It is so like the Federal Government to bigfoot in and spoil the fun of the Republican Confederate Party as they celebrate Confederate History Month. I’m sure they’ll blame this on Obama, but it seems that the National Archives is interjecting themselves into the CHM thing by launching an interactive exhibit called “Discovering the Civil War.”
The WP offers an early review:
The show proceeds thematically rather than chronologically. It raises large questions — What led to the secession of the South? Were there efforts to avoid war? — and then offers documents that should help visitors form answers. Early in the exhibition, viewers confront what might be called the Southern-apologist listening station, where you can both read, and listen to, a document laying out South Carolina’s reasons for secession. After some boilerplate language about the Constitution comes reason No. 1: The right to property, which for South Carolina included the right to human chattel, had been infringed.
There it is, in black and white, and coming at you through a very 1980s hand-held listening device: Slavery is the cause — the essential, primary, undeniable first and sufficient cause for the war. While much of the exhibition aims at nuance and complexity, this should be sufficient to unmask the old masquerade about what the South was fighting for. Efforts to make it seem problematic and complex are all too often part of a nostalgia game, nostalgia for a time when every white Southern man had a God-given right to be a racist, if he so chose.
Looks like the Civil War Sesquicentennial Celebrations will put CHM to shame and provide endless reasons for Republican Confederate Party outrage. Should be fun.
Cheers
de stijl
Dennis G, you’ve done a man’s job with this series.
Yutsano
This is why the FSM invented popcorn. I’m sure the poutrage shall indeed be numerous and delicious. I’m fairly certain the National Archives already had this exhibit scheduled, but I appreciate the timing of this. Now if we could only get this to tour all through the South.
Dennis G.
@Yutsano:
The National Archive site mentions that the show will travel to eight cities beginning in June 2011. I imagine at least one of them will be in the South.
The companion Web site for the exhibit should launch this weekend (at least that was the impression I got).
Cheers
Mike in NC
Hey, Dubya famously said he “didn’t do nuance”, nor do any of the teabaggers and wingnuts who loved him so much.
Uh, and this is so different from what? To be fair, a lot of my neighbors are white Northern racists who just moved to a warmer clime.
James in WA
Cue racists screaming “STATES’ RIGHTS!” in 3…2…1…
Mike Kay
did anyone ever ask Ken Burns about this fiasco?
asiangrrlMN
Dennis, I have the utmost respect and admiration for you for endlessly educating us about the civil war and the causes of said war. You keep bringing your A game. This is a tasty entry, indeed. Yutsy, pass the popcorn.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Parmesan-rosemary or homemade caramel? See? I don’t even mess with popcorn.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Yes! (Some of each, please).
Quiddity
“Slavery is the cause” is basically what Lincoln said in his second inaugural.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Best fresh out of the popper just waiting to be scarfed down. Oh and I sent you an e-mail where I tapped into my inner anthropologist. I think there might be something wrong with me.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: You fake-married me. ‘Nuff said.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Oh sure throw that little factoid in my face. I can’t exactly argue with that point however. Although FWIW I like our little fake famiglia.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Heh. Me, too. I just watched Rachel destroy the asshat leader of FAIR. Wow. He was flustered, stupid, and floundering. Nice!
asiangrrlMN
@asiangrrlMN: Although part of me wishes she would have nailed him on the ‘I know an illegal when I see one, but no it’s not racial-profiling’ bullshit.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I think making him look like an asshat is enough for now. Exposing their true motivations is a much better offensive strategy IMHO.
BethanyAnne
You know, I hate to disagree, but I thought Rachel came off pretty badly in that interview. If you already know FAIR are assholes, it would be fine, I guess. But I watched it, and there was this McCarthy vibe to it. “Did you employ a guy who associated with some people who said this 20 years ago?” is just not compelling to me. And just the whole “talking over him, won’t let him speak” thing… it was just way too Fox News for me.
Yutsano
@BethanyAnne: Angry Rachel is angry. You’re right that she’s usually more balanced than that, however if she isn’t getting the truth she can be a bit of a bulldog.
(See what I did there?)
