Posted: Friday, April 27, 2012

Tahlequah student's flag sparks first-amendment dispute
By Steve Berg

Tahlequah, Okla. —

A 17-year-old Tahlequah student's Confederate flag has prompted a possible legal battle over first-amendment rights.

The student, Matthew Newcomb, decided about two months ago to start flying the flag from his pickup truck, said his mom Michelle Armstrong.

But she says the school told him he couldn't display it on school property.
 

She then contacted the Oklahoma chapter of the ACLU, which has agreed to take up the case.

The ACLU has asked the school to provide a legal basis for its decision to prohibit the flag, said Oklahoma ACLU Executive Director Ryan Kiesel.

He says they're waiting for a response from the school and will then decide how to proceed from there.

To many, the Confederate flag symbolizes slavery and bigotry, but Armstrong says there are more aspects to its history that have been overlooked of forgotten.

As an example, she says the Cherokees who were based in Tahlequah at the time of the Civil War fought on the side of the Confederacy.

Beyond that, she said its important to her to teach her son to stand up for his constitutional rights.

"I would hope that our educational system and those people who have been hired to educate our children would be more concerned about THAT, the education of our children that what they wear on their bodies or fly from their vehicles," Armstrong said.

© 2012 Cox Media Group

On The Web:   http://www.krmg.com/news/news/local/tahlequah-students-flag-sparks-first-amendment-dis/nMkG2/

 

Confederate Memorial Day not to be overlooked

Written by Fritz Chapin  
Wednesday, 25 April 2012

Today is a very important, but overlooked holiday.  Today is Confederate Memorial Day in many states around the South, including Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.

This day should not only be important to the South, but it should be recognized by the whole nation.  The liberal teachings and media would have you think that this day is just for those backwards, racist few who long for the days of slavery, racism and hate, but that was not what the true Confederate cause was.  The true meaning of this day is to honor those individuals who took up the cause of the states retaining their freedom from an overpowering federal government.

They weren’t fighting for slavery, as many liberals would have you believe.  Many of the soldiers who gave their lives for the cause opposed slavery outright or were way too poor to even own slaves.  In actuality, it was slavery that was keeping these people poor because all of the manual labor jobs usually done by the uneducated were being done for free by slaves, thus putting them out of work.  Their cause is kept alive today by many individuals and groups alike.

One such group is the Tea Party, at least in its original form.  Its goal was simple: get the government out of people’s lives and allow them to live how they deemed fit.  The way they went about this was by putting politicians in the House to push their agenda of low taxes and lower government regulation.

By doing this, they’ve blocked harmful bills such as the DREAM Act, effectively opening the boarder to illegal immigration as long as they go to our schools or serve in our military; the JOBS Bill, which would be another trillion dollar bailout that we can’t afford; and put a huge hole in the Unemployment Extension Bill HB 4213 by not letting unemployed citizens get 125 weeks of unemployment but 99 weeks instead, along with a slew of conditions that must be met and continue to be met to keep getting assistance.

Even liberals embrace the Confederate cause every once in a while.  Remember when y’all were ranting and raving about SOPA and PIPA being an invasion of privacy by the federal government?  Or the time y’all hated the Patriot Act because it gave the federal government “almost God-like powers over its citizens,” according to Democrat Ed Pastor.  That was y’all embracing the Confederate roots that are, in actuality, very American roots.

It is our duty as citizens of this great country to make sure that the scope of government stays in check, that we are allowed to be the captains of our own destiny and it’s not the government’s job to step in and tell us how we need to live.  So, next time you get enraged by the government or any authority figure gets into your business, remember that you are invoking the memory of those brave men who fought for a cause they felt, and that is still, justly American.

On The Web:   http://www.gadaily.com/index.php/views/37-column/7577-confederate-memorial-day-not-to-be-overlooked

 

Did you know Confederate Memorial Day is still a state holiday?

Apr 24, 2012

ATLANTA -- If you tried to do business with a state agency on Monday, you were out of luck.

That is, unless you wanted to park for free in the state capitol parking deck, which was wide open and unmanned.

Most state workers had the day off because it was a Georgia government holiday, Confederate Memorial Day.

The official date isn't until Thursday, April 26, but the state observes it on a Monday to provide employees with a three day weekend.

Confederate Memorial Day was first declared an official Georgia holiday in 1874 and has been observed ever since.

Six other southern states also celebrate it: Florida and Alabama (April 23), Mississippi (April 30), North and South Carolina (May 10) and Texas (January 19).

The holiday was set aside to remember those who died fighting for the Confederacy, many of whom are buried in several local cemeteries.

Supporters say it's a way to honor the memory and sacrifice of their ancestors.

"Learn your history; learn the history of this country, of the southland; learn the history of all ethnic people of all backgrounds," said Calvin Johnson, Jr. of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Others would just as soon forget the memory of those whose government declared an armed rebellion and enslaved other human beings against their will.

"I think it's unfortunate; it's not a day I would celebrate knowing the history of the Confederacy," said State Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta).

Unlike the political battle a decade ago over changing Georgia's state flag, Sen. Fort says there's no movement to change or even do away with Confederate Memorial Day.

After 110 years as a statutory holiday, it was technically dropped from the state's official list by the state legislature in 1984.

