I don't think you get it, Flax. The rest of us are just trying to cope with what's going on now.
Some braying jackass out there tells us that Lincoln was evil and Yankees are scum and the Old South was some kind of libertarian paradise -- 147 years after we assumed all that was over and settled -- and we respond as best we can.
Most of us don't have anything against the South and aren't looking for a fight. We're just tired of hearing how wonderful the South was and how horrible the rest of us are supposed to be.
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