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We Don’t Care What You Think
Been working since 4 am and that, combined with SJWs on Twitter, I may be a little testy. I apologize, sort of, if this offends anyone, but for those of you that want to rip down our monuments, take down flags and/or whatever other symbols in the South offend people’s sensibilities now, here’s the deal.
If you don’t live here then we don’t want your damn opinion about our monuments, etc. You’re not here, so guess what? You don’t have to look at it! Go about your day and try to forget about us honoring our war dead or people we think were heroic, if not perfect leaders. After all, in the SJW world view, Lincoln himself was racist as well, so it won’t be long before we tear down the Lincoln Memorial. We know now that history began with Obama’s election, so why even acknowledge the past has been a bit more complicated than today’s college student at Evergreen may understand.
The South is plenty conflicted already about race, poverty, the war, and how we feel about some of our collective guilt and whatnot. Now Antifa is going all Taliban on us and tearing down any monuments they feel offends their Social Justice dogma. So don’t take up for them, don’t defend their position, don’t explain how they are really right but just a little overboard on their implementation.
They are wrong and most importantly we don’t give a good G.D. what they think. They need to go back to Seattle or wherever the hell they came from (probably UNC). As far as the Nazis and Antifa protesters go, is Virginia out of rubber bullets and fire hoses or something?
I heard the story as it was passed down
About guts and glory and Rebel stands
Four generations, a whole lot has changed
Robert E. Lee
Martin Luther King
We’ve come a long way rising from the flame
Stay out the way of the southern thing
A damn reasonable response, Lowtech. Thanks. I know it’s been a particularly miserable week for getting poked with a sharp stick from every angle of the media.
I wish all of you could have seen an amazingly un-PC play called “Stonewall Jackson’s House”, which got admiring, even stunned reviews in, yep, NYC twenty years ago, in what now looks like freer times. Written by Jonathan Reynolds, we tried and failed to get a production going in Los Angeles. It’s a stupefyingly good role for a young black woman. She’s a tour guide at Stonewall Jackson’s House, born in the South, and has to put up with patronizing questions from tourists all day long. Then she pulls what you expect–she’s not demure and submissive at all, but a fast talking, quick witted skeptic–a leftist along BLM lines? No, it turns out, the opposite; she’s a black conservative who plays a game with audiences, seeing just how much nonsense she can get us to swallow…at this point, the swift changes and ironies and paradoxes reduce your average theater audience to the level of short-circuiting Star Trek robots. they don’t know what or who to applaud any more, and that’s the point.
I just figured out how to stop progressives from agitating to have all of these old statues and monuments torn down:
Trump should begin mass producing statues of himself, and any time an existing landmark is removed — or, anytime a site becomes marred by leftist protest or violence — Trump can move one of those statues of himself into that spot.
Unless progressives want to have statues of Trump EVERYWHERE, they should slink back into their homes and bite their tongues, at least for the next 3-7 years.
The hardest fighting division in the Army of Northern Virginia was that of John Bell Hood’s Texans. Texans always move them.
I grew up mostly in Virginia to yankee parents, whose family came to the country after the civil war, so I have no ancestors that were on either side in the war. But I will say this: I never saw such virulent racism as I have from northerners. Boston and Chicago racists were very open about their racism. I’ve seen racists in Virginia, but that seemed to be more out of habit than out of hatred. The northern racists that I met (mostly in college in Indiana, but also in the military) were just plain evil about their racism.
So I say that the stereotype that southerners are racists, such as you see in the movies, is more ignorant northern snobbery.
I get a kick out of people in California lecturing Virginians about the Confederacy. It is indisputable that the war involved slavery, but it is also indisputable that the war was also about an over reaching federal government. Lincoln was a tyrant and made no bones about it. Virginia, a sovereign state, was invaded and the people living there had good reasons to fight back, even those who didn’t support slavery. Remember there were two waves of seceding states, the seven hot headed states led by South Carolina, and the remaining moderates who only seceded after seeing that Lincoln was violent and dangerous.
I think the comparisons to the Islamists that destroy historical treasures is very apt.
We might call them scallawags.
