I am not a neo-secessionist or consider myself part of the Confederacy (maybe part of Dixie, but that is a cultural, not a national identity).
It’s an issue if history in general. Confederate and Union soldiers alike were all Americans, and those who died on both sides should be venerated by this nation as those who fell to protect what they saw as sacred. Where this effects contemporary conservatism is the potential of leftists to continue to use the effacement of the American heritage (in all manifestations) to erase our identity, a subject very important to American conservatives.
In before the grammar Nazis:
*issue of history
*affects contemporary conservatism
Darn autocorrect.