Malcolm X wrote that “History is a weapon.” He was right, and no topic encompasses this truth more than the War of Northern Aggression. And the most practical way we rebels can advance in this post-modern war being waged against the South is simply education. Sounds cliche, right?
But how can we expect anyone who doesn’t have a clue about our past, its people and their divergent ancestry, cultural practices, and faiths to grasp the complicated conflict and the confluence of events that led to it? Armed with such faulty illogic, it’s no wonder they rigidly reject intellectual inquiry, embrace myths, and push for malicious deeds.
We must barrage this real “lost cause” with facts. After all, as Robert E. Lee said, “It is history that teaches us to hope.”
We must teach ourselves true history, and then spread that message to our children, friends, and foes. “Be bold, but loving” is my mantra when taking on the tidal wave of ignorance and outright lies about “the Civil War.” We must defeat the “idiots” among the “useful idiots” who permeate our culture and wield the “useful” to our own advantage.
Let’s smash that PC lens through which the Yankee provincialists, Southern self-loathers, mainstream statists, and Marxist agitators distort the past, co-opt the present, and disseminate their vile messages in pursuit of a soulless future. We may not make headway with the most ardent of ideologues, but it never takes a majority opinion to create change.
It’s all in a name
Context is imperative for genuine historical knowledge to flourish. Without it, you’re robbed of the unraveling of the human experience, clouded judgement takes hold, and pretty soon, you’re colluding in a cultural genocide.
It’s like people who take one sliver of the Bible and twist it into something nefarious. They’ll misuse one thread of the tapestry and spin it into a web of their own or someone else’s selfish ends. These benighted folks willfully ignore that for a comprehensive understanding of Christianity, one must read the full story from Genesis through Revelation, as well as constantly consider set, scene, background, and players.
Similarly, defining the South and all of its rich history within a four-year period is not only dishonest, it’s dangerous. Let’s begin the disarmament process by diffusing a few of these few historical heresies.
In a recent blog, I explained why using the misnomer “the Civil War” is technically inaccurate. It’s just words, you might say. But words are important and carry with them information and presumptions. They can enlighten or confuse.
This prevalent mislabeling of the war isn’t innocuous. It’s used purposefully to muddy the waters and immediately frame the culminating event in terms of good-versus-evil, laying a basis for the anti-Southern/pro-central-authority narrative. It’s the cornerstone upon which the progressive house of cards it built.
Bunch of Benedict Arnolds
We must challenge the name of the conflict and get on the offensive. See, if this war was about the rebellion of fellow countrymen and “saving the Union,” it’s a much easier sell to make out Confederates as “traitors.”
This feeds into the conventional belief of Yankees as benevolent patriots (not foreign invaders who were trying to compel through violence a sovereign to their dictates) and Southerners as subhuman scum (not people seeking self-determination and defending their homes). As referenced in my last blog, this was a Northern war of conquest, so I say pop that bubble right out of the gate.
Of course, this theme is buttressed by the deleterious notion that secessionists were betrayers to a “Nation.” But a gleaning of true American history tells us that most Southerners considered their state their country, thus, there was no “treason.”
“All I am and all I have is at the service of my country.”
— Stonewall Jackson, 1861
Hell, most Yankees felt the same, hence, the reason Northerners were the first to bring up secession in 1787, and then again throughout the 1800s in response to a variety of political grievances against their “brothers” below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Really, this isn’t rocket science: if you must accede to something – like joining These United States or ratifying the U.S. Constitution – you can certainly secede from it. Just reference the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which fully explain the federated system of the republic.
The Union is ‘Murica
Secession is being true to the voluntary-compact nature of federalism. If people can’t grasp these facts immediately, just be content by planting a seed of doubt in their miseducated minds.
“Before the war, it was said ‘the United States are’ – grammatically, it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states,” remarked historian Shelby Foote. “And after the war it was always ‘the United States is,’ as we say today … and that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an ‘is.’”
The “one country indivisible” view is a result, and the Lincoln cultists in all their varied totalitarian stripes happily spin the tale. Thus, a defense of states’ rights is deemed apostasy, since it strikes at the heart of what people think it means to be American, so get ready to be castigated anything from “unpatriotic” to “racist.” Just shake it off, rebel.
The statists fly the U.S. flag above the Christian flag at their churches and above their state flag at businesses, yet hate an overbearing executive when their guy isn’t in the Oval Office. Huh? Be plucky and out these inconsistencies and the events that led us down this road to serfdom. Then bless their hearts and keep on whistling “Dixie.”
Myopia mania
Some intellectuals will even admit that secession is legal, but in the case of those dirty-bastard Confederates, it wasn’t moral because … all together now … “The war was all about slavery.” Yawn.
It’s this oversimplified and infantile claim that has bamboozled the most people. I could write an entire blog on this fallacy, but the sheer scale of this stupidity really dawned on me a few weeks back, when we visited the Valley Heritage Museum near Massanutten, Virginia.
There, you can watch a presentation on Stonewall Jackson’s famous Valley Campaign of 1862. Jackson’s tactics are still studied in military colleges because his 17,000 soldiers marched an exhausting and often wet and muddy 646 miles in 48 days, but still pulled out winning battles against the Union’s 52,000 men, eventually staving off Union reinforcement against Richmond.
At this stage of the war, Confederate regiments were all-volunteer and most Shenandoah Valley families had nothing to do with slavery. You’re telling me that these men risked life and limb and under the most physically straining of circumstances all because of their hatred of black folks?
