Note to those who support the Confederate flag: DON'T BACK DOWN.
Don't be tepid or tentative in your support of the flag. Our opposition to Northern cultural bigotry and historical (and hysterical) ignorance must be firm and unflinching. We are right, and they are wrong. View the issue with the moral clarity it deserves.
Anti-Southern bigotry is possibly one of my biggest triggers. I wrote about that some time ago, in a previous post from 2010. In that post I noted that the Civil War was then, and this is now. I said that I wanted to work with Northerner conservatives in our modern political struggles, and not refight a war of 150 years ago. However, I noted that the Civil War (better described as The War for Southern Independence) tapped deep emotions in me, and had the power to make me hate. I stated that I don't like to hate and seek to avoid that emotion whenever possible, because happiness and hate cannot coexist. This week, however, I feel the negative emotion returning.
Why? Because Yankees, liberals and Southerners ignorant of their own history keep re-invading the South. They buy into the Northern Myth. Intellectually lazy, they go along with the popular mythology that casts the Confederates into the role of villain. They dishonor our Confederate ancestors and grossly misrepresent their cause. Now they want to finish the wishes of General Sherman to exterminate all Southerners completely, by insisting that the Confederate flag be relegated to museums, viewed only as a dishonorable artifact.
"We must show manners to those who find the flag objectionable," they write. Why is it that we must show manners but they do not? Why do their feelings count but not ours?
Arm yourselves with knowledge of Southern history. I suggest you can do that by reading a previously posted article by Professor Donald Livingston of Emory University, "Why the Civil War Was Not About Slavery."
The Civil War was then and this is now. No Yankee bummers still live
ReplyDeletewho 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.
With you on that!
Stogie, I've always respected your opinion on this, and I've learned a lot from you.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, though, I find your take on the Civil War and Southern heritage rather bizarre. Of course, I'm not from the South, so it's not a visceral issue for me. My dad, however, was born in Missouri, a slave state. His grandparents were slaves. How am I supposed be sympathetic to the "heritage" argument when that heritage includes proud support for chattel slavery? I'm sorry you get hatred in your heart when others simply don't agree with the heritage argument. I think the culture is to the point, on the left and right, that it's simply no longer acceptable to revere the heritage and discount the racist slave roots of the Confederacy.
See Jonathan Tobin, "A Flag and the Fatal Intersection of Heritage and Hate":
"For those who plan to respond, as they always do, to discussions about this topic with emails regurgitating neo-Confederate talking points about the Civil War being a conflict about state’s rights rather than slavery, let me state up front that I’m not buying it and neither is any other serious student of history. The Civil War did hinge in part on constitutional questions but the notion that slavery was incidental to the outbreak of the conflict is simply absurd. Without slavery, there would have been no war. The south seceded because it feared limits on the expansion of slavery would eventually doom the institution. To protect a heritage built on the uncompensated labor of slaves and their vast investment in human “property,” the states that formed the Confederacy waged a bloody war that costs hundreds of thousands of American lives and left the south in ruins. It would take a century for the region to recover completely."
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/06/19/confederate-flag/?utm_content=buffer9053d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Stogie, I just posted a response to Donald on his sight, feel free to read it. I deeply respect Donald Douglas, but I felt I needed to set the history straight. And, yes Johnathan Tobin is a buffoon on this topic, I would enjoy intellectuallythrashing him, or watching you do it
ReplyDeleteCheck this out: SC Gov. Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott Calls For Removal of Confederate Flag From Statehouse Grounds.
ReplyDeleteAs noted below, I have formally challenged Tobin to debate the matter.
ReplyDeleteI will not support or vote for either of these people in the future.
ReplyDeleteI have now refuted his points above in a new post.
ReplyDeleteGood morning AOW.
ReplyDeleteI still can't believe the corporate media and GovCo managed to equate that insane murderer with Southern heritage. Who elected Roof to be the one who defined what the Battleflag represents? Amazing.
ReplyDeleteBut every time -- EVERY TIME -- a Muslim kills or plots mass murder in the name of Islam, our moral and intellectual superiors warn us not to see them as representing Islam.
Here's the latest example:
http://www.wral.com/morganton-man-charged-in-plot-to-kill-americans-of-behalf-of-isis/14731349/
This country is now officially nuts.
You know, it's enough to make you want to secede.
ReplyDeleteI do want to secede. I rejoined the League of the South a year ago. I now see the error of my ways, trying to work through the Republican Party, which I will now leave, and the mainstream conservative movement that is anxious to denigrate the Confederacy in order to clothe themselves in the false robes of righteousness of the Northern Myth. I've had enough.
ReplyDeleteOkay, Stogie, I've read Professor Livingston's piece and I find it to be a terrible piece of historical writing. Here, "Response to Stogie at Saberpoint and 'Why the Civil War Was Not About Slavery...': http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/response-to-stogie-at-saberpoint-and.html
ReplyDeleteAt your comment you don't respond to my substantive points. You don't respond to them at all. Livingston makes all kinds of juvenile logical fallacies. Frankly, he's arguing against straw men and phantoms. No one denies the North was racist. You yourself continue to point out the North's racism as if this exonerates the South. The entire country was racist. Further, I've never said Lincoln was anti-racist. I said at the post that Livingston completely decontextualizes Lincoln's positions on slavery, and he issues bald-faced lies about what Lincoln actually said (on the 1862 address to Congress, for example). You don't respond to these because you can't. You fall back to the same tired arguments about how racist the North was, to which all I can say is I agree with you. The difference is that the South seceded. It did not secede because of the tariff. The tariff was a smokescreen for the real issue, which was the freedom of Southernerw to own slaves. It doesn't matter how well slaves were treated. It's against universal human rights, the inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence, to keep and perpetuate chattel slavery. Also, I don't discount the Southern heritage argument and never have. The problem is that those honorable elements of Southern heritage cannot be hermetically sealed off from the deadly and immoral institution of slavery. I'll be glad to continue to discuss the issue. It's not personal to me, frankly. I have no investment in Southern honor. I do have an investment in defending conservatism against the left's diabolical attacks on the right. Why do you insist on helping leftists attack conservatives?
Not only are they slamming the South for political points, but it's Republicans who just voted to give The Big O near-dictatorial powers to export American jobs and further impoverish the Middle Class. We're being stabbed in the back, my friend.
ReplyDeleteDonald, I have now performed a point by point rebuttal of your response. It wasn't difficult, you make no salient points. You refute nothing. Refuting your comments was not even difficult.
ReplyDeleteI doubt it very seriously
ReplyDelete