As John noted earlier, the neo-Confederates in Mississippi have decided to celebrate the legacy of a Slave Trader, War Criminal, American Traitor and Domestic Terrorist with a special commemorative license plate.
There are vile, violent and evil men populating the history of our Nation, but you have to look long and hard to find folks as immoral, dishonorable and deceitful as Nathan Bedford Forrest. He is a patron saint of white supremacy, racism and treason.
So naturally, he should be celebrated as a wingnutopia role model.
He was an entrepreneur and in the years leading up to the Civil War he made a fortune buying and selling people. He was the co-fonder of the “NegroMart” a wholesale mega store for slaves and when the war started he was filthy rich.
During the war he organized a gang of excessively violent and vengeful riders who were very skilled at the hit and run tactics of guerrilla fighting. He has been greatly mythologized over the years by the Church of The Lost Cause, but he was little more than a war criminal. Perhaps his most famous crime was the Massacre at Fort Pillow in 1864 where he ordered his troops to murder hundreds of surrendering troops. As Forrest himself put it in his first report of the killing field:
“The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.”
One of the men under Forrest’s command wrote to his wife:
“the poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hand scream for mercy, but were ordered to their feet and then shot down.”
And historian Richard Fuchs, in his detailed study of the massacre described it as:
“…simply an orgy of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct – intentional murder – for the vilest of reasons – racism and personal enmity.”
Taking action for the vilest of reasons is the phrase that best describes Forrest and the wingnuts dedicated to celebrating his legacy of shame.
When the war ended Forrest returned home but could not re-open his NegroMart, so he worked with other white supremacist to find new ways to steal the labor of the recently freed slaves. Over the years they used many tools but it all stated with terrorism and the theft of labor was maintained for a century with violence. When a fellow traitor told Forest about plans to form the Ku Klux Klan, Forest told him:
“That’s a good thing; that’s a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the niggers in their place.”
Soon Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the KKK and bragging that he had 500,000 men under his command. The result over the next century was a body count in the thousands and uncountable ruined and damaged lives.
Before the war he road his “NegroMart” to become one of the richest men in the South, after the war he was a failure in business, bankrupting his companies. But his record in business is not why he is celebrated. It is his record as a traitor, war criminal, racist and domestic terrorist that these folks want to celebrate.
It is mighty white of them.
I wonder when these Teabaggers will start to call for a vanity license plate to honor Timothy McVeigh? Sure he’s a piker when you compared his treason and body count to the founder the NegroMart, but Forrest and McVeigh are fruits from the same poisoned tree. If you celebrate one, why not the other?
Or perhaps they could have a license plate celebrating the KKK or lynchings or the Red Shirt riots of 1875.
A more honest approach for these fuckers might just be to offer some “Kill the Nigger” license plates.
But honesty is not something they’ve ever done, so I suspect that they’ll stick to talking in code and use the musing of old Nathan to do so. Already iterations of his saying, “Get ’em skeered and keep the skeer on ’em” is very popular with white supremacist code talkers. It is a way to say I am not afraid to be violent, so you should be scared. The call for the Nathan Bedford Forrest plates is just a way to move a violent threat from a bumper sticker to a State sanctioned bit of intimidation.
Way to go Mississippi–that sure is a great way to diddle the nit. I suspect the race to neo-Confederate crazy town is on–I just can’t wait for it to become a litmus test in wingnut politics. The Mittster’s race with Pawlenty to defend the Lost Cause should be a thing of beauty.
What an incredible bunch of assholes these people are.
Cheers
Gin & Tonic
Bad URL on the first occurrence of the full name, in para 2.
Tom Levenson
I weep.
I’ve been reading both Grant’s and Sherman’s memoirs lately, and it is worth remembering what they both remind us — Grant especially: the Southern officer corps were the leaders in a treasonous conspiracy formed to steal the labor (as you say) and the sexual services of millions of human beings.
NBF was one of the worst, but Saint Bobbie Lee was another one of them … as were most of the rest.
We need to be reclaiming history every day; the southern myth has stood too long, and it is long past time we make it a mark of Cain to stand with the lost “cause” of southern treachery.
nitpicker
I wonder how Ron Paul’s favorite economist feels about this turn of events.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
I’m sure some fucktard will point out that the Negro Mart jail promised comfort, safety and neatness so really it wasn’t all that bad.
Excellent post by the way.
freelancer
Morzer, you hear that? You can’t spoof under the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest anymore. It’s not cool.
Cacti
Be careful, the last thread about this brought out some resident Forrest/Confederate apologists.
stuckinred
Don’t forget this sheep fucker from Georgia:
themann1086
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: One of my roommates* argued that to me. That slavery brought Christianity to the black man and brought him to a better place**, so really it was a good thing.
*Not exactly by choice. Also, he was 7/8ths or 15/16ths Southeast Asian and claimed to be… what was the word… “grateful” or “relieved”… that he was 1/8th or 1/16th white. Yuck.
**Better thanks to the free labor we got from robbing the places we took them from! Christ, slavery apologists are stupid.
Anne Laurie
Thanks for writing this, Dennis. Depressing reading (and I know it was even more depressing to put together) but, yes, we need to keep reminding the wilfully ignorant just how rotten and criminal all their “Glorious Causes” and “Great Men” really were.
Mike in NC
As posted in a previous thread, ole Haley Barbour will enthusiastically support this effort to honor their “proud heritage”.
Who else deserves a commemorative tag? The possibilities are endless: Tim McVeigh, The Unabomber, Benedict Arnold, and John Wayne Gacy are a few that come to mind.
Cat Lady
I’ve always regarded Mississippi as more foreign than some countries I’ve been to. Fat, racist and ignorant is no way to go through life, you stupid southern fucktards.
Dennis G.
@Gin & Tonic:
I think I have it fixed. Give it a go…
Thanks
hilts
Anyone interested in slavery should check out this great presentation from Daniel Rasmussen on BookTV discussing his book American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt
h/t http://www.booktv.org/Program/12193/American+Uprising+The+Untold+Story+of+Americas+Largest+Slave+Revolt.aspx
General Stuck
first commwnt with new laptop havingnever used one,awkward as hell. but will get used to i guess,
anyways,eat shit and die redneck die. that is all
morzer
@freelancer:
Well, I had to choose a suitable name for the LOOGies. And yes, I was well aware of what a loathsome human being Forrest was. I wanted to see whether any of the LOOGies would call me out. Since they are such nice Christian Republicans, naturally none of them did, which I found.. informative.
