We're not one to erase history. The time was what it was, and it reverberates through to this day.
The trouble is, Americans have an aversion to dealing straightforwardly with the unsettled issues of that war, and that time.
It's in no small measure why we end up fighting about proxy issues like flags and statues and speech locations by politicos. Or activist judges.
There's no denying history, or debating its meaning and application to our times. What Waldo finds disturbing is show- as the Republican Party contracts- the Myth of the Lost Cause burbles up closer and closer to the surface of the party's discourse, especially since Trent Lott's tribute to Strom Thurmond. His backfilling illustrated how devoid of meaning language has become in the public sphere: read his speeches trying to save himself and you'd think he was about to endorse marriage equality, so expansive were his profusions about liberty and equality.
And there's the rub.
Invoking the Confederacy is, more often than not in these times, not a meaningful historical exercise, or a tribute to the past bravery of warriors, but code for hatreds the speakers lack the guts- or have the political savvy not to- speak of openly. The seccesh movement in some legislatures masks a fairly predictable roster of other itches they can't get scratched any other way. Go independent and everyone can carry guns everywhere, justice will be rigged for what conservatives want, women will know their place, blacks and gays will, well, hopefully, migrate.
Deniable racism, like President Bush's nomination of Judge Pickering on Martin Luther King Jr Day. Or self-victimization, like The Palmetto Scoop's endless equation of gay rights to denial of public funding of Confederate heritage groups...in his typically assbackward way, the argument becomes, if gay is OK- and, by extension, pedophilia- why not celebrating slaveholding and those who were willing to die defending it?
Cotton Boll's peroration is uncharacteristically weak:
Right or wrong, we’re all products of the periods we grow up in, which is something these self-proclaimed Gandhis either don’t realize or don’t want to realize.
Historical revisionism to boost one’s own ego is the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty. If you don’t like the Confederacy because some of the folks who wave the battle flag today aren’t as educated as you, don’t speak as well as you or don’t share your same sophisticated views, then just say so.
But don’t use a simplistic interpretation of one of the most complex periods of American history as a soapbox to brag about how enlightened you are.
That's frankly, a Wallaceite, anitintellectual argument that punts the hard questions to brood on being thought inferior by pointy-headed intellectuals. Mental fast-food. Gets the blood up. Blame it all on the other misunderstanding what we haven't thought through very well ourselves. The animal spirits roam the land.
What it boils down to is there are those who consider the legacy of the Confederacy inexcusable, those who consider it respectable, and those who see it as a vehicle to revive a white, male, protestant, racist politics into our mainstream debates. Bob Barr's Dixiecrat hijacking of the Libertarian Party illustrates where the latter course's danger lies.
If conservatives won't weed their own garden, they shouldn't complain when others point out the noxious things growing there.
Some interesting points, Waldo. I'm not going to disagree with you that there are plenty of folks who stand behind the Lost Cause because they view it simplistically, as a period when life was supposedly like one big Walter Scott novel. White men ruled the roost, white women knew their place and it was tough luck for just about everyone else.
ReplyDelete(Of course, I would argue that, in reality, it was only a small number of white men who ruled the roost, as a large segment of Southern whites lived a hardscrabble existence, as well, but most folks don’t want to let reality get in the way of a good story.)
What I tire of is hearing that the Confederacy was the 19th Century equivalent of Nazi Germany, as I've heard some say.
I'm not going to ever make the claim that slavery wasn't part and parcel of the Confederacy, but I also can't agree with those that argue, in effect, that millions of dirt-poor farmers would risk their lives to defend a rich plantation owner's right to subjugate blacks.
Further, we can sit here today and rightfully condemn slavery, but we’ve had it ingrained in us for nearly 150 years that the practice is illegal.
In 1861, by comparison, slavery was still the law of the land and had been more or less an accepted part of Western culture for as far back as anyone could remember.
That's not meant as an excuse, but just the realization of a simple fact that it would have taken an unusual individual in 1861 to be able to deviate from society's mores.
The point of my post was that I get tired of the media types who think they're so pure of heart that they would have selflessly stood up to the slave-owning society of the Antebellum South.
Falling in lockstep with whatever the current line of shallow thinking is - which is what newspaper columnists and reporters do when they allege the Confederacy existed solely as a means for whites to keep blacks in chains - is precisely why abhorrent institutions like slavery lasted as long as they did.
Take care.
I agree, CBC, that the over the top rhetoric is false AND tiresome. And I appreciate your thoughtful reply. This is the sort of conversation I hoped political blogging would be like but so rarely is.
ReplyDeleteYes, there does seem to be a shortage of intelligent discussion on blogs, whether in South Carolina or elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteAnd as bad as it can get on some of the political blogs, try reading the comments on message boards for newspapers and, paricularly, television station websites.
I'm not looking for the rest of the world to agree with me, but it's nice to read opposing viewpoints without having to wade through ad hominem attacks.
Not Very Nice used to make the same point before abandoning the field entirely, much to my regret.
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