Good luck, my brother. You're gonna need it.
Posted on 09/15/2003 9:45:33 AM PDT by quidnunc
Now and then some abstract scholar, i. e., some damfool, will claim that The War is over, and that furthermore we in this country, by which he means the United States of America rather than what Robert E. Lee meant (Virginia), have so progressed and advanced and generally become so modern and characterless that the Civil War/War Between the States no longer has much of an influence over us.
Even the more ideological terms for the conflict (War of the Rebellion/War of Northern Aggression) have fallen into disuse except among the few remaining True Believers. As for referring to the Late Unpleasantness as the rock from which we are hewn — we think the phrase may be Faulkner’s; he wrote everything, didn’t he? — well, it was really just a pebble. And it’s already rolled down History’s hill.
Fuhgeddaboutit. The whole subject can be safely left to the re-enactors. It’s over at last. It’s history, as we amnesiac Americans say, meaning it doesn’t matter any more. We can all relax. Then you pick up the front page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette early on a, well, not exactly frosty morn but a nice early September one, wipe off the sweet Southern dew it picked up on the lawn, and read the Page 1 headline: Sons of Confederate Veterans rebel at idea of planned Lincoln exhibit Oh, no, not again.
The new Confederates aren’t just in the attic any more, they’re in the streets, or in the papers anyway. They may be bad news, but they’re always good copy. We do know Faulkner said this: In the South the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past. And this headline is just another daily confirmation of that proposition. Q. E. D.
The Common Soldier of the Confederacy was petrified long ago, reduced to that stone idol outside every Southern courthouse, which, tradition holds, must be placed so that it peers northward, ever on guard against The Invader. And by now the genuine heroism of those bygone days has been interred under the leaden weight of ten thousand Confederate Memorial Day speeches.
Alas, we will always have with us the professional Southerner, who, like the Bourbon kings of France, remembers everything but learns nothing. Especially about charity for all and malice toward none, particularly where Abe Lincoln is concerned.
Ah, yes, Abe Lincoln, aka The Tyrant, The Ape, That Depraved Thug and all the other insults to which a defeated civilization is heir to. Which is understandable. All the Old South had left after Appomattox was the luxury of hate, and by now we’ve just about worn it bare. The epithet Damnyankee may still have a certain resonance for those of us of a certain age, but cussin’ Abe Lincoln? That pastime no longer sounds genuine; it’s more a set piece for the delectation of little children and paying tourists.
There’s also a new brand of revisionist historians, or rather revisionist rhetoricians, in ghastly bloom up North who hate Lincoln for their own separate but equally zealous reasons: He was no abolitionist but a Unionist first, he was too soft on the South, he wore his tie wrong… . Maybe they could join up with these official sons of the Confederacy quoted in the paper and have a joint encampment. Hot dawg. That would be fun to watch — from a safe distance.
Here in Arkansas, the latest object of all this misspent fury is a three-foot high replica of the classic statue of Father Abraham in the Lincoln Memorial. This little statue had quietly gathered dust in the lobby of Hot Springs’ old convention auditorium until somebody realized it was a model for Daniel Chester French’s masterpiece in the Memorial. So now it’s being given a place of honor in the city’s new Convention Center, which infuriates the Forget, Hell! brigade. It sounds determined to make one more hopeless charge, like Pickett’s, across open ground, completely exposed.
This time they’re firing verbal blanks: "Having an exhibition anywhere in Dixie of this depraved thug is the equivalent of having a statue of Adolph Hitler in Israel." So says the commander of Hot Springs ’ local chapter (" camp") of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Leo Strauss, the philosopher and patron saint of American neoconservatives, had a phrase for this kind of, uh, reasoning. Scholar that he was, he called it reductio ad Hitlerum, a play on reductio ad absurdum. Instead of reducing every idea to its absurd extreme, this rhetorical device reduces any opponent to Hitler. The commander of Hot Springs’ Confederate camp may have hit on the ploy naturally, like life imitating bad art. (The left is fond of the device, too, which is equally ineffectual when used against Robert E. Lee.)