But the law still allows the governor to proclaim it by executive order, which has been done every year since then.

We wanted to talk to Gov. Nathan Deal about the holiday on Monday, but his office was closed.

In 2009, the state legislature officially designated April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

Copyright ©2012 WXIA-TV Atlanta, Pacific and Southern Company, Inc

On The Web:   http://www.11alive.com/news/article/239524/40/Did-you-know-Confederate-Memorial-Day-is-still-a-state-holiday

 

Flagpole and Monument Dedicated to Confederate Soldiers Buried in Oconee County

Sunday's ceremony at Watkinsville Cemetery also honored the late Robert N. Hale, Sr., who was instrumental in marking the graves of Confederate soldiers in Oconee and surrounding counties.

By Stephanie Gross
April 23, 2012

The Brig. Gen. T.R.R. Cobb Camp No. 97 Sons of the Confederate Veterans on April 22, 2012 held a flagpole and monument dedication ceremony to honor Confederate soldiers buried in Oconee County.

The ceremony took place at Watkinsville Cemetery, where 34 Confederate soldiers are known to be buried. Their names were read aloud and the flags were raised while Taps was played. The 18th Ga. Vol. Infantry Honor Guard posted the colors and also gave a musket salute.
 

Also recognized was the late Robert N. Hale, Sr., who spent much of his life researching the service of those soldiers who died and ordering and installing headstones to mark their graves throughout Oconee and surrounding counties.  His family was presented with a plaque in Hale's honor and they unveiled the monument.

A solar light will be installed on the flagpole so that it will be visible day and night.

Watkinsville Mayor Charles Ivie announced that contributions made to the ongoing maintenance of the cemetery are now tax deductible.

On Confederate Memorial Day, Thursday, April 26, another ceremony will be held at Oconee Hill Cemetery in Athens at 4 p.m.

Copyright © 2012 Patch

On The Web:   http://oconee.patch.com/articles/watkinsville-cemetary-dedication#video-9700590

 

Legal battle over Confederate flags in Lexington takes another step in court

April 24, 2012
Chris Hurst
WDBJ7 Anchor

The ongoing legal battle over Confederate flags in Lexington takes another step in Federal Court.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans is suing the city, saying it wants to raise the controversial flag on city property. The city recently asked for the case to be thrown out.

Your Hometown News Leader has learned that last week the SCV filed a motion for that to be denied, saying it doesn't meet the standards to do so.     It also mentioned how other groups have flown flags, so why not the Confederate one.

The trial is set to start in November.

Copyright 2012 WDBJ7-TV

On The Web:   http://articles.wdbj7.com/2012-04-24/confederate-veterans_31394878

 

Experts: Schools often win dress code cases, but must reasonably forecast disruption

Apr. 25, 2012

Gibson County High School senior Texanna Edwards is the latest in a long line of American students who have clashed with school officials over a controversial garment or symbol on a piece of clothing. According to some legal experts, the Confederate flag has been at the center of many cases involving purses, T-shirts, jewelry and at least one other prom dress.

Edwards, 18, said she was banned from attending her senior prom last Saturday because of her dress, which resembles the Confederate battle flag. She has said she would look into pursuing legal action.

David Hudson Jr., a First Amendment scholar with the First Amendment Center in Nashville, has written several articles and books on the topic of student speech. He said there have been several court cases dealing with students being punished by their schools for what was ruled as inappropriate clothing. Specifically, Hudson said there have been many cases involving the Confederate flag.

In cases debating a student’s freedom to wear Confederate-themed clothing, courts generally apply the Tinker standard — which was the established after a 1969 case where students were suspended for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The court held that public school students had the right to wear the armbands because the school system had no proof they alone could cause a disruption. That has become the standard in future cases involving similar situations, Hudson said.

“Can school officials reasonably forecast a Confederate flag will cause disruption of school activities?” he asked. “Given the racial tension and given the Confederate flag, there is a reasonable forecast.”

There was a case in 2001 in Kentucky that reached the 6th Circuit. The student wore a Confederate flag T-shirt from a Hank Williams Jr. concert and that court held in favor in of the student, Hudson said. That case is known as Castorina v. Madison County School Board.

“They can’t flat out ban something because they don’t like it,” Hudson said. “They may prohibit something if they can point to an incident that may lead to problems or fights at school. You want to show that there’s been any type of disruption. You have to be able to point to something; you can’t just do it because there may be disruption without a factual context — there must be reasonable belief that can happen.”

School position

On Monday, Eddie Pruett, director of the Gibson County Special Schools District, said there have been racial tensions in recent years. He also said the dress code for each school is left to the discretion of the principal. Pruett was the principal of the high school until the end of the school year in 2011, before current Principal James Hughes succeeded him this year.

According to the school district policy, “When a student is attired in a manner which is likely to cause disruption or interference with the operation of the school, the principal shall take appropriate action, which may include suspension.”

The school’s dress code says students cannot wear clothes with holes or frays, tops that reveal the midriff or show cleavage, transparent clothing, short skirts and shorts, tanks tops and hats. Baggy pants are also prohibited.

