the Downfall of the Slavery Driven Expansion of the Antebellum United States, which was itself derived from a comment I made on a post over at his blog entitled Slavery Shrunk America.
As an aside – you can see immediately that The Chiefio and the Meme Merchants Consortium are operating on very different theories about titling posts. Chiefio seems to be operating on the Norman Mclean [Scottish] model, and we MMC on the James Joyce [or Irish] model – oddly the MMC tends towards Scottish ancestry, and Chiefio Irish – go figure.
Naturally, my interests were somewhat tangential to Chiefio’s original post, which had more to do with how North South pre-Civil War political wrangling over the slave issue affected US expansionism southwards into Mexico, but we seem to be having some kind of a civil conversation on the subject – I’m loving it. You can decide if its interesting to you.
The Coraline Meme 