Lake County calls for end to Civil War Days

The Lake County Sun ^ | June 12, 2019 | Frank Aberderholden

[PBRCat]

The 2019 Civil War Days might be the last hosted by the Lake County Forest Preserves after the district president questioned the appropriateness of the annual commemoration that features the Confederate flag.

President Angelo Kyle said he would prefer to focus on environmental issues such as climate change.

In 2015, the district staged Civil War Days shortly after South Carolina removed the battle flag from its Capitol. At the time, forest preserves officials said Confederate flags were not being displayed inappropriately and were used in a historical context.

Kyle, who is African American, said that history is written by the victors, and he believes there is only one side to the story being told.

“Our ancestors told us what really happened. Did you know that black soldiers were put on the front line in the North and Southern front lines so they would be killed first?”

Many board members were stunned, with former president Ann Maine questioning Kyle’s authority to make the decision.“I’m deeply disappointed in the process and lack of transparency. I’m deeply troubled by this and concerned about the precedent it sets."

Commissioner Michael Danforth also questioned the cancellation and why it wasn’t discussed by the full board. He pointed out that African Americans made up 10 percent of the Union forces, and the event was to help us “never forget” the history of slavery in the United States.

Activist and North Chicago resident Ralph Peterson Jr. also addressed the commissioners, telling them that he feels the Civil War event is racist.

“This has nothing we want, nor should celebrate, nor re-enact. When southern states are being made to tear down every statute representing this racist, murdering chapter of our history, I can’t believe our own forest preserve is celebrating it every year, and with our tax dollars.”

[PBRCat]

The collective stupidity of politically correct agitators on full display.

[mylife]

Angelo Kyle is a regular Rocket Scientist.

[Trump20162020]

Kyle, who is African American, said that history is written by the victors, and he believes there is only one side to the story being told.

Unless it's the American Indian Wars or whatever, then something, something noble losing side being oppressed, right?

[Trump20162020]

"When southern states are being made to tear down every statute"

This right here is your brain on the Associated Press. There are literally hundreds of statues, named roads, etc. still in place, what is this person talking about?

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Maybe if Lake County ends Civil War Days, the feral zoo animals in Chicago will like them, and not demand more of their money each year.
 

[wardaddy]

Poor Yankees not allowed to celebrated their glorious victory freeing the inestimable negro

Shudder.

[Spok]

“Statues” or “statutes “? Does this AP writer know there is a difference?

[FlingWingFlyer]

President Angelo Kyle said he would prefer to focus on environmental issues such as climate change.

It sounds like Angelo isn't capable of multi-tasking.

[FlingWingFlyer]

I haven’t heard of Sheila JACKSON LEE making any name change moves.

[Nifster]

I don’t care what someone told him. His history is wrong

[Fiji Hill]

I haven’t heard of Sheila JACKSON LEE making any name change moves.

A couple years ago, a Korean-American sportscaster named Robert Lee was canned because his name was racist.

[jmacusa]

I've always thought that expression “History is written by the victors’’ to be idiotic. Who should write it, the losers? I'm no fan of the Confederacy and Confederate monuments on public property but the Confederate flag being flown as part of a historical reenactment is where it would be most appropriate to display it.

[LeoWindhorse]

Deo Vindice

[FreedomPoster]

They will remove every reference to Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of the Founders if allowed.

[Bonemaker]

I live in Lake County. How was this handjob elected? The upshot...at least at this time..is that Mr, Kyle was told to poound sand.

[Guenevere]

Attempt to erase history continues......

.

[IrishBrigade]

‘but the Confederate flag being flown as part of a historical reenactment is where it would be most appropriate to display it.’

this came to a head in Gettysburg, which has a sizeable black population, over the annual march celebrating the dedication of the national cemetery; I had stopped doing the march by then (Union reenactor) so how it was resolved I don’t know...at the time, I remember thinking ‘just shut the hell up for one goddam day...’

[IrishBrigade]

‘Deo Vindice’

unfortunately for the CSA, Deo didn’t do much vindicing, did he...?

[nathanbedford]

“This has nothing we want, nor should celebrate, nor re-enact. When southern states are being made to tear down every statute representing this racist, murdering chapter of our history, I can’t believe our own forest preserve is celebrating it every year, and with our tax dollars.”

(Here is an old reply that I have dusted off for this occasion:)

he retention of a wayward state and the federal union by military force was at least an arguable constitutional question on both sides in 1861. After Sharpsburg, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation converted a political question into a moral crusade against slavery. In subsequent years, the right of a state to voluntarily separate itself from the union was no longer arguable because it was attached to the preservation of slavery.

I do not mean to express these principles in absolute terms, nor do I contend they applied to all people at all times during the Civil War but in the long thrust of history we see the conversion of the war between the states into a war for the abolition of slavery. It became not a political question but a moral one.

I hold to the precept that culture trumps politics. The left is far more adept than conservatives at shaping culture and exploiting it to win the political argument. We have seen these arguments be so successful that states rights to retain representative power among the people of the state have been swept aside when the left wins the cultural arguments. For example, it has now been standard doctrine in the Supreme Court and applied to the whole nation that an alleged right of privacy trumps the power of the state to criminalize the use of birth control, criminalize abortions, criminalize sodomy, criminalize mixed marriage, or even fail to recognize homosexual marriage. What once could only be accomplished with the deaths of 700,000 Americans in our Civil War, is now accomplished at the stroke of a pen by five unelected Supreme Court Justices, the rights of the people of the state to govern themselves are simply usurped.

Race has been a pivotal issue in America which is been used by the left to distort the Constitution. Slavery was such a compelling moral issue for both sides that the constitutional issue could only be settled on the battlefield. Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the issue of race has become dispositive of many constitutional questions but the issues are settled all in one direction because the culture has so dictated. By way of examples, the idea of discrimination based on race is out of bounds unless the discrimination favors a designated race in our universities. Measures to prevent fraudulent voting are struck down because they allegedly place undue burdens on the African-American race. Voting districts are shaped or reshaped because of their inclusion or exclusion of African American or Mexican American races.

Today the left is attempting to weaponize race to frustrate reform of Obamacare or to reform criminal justice sentencing and our drug laws. Once the left captures a critical mass of media and academia by pleading race, it captures a critical mass of the population and gets its political and legal will enforced over others. The left has been so effective that it is now a widespread conviction of much of our citizenry that any discrimination whatsoever, not even related to race, is not just wrong but illegal.

The removal of the Confederate statues in New Orleans should not be viewed as an aberration in our history but as one more a latter stage example, or better one more symptom, of the war over culture, often involving a war about race to dominate politics.

The "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy is being lost one more time today in the war for the culture. As arguable on both sides as it is whether the Civil War was a war about slavery, it was also incontestably a war about liberty, the constitutional right of (certain) citizens of a state to govern themselves.

I would extend the meaning of the purge of history in New Orleans by shorthand: lose the often contrived war about race and risk losing not just your history but your liberty. Watch your destiny and your power within your state to defend your liberty migrate into very few elitist hands. Some of those hands are attached to Supreme Court Justices, some to federal politicians, some to bureaucrats. In New Orleans, the power is now vested in the City Council but that Council is operating within a culture.

[Feckless]

Ethnic Cleansing is universally seen as a bad thing... except when the victims are White Southerners. If people insist on removing every last vestige of the Confederacy we should see the line at the Kenyan Airlines ticket counter about 50 million deep, waiting to purchase one way tickets.