Posted on 12/27/2002 10:10:58 AM PST by Chi-townChief
I don't see why there's so much trouble about poor Trent Lott. After all, the South won the Civil War--oops, the War Between the States--and they're entitled to enjoy their victory. It's their right to fly the Stars and Bars over the Georgia capital, to celebrate the ''Confederate Heritage,'' to speak at the racist, anti-Catholic Bob Jones University, to lecture to white supremacy groups, to venerate the Dixiecrat Party and its founder Strom Thurmond for his wisdom, to proclaim always their mantra of ''states' rights,'' to trim black voters off the polling lists.
Admittedly, racial segregation in the South isn't what it used to be. Blacks can ride anywhere on a bus that they want to, their kids can go to integrated schools, they can vote in elections, they can work at jobs formerly off-limits to them. They're still poor for the most part and not all that well-educated (in Mississippi no one is), but that's not the fault of white Southerners.
Does someone say that the Stars and Bars is the flag of a racist revolution to keep black people in slavery? Does someone argue that the ''Confederate Heritage'' is a heritage of racial oppression, rape and murder? The answer is simple: ''Hey, boys in blue, we whupped y'all fair and square. Y'all ain't nothing but bad losers.''
My ''damn Yankee'' prejudice is to say that ole Marse Abe made a mistake. He should have let the rebel states go. We didn't need them, and we'd be better off without them.
The South didn't win the war, you say? Who's running the country now? Texans (or pseudo-Texans) like Bush and Cheney and DeLay, and crackers like Trent Lott, and until recently carpetbaggers like Newt Gingrich. When was the last time a Yankee was elected president? In 1960, the only Northerner since Roosevelt. Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon don't count; Orange County is Confederate country.
Nixon was the one who had the brilliant idea of incorporating Strom's Dixiecrat Party into the GOP in his notorious ''Southern strategy.'' Most of the newspaper accounts of the turn of the Solid South from Democratic to Republican don't mention that the change was inspired by anger in the South at the Democratic support for civil rights and racial integration. The Democrats won the campaign but lost the war. Gettysburg was not the decisive battle of the war between the states. The 1968 and 1972 campaigns were. The ''reform'' wing of the Democratic Party threw out the unions and the Catholics and gave away the game to the Dixiecrat wing of the Republican Party. They've never figured out how to win against the descendants of Strom and Tricky Dicky.
I'm not saying that all Southerners are racist (there are a lot of racists in Yankee land too--most of them Republicans). Nor do I contend that all Republicans are racists. However, the current Republican near-majority has its origins in racism. Many of the present causes of Southern Republicans--the Stars and Bars, the Confederate Heritage, Bob Jones University--are clearly causes of the antebellum South.
I'm willing to accept the song ''Dixie,'' both because ole Marse Abe ordered it played for the big victory march in Washington when the war was over and because it was written by Bing Crosby, a notorious Yankee who never set foot in Dixie (actually by New Yorker Dan Emmet, whom Crosby portrayed in film).
However, if the Republicans really want to break free of the Old South and become once again the party of ole Marse Abe (which they clearly don't), then they have to do more than merely drop redneck bigots like Trent Lott. They must loudly disown Bob Jones University and the battle flag over the Georgia capital and the Confederate heritage, and Jeb Bush's elimination of black voters from Florida registration rolls.
I concede that the Dimmycrats (as Mr. Dooley called them) are not without faults of their own--most notably the anti-Catholicism that affects some of the leadership level, their enslavement to the teachers unions and their stand on some life issues. Yet, whatever their failings, they're not storming the Little Round Top at Gettysburg with the Stars and Bars waving and loud rebel yells.
History says that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine triumphed in that skirmish. A look at the Beltway today makes me wonder if they really did.
Reagan's an Illinoisan.
Bull. More Dems are racist.
Who gives a rat's @ss about Bob Jones U? How many people could even name which state it is in? Is this trivia all their "movement" has left?
As for that nonsense about removing black voters from the rolls they've never produced any sort of evidence. Of course nobody needs evidence nowadays; you just repeat your lies in a louder voice and say that anyone who disagrees must be a racist.
Yeah, just look at Boston.
My liberal brother in law and I had a discussion about this the other night. There's no way to play history through in our little minds considering outcome of the Civil War to be different, but it's an interesting thing to contemplate. Would we have had a relationship like the British and the Americans do today, or would we have had a relationship like the countries of Yugoslavia. A big point of contention would've been the continued escaping of black slaves into the United States. The Confederacy would've been up in arms for decades over that. Also there would've been security. The Confederacy would've been industrially weaker than the United States and that would've built up coveteness not unlike we're seeing today with the extreme jealousy that France, Germany, and now Canada shows toward us which probably would've led to conflict and maybe even an alliance between the Axis and the Confederacy during the WW2 if history would still have taken that path. Who knows, the eradication of the evil of slavery alone made it a good thing that the Union won.
Oops did I pull a Trent Lott...
Kinda. What's your opinion on slavery?
That's my perspective too. I used to work in a union shop. The unions here are racist and pro-Dem.
Without America in the First World War (which likely would have happened anyway), the stalemate would have dragged on in France. England more likely than not would have undergone the Socialist revolution - because the Marxist theories were designed around the English economy.
How long would it have been till an oppressed mass of blacks in the Confederacy risen up in a bloody socialist revolt under those circumstances?
Be happy the Confederacy lost - the 20th century would have been even bloodier, and the whole globe would likely be socialist now.
True. Randy Moss, Sharpton, Jackson, Farrakan, etc., are the biggest racists in America. And none of them have ever voted Republican I'm sure. Let's compare Randy Moss' press with Rocker's.
Probably true. These supposedly pro-state's rights states sure had no problem supporting the likes of Wilson and FDR.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.