As President Jefferson Davis so plaintively said: "All we want is to be left alone."
I get it now. I'm just an ignorant yank that couldn't possibly understand the beauty of the antebellum southern way of life that was threatened by scurilous yankee insistance on following the legislative proceedures of the same Constituion those Rebel states ratified in the first place and later found to be too onerous. States rights over the democratic process and all that. Please.... the only Principle that mattered, the only right at stake, in spite of all the political rhetoric and attempts to obfuscate the issue (on both sides) was slavery. Pure and simple.
It amazes me when southerners who can see right through, and perfectly dissect, political spin when its on TV in the year 2002, become dumbstruck by the spin of their own Civil War (and long dead) politicians. I find it even more amazing when it comes from southern conservatives (I'm making an assumption about your political leanings here, so forgive me if they are incorrect), who don't seem to understand that they are parroting the same rhetoric of southern democrats who brought us the welfare state and near universal socialism.
While I will never deny any southerner the right to be proud of his state or the accomplishments of its soldiers and generals in the war, this blind devotion to the "rightness" of the Confederate cause and near religous adoration of Leaders like Lee, Davis and others is beyond me.
I have always stated that the Democratic Party was and still is a slave party (and the historical record on that is indisputable on the basis of fact). For any southerner that considers him or herself a conservative or Republican to mouth the lies of that party is a cognitive dissonance of collosal magnitude.
To me it is no different than when todays Muslims say they are against terrorism and suicide bombers, only to say "but" before launching into a rant on Isreal. No difference whatsoever.