Confederacy of the determined - (Southern heritage buffs vow "Confederate History Month")

WASHINGTON TIMES.COM ^ | APRIL 24, 2005 | Christina Bellantoni

[CHARLITE]

Southern heritage buffs vow to use the Virginia gubernatorial election as a platform for designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

The four candidates have differing views on the Confederacy, an issue that has been debated for years in the commonwealth.

"We're not just a few people making a lot of noise," said Brag Bowling, a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the oldest hereditary organization for male descendents of Confederate soldiers. "This is not a racial thing; it is good for Virginia. We're going to keep pushing this until we get it."

Each candidate recently shared his thoughts on what Mr. Bowling called a "litmus test for all politicians." Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine would not support a Confederate History and Heritage Month. Former state Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore would support something that recognizes everyone who lived during the Civil War.

Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr. and Warrenton Mayor George B. Fitch would support a Confederate History and Heritage Month. Many past Virginia governors honored the Civil War or the Confederacy.

In 1990, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first black governor, a Democrat and a grandson of slaves, issued a proclamation praising both sides of the war and remembering "those who sacrificed in this great struggle."

Former Govs. George Allen and James S. Gilmore III, both Republicans, issued Confederate History Month proclamations. In 2000, Mr. Gilmore replaced that proclamation with one commemorating both sides of the Civil War -- a move that enraged the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, has refused to issue a gubernatorial decree on either side of the Civil War.

Mr. Kaine, another Democrat, would decline to issue a Confederate History and Heritage Month proclamation if he is elected governor, said his campaign spokeswoman, Delacey Skinner.

[MamaB]

Well, I am just as proud of my Confederate ancestors who, btw, never owned any slaves. One had such a bad foot that he could not fight but he did his share by making shoes for the soldiers. His son did fight. Believe me when I say that some of us are extremely proud of our ancestors who have fought in every war since the Revolution. As far as my genealogy shows none were killed.

[MacDorcha]

"Lets put this 'states rights' being a barrier to Federal tyranny to rest once and for all."

Is it State judges or Federal judges that are interpretting the Constitution in such a way that makes us mad?

The State is NOT the bad guy. The distorted belief that the Fed is Good (and MORE powerful than any state) is the problem.

[MamaB]

Let me tell you something. The north had slaves and most of them landed in northern ports. Some of the families of the slaves sold them in the first place.Some honor in families! Slavery is still going on.My families never owned any slaves because they were busy trying to make a living. I have seen the land they tried to farm and it was a miracle they were able to grow anything. And, remember this was done with horses pulling plows if they were wealthy enough to own some. You try to do what they did. I have been all over the South and it is a wonder they even made it through the foothills of the Appalachians and don't forget the rivers they had to cross. It amazes me that they made it and still lived to their 80's and 90's. Guess that is why my mother will be 101 and believe me she has some tales to tell about growing up in her family of about 13 kids. I, for one, would not have made a good pioneer!

[MamaB]

I just did some research and one of the articles I found stated that Connecticut is known as the state that slaves built. Even New Hampshire had slaves. 6,000,000 people in the south did not own any slaves but they still fought for the South.

[Capriole]

do YOU know Brag????

I've listened to him speak and have read numerous articles and letters he has written. It is on these grounds that I am judging him, not on his personal character, which I'm sure is exemplary.

i DO know him & he speaks for the COMMON PEOPLE of dixie. he is NOT a scholar, but IS a TRUE southern gentleman!

Very possibly. And I am a Southern lady. Brag Bowling doubtless speaks for the common people of Dixie, but he is not representing them to the rest of the world as well as he might.

we of the SCV DO have SCHOLARS, but all viewpoints of the southland's freedom fighters are VALID & VALUABLE.

I'm afraid that in some way I have failed to make myself quite clear. I agree with you that the SCV does not need a scholar in this position. But it does need someone with a little more skill at public relations so that people who are not Southern, or are Southern but don't know much about their history and heritage, can hear a clear message. Brag Bowling is not a professional, and a more deft and skilled touch would do better to reach, teach, and persuade people who have misconceptions about the SCV and Southern heritage.

After all, there are millions of people out there who have been misinformed and miseducated by their Yankee schoolmasters. Putting forth the Southern perspective is a big job. When you're trying to reach folks with the message that Southern heritage is something to be proud of and that Southerners are not ignorant traitors, you won't be successful if you write and speak in a bombastic, clumsy way.

