Posted under Interventionism & Political Correctness
Uh-oh. The Southern Poverty Law Center has detected yet another deviation from orthodoxy. Seems they don’t like Peter Applebome’s piece on iconoclast Kirkpatrick Sale of the Middlebury Institute—and if Heidi ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy:
The Oct. 18 Times article is essentially a pillow-soft feature that paints a picture of Sale as a father figure to the somewhat goofy but nevertheless endearing secessionists. …
What Applebome never says is that Sale arranged a co-sponsoring agreement for the Oct. 3-4 convention with the League of the South. He doesn’t note that most people familiar with LOS consider Sale’s new partner a white supremacist hate group…
Aha! Seems part of the problem is that the SPLC thinks it owns the legal rights to all the mainstream media’s puff-pieces, and they’re just jealous that someone else gets some MSM lovin’.Â
Worse, as far as Heidi & Co. are concerned, these terms of endearment were aimed at a prominent critic of the ruling elite, and that’s a no-no. The SPLC’s job is to enforce obedience to the central government and its globalist agenda. It’s one of Big Government’s busiest little helpers. Randall Williams, who resigned from the SPLC in 1986, said in 1988: “We were sharing information with the FBI, the police, undercover agents. Instead of defending clients and victims we were more of a super snoop outfit, an arm of law enforcement.†So obviously, saying or writing anything that the SPLC condemns carries a bit of risk with it. Is it possible this money-making machine might abuse that kind of power, and go after someone for purely political or personal reasons?Â
The SPLC is a privatized army enforcing globalism, and it fulfills its function by bashing dissidents. Not only is the reader of this latest hit piece supposed to believe that the polymath Sale has been taken in by wily Southern secessionists, but is also expected to swallow the notion that any deviation from mainstream thought is extremist, hateful, and a threat to us all.  The SPLC has bashed opponents of the Iraq War as anti-Semitic, and portrays anyone who opposes the globalist, anti-middle-class Open Borders agenda as racist. Like all successful mercenaries, fighting for the regime has paid off well for the SPLC—under Morris Dees’ direction, it has amassed a fortune, and is generally portrayed in the corporate media as America’s repository of goodness and light. Wampum and worship are high-energy fuels for big-time egos. So when anyone utters a word countering its revealed wisdom, Morris’ Silver Hammer comes down hard. The SPLC article continues:
Applebome seems to have a soft spot for Southern secessionists. Author of the 1997 book Dixie Rising: How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics and Culture, Applebome in the Times article describes the secession movement that led to the Civil War as “a movement now seen as racist, violent and a loser.†Now seen? As every serious scholar of the Civil War knows, there is no question that the war was fought to defend slavery and the system of white supremacy.
So, “every serious scholar†knows this? Where do I start? I could mention the Crittenden Resolution, which Congress passed in the early days of the war to define WHAT THE CONFLICT WAS ALL ABOUT:
Specifically, the resolution stated that the war was being waged for the reunion of the states, and not to abolish the south’s “peculiar institution†of slavery. The resolution required the Union Government to take no actions against institution of slavery. It was named for Senators John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee (who was later to become President).
The war was fought not for “overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States,†but to “defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union.†The war would end when the seceding states returned to the Union with slavery being intact.
Notice that’s not anyone’s opinion on either side of the question, but official US policy.
And if the war was fought over “white supremacy,†how does one explain Abe Lincoln’s attitudes toward blacks, which can hardly be called egalitarian? Or Union commanders Sheridan’s, Sherman’s, and Grant’s less-than-hospitable opinions about Jews and Indians?
There’s an unsettling logical consistency to the SPLC’s accusations of racial hatred that actually proves the League’s case against the Lincolnian state. DC’s corruption, its escalating war on liberty, and unending bloodlust can be traced directly to Lincoln’s violent counter-revolution against dispersed political power. That’s why Neocons defending globalism invoke the holy name of Lincoln to justify their unconstitutional power grabs and interventionism. Like Lincoln, apologists for DC’s most profitable export, which is subsidized mayhem, defend it as necessary to spread the self-proclaimed nobility of its foreign policy. Those who oppose violent liberation must be possessed by hatred, period. Therefore, our objections against the ongoing assault on the Bill of Rights, the obscene waste of money and lives, and frightening centralization of power are dismissed as covers for a secret agenda of racial hatred.Â
It is propaganda, pure and simple. Judge it by the simple standard of what’s at stake, and what these “champions of liberation†stand to gain by making these accusations.Â
Michael Hill on 25 Oct 2007 at 7:27 pm #
Great article. Harrison is right on point about the SPLC.
