However, my memory varies from your account of the creation of my about page. To the best of my recollection the about page always contained the late-in-life conversion of Gen. Forrest to Christianity. But did you not admonished me respecting the use of the word "guerrilla" when I tried to use it as a noun instead of an adjective? I fought you as long as I could but finally had to concede your point but I was stubborn and unwilling to comply with your counsel so I put the word in italics arguing that that treatment designated the word as a foreign language word and therefore I could use it as a noun. The use of the word guerrilla appears in the about page as follows:
At war's end, General Robert E. Lee was approached by his subordinates who urged him to break out from Yankee encirclement and take to the western mountains to wage a guerrilla against the enemy. It is a testament to the nobility of Lee's character that he firmly declined their suggestion urging his men instead to lay down their arms and take up their duties as citizens of the Federal Republic.
As you know from our previous exchange on this issue, I did not decide to use either the pen name, Nathan Bedford, or the avatar cavalierly but deliberately and with full consciousness of the potential for criticism from the left, which you quite rightly point out. As the reader will see from a review of the about page, I consciously concluded to use this name and avatar for several reasons not the least among them was a certain puckish satisfaction for sticking it in the eye of the left. But on a more serious level, I decided to attack directly the last refuge of leftist scoundrels, the race card. That partly explains my tedious repeating on various threads Nathan Bedford's first maxim of American politics: all politics in America is not local but ultimately racial.
I understand completely your point of view that one ought to tread lightly in this area of race and I do not entirely dismiss it but I have at least to this degree consciously rejected it. In other words, my posture is not thoughtless but calculated. I have concluded that conservatives must stop running from this issue and stand and fight. The most recent example of the baleful power of the race card in American politics is on display right now in the pushback against Trump as a racist for demanding proof of Obama's eligibility. Trump's reaction is to take them on directly. He is not apologizing his way into political suicide as we so painfully observed with Sen. Trent Lott. I think Trump's reaction is long overdue and the better course. We shall see.
Interested Freepers lurking on this thread will find much of this alluded to in the about page.
As to the caution that I ought not to be posting under this name and avatar from Germany, I make no apologies. It is a fact that there is less prejudice against Africans here in Germany than in most parts of the United States. The intermarriage rate is extremely high here. The Holocaust was two generations ago and I leave it to the Lord to visit the sins of one generation on to the next.
But if the opposite were the case, I would nevertheless reject your observation which implies that an accident of geography forecloses free-speech and presumes a guilty character. I reject it for the same reasons I use the pen name and avatar.
I have posted many times my belief that it is fatal to condition the right of free speech on the subjective reaction of the listener. That is what the left is trying to impose on us to shut down conservative speech. That is how the Muslims are trying to impose censorship on the whole world. Once we submit to subjectivity there will be no end to the tyranny
Equally, I reject the notion that public relations values, the Dale Carnegie idea of making friends and influencing people, trumps vigorous and principled advocacy of conservative values. That is the way of timidity and defeat.
It was great to hear from you again and I hope you are doing well.
Are you going to correct my grammar?
Fondly,
