A Confederate Song: The Yellow Rose of Texas (Video)

I have loved this song since I was a wee lad. It was popular among Confederate cavalrymen, of which my great grandfather was one: Roddy's Brigade, L Company, 4th Alabama Cavalry, Confederate States Army.  Enjoy.

Confederate Quote of the Day: Jack Kerwick

In treating the Confederate flag like a Swastika, in reducing it to a one-dimensional symbol of “hate,” the flag’s enemies—both Democrats and Republicans—are guilty of nothing less than the dehumanization of generations—of millions—of patriotic, God-fearing, salt-of-the-Earth Southern Americans.

--Jack Kerwick, writing in the Unz Review:  
The Fake Controversy of the Confederate Flag -- and Why It Matters

Feeling Alienated: Pray For a New Secession

Yankee Hatred Then As Now

Let's see....Congress is voting on banning the Confederate flag from federal cemeteries.  Illegal aliens are to be allowed to vote (if the left has its way).  Radical white-hating blacks vote to dig up Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife from their graves in Memphis.  The IRS and DOJ were conspiring to put conservatives in jail during the last election cycle. Christianity is being increasingly suppressed and replaced by a love of the State.  Plans are underway to rename U.S. forts named after Confederate generals, e.g., Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, Fort Hood. Monuments to the Confederate dead are being removed. Streets and schools are being renamed to erase any memorials to Confederates.

It's gotten so bad that radical white-hating blacks are now demanding the removal of Thomas Jefferson's memorial in Washington, D.C., and the renaming of Washington, D.C. (both Jefferson and Washington were slave owners).

This race-based hysteria has reached depths never previously attained in American history.  Never before have politicians and "civil rights" race-hustlers assaulted so assiduously the traditions, culture and history of the South.  What we are witnessing is an outpouring of hate, intolerance and ignorance by one segment of the population against another.  The Confederate flag is not so much a symbol of hate, but its target.  Indeed, it was largely this sectional hatred of North against South that brought on the last Civil War.  It may very well bring on the next.

Each day brings fresh outrages, and I read about them, dumbfounded, shocked and sickened.  Tonight, as I sit here at my table, I have to ask myself:  Am I proud to be an American?  The answer is no. Do I have any optimism for the future of this country?  Again, the answer is no.  Do I feel any patriotism for the USA?  Not very much.  Am I motivated to get out the vote for Republicans?  No.

About the only thing I could get excited and motivated about is secession.  I would love to see Texas lead the way.  I would love to see various states flip off the federal tyranny on their way out the door.

We can no longer hope to save the America that once was -- but we can save pieces of it -- through secession.  Instead of seeing the Confederate flag as a disdained memorial to long-dead and defeated soldiers, I want to see it flying proudly and lively over every state capitol in the South -- as the national flag of a new Southern Confederacy.

Now I'm a Good Ol' Rebel: A Bitter Song of Southern Defeat

I've always liked this song, as it conveys the true feeling of defeat and despair that Confederate soldiers must have felt after Appomattox.  I don't agree with every verse -- I don't hate the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, both of which were corrupted and ignored by Lincoln in his war of subjugation and conquest.  Most everything else I agree with, especially in these dark times of Southern cultural cleansing and repression.

Confederate Soldier Pic of the Day

Here's an ambrotype photograph of a young, handsome Confederate soldier.  His identity is unknown.  He is wearing a forage hat and a shell jacket.  A forage hat is similar to a kepi, but deeper.  It was used as a kind of grocery bag to carry apples, eggs, corn or whatever foodstuffs the soldier could find while on campaign.

He also appears to have a secession cockade pinned onto his jacket.

An ambrotype photo is one that was made on glass.  These old time photographs had no negative -- they were the negative!  So  the photos were actually mirror images of the subject.  They also appear very dark when viewed, as they rely on reflected light in order to see the details.  I have used Photoshop to lighten the images, flip them horizontally so they show the subject as he really was, not a mirror image.  Finally, I cleaned up a few spots and imperfections here and there.