I don’t know if I agree about their running conservatism. It’s true some conservative intellectuals are based in the North East And the South has a deep history with the Democratic Party. I think you are primarily talking about the intellectual movement that shifted from the democrats during the Carter administrator at continue do so with Reagan. Social conservatives as well as thr more populist blue color factuon I think is primarily based in the South
I know being raised in the South I’ve never seen the balkanisation is it northern cities. The way New York City is segregated bought by block amazed me when I first visited. Rob Long has discussed before how striking it is in the South that races mix at all levels of society. You can go to the nicest restaurant in Charleston and have mixed race tables eating together while in Malibu California that is very rare.
@Gary Yes I agree and this post isn’t intended to disrespect or insult people from other regions. When I have visited Civil War battlefields or visit cemeteries in the North I felt the Union dead deserved all the respect due to those who are fighting for a cause they feel is just. Hell when Gettysburg veterans from both sides held reunions on the very grounds they were killing each other, they showed one another respect.
My point in the post is, the South fought for a cause they thought was just and worth dying for. It is possible, for me at least, to consider the catalyst of secession to be abhorant and still consider these men honorable, heroic and conflicted figures. Regardless, no one should be able to just destroy something someone else has just because it hurts their feelings.
I’ve really enjoyed reading this thread because I am starting to feel as if I’m the only person in my city who thinks that removing all of these statues is wrong.
I also know that I cannot go and protest the changing of Robert E. Lee Road in my very blue city without getting crucified… possibly losing my job. (There is nothing called “tenure” for an adjunct.)
And that’s why you end up having the most abhorrent people of all–people I shun and despise–going to these memorial sites and protesting the removals.
People should really understand that there is a much larger group of Southerners who find this erasure of the past very, very, very offensive, even whilst they hate white supremacists.
That large group of Southerners was led by a historian in New Orleans–a guy from Tulane who was tarred and feathered by the Landrieu machine–and if you watch council meetings about the statue removals there, many citizens showed up to support Lee Circle. Some of these people were fine with even compromising on which statue was moved–one which had a particularly unsavory history and was certainly a KKK rallying spot got very, very little support for keeping–but the process on Lee was exceedingly undemocratic. It didn’t matter that the preservation of history motivated many to protest, and since those voices didn’t matter, I really don’t know why Andrew Jackson isn’t a possible subject for removal at some point. (I admire him much, much, much less than Robert E. Lee. The Trail of Tears really can be laid at his feet, though I also understand the father of the Democratic Party is also complicated.)
Well, the (leaders of the) white supremacists aren’t stupid. They rally around a cause that appeals on non-racial grounds to many other people in the South to grow their numbers.
In other words, when some young people look at who is defending their right to have a past, they see only one group standing, so they go to that group.
It’s pernicious. And it’s not caused by the existence of a statue. It’s caused more by things like a city council sending out an opportunistic email that a road name will be changed because… well… they can do that whatever anyone thinks.
Does anyone who speaks out want to be called a white supremacist?
Regional hated towards the South is exactly why I don’t seriously say “All people from California are the worst” and such. I know quite a few awesome people from NY and Cali. I’ve had the worst luck with rude people from Chicago and New England in general, but I’d say 90% of the New Yorkers I’ve met were actually pretty nice to me.
This is a lot like what you say northerners say about southerners when you explain why you hate us so much.
They’re about equal in my book, but I’m also rarely in the mood for classic rock.
NY not equal to NYC. California is not a drug cartel.
Brilliant!
The North never had to confront their racism. They spent all their time sneering at our failings (which were many, to be fair) that they allowed themselves to believe that their record was spotless.
You should be. When I go to Civil War sites that have been preserved, I feel an overwhelming sadness for all the men who died in that horrible, awful war. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address echoes in my head. The weight of history is awesomely heavy, and all those men were Americans.
However, I think that the defensiveness in the South is found in the fact that we feel as if some people would like to dig up the bodies of those mere boys who died in grey and discard them in the trash. Burn them up like garbage. Kill any memory of the ways in which the Stonewall Brigade comported itself, even as people from the South who know anything about the Civil War also admire Union units like the Iron Brigade.
I don’t know how to explain why, but it really makes me want to cry.
Perhaps it’s like being a descendant of Erwin Rommel? I wonder if Germans today are allowed to know what kind of man he was. The desert fox often ignored Hitler’s orders about how to treat Jewish populations over which his tanks rolled, was an amazing military commander who wore his country’s uniform in a time where there is no ambiguity about the evil nature of Germany’s ultimate cause, but who died to save his family after being involved in an attempt to kill the Hitler himself…
I wonder if there are any statues to Rommel. Probably not.
