VA gov calls for Confederate History Month

[Vernon Windsor]

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has re-declared April as Confederate History Month in that state. The Republican gov is bringing back a
tradition let go by the two Democrats who preceded him -- Mark Warner
and Tim Kane.

This is a touchy one in Virginia, and McDonnell seems to know it. The official proclamation includes six "Whereas" statements -- you know, where
they say "Whereas this group is so awesome" -- and four statements that
"all" Virginians stand to gain from considering the sacrifices and honor
of Confederate soldiers. That doesn't include the "all should unite"
quote from Confederate General Robert E. Lee, or the "all our citizens"
McDonnell calls on to join in the observance.

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Despite previous governors' refusals, McDonnell issues Confederate history month proclamation

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has quietly declared April 2010 Confederate History Month, bringing back a designation in Virginia that his two Democratic
predecessors -- Mark Warner and Tim Kaine -- refused to do.

Republican governors George Allen and Jim Gilmore issued similar proclamations. But in 2002, Warner broke with their action, calling such proclamations,
a "lightning rod" that does not help bridge divisions between whites
and blacks in Virginia.

This year's proclamation was requested by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A representative of the group said the group has known since it interviewed McDonnell when he was running for
attorney general in 2005 that he was likely to respond differently than
Warner or Kaine.

"We've known for quite some time we had a good opportunity should he ascend the governorship," Brandon Dorsey said. "We basically decided to bide our time and wait until we had more favorable
politicians in Richmond."

Dorsey said the governor's stamp of approval would help the group publicize the month and aide tourism efforts in the state.

As I read it, this proclamation is more designed to get people to study the issue rather than simply being a tribute," he said. "We would like everyone in the state to honor the
sacrifice of the brave men who went out and died in battle. At the very
least, we'd like them to study why they went out and did it. And I think
the proclamation could be construed either way."

The language can be seen on the governor's Web site.

Richmond is the former capital of the Confederacy.

Sen. A. Donald McEachin (D-Richmond) said he was "stunned" to learn of McDonnell's decision and even more stunned that the proclamation did not include any reference to
slavery. "It's offensive,'' he said.

The proclamation is one of about two dozen McDonnell has issued since his inauguration in January. Many, but not all, are posted on the office's Web site.

-- Anita Kumar and Rosalind S. Helderman

[Rhon91]

wow... is about all I can say. Guess this is his way of 'taking back America'? How ignorant!

[Madhatterat60]

I have no problem with this, Vernon...depending on how its handled, of course. If this is simply race baiting cloaked in quasi-history, that's one thing. But our Civil War defined us...it made us who we are today, a collective country rather than simply a collection of 50 individual states going at each other tooth and nail. I'm disappointed that there are several Civil War months across the country. We could all use a good lesson in that kind of civics now and then.

[Vernon Windsor]

Virginia is changing. It has been for a time now. The fault lies with the Governor and the Attorney General and the people who elected them. I didn't follow the campaign, so I don't know what was promised to whom. Maybe Grace knows. But what they ended up with for elected officials is very troubling.

[Madhatterat60]

You don't say, though, Vernon...what the goal of the Confederate History Month is. Are those who want to set this up interested in the historical significance of Virginia in the Confederacy? The history of the Confederacy altogether? OR is it simply racism disguised in a veneer of legitimacy?

[Vernon Windsor]

Was I supposed to say what the goal of Confederate History Month is? I'm simply referring to the rollback of equal protection for gays and lesbians that these two officials have enacted since taking office. The whole Confederate thing is part and parcel of their restoration ideology (my characterization from what I've been able to gather).

[brujo]

I have never been in any small town in Virginia that did not have a memorial to Confederate soldiers. If you want to talk about the original state's rights issue, this is it. 80% of the battles fought in the Civil War were fought in Virginia, and Richmond was the capitol of the Confederacy. Shelby Foote used to talk about Conferate Soldiers who'd been captured by Union Troops. Mostly these men where dirt farmers, ekeing out a living from the land. They didn't own hundreds of acres, they didn't own slaves, but when asked why they were fighting, they'd say the same thing...."because you're down here".
James Webb, Senator from Virginia wrote a book a few years ago you should check out called "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America". It won't keep the tongue clicking down any, but it should give you some insight into how some of the people who live there think.

[Madhatterat60]

McDonnell said he did not include a reference to slavery because "there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states.

Best not piss off the Tea Baggers too much then, eh?

[Vernon Windsor]

What are you sorry about?

This whole thing reminds me how relentlessly the inconvenient facts of history tend to lose themselves in the retelling. The first Tarzan movie from Disney, although set in Africa, had no Africans in it at all. I listened once to a white trumpeter recite a history of jazz music that contained no black people. None. Why should anyone be surprised the Bob McConnell would just "forget" to mention slavery.