[Colt .45]

"I have another idea...Lets have a Yankee AS*H*LE Month, for those that want to dishonor Southerners...."

Amen my brother, AMEN!

[Colt .45]

"No one invaded anyone, the Southern states that seceded were in violation of the laws of the Constitution and the laws were being enforced."

By the way, what law in the Constitution states that any State or person does not have the right to secede? You can't answer that because there ISN'T ONE!

I have thought things out seriously and in conclusion have come to the realization that you're just like the rest of the no brain Yankees who think that "Honest(?)" Abe was the saviour of the nation and what he did was greatest for liberty. You haven't a clue as to what the Founders' really intended and think that when the Constitution was ratified the States were giving up their sovereignty and been voluntarily sucked into this black void known as America. But then what proves your theory is full of sh*t is the words of James Madison himself upon the adoption of the Constitution. He said " This Constitution is NOT a NATIONAL document, rather it IS a federal document." Once more for your edification, Federal means SHARED POWER!

The Founders' knew that the preponderance of power was to lie with the State governments as it was the State Governments who ran interference with Britain's central monarchical government during the despotic years leading up to the American Revolution. They knew that the State governments would better protect their own Peoples' interests and rights. Thus there was to be a check on the power of the central goverment. And at that time it was viewed that the States (i.e. The People) had the right to nullify any legislation from the federal government deemed tyrannical or limiting the liberty of the People (Read the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions). Yes the Founders' wanted to form a more perfect Union, however they put the Bill of Rights into the Constitution because they knew that Public SERVANTS can become corrupted by power, especially those in the central government. And they knew and firmly believed that the absolute seat of power was the People themselves. So the 9th and 10 amendments were added and further strengthened by State constitutions which stated "Whenever government power shall become despotic or abusive, the States' i.e. The PEOPLE can throw off the yoke of tyranny by resuming those powers delegated to that government." It was viewed as a right, not something the government gives through its stingyness, but rather something (if you're a liberal you'll hate this) that GOD gave to People and that it was an inalienable right! Now I know you're going to say something stupid like "No its only Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But go back a few words in that line of the Declaration and you'll find that it says - AMONG THESE meaning that there were more GOD given rights than just those three! So your putrid argument that the Southern States were wrong is in error. They fought for their God given rights as stated in the 9th and 10th Amendment, but were denied those rights by the Federal Government.

No knees jerking here, just stating facts to someone with the brilliance of a 4 watt bulb.

[Colt .45]

"No one invaded anyone, the Southern states that seceded were in violation of the laws of the Constitution and the laws were being enforced."

By the way, what law in the Constitution states that any State or person does not have the right to secede? You can't answer that because there ISN'T ONE!

I have thought things out seriously and in conclusion have come to the realization that you're just like the rest of the no brain Yankees who think that "Honest(?)" Abe was the saviour of the nation and what he did was greatest for liberty. You haven't a clue as to what the Founders' really intended and think that when the Constitution was ratified the States were giving up their sovereignty and been voluntarily sucked into this black void known as America. But then what proves your theory is full of sh*t is the words of James Madison himself upon the adoption of the Constitution. He said " This Constitution is NOT a NATIONAL document, rather it IS a federal document." Once more for your edification, Federal means SHARED POWER!

The Founders' knew that the preponderance of power was to lie with the State governments as it was the State Governments who ran interference with Britain's central monarchical government during the despotic years leading up to the American Revolution. They knew that the State governments would better protect their own Peoples' interests and rights. Thus there was to be a check on the power of the central goverment. And at that time it was viewed that the States (i.e. The People) had the right to nullify any legislation from the federal government deemed tyrannical or limiting the liberty of the People (Read the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions). Yes the Founders' wanted to form a more perfect Union, however they put the Bill of Rights into the Constitution because they knew that Public SERVANTS can become corrupted by power, especially those in the central government. And they knew and firmly believed that the absolute seat of power was the People themselves. So the 9th and 10 amendments were added and further strengthened by State constitutions which stated "Whenever government power shall become despotic or abusive, the States' i.e. The PEOPLE can throw off the yoke of tyranny by resuming those powers delegated to that government." It was viewed as a right, not something the government gives through its stingyness, but rather something (if you're a liberal you'll hate this) that GOD gave to People and that it was an inalienable right! Now I know you're going to say something stupid like "No its only Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But go back a few words in that line of the Declaration and you'll find that it says - AMONG THESE meaning that there were more GOD given rights than just those three! So your putrid argument that the Southern States were wrong is in error. They fought for their God given rights as stated in the 9th and 10th Amendment, but were denied those rights by the Federal Government.