Andrew T. on 25 Oct 2007 at 7:42 pm #
The group has hardly been kind and honest with your organization, have they, Dr. Hill?
roho on 25 Oct 2007 at 8:37 pm #
This past summer I spent a half day at “Mountain Home”(The poor equivalent of a Veterans Hospital for the Confederacy)in the Clanton Alabama area. I watched a passing tourist walk her dog on the graves of the cemetary as if she thought it was a park of excrement…………Few things on interstate 65 makes me smile more than when I pass the huge flag at night with the lights on it…………………It is breathtaking to say the least.
csason on 25 Oct 2007 at 8:44 pm #
What part of ‘integrity’ is misunderstood in THAT piece ?
That’s what happens when people derive the definitions of words
from contextual uses…then they wander aimlessly through conversations,
but I suppose I too, am guilty of that..
‘Something’ called the Middlebury Institute ??
HarrisonBergeron on 25 Oct 2007 at 8:50 pm #
csason wrote:
” ‘Something’ called the Middlebury Institute ??”
Yeah, the SPLC is pretty obvious in its bias. It refers to people and organizations of which it disapproves as if they were unsightly objects best regarded at a safe distance.
Filmer on 25 Oct 2007 at 9:24 pm #
Potok wrote this piece. Heidi must have been busy slandering someone else.
Lindy's Revenge on 25 Oct 2007 at 10:17 pm #
“White supremacy” was accepted by just about everyone except the New England lunatic fringe in the Civil War days. I have anscestors who fought on both sides, and I can tell you that the my Confederate anscestor was not primarily thinking about defending “white supremacy” and my Union anscestor was most certainly not thinking about putting an end to it. The slavery system was considered reprehensible by most whites on both sides because it cut into white labor, because it encouraged corruption among white Americans, and because of the despicable practice of breaking up black families by slave traders (which even the slave owners disliked), but not because it created a racial caste system per se. Both sides generally found this system normal and natural, and unavoidable if the black and white races shared the same country. “White supremacy” did not even become an issue until later, and I would say that the Confederate cause did not become synonymous with it in the minds of many Americans until after World War II.
Andrew T. on 25 Oct 2007 at 11:22 pm #
Lindy’s Revenge,
Every human being has a right to be free. Property is a fundamental right; your most fundamental property is your body.
Danby on 26 Oct 2007 at 7:19 pm #
Andrew T,
That is true, but the topic of discussion was the attitudes of whites on both sides of the Civil War, 147 years ago, not the innate dignity of the human person.
If you had asked the average Northerner in 1860 to fight against the South to defend the equality of the races, he would have laughed in your face. If you were lucky. The concept was simply not even a topic of consideration in either the North or the South.
The Northerners (and they were many) who hated slavery hated it because of it’s effects on the whites, because of the cruelties that inevitably accompanied it’s practice, because they hated Southerners or because slavery is theft. With very few exceptions they did not hate race slavery because it is based on the premise of racial inequality. Racial inequality was assumed by most all whites and even many blacks. It was explained by Darwinists and excused by clergy.
So, while many of slavery’s defenders defended it on the basis of racial inequality, that was because racial inequality was widely assumed to be true. Slavery’s opponents didn’t bother to attack slavery on the basis of racial equality because such an argument would have been laughed off the stage in the mid-nineteenth century.
In considering history, it is vital not to impose your own cultural views and values on those whom you hope to understand.
Andrew T. on 26 Oct 2007 at 7:34 pm #
Danby,
Thanks for commenting. Yes, of course I realize that the main reason by far that the Civil War was fought was ; the issue of slavery was only a minor topic on the agenda, although it gained more momentum as the war picked up.
Thomas Woods’ “33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask” neatly dispels the myth that slavery was the central issue of the War, along with 32 other myths related to American history.
Andrew T. on 26 Oct 2007 at 7:35 pm #
Thanks for commenting. Yes, of course I realize that the main reason by far that the Civil War was fought was fought was a state’s rights; the issue of slavery was only a minor topic on the agenda, although it gained more momentum as the war picked up.
Thomas Woods’ “33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask” neatly dispels the myth that slavery was the central issue of the War, along with 32 other myths related to American history.