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Of Guilt and the Late Confederacy
Townhall.com ^ | August 14, 2018 | Bill Murchison

Posted on 08/14/2018 5:54:38 PM PDT by Kaslin

Anti-Confederate liberals (of various races) can't get over the fact that pro-common-sense liberals, moderates and conservatives (of various races) can't go over the fact that rhetorical agitation over race has led us down a blind alley.

The supposed "nationalist" rally in Washington, D.C., last weekend was more an embarrassment to its promoters than it was anything else significant. No one showed up but cops, journalists and anti-nationalist protesters.

Ho-hum. We're back approximately where we were before the Charlottesville, Virginia, disaster the Washington march was meant to commemorate -- a foul-tempered shouting match that ended in death for a bystander hit by a "nationalist"-driven car.

A vocal coterie continues to think all vestiges of the late Confederacy -- especially, statues of Gen. Robert E. Lee -- should be removed from the public gaze. A far larger number, it seems to me, posit the futility, and harm, that flow from keeping alive the animosities of the past.

The latter constituency rejects the contention that, look, the past is the present: requiring a huge, 16th-century-style auto da fe at which present generations confess and bewail the sins of generations long gone. The technique for repenting of sins one never committed in the first place is unknown to human experience. Nevertheless, it's what we're supposed to do. Small wonder we haven't done it, apart from removing the odd Lee statue, as at Dallas' Lee Park. To the enrichment of human understanding? If so, no one is making that claim.

Looks as though we're moving on to larger goals, like maybe -- I kid you not -- committing "The Eyes of Texas" to the purgative flames, now that the venerable school song of the University of Texas, and unofficial anthem of the whole state, has been found culpable.

Culpable, yes. I said I wasn't kidding. The university's vice provost for "diversity" has informed student government members who possibly hadn't known the brutal truth that "The Eyes" dates from the Jim Crow era. "This is definitely about minstrelsy and past racism," said the provost. "It's also about school pride. One question is whether it can be both those things."

Maybe it can't be anything. Maybe nothing can be, given our culture's susceptibility to calls for moral reformation involving less the change of heart than the wiping away of memory, like bad words on a blackboard. Gone! Forgotten! Except that nothing is ever forgotten, save at the margins of history. We are who we are because of who we have been; we are where we are because of the places we have dwelt and those to which we have journeyed.

A sign of cultural weakness at the knees is the disposition to appease the clamorous by acceding to their demands: as the Dallas City Council did when, erratically, and solely because a relative handful were demanding such an action, it sent its Lee statute away to repose in an airplane hanger. I am not kidding -- an airplane hanger.

Civilization demands that its genuine friends -- not the kibitzers and showmen on the fringe -- when taking the measure of present and future needs, will consider and reflect on the good and the less than good in life, not to mention the truly awful and the merely preposterous. To remember isn't to excuse; it's to learn and thus to grow in wisdom and understanding.

In freeing the slaves, Yankee soldiers shot and blew up and starved many a Confederate. Was that nice? Should we be happy that so many bayonets ripped apart so many intestines? No. Nor should we be happy that so many Africans came in innocence to a land of which they knew nothing to work all their days as the bought-and-paid-for property of others.

History is far more complex, far more multisided than today's self-anointed cleansers of the record can be induced to admit. I think the rest of us are going to have to work around them. In the end, I think, and insofar as it can be achieved, we're going to have to ignore them.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: confederacy; texas; theleft
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To: FLT-bird

How very childish of you. Thank you for displaying your intellectual shoe size for us.


321 posted on 08/26/2018 7:55:29 AM PDT by jmacusa (Made it Ma, top of the world!'')
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To: jmacusa

There is no need to get this vulgar. You sound like the hard left in their name calling.


322 posted on 08/26/2018 8:01:25 AM PDT by apocalypto
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To: apocalypto

Um, do you live in a convent? What is vulgar about what I posted?


323 posted on 08/26/2018 8:15:50 AM PDT by jmacusa (Made it Ma, top of the world!'')
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To: FLT-bird; rockrr
FLT-bird: "As I said, its obvious you don’t have much going on in your life to go miles out of your way over and over again..."

Free Republic is not "out of my way", it's where I go almost daily for news & opinions.
Your posts are not "out of my way" when they're in a thread that interests me.

FLT-bird: "...try to drag me back into a thread that has been off the board for weeks or months."

I have no idea what "off the board" means.
But if you are sincerely curious, the explanation is simply that when I get time from my busy life, I review threads like this and answer any posts like yours which were not already answered.

