The Republicans used the heartbreaking murder of black Southerners by white Southerner Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina to ally with the Democrats in their long-awaited attack on the memory of the Western people. Perhaps they thought that by throwing the South to the wolves, they’d save their own hides. So Nimarata Haley, then the governor of South Carolina, courageously (of course) removed the Confederate battle flag from where it flew before the statehouse. “That’s not who we are.”
The GOP propagandists hopped on the theme with gusto. The likes of Dennis Prager at the ironically named Prager University created 15-minute courses demonstrating the Republicans were the “party of Lincoln,” “Dems are the real racists” and so on. Those bytes of toxic stupidity were amplified by blogs like Instapundit and others that got popular cheering on the neocons after 9/11.
This twaddle originates from the Claremont Institute, which functions as a clearing house and a “groomer” of politicians – that would be you, J.D. Vance — who don’t have the historical sense to know when they’re being bullshitted. Claremont provides fake historians a sinecure, eg Victor Davis Hanson. Its primary reason for existence is to promote the peculiar ideas of Harry Jaffa, author of a book called Crisis of the House Divided. It is page after page of turgid crap. It’s best described as the founding myth of the modern Lincoln cult. Lincoln is depicted as a noble prophet, leading his people (which doesn’t include the South) to the “promised land,” or something.
Jaffa was a student of Leo Strauss (Jaffa played the fiddle and would soothe Strauss’ ardent spirit by scraping out some baroque nonsense every so often). Strauss is usually portrayed as one of the “intellectual giants” of the neocon movement. That’s not surprising; both he and Jaffa (and the Claremonsters) were ardent neocons. Yet Strauss’ great contribution to the sad history of human stupidity is his notion that the Great Thinkers of the past, fearing persecution, “disguised” what they really meant between the lines of their books. So there’s secret codes in Plato, and he means something completely different from what you’ve been told for hundreds of years. And I, Leo Strauss, am the first to have attained true understanding.
Does this sound like typical gnostic mystery religion crap? It is. Jaffa spotted his opportunity. The Founders, Jaffa declared, left secret coded messages in the texts of the Declaration of Independence – knowing that Providence would one day raise up Abraham Lincoln to the True Meaning.
Jaffa elevated the Declaration over the Constitution. Over everything, as it happens; Lincoln was assigned the mantle of the prophet. His brutal war of conquest was recast as a noble crusade, a foreshadowing of the other crusades that God had appointed America to undertake to impose His Will on the rest of the world. Fortunately, His Will happened to line up neatly with the coded messages Harry Jaffa claimed Lincoln discovered in the Constitution.
Paul Gottfried says Jaffa admitted he was out to create a new religion, and he did.
The Republicans did their damndest to out-ignorant the Democrats. Professional Christians like Rod Dreher and Russell Moore beat their breasts, sobbed piously and demanded the monuments come down, because “that’s not who we are.” Dreher (born in Louisiana; it’s clear, if you’ve read enough of his writings as I have, that he despises the place and is embarrassed by his kin) completely outdid himself. New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, also seeing an opportunity, destroyed the Lee and Beauregard memorials in the Crescent City. Dreher spent his usual 30 paragraphs of stream of consciousness and 25 cut-and-pastes and twenty pleas/links to buy his book, and somewhere in there agreed with Mitch that they really gotta come down. Think of the feelings.
How about that? The “live not by lies” guy, everyone’s favorite Orthodox agony aunt, desecrating ancestral memory at the behest of a Louisiana political family. And not just and Louisiana political family – the Landrieus.
Beware of false prophets.
That was around ten years ago. I decided to pick up the geneaology stuff; I wanted to see how many Confederate soldiers were in my woodpile.
I also started documenting Confederate memorials. This is how we remembered our dead.
“The Call To Arms,” Corisicana, Texas
A summons to battle isn’t common in Confederate imagery. The atmosphere is more one of mourning. The historical market below provides clues. Recontruction was far, far, far different from what Eric Foner tells you. He is the Columbia historian whose interpretation – that it was a noble enterprise limited by the racism and terrorism of the Southerners – is to the War Between the States what Churchill is to WW2 cultists: unchallengable and graven in stone. It was actually a nasty, violent and bloody mess; it’s my belief that much of the racial tension today was deliberately fomented then by the Republicans, who were using the freedman as political pawns to facilitate their asset-grab.
Raymond, Mississippi
Raymond is about 30 miles east of Vicksburg. Brigadier-General John Gregg ran into the forward elements of U.S. General John McPherson’s XVII Corps. Something of a chaos; General Gregg, realizing he was outnumbered, disengaged. Ed Bearss, considered the doyen of Vicksburg historians, admits that McPherson did not handle his troops well.