Mike in NC
@Tom Levenson:
Two books in my “to read” pile:
“Sherman: A Soldier’s Life” by Lee Kennett
“Sherman’s Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea” by Noah Andre Trudeau
Dennis G.
@nitpicker:
That prick is another piece of work. Paul’s ‘expert’ is an anti-Lincoln zealot and Confederate dead-ender. He has all the economic smarts of Jeff Davis. It is all magical thinking and he is the fanboy they lead with. The hearing was glibertarian/confederate sparkle dust until some Dems started asking the asshole about his real beliefs.
Amazing.
morzer
@Mike in NC:
Well, they could always have a Barbour-McVeigh day, much like the Lee-Jackson day in old Virginny.
ploeg
Of course, you will have those who bring up Forrest’s supposed change of heart in the last two years of his life, after most of the damage had been done. You can be certain, though, that those who buy the commemorative plate are not terribly interested in reconciliation and racial equality.
It is yet funny (strange) that many army bases in the south are named after Confederate soldiers (such as Camp Forrest).
Stillwater
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: I’m sure some fucktard will point out that the Negro Mart jail promised comfort, safety and neatness so really it wasn’t all that bad.
Isn’t that the way it always goes – some fool without sympathy, or empathy, or the ability to view things objectively saying ‘well, it coulda been worse, ya know?’, completely unaware of the pathology expressed by those words?
hilts
A good commentary that cuts thru neo-Confederate bullshit
Of Course the Civil War Was About Slavery
http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/of-course-the-civil-war-was-about-slavery-26265
Dennis G.
@hilts:
I caught that on C-Span and when he was on the Diane Rhem Show. It is a book on my list to get to one of these days.
Gin & Tonic
@Dennis G.: Link works. Thanks.
hilts
@Dennis G.:
God Bless C-SPAN. I’ve lost count of how many great presentations I’ve watched during the BookTV programming block. And I love Diane Rehm too – thx for that link.
KG
@stuckinred: ok, I give up, I just flipped through 1st Corinthians and saw no such reference, so what the fuckity fuck is he talking about?
hilts
Anti-Neo-Confederate blog
http://newtknight.blogspot.com
stuckinred
@KG: These morons just make shit up and the rest of the goobers shout yee haw!
Tom Levenson
@Mike in NC: Cool. To be checked out.
Meanwhile, I do like Ta-Nehisi Coates assessment of Grant: Superman. (He was talking about the moment in the memoir when Grant describes leaping his horse onto a departing river-steamer as a
Confederatetreasonous force was moving to capture him.)West of the Cascades
@Tom Levenson: This. Grant was dreadful at everything he tried his hand at in life except commanding men in battle and providing for his family through his written memoirs, which are about as good a piece of writing ever set to paper on this continent. Grant’s recollection of his feelings upon Lee’s surrender that the Southern Cause was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought” pretty much gets to the nub of the issue.
Wouldn’t that make a nice vanity license plate? A Confederate Battle Flag with the logo “the worst cause for which a people ever fought” ?? If I lived in a southern state (and owned a car with bulletproof windows), I’d buy one.
Come to think of it, it’s pretty fucking honorable that Grant failed in business before the war while Nathan Fucking Bedford Forrest succeeded.
+4
KG
@stuckinred: ok, because what I read in 1st Corinthians was actually “don’t have sex, don’t get married, but if you can’t stop yourself get married and then have sex.” But there was nothing about criminals of any kind.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@stuckinred: Theocrats arguing that something is a capital offense in the Bible should either go all in and call for the death penalty for said crime or shut the fuck up.
I also don’t recall drug dealers in the Bible, but then I don’t have the TalEvan version.
@themann – Yes, and the descendants of Jewish people who fled Europe to escape the NAZIs should be grateful to Hitler because without him they wouldn’t have come to America. Ditto anyone who has ever converted to Christianity to stop some bastard from torturing the shit out of them. Hey, it’s fun to paint a big happy face over mind-boggling cruelty!
@Stillwater – Coulda been worse can be said about many things. Including a sharp kick to the nads. I mean, being SHOT in the balls would be much worse, so people shouldn’t complain when I Rochambeau them.
freelancer
@morzer:
I found that ridiculous as well. Factions of them welcomed you with open arms, but no one brought it up, AT ALL. There’s something about being enmeshed in ideology and identifying yourself by one name or another and wanking quixotic about modern conservatism or liberalism or whatever, closes you off from the experience of being a human being, especially if you express that view online.
Okay, I’m a well-rounded human, I have friends and family and a myriad of various experiences, but when I open up a Web Browser, I’m an intellectual conservative and that’s the framework that I restrict myself to and defend. Context doesn’t matter, so even if someone pops up online commenting on a post I agree with who goes by the name of “Anne Frank’s Gestapo Rapist (not somebody she hired to rape Nazi’s, fyi)”, and they’re speaking sense, I feel no need to address the actual handle the person has chosen because “I’m a Libertarian and I don’t care. People can call themselves what they want and I could give two shits”, etc.
Simply odd, for a site and commentariat that considers themselves to be in the “serious” realm of the blogosphere.
BJ is full of jokesters, and smartasses, but is regularly recognized as having serious opinions on the topics of the day by National media, online or on TV. All this, despite having Open Threads for TV shows, the Superbowl, posts about almost killing yourself nekkid whilst mopping, Jack Russell Terriers, Neti Pots, Mac vs. PC flame wars, donation blegs for people in need, and fucking soccer.
The point is, a website/blog can be all the way human, and only a percentage political, and just as analytical to be considered worthy of coverage and linkage.
shortstop
@Cacti: Sure, this Forrest plate business looks bad, but what about all those groups in New York currently trying to get statues and Franklin Mint commemorative plates honoring the draft rioters of 1863? Answer me that! You can’t, can you?
AxelFoley
@themann1086:
Heh, you should have told him that the oldest Christian nation in the world is in Africa (Ethiopia). And Christianity was brought to Europe later. Bet that would have blown his mind.
asiangrrlMN
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Agreed. Including stoning for adulterers and people who get divorced. Amirite, you rightwing Christian theocratic fuckers? ::crickets:: Yeah. That’s what I thought.
