Political correctness at Little Round Top

TownHall.com ^ | 1/06/03 | Pat Buchanan

[I still care]

Thanks so much for your comment. I live in Florida, so we are visiting a Florida battleground this year. After reading this thread I can't wait to get there.

[wideawake]

Keith and x, you've missed the point.

As it stands right now, the material available to tourists at Gettysburg does not valorize the South - it is all about the fighting men, the generals and the units of both sides.

Gettysburg does not debate the causes of the war. It does not embrace the Confederate myth of a noble struggle for states' rights nor does it peddle the Union myth of a noble struggle against slavery.

What it does is document WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED ON JULY 2ND, 3RD AND 4TH 1863. Which units, led by which officers fought where and when in the battle. That's all. This business about the "High Watermark of the Confederacy" is not Southern propaganda. It is merely an observation that at the moment of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg the South was at the absolute height of its military fortunes in the War and that after Pickett's Charge the military fortunes of the South began to decline. That's an objective historical fact, not a statement of partisanship.

Let the causes of the war be debated in the classroom. Let the actual concrete events of the battle be described as accurately as possible on the battlefield.

[x]

I don't disagree with what you say about the Park. I do point out that the desire to rewrite history isn't all on one side and the fear that history will be rewritten isn't all on the other.

It may also be naive to think that the staff at the park can entirely avoid the question of why the war started. People who don't know that will come and ask. The staff will answer that, either on the spot, or through an existing exhibit. And people will disagree about what that exhibit says.

I don't think Gettysburg needs a greater emphasis on slavery than it already has. And I'd hate to go to every park and get a lecture on race, class, gender and ethnicity. That kills off the real interest of history. But given developments after Reconstruction, the question isn't as simple as Pat wants to make it.

[stainlessbanner]

Bump!

[stand watie]

!!!!

[Colt .45]

All this article and subsequent responses from some on here shows, is that the Yankee version of history still sucks as bad as it did years ago. It definitely proves that nobody knows about how the US government was set up, nor do they care to dig into history enough to find out. It can be used as a measuring stick or thermometer to find out how lukewarm most Americans are about finding out what actually happened. Most of these clowns think that once the States ratified the Constitution they were bound to it forever and signed away all their right of self-determination to the Federal Government. I'll bet Jefferson and Madison are spinning in their graves! If Americans would bother to research it, they would find out that it was quite the opposite. But then that would show that their "Saint" Lincoln had feet of clay wouldn't it?!

In a way I am glad there are still many ignorant Yankees out there, it makes me that much more proud of my Southern ancestry standing up to government tyranny.

[4CJ]

Now, Civil War battlefields are to become indoctrination centers of Political Correctness, unless we stop it.

Pat's right about some things.

[stainlessbanner]

Last time I was at Gettysburg, I took one of them car tours where you let the guide drive your rig thru the park - he stops at all the sights and memorials and will answer all the questions you can ask. I pressed my guide and he finally admitted the South was right (and he was from the North!).

He said the park officials don't like them to get into those discussions with guests, but I pressed him on issues like slavery, secession, etc. and he opened up.

They can crank out all the propaganda they like, but there are still individual historians who seek out the truth!

[aomagrat]

"Our current museum (at Gettysburg) is absolutely abysmal. It tells no story. It's a curator's museum with no rhyme or reason."

Translation: It doesn't fit the liberal agenda.

[AnAmericanMother]

And what on earth is wrong with a "curator's museum"?

That sort of museum (and the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond is a good example) basically gives you "just the facts, ma'am", with lots of artifacts from the period with informative placards on their origin, provenance, etc., biographies of the participants, and a factual description of whatever historical events took place there.

Then YOU do the interpretation, if any is desired.

Of course, this means that you have to be SOMEWHAT prepared when you show up - i.e. have a basic knowledge of the history of whatever you're going to see.

Where modern museums get into trouble is by spoon-feeding "interpretations" to slack-jawed rabble who haven't bothered to learn the first thing about what they came to see. Problem is, "interpretations" are wholly a matter of personal opinion and prejudice, and like certain portions of one's anatomy, everybody's got one. I believe museums should stay the heck out of the personal interpretation business, and leave that for the historians to fight over in their learned journals, where nobody has to pay any attention if they don't care to.

[SCDogPapa]

Very good post!

[lentulusgracchus]

In it, this yutz Latschar said something to the effect that he wanted to make the lessons of Gettysburg about the universal desire for freedom and meaningful to all the world's people.

He's a Klintoon appointee....there's the beginning of your problem. If he's a political appointee, he needs to go out on his derriere, as you suggest. If he has Civil Service protection, then his next pulpit needs to be Denali National Park.

[lentulusgracchus]

...Grand Wizard Pat....

Please support with evidence, meaning quotes or documentary evidence, your contention that Pat Buchanan is either a sympathizer with, or a supporter of, the Ku Klux Klan.

I assume you didn't mean to imply that he is actually a Klan leader. That will get you sued.

Waiting.

[lentulusgracchus]

There is a cheaper way to get the required ratio of black visitors: keep a daily tally of how many black visitors come to each park, and the next day allow a maximum of 9 times that number of whites to visit the park in question.

That, or removal of all the Confederate monuments, and placing a sign at the entrance, saying something like "Southerners: You Are Not Welcome Here."

[PRND21]

President Bush should stop the politicization of Gettysburg. To let it happen would be an abuse of office.

What a nutbag Pat has proven to be.
But hey, now the <1% people have Tancredo.
Pitiful.

[AshleyMontagu]

There will soon be a much needed Holocaust museum built on the site. Stop the Hate!

[lentulusgracchus]

...Let the causes of the war be debated in the classroom. Let the actual concrete events of the battle be described as accurately as possible on the battlefield.

Exactly. Do the armchair generaling in armchairs, the pontificating in a pulpit, and leave the battlefields to people who want to go there and spend some time propitiating our ghosts and learning from their loss.

[lentulusgracchus]

To color all Confederates as racist slavers is nothing but the worst sort of slander, from slimy worms that wouldn't have the guts to do what those men did.

Lightning streaking across the sky bump.

BTTT.

[lentulusgracchus]

Is this guy Latschar a Clinton or Bush administration appointee?

Klintoon. See my #32.

[lentulusgracchus]

There will soon be a much needed Holocaust museum built on the site. Stop the Hate!

You mean a museum of the 20th-century Holocaust, on the Gettysburg battlefield? Surely not: forum non conveniens. Or are you speaking metaphorically?