McPherson, a native of Ohio, was a favorite of both Grant and Sherman. The first commander of the Vicksburg garrison, he got in trouble for being too nice to the civilians. He was killed during the Atlanta campaign. Vicksburg is always associated with Grant; his campaign is celebrated as the pinnacle of military genius. Grant, during the war, kept a lot of newsmen around headquarters; he was no genius, but had the low cunning to understand their value. Maybe one of them invented the “Unconditional Surrender” thing. You know: wholesome gruff midwestern man Grant, not taking bullshit from those arrogant Southern firebrands. Unconditional surrender or nothing. Something like this:
The problem here is that much of Grant’s Memoirs – written to raise money, as he’d pissed his fortune away – is a fabrication. Frank Varney and Joseph Rose have done magnificent work in sorting out the truth from Grant’s tall tales.
Grant demanded “unconditional surrender” in an exchange of notes between he and General Pemberton, commander of the Army of Vicksburg. The two met on July 4. Pemberton thought he could get better terms on the American birthday; nope. Grant refused to provide terms. Unconditional surrender or nothing.
“Then, sir,” Pemberton said. “It is unnecessary that you and I should hold any further conversation. We will go to fighting again at once.”
Grant caved. He muttered that their officers should work out the terms. The Confederates were paroled and marched out by regiment. Many, including at least four of my folks, made their way to the Army of Tennessee, which under the hapless General Bragg was being outmaneuvered by the brilliant General William Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland during the Tullahoma campaign.
One would die at Adairsville in Georgia; the other at Franklin in Tennessee.
A personal opinion of Claremont et al (Prager, American Thinker, Hillsdale…)
May they rot in hell!
Hear, hear!
Calling Haley by a name she doesn’t use does not change one irrefutable fact: after the Roof murders there was no way that the battle flag was going to continue to fly over the capitol. That isn’t to say the flag was responsible for the murders. It isn’t to say it was right that it be taken down. It is just to acknowledge the reality that no governor could have kept it flying.
The US Flag still flies after the murders, rapes, pillaging, and destruction brought on by a war that Lincoln prodded and goaded into being in order to not lose the tariffs from the southern ports, and his provocation of ressuplying Fort Sumter and blockading Charleston.
Charleston and South Carolina were on friendly terms with Anderson and were keeping Sumter and Anderson’s soldiers in provisions,
and Lincoln refused to even meet with South Carolina’s emissaries, who were trying to avoid hostilities.
May Lincoln, Grant, Seward, Sherman, and their rogue soldiers know the smell of flesh being eaten by the fires of brimstone throughout eternity.
Even that is lenient for their crimes perpetrated against my homeland.
I wouldn’t argue with a thing you wrote. It doesn’t change the fact that after Roof, it was impossible for any governor of South Carolina to keep the battle flying over the statehouse. Fairness had nothing. to do with it.
A governor with principles could have easily stated that the flag had nothing to do with Roof’s actions. I would bet that the FBI also found Roof with an USA flag or even an Old Navy t-shirt with the USA Flag, Let’s face it, all mommas at some time bought an Old Navy shirt for their children to wear on the 4th of July. Of course, those photos would have been destroyed by now.
Said governor could have said that over and over and the pressure would not have abated until the flag came down.
It was an unwindable issue at that point and there weas no sense in trying to keep fighting it.
You are correct about the inevitability of the removal of the flag from the museum grounds. I’ve been watching what began as a slow creep since the NAACP declared in convention, 1991, for removal of Confederate symbols. It’s also true about using Haley’s given name as an apparent pejorative – an unforced error for someone attempting to argue for reason and comity. The problem was Haley’s reactionary and precipitous action in announcing the removal of the flag. Her first action, it did indeed signal that the murders were the fault of the flag and Confederates from 1861 to 2015, for anyone who wanted them to be. Being in charge is hard but Haley’s immediate bow convinced me I can’t trust her during any other high stakes event of state. Will she react to protect the people – or herself?
I find no fault with anyone who finds fault with some of the things Haley said. I would not go far as to say that errors she made in dealing with the inevitable were disqualifying. I appreciate the discussion and viewpoints that might not be the same as mine. Thank you.
I wonder if there exists a picture of him with a US flag?
Every stripe on the US flag represents a slave State.
Humanity muddles its way through history, often brutally.
No one person or side can claim immunity from error.
It’s error—correction—-over correction—recorrection. Problem is when corrections stop and man continues on in error.
id be much happier today if id learned gnostic secret code way back.
Nice to learn the truth about Grant! Why I love this space and learn so much. Thank you, Mr Cade