The photographer would often paint on a bit of color to make the image look more realistic.  This Confederate's buttons have been tinted gold, and the badge on top of his hat has also.  I can't tell what the badge is.  If it is crossed cannons, he would be in the artillery; crossed swords, the cavalry.  A bugle signifies infantry.

The photographer would often dab a subtle blush of pink on the subject's cheeks.  You can see that in this photograph.

Two Worthy Books: One on Immigration, the Other on Slavery

I have read two worthy books in the past two weeks, ones that I recommend.  They are:

1.  The Path to National Suicide - an Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism, by Lawrence Auster.  This book explains how, due to liberal ideology, our borders were opened in 1965, and how the resulting transformation of America's ethnic composition helped fuel the ideology of multiculturalism which is changing the demographics of America in radical ways.  Auster does not argue that all non-European immigration be halted, but that it is occurring too much and too fast for new immigrants to be successfully assimilated into our Anglo-Saxon, Judeo-Christian culture.  The demographics of America prior to the 1965 immigration act should be restored and preserved, in order to retain our culture, forms of government and traditions.

I found the pamphlet very well written and argued.

2. The Myths of American Slavery, by Walter D. Kennedy.  The actual history of slavery in the United States includes the North's enormous culpability in the institution, as well as its hypocrisy.  The author convincingly refutes the many slanders and falsehoods about the Confederacy, the Southern states, and the myths about the institution of African slavery.  Note:  exposing the whole truth about slavery is not "defending slavery," so please don't go there.  If you adore Lincoln as a demi-god and like to repeat the simplistic falsehoods of the Northern Myth, you won't like this book -- and that's why you should read it.

There is no way you can honor, respect or admire the Yankee invasion of the South in 1861 without undermining your own freedom in the here and now.

Freakout Nation Freaks Out Over a Child's Hat

A little black boy in North Carolina was given a Confederate kepi as a prize at his grade school.  As he stepped off the bus on his way home, his mom freaked out.  Omigod, a Confederate kepi!  Slavery!  Racism!  Some dumb-ass leftwing site (Freakout Nation) picked up the story and are now wallowing in self-righteousness.  They don't realize it, but they are also wallowing in ignorance.

The Northern Myth (that righteous Northerners fought the Evil South to free the slaves) is a matter of religious faith for the ignorant, a paean to the mighty federal government, who has the right to compel any of the formerly sovereign states to do what it wants, to invade those states with armies, make war on the population therein, and kill and destroy until the will of the populace is obliterated.  This is a blueprint for internal tyrants to reduce Americans to utter despotism, and even those conservatives who buy into it are promoting the unbridled power of the centralized government.

Grave of a Black Confederate
Cavalry Trooper

And no, the so-called Civil War was not fought over slavery.  There is no moral justification for Lincoln's war of aggression.  (Read the article before hitting me with all the Damn-Yankee talking points.)

I commented over at Freakout Nation, and was quickly banned from further commenting.  Ignoramuses do not appreciate any light allowed into their desiccated brains.

And He's Wearing a Kepi
See Confederate Memorial Here

I told them that this kid is not the first black to wear a Confederate kepi.  Many blacks did, in service to the South.  This unfortunate fact upsets the great moral, self-legitimating myth, and must be suppressed.  The brainwashed like their history nice and neat, like a file cabinet with two drawers, one marked "Good" and the other "Bad."  Actual history is not so neat and tidy, not so easily understood.  And, frankly, I am sick and tired of having ignoramuses slander my Confederate ancestors.

Real Confederate Soldiers
Notice the Tan on the Confederate in Upper Right?

H.L. Mencken and the Gettysburg Address

As the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg approaches, I think it is appropriate to pierce the self-delusion of Yankee apologists and dreamers with a quote from H.L. Mencken.

by H.L. Mencken

The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.

