When Will the Left Leave Southerners Alone?

Opinion Editorials.com ^ | January 19, 2004 | Doug Hagin

[SuziQ]

patritism = PATRIOTISM!! Spell check, girl!

[x]

The problems start with the title. What if some of those who oppose his views are Southerners themselves? What if they aren't leftists in any real sense of the word? Groups like Southerners and leftists or Southerners and those who want the Confederate Battle Flag taken down from state capitols aren't mutually exclusive.

Hagin turns this into a "them" vs. "us" tribal conflict and ignores the extent to which it's an internal South vs. South debate. "They" seem to include everyone from those who might have criticized the Confederacy to the vandals who deface monuments, and "they" don't overlap with "us" Southerners in any particular way. Then he goes on to express some well-known half-truths or half-lies about Confederate leaders.

Hagin seems to believe that those like him are the real "true Southerners" and those who don't agree are "outside agitators." But even if all of us who live in other parts of the country or the world never said a word about these Southern heritage issues, there'd still be a lot of conflict -- and rightly so.

The people who will win this "battle" over Confederate monuments will be those who can put the monuments into a more acceptable context for Southerners as they are today. It will be those who are best able to combine all the evidence available to us now and offer a verdict that concurs with what Americans believe today. Hagin has more work to do before he make good showing in that competition.

Important questions are why Southerners or Americans should attach more value to the four years we spent fighting each other, than to the two hundred or four hundred years we've lived more or less together on this continent, why "Southern identity" should be defined by a dubious revolt over a century ago, rather than by the rest of Southern history, and how America can accomodate two warring camps in its national self-image and come to some sort of resolution of the conflict.

[The Toll]

If they stopped hating us then I would be freaked out!

[junta]

Hell I would settle for "conservatives" to stop hating the South.

[wardaddy]

I forgot to mention Southern collaborative accomodators but I got reminded.

[billbears]

What if some of those who oppose his views are Southerners themselves? What if they aren't leftists in any real sense of the word? Groups like Southerners and leftists or Southerners and those who want the Confederate Battle Flag taken down from state capitols aren't mutually exclusive.

No, but we have a name for them. Scalawags ;)

[onyx]

I forgot to mention Southern collaborative accomodators but I got reminded.

By whom? :)

I agree with you, vetvetdoug. I've long held the belief that the South is the soul of this nation, and I've often stated here that the South is saving the Union from the democrats, (sans LA of course).

[<1/1,000,000th%]

About this time every year these monuments become targets for those among us who despise the South and it’s heroes. Sadly 2004 has proven to be no different than previous years. The Lee monument was recently defaced by a miscreant with more paint than brains. On the bottom of the statue the words “ death to Nazis” were spray painted. Where does such ignorance and hatred come from?

Is this the same thing painted on Clinton's library?

[wardaddy]

Amen...lol.

[sweetliberty]

Excellent and truthful post. The south seems to hold the last vestiges of the "old" America, the America that values tradition, family, faith, independence and patriotism, in other words, all the things that are anathema to the sociocommiecrats. As long as the south exists and remains rooted in the values that made America great, the sociocommicrat state will not be complete. This is really an extension of the attempt to exterminate God, because as long as He remains, Satan cannot rise to his full power. In other words, as the scriptures say, no man can serve two masters for he will love the one and hate the other. As long as there are Americans whose master is the Lord, as is still the case in much of the south, then they will never be servants of the state, and this is completely unacceptable to the sociocommiecrats.

[Polybius]

Important questions are why Southerners or Americans should attach more value to the four years we spent fighting each other, than to the two hundred or four hundred years we've lived more or less together on this continent, why "Southern identity" should be defined by a dubious revolt over a century ago, rather than by the rest of Southern history, and how America can accomodate two warring camps in its national self-image and come to some sort of resolution of the conflict.

Such a balance was achieved from the turn of the 20th Century to the time that race-baiters began using Confederate history as a racial lightning rod for political gain.

By the end of the Spanish-American War, both North and South once again saw themselves as one nation albeit with local military heroes. By the later 20th Century, U.S. Army had military bases such as Fort Benning and Fort Bragg and U.S. Navy warships such as the USS Stonewall Jackson that were named after Confederate military heroes.

A National Georgraphic Magazine from the early 1940's labelled Robert E. Lee as an "American" hero.

Southerners do not attach "more" value to their ancestors viv a vis modern America than Native Americans attach to their ancestral warriors or Black attach to their own ancestral heroes. That does not make them any less "American".

Try to pulling an American flag down from it's flagpole in front of a bunch of Souterners and try to burn it and see how far you get.

Try telling a bunch of Native Americans that their Indian ancestors that fought against the U.S. Army were uncivilized, murdering savages and see how far you get.

Try telling a bunch of Blacks that the Black Buffalo Soldiers that fought against the Indians were murderers helping to commit genocide on the Indian people and see how far you get.

All groups, will defend their ancestors against attacks that serve no purpose other than to fan the flames of racial and regional hatred that prior generations tried so hard to extinguish.

[wardaddy]

Bump and thanx!

[x]

Many Blacks felt and feel that the reconciliation of North and South in the late 19th and early 20th century happened at their expense. That's not just a question of wounded pride or hurt feelings. Their livelihoods, liberty, opportunities, and lives were dealt a blow by the compromise that prevailed from the end of Reconstruction to the success of the civil rights movement. So whatever kind of understanding or resolution is achieved now will have to be in other terms than those of 1876, and will have to include a view of things that was long suppressed.

As I said, these flag and holiday questions are something that Southerners will have to resolve for themselves. Where the rest of us get involved is when the fringe attacks Northerners as servants of tyranny and uphold the Confederacy as a justified rebellion or even as America's last stand against dictatorship. At that point, people who don't have any particular hostility to the Confederacy do get fed up.

Many who wouldn't object to a "they were brave men who thought they were right" approach to the Confederacy, lose sympathy when the message becomes "the South was right! (and the North wrong)." So yes, nobody wants to have their ancestors attacked, and it's only natural that people will take offense, but that doesn't seem to have gotten through to some hard-core Southern nationalist types.

That's the problem with "heritage movements." When they're taken too far, when it's not just a question of the present honoring the past, but of the present surrendering to past vanity, pretentions, conflicts, hostilities, and hatreds, heritage movements end up sowing discord and causing trouble needlessly.

[junta]

I disagree, the aversion therapy has worked supremely well. Shout "racist" at some white male and they act like Alex of "Clockwork Orange" cringing and cowering.

[wardaddy]

Well they don't bother me ...even on this forum.

You either from what I observe.

We just have to teach spine.

I can handle non-Southerners judging me...they always have since way before even the cotton gin but my own provincial kin growing all weak and sucky angers me the worst.

I'll die the way I am and my children will at least know where they came from. That's about all we can do at this juncture.

Maybe I'm insulated. 90% of white southerners I know think more or less like me. They loathe PC....as do a fair number of blacks who resent being used by interlopers as virtue fodder.

BTW...I don't live in a trailer park. I live in a zip code that is one of the top 10 GOP donating per capita east of the Mississippi according to urban legend.

Regards