BethanyAnne
Guess I’m just glad that no one is looking up folk that I hung around with 20 years ago to see if they said anything dumb so that it could be held against me.
dslak
@BethanyAnne: People that someone at FAIR “hung around with 20 years ago” isn’t the issue. The issue is establishing a pattern of racist behavior, and that pattern goes back that far. While Maddow may have occasionally stepped on Stein, it was also necessary to shut him down when he would go off on a tangent about the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Balance is beside the point: If an intervieweee chooses to avoid pertinent questions, a decent interviewer should follow up on that evasion. There was nothing comparable to Fox News here, as Maddow was not making dark insinuations, but making an argument based upon the known views of people who have or have had leadership positions in FAIR.
NobodySpecial
Exactly. Asshat tried to deny something he said on Hannity’s show, even! If only Rachel had played the clip to go with it, it would have been much better.
BethanyAnne
@dslak: I should say that I have no doubts that the FAIR folk are racist asshats. But I was watching when she interviewed that guy who creates all the fake websites. Burman? The one who makes all the astroturf groups. Her interview and dissection of him was much more effective because she was calm, and stuck to the direct record. Jumping all over the FAIR guy was maybe satisfying, but much less effective.
racrecir
But, but…Civil Rights…because Republicans…Party of Lincoln…
Oh heck, take it away Deroy Murdock:
I heard somewhere that the purpose of right-wing media isn’t so much to misinform readers as to invite them to participate in the spreading of misinformation. The Murdock article was at the height of a time when numerous right-wingers were all claiming that the passage of the Civil Rights Act was the proper legacy of the modern-day Republican Party.
In various and sundry blog posts on anything remotely related, comment sections were descended on by wingers parroting this newly discovered history. Of course, this kind of behavior was and remains standard operating procedure. I don’t pay close attention like I used to so I’m partial to examples from the ‘early years‘, and the Murdock piece is a splendid one at that.
Psychology calls it motivated reasoning. But maybe a new name is needed that accounts for this Internet thing like, say, ‘motivated democratic participatory propaganda’. Or maybe ‘epistemic closure’ works fine. Or maybe Mr. Twain has it:
Motivated corn-pone. I like the sound of that.
Yutsano
@racrecir: If corn pone ain’t motivated to get in my belly it don’t need to be anywhere around me. Gotta love Samuel Clemens for telling the awful truths of his day.
cmorenc
Slavery the prime cause of the Civil War, rather than oppressive intrusion on state’s rights and individual liberties?
Damn, that’s what you get when you let dirty fucking hippies infiltrate to rewrite history to miseducate the public. Some dirty fucking hippies need to be punched, and this atrocity needs to be promtly corrected, else our Southern heritage of civalry and freedom and our great-great grandfathers who fought no nobly will be slandered!
My great-great grandfather Col. Beauregard Pickett Lee III CSA is spinning in his grave at Gettysburg Cemetary.
Joey Maloney
@BethanyAnne: I agree with you insofar as I would have preferred to see Rachel go after the provisions of the law rather than the group itself.
There’s no question that the group is made up a racist asshats and it’s valuable to expose that, however stopping there allowed the asshat in the hot seat to pull that McCarthy card which, true or not, is resonant. Better IMO to focus on the racist results of their asshattery.
The question I wanted to hear Rachel ask was about how SB1070 – that FAIR helped write – will work in practice. “Let’s pretend I’m a policewoman. Prove to me right now that you’re an American citizen. Drivers license? Nope, not proof. Social security card? Nope, not proof – too easy to counterfeit. You’re coming with me. You can make your phone call from the cell.”
El Cid
@dslak: Hey! You’re just taking FAIR out of context! Mentioning what our Board of Directors apparently think and say — now that’s just out of context! Mentioning what our Regional Directors do and say, and what racist groups they appear with and are listed as being a part of — this is just out of context! In fact anything you ask me that doesn’t allow me to spin things they way I want — that’s just out of context!
El Cid
I wish there were a huge national commemoration of Reconstruction, the incredible promise of freedom and fairness so many fought for and achieved so much for, and the “Redeemer” white supremacist reconquest which set the stage for the entire next century of U.S. politics.
I don’t think it will happen, though.
kid bitzer
i was around for the 100th anniversary of the war, and i’ve got to say that nobody–nobody anywhere–was making the effort to focus the nation’s attentions on the primary documents of the confederacy.
there was a lot of appeasement, instead–appeasement of southern traitors, whose feelings we didn’t want to hurt. a lot of gone with the wind.
if we do this 150th anniversary right, by focusing on *what the confederacy fought for* as expressed *in the confederacy’s own words*, then we should be able to end the lies forever.
