Posted under Lincoln & NeoCons & Political Correctness & Race & Sovereignty and Secession & Survival of the West & The South
Nothing is quite so striking as the spectacle of self-righteous and self-professed anti-racist crusaders flamboyantly demonstrating their sincerity by unleashing torrents of vicious bigotry. Virginia’s Governor Bob McDonnell’s decision to honor the Old Dominion’s Confederate ancestors has enraged the neoconservative and progressive left, who have used the occasion to indulge their ethnic hatred of the Southern people, while simultaneously endeavoring to discredit the Jeffersonian ideals upon which America itself was built.
I am often taken aback at, not just the hypocrisy of the anti-Southerners, but the sheer blindness and ignorance of that hypocrisy on the part of the hypocrites. Many anti-Southern bigots are not at all cognizant of the fact of their own ethnic hatred, or that it is ethnic hatred, and those that are aware of it wear that hatred as a badge of honor. Just peruse the comments section at any of these sites – so many on the left measure their own anti-racism by how passionate they are in their hatred of the Southern people. The idea that Southern people should think to honor their heritage without ritually shaming themselves is almost literally blasphemous to that corner of the left. They are outraged at such a prospect, and the sheer brazenness of their bigotry is breathtaking.
Neoconservatives are not exactly known for their robust sense of propriety, but even by their philistinish standards David Frum’s boorishness is exceptional. This Canadian presumes to dictate which Americans may and may not celebrate their heritage, and how those that may should go about it. He scoffs at the idea that Confederate soldiers “fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth”. The idea that men might take up arms to defend their homes from invaders is strange and exotic to David Frum – a notion hardly to be believed. To neoconservatives in general it seems to be an alien concept. Perhaps this ignorance on the part of neoconservatives of such a basic and natural (and healthy) compulsion explains in part why they seem so genuinely stunned when those people they send our soldiers to conquer take up arms and resist.
Jesse Jackson, in response to Gov. McDonnell’s proclamation, displayed an impressive gift for multitasking by race-baiting and lying at the same time. And he didn’t even drop any race-bait! During his customary post-racial-controversy performance he makes the ludicrous claim that the GOP is “in hock to their Southern, neo-Confederate base.” Perhaps someone should inform the League of the South of this fact. He goes on to wage rhetorical war against our Constitution and therefore the idea of America itself, concentrating his fire on the Tenth Amendment, urging “Let us not forget the sordid history of states’ rights, bound up in defending slavery, segregation, secession, and sedition”. In Jesse Jackson’s never-ending three card monte act he has here sleeved the Confederate card and switch it for a Constitutional one, in the process maligning the founding American ideal that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive to (Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness), it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government” as seditious. It is nothing short of an attack on the idea of self-government itself, which is the great enemy of the left in America. Were the people of the sovereign states to regain the proper measure of self government the left would find its policies expunged from the great swaths of America that never wanted them and never voted for them, and the left would find themselves governing only their own lives instead of everyone else’s.
The ignorance on display in a great many of these condemnations is so extreme as to be literally incredible. Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the farcical claim that the Confederate battle flag was “raised explicitly to destroy this country (the U.S.).” I can scarcely credit that a senior editor for The Atlantic actually believes that. Presumably he has attended some college at least, and if not then high school. As such I would be stunned to find that Coates is sincerely ignorant of the fact that the Confederacy never attempted or planned to “destroy” the United States, but merely to leave them. He is either profoundly ignorant as to the nature of the War Between the States or a liar, and I’m leaning toward liar.
This controversy has brought out all that is ugly about the left – its intolerance, its bigotry, its viciousness and its philistinism: qualities the left flamboyantly feigns to abhor except when they are used to humiliate Southerners. The sons of the great state of Virginia can look to their history for inspiration in repelling this attack on their home and heritage.
UPDATE:
Pat Buchanan weighs in on the controversy, and Huffington Post blogger Dr. Jonathan David Farley rejects my argument that the Confederates never intended or attempted to “destroy” the United States.
Those who feign outrage that a celebration of Confederate history does not contain a mea culpa for slavery are missing the point: a “celebration” focuses on positive achievements, by definition. To argue that Confederate History Month should dwell on slavery is akin to arguing that Martin Luther King Day should be utilized to examine MLK’s plagiarism and adultery and communist associations, or that Black History Month would be the appropriate time to emphasize and explore violent black-on-white crime or the incompetence and corruption that characterizes the governments of so many black African nations.
UPDATE II:
Jeff Schweitzer, the author of “The Confederacy: Kill the Myth Once and For All” over at HuffPo, has responded to my argument thusly:
“You are sadly mistaken. Your proposition that the United States would have continued is more naïve than I think you are. Once a state could secede whenever it did not like federal law, the Union would soon collapse. As proof, toward the end of the war, Confederate states were threatening to secede from the Confederacy! There is no way the South’s action could lead to anything but balkanization. Your argument is a bit pathetic really.”
Marvel at how anemic that argument is. This Schweitzer “served at the White House during the Clinton Administration as Assistant Director for International Affairs in the Office of Science and Technology Policy”, “was responsible for providing scientific and technological policy advice and analysis for Al Gore, President Clinton and President Clinton’s Science Advisor, and to coordinate the U.S. government’s international science and technology cooperation,” he “worked with the president’s cabinet and 22 U.S. Government technical agencies, and with countries throughout the world, in a broad range of fields including biology, physics, chemistry, geophysics, agriculture, oceanography and marine sciences,” and “was instrumental in establishing the permanent Global Forum on Science and Technology at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to promote greater international scientific collaboration” – and that puerile, simplistic argument is the best he could come up with. He’s being earnest, too. Does that read to anyone here like the argument of a well educated adult? That this mediocre mind has risen to any position of prominence or influence is more proof that America has long since ceased being a meritocracy.