My knowledge of the Civil War is woefully inadequate. I learned most of what I know from TNC and dengre during CHM. This shit just makes me ache. The inhumanity. The viciousness. The cruelty. I did not know about the Massacre at Fort Pillow until today (someone mentioned it in an earlier thread). This is the man the white-supremacist fuckers want to commemorate? Fuck you, you fucking fuckity-fuck assholes. With a rusty pitchfork through all your orifices. While rap music is being played in the background.
stuckinred
@asiangrrlMN: And fuck the “barn” too!
morzer
@AxelFoley:
Actually, no. Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a nation in 301 AD. Not that it matters hugely either way.
Mike in NC
@asiangrrlMN:
There’ve been at least a few books done on the subject. I recall one was called “The Falling Hills” and I have one by Harry Turtledove “Fort Pillow: A Novel of the Civil War”.
Midnight Marauder
This post is very uncivil.
+4
Dennis G.
@shortstop:
Couldn’t find a bit of evidence about that so I will take it as snark.
But for fun, lets say that some wanker has commissioned the easily hired Franklin Mint to have Chinese workers a-fix decals to plates before they are fired–and that they find some gullible idiots to buy the plates. It is still a private effort effort. It is not State sponsored. For those who think that a ‘Draft Riot’ plate scam is the same as the effort to honor NBF with State sanctioned/promoted vanity license plate, I would advise them to seek professional help. Perhaps these comprehension issues could be cured with time and therapy.
Best of luck to the little dears.
Cheers
asiangrrlMN
@stuckinred: Who won? Oh, crap. Down by 8 with less than two to go. Sigh.
@Mike in NC: Thanks. I have a lot of catching up to do.
Gozer
As a son of the South I’ve often talked with my friends up here in Yankeeland about the Civil War and particularly the aftermath. They all give me weird looks when I say that the Union’s biggest mistake at the end of the war was not totally getting rid of the the command and control and political elites of the the South.
They don’t really understand how much of a martial culture existed (and exists) down there and how much ancient grievances live on. In some areas it really isn’t much different than Talibanistan.
Jeanne ringland
@West of the Cascades: I thought Samuel Clemens wrote Grant’s memoirs, partly because Grant was broke soon after he left the presidency.
morzer
@Jeanne ringland:
No, he made a deal with Grant to publish them. Grant was to get 75% of the profits.
mrami
I grew up in Nashville. I look white, but I’m Hispanic and my last name is a very common Hispanic name. And growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, a lot of kids just didn’t know, apparently, that [my last name] meant I’m a Mexican. There really weren’t a lot of Hispanics tooling around in my neighborhood. Often times, I knew the day a friend figured out who I was, because they would talk to me very cautiously, not sure if they were still talking to the same person. Sometimes they wouldn’t talk to me at all.
I haven’t been back in a long time, but that’s what it was like before the demagoguing and dog whistles. For a lot of the kind of people I knew back then, I could envision the hatred of the current environment slipping on like a comfortable glove.
Call me a pessimist, but I don’t think there’s anything that can be done to wind this back at this point. The politicians in the South can instigate race warfare, and there just aren’t any real penalties to be paid. In fact, things like this are probably an “all’s clear call” of sorts to let the racists know it’s okay to come out of hiding.
Anya
All I can say is Mississippi goddam!
morzer
@mrami:
You don’t think the demographic shift and die-off of old white racists might help over time?
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@morzer:
Yes, we used to call that sophistry. Nice trolling, General.
TOP123
@themann1086: Ugh. (whistle of amazement) Your story of that roommate actually just made me shudder, literally. The fractional self-loathing? Wow.
I spent some time in East Asia, and was surprised, in talking to some of people I met who were Christians, to hear some of them say that they felt that Western colonialism had worked out for the best, as it brought Christianity. I had a very hard time with that. So did most of their fellow citizens, to be fair.
morzer
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
What can I say? I was a lion surrounded by Christians.
frosty
@Gozer: I’m reading Albion’s Seed. It is eye-opening how much of the fissures and battles in US politics stems from the four groups of English settlers: Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers, and Borderers. I used to puzzle at the people in the Balkans who held grudges for 400 years. It is no different here.
Virginia (Cavaliers) was established by Berkeley, who deliberately set up an autocratic society that mirrored Southwest England. The Appalachians (Borderers) were settled by people who’d lived in an area where the rulers changed constantly and the only safety was in sticking with your clan and fighting.
These two groups made up the Confederacy. Nothing has changed, despite all the years of immigration by many different nationalities. Including Quakers and Puritans moving to the south.
morzer
@themann1086:
That’s actually a classic slave-holder line of argument that goes back to the 1830s and probably beyond. Pretty chilling to hear it uttered in modern times.
mrami
@morzer: I hope so. I truly do. But being inclusive is so hard, apparently, and being bigoted is so easy.
And of the strides that have been made in civil rights in the past 50 years or so, I don’t know how much has been possible due to the removal of guns from civil discourse (I don’t mean the topic of guns, I mean actual assembly of armed citizens at political events). That’s going away now, apparently (see Arizona), and to an extent most people don’t realize, “might makes right”.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@morzer: That Jason Kuznicki guy was on to you lickety split. What that tells me is that they read us even if we (mostly) can’t bear to read them. Hardly surprising.
Jamie
One thing I didn’t see coming in 2008, that electing n African American President would allow so many conservatives come out of the closet as unrepentant racists
dww44
@Cat Lady:
Please, we’re not all white racist Southern fucktards. Some of us are white, non-racist, lifelong liberal Southern Democrats, raised poor as church mice, and even worked in the very first desegregated schools even though we were educated in segregated ones. Tis a very long and painful history we have. In many unobvious ways, white Southerners continue to be harmed by the sins of their fathers.
There are many fine and decent people in Mississippi;they aren’t all descendants and worshipers of Nathan Bedford Forrest. The real problem is the military heritage that so many Southerners so revere. See the post by Gozer, son of the South, at # 42.
morzer
@mrami:
I’ve been wondering whether the next white nationalist trick would be to restrict gun ownership to real (i.e. white) citizens.
Mike in NC
@frosty:
Bank on it. In a few hundred years Americans on space colonies will be getting into fistfights about Civil War shit that’ll never be settled.
morzer
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
Was he? I must have missed any “insights” he tried to offer. Not that missing Kuznicki’s “insights” is hard to do.