(or at least reduce them to a small enough rump that neo-confederacy will be no more popular than neo-nazism).
the cornerstone speech. the articles of secession. the csa constitution. their own words. that’s the stake that will kill this monster off and keep it in its grave.
and thank you, dennis, for helping to spread the word.
MikeJ
@Joey Maloney: Phone call? What makes you think non citizens get a phone call? Those rights are reserved for citizens.
geg6
@kid bitzer:
This. Goddammit, this. Throw the actual words and primary documents in their faces every day, all day long until they STFU about the whole bullshit states rights crap they’ve used to rationalize their racism ever since Reconstruction was perverted to appease their worthless asses.
WereBear
Props to you, Dennis G. This has been an awesome series.
In order to cling to a fantasy, they must ignore actual history. I’m always amazed that truth does not matter to them; not any kind.
Dennis G.
@WereBear:
As we all know, reality has a liberal bias.
Linda Featheringill
@kid bitzer: The 100th anniversary of the civil war:
I was old enough to participate in the festivities but I don’t remember anything being said at that time. Maybe Oklahoma [where I was] didn’t really celebrate the civil war. Of course, the Territory of Oklahoma was populated in the 1860s by people who had other problems.
Maybe they just passed the popcorn and watched the show. Crazy white people!
rickstersherpa
One could say it is all in the “Bonnie Blue Flag” – “Fighting for our property we earned by honest toil” – the property’s honest toil that is.
I do like how these ass hats like to claim that because of the what people who called themselves “Democrats” did what people who were called “Republicans” did 150 years ago has anything to do with the current post 1964-72 parties is engaging in “lying.” Liberals like Lincoln, Stevens, Morton, Sumner, and Fessenden would be as welcome the current as ants at a picnic.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Ditto. Not just a ditto, but wanted to add, this has been one of the best series of articles I’ve seen on the blogs over the years.
If there is a Pullet Surprise for the blog world, then this set of pieces should be on the short list.
DecidedFenceSitter
What’s interesting being in NoVA is I have some close friends who were educated in the school system outside of Richmond, VA. Now two of these friends are sisters, both fairly liberal oriented.
And so I’ve shared a couple of these articles, and it has been quite enlightening to see all their defenses come up to defend the South, that it wasn’t really that bad, that the current movement is only about the good parts of the War of Northern Aggression™.
flukebucket
@cmorenc:
Ain’t it funny how the south claims to have fought for state’s rights so they could fuck folks out of individual liberties.
kid bitzer
38–
yup. and if you read the south carolina articles of secession
avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
one of their central grievances is that other states want to claim that *they* have states’ rights too–the right to make their own policies about slavery, fugitives, and freedmen.
and south carolina *hates* it when new york or illinois says it has states’ rights–no, goddamn it, you have to follow the federal law, and return those slaves to us pronto!
they actually complain–get this–that the northern states “nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them.” oh please. south carolina? you really want to complain about other states nullifying federal acts?
well of course they do: when federal law favors slavery, they don’t give a good goddamn about states’ rights. nullification is only for slavers–when abolitionists want to nullify federal law, then they have no states’ rights to do so.
and thus it ever was–“states’ rights” has always, always been a pile of steaming horseshit, covering something even nastier underneath: racism, slavery, and white supremacy.
frankdawg
Back in the early internet days I was part of a Civil War email list (look up email list on google kids!) One of the things that drove me nuts was how a small portion of the Southern apologists would continually dredge up their long lost – often shirt-tail distant relatives as a defense. One particular ass clown was marginally related to Henry Light-Horse Lee and therefore Gen. Bobby Lee. I never understood how that was supposed to prove his point or bolster his opinion but he waved his long dead kin every chance he got. I finally told him if he was so into ancestor worship he should try some Pacific Island tribal culture.
Long story short I almost wet myself laughing at:
@cmorenc
“My great-great grandfather Col. Beauregard Pickett Lee III CSA is spinning in his grave at Gettysburg Cemetary. “
James in WA
Let us not forget this gem, the very first reason for secession given by Mississippi:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
In today’s rhetoric I believe that the above sentiment would be expressed along the lines of “We Just Want Our Country Back.”