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How the South Won (This) Civil War (MEGA-HURL)
Newsweek ^ | 4/25/2008 | Michael Hirsh

Posted on 04/25/2008 5:07:54 PM PDT by Braak

In the summer of 1863, Robert E. Lee led an ill-advised incursion into Pennsylvania. His army was defeated at Gettysburg, and thence afterward Lee beat a fighting retreat until the South lost the Civil War. One hundred and forty-five years later, the South--or what has become the South-Southwest--has won another kind of Civil War. It has transformed the sensibility of the country. It is setting the agenda for our political, social and religious mores--in Pennsylvania and everywhere else.

This thought, which has been recurring to me regularly over the years as I've watched the Southernization of our national politics at the hands of the GOP and its evangelical base, surfaced again when I read a New York Times story today. The article was about an "American Idol" contestant--apparently quite talented--who was eliminated after she sang the title song from "Jesus Christ Superstar." When it debuted 38 years ago, the rock opera was considered controversial for its rather arch portrayal of a doubt-wracked, very human Jesus, but the music was so good and the lyrics so clever that it quickly became a huge hit. In the delicate balance of forces that have always defined American tastes--nativism and yahooism versus eagerness for the new and openness to innovation--art, or at least high craft, it seemed, had triumphed. But our national common denominator of taste is so altered today that the blasphemous dimension of "Jesus Christ Superstar" now trumps the artistic part. And somehow, no one is surprised. Our reaction is more like, "Why would she risk singing a song like that?"

(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: culturewar; nationalism; north; secession; south; statesrights
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To: ought-six; Michael.SF.
Jackson's death, Stuart's showboatin', and Lee's over-reach. Never was a better General that Lee in his own backyard, but he was unable to fight every battle in his own backyard.

But the rebels Jackson, Stuart, and Lee, all three are at least partially vindicated by the vile, foul, infuriating condescension the Eastern, Yankee, liberal Hirsch spews in this Newsweek piece.

the realism and internationalism of the Eastern elitist tradition once kept the Southern-frontier warrior culture and Wilsonian messianism in check. Now the latter two, in toxic combination, have taken over our national dialogue, and the Easterners are running for the hills.

If Jackson, Stuart, and Lee were still around, Hirsch and his traditional, elite, Eastern internationalists would be running for the hills that much faster.
21 posted on 04/25/2008 5:56:31 PM PDT by flowerplough (I suck at Photoshop)
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To: Braak; All
typical of a leftist/liberal - their beliefs about causes of things are the gospel and factual truth about those causes, because, unlike real science, mere correlation does ( false) equal causation

i like the gal that was voted off and i think she should not have been and i think her “Jesus Christ Superstar” performance was one of the two best vocals on that night

but i don't think she should worry, she has enough talent that some agents are most likely already seeking to manage what i believe will be a good musical career but

my take on why she was voted off is that she had fewer fans among the teenyboppers who are keeping a little-talent dread-locked young white guy on the show (hardly the favorite of the American “south” the author hates so much)

my other take on possibilities is that no idol contestant has made it into the final four sporting prominent tattoos or body rings/piercings (the voted off gal has a prominent tattoo on her right shoulder)

by this point in the contest it is a popularity contest more than a singing contest - steady fans care less about an individual nite's performance than how well they have already appreciated the sum of a contestant's performances up to that point - the ones you favor can have a bad individual nite and you still vote for them

but leave it newspeak to look for something sinister in the american people

22 posted on 04/25/2008 5:59:33 PM PDT by Wuli (.)
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To: Braak

“Yet John McCain, even with the GOP nomination in hand, would never dare repeat his brave but politically foolhardy condemnation of the religious right in 2000 as “agents of intolerance.” Why? Because we have become an intolerant nation, and that’s what gets you elected.”

This writer is just one more elitist hater with his nose in the air. Not worth dwelling upon.


23 posted on 04/25/2008 6:01:07 PM PDT by Will88
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To: ought-six
I concur with your thoughts as well. My argument with the putz that wrote this was the suggestion that Lee's strategy was flawed. It was not. He did what he had to do, take the War to the North, so that the burden of the fight was taken away from the South in general and Virginia in particular.

Had a few things swung differently, Lee's plan would have been considered military genius, by many.