No knees jerking here, just stating facts to someone with the brilliance of a 4 watt bulb. And you should change your screen name as your postings are nothing like what the Declaration espouses, you know ...

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

[TexConfederate1861]

OK...Stephens didn't say in his quote that "man" didn't have god-given rights, he said the "NEGRO" did not. This was a common belief, even held by Lincoln. The Founding Fathers certainly were not refering to slaves as "equals", when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, as many owned slaves themselves! I am quite sure you must realize that!

[lentulusgracchus]

Isn't it fun to have somebody to debate against now and then? Who else is going to take a provocative contrary position for y'all?

Well, as a matter of fact, there are three groups, two of which post here.

One is the faculty Marxists like Eric "the Red" Foner of deeply-pink Columbia University (which was denounced, along with NYU, back in the 50's by Louis Budenz as a hotbed of Stalinist agents of influence), who have been enabling leftist Clintonoid initiatives to "contextualize" the Civil War at all national sites under the care of the United States Government. This has usually involved hanging the "it was all about slavery" smear on the South, with the intention that the slavery reminder should resonate with black and liberal voters and invigorate Democratic finger-pointing, hate-puppet "identity politics" that liberal opinion-mongers have been waging against Southern conservatives since even before Newt Gingrich took the Congress away from them.

The Clinton/Rat/Left political strategy is to demonize modern Southerners by constantly pointing the finger and ranting about slavery and civil rights (never mind that Clarence Thomas enjoys his just fine, thank you).

The objective is that Northern and Midwestern (e.g. Ohioan) Republicans and "Reagan Democrats" would feel compelled to back away from any position or candidate supported by real conservatives, who as Newt et al. showed with the 1994 Contract, are the real political competition for Clintonism ("Totalitarian Leftism with a Moderate Face"). The "anti-Southern Strategy", or "South-Bashing Strategy" is simply to make Southerners, and by extension all conservatives, radioactive. Invective is their tool. That is the first group of South-bashers.

The second group is the neoconservatives. One of our strongest South-bashers in this forum is a liberal Zionist and nominal Republican from Beantown who lives in New York. There is a clutch of these guys, most of them living in the New York piece of Megalopolis, who check in to troll the Civil War threads and rip Southerners every chance they get as categorical racists, segregationists, and whipcracker-wannabe's. This attack is grossly prosecuted with a broad brush and as such is unfair, but these guys won't back off for a New York second. They despise the South utterly -- that's not too strong a phrase -- and they tell other Republicans very frequently that the presence of Southerners in the GOP is a moral stain on the Party and an embarrassment. You don't think they post that, I can link you.

Like here: Neocon screed.

Why the vitriol? I don't know -- but I think it stems from the fact that a neoconservative is a liberal at heart, and that one of liberals' fixed values is that the South is the home of evil. (Like some FReepers allege that Ithaca is the City of Evil, or something like that, because of the presence of Cornell and its cadre of mouth-breathing liberal 'bots.)

What is incontestable is that this anti-Southern neocon bias, this occasionally strong prejudice, has been expressed in serious opinion forums, like the 1998 Christopher Caldwell thinkpiece about the future of the Republican Party in The Atlantic Monthly. Caldwell was a senior writer for Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard and a card-carrying neocon. His thesis was as outlined above: a warning to Republicans that they had to break out of the "Finkelstein Box", named for legendary Republican Rat-squasher Arthur Finkelstein, by attracting moderate Democrats in big states bordering that "box" of "red" states in the South, Midwest, and Mountain West that reliably vote Republican year after year. To appeal to voters in these "battleground" states, Caldwell argues, the GOP has to soft-sell conservativism and put the Southerners in the back of the bus. Better still, lock them in the attic. His article was titled "The Southern Captivity of the GOP", and it was basically an invitation to Southern conservatives to get lost -- except at election time.

Why would Caldwell think this? Well, let him tell it:

As southern control over the Republican agenda grows, the party alienates even conservative voters in other regions.....The most profound clash between the South and everyone else, of course, is a cultural one. It arises from the southern tradition of putting values -- particularly Christian ones -- at the center of politics. This is not the same as saying that the Republican Party is "too far right"; Americans consistently tell pollsters that they are conservative on values issues. It is, rather, that the Republicans [i.e. Southern Republicans] have narrowly defined "values" as the folkways of one regional subculture, and have urged their imposition on the rest of the country.....