"Confederate Gray" Blog Goes Online

My crummy week is almost over and I haven't blogged at all.  What time  I had after work was creating a new blog called "Confederate Gray."  I so enjoyed my last exchange (see prior post) with commenters that I decided to start a blog that focuses on the War for Southern Independence.  It is a major personal interest, since my great grandfather and his older brother both fought for the South with the Alabama Cavalry.

So how relevant is the WSI (War for Southern Independence) today?  Pretty relevant, I'd say.  There are some close parallels.  The Northern states who defied the Constitution and the laws in 1860 are similar to Barack Obama defying the Constitution and the laws today (by refusing to enforce federal immigration laws).    For Southerners of that time period, Lincoln's election was the last straw in what they saw as a long train of abuses.  If Obama is re-elected, I will see that as the last straw; however, not being a state myself, I won't secede.  I will, however, urge actual states to do so.

In any case, if interested, check out the new blog.  It is Confederate Gray.  If you are a Yankee, you may not like it.

Israeli Veteran Proud of His Confederate Heritage

After a ceremony to join the Sons of Confederate Veterans,

Arieh O'Sullivan displays the Confederate flag he took

into battle with him when he and his Israeli

paratrooper unit invaded Lebanon in

the 1982 war, Feb. 22, 2012. (Arieh O'Sullivan)

Here's an interesting story in the Jewish press, about an Israeli Arieh O'Sullivan, a former paratrooper and officer in the Israeli Defense Force.  O'Sullivan, a citizen of Israel, drives around in an army jeep with a Confederate flag on the spare tire.  He recently joined the Sons of Confederate Veterans, aligning himself with a chapter in Biloxi, Mississippi.

O'Sullivan fought with the IDF in Lebanon in 1982, and like thousands of Confederate descendant-soldiers, carried the Confederate battle flag into battle -- concealed in one of his pouches.

O'Sullivan's ancestor was in the Confederate cavalry of Alabama (so was mine), and O'Sullivan notes similarities between the Confederate nation and Israel -- as have I.  His impressions are not quite the same as mine, however.  O'Sullivan says this:
“There’s some kind of kinship between Israel and the Confederacy: Both are mired in self-pity, victimology and obsession with history.”

My impressions of the two nations' similarities are these:

1. Both are (or were) small nations surrounded by hostile forces bent on their violent destruction.
2. Both are the target of unending lies, distortions, ignorance and slander about their origins, purposes and the reasons they are/were attacked.
3. Both are/were absolutely determined to survive against seemingly overwhelming forces.

The Jewish Times reported this story factually and impartially, without trying to slime it with leftist or Yankee spin, as is done regularly by the American propaganda press (also known as the mainstream media).  Read the story here.

Why The Civil War Was Not About Slavery

By Donald W. Livingston, Professor of Philosophy, Emory University

Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans
President, Abbeville Institute

Reprinted With Permission

Donald W. Livingston

American historians up to the 1960s tended to treat the War Between the States as a tragic or as a bungling affair. The moral challenge posed by slavery was seen as an aspect of why war broke out, but one overshadowed by deep and long standing constitutional, economic, and political conflicts. Today, however, historians, inspired by Marxist-style analysis, preach the one-dimensional doctrine that the conflict at its core was a moral struggle over slavery. The South was willing to destroy the Union in order to protect slavery and expand it. The North fought to eliminate slavery by preserving the Union. A recent historian, for instance, writes “It is an astonishing anomaly that … for one hundred years historians and commentators attempted to exorcise slavery as relevant or to downplay it as incidental to the conflict. Recent scholarship has at last acknowledged that the participants, after all, knew what they were contending about. Slavery, its expansion or limitation, its abolition or perpetuation was what the war was all about.”¹

