Private Property and the American Heritage

America’s cultural elite has apparently decided that a new round of demonization of Southerners is in order and is busy eradicating all semblances of Southern heritage, especially the Confederate battle flag, from any and all public places. Now that there are no problems at all with the black family structure in the inner cities, nor with crime or poverty or education there, the NAACP is spending resources battling anyone who wants to fly a Confederate flag anywhere at any time. It is all reminiscent of how the Soviets and other communist regimes rewrote their own history as a means of bolstering their own political power.

For years, Southern heritage groups have entered the political fray and have lobbied to maintain their symbols, but with little success. New York City playwright and historian John Chodes recently remarked to me that Southerners today remind him of his own Jewish people of yesterday: the one group in American society whereby discrimination is acceptable if not expected. Vanderbilt University mathematics professor Jonathan Farley (who boasts of being a communist) even went so far as to suggest to the Nashville Tennessean on November 20 that the hundreds of thousands of surviving Confederate soldiers should have been mass executed by the federal government after the war. He still has his job and such a statement will probably help, not hurt, his chances for tenure in today’s politically correct university system.

A recent example of the whitewashing of Southern history is the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in October to prohibit the flying of a Confederate flag over the cemetery in Point Lookout, Maryland, where 3,300 Confederate soldiers were buried in a mass grave after they were intentionally allowed to die of starvation and disease. I say "intentionally" because at the time the North was flush with resources, food, and money, and could have saved many of these men. If the Lincoln administration was in fact devoted to "equality," as Harry Jaffa and his followers have absurdly claimed for decades, then the commander of the Point Lookout prisoner of war camp should have been hanged after the war, as was the Confederate commander of the Andersonville prison, where many Union prisoners perished.

In fact, a case can be made that the Andersonville commander should have been spared: There was scant food or medicine available in the South for the prisoners by 1864, unlike in the North, and the Lincoln administration had rejected prisoner exchanges. The Andersonville prisoners could have been spared by such exchanges, but the Lincoln administration decided that the exchanges would advantage the Confederate army, which was suffering a manpower crisis. No such crisis existed in the North, especially with thousands of Europeans being recruited into the Union Army by being promised free land under the Homestead Act.

Southern opponents of the "air brushing" and whitewashing of American history are beginning to wise up and are realizing that the political arena may not be the best place to fight this battle. While attending the annual Christmas banquet of the Richmond Civil War Roundtable, where I was the banquet speaker, I learned that there is a plan to purchase a private plot of land adjacent to the Point Lookout cemetery where the Mother of All Confederate Flags will be flown and will be so big that it will be seen for miles out into the Chesapeake Bay.

The South Carolina League of the South was recently harassed when a local politician told it that it could not fly its flag on the road leading to Abbeville, South Carolina, because a citizen had complained. The League responded by placing an even bigger flag on a private parcel of land, and erecting the original flag pole and flag on another spot at the other end of town. The complaining citizen must be doubly perturbed.

The new statue of General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Tennessee is also on a private plot of land. It has been protested, of course, but there is nothing the protesters can legally do to remove the statue.

What these examples suggest is that Southern heritage groups – or any heritage groups for that matter – need to rely more on private property and less on politics as a vehicle for defending themselves against politically-correct bigotry. Forget about government property; you’re hopelessly outnumbered. If Southern heritage – all Southern heritage, not just from the 1861–1864 period – is to be preserved it will be preserved in private museums, book collections, libraries, Internet web sites, schools and colleges, and in the minds of home-schooled children.

The Confederate battle flag has become a worldwide symbol of opposition to state tyranny. It has been flown in the former Soviet republics and in many other places where there are opposition movements to centralized state oppression. That is why self-described communists like Vanderbilt University Professor Jonathan Farley are so opposed to it to the point of hysteria.

I could just hear one of his classes:

Klaasss, u's got's ta noes, all dis mat schtuf is ah conspirious o da old dade white men. Dhey did dis ta discrimeinate aginst us.

Furst ting we's goin' ta do is get rid of squawres and cubes. Next, we do away wit logs cauz loggin' da forest is evil. Den we get rid of da geek (or is it greek) lettas of Alpha and Omega becuz there ain't a no absolutes."> etc.....

DiLorenzo Article Here

That explains it. At first I thought that you had written it, billbears, and had wondered if you had suffered a massive head injury recently. But identifying it as another POS post by Tommy DiLusional explains everything.

That is why self-described communists like Vanderbilt University Professor Jonathan Farley are so opposed to it to the point of hysteria.

Talk about being opposed to something to the point of hysteria! Look in the mirror, Tommy.

But identifying it as another POS post by Tommy DiLusional explains everything

Ah, name calling. I realize when faced with factual evidence it must be hard for you. Having your mind filled with mush from avowed Socialists such as Sandburg and McPherson can be bad for you, you know.

Talk about being opposed to something to the point of hysteria

There it is again. Calling fact hysteria? Take a look at Farley's political website. He ran for office this year. Some of his more 'notable' positions include but not limited to:

-reparations for slavery and segregation
-an end to the prison-industrial complex, the so-called war on drugs and three strikes
-freedom for political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier
-an end to the military-industrial complex
-a reappraisal of third world debt
-exposing the crack-CIA connection

Ah, the everpresent CIA-crack connection. Sounds like a Sandburg for the 21st century. Bet he's just the closest friends with Morris Dees.

Ah, name calling.

Ah the stupidity. Only DiLusional could manage to bring Andersonville into an arguement on private property. Any attempt to smear Lincoln and uphold the starving to death of Union prisoners, I guess. Why didn't Tommy D. use it as an excuse to show how private property was respected under the Davis regime? Perhaps it was because private property wasn't respected under Davis? Could that be it?

Take a look at Farley's political website.

Oh don't get me wrong, bill, I hold no respect for Farley OR his political opinions. But I find it highly amusing that DiLorenzo accuses someone else of, how did he put it, "Opposed to it to the point of hysteria." Anyone who has read Tommy's rants and raves over the past year knows that his accusing someone else of hysteria is a prime case of the pot calling the kettle 'grimy arse'.

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