“Clothing, which is in the opinion of the principal suggestive or revealing, will not be allowed. Certain shirts with printed material on them will not be allowed,” the dress code says.

The school offered the example of a T-shirt with a beer advertisement. There is no specific mention of banning politically or religiously controversial images on clothing.

Hudson said if he was arguing for Edwards, he would say banning her from prom was a “knee-jerk reaction” as the result of the Confederate flag being a controversial symbol and school officials not listing any specific facts that led to a disruption of a school function.

“If I was arguing for the school, I would say it’s racially divisive symbol and that it caused disruption in the past,” he said. “More cases have been found in favor of the schools than the students, so they also have that.”

Tinker established a standard — that school officials can punish student expression only if they can reasonably forecast that such student expression will cause a substantial disruption or material interference with school activities, Hudson said.

The First Amendment scholar said that in Castorina, the 6th Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the student, saying school officials selectively targeted certain symbols.

“There was testimony from other students who said students were allowed to wear Malcolm X T-shirts, things like that,” he said. “The school board can’t single out the Confederate flag as a controversial symbol but allow others. And there wasn’t a showing of substantial disruption. That student also had at least one African-American student testify on her behalf saying they weren’t offended by the shirt.”

NAACP responds

Harrell Carter, president of the Jackson NAACP branch, said decisions about banning certain types of clothes or symbols on clothes have to be left up to the school administration.

“They know the culture of their school well enough to make a decision such as this,” he said. “And to determine if there was a high volume of concern for the Confederate flag and its connection to slavery and the oppression of people.”

Carter said advocates for individual freedoms and believes freedom of speech is important.

“But you don’t want to be the one to yell, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater with no fire or create a type of atmosphere that leads to other things,” he said. “If they felt it was inappropriate to do so, I’d have to leave it up to them. It’s a fine line.”

Given the potential volatility with the Confederate flag, Carter said he would have to lean on the side of the school administrators to use their best judgment. He said doesn’t know what Edwards’ intent was or why she felt compelled to wear the dress.

“Was it to incite other people? I would have to agree with the administration if they think they prevented something bad that could’ve happened,” he said. “I lend my support to their decision. The Confederate flag causes a lot of issues and problems, and we’ve never been adult enough in our local communities to teach our children about that period of time.”

Different people view the flag in different ways, Carter said, either as the symbol of traitors who started a war or as a symbol of fighting for states’ rights.

“I think history is clear on the regard that the Confederacy would’ve torn this country apart if not for the decision Lincoln and others made to prevent the creation of other slave states. Unfortunately, we still have to fight this war in this century,” he said.

More case law

Barbara Kritchevsky, a professor of law at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, said this story sounds similar to recent cases involving gay students wanting to bring their dates to prom.

“It’s hard to speak to this without knowing what the rules there are. Is there a dress code (for the prom)? If I wore jeans and a T-shirt, could I get in?,” she said. “There is no question that a school can have a dress code for a prom. But generally, if you’re censoring a political message and you let someone wear a pro-choice button, you couldn’t not let someone in with a button that says pro-life.”

Kritchevsky said normally school officials have the leeway to enforce school dress code rules for an educational environment. Prom is not educational, she said.

“If prom is something you need to buy a ticket to, it certainly raises First Amendment issues and one’s right to speak freely,” she said. “In terms of whether she has a case … it depends on whether there is a dress code or notice of some requirements. Must the clothes be approved? If there is some teacher in charge, that suggests it is some sort of school function and implies putting someone on notice there is some sort of dress code.”

Edwards said on Monday that the only person who voiced concern about her prom dress beforehand was a teacher who was serving as prom sponsor. The teacher told Edwards the dress might be considered “inappropriate,” but Edwards never spoke with school administrators about the dress because students had worn attire with Confederate flag emblems to school before, the student said Monday. Edwards has said she wanted to wear the custom-made dress because she thought it would be unique and reflect her Southern heritage.

“It’s become sort of an issue of trying to have clothing appropriate for the occasion,” Kritchevsky said. “Are they really trying to censor a certain viewpoint? That’s a real First Amendment issue. It seems like you’d have an argument that that’s what’s going on. The school might have a neutral policy saying it has the right to limit attire at prom.”

Kritchevsky said this incident touches on the issue of freedom of speech, but isn’t sure whether there was a violation of that freedom.

“The school is in the best position if it has a clear policy on the front end in neutral terms — a dress code for prom, etc,” Kritchevsky said. “And it’s not like she was suspended and this would affect her chances of going to college. But that doesn’t mean this doesn’t implicate First Amendment violations; but there are not the same repercussions as a suspension or something would bring.”

Copyright © 2012 www.jacksonsun.com

On The Web:  http://www.jacksonsun.com/article/20120425/NEWS01/304250019/Experts-Schools-often-win-dress-code-cases-must-reasonably-forecast-disruption

 

Confederate flag prom dress keeps TN student from celebration

Apr. 24, 2012

Gibson County High School senior Texanna Edwards was — like many of her classmates — looking forward to her prom last Saturday.

But Edwards didn’t get to attend because of her attire — a knee-length red dress decorated with bright blue stripes and white stars inside the stripes. The school’s colors are red, white and blue, but the dress resembles the controversial Confederate battle flag.