Another historian writes “that Southerners seceded over one thing and fought over one thing, slavery.” A recent biographer of Robert E. Lee says of Lee “He was a leader in the Southern rebellion, in which so many fought so nobly for such a bad cause.”²

Robert Penn Warren, a Pulitzer Prize poet and novelist, witnessed the birth of this new style of writing history in the early 1960s, and wrote a devastating critique of it in The Legacy of the Civil War. Through the myth of a holy crusade to abolish slavery, Americans had illegitimately acquired what he called a great “treasury of virtue.” Even historians who know the myth is a distortion have generally not written history in a way to criticize it. The National Park Service has ordered every Civil War battlefield park in the nation exhibit the theme that the war was “about slavery.” This was the theme of Ken Burns’ TV series on the Civil War in which Lee was presented as “a traitor.” The series was very popular and prompted the conservative columnist George Will to gush that it was a demonstration of what television is for. The myth has been taught for generations in public schools and colleges. References to it are frequently heard in political speeches, commemoration speeches of all kinds, the media, in film, and in sermons from mainline churches. People in Argentina, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow and Australia who know next to nothing about American history know that the Civil War was “about slavery.” The upcoming sesquicentennial year commemorating the beginning of the War to Prevent Southern Independence promises to be a long, extended speech explaining how the war was “about slavery.” The myth, however, is not true. What is essentially wrong with it is not that it obsessively focuses on slavery while omitting facts contrary to the myth (though it does that), but that it reads a moral meaning into the conflict over slavery that did not exist. It leads us to believe that the North’s “antislavery” was a correct response to the moral challenge, whereas the South was “pro-slavery” and reprehensibly turned its back on the moral challenge. In what follows we shall see that what Warren called America’s great “treasury of virtue” is filled with fool’s gold that morally corrupts all who exploit it.

The first thing to appreciate is slavery was, from the very first, a national enormity, an American sin for which every section of the Union bore some responsibility. This, however, is not how we have been trained to think. We think of slavery as an alien and “un-American” practice confined to the South in the 19th century. But an honest look at American history reveals a quite different picture. Slavery was woven into the economic, political, and cultural fabric of the Northern states from the beginning. The first African slaves were brought to New England in 1638 in exchange for enslaved Indians. Boston began importing slaves from Africa in 1644. For 164 years New Englanders sold slaves throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The 150th Anniversary of the American Civil War: Understanding History and the Cause of Freedom

My friend Donald Douglas has a post on the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, or as we Confederate sympathizers prefer to call it, the War for Southern Independence.  I generally like to steer clear of discussions about that war, because I fear some deep well of emotion will be tapped in my soul and I become filled with pure, unadulterated hatred for the North and for Yankees.  Well, not exactly; a pure and deep hatred for the Yankees and Northerners of the 19th century, all of whom are long dead.

I don't want to go there, because hatred is an ugly emotion and it is impossible to feel happy and feel hatred at the same time.  I would rather avoid such feelings whenever possible.  However, I do have my triggers and they are wired to strong emotions.

The Civil War was then and this is now.  No Yankee bummers still live who burned down the South, murdered civilians, destroyed private homes and farms, raped Southern women, starved Confederate POWs (or used them as human shields against artillery).  The current generation of Northerners are not responsible.  It would be stupid to hate the descendants of the Northern side, especially since many of them are now valued friends and allies in a new struggle for state sovereignty and individual freedom.

Instead of refighting old wars of 150 years ago, we need to focus on the current struggle against liberalism, socialism and big government tyranny.  The left would love to use the sesquicentennial of the Civil War to divide conservatives, make them hate each other, in a divide and conquer strategy.  We have to be smarter than that and not allow it.

However, there are very strong reasons why the true history of the Civil War be told, one without either Southern or Northern bias, if that is at all possible (it isn't, but we must try).  Modern politicians often rewrite history to justify political actions in the here and now.  History becomes a political tool for achieving modern political ends.  Carl Sandburg's celebrated volumes on Abraham Lincoln, or so I've read, were largely a disguised justification for Roosevelt's New Deal.  (Carl Sandburg was an avowed socialist.)