Citizen Alan
We’ve been discussing this all day. I’ve defriended 3 people on Facebook over it after flat out calling them racists for trying to defend NBF.
That said, it’s really the North’s own fault. You knew what kind of hateful poisonous bastards lived down here and you still took us back. As far as I’m concerned, with the exceptions of the Nazis and possibly the Aztecs, no society in human history deserved its destruction as much as the Confederacy.
morzer
@dww44:
Do you see things changing in the future? What happens when the older white folk die off? What about the newer, more Hispanic America?
TOP123
@Mike in NC: Waaait a minute, Benedict Arnold? Once a hero, then a traitor, but never a mass murderer, terrorist, or serial killer. Though if you wanted to think of someone who betrayed his country and was a butcher of his fellow men, I guess we’re already talking about a good example.
dww44
@Jamie:
Neither did I and I live here. In fact a close relative in a nearby not quite so red state and I continue to be amazed by the unleashing of the racism engendered by the 2008 election results. I sometimes wonder if Obama really gets that. He has no real southern roots and perhaps can’t comprehend how difficult it has been for some to accept the fact of his Presidency. That was definitely Joe Wilson’s problem and now he’s polling ahead of Lindsay Graham for Graham’s Senate seat.
Now, Michelle, I think that she does get it, so perhaps she has convinced him that all this “otherness” business is just a dogwhistle for racism.
mrami
@morzer: That mission is partially completed. Any restriction on felons is disproportionately a restriction on non-whites, of course. http://www.suite101.com/content/gun-ownership-by-convicted-felons-a71729
morzer
@dww44:
What did you make of Virginia and North Carolina going for Obama?
morzer
@mrami:
Right, but I just wonder how long it will be before they try and go for full-on whites only gun ownership.
Warren Terra
I’m pretty enthusiastic about these license plates: not only will the asshole bigots put great big labels on their cars announcing their essential worthlessness as human beings, they’re going to pay special fees to the government for the privilege; a win-win situation. If we could get them to wear identifying signs on their person as well, for when they’re not in their cars, that would be even better. I recommend propellor beanies emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag.
TOP123
@Mike in NC: For all his other craziness, Victor Gaius Davis Octavius Hanson (or whatever his delightful nickname is over at Sadly, No!) had some very nice things to say about Sherman in a book the title of which escapes me now. It would be interesting to see a Neo-Con/Neo-Confederate seminar on the subject… and will Conservative/Confederate purity eventually require him to be purged?
Suffern ACE
@Mike in NC: LOL. Like the civilized nations that build those space colonies are going to allow us on them.
asiangrrlMN
@dww44: Oh, believe me, he gets it. I knew before he was elected that his election would bring this shit out. Granted, I didn’t suss QUITE how bad it would get, but I knew it would bring out the ugly racism in a hurry.
Church Lady
I’m not sure what side of the street #87 is, but the location of Forrest’s Negro Mart is now either the Shelby County Courthouse or Calvary Episcopal Church. Given that Calvary is pretty old, I’m thinking probably the Courthouse.
uila
Oscar Brown Jr sez… Bid ‘Em In (not for the faint of heart)
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
I don’t think Obama could have survived Chicago, which has a very interesting history, shall we say, of organized segregation, and not had some pretty clear idea of the craziness that was waiting.
dww44
@morzer:
These days its difficult to see that change will result from the dying out of my generation and those older than I. I am a product of the 60’s and many of my peers that I believed to be somewhat liberal turn out not to be so. Those I see who are “Sons of the Confederate Veteran” types are 20 to 30 years younger than me. So I never bought into the idea that the 2008 election signaled a massive shift towards progressivism and 2010 unfortunately proved me right.
The real problem where I live is that the white middle class for almost 2 generations has been totally educated in private, mostly religious schools. They have not interacted with their fellow black citizens nearly as much as I did growing up in a segregated culture. They have never lived in an inclusive society. Figuratively and literally they have lived in gated communities.
My new next door neighbor, single, an attorney, and a recent veteran, is flying the old state flag replete with the Confederate battle flag. The one which was replaced by our last Democratic governor who lost his bid for reelection as a result of his leading the effort to remove the flag. Started seeing the flag flying at a couple of other homes. Finally put 2 and 2 together when I saw SCV ads in sepia tone all over MSNBC during their nightly liberal programming. Very ominous tones about “our heritage being destroyed”. So, yes, right now, we are regressing not progressing. But I have hopes if the regression happens fast enough and is obvious enough, as with the SCV, then chances are the hour glass will right itself.
TOP123
@mrami: So let me guess, that’s mrami… Lopez? ;) I think you’re on to something here. There is so much talk about demographic change and the younger generations, and on an earlier thread there was talk about how you see less of the Battle Flags and whatnot down South. The thing is, (and first of all, in my experience, there are plenty of ’em left flying) I don’t think that’s a one-way street. I remember when GA changed its flag, again, and it was b/c people were upset Gov. Barnes had gotten rid of the anti-civil rights flag, adopted in 1956 (now why would that be?), which featured the Battle Flag/Southern Cross emblem prominently. His admittedly boring flag lasted all of two years. So what did they do? Sure, sure, we’ll get rid of the Battle Flag (as used by the KKK), but we’ll replace it with a state flag modeled on the original ‘Stars and Bars’ flag of the CSA. As an additional f/u to those who weren’t entirely on board with American Christian Exceptionalism, they added ‘In God We Trust’ in the middle, even though this in no way figures in the state’s motto or seal. Basically, dog whistles. Dog trumpets, more like.
Jamie
@Mike in NC:
well Benedict Arnold played a key role in the Battle of Saratoga.
morzer
@dww44:
Not to keep interrogating you, but I am genuinely curious about how that righting would occur, and what form it would take. I must confess to sometimes thinking that a split between North and South seems inevitable, and even desirable.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Gozer: “They don’t really understand how much of a martial culture existed (and exists) down there and how much ancient grievances live on. In some areas it really isn’t much different than Talibanistan.”
Agreed. People who are lucky enough to not be burdened with something like it don’t realize the depth of the generational hatred and anger that is passed on in some cultures. They can’t relate to it or see it for the evil it can be because they are completely ignorant of it. That’s how shit like these Traitor Plates get suggested and passed into law. Too many people don’t realize what is going on because they are ignorant of history.