Edwards, 18, said she wasn’t allowed inside the prom after school officials told her the Confederate flag prom dress was “offensive and inappropriate.”

“We asked why they thought that, but they kept saying the same thing over and over,” she said Monday. “We kept asking people walking inside — black and white — and everyone said they loved it. Two black women even went off on the principal. They were upset with the principal. No one was upset with me.”

School officials said a teacher warned Edwards about two months ago that the dress might not be acceptable. The teacher, who served as prom sponsor, expressed concern and suggested to Edwards in February that she should clear the idea with the principal, but Edwards did not do so, said Eddie Pruett, director of schools for the Gibson County School System.

Pruett said there have been race-related issues at Gibson County High School in recent years and that Principal James Hughes thought Edwards’ dress could have caused a problem.

“She was told because of the dress and what it would look like, it would be considered inappropriate,” Pruett said. “She had talked with the prom sponsor and they told her it would be inappropriate. ... I feel like Hughes followed legal precedents set by other court cases. Students have legal rights, and we don’t infringe upon those. But we have to follow legal precedents, and if there is a reason to believe something could happen, we don’t wait until after the fact to do something.”

Offer to change is rejected

Edwards said she told several people about her idea and many liked it. Only the one teacher said the dress was a bad idea and that she should check with school administration, she said.

“I didn’t talk with administration because we wore rebel flags all through my four years at Gibson County,” she said. “I didn’t ask for approval because I didn’t think I needed to. I had one teacher tell me it was a bad idea. but I just thought she only said that because it would offend people. But I asked a bunch of people before I had the dress made and they all loved the idea.”

Kim Lee, Edwards’ mother, said her daughter was told by school officials when she arrived at the prom that she could go home and change and then be admitted, but she didn’t. About $500 was spent on her hair, makeup, the dress and her date’s apparel, the family said.

Edwards said, in a way, she wanted her dress to look like the Confederate flag because she lives in the South and at the time she didn’t know if there was a dress like hers. She had the dress custom made.

She said in her four years as a student, she’s seen students wearing clothing bearing the Confederate flag with no incident.

But she said on Monday friends were sending her texts and messages saying school officials were checking for rebel flags and making students hide them as a result of this incident.

“As far as our dress code — girls can’t show cleavage, wear short shorts or have holes in our clothes, and boys can’t have saggy pants,” Edwards said.

'Unfortunate incident'

Pruett said the dress code for each school is left to the discretion of the principal. Pruett was the principal of the high school until the end of the school year in 2011.

“Their job is to make sure their school is a safe learning environment,” he said. “Whenever they have after-school activities — be it a game, prom or something else — they have to ensure those same things apply. They have to ensure they have a safe environment for all students.”

Hughes — who was the assistant principal until this year — called Pruett to discuss the issue on prom night, Pruett said.

“I hate that the girl was not able to attend prom, and this is an unfortunate incident,” Pruett said. “But as a school district, we have to look out for the best interest for all students. You have to try to do what’s best for every child. Because of past incidents, Mr. Hughes felt that by admitting that dress it could cause a problem that night, or it could continue on throughout the school year.”

© 2012 www.tennessean.com

On The Web:  http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120424/NEWS21/304240032/Confederate-flag-prom-dress-keeps-TN-student-from-celebration

 

Teen banned from prom over controversial dress

Apr 24, 2012
By Janice Broach

MEMPHIS, TN -

(WMC-TV) – A Mid-South teen is banned from prom for wearing a dress that resembles a confederate battle flag.

"It wasn't done to offend anybody," Texanna Edwards explained of her dress. "It was done just for the sole fact that I just wanted a rebel flag dress because I thought it was cool."

But the principal at Gibson High in West Tennessee did not think it was cool.  Edwards, a senior at the school, tried to wear the dress that she helped design to the prom Saturday night.  She also wore a rebel flag necklace.

"He told us y'all have to leave because the dress is inappropriate," Edwards said.

Texanna, who plans to become a veterinarian, said she almost cried, "I felt like it but I was more mad."

She says she does not understand why the dress was banned because students in school wear rebel flag shirts, hats, and belt buckles.

"I don't see the point of not letting someone in their one-and-only prom, senior prom. The year they graduate. Doesn't represent anything bad," Cody Beasley, a fellow student says.

LaShantay Beverly, also a student, agrees.

"Other people wear the same stuff to school but they don't get kicked out of school on that basis," she said.

"It was heritage not hate.  She didn't go in their to make nobody upset or anything like that," says student Brittany Donald.

Gibson High principal, James Hughes, refused to talk with WMC-TV.

Last year, Texanna wore a camouflage dress to the prom.

She says the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

© Copyright 2000 - 2012 WorldNow and WBTV

On The Web:   http://www.wbtv.com/story/17712045/teen-banned-from-prom-over-confederate-dress

 

Teenager banned from her high school prom for turning up in Confederate flag dress

Texanna Edwards, 18, thought the gown which she designed was 'cool'
By Daily Mail Reporter
25 April 2012

A high school senior was barred from her prom after she showed up to the dance wearing a dress emblazoned with the Confederate flag.

Texanna Edwards, 18, wasn't allowed to go inside last Saturday with other students because of her choice of gown that she had helped design.