Southerners now wag the Republican dog. How did the party let that happen?

-- Christopher Caldwell, "The Southern Captivity of the GOP", The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1998, p. 55ff.

Not just writing a hit piece on the South, Caldwell mulled various areas of Republican and national politics and assigned blame to the prominence of the NRA and its, and the GOP's, vulnerability to charges of extremism and to bracketing with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. But the Southern cultural element, he insisted, was a political deal-breaker with important constituencies.

A new article treating this continuing intraparty politics, which has now established the "big tent" as the policy of the GOP under George W. Bush and Karl Rove, is on the cover of American Conservative this month.

That's the second group.

The third group is like the second; these are Straussian "moderates" who follow Harry Jaffa in his strong defense of Abraham Lincoln against any revision or review. They are located mostly around such Straussian strongholds as Northwestern University in Chicagoland and Claremont-McKenna College in Pomona, California. The "Western Straussians" are almost exclusively the students of Harry Jaffa and include e.g. former ambassador and recent senatorial candidate (Illinois) Alan Keyes, and they frequently refer to themselves as "Declarationists", from Jaffa's political theory that all political legitimacy flows from the Declaration of Independence and from political adhesion to its statement of ideals.

The problem for Southerners with Declarationism is that the Declaration was used by Lincoln as a justification of his departure from, and flouting of, the Constitutional restrictions on his actions and policies, to rid the United States of slavery by the institution of an internecine civil war to "purge" the American body politic. This politics, like the Leftists', relies on what the Left in other circumstances calls "blaming the victim" to justify a war policy (in my own provisional opinion) for resolving political differences that Lincoln himself, in his correspondence from 1855, admitted could not be resolved within the constitutional forms of a federated republic.

The original Marxist attack on the South, dating from the first Clinton campaign and a New York Times press campaign dating from 1991 or earlier, sought to point afresh the finger of moral inculpation first levelled by the Abolitionists. That renewed moral attack, which has upset the national compromise enjoined by the Civil War veterans themselves, brought out a strong reaction by revision-minded Southerners, including Thomas DiLorenzo, who with better or worse tools and arguments, went to work on the policies of the Lincoln Administration and the politics of Abraham Lincoln himself. This didn't so much energize the Straussians to come to Lincoln's defense as it enraged them, judging by the response on this forum, so that the Straussians find themselves in bed with neoconservatives and Marxian academic Leftists in attacking the South -- the better, in the Straussians' case, to defend Lincoln and his Declarationist politics.

The DUmmies? PLEASE! They can't frame a coherent argument, they're too full of vitriol and THC.

Not logical to you and me, perhaps, but they're good at putting together the kind of vitriolic "politics of personal destruction" that Media Research Center's Brent Bozell warned about after the 1994 election, as the Left, realizing their peril, went to war on Newt Gingrich in order to preserve Bill Clinton's reelection in the 1996 election.

[rustbucket]

There is an interesting Confederate Flag in the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond. It has a single word on it, "HOME".

[Mongeaux]

"Well, I am just as proud of my Confederate ancestors who, btw, never owned any slaves. One had such a bad foot that he could not fight but he did his share by making shoes for the soldiers. His son did fight. Believe me when I say that some of us are extremely proud of our ancestors who have fought in every war since the Revolution. As far as my genealogy shows none were killed"

None of my ancestors were killed in the Civil War either, which makes them either accomplished warriors or very adept cowards. :)

[BillyBoy]

>> You're a liar on three counts. Not RINOS, but conservatives. <<

COUNT 1: If you call yourself a Republican, then one would presume you support Republicans. Perdue is the first REPUBLICAN Governor EVER in Georgia history. He also votes the "right way" on Republican issues 90% of the time. They OPPOSE him, yet they support all the previous DEMOCRAT governors such as Maddox, Carter, Busbee, Harris, Miller, Barnes, etc.

They're free to call themselves "conservative", that doesn't make it so (voting for pro-abortion, tax-and-spend racist bigot Robert Byrd clones doesn't make one "conservative") The "Log Cabin Republicans" similarly profess to be die-hard "conservatives" (especially "fiscal conservatives"), yet they similarly attack Republican incumbents (President Bush) but have nothing but praise for DEMOCRATS. You know what that makes them? RINOs.

