I have recently begun watching Ken Burns’ Civil War on Netflix. I figured its cheaper to watch a little at a time than go for one straight 10 hour series on DVD for $90. Trust me, I’d love to buy all of his DVD’s but they are just a bit too much and I think I’d only watch them once.
So I’d figure I’d share the facts that I am learning from this experience with my readers and I won’t try to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen this documentary. I will probably keep this a rolling part of the blog seeing I don’t have too many of those things right now. I try. I really do.
Fact #1: The South Had a Better Constitution – Okay, so the South had it’s own Constitution that was very similar to the Current Constitution. Only there were a couple things that I liked better in the Confederate constitution. Like the Line Item Veto for the President and the 6 year term for a President. That’s pretty much the only thing missing from the current constitution that would make any President’s job easier when assigning a budget. I mean, I understand, what the argument was when they were deciding what the South had to do in order to take the loss. Probably something like:
North - “Okay, if we beat you, you have to get rid of that Line Item Veto shit. And we get only a 4 year President. We don’t want someone to be in power for 12 years.”
South – "Deal. If we win, we get to keep slavery. And no touching of the hair and face.”
North – “Fine. Let’s Rumble.”
It’s things like this that get me angry. It just means that we have thought of the best possible solutions for this country but we decided to just ignore them. I mean, the NFL had the AFL, and they ended up taking the ideas of the Challenge Flag, the 2-point conversion, amongst other things. They had competition and it bred a superior league. The NBA had the ABA, for which they took the Half-time show and 3 point line, thus breeding a superior league. I mean, if the North had the South and did not take the Line Item Veto, then we deserve all the bad stuff. I hate it.
The 6 year terms isn’t as bad either, but it puts the President on the same level of the Senators in the Congress. Senators seem to have so much more power than everyone else. I think if someone saw eye to eye in Washington, we’d be able to see
Fact #2: The Youngest Victim of the War was a 9 Year Old Boy – This just makes some of the older generations more bad ass. I mean these kids were signing up to be drummer boys and flag holders for men who were out there to kill each other. Talk about growing hair on your chest. I mean kids nowadays are suing schools over being tagged too hard at recess. This is absolutely the weirdest and most shocking thing I have heard about in this series.
Why there hasn’t been a miniseries about the Civil War, and every part of it’s time on HBO is beyond me. Have it be like a Tom Hanks production made of like 15 episodes that are 2 hours long. Go to the bone with this one. I mean I like Band of Brothers, but this is our own country. We could have so many different dynamic plot twists and turns to this one. Like someone inventing a new bullet that kills a lot of Northerners so Lincoln has to change his strategy or the Battle of Antietam and its fallout. This would be television gold. We could cast half of Hollywood in this thing and everyone would have a subplot. It would be that awesome.
That’s it for now. I will continue watching Ken Burns Civil War and I will no doubt be delivering interesting facts from the documentary. Travel on my friends.
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