In George Orwell's 1984, the apparatchiks of some future tyranny are constantly rewriting history to justify current events.   The reason is simple:  "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."  It is for this reason that, though I wish to avoid unnecessary strife between myself and modern Northern allies in the cause of freedom, that I must sometimes publish articles about the Southern Confederacy and the cause for which my Confederate ancestors fought.

I am currently seeking reprint permission for the best article on the causes of the war that I have ever read.  It is "Why the War Was Not About Slavery," by Professor Donald W. Livingston of Emory University.  It appeared in the September/October issue of Confederate Veteran magazine, a publication of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, of which I am a member.  That article will put the history of the Civil War into a much more accurate context than now exists in popular culture.

Paul of Powerline is WRONG: The Right Proclamation in Virginia

Paul of Powerline is a Lincolnophile, who chooses to believe the false and flattering myths about our most overrated president, one Abraham Lincoln.  Okay, so he loves a white supremacist who ended the consent of the governed, greatly increased the power of the federal government and started a war that killed 640,000 Americans and made war on women, children and civilians.  (And that was when he wasn't busy killing American Indians.)

Paul now objects to the Governor of Virginia issuing a proclamation to honor Confederate history by making April "Confederate history month."  It seems the Governor removed the anti-slavery language from the proclamation that had been tacked on it before. That was absolutely the right thing to do.  The war wasn't about ending slavery and the North largely hated blacks; didn't want them in the new territories, not because they opposed slavery but because they opposed the presence of blacks and the additional political clout that might accrue to the South, enabling it to better resist Northern tariffs. 

Paul says Confederate soldiers were "honorable" even though they fought for the wrong side.  Horseshit, Paul.  They fought for the right side, but the right side doesn't always win.  And when they lose, they have to endure many decades of slander, myth and outright lies.

It is a shame that liberals (and Northern myth zealots like Paul) have politicized history by rewriting it for the purpose of advancing modern political issues.  So Confederate descendants must now apologize for their ancestors at every turn, in order to tacitly approve and confirm the Northern myth, i.e. that the North didn't (illegally and immorally) invade the South for conquest, territory and taxes, but did so because they were morally outraged about slavery, filled with glorious self-righteousness and dedicated to the equality of man, no matter what the price in blood and treasure.  Yeah, right.

I'll tell you what I think, Paul.  The next time any Northern states want to honor Yankees, they should do so, but only with language that denounces Indian genocide, war crimes against civilians, Northern racism, arson and theft, and imperialism against other states and territories (ask the Hawaiians about the latter).

A Rebuttal to "Crooks and Liars" on the Sons of Confederate Veterans

The brazen liars at "Crooks and Liars" printed a ton of misinformation yesterday about the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV).  Perhaps they should rename their blog as "Crooks, Liars and Cowards" since they delete all comments that refute their positions.  This post will rebut their scurrilous article on the SCV.

They printed the following:

Experts say the divisions within the Sons vary between two extremes. On one side are the traditionalists, members who focus on cleaning up Confederate grave sites and conducting Civil War re-enactments.

On the other side are the so-called Lunatics, up to 2,000 members who deride traditionalists as "grannies'' and belong to camps named after notorious Southern figures such as John Wilkes Booth and Jesse James.

John Wilkes Booth members have been known to put pennies in urinals, making sure to leave the Lincoln side face-up. Other Lunatic groups have removed the U.S. flag from their halls and banned the Pledge of Allegiance, says Walter Hilderman, who several years ago created an anti-Lunatic group called Save the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

"The problem is it's supposed to be a patriotic organization," says Hilderman, 59. "You are either that or you let guys in who want to secede."