I have never understood the tolerance of the flag of traitors in our country. Too many in our nation embrace it and not enough repudiate it as the symbol of greed, hatred, suffering and intolerance that it truly is. Too many people are unaware of the evil that surrounds them to this day, evil that is looking for a way to further its goals. Those who embrace the traitors and their way of life can soak their ‘heritage’ in gas, light it and shove it up their asses, sideways.
Sherman should have burned and salted the earth of the rich and powerful on his march to the sea. They were the fuckers responsible for the mess. Much like the rich of today.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Great stuff Dengre.
TOP123
@dww44: The private education and gated communities point is key, I think. There are plenty of places in the immediate suburbs (strikes me that we’re talking about the same region, here) that are stunningly conservative, I mean to a level that most people wouldn’t understand, and these are people who commute to work every day in a large city that votes blue. The redneck stereotype people have politically of the South just doesn’t compute… the most terrifyingly reactionary people I’ve ever met live in Marietta and Peachtree City (where they drive golf carts to the store), not some backwoods valley in a cabin with a still out back. They work in real estate law and middle management.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@morzer:
No way. One of my customers is from Georgia and his twelve year old son is a chip off the blockhead father. His anti-Obama ‘jokes’ are childishly cruel, as children can be. It makes his father real proud. No shit. He laughs and beams at his son with pride.
It made me sick.
morzer
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
It sounds truly repellent, and I understand that it doesn’t make the future seem too hopeful. I just wonder whether the demographics might shift enough in future to push the real right-wingers out of the political arena, and force the GOP into more rational ways. I do find it interesting that Obama won Virginia and North Carolina. I wonder whether we can manage to keep Virginia blue at national level, and if so, what that does to the electoral calculus.
themann1086
@TOP123: Just to make it you shudder more, that might not be the worst thing he’s ever said.
For the lulz, I feel compelled to offer a story where him, me, and our other roommate (who is awesome if sadly afflicted with libertarian wishful thinking) were hitting the hay, like first week of the semester, when the subject of “masturbating in the dorm room” came up. The details are irrelevant, but suffice it to say that the following sentence was uttered: “Doesn’t it make you feel guilty?” Our simultaneous response: “No!”
Dude had issues. Has them still, last I heard.
dww44
@morzer:
At the time it was a hopeful sign. North Carolina has long been viewed as a more progressive place by those of us much further South, probably because of the higher education universities and research concentrations around Raleigh and environs.
Virginia was a surprise and especially to the brother who lives in the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC. He’s now thrilled (he’s very pro-business and old school GOP) that the Republicans have taken back the state and is looking forward to reclaiming Webb’s seat. He says that 2008 was an anamoly for Virginia.
Bottom line, there were a lot of otherwise sane Republicans who just couldn’t vote for the GOP ticket in 2008 and in 2010 they came home to a party fast being taken over by the loonies. Our real hope is that the loonies do take it over soon and the tables will turn back left as quickly as they turned right. But, sadly, as long as the plutocracy is able to triple outspend Dems, it’s gonna take longer.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@morzer:
I think the number will slowly dwindle but the problem is that it may be too slow to prevent it from lashing out one last time in it’s last dying gasp. I think that the changing demographics will eventually ‘win’ but I think the crazy will get distilled into extremely bitter dregs who will still try to do damage for their ’cause’.
If I sound pessimistic, I am. We have several trains on collision with each other and nobody seems to want to stop them from colliding. Worse IMO is that too many seem to be encouraging the collision for their own benefit.
dww44
@TOP123: Yes, we are talking about the same place, same state, a bit further south. Brother-in-law lives near Peachtree City, and Marietta elected Newt to Congress and now they can lay claim to Bobby Franklin, the idiot in the state legislature, who has introduced loony bill after loony bill, like legislating the payment of state obligations in gold and allowing guns in churches and schools.
I am very much a distinct minority these days, surrounded by all these middle class white Republicans, male and female, but with males very much in control of the levers of political and economic power. The rednecks get the publicity. The others who are not are the ones we should fear.
TOP123
@dww44: PTC is one of the scariest places I’ve ever been. A very good friend’s brother-in-law lives there, and is someone who will tell you in dead earnest over brunch pretty much the most fever-dream-like thing you could possibly imagine hearing on Glenn Beck’s program. And he’s a successful lawyer with three kids and a nice house, etc., etc. The whole redneck rural thing is not, the way I see it, the strategic issue going forward, politically. It’s the rapidly expanding suburban subdivisions, which might as well come with Rush and Michael Savage piped over loudspeakers.
I think people from the rest of the country hear about the (Hon.) Bobby Franklin and think (sad to say) oh, those Georgia rednecks, and have no damn idea where and what Marietta is. Cobb Cty. is like the Republican vision of the future.
dww44
@morzer: Well, I honestly think this is a phase here in the South with all the repressed animus vis-a-vis Obam ‘s election coming out. It will dissipate. I already see some evidence of that and I see evidence of the business end of the GOP trying to marginalize the extremists in the state legislature (like co-opting a not unsizeable number of the few Dems who got reelected last November).
The Obama animus isn’t confined to the South though. Heck, from what I read, I don’t think Ohio is any less racist or less conservative than this Southern state.The GOP swept the entire state. In fact, a friend who works at the nearby Air Force base hails from St. Louis and her husband from Ohio and they are all as anti-Obama as the most redneck neck in these parts. A few months before the November elections she said they, the GOP, were going to take everything back and that she had never seen a more unpresidential First Family. When I called her out on that one she didn’t have anything to back it up. It was all just based on feelings and Fox ginned perceptions. She also told me that I couldn’t possibly be well-informed if I didn’t watch Fox News. She is not an idiot;she is middle class and she actually believed what she told me.
Yes, I’ve read across various blogs all these comments that our separating/seceding would be best for all and even inevitable. I disagree. There is a legitimate deep-seated loyalty to the US of A here in the South that is currently obscured by the anti-government wing of the conservative movement. I don’t see the South and Southerners’ behavior as being any more egregious, or racist, or anti-intellectual than, say, the Southwest. Should Arizona secede, along with Texas? What about eastern Oregon and eastern Washington? Utah, perhaps? The crazy is everywhere. It’s just that it fits the stereotype of the South. Obama keeps trying to appeal to our better selves in this country and he may just be making a bit of headway.