James on 09 Apr 2010 at 4:07 am #
The ignorance and bile are shocking (and somewhat comical) but by no means are they surprizing. This has been the rhetoric of the Left for decades now. It has only become more widespred and more vociferous. There is so much that could be unpacked and examined in these statements, but to do so would consume too much time and space. What I find interesting is how, when it comes to Confederate symbols and commemoration, the Left keeps moving the goal line. During the controversies in Georgia and South Carolina surrounding the Confederate flag in the 1990′s those attacking the flag never would have denied that Confederate soldiers could be or should be honored in something like a governor’s proclaimation. (Afterall, who reads those anyway!) All they said they were against were displays of the Confederate flag in “positions of soverignty.” They disclaimed any desire to wipe away all official and honorable recognition of the Confederacy and Confederate soldiers. There would be no removal of monuments, or sandblasting of Stone Mountain. It was all about compromise and good faith and being fair. Now that they have won those battles they are moving to their next objective which will be the elimination of all public recognition of the Confederacy which is not a Soviet style denunciation. Anyone who does not accept the semi-official, and totally simplistic and ideologically driven, interpretation of history will be branded an outlaw. I do not doubt that if present trends continue we will absolutely see the removal of Confederate monuments, the sandblasting of Stone Mountain, the proscription of anyone who asserts their Southern identity in any thing other than a self-flagalating manner. Its is amazing how the advocates of “diversity” are the more totatlitarian enforcers of uniformity by asserting we all must adhere to the same view of history and have the same identity. Some may see these “Confederate controversies” as something of a sideshow. I disagree. I think in them we see the true, unadulterated totalitarian essense that is at the very heart of Leftism. All must conform! And, any deviation which genuinely deviates from the mainstream will be crushed.
Matt Weber on 09 Apr 2010 at 2:57 pm #
Clearly the post-Civil-War education campaign has failed, and people are not making the correct conditioned word associations when they hear ‘Confederacy’. For this reason, I submit we need a new word that seamlessly makes the proper connection for us. I humbly suggest ‘Slavederacy’.
In seriousness, what is Dr. Jonathan David Farley a doctor of?
S.L. Toddard on 09 Apr 2010 at 3:08 pm #
“He is the 2004 recipient of the Harvard Foundation’s Distinguished Scientist of the Year Award, a medal presented on behalf of the president of Harvard University in recognition of “outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of mathematics.” He obtained his doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University in 1995, after winning Oxford’s highest mathematics awards in 1994. Jonathan Farley graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1991 with the second-highest grade point average in his graduating class.
Dr. Farley’s mathematical work has been profiled in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in Science News Online, in The Economist Magazine, in USA Today, on Fox News Television, and on Air America Radio. In 2001, Ebony Magazine named Dr. Farley a “Leader of the Future.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jonathan-david-farley
HarrisonBergeron2 on 09 Apr 2010 at 5:46 pm #
the GOP is “in hock to their Southern, neo-Confederate base.” Perhaps someone should inform the League of the South of this fact.
Yeah, it never ceases to amaze me how powerful some people think we are. We couldn’t get the time of day from 99% of country club Republicans, yet we’re supposed to have these cats “in hock” to us?
Miracles and wonders!
Patroon on 10 Apr 2010 at 5:44 am #
“Once a state could secede whenever it did not like federal law, the Union would soon collapse.”
Notice the Cult of Unity within that statement.
Matt Weber on 10 Apr 2010 at 7:08 pm #
In an African editorial (about something completely unrelated), I read the following:
“The problem for European-founded states in Africa is their need to legitimise their presence by seizing control of the sites of native symbolism. If that fails, they will relinquish them only if they are first able to disembowel them of any continuing power they may have over the natives.”
To which we can add that this is characteristic of European-founded states in America as well, and that it isn’t limited to physical sites.
Captainchaos on 14 Apr 2010 at 1:51 am #
Absolute opponents of the Confederacy are really objecting to the assertion of White racial interests unto the ability of Whites to enslave non-Whites. Absolute proponents of the Confederacy are really supporting the assertion of White racial interests unto the ability of Whites to enslave non-Whites.
“Once a state could secede whenever it did not like federal law, the Union would soon collapse.”
By what logic could the Union insist upon its continued integrity that did not contradict the precedent set by a hypothetical successful Confederate secession? None that I can see. So then, perhaps not an imminent collapse, but a eventual dissolution, I think is inarguable.
Besides, any White man who took a bullet so Massa could continue to undercut the value of his labor whilst Leroy picked Massa’s cotton, and so eventually Leroy could have access to White women to effect the total racial destruction of said White man’s race, most likely had even fewer braincells than he had teeth.
Which is why triangulating against National Socialism and voicing support for the Confederacy remains a mugs game for the average White man: the former dedicated to maximizing his ethnic interests, the latter, not so much.
Of course I would not expect less from Toddard, who like White liberals, views the maximization of the interests of his rank-and-file co-ethnics as a threat to his petty interests. That is, really, at base, all that is going on here.
Amy on 23 Apr 2010 at 3:25 am #
In an African editorial (about something completely unrelated), I read the following:
“The problem for European-founded states in Africa is their need to legitimise their presence by seizing control of the sites of native symbolism. If that fails, they will relinquish them only if they are first able to disembowel them of any continuing power they may have over the natives.”
To which we can add that this is characteristic of European-founded states in America as well, and that it isn’t limited to physical sites.
Robin on 01 Sep 2010 at 6:00 pm #
Oh, please. Every idiot knows that there is no real relationship between Southern Conservatives and neo-Conservatives.