The dress - red, knee-length and covered with blue stripes and white stars - was deemed 'inappropriate and offensive' by teachers at Gibson County High School in Tennessee.

Miss Edwards told Msnbc that she thought the dress was 'cool' and wanted her dress to look like the Confederate flag because she lives in the south.

She said: 'We kept asking people walking inside - black and white - and everyone said they loved it.

'Two black women even went off on the principal. They were upset with the principal. No one was upset with me.'
 
Director of schools for the region Eddie Pruett said there have been episodes of racism at the school in recent years and that the principal believed the dress may have caused a problem.

Miss Edwards had been told by teachers that if she went home and changed she would be allowed into the school dance but she decided against it.

Her family had spent around $500 on the specially designed dress along with the teenager's hair and make-up.

The 18-year-old added that students at her school often wear T shirts and belts with the Confederate flag and it has never been an issue before.

The 13 stars of the Confederate flag represent the southern states who attempted secession from the United States during the Civil War, and where slavery was legal.

The Confederate States set up a government from 1861 to 1865, but were eventually defeated by northern states in the U.S. Civil War.

The 13 stars on the Confederates Flag represent the states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri.

On The Web:   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135135/Texanna-Edwards-Teenager-banned-Tennessee-prom-showed-Confederate-flag-dress.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

April 23, 2012
Confederate controversy

By JOSH NEWTON

TAHLEQUAH — When 17-year-old Matthew Newcomb started flying the Confederate battle flag in the bed of his truck, he was admittedly doing what he thought was “cool,” going along with what a few of his friends were doing.

But flying that flag – which Newcomb believes is wrongly perceived in the U.S. as a symbol of racism and hatred – has turned into something he never expected. In just a matter of weeks, he has been called an ignorant “redneck” and received a gun threat on Facebook. And he’s been at odds with administrators at Tahlequah High School, which prompted top officials from the Oklahoma affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union to review the issue.

“After I’d been flying the flag for about a week, a buddy showed me a Facebook post,” he said. “A woman had taken a picture of my truck with the flag in it, and said, ‘Way to show your ignorance, redneck.’”

Newcomb took offense, but not at being called a “redneck” – he readily admits he’s a hard-working “country boy.” What bothered him was the inference that he is ignorant for flying the flag.

His mother, Michelle Armstrong, told him not to fly off the handle at the woman’s comment, but to first do some research.

“It was important to me that, before he mouthed off at that lady for calling him ignorant, he made sure he wasn’t ignorant, that he understood what he was doing,” said Armstrong.

She suggested a few readings, and Newcomb took the challenge to heart. For several weeks, he’s been glued to his computer screen, pushing the Internet data plan on his cell phone to its maximum allocation.

“There’s so much that I never would have known if I hadn’t started flying the flag,” said Newcomb.

“I read the Confederate constitution, and I read the secession letters. People say, ‘Oh, the flag represents slavery.’ That’s not even why the war started. The war started because [the South] wanted to get away from federal law.”

Newcomb acknowledges slavery played a role in the American Civil War, but said he believes the overarching theme was self-reliance.

He stresses he isn’t racist, and has friends from many different backgrounds and cultures. He only wants to highlight what he feels was the overall message of the South during the war.

“There was no one to rely on but themselves,” said Newcomb. “They didn’t take loans from other countries when they were trying to start. All the money they used to start up the Confederacy was from the people who lived in the South. They relied on themselves for everything they needed. They didn’t ask for anything. That’s Southern pride.”

Newcomb eventually responded to the woman who’d called him an “ignorant redneck.” He used his research to compile his response, which read in part: “For the record, neither the content, nor the design [of the Confederate flag] have anything to do with racism, slavery, hatred or white supremacy, or anything worse.”

In recent weeks, Newcomb has displayed the flag in the back of his truck and driven to the THS campus. His pattern has been to arrive every morning for an early class and place the flag inside the cab of the truck, where it stayed until the end of the school day.

Then, on April 2, a THS administrator told him he needed to be “more street-smart,” Newcomb said.

“That’s how he said it to me; it was strange,” said Newcomb. “He didn’t tell me to take the flag down or anything.”

Newcomb said he was later summoned to a THS office, and administrators asked to voluntarily stop flying the Confederate flag. Apparently, some students had complained.

“I told them no, because that’s how I felt,” said Newcomb.

“Then another principal said they had fielded complaints about my driving on campus.”

Newcomb said school officials threatened to forbid him from parking in the THS lot – not because of the flag, but for what they said were unrelated complaints about Newcomb’s driving habits. Newcomb contends the first stemmed from a transmission problem with his truck, and the second complaint was lodged after his vehicle hit a gravel patch and slung some of the gravel.

“They told me they would suspend me from parking, and I’m like, ‘Well, if I take my flag down will you let me drive?’ Prior to that, they said neither things had anything to do with each other,” he said. “And then [a THS principal] said if I’d take it down, he’d take the suspension away.”

Newcomb’s mother asked for that agreement in writing, but says one of the principals denied her request, and added he’d withdraw his decision if the family wasn’t content with the verbal agreement. Later, Newcomb said he was called to a meeting with THS administrators and told that flying the flag, or displaying it in any way, would subject him to punishment – including suspension, and after three offenses, expulsion from school.