Of course, by your standards, they CALL themselves "conservative", so that makes it true!

>> Gov. Perdue pledged to support a referendum on the 56 flag - after election he caved on the issue. <<

POINT 2: Since I never said anything about a referendum of the 1956 flag, I can't see how I "lied" about this issue. I did say Perdue's new flag incorporates the ACTUAL FLAG OF THE CONFEDERACY from 1861 , so if someone REALLY wanted "confederate hertiage", they'd be more than pleased. Instead, they are upset that he didn't include the 1956 flag (gee, I must have missed where the history books said the CSA existed in 1956), which is best known as being erected by a DEMOCRAT governor of the state the capitol solely to protest the desegregation of Georgia schools.

If they like the 1956 flag better than the ACTUAL confederate flag of 1861, I'd say the only "hertiage" they're looking to preserve is the one-party RAT rule of Georgia in the 1950s.

>> No one that I know is interested in electing dims to office, conservatives yes. <<

COUNT 3: Gee, if you think I'm "lying" that a bunch of Georgia "conservatives" have openly endorsed Dems, you must not visit this threads much that proclaim yourself an expert on. Here's one to look over for starters: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1350646/posts The creator of this thread, "GeorgiaConservative", openly endorses Max Cleland, DEMOCRAT, to "replace" Sonny Perdue. He then finds little support for Marxist Dim Cleland (maybe he though Zell Miller's endorsement of Perdue would convince us to vote for him), so he switches strategies and recommends Mark Taylor, another DEMOCRAT, for Governor. Lastly, he suggests Cathy Cox (yup, yet another DEMOCRAT) for Governor. This is just one example of such a thread. You should see the RIP Lester Maddox thread, where plenty of "conservatives" swoon over the former DEMOCRAT governor (who only won the RAT primary because Republicans crossed over thinking the Robert Byrd clone would be easy to defeat in the general -- and he was defeated but the RAT legislature installed him anyway). I'm not even going to get into all the threads where other Georgia "conservatives" proudly promote and ENDORSE such DEMOCRATS as Carl Sanders, Sam Nunn ("wants your gun"), Jimmy Carter, Denise Majette, Roy Barnes, Zig Zag Zell Miller, Richard Russell, etc. Their excuse is the era of one-party Democrat rule was full of "true conservatives". You're calling me a liar? How else would you explain their fawning over every "D" elected to statewide office to Georiga over the last 50 years?

>> You did have it correct that the Barnes rag was a 'pathetic polititcally-correct flag'. <<

Thank you. Though unforatuenly that does not stop the Perdue haters from missing the good ol' days when Barnes was in charge. Fortunately, Barnes's ugly little "legacy" has been replaced with this lovely item that a MAJORITY of Georgians supported:

The RINOs don't need no stinkin' majority opinion though, which might explain why like Governor Lester "Christine Gregorie clone" Maddox so much. ;-)

[MamaB]

I was talking about all the wars.

[Mongeaux]

I was talking about all the wars.

Actually, me too. Great Great Grandpappy and 2 brothers fought in The CIvil War, Granpappy Mongeaux fought in WW1 and WW2. Uncle Mongeaux fought in Korea - Bronze STar - he marched in and out of Chosin Reservoir 5 times. None of them got killed.

[Mongeaux]

"Isn't it fun to have somebody to debate against now and then? Who else is going to take a provocative contrary position for y'all?

Good to see you jump into the fray. Nice long piece. Let's see what I can do with it...

In response to my question about "Provocative contrary opinions" you posit three groups, nicht wahr? 1.Commies, 2. Neocons and 3.Straussian "moderates"

1. DUmmies, Liberals and Commies. Granted, I have only been a Freeper for eight months or so but I have yet to see a "provocative contrary position" from this portion of the political spectrum on this site. I have read left-wing posts full of tantrums and accusations, name calling and lunacy, but they don't appear very often and have little to recommend. Maybe you find trolls provocative, I just find them trite, hysterical and a bit sad.

2. Neocons

There is a clutch of these guys, most of them living in the New York piece of Megalopolis, who check in to troll the Civil War threads and rip Southerners every chance they get as categorical racists, segregationists, and whipcracker-wannabe's. This attack is grossly prosecuted with a broad brush and as such is unfair, but these guys won't back off for a New York second. They despise the South utterly -- that's not too strong a phrase -- and they tell other Republicans very frequently that the presence of Southerners in the GOP is a moral stain on the Party and an embarrassment. You don't think they post that, I can link you.