Doubtless the comparison is supposed to shock, but by now it only bores. And instead of being provocative, invoking Hitler in connection with Lincoln comes across only as… strange.
Strange things do happen when a civilization dies before its time, especially if it has self-destructed. What did Tacitus say of the Romans? They make a devastation and call it peace. The fire-eaters of 1861 made a devastation and called it the Lost Cause.
It was Margaret Mitchell, strangely enough, that great romanticizer of The War, who had her shining knight Ashley Wilkes tell the truth in his letter to Melanie: that our people were deceived by demagogues we mistook for statesmen, and the South promptly marched off to disaster. Now not all our tears and curses can bring back what once was. Certainly cheap propaganda can’t. It’s gone with the wind.
It has become the fashion over the years to write off Gone With the Wind as just another exercise in Southern sentimentality, but that old standby contains some worthwhile lessons about victory and defeat, dreams and reality, and the nature of true honor.
We are now engaged in another struggle to determine whether we shall live free or slave in this world. Our enemies, driven mad by the loss of what was once a great civilization, the envy and teacher of the known world in its prime, have reached out to settle imagined old scores. Sound familiar? It should, at least to Southerners. Call us Ishmael. Anyone who thinks we have nothing in common with Arabdom’s fanatics needs to think again. To them the battles of the 12th Century are as real as Gettysburg to us. These turbaned re-enactors out of the East would much prefer to live and die in that storied past, when everything was so clear, instead of in the burdensome present with all its complicated choices.
Our enemies, whatever superficial differences may separate us from them, are no strangers. We should know their feelings well. What was the Ku Klux Klan in its heyday (circa 1924) but a terrorist band thinking it could revive a history that never was? Like Hamas or Hezbollah, the kluxers were masked, too. Terrorists are terrorists the world over.
To some, History is an eternal battleground on which the old flag has never been furled. They exist in a kind of dreamworld in which rhetoric will always have more attraction than understanding. And any excuse will do to declare war — The War — once again. With the same futile results.
It was Faulkner who wrote of the kind of Southerners who would fight the Civil War all over again knowing he would lose. The frightening thing is we can understand that impulse, even admire it. That’s what makes them dangerous.
Maybe the charitable thing to do would be to tiptoe quietly past this ward, and leave the speechifyers undisturbed in their fancies. They’re harmless by and large.
But, lest we forget, catastrophe may start with rhetoric. It’s one thing for these people to believe what they say, but the innocent young might. And then we’ll never stop fighting The War. So somebody always needs to step up and point out that these rhetorical fancies are only that, and where they once led. The South must not fall again, a victim of its own strange illusionists.
We are now engaged in another struggle to determine whether we shall live free or slave in this world. Our enemies, driven mad by the loss of what was once a great civilization, the envy and teacher of the known world in its prime, have reached out to settle imagined old scores. Sound familiar? It should, at least to Southerners. Call us Ishmael. Anyone who thinks we have nothing in common with Arabdom’s fanatics needs to think again. To them the battles of the 12th Century are as real as Gettysburg to us. These turbaned re-enactors out of the East would much prefer to live and die in that storied past, when everything was so clear, instead of in the burdensome present with all its complicated choices.
The Confederate jihad!?
And we'd settle the Yankees' hash this time if it came to it, 'cause it would be the Northeast, West coast, and Madison, Wisconsin against the rest of us.
This editorial was written by Paul greenberg, whose credentials as a card-carrying Southerner born and bred simply cannot be questioned.
And how do I know Greenberg wrote this?
Because it returns to a theme he raised a few years ago:
“Both Arabdom and the Old South are remnants of once great civilizations with flaws that doomed them to defeat. The blinder partisans of each look back with a nostalgia that clouds their vision. Their love for an imagined past that is now beyond re-creating prevents them from seizing the present, and fashioning the future. They prefer their imaginary world of slogans and fixations, though it is only imaginary, to the possibilities of a new start in reality — because reality requires compromise.” – “The Arab Tragedy: A mistake becomes a tradition”, (The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial, July 18, 2000)
You are proving Greenberg's point.