If it helps, you can think of me as a clean-up hitter -- my goal is to knock it out of the ballpark and bring home any runners already on base.

Of course you are free to answer my posts, or not, as you wish, your choice, no law says you have to do one or the other.

FLT-bird: "No self flattery is required to make that observation.
Its quite obvious."

No, you still flatter yourself, so I went back & counted them up.
Of my past 100 posts, FLT-bird was addressed on six.

But I only respond to your lies, so in the future stick to the truth and you'll never hear from me again, FRiend.

324 posted on 08/26/2018 11:15:41 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: FLT-bird; rockrr
FLT-bird: "uhhh. no, I’ didn’t start it.
This thread had been dormant for weeks."

Oh, dear, you never stop with the nonsense, do you?
This thread was never "dormant".
So I went back and counted -- by my count FLT-bird made 53 posts on August 14 & 15 then refused to respond to any more until August 23, and that was just to complain I would "try to draw me back in."
But in the mean time, between the 15th and 23rd, the thread remained very active, with several posts daily, including one to you on the 18th which you didn't respond to.

So the bottom line is that FLT-bird is chock-full of nonsense and this particular complaint is just another on the very long list.

FLT-bird: "Then you and your little cabal tried once again to drag me back into the tired old discussion by tagging me over and over and over again weeks after I had ignored your previous attempts."

Complete nonsense.
Review this thread yourself, the truth is there for anyone to see.

FLT-bird: "Really man, get a life."

Really man, get a grip.

325 posted on 08/26/2018 11:48:36 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: rockrr

Oh look! 4th attempt of the day to rope me back into this old thread.


326 posted on 08/26/2018 12:19:19 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: jmacusa

Oh look! 5th attempt of the day to rope me back into this old thread.


327 posted on 08/26/2018 12:19:47 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: BroJoeK

Oh look! 6th attempt of the day to rope me back into this old thread.


328 posted on 08/26/2018 12:20:26 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: BroJoeK

Oh look! 7th attempt of the day to rope me back into this old thread.

It sure is a good thing your little cabal isn’t obsessed and has so much going on in their lives. Otherwise, you’d be making numerous attempts to revive an old thread that scrolled off weeks ago by repeatedly tagging me day after day.

Oh wait.....


329 posted on 08/26/2018 12:21:51 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: FLT-bird

There’s that OCD shining through again...


330 posted on 08/26/2018 12:24:32 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
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To: rockrr

Oh look! 8th attempt to draw me into this thread today.

Good thing y’all aren’t obsessed losers with no lives.


331 posted on 08/26/2018 12:42:26 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: rockrr

I know who this guy is! He Al Pacino as “Michael Coroleone’’ in “GodFather 3’. “I keep trying to get out but they keep dragging me back!’’


332 posted on 08/26/2018 1:01:16 PM PDT by jmacusa (Made it Ma, top of the world!'')
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To: jmacusa

I thought he was the guy in Monty Python who keeps protesting “I’m not dead yet!” when they throw his mangy carcass on the cart.

“I feel.....happy!”

;’}


333 posted on 08/26/2018 2:29:19 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
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To: FLT-bird; rockrr; jmacusa
FLT-bird: "you’d be making numerous attempts to revive an old thread that scrolled off weeks ago by repeatedly tagging me day after day."

post #318: "off the boards"?

post #319: "dormant for weeks"?

post #329: "scrolled off weeks ago"?

What do those terms even mean, if anything?
In fact this thread has seen posts nearly every day since August 14 and many other threads go on for weeks & months, so long as people remain engaged.

So what, exactly is FLT-bird's problem?
As Queen Gertrude said to Hamlet: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

334 posted on 08/27/2018 5:03:25 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: BroJoeK

I think you nailed it the first time: flt comes onto a thread, throws out a bunch of stuff, disparages anyone who dares to disagree, and then focuses on deflection in place of defense.


335 posted on 08/27/2018 8:07:41 AM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
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To: BroJoeK

Ho hum. Another day, another attempt to necro this old thread from one of the usual suspects. What a shock.


336 posted on 08/27/2018 9:02:40 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: BroJoeK

“So what, exactly, is FLT-bird’s problem?’’. He’s not taking his meds regularly.


337 posted on 08/27/2018 10:35:49 AM PDT by jmacusa (Made it Ma, top of the world!'')
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To: jmacusa

Entitled or not, some people such as yourself insist on having them anyways.


338 posted on 08/28/2018 2:07:10 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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