Destroying the Past to Change the Present

On June 17^th, 2015, a deranged white man, Dylan Roof, attacked an all-black prayer meeting in a South Carolina church killing nine of the participants. Of course, most rational, intelligent (that is, ordinary) Americans saw the mass shooting as another opportunity for the “gun violence” crowd to demand an end to the rights of law-abiding Americans to own guns; and indeed, for a few hours or maybe a day, the matter pursued that course. However, to the surprise of most, the matter suddenly launched into a very different crusade, rising to a frenzied pitch in mere days! Suddenly there appeared on the internet photos of the malefactor holding the Confederate Battle flag! As a result, the hue and cry went up against that symbol rather than guns!

Odd as was the switch from guns to flags, even more astonishing was that almost immediately, the demand for the removal of the Battle Flag morphed into a demand for the removal of all things Confederate or even Southern—after all, Washington and Jefferson never wore the gray but they, too, were included in the demanded purge! Even southern born “progressive Democrat” Woodrow Wilson was vilified.

Furthermore, this madness was not limited to black groups such as the NAACP—although that organization was in its forefront. The hysteria included Southern politicians of both parties and even Confederate organizations such as the SCV and the UDC! Those who resisted the censorship of Southern symbols were astonished at the size, breadth and especially the speed of the offensive! People who had previously ignored the assault on their heritage, suddenly found that while they could get a cake celebrating ISIS at WalMart, they could not purchase one showing the battle flag!

The question then became what had turned an expected crusade against guns into an assault on American history? Why was it better to destroy the South, her culture and history rather than to get one step closer to nullifying the 2^nd Amendment? What is it about the Confederate States of America that made its symbols, heroes, monuments, memorials and history so depraved, evil, and perverted that these cannot be allowed to exist except in museums? Of course, the only acceptable answer is black slavery! Yet that “answer” is false. Those not ignorant of history – an admittedly small percentage of the populace – understand that the people of the South fought for their God-given, constitutionally protected rights  as Americans. Of course, as one of those “rights” was the right to own slaves, then it is true to say that at least some did fight for slavery.

But was the war about slavery? The proof against this is so absolute that the claim itself is nothing more than nonsense intended to mislead rather than inform. Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis openly admitted that slavery was not the “cause” of the war. Davis said it was an “occasion,” but not the cause. Lincoln himself admitted that the war was about secession and taxation as the South paid the vast majority of the proceeds going into the federal government.

But even if one wishes to believe that Southerners—the vast majority of whom did not own slaves!—fought for their “peculiar institution,” that does not negate the finding of the United States Government that those who fought for their homes in the “Civil War” were Americans; that they fought nobly and were therefore worthy of being honored and, furthermore, that the same was true of their heritage and their symbols—including their flags! This means that the assault on all of the above by that government today, countermands the rulings of that same government in the past!

We must then ask, what has changed in the last fifty years? Simple! Today the United States is under attack by the forces of communism, socialism and globalism. This attack has been so successful that most of the country is ready to fall like a rotten fruit into the hands of our enemies. Only the People of the South remain wedded to the vision of the Founders—and even that is slowly fading with the passage of time, the destruction of our younger generations and the flood of “immigrants” into Dixie. Nonetheless, the South is still largely Christian, a faith that has also come under attack together with Western Civilization itself.

For the country to fall, the South must be destroyed as a cultural and political force! Indeed, that was the whole thrust of Lincoln’s war when he wrote in 1862, “. . . the character of the war will be changed. It will be one of subjugation. . .the South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas.” If the South is obliterated, then the New World Order will be advanced—but that won’t happen as long as the South refuses to go peacefully into that dark night. Therefore, we may be sure of ever greater and more potent attacks against the symbols and heritage of the South and her people in the very near future.

Note: The views expressed on abbevilleinstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.

Valerie Protopapas

Valerie Protopapas is an independent historian and the former editor of The Southern Cavalry Review, the journal of The Stuart-Mosby Historical Society.

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