I don’t think it’s inevitable or desirable for the South, as an entity, to breakaway. Not good for any of us. I think back three decades to the supposed inevitability of a separate French speaking Quebec province, no longer a part of Canada Yet that never happened and I don’t hear much about that separatist movement any more.
Gozer
@dww44: That ain’t nothin’. My home district back in Louisiana produced (in succession…or should I say secession?) David Duke, Bob Livingston, David Vitter, and Bobby Jindal.
That’s some fuckin’ weapons-grade insanity right there.
EDIT: And I have to agree with you dww44 that the North is not always better. Case in point, my current district in PA produced…Pat Toomey. *shudder*
dww44
@TOP123: Guess who represents PTC in Congress: Lynn Westmoreland. These days he lays low, cause he’s not good for anything but carrying water. My brother-in-law lives in nearby Newnan and belongs to a Rotary club in Peachtree City. Told the President of the club a couple of years ago, a staunch Republican, that his party was responsible for the country’s inability to have a civil political discourse. This brother-in-law, retired Army colonel, inveterate world traveler, voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, but for Obama in 2008. From an outsider’s viewpoint I can see that PTC would be frightening. Much the same experience I had when visitng newly married daughter in the upper middle class homogenous suburb of Dallas called Flower Mound. Super suburban and very very religious in outlook. But then the gated community lifestyle and mental outlook are also endemic up at the retirement communities on Lake Oconee, an hour east of Atlanta.
You are right that Cobb County is what the modern GOP aspires to be. When you get right down to it, the forces of exclusivity and inclusivity are at war with each other in the country and we don’t yet know which will win out in the end. The sort of mental inbreeding that the suburbs “grow” renders otherwise educated people incapable of seeing that inclusiveness is the real path to economic prosperity and embracing diversity will make our democratic institutions stronger and more resilient.
TOP123
@dww44: Yeah, you pegged it. The ‘unpresidential’–never more so!–president and first family. This trope is the refuge of countless conservative friends and acquaintances who ‘don’t want to talk about politics’, or ‘don’t want to say anything bad’ to their Democratic friend, but ‘don’t you just think Michelle is so tacky? (or pushy, or loud, or…) Wasn’t Obama’s bow/kiss/scrape unpresidential? Etc., etc.
@Gozer: You have a pretty good argument, here.
WyldPirate
@shortstop:
Sorry I got on this thread lead.
I can’t help but comment that you and some others in this are an obnoxiously stupid fucks that can’t read well.
First, at no point in the other thread did I defend either the idiots wanting to get a NBF license plate in Mississippi nor did I ever defend anything that Forrest ever did.
The reason i brought up the issue of the New York draft riots was because hundreds of unarmed blacks were beaten, murdered and hung from lamp posts during that incident in the very heart of the “country”–the glorious city of New York in the heart of “the Union” that was fighting to rid the nation of slavery–was to demonstrate that racism, cruelty and exploitation of slavery wasn’t just limited to the South either then or now.
Not very charitable treatment, beating, murdering and hanging unarmed blacks is it? Hell, their was even an effort to raid a black orphanage and kill the kids, but they were evacuated before it happened. In fact, that is probably less charitable treatment than the soldiers at Ft. Pillow got. You see, I’ve been to Ft. Pillow and it was a shoddily constructed and defended defensive position. On top of that, the Fort’s “supporting artillery”–a Union Gunboat—was (buttoned up” and didn’t provide supporting fire because of sniper fire. The facts are that the Ft. Pillow was taken rapidly because of the use of effective military tactics.
The 1863 draft riots were caused in large part for economic reasons. People were pissed and rioted because the draft at the time allowed the wealthy to buy their way out of military service with the Union Army. And guess what, just like Vietnam, the poor were beginning to pay a heavier price during wartime. Many of the immigrants and poor white people of the city resented that fact and they blamed blacks for the fact that they had to enter the military. They also viewed free blacks as competition in the workforce. And even though the Yankees at the time were “enlightened”, the were not enlightened enough to have blacks in their units.
You and some other idiot twits here on BJ along with lazy-assed researchers/shithead obsessives like Dennis Green seem to ignore that sort of thing. You seem to ignore the fact that the North began to build up its industrial base to a large extent prior to the Civil War using raw materials obtained from slave labor. You seem to ignore the fact that the country was founded on the fact of discord over slavery but benefitted mightly from it and even allowed it in most of the northern US.
Yeah, buddy. Everyone in the North during the Civil War and everyone since is just pure as the driven snow. No racism or prejudice up there in the Northern US, uh-uh.
I brought the issue of the rioting up in Boston over desegregation in the 70s in the other thread for a similar reason–to demonstrate that there were and are sorry, racist fucks all over the country even a 100 years later.
I get sick of stupid fucks like you and Dennis Green and non-reading dipshits like Cacti who love to broad-brush everyone in the South as being racist rednecks today. They aren’t by any stretch of the imagination. People in the South are not unlike people all over the rest of the country–mostly pretty good and decent people overall but not without its share of racists/haters, murderers and other scum.
And Dennis, bone up on your military history a bit, you know jackshit about it. Forrest may have been a despicable human being, but he was an effective commander of a Corps-sized cavalry unit that was known for their extremely rapid movement, raids and fighting his troops from a dismounted position so they could more effectively employ their rifles. You see, it’s more effective shooting from the ground than firing while riding a horse. That was/is nothing like “guerrilla warfare” but more like todays mechanized infantry that moves on the offensive, dismounts from their vehicle and assaults a position as practiced by today’s US military.
dww44
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
On the other hand, there are events and actions that do bode well for our future. In this small black majority Southern city, with a majority white population in the suburbs, a white Democratic mayor was elected 3 years ago, succeeding the first black one, and a Black Democrat became the first County Commission chair. All of this was thanks in part to Obama’s coattails, cause he carried this county.
One of the first acts of that white Democratic mayor was to address the city’s black population and apologize for fact and harm of the institution of slavery. There have been recent black-white poltical arguments as a result of the overwhelming defeat of Dems by Repubs in the state. Lots of long time elected Black Democrats (at the state level), accustomed to being in the majority, are having to adjust to being a very distinct minority. Those very public arguments, some of which occurred in front of cameras, have resulted in a couple of planned “unity” conferences attended by the local political power structure and much publicized by the local paper. There is reason to hope.
morzer
@WyldPirate:
So your view is that mass murder is acceptable provided the man committing it is a good soldier?