“Flying that flag is my constitutional right, my freedom of speech and expression,” said Newcomb. “It’s not earned; I get that for just being born in this country.”

TPS Superintendent Dr. Shannon Goodsell confirmed Friday the district does not permit flying the Confederate flag on school property.

“Ultimately, for the school district, the flag being on campus created an academic disruption to the school day,” said Goodsell.“The issue the school district has is that the flag was displayed on school property during school hours, and it represented, or became, a symbolism of racism, making students upset. Students projected racism and bigotry as a result of the flag, and that is something the district will not tolerate or accept in a public setting. TPS is about education, and our focus is centered on education.”

Goodsell said that while he is precluded under privacy laws from directly discussing a particular student, TPS is a multi-cultural, diverse district, and administrators want to honor and protect all races, all nationalities, and all beliefs while creating a safe educational environment.

“The school district cannot accept or allow any forms of racism that threaten our student population, or that prohibit the academic process of that site,” said Goodsell.

“We believe everyone has the right to a free and appropriate education, and that the high school is not the forum to express that type of speech.”

Newcomb and his mom disagree with the district’s position. Armstrong contacted the Oklahoma affiliate of the ACLU, and Executive Director Ryan Kiesel traveled to Tahlequah Friday to meet with the family and TPS officials during a due-process hearing.

“First, I want to make it clear the ACLU is not defending the Confederate flag,” Kiesel told the Daily Press after the meeting. “Our interest in this is that we, as the defenders of the Bill of Rights and constitution in the state of Oklahoma, want to make sure that any time the government – in this case, the school district – wants to limit or censor an individual’s speech, that they meet the compelling justifications required by the Constitution. Anytime we hear a report of a government entity limiting speech or censoring speech, regardless of whether a majority of folks might find that speech offensive, we take it upon ourselves to ensure there are no violations of civil rights or the Constitution.”

Kiesel said the Oklahoma ACLU’s goal isn’t to file litigation, but instead to review the case, talk to all parties involved, and resolve the issue without a lawsuit.

“We’ve asked the school [to] articulate to the student and his family, then to the ACLU, why they’re taking that action,” Kiesel said, speaking of TPS’ prohibiting display of the Confederate flag.

“It’s important to remember that, while schools do have some constitutionally permissible discretion in limiting the speech rights of their students and teachers, the Supreme Court has held that you don’t lose your constitutional rights when you walk into the school.”

Kiesel believes TPS officials will respond to the request, and Goodsell confirmed Friday that administrators are compiling a report to submit to the ACLU.

“Our end goal is to make sure the rights of the students are protected and recognized, and so long as the school does that, then there’s really no need for further action on our part,” said Kiesel.

Following Friday morning’s hearing, Armstrong said school officials issued a four-day suspension to her son for flying the Confederate flag.

“And they claim Matthew had made some threats based on race,” said Armstrong.

“Of course, none of that was mentioned until today, and they don’t seem to have means of backing that up.”

Armstrong said she’s willing to pursue whatever means necessary to clear up what she sees as a clear civil rights violation.

“When this began, Matthew was flying the flag because it’s the thing rebel redneck boys do - they fly their rebel flag,” said Armstrong.

“I wanted him to not be one of the crowd. I wanted him to know and make an informed decision about his choice. I do feel like my son’s civil rights are being violated – and not just my son, but students at-large. Students aren’t being taught lessons on constitutionality. And not just regarding this flag, but regarding expressions of their individuality, which would not hurt a fly.”

Newcomb wants his critics to “look outside the box” before rushing to judgment.

“I want the school to recognize what they’ve done wrong, and I want to get recognition for not being racist, for truly standing up for what I feel is right and what I believe in,” said Newcomb. “Don’t assume, ‘Oh, they’re racist because they have a flag,’ or, ‘Oh, they’re a troubled teen because of how they express themselves with their hair.’ It’s not like that. Ask that person what it means to them.”

© 2012 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.

On The Web:   http://tahlequahdailypress.com/local/x1344827782/Confederate-controversy

 

MB leaders deciding on confederate flag welcome sign

Apr 24, 2012
By Evan Lambert

MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) - A welcome sign is supposed to give visitors a good first impression, but a proposed sign in Myrtle Beach is already stirring controversy because of the Confederate Flag one group wants to put on it.

The group is called the Myrtle Beach Sons of Confederate Veterans. It asked city council for permission to put up a group sponsored welcome sign on private land along Highway 501.
 

City leaders say right now, they're checking with their lawyer about whether the sign would adhere to the city's ordinances. Typically leaders don't allow signs on land without a building.

While the city considers the sign, some community leaders and neighbors don't think it's a good idea.

"I say bad idea because there's not enough people using the Confederate Flag like it's supposed to be used. There's too many people using it in a negative context," said Pat Causey.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans acknowledge that many people believe the Confederate Flag has a negative connotation, but say it's not meant to be seen that way.

"They're wrong. The flag is actually a replica of the cross of St Andrews," said Ken Thrasher, with the group's Myrtle Beach chapter.

"We're not an organization that is biased toward anybody. We're not partisan, non-denominational and non-racist," Thrasher said.