The new Civil War battles are but proxy wars for other wars, including wars to come, on both sides. Slavery was instituted under the Stars and Stripes, not the Stars and Bars. The people shreiking about Confederate memorials and names are just as offended by American symbols as by the Confedrate ones, they just don't yet have the nerve, numbers, or muscle to say so. Look at the trend of renaming schools and other public facilities named for George Washington and other slave-holders, for example. On the other side, much of the pro-Confederate sentiment has less to do with history than with multi-culturalism today. You can dress up in costumes and "honor the past", but taking steps to preserve the actual culture is forbidden. When the descendents of those Confederates are a minority in their homeland, these symbol wars will be irrelevant. They can't stop that from happening but can't sit and do nothing, so they moan about statues.
The spectacle of the author of this piece roasting the denunciation of Lincoln as Hitler, and then turning around and suggesting that his opponents are the equivalent of terrorists, Muslim and KKK, is striking. You get a lot of that these days. It's as if he forgot what he wrote a couple of paragraphs ago, or (more likely) can't really see the hypocrisy in it because he doesn't doubt his own righteousness.
Good luck, my brother. You're gonna need it.
Interesting. Hadn't thought about it in this manner.
You know anything about this?
Paul Greenberg is a rock-ribbed conservative and anyone who claims otherwise is a thick-witted crackpot.
He has written that his parents, Jewish immigrants who fled fascism in Europe, became die-hard American patriots because they knew what it was like to live under the heel of of tyranny.
Moreover Paul Greenberg loves the south.
He regularly writes favorable articles about some aspect of Southern life or culture.
He just believes that the neo-Confederate "southrons" are cranks.
To some, Hot Springs has the good fortune to possess a rare and valuable bronze statue of President Abraham Lincoln, one of the nation’s pivotal leaders.
Hot Springs Civic and Convention Center officials are putting the finishing touches on a display for the bronze statue, cast from the model used for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. It was dusted off after 40 years of obscurity in the Spa City.
Others who honor the Confederacy, however, want no part of an exhibit that would venerate the president who presided over the Union during the Civil War, sometimes called the War of Northern Aggression in the South.
The local chapter, or camp, of the Sons of Confederate Veterans already is planning protests. Camp commander Loy Mauch, a Bismarck resident, says any tribute to Lincoln simply insults their values. "Having an exhibition anywhere in Dixie of this depraved thug is the equivalent of having a statue of Adolph Hitler in Israel," Loy Mauch wrote in a recent letter published in The Sentinel-Record. Mauch and his camp, which he says has about 100 members, are fighting to preserve and protect the legacy of the Confederacy, just as they have with other disputes over the use of Confederate symbols found in public displays such as state flags.
Before they protest, however, the Sons of Confederate Veterans wants to speak with convention center officials and give them a chance to remove the statue, Mauch said.
Convention Center officials say they don’t want to debate Lincoln’s role in U.S. history. They also don’t want to remove the statue. "If you look at the polls, he’s one of our most admired presidents," said Steve Arrison, executive director of the Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission, which oversees the convention center. "Ninety-nine percent of the earth admires President Lincoln. He’s not going anywhere."
The Sons of Confederate Veterans is dedicated to preserving the memory of those who fought for the Confederacy so future generations can understand the motives that animated the Southern Cause." "The memory and reputation of the Confederate soldier, as well as the motives for his suffering and sacrifice, are being consciously distorted by some in an attempt to alter history," according to the organization’s Web site. "Unless the descendants of Southern soldiers resist those efforts, a unique part of our nation’s cultural heritage will cease to exist." Groups like Sons of Confederate Veterans cling to elements of the Old South, where a plantation aristocracy ruled over both blacks and poor whites, said Fred A. Bailey, chairman of the history department at Abilene Christian University in Texas.