That said, to demonize an entire region of the country, seems to me to be unnecessary. People are born where they are born, and further they are mobile. I don't believe everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line is a racist anymore than I believe every police officer is honest or every Democrat will cast votes with the people in mind.

[Vernon Windsor]

145 years of uneasy peace
By Mike Sweet

The South's conflicted attitudes about the Civil War and its aftermath were not obvious to me as a child living in Virginia years ago.

We lived in a new neighborhood across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Its residents worked for the government or the military and came from all over the country and even other countries.

As a group of mostly white outsiders, we were insulated from most of the conflicts that seethed within native Virginians in the 1950s, especially segregation.

For black and white Virginians, the insurrection that nearly destroyed the United States divides its citizens even now.

Being young and naive in a place where the Civil War was celebrated in every town square and schools and movie theaters were segregated, I was drawn to the mystique of Johnny Reb as a mythic hero.

When the neighborhood kids played CiviI War, I volunteered to be a rebel. Even then rebellion appealed to me, being as it is one of two possible outcomes of a Catholic education.

I owned a snazzy gray kepi and a wooden musket and I liked the Stars and Bars for its aesthetics, not its darker implications that only later became clear.

A worn-out bed sheet and a broom handle, some tacks and crayons for coloring produced a passable confederate battle flag or Old Glory. Each was essential for charging into enemy lines in well-groomed back yards that stood in for Manassas and Antietam. Places where real soldiers died horribly not far from our safe, comfortable subdivision.

Across the river and a few miles upstream in Washington, Abraham Lincoln had rescued the founding fathers' dream from the secessionist Virginians. He was repaid with a bullet to the head by a disgruntled confederate days after victory was assured.

It was a bad omen for the uneasy peace that followed. Ingrained white resentment at having lost the war visited a century of Jim Crow abuses upon former slaves and their descendants. It took Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat and Southerner, to start fixing that.

The thing that is hard for many people to grasp is that soldiers on both sides died in the pursuit of causes they didn't fully understand or didn't agree with.

Yankees were far from universally eager to die to free black slaves, but they were inclined to keep the nation together. Few rebels owned slaves, but they were willing to die to maintain that way of life because no outsider was going to tell them how to live.

The prideful conundrums of that war haunt the nation still.

Old wounds opened in Virginia this week when Gov. Robert F. McDonnell declared April to be Confederate History Month. It was a tradition (if 13 years counts as a tradition) started by another Republican governor to appease white people whose ancestors fought in the war.

The declaration was on hiatus during eight years of Democratic leadership, which Republicans saw as political correctness rather than good manners.

Not surprisingly, McDonnell's act upset the NAACP and the state legislature's black caucus. They argue that in honoring confederate soldiers he deliberately declined to mention that they had fought not just for states' rights but to preserve slavery. Reverse political correctness, in other words.

Ultimately, McDonnell apologized, and said he issued the proclamation to promote tourism. Sure he did. Political observers say he did it to please the GOP base because he is in a tough race with Virginia's attorney general, an ultra-conservative Republican who is only a tiptoe to the left of Atilla the Hun.

It can be argued that some black Virginians are not sufficiently sensitive to the feelings of white Virginians whose ancestors fought for the South, in their view honorably so.

Likewise it's plain that some white Virginians are insensitive to the equally strong feelings of the descendants of slaves who suffered inhuman brutalities.

How they all get past that impasse is unclear.

But it sure doesn't promote reconciliation when politicians play games with history for personal gain.

A ploy that is absurd given the irony that Republicans seeking to placate their own kind must ignore their own history, in which a Republican president sent all those Johnny Rebs to their graves and freed the slaves because it was the right thing to do, not the most popular.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/sweet-040810

[Vernon Windsor]

The Confederacy: Kill the Myth Once and For All

Jeff Schweitzer
Marine Biologist and Former Clinton White House Science Advisor
Posted: April 7, 2010 10:49 PM

On April 3, 1865, Richmond, Virginia, fell to Union soldiers as Confederate troops retreated to the West, exhausted, weak, and low on supplies. The end would come soon thereafter. On April 5, Generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant started an exchange of notes that would lead to Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9. As we approach this important anniversary, the time is upon us to consider, and ultimately reject, the sterilized myths of the Confederacy.

Southerners who claim a deep national pride celebrate their ancestors' efforts to dissolve the very union of states whose flag they now so proudly fly. They honor a campaign to destroy our country but claim the mantle of patriot. That makes no sense. The contradiction is always swept under the rug, but that must stop. Next year will mark the 150th anniversary of the war's first battle; that is a good time to close this chapter of hypocrisy and inconsistency. A southern loyalist cannot be a patriot; the two ideals are mutually incompatible. You cannot simultaneously love the United States and love the idea of destroying the United States. To claim both is insane, the equivalent of declaring that you love all Mexican food but hate enchiladas. The claims are each exclusive of the other and therefore by definition both cannot be true.