What "experts" say these things?  None are identified.  There are no SCV Camps named after either John Wilkes Booth or Jesse James and there never has been.  You can verify this yourself by visiting the SCV website and browsing through the camps in each state and also the international camps.  I did so this morning and did not find any camp named "John Wilkes Booth" or "Jesse James."  Furthermore, I know the SCV is jealous of its reputation and would never allow such names.  However, suit yourself and browse the camps and see if I'm wrong.

The anecdotal story of non-existent "John Wilkes Booth" members putting pennies in urinals is another myth.  Note that no details have been provided for this camp (what's its Camp Number?  Where is it located?  Who is its Commander?).  The story is a lie.

I know of no SCV camps that have banned the American flag or the pledge of allegiance from their halls.  The story is just another lie -- note the complete lack of specifics or verifiable facts.

The so-called "Save the SCV" group was loyal to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and insisted that SCV members be kicked out based on their personal beliefs and memberships in other non-radical organizations (the Sons does kick out members of non-peaceful, radical groups like the Klan, Skinheads or Neo-Nazis).  The misnamed "Save the SCV" group insisted on forcing their personal political views on the entire membership and vetting members based on that criterion.  They were willing to damage the organization's reputation in support of their personal politics and most of us considered them despicable.  They had the attitude of rule or ruin and did their best to damage the Sons.

The "Save the SCV" group was overwhelmingly opposed by the majority of SCV members and was defeated.  The Sons does not screen members based on their peaceful, personal political beliefs.  It never has.  So the Sons has a few gay members because their sexual preference is not a criterion for membership.  My own SCV camp has a member who is a leftist peacenik from Berkeley who smokes "medical marijuana."  When he applied for membership he was not opposed, because his personal, peaceful political beliefs are not the business of the SCV.  (He volunteered this information, it was not requested of him.)

A couple of years ago the Sons reprinted in its magazine an article by Ann Coulter defending the Confederate South.  There were many letters to the editor by members, some praising Coulter and others denouncing her. It was obvious that the Sons has more than a few liberal members, although the majority are probably conservatives.  I don't know for sure because the Sons does not keep such statistics.

Another non-criterion for membership is whether the potential SCV member wants to secede or believes in the right of secession.  Those are political positions and the Sons' charter strictly forbids it to engage in politics.   I believe in the right of secession of any state; I do not have any great desire to secede at this time in history.  Before the Civil War, the right of secession was largely unquestioned.  It was even taught as a legal right at West Point.  Abraham Lincoln verbally supported the right of secession in a speech to Congress in 1848.  (When the South took him up on it in 1861, he suddenly changed his mind.)

Beliefs in secession are neither violent nor radical, and are none of the SCV's business, nor that of anyone else.  However, if the nation continues in its radical leftward direction, I would support secession of the Red States in order to preserve liberty and to reject Democrat/socialism.  Who agrees with me?  Walter Williams, a black libertarian university professor does.  The right of secession was not decided by Northern violence and is not a "lunatic" position.  "Crooks and Liars" has no valid argument and so is reduced to insulting pejoratives and ad-hominem attacks.  No fair-minded person will find their specious insults convincing.

The SPLC and "Crooks and Liars" rely on guilt-by-association in order to slime the SCV.  They mention Kirk D. Lyons, a North Carolina attorney who has defended members of radical groups charged with crimes.  So is this illegal or unethical?  No.  Every American citizen is entitled to legal representation and a defense.  It does not mean that the attorney agrees with their radical views.  If I'm wrong, then every attorney who ever defended a murderer must be in favor of murder.  Ridiculous.  Lyons is a member of the SCV and has done nothing to deserve being kicked out.  He has a close friend in a black man, H.K. Edgerton, who supports SCV causes and they have often appeared together in public forums.

The real reason why "Crooks and Liars" wants to slander the Sons of Confederate Veterans is so they can hang the albatross of "racism" around the neck of Rep. Joe Wilson, who offended them by accusing Barack Obama of lying (even though he apologized for it).