No need, I believe you. I got no problems with the New South unless it's January and I am watching golf. I see people not wrapped to nosetips in parkas, hats and scarves, standing in shirtsleeves on actual GREEN grass and I ache with envy. "Gator" and "White Lightnin'" are two of my favorite movies. And I think Randy Newman writes a damn good song.

Tell you the truth, I don't believe northerners think much either way about the South, or any other point of the compass. We're just not emotionally invested; we have our own crappy lives to lead up here too.

As for "Neocons", I believe that's the most amorphous political designation I have seen in a decade. It seems to mean something different depending on which mouth is uttering it. I'm used to plain old "Cons", which is what I am. I also think that the Republican Party risks losing the South at its peril. And anybody who suggests we abandon you all ought to be sent back to whatever passes for the Political Minor Leagues for some seasoning at the end of a good piece of wood, also well seasoned.

3. The Straussians. Ok I am not even going to pretend to understand what a German composer has to do with modern American Politics. Anyway, he's dead right? What do his followers expect to do - waltz the South away? Whatever it is, it sounds foreign so I am against it!

I still honestly want to hear someone explain to me why it wasn't a good thing that the South lost the Civil War. One of you please tell me that if the Confederacy had won, the slaves would have been freed sooner and the cause of freedom around the world could have been been advanced as or more effectively by a divided America. Do you honestly believe you were on the right side of history? I don't see it.

[lentulusgracchus]

1. The Marxians generally show up in quotations put up by one of the other two groups, usually the Claremonsters. They like to quote Jack Rakove, Daniel Farber, James McPherson, sometimes Foner, Mark Neely. Neely's a good case in point. He recently completed the second of two tomes about the protection, or lack of it, of civil liberties during the Civil War. His large conclusions were that Lincoln followed the law as best he could, and that Jeff Davis walked on it with riding boots. Asking Neely to be evenhanded is a bit like asking Theodore White, the journo author of series of campaign books, to stop referring to conservative Republicans, whom he spat on, as "primitives", which he must have done 50 times in The Making of the President 1964.

To put it bluntly, these guys are about as evenhanded as Thomas DiLorenzo is -- and he isn't.

2. Neocons -- someone did just put up a couple of good definitions of what a "neocon" is, that are contemporary and workable. Irving Kristol's old joke definition is about as descriptive, though: "A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality." Actually, this defines a neoconservative like himself (he is the "godfather" of the movement) rather better than a conservative or "paleocon".

3. Straussians are students of Leo Strauss. There are several still alive, in Chicago, the East Coast (the "East Coast Straussians"), and at Western campuses.

The best working definition of a Straussian is someone who doesn't personally believe in religion, but promotes it for its social and political utility.

The downside is that they can come across as cold users and manipulators. But at least they aren't Stalinists.

I still honestly want to hear someone explain to me why it wasn't a good thing that the South lost the Civil War. One of you please tell me that if the Confederacy had won, the slaves would have been freed sooner and the cause of freedom around the world could have been been advanced as or more effectively by a divided America. Do you honestly believe you were on the right side of history? I don't see it.

Being on the right side of history is teleology, and as a conservative I'd rather be on the right side of my principles. Marxists like to talk about tides of history, and I like to talk about how full of it Marxists and liberals are. Liberals are the worst for talking about "broad trends" in history that determine all outcomes. I'll give a counterexample of why I think they're full of it:

In 1813, the Spanish general Pablo Morillo secured control of northern South America. His control was very tenuous and he required reinforcement and materiel. Neither was forthcoming, but not because of a "trend" or "tide of history". Morillo couldn't maintain control because the Spanish Navy no longer had enough bottoms to supply his needs. They no longer had sufficient shipping because Lord Nelson had broken up the Franco-Spanish combined fleet at Trafalgar several years earlier. An individual command decision had trumped "tides of history". General Morillo's reality had been "deeply impacted" by the actions of a single man. He went on to lose South America to a recrudescence of the revolution.

Your criteria for ranking the possible outcomes of the Civil War leave a few considerations out, such as whether you are still a free citizen yourself in the same sense that citizens had been free in the time of DeTocqueville, in Jacksonian America, and whether it's more or less likely that you will be confronted by political conspiracies like liberalism that will be able successfully to enmesh and catch you and hold you fast in a web of regulation and self-interest successfully compromised by the State (which is what Hillary tried to do with health care).