“We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence.”
— Jefferson Davis, 1864
Less than 25% of Southerners had slaves, “with half of these holding fewer than five and fewer than 1% owning more than 100.” We’re supposed to believe that Confederate troops – a third of whom perished and another third wounded – abandoned their homes, left their families vulnerable to the wickedness of invasion, and suffered the hell of war, all to protect some rich guy’s property?
Seriously, it’s ludicrous when you actually stop and think about it. Call out the perpetrators of this myopic historical interpretation as the intellectual nincompoops that they are, take the contemptible claims of being a “white supremacist” in stride, and suit up for another battle.
Also from the front lines
As a libertarian, I’ve had to take on a few purist anarcho-capitalists who accuse me of worshipping the state, since the Confederacy was a government. But as F.A. Hayek stated, the smaller a political territory, the more liberty thrives. And since the CSA was smaller and more highly decentralized than the draconian and protectionist Union, moving closer to freedom and away from tyranny was an obvious improvement.
As a Christian, some say I’m stirring “disunity” within the Church. If you’re “authentic,” they say, you must get on the racial-reconciliation bandwagon by denouncing the Battle Flag and the monuments.
I would counter that it’s the evangeleftists who are creating division by putting “people of color” on a pedestal and asking that white folks bow down at the altar. Sheesh, talk about idolatry. If you dare not conform to the self-flagellation standards, you might be called a “Nazi” or scolded as “unsaved,” but thems the goods when dealing with ahistorical mainline Protestantism.
Other Christians have accused me of worshipping men, instead of Jesus. But as an Orthodox, I see it as similar to venerating the saints. No, I don’t deify my Confederate ancestors and Southern heroes; I’ll leave that kind of heresy to masses and their Lincoln-mania, as well as their use of the transcendental and twisted “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
But I do see past Southerners as fallible creatures who took great risks and denied self for a cause they deemed worthy. Sure, they’re not my intercessors to God, but we can learn from their story, their mistakes and triumphs, and appreciate the humanness and occasional gallantry brought on in such trying times.
“A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.”
— Alan Kay, computer scientist
Ask people to try to put themselves in the shoes of a Confederate. This should be an easy thing for folks born and bred in Dixie, but sadly, progressive indoctrination has even gained ground here and weaponized white-guilt has sliced its way into the hearts and minds of many in the homeland.
The poison of presentism
This inability of self-reflection and the penchant for “reducing the drama of human experience to abstract, supposedly universal theory,” as Clyde Wilson explains it, is what’s known as “presentism.” It’s a person’s religious-like belief that he’s so moral, pious, and altruistic in the here-and-now that he lacks the empathy necessary to honestly study past events.
You know the pompous, puritanical type. To him, history began in 2017 and everyone before – well, mostly just white folks of European descent, especially those who live(d) in the South – is deemed an oppressor of the Old World. And if he had existed back then, by God, he would’ve undoubtedly been on “the right side of history.”
As historian David McCullough explained, “The study of history is an antidote to the hubris of the present – the idea that everything we have, everything we do, and everything we think is the ultimate, the best.”
The presentist is sure that even though abolitionists at their height only accounted for single-digit percentages of the population, he would’ve been a crusader for the Negro’s “equality.” Even though abolitionists wanted to free the slaves, many sure as hell didn’t want to live among black folks and have them “dirtying up” their lily-white New England cities. So yeah, maybe he would’ve been an abolitionist after all.
Your average 1860s Southerner (black and white alike) had more virtue and honor in his little finger than do any of these presentists in their whole shameful, hypocritical bodies. Don’t be afraid to go for the jugular when deconstructing these self-serving opportunists and their adherence to this haughty scam.
Personal secession
Just like the Orthodox grandmothers, who kept the traditions and symbols of Orthodox Christianity alive during Bolshevism and throughout the Soviet’s long and grueling persecution of the Eastern Church, the home is the most effective place to subvert the insidious power of cultural genocide.
The revisionist history peddled in government schools and reinforced in the popular culture is one of the main reasons we homeschool, which I call “personal secession.” It’s through home education that we learn about and preserve our customs and heritage, as well as raise up ambassadors in Southern apologetics.
My sons study Southern heroes, do cursive copywork of Lee and Jackson quotes, read biographies, and discuss what total war and invasion must’ve been like. We dig into our ancestry and recognize the contributions Southerners made to the building and bettering of America.
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain
We visit battlegrounds, museums, and cemeteries, admire monuments, and sing “Bonnie Blue Flag.” We discuss slavery, economics, court cases, and Reconstruction. We understand that the tyrannical madness unfolding before our eyes today can all be traced back to the 1860s of yesterday.
We ponder why a “union” that had always been more like a hostile marriage wasn’t allowed to amicably divorce. We contemplate why so many people think coerced unification and 700,000 dead was preferable to peaceful separation. And we ask, “If you Yankees hate us so much, why didn’t you leave us be?”
You don’t have to be a homeschooler to secede. Just keep on digging into true history and questioning the status quo.
Read historians like Don Livingston, Tom Woods, Kirkpatrick Sale, Clyde Wilson, M.E. Bradford, Brion McClanahan, Marshall DeRosa, Thomas DiLorenzo, and others. Follow the Abbeville Institute. And avoid like the plague “scholars” like communist Eric Foner and liar extraordinaire Doris Kearns Goodwin.
And wonder: just how worth saving is this Southern culture and its people? The answer: very. The war is on, so let’s de-weaponize the propaganda.