He is probably thrown onto the ash heap of history in Berlin, and that is really too bad, isn’t it?
I also don’t think the secession of the Confederacy, a country that was perpetuating an institution we all hate that had been written into the US Constitution and part of life since the beginning of the country, can in any fair way be compared to the Third Reich.
Yet… let’s dig those boys up and burn them out of all memory.
That’s a horrible disservice to history. It also forgets the positioning of Lincoln who saw the boys in grey as Americans, too. That was his big point, wasn’t it?
Pride is a sin.
Regardless of whatever facts that other people want to believe, Robert E. Lee was an honorable man that even the North respected at one point. The more they call everyone racist for saying things like that, the less it means.
If you point out he was an old white man and a communist you might be able to unite everyone.
Rick Moran has something to say about this:
After taking down Confederate statues, moving the tombstones of Confederate war dead may be next
As a transplant from Texas to Tennessee, it’s been my experience that Texas is Texas first and foremost, and Southern only where it doesn’t get in the way of being Texas. The Southern vibe is a whole lot stronger in Tennessee (and I can assume in its surrounding states).
BTW – Both states are wonderful, and the people of Tennessee will not hesitate to remind a Texan there would be no Texas without the help of Tennesseans.
To the OP, Concrete has expressed something powerful and viscerally emotional: Southerners don’t want or need outsiders to tell us how to live. (I notice he politely avoided the term “carpetbaggers.”) This is a cultural thing that almost certainly pre-dates the Civil War. It is practically in the DNA of Southerners to be fiercely independent and aggravatingly stubborn. And sometimes thoughtlessly daring. (“Hey, y’all! Watch this!”)
What is missing from all the reporting and the arguing on social media is the fact that the South is changing daily – from the inside. It is remarkably different today than it was even twenty years ago. However, to watch the news would be to believe that the South remains in the middle of the Jim Crow era. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It’s a good article.
I wonder if those people who wanted to remove TR marched to remove Margaret Sanger as well? I despise pretty much every single thing that eugenicist stood for, and I see the organization she built–Planned Parenthood–awash in blood.
But I would hypocritical to want to remove her from a public space of honor because her views were very typical in her day; many other Americans hold her up in a place of honor, and she should be remembered.
Also, the irony is that TR spoke out against Lynch Laws in the South. Not so his cousin FDR who did not want to offend a core constituency in the Jim Crow block.
Therefore, if you remove TR, the other Roosevelt should really go, too.
So not really anything Northern or area wise. Just like the world in general? Maybe that is why you miss the point.
One could argue that this was the ultimate cause of the War. Slavery just happened to be the most egregious example of it, and, not coincidentally, the one the North felt most comfortable focusing on because it allowed them to feel justified in their sneering.
We in the South do not venerate our great generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson because they fought in defense of slavery but because they fought in support of our homeland. Lee entered the war as a Virginian, not as a slaveowner. Not everyone in the South owned slaves or supported slavery but they all supported their state. Few men on either side charged into battle with the thought of defending/abolishing slavery utmost on their minds. They died representing their family, their state and their region.
It is not the generals to blame but the polititions on both sides whose uncompromising actions brought about this national tragedy. Can we not blame the polititions in Washington for most of the discord in America today? I think so.
As we were watching the news clip, mentioned to my husband that it reminded me of tribal behavior. Although I think the Soviets also tore down important historical buildings after WWII.
I don’t understand the anger. Perhaps Eric Hoffer’s explanation of mass movements deserves some consideration. These seem like well fed, comfortable people protesting. Maybe they don’t have enough to keep them busy or their lives are spoiled. Obama and Trump both came at a time where the disaffected were looking for a leader.
The way some of you have been using Yankee in this thread comes across as if the northerners were using cracker and redneck to describe your side the whole time. For a side that claims to be a victim of bigotry you use the ethnic slurs way too much.
That didn’t mean they were wrong to do so.
That’s interesting. I’ve noticed the exact opposite in Mississippi. I got the impression blacks and whites just kind stayed separate down there even without the legal segregation.