Liberals can't win any major political argument with rhetoric, logic or facts.  They must always resort to innuendo, guilt-by-association and slander of the opposition.  Their lack of argument is matched only by their lack of personal ethics.  Don't believe them.

Update:  I received official confirmation from the Sons of Confederate Veterans regarding some of the points I rebutted above:

There is at least one real camp named for Quantrill with whom James rode;
however, I know of no camp that has ever been named for either Jesse James
or John Wilkes Booth.  James and his brother were Confederate soldiers, both
well educated, and their parents taught at Georgetown College, a Baptist
School in Kentucky.  They turned to crime after the war.

At one time there was a social group who called themselves the John Wilkes
Booth camp, and at certain meeting locations individuals would get together,
have a drink and some would wear round disks around their necks that read
John Wilkes Booth camp.  I am not aware of any activity such as this since
2003 or so.  They had no traction and were not official in any way, shape or
form.

Ben Sewell, Executive Director, Sons of Confederate Veterans

Note to Crooks and Liars: I Too Am a Member of Sons of Confederate Veterans

David Neiwert of the aptly named leftist "Crooks and Liars" blog thinks he has discovered something significant. Rep. Joe Wilson, Republican from South Carolina, is a member of the "Neo-Confederate" Sons of Confederate Veterans. Aha! Well that no doubt explains Wilson's recent, apt description of Obama as a "liar." Wilson must be a racist, because Confederate = racism. A nice simple formula for simple minds and the intellectually dishonest. Well I beg to differ. Let me explain...

I am a life member of Sons of Confederate Veterans. The organization has been around since 1896, originally organized to care for Confederate veterans of the Civil War and to safeguard their memory and history. It was known that the victors write the history books and that the South would be largely slandered and slimed by Northern historians. The Sons would be a counterbalance to their bias.
..

The Sons is not some kind of racist or extremist organization. Our main activities include memorials and memoriams, seminars and conventions. We spend a lot of time in cemeteries, repairing old graves and obtaining headstones for those unmarked and long-forgotten veterans. We often cooperate with the Sons of Union Veterans for mutual goals. (Say Crooks & Liars, are the Sons of Union Veterans "Neo-Yankees"? The Sons of the American Revolution "neo-colonists"? Just asking.)
..

The Sons is a non-profit organization that is exempt under IRC 501C(3). Membership is open to any male who is a lineal or collateral ancestor of a Confederate soldier, sailor or marine. The organization has members of many races and creeds, including white, hispanic, Jewish, black, Chinese, American Indian, Catholic, Protestant, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican and Libertarian. When you insult the Sons, you insult a broad spectrum of humanity.
..

The Sons of Confederate Veterans has no political purpose or agenda and ousts any members connected with hate groups. Nitwit Neiwert stresses the fact that the Southern Povery Law Center thinks the Sons are "racist" and "Neo-Confederate" (whatever that means), but anyone in the know is well aware that the far-left SPLC is an egregious fraud. They call everybody racist and constantly exaggerate the number and size of "hate groups" in order to bring in dues from the gullible public -- and even Rush Limbaugh has said as much.  They are the richest of all non-profit organizations, with funds that are in the millions of dollars.  They have been denounced as a fraud by many people, including prominent liberals.
..

The American Civil War was not some simplistic fight between good and evil. It was a complex cultural event centered mainly around the issue of secession. The war was NOT fought to end slavery, but to force the South back into a union it no longer wanted. It was a war of conquest, more about the right to taxation and control of territory than it was anything else. Slavery was a side issue, falsely portrayed as a priority after the war to give moral justification for the North's invasion and the loss of 640,000 lives.
..

Oh yes, do I support secession? You bet your ass I do. Just like our Founding Fathers did.
..

Via: The Other McCain

Via: Crooks and Liars

Via: Memeorandum

Our Southern Heroes

For us Confederate descendants, this says it all.