City Council should get back to the group by its next workshop in two weeks.

Copyright 2012 WMBF News.

© Copyright 2000 - 2012 WorldNow and WMBF

On The Web:   http://www.wmbfnews.com/story/17698833/mb-leaders-deciding-on-confederate-flag-welcome-sign

 

Sons of Confederate Veterans
April 26, 2012  
 
PRESS RELEASE 

CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY OBSERVED ACROSS GEORGIA
  
(Atlanta - April 26, 2012)  Today, April 26, is the date formally set aside for the observance of Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia. For nearly 150 years, the state of Georgia has officially observed Confederate Memorial Day in memory of the nearly 100,000 Georgians who served faithfully from 1861 to 1865 in the defense of Georgia and the South in spite of overwhelming odds.
 
In addition to supplying a large number of the soldiers who served the South during the War Between the States, Georgia was also crucial to the Southern cause in supplying many of the key leaders of the Confederacy. Georgia statesmen who served in the Confederate government included Alexander Stephens, who served as the Vice-President of the Confederacy, and Robert Toombs, who served as Secretary of State for a short time in the Confederate cabinet. Because of its geographical location, Georgia also was a pivotal state in the supply and defense of the South; and, because of this, was the victim of Sherman's ruthless "March to the Sea" in which thousands of civilians were murdered and their homes burned to the ground as part of the federal "scorched earth" policy in Georgia. Still, despite lack of proper food, clothing, medicine, and even military supplies, the Southern soldier fought valiantly in defense of his family, his Christian religion, and the traditional agrarian culture of the South for four long years.
 
This year's Confederate Memorial Day falls within the Sesquicentennial commemoration of the War which was going on exactly 150 years ago. In keeping with the annual observance of the holiday, and coupled with the anniversary of the War, special events and ceremonies are planned all across the state of Georgia on Thursday and this coming weekend. The Sons of Confederate Veterans, formed in 1896 by the real sons of Southern veterans, stands today as the organization charged with commemorating the role of the Southern soldier in the War for Southern Independence and honoring his memory. Georgia Division Commander Jack Bridwell stated, "During the Sesquicentennial, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to educate the public about the real reasons for which the Southern soldier sacrificed so much and to remember his heroic valor in the face of the most adverse circumstances. We are excited about the numerous Confederate Memorial Day ceremonies that are planned all across the state this week." Anyone interested in learning about Confederate Memorial Day events nearby are encouraged to contact the Georgia Division of the SCV through their website at www.GeorgiaSCV.org or by calling 1-866-SCV-in-GA.
  
END RELEASE
   
Ray McBerry Enterprises is the public relations firm for the Georgia Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans. 
 

Friday, April 20, 2012

New Law: Virginia will not cooperate with NDAA detention

RICHMOND, Va. – On Wednesday, the Virginia legislature overwhelmingly passed a law that forbids state agencies from cooperating with any federal attempt to exercise the indefinite detention without due process provisions written into sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act.

HB1160 “Prevents any agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency of the armed forces of the United States in the conduct of the investigation, prosecution, or detention of a United States citizen in violation of the United States Constitution, Constitution of Virginia, or any Virginia law or regulation.”

The legislature previously passed HB1160 and forwarded it to Gov. Bob McDonnell for his signature. Last week, the governor agreed to sign the bill with a minor amendment. On Wednesday, the House of Delegates passed the amended version of the legislation 89-7. Just hours later, the Senate concurred by a 36-1 vote.

Bill sponsor Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Manassas) says that since the legislature passed HB1150 as recommended by the governor, it does not require a signature and will become law effective July 1, 2012.

Several states recently passed resolutions condemning NDAA indefinite detention, but Virginia becomes the first state to pass a law refusing compliance with sections 1021 and 1022.

“In the 1850s, northern states felt that habeas corpus was so important that they passed laws rejecting the federal fugitive slave act. The bill passed in Massachusetts was so effective, not one single runaway slave was returned south from that state. Today, Virginia joins in this great American tradition,” Tenth Amendment Center executive director Michael Boldin said. “When the federal government passes unconstitutional so-called laws so destructive to liberty – it’s the people and the states that will stand up and say, ‘NO!’ May the other states now follow the lead taken today by Virginia.”

For more information on the new Virginia law, click HERE.

On The Web:   http://fwatch.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-law-virginia-will-not-cooperate.html

 

Friday, April 20, 2012
The CONFEDERATE STATE of KENTUCKY
By Bob Hurst

Just over ten years ago ( February of 2002, to be exact) the Florida Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) held a dedication ceremony and flag-raising at a site just off Interstate 75 near White Springs, Florida.The large flag being raised on the 100-foot flagpole and the monuments being unveiled represented the second site in our flag placement program called "Flags Across Florida". An earlier ceremony had been held in December 1999 at a site on US Highway 27 just south of the Georgia-Florida line which was about twenty miles north of Tallahassee. This first site was smaller and not on an interstate highway so it didn't get the media attention of the White Springs site, nor of our third state site which was dedicated in April 2009 on I-75 just east of Tampa.

