[ken5050]

Did you hear Kerry's comments after W. made his recess appt of Pickering?...

[stylin_geek]

Along with Christians, gun owners, and anyone who dares espouse Conservative ideals, Southerners are not only not a protected class they are favorite targets of the politically correct bigots.

A great line.

[WKB]

Missippy Ping

[TomServo]

Dixie Ping!!!!

[Riley]

In fact it seems they were born offended and are only happy when they are offended.

Well said.

Martin Luther King spoke of judging men on the content of their character, too bad many who claim to admire him are ignoring his words.

Standing on my chair, applauding.

[Khurkris]

Thanks for posting this.

[cripplecreek]

this is one michigan yankee who supports the south, states right, confederate flag and all.

[stainlessbanner]

Southerners will only catch a break when the very last ounce of political and financial gain is squeezed from the few remaining vestiges of the South.

When there is no more, they will leave Southerners alone.

[talleyman]

Dixie bump!

[Lakeside]

Short answer--never. We are one of the few whipping boys left that lefties can show their extreme prejudice against without being labeled a bigot or insensitive. No, they have successfully turned who they are around onto us.

[ChefKeith]

The left will leave Southerners alone when they (the left)are All dead !

And for Me that time can't come soon enough

[SuziQ]

The answer to the question posed in the thread title is NEVER!! The South is the last bastion of traditional values and patritism. Confronted with these values, liberals flinch like a vampire before a cross, and will try anything they can to tear them down!

[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.

[junta]

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

[<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?