Interesting and instructive.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@WyldPirate:
Yeah, Dengre never mentioned the hatred of blacks that is deeply rooted to this day in the still secessionist north, does he?
Fuck you are stupid. Really, absolutely, pathetically stupid. Terminally stupid. You must look for topics like this just to get your kicks by being the righteous fuckwad who is tossing off everywhere.
Rage away. I couldn’t give a shit what you say because it’s sure to be brain-achingly stupid. I just thought you deserved to know that.
TOP123
@dww44: That’s interesting about your brother-in-law. Know a few diehard conservative friends who turned against the GOP (yep, mostly over Palin), but they’re still too few and far between, and they’re not coming to the (D) side, just waiting for a non-moronic ticket.
What you said about Flower Mound resonates with me. A new more-or-less synthetic community like Peachtree City can be unreceptive to a non-resident, and I think attracts more of its own. It really strikes me as a cult, this new talk-radio infused suburban model. It’s not the country or the city I worry about. It’s the suburban counties where the crazies live.
Anne Laurie
@Warren Terra:
Hey, let’s ask that they get their “heritage flag” tattooed on their forearms… and see how long it takes them to get the reference.
Cerberus
@TOP123:
Yep, while there is still the huge discrepancy between South and North, I think the biggest divide between Cosmopolitan and Confederate Party is definitely Cities vs Suburbs.
And it makes sense it would be so and that the Confederate Suburban Party would be splitting with reality.
Since at least the 60s there’s been two responses to the various social changes we’ve seen. There is accepting them and slowly growing or run to the suburbs and pretend it never happened, everyone doing their part to keep up with the Joneses and keep up appearances.
And the suburbs are keeping up those appearances hoping to make reality continue go away in denial and will continue to become nasty as they continue to fail to make the bad real world go away.
I think like with so many things he did to the country’s downfall, the extra oomph of denial Reagan gave the suburbs and the “Lost Causers” to pretend everything was fine is going to continue to fuck with us for a very long time. The 50s can return again, the Confederacy can return again, because it was Morning in America where we all pretended all the bad others went away for a decade.
They’re hoping that wishful thinking can make it happen again.
Of course, I think things like the internet are making it really impossible to create bubbles of denial and what we’re seeing is the pus draining from that infection as the Confederacy Party is losing places to hide from the cultural changes.
Doesn’t mean they won’t make us suffer as much as possible in the meantime of course.
bjacques
We need a license plate honoring General Sherman. That is all.
Cat Lady
@bjacques:
Fixt.
agrippa
The South – the old Confederacy – has not changed very much in attitudes.
I think that Cerberus is right that many are trying the best they can to avoid changing those attitudes. White flight to the suburbs is one way to do that.
There are many in the North who hold similar attitudes about race and diversity.
Cacti
@morzer:
Not a North Carolina native, but I did live there for 10+ years and still have family there.
NC going for Obama was less about a change in attitude of the natives than it was about the State has experienced substantial population growth in the past 20 years from people moving in. I’d say it’s a purple state at best, but it’s reached a tipping point with non-confederates that it’s no longer safe red.
Cacti
@WyldPirate:
And it’s exactly the same because 150 years later, the New York legislature has introduced a bill commemorating the 1863 draft riots.
You are proof positive that the south will never deal honestly with its own history. Some false equivalence that “bad things happened in the North too” will always be used to handwave away the fact that your secessionist forebears took up arms against the United States to preserve chattel slavery. No amount of spin or moonshine is going to make that one go away Johnny Reb.
Your pitiful attempts to minimize the villainy, racism, and horror that was the adult life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, casts quite a revealing light on your constant, vociferous criticisms of the first non-white President.
Neoconfederate, apologist scum you are.
Barry
@TOP123: “For all his other craziness, Victor Gaius Davis Octavius Hanson (or whatever his delightful nickname is over at Sadly, No!) ”
My nickname for him is ‘Tertiary Syphillis’ Hanson, after both his initials (VD), and the fact that tertiary syphillis causes insanity.
Barry
@WyldPirate: Tell ya what – why don’t you just post ‘More neo-conferederate crap from a stupid screen name’ until you have something to say which is true and relevant.
You haven’t said anything that people here didn’t know already, and the conclusions you draw (such as people here believing that the North is as pure as the driven snow) are lies.
mrami
@TOP123: Heh, did I give away the farm there with my username? :)
Yeah, progress is not a one-way street up. We are developing on a downward arc right now, for god knows how long.
Dan
And, also, the NegroMart drove all the mom and pop Negro stores out of business.
DKF
@morzer:
Well, following Justice Scalia’s argument, just as the 14th Amendment was not intended to apply to women, so the 2nd Amendment was not intended to apply to non-whites.
jinx
@Tom Levenson:
Just after TNC wrote of his trip to a confederate cemetery I stumbled across this article about Venice and the manipulation of history (that in the end actually enforced the status quo) that occurred there. The circumstances while very different are to my mind also very similar to our current reality in America.
This quote in particular stood out:
The Golux
Barbara Bush, when touring the NegroMart facility, was heard to say, “And so many of the people in the Jail here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.”
Geeno
@Dan: Pure WIN!
Don’t spend all your internets in one place.
Scooter Macgruder
For reasons not worth going into, I re-read Gone With the Wind this past year. I don’t remember feeling much one way or the other about its racial attitudes 35 years ago, but I was dumbfounded by them this time around. I should say that I am now a 50-year-old white male; and then I was a 15-year-old white dork. But my point is that I think the we-really-treated-those-darkies-nice perspective that stinks up the that whole book must have had a big influence on the whole country. The great southern myth (or fabrication) of slavery’s benevolence was mainstreamed in many ways, but that popular culture success of that book and the movie afterward must have done a great deal of harm. All those nice sorority girls could sigh contentedly knowing that Big Daddy’s complaining about “them” was maybe a little crude, but based on some kind of reality.
redoubt
@morzer: Been saying that for years: if he can survive South Side Chicago politics, he can survive anything. Keep in mind that the Dan Ryan (I-90-94) was intentionally built where it was as a racial border.
@asiangrrlMN:Been a Civil War buff since I was eight, but then I grew up in Chicago–Grant Park, Sherman Park, Lincoln Park, Sheridan Road, Logan Square, Farragut High School. . .