Grant took greater risks in the west and prevailed through perseverance and other factor's. No one would now say that Grant's 'plan' at Vicksburg was "ill advised", unless of course he had lost.

24 posted on 04/25/2008 6:02:11 PM PDT by Michael.SF. ("democrat" -- 'one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses " - Joseph J. Ellis)
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To: Braak
On foreign policy, the realism and internationalism of the Eastern elitist tradition once kept the Southern-frontier warrior culture and Wilsonian messianism in check.

A particularly idiotic remark. Wilson was the quintessential Yankee. There wasn't anything southern about him.

25 posted on 04/25/2008 6:03:58 PM PDT by BitBucket
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To: Michael.SF.

I am going to have to save time for the first day of the battlefield on a future trip and check this out. We were only there long enough to do the third day in the afternoon evening and the second day the following morning. Anyone serious really needs to allow a half day (at least) for each day of the battlefield. One day is definitely not enough.


26 posted on 04/25/2008 6:05:27 PM PDT by Vigilanteman ((Are there any men left in Washington? Or are there only cowards? Ahmad Shah Massoud))
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To: Braak
An article that begins by arguing that a singer was eliminated from the American Idol because her choice of "Jesus Christ Superstar" seemed "blasphemous" could only have been written by someone in urgent need of medical attention.

Carly Smithson took what should have been a ticket to the next round, shanked the lyrics at least twice and--although she has a good voice--shrieked and screeched and bellowed her way into turn down the volume land. How that proves that we Bible-thumpin', gun-totin' southern turnip truck refugees have managed to destroy the wonderful land that surely God and General Grant intended be run by northeastern elites is apparent only to Mr. Hirsch, graduate of something called "Tufts" which we hickory nuts assumed were scruffy hair patches that appeared where they shouldn't be, sort of like on the underarms of girls in Massachusetts and France which, as it turns out, are home to "Tufts" campuses.

Not content with such world class foolishness, Mr. Hirsch goes on to suggest that Senator Obama's "association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weatherman Bill Ayers" is justified because "after Obama graduated from college he became an inner-city organizer in Chicago, and they were natural allies for someone in a situation like that." I suppose that had Obama arrived on the Chicago scene decades earlier, fresh out of business school and becoming a bank employee, folks named Capone or Sutton would have been "natural allies."

27 posted on 04/25/2008 6:08:33 PM PDT by catpuppy
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To: Vigilanteman
We hired a private guide for our tour which was money well spent. He drove our car and we rode. He asked us a lot of questions to get a feel for our thoughts and knowledge of the battle (my oldest and I are both CW buffs). He then took us to some spots which were a bit off the normal path.

You might want to consider doing the same.

28 posted on 04/25/2008 6:10:59 PM PDT by Michael.SF. ("democrat" -- 'one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses " - Joseph J. Ellis)
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To: catpuppy

Actually, I am glad she is gone, now I do not have to see her “illustrated man” BF any more.


29 posted on 04/25/2008 6:12:15 PM PDT by Michael.SF. ("democrat" -- 'one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses " - Joseph J. Ellis)
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To: Braak

Its an incoherent mess, but it goes as follows:

He thinks someone got voted off “American Idol” for singing a supposedly “controversial” song, which isn’t what happened, of course. Its at that stage of the contest, there are only the talented performers left, so at this stage everyone who leaves is a talented performer. And only in Hirshworld is a 35 year-old rock opera “controversial”.

He thinks the south has taken over America, by which he means the south, west, and mid-west have taken over America, but he tries to make that sound like a bad thing by associating the 3/4 of America he doesn’t like with the old confederacy, although the party he doesn’t like defeated the confederacy and the party he does like “was” the confederacy. And what he doesn’t like about them is what he calls “radical patriotism”.

He goes on to complain about that fact that evangelicals and believing catholics seem to have found one another. I’ve noticed the same thing, but in my world its a good thing, but it seems to bother Hirsh quite a lot.

There is one line that is rich, and it is one which I heartily agree with. He thinks Obama should excuse his friendship with Ayers and Wright by explaining that they are natural allies for someone like him. Which, I think, is precisely what the rest of us have been trying to say, and Hirsh has now expressed it for us very eloquently. Yes, Ayers, Wright, and Obama are natural allies. There is no doubting it.