What I well remember about the dedication of the White Springs site was the scathing editorial that appeared in the local newspaper here in Tallahassee. Why, you would have thought from reading the editorial that our flag alongside the interstate would single-handedly wreck the Florida economy by bringing an end to tourism in the state. The editorial raved about the terrible impression the flag would make on all those northern visitors coming to Florida to enjoy our attractions and spend their money. The editorial even asked what would people think of us when one of the first things they would see upon entering the state is a Confederate flag.

I couldn't resist responding to the editorial so I sent a brief communication to the head of the editorial board stating that most of those people would likely think that Florida was a Southern state that took pride in its history and heritage. I also suggested that perhaps she should be more concerned with the impression made on the tourists by a long series of billboards that began on I-75 about twenty miles south of our flag site that featured scantily-clad or unclad young women proclaiming, "We bare all". I wondered if she had a problem with those billboards and the impression they would make on Florida's family-friendly image. I never received a response.

I thought about all this recently when I read on the internet that the Kentucky Division of the SCV was about to dedicate a park featuring a large Confederate Battle Flag flying from a tall pole on a site just off Interstate 24 near Paducah. It always thrills me when I learn of these sites where our Confederate ancestors will be honored. This will also be a very pretty spot where visitors can sit on benches to relax or just enjoy the surroundings. Kudos to the Kentucky Division!

As to be expected, though, as always happens whenever anything concerning the "C" word ("Confederate") is involved, some of the always complaining people will complain and some elected officials can be counted-upon to deliver some smarmy, politically-correct statement denouncing the flag. Some Kentucky officials didn't disappoint. The Judge-Executive (whatever that is) of the county was quoted as saying, "There are people that view that flag with disdain. It's going to be seen by travelers, and we don't need that. That's unfortunate." Not to be outdone, the Deputy Judge-Executive (?) chimed in with, "We would prefer it not being there, of course." (By the way, there was no report of what the "Assistant Deputy Judge-Executive" or the "Associate Assistant Deputy Judge-Executive", or other officials had to say about the matter.)

The nice thing is that the park is located on private property so the SCV has a First Amendment right to fly the flag. One has to wonder, however, considering recent events how much longer in this country any of us will have that right. Incidentally, there are many other sites around the South where heritage groups (primarily SCV divisions and camps) have created these sites where our beautiful battle flag is flown.

I attended the dedication ceremony several years ago for that marvelous site in Alabama which overlooks I-65 between Birmingham and Montgomery. There is also another site in Alabama, I am told, near Mobile. I understand that Georgia now has sites on I-75, I-85, I-95 and I-16. I know there is a site in Tennessee just south of Nashville and I have heard that others are planned. When I first heard of the plans several years ago for the Kentucky site, I was told that the Arkansas Division, SCV, was also in the process of locating land near an interstate highway that could be obtained and used for the creation of a park site.

I find all of this to be good news (and exciting, also) and it all shows that there are many people still willing to "ride to the sound of the guns".

Now, I imagine that some of you reading this column were confused when you read the title because you remembered those maps from your history books that showed eleven Confederate states and Kentucky was not one of them. Well, make no mistake about it, there are many reasons why Kentucky can certainly be considered Confederate.

It begins with the fact that Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, was a native Kentuckian. Yes, I know that Lincoln guy was also supposedly born in Kentucky although there are people who disagree. (Imagine that, disagreement over where a president of this country was born...hmmm.)

When Abraham Lincoln sent a telegram to the Kentucky governor, Beriah Magoffin, asking for state troops to help fight the South, the governor responded: "I will send not a man nor a dollar for the wicked purpose of subduing my sister Southern states." Lincoln recognized the strategic importance of Kentucky and was reported to have said: "I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky."

Actually, it was the desire of the state to remain neutral and both houses of the General Assembly passed declarations of neutrality on May 20, 1861. By September of 1861 both Union and Confederate forces were occupying the state. On September 7th the General Assembly (which tilted pro-Union) passed a resolution ordering the removal of Confederate troops.

In response, a group of Southern sympathizers moved to create a Confederate government for the Commonwealth. Delegates from 68 counties met in Russellville and passed an Ordinance of Secession on November 20, 1861, and designated Bowling Green as the capital of the state. George W. Johnson was elected governor. Kentucky was admitted to the Confederacy on December 10, 1861, and a Confederate State Seal was adopted by the state on January 16, 1862.

By February 1862, Union forces had overwhelmed the Confederate forces in Bowling Green and General Albert Sidney Johnston ordered his troops to abandon the capital.The government then traveled with General Johnston's army. Governor Johnson, sadly, was killed at Shiloh while serving on active duty with the Confederate Army. The government later re-entered the state but was again forced out after the Battle of Perryville.

So there you have it. Not only was there an Ordinance of Secession passed by delegates from all over the state, but Kentucky was also admitted to the Confederacy by action of the Confederate Congress and President Jefferson Davis. But there is so much more to the story of the Confederate state of Kentucky. The state supplied to the Confederacy not only one of the most celebrated units of the Confederate Army, the "Orphan Brigade", but also provided 37 Confederate generals who were natives of the state. Among these generals were names that are still legendary.

Well-known native Kentuckians who wore the sacred gray include Albert Sidney Johnston, John Bell Hood, John C. Breckenridge