"They are a distinct but very vocal minority,"Bailey said."They don’t like what’s happened to the South. White society has lost its entitlement, and [the Old South] heritage is being destroyed."
Seeing memorials to Lincoln, the leader of the military force that brought down the confederacy, only exasperates that frustration, Bailey said.
Earlier this year another tribute to Lincoln sparked protests. Confederate sympathizers waged a letter and e-mail campaign against a Lincoln statue donated to the Richmond Battlefield Park in Richmond, Va., the capital of the Confederacy.
The superintendent of the National Park Service park, Cynthia MacLeod, estimated she received about 1,000 letters or emails, the majority opposing the statue.
" I wasn’t surprised at the amount but the tone, "said MacLeod Thursday, acknowledging they were hateful and vitriolic. "It was different from what I expected."
The statue in Richmond was donated by the U.S. Historical Society and is part of the park’s master plan to place the battles in larger historical context, MacLeod said, adding that the statue is not commemorative but interpretive.
"We think it’s a way to tell a story," she said.
When the statue was dedicated in April, about 100 Sons of Confederate Veterans gathered at the grave of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, to protest the Lincoln statue.
MacLeod didn’t see the protesters, but she did see an aircraft towing a banner over the dedication ceremony. The banner read, "Sic Semper Tyrannis,"Latin for" Thus Always to Tyrants, "the Commonwealth of Virginia’s motto. It’s said John Wilkes Booth uttered those words just before he assassinated Lincoln. The Sons of Confederate Veterans disavowed any involvement in the banner.
A tourist’s gift
When Union forces advanced to within 40 miles north of Little Rock in 1862, Gov. Henry Rector" panicked, packed up the state archives, and headed west, eventually ending up in Hot Springs, "according to the Rugged and Sublime, a history of the Civil War in Arkansas edited by Mark K. Christ. That moment was Hot Springs’ mark in Civil War lore.
But 138 years after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Va., the Arkansas resort city of 35,750 can now boast the state’s largest local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Civil War historians like Carl Moneyhon of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock can’t imagine the Hot Springs statue will spark the same furor that was seen in Richmond.
"It’s not like Hot Springs is hallowed ground,"said Moneyhon, who is teaching a class this fall on modern society’s fascination with the Civil War.
Until recently the Lincoln statue in Hot Springs had gone mostly ignored. The statue came to the Spa City, courtesy of a wealthy Chicago businessman, Benjamin Kulp, who spent his summers in Hot Springs. It’s believed to be one of fewer than a dozen scale replicas cast from the working model of the larger Daniel Chester French statue that is the centerpiece of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.
That Lincoln, sitting and draped with an American flag, stands 19 feet tall and 19 feet wide. It’s carved from 28 blocks of white Georgia marble.
The one in Hot Springs is 3 feet high.
More than four years ago, Arrison noticed the Lincoln statue among items from the old convention auditorium being prepared for auction. It had been in the lobby of the auditorium for years.
The statue eventually found its way to a break room and a spot between men’s and women’s restrooms before it was authenticated and reached its current resting place in the convention center.
Now the statue sits on a 65-inch wooden pedestal in a second-floor hall of the convention center lined with framed images of American presidents, including John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, who grew up in Hot Springs.
At that point, the Sons of Confederate Veterans took notice."They ought to send it back to Chicago,"Mauch said.
Instead, convention officials have almost finished the display. All that is needed now is an American flag and a plaque denoting the statue’s significance, Arrison said.
"He’s always been here,"he said."He’s been here since [1962]. But no one realized what they had. It’s an individual art treasure."
(Noel E. Oman in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 5, 2003)
http://www.ardemgaz.com/
I therefore call that we should ban the flag used most by the Klan throughout their 'heyday' and the official flag of the Ku Klux Klan and leave the flag of the South alone
That's the real purpose of the Sons of Confederate Veterans - to honor those who spent their lives and blood to defend themselves and one another, not to instigate or engage in pointless controversies that pollute the cause with dishonor.
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