He wishes McCain would find the nerve to repeat his attacks on conservative Christians, and believes that the fact he doesn’t is due to the fact that this is an intolerant nation. Yes, Hirsh is right, the catholics and evangelicals who have found one another are intolerant of intolerance directed at them. Or maybe they aren’t, but what politician wants to risk alienating the very people he is trying to snooker into voting for him? So, for Hirsh, this obvious dark night of intolerance, during which politicians don’t dare to insult their voters, can only mean that the confederacy has risen again, to vote singers off of American Idol.

Whatever he gets paid to write this stuff, its too much.


30 posted on 04/25/2008 6:19:35 PM PDT by marron
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To: tgusa
This is the closest I’ve come to reading Newsweek in about 10 years.

I still turn the rag front to the wall when I think of it at the newsstand or supermarket shelf.

31 posted on 04/25/2008 7:07:16 PM PDT by higgmeister (In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
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To: gate2wire
If the rebs had moved south after the first day, and cut off the Union Army from D.C., who knows what may have happened.

That's what Longstreet wanted to do, to induce George Meade to attack Lee on unfavorable ground -- Pickett and Little Round Top in reverse.

In grosser scale, that's what the whole Pennsylvania campaign was about, until Lee "got his blood up" when he saw Meade's army standing before him, and went over to the assault.

Of course, we're aware of that end-maneuver, interpose-and-turn strategy because Longstreet's memoir came to be relied on for the popular Killer Angels.

32 posted on 04/25/2008 7:18:21 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: flowerplough

One has to wonder what would have transpired at Gettysburg had Gen. Stonewall been there.


33 posted on 04/25/2008 7:18:42 PM PDT by sasportas
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To: marron
So, for Hirsh, this obvious dark night of intolerance, during which politicians don’t dare to insult their voters, can only mean that the confederacy has risen again, to vote singers off of American Idol.

At last -- the final, innermost veil is rent from top to bottom by Hirsh's rapier mind. The Truth revealed! LOL!

34 posted on 04/25/2008 7:24:09 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: Little Bill
Basically I agree with you 100%

As a life long Alabamian one thing I get extremely tired of explaining when I travel around is most of us are not that much different from anybody else.

I hate to break it to 'em, but we have people driving Mercedes down here and best I can tell everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time and gets bitched out by their boss when they show up late for work.

And just for the record - a quick jog around my neighborhood would clue Mr. Hirsh in to the inconvenient little fact that we have plenty of self righteous, "tolerant" and utterly boring lefty prigs which should be right up his alley.

In the words of my forefathers, he can kiss my rebel ass.

35 posted on 04/25/2008 7:39:02 PM PDT by Condor 63
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To: sasportas
One has to wonder what would have transpired at Gettysburg had Gen. Stonewall been there.

One famous scene would not have happened .... the one in which General Ewell, commanding Jackson's Corps, received an a suggestion that he seize the initiative on the evening of the First Day and charge up Culp's Hill at the northern end of the Union line, and responded by staring at the officer making the suggestion "like a goggle-eyed snapping turtle". He obviously thought that that officer was out of his mind, making a risky suggestion like that.

Win, lose, or draw, Jackson would have been up the hill even before his trailing brigades had come up behind him. His instincts were the opposite of Ewell's. Jackson alive, there at that moment, would have been all the difference Lee needed.

36 posted on 04/25/2008 7:39:34 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: BitBucket
Woodrow Wilson was a southern Democrat, despite having been elected Governor of New Jersey from Princeton. His chief opponents were northern Republicans Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge.
37 posted on 04/25/2008 7:42:57 PM PDT by iowamark
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To: Michael.SF.
As I recall, when I was there I concluded that the stage for the loss by the South was set when Ewell, on day one, failed to follow up on Howard's retreat through the town.

Exactly what I was thinking, if the issue had been pressed on the first day, who knows...

38 posted on 04/25/2008 7:43:23 PM PDT by higgmeister (In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
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To: Braak

Hirsh shows the Marxist thought that got him a job at Newsweek and has been driving Newsweek circulation down.


39 posted on 04/25/2008 7:44:53 PM PDT by iowamark
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To: Condor 63
I think that our ancestors who fought in the War Between The States, both sides, have more in common than some liberal trash have with us.
40 posted on 04/25/2008 7:59:34 PM PDT by Little Bill (Welcome to the Newly Socialist State of New Hampshire)
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