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: The Carthegians & their baby sacrificing are right up there, IMO.
Paul in KY
@themann1086: I can’t believe that subject came ‘up’ in a dorm conversation. Jeezus!
Paul in KY
@WyldPirate: WTF does Forrest’s skill at being a cavalry commander have to do with him ordering the murders of surrendering U.S. troops? Riddle me this.
Tehanu
@Mike in NC:
If you haven’t read the actual memoirs by Grant and Sherman, you should. They’re beautifully written and well worth the effort.
Dennis G.
@WyldPirate:
Dude, I belittle the glorious military career of NBF on purpose. Yes, he was brilliant but you could make a case that Union officers like Sheridan were better–they just never had the massive Lost Cause myth machine pumping them up. And last I look there was not a Union General who engaged in a massacre like Fort Pillow. Treating NBF with any respect gives approval to his war crimes and/or offers a lame justification for them. The old terrorist has earn my contempt on all levels–and that includes making fun of his myth of military greatness.
And every post of neo-Confederate wankerism does not require a disclaimer that the neo-Confederate mind set can be found in every state of the Union and that that was true in any year of our Nation’s shared past as well as now.
The draft riots were bad, but last time I looked nobody in NY was advocating efforts to celebrate them as great. Your efforts at changing the argument and misdirection are predictable as always.
b3nt3n
Brings to mind Tom Lehrer’s satirical song “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra3qnLXmJDM
I wanna go back to Dixie
I wanna be a dixie pixie
And eat cornpone ’til it’s comin’ outta my ears
I wanna talk with Southern gentlemen
And put my white sheet on again,
I ain’t seen one good lynchin’ in years….
Evolved Deep Southerner
@WyldPirate: Wow. Seeing a new side of you this evening. Not your good side.
ryan
While I sympathize with the author’s basic point about Forrest, I have to condemn his associated Tea Partiers with the KKK and the Forrest apologists. Are some Tea Partiers apologists and Neo-Confederates? Sure, just as some Left Winges are apologists for Che “I regularly shot Batistas” Guevara as well as the Communist Party.
The Left and RIght are both full of nutjobs. To associate a whole group with a few nutcases is intolerant, anti-intellectual, and the act of a zealot.
The irony of this is that the author is closer in behavior to those he condemns than liberal values he allegedly values.
morzer
@ryan:
Funny then that all the acts of violence and murder have been right-wing sponsored and defended in recent years.
But I dare say that doesn’t worry you.
Bogeyman
While we’re so busy cursing and smearing apologists and all their ancestors, let’s ignore the official and Congressional records on the precept of this thread:
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest
Considering that the House committee (1871) that investigated and reported per above included Sherman and various Radical Republicans…we can assume they would NOT be predisposed to whitewash Forrest’s involvement if there were ANY evidence.
But don’t let these inconvenient facts break up your little smear party. Carry on.
Bogeyman
@Anne Laurie: Nice, Anne Laurie, never pass up an opportunity to use the “N” word when smearing southern people. Your reference seeks to make some equivalence between Confederates and Nazis. How original…and how despicable.
You are so blinded by your own ignorance and intolerance that you can’t see how offensive that is. Did you know that there is a Nathan Bedford Forrest in Arlington National Cemetery? His name is Nathan Bedford Forrest III. He was a General in the U.S. Army and he died in the skies over Germany on a bombing mission in 1943. He was the great grandson of the Confederate general and he died fighting Nazis.
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/forrest.htm
Countless other descendants of Confederates have served their country in wars since 1865 — many made the ultimate sacrifice fighting Nazis. Gen. Patton was the grandson of a Confederate soldier. So was President Truman.
Thousands of Jews fought for the Confederacy, defending their homes against invaders. Their descendants, too, take offense to your Nazi analogy.
morzer
@Bogeyman:
Descendants of those Confederates do not excuse the vile conduct of their traitorous begetters. Your seditious forefathers betrayed their country, were beaten by better men on the battlefield, and will never be regarded with anything but contempt by the overwhelming majority of decent, patriotic Americans. I wipe my ass on the Confederate flag and I shit on the graves of Lee, Jackson, Davis, Forrest and rest of their worthless breed.
Bogeyman
@morzer: Morzer, while your articulate arguments are so overwhelming, I have no interest in your bowel habits. Better men? Really? How many supreme commanders did Lincoln go through? At Brice’s Crossroads, Forrest wiped the floor with Sturgis with about the half the troops the Union had (4700 vs. 8100). Southern troops were generally outnumbered two or three to one and out supplied — and yet it took four years.
Traitors? Were the 13 colonies traitors? Should we rename the capitol in DC named for a traitor to the British crown?
Dennis G.
@Bogeyman:
Technically speaking our founding fathers were traitors to the British crown. They were in rebellion against that King.
And the Confederates were in rebellion against the United States of America and sought the destruction of our Union and Constitutional Government. Their neo-Confederate descendants still seek to do the same–and from you comments I guess were can count you among their rank. So be it, but please do not pretend you have any love or affection for the USA while you sing the praises of Confederate traitors and excuse their crimes.
Bogeyman
@Dennis G.: Confederates did not seek “destruction of the union and Constitutional government.” That is an assinine assertion on your part. The southern states sought INDEPENDENCE. The Union and the US Constitution would have remained in place. The southern states formed their own Confederation, and their own Constitution (essentially modeled on the US Constitution). They didn’t seek to take over D.C., or any territory of the northern states any more than George Washington and the Americans sought to capture London. Therefore, it wasn’t a ‘civil’ war but a war for independence… much like the war of 1774–1783.
It is you whose allegiance to the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration is in question.
Since you see the founding fathers as “traitors,” then you must disagree with the principle in the Declaration that “Governments derive their JUST powers from the CONSENT of the governed.” Be that true, then it is YOU who is the traitor to America.
Hitler in Mein Kampf applauded Lincoln’s actions to crush states rights and consolidate all power in one capitol. He did the same thing to the independent German states in forming the Third Reich.
Crimes? Please. It is you, Hitler, Lincoln, Stalin and other consolidationists who are the deadly enemies of liberty. The purpose of the Constitution was to LIMIT government; most of its text consists of things the central government may NOT do. Thanks to Lincoln, Wilson, FDR and LBJ (and now Bush and Obama)…. the Constitution is largely ignored and the central government is UNlimited in what it can do.