What is going on, right now, is that we must deal with a demagogue in Washington, whose conduct over the years attests his hatred for various aspects of the American tradition--some of it identified with one region, much of it virtually ubiquitous.
He sat for years in a Church, where his Pastor damned America. He organized discontent among the poor, as an occupation, before he ran for office. He studied Marxist values & techniques from others who hated America.
That demagogue was elected because a large segment of our youth, who should have known better, were never taught the positive things about the American tradition, which motivate most of us at this Forum.
You want to cope with what is going on now? Then do not encourage this endless disparagement of traditional American values. What I allude to is not people expressing different opinions on historic issues; but disrespecting one another's forebears. That is not the way to rally once more to rekindle the coalition of traditional Americans who created the Constitution, now being deliberately ignored in Washington; no way to uphold values that must be upheld, if America is to survive in any recognizable form.
Of course, anyone who suggests that "Yankees are scum," is doing exactly the same thing that I deplore. A far better example of the right sort of interaction, would be the respect that our neighbor from Clermont County, General Grant, showed for General Lee, at the end of the War; or which General Lee showed in teaching his students at Washington & Lee, not to hate the North..
William Flax
Treasonous destruction of the Union is the farthest one can get from “American tradition” and “traditional American values”.
I certainly didn't have anything against Robert E. Lee when I came here, but after years of Yankee-bashing and Lincoln hating, I don't really care to hear any more about the saintly Marse Robert.
Maybe that's part of growing up -- being able to see the faults or flaws of Lincoln or Lee or Davis or Jackson or Grant or Sherman. It doesn't mean that you don't have respect for them, just that you can see that they had their own failings as all people do.
The idea that Johnny Reb and Billy Yank were the best of friends and wouldn't have had any quarrel with each other if it weren't for those pesky abolitionists is gone and isn't coming back any time soon. It was a sweet story, but certainly not the whole truth. That doesn't mean America is going to put Che Guevara, Mao, or Malcolm X in the place of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, though.
But you might be right. There might be good reason to worry about the future. If you're concerned you might tell your secessionist friends to cool it and not antagonize conservatives and Republicans who don't share their point of view about what happened long before any of us was born, rather than always taking their side. Respect is a two-way street.