Let us take one issue off the table immediately. Certainly one can rightly honor the bravery of fallen soldiers no matter whether they wore blue or grey. We can appreciate the rare military genius of Robert E. Lee, and the loyalty and dedication of Stonewall Jackson, George Pickett and Nathan Forrest. These generals and the men they led fought valiantly, with integrity, with honor, for a cause in which they believed passionately. For this we owe them our deepest respect.

But honoring the man is not equivalent to honoring the cause for which he fought. The cause championed by the South should cover every American with shame. Have no doubt that the South was at war to dismantle our nation, to destroy our Constitution. For this goal of secession, of which nobody should be proud, more than 630,000 soldiers (some claim up to 700,000) were killed or wounded in four years of hellish war. To put this in perspective consider that the entire population of the United States at war's end was 35 million, putting war casualties at nearly 2% of the total populace. Equivalent rates of casualties today would result in 5 million dead or wounded, dwarfing our losses in World War II, or any other war.

Why did 2% of our population suffer death or maiming? Over the issue of state sovereignty and the interpretation of the Tenth Amendment (ratified in 1791). The text is simple enough: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." But we also have the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution, which say, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

Simply put, 11 southern states seceded from the Union in protest against federal legislation that limited the expansion of slavery claiming that such legislation violated the tenth amendment, which they argued trumped the Supremacy Clause. The war was indeed about protecting the institution of slavery, but only as a specific case of a state's right to declare a federal law null and void.

The inherent tension between Article VI and the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution has kept lawyers busy and wealthy since our founding, and the argument goes on today. But the South went a significant step further than arguing a case. In seceding from the Union those states declared the U.S. Constitution dead. The president of the United States, sworn to uphold the Constitution, had no choice but to take whatever measures were necessary to fulfill his commitment. So war came.

So what exactly about that history would lead one to fly a Confederate flag over a state capitol building, or paste one on a F150 bumper or wear one on a T-shirt? Is the South proud of its efforts to protect slavery? Or attempting to destroy the United States through dissolution? For starting a war in which 2% of the population died? For losing the war? These are odd banners to carry around for nearly 150 years.

Perhaps the pride comes from the fact that the South stood up to a greater power, at least checking or slowing the pace of an expanding federalism. But even that does not pass the smell test; by starting but then losing the war the South created the exact opposite effect, solidifying federal power like never before.

But damn if the South does not hold on to the war as if they never actually lost, fighting incongruously for a hopeless cause of questionable value while simultaneously wrapping themselves in the American flag! So we get oddities like Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell proclaiming April "Confederate History Month" without ever mentioning slavery. When questioned about this curious oversight, McDonnell lamely explained that "there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia." Really? If slavery was not among the most "significant" issues for Virginia, exactly what other state right was being violated by federal law leading to the Civil War? Does McDonnell even know the history of the war? Sadly, McDonnell is the not the first governor of his state to explicitly omit slavery from lofty declarations. Former Republican Virginia Governor Republican George Allen also failed to recognize slavery when making a similar proclamation. Seems to be a disease of Republican governors, a historic irony given the role of the young Republican Party in the war.

The South started and lost a war that nearly destroyed the United States in pursuit of a terrible cause. Let it go. Let. It. Go. You fought well but lost decisively. Your cause was unjust. Your actions were treasonous. There is no part of the Confederate cause of which to be proud. There is no moral high ground here. Waving the American flag while fiercely defending the effort to tear that flag down is untenable. Make a choice; be a proud American or a proud Confederate. You cannot possibly be both.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/the-confederacy-kill-...

[Vernon Windsor]

You ask about the GOP base. Ignore the title of this video clip and just watch it. Contemplate how things have changed since it was filmed. You'll have your answer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu3kdorvHE8

[Madhatterat60]

Wausau tea party organizer Meg Ellefson said Koschnick's concerns were legitimate and after she called Eidsmoe on Thursday, he offered to withdraw from the rally."

My first thought was...."Figures."

After a bit of thought process though, I can't help but wonder whether the organizers of most Tea Bag affairs (I REFUSE to call them a party) aren't blissfully ignorant and naive about the 'fleas' they're attracting? While initially, the organizer may have been THRILLED to have an actual "lawyer" attending...you know...someone 'educated' and 'degreed'...I can't help but wonder if she'd known about his mind set right off if the invitation would still have been sent. My feeling is that a great many of these Tea Bagger types are too ignorant to pound sand.