I think you have to create a matrix of possible outcomes and guess -- because that's all you can do -- whether the other possible outcomes would have been better than what in fact we got.

No Civil War would have been the best outcome, because of the loss of life attendant on the war. I can't believe that Lincoln's policy outcome was worth all that death.

Better still would have been no secession, since a) that also results in no war, and b) as Alexander Stephens pointed out, the South wasn't yet destitute of political resources, although her leading men thought they would be progressively beggared, politically, until enough new States would have joined the Union -- all of them as free States, at the Republicans' insistence -- and enough new Supreme Court judges had been appointed, that Lincoln could have basically imposed all the changes of the Civil War by decree (disguised as Constitutional amendments, in order to obviate the nuisance of having to pay for the slaves they were taking).

So if you are the South and you listen to Alexander Stephens (who, remember, was a Whig), you stay in the Union and hope that business is good enough that your immense property loss can be offset, in case you lose politically. Very risky.

If you are the South and you don't believe him, as the South didn', then you leave the Union, which is what happened, because the aftermath of the John Brown raid has made it clear that the South has zero -- zippo -- future left in the Union except as a spat-upon milking cow. This was essentially the position argued by men like Toombs and Robert Rhett.

The North was only going to do one thing, and that was to dominate the South completely in every sphere of life. What the Republicans had done was to unite the North in order to achieve their goals vis-a-vis the South, which was to shut the South out of the national agenda completely. This had already been accomplished when Lincoln was sworn in. Republican majorities ensured that whatever Lincoln and the industrialists wanted, they would get; and they weren't about to let the trade and tariff money go (Northern editorials cited in other threads make it clear that this was the consensus of the East Coast business community). No matter what the South did, they were going to take a pasting. They were going to have to pay, and pay, and pay -- just for the privilege of remaining in the Union. And they couldn't leave, because they still had money that Northern businessmen were going to get from them. That was part of the reason for uniting the North politically. You pay, we take. Game over.

From the standpoint of civil liberties, notwithstanding emancipation of the slaves at the end of the war, everyone in the South wound up worse off than if there'd been no war. Blacks had more rights (subject to illegal interference) than before the war, but they hadn't anything like the legal rights white men had had before the war, and the whites had lost theirs, to all intents. They only recovered some of their prewar stature by taking whatever political power they could away from blacks. Net, the region was still down to the North and basically a conquered country. And North and South, the status of citizens in the market and before the law went into a straight-line decline as the industrialists entrenched themselves and subjected other citizens to strong social controls like time clocks and factory-town environments, private police forces and the marginalization of skills by manufacturing -- which had been the same force that had driven German clockmakers, mechanics, and gunsmiths to come to America 100 years before.

So net, I think the Civil War was a disaster, and we've been paying for it ever since. Blacks may think they did well out of it, but all they got was half a loaf, while their neighbors lost a whole loaf, and the Unionist farmers who fought for Mr. Lincoln lost a quarter-loaf, and eventually the farm. The winners all lived in the big cities and "vacationed" in bungalows just above their scenic lake backed up to the old South Fork Dam which, when it broke and drowned 2200 people in Johnstown, the winners were sufficiently socially, economically, and legally insulated, only a dozen years or so after the war, that they never had to accept even the first shred of responsibility for the death and destruction in the valley below. And why should they? They'd been the beneficiaries of a bloody war and come out smelling like a rose; and nobody had been able to assign them any responsibility for that, either -- never mind that their nominees sat in Lincoln's cabinet and helped oversee the warring down of the American People.

The winners were too few, their rewards too great, and too many people lost. Yes, I think another outcome might have been better -- even, eventually, for the slaves.

[fortheDeclaration]

And your point is what?

I think slavery was eventually outlawed there was it not?

Slavery was intended to be ended by the Founders as it was seen as an evil, not as the South later tried to defend it as, a good.

[fortheDeclaration]

As for secession itself, the states cannot vote to secede themselves out of the union. " They sure did anyway. "Cannot" is a very strong word. And you know what? The North took it at the time that the South voted to secede.

The States that voted to secede voted on the state level, not the national level.

Those congressmen of those states attempting to secede resigned from the Congress.

[fortheDeclaration]

The fact the Democratic Party split its own Party when Douglas refused to accede to the Southern demands that he accept slavery's expansion, is proof of what the South wanted.

As for what Lincoln stood for, read his writings.

I will be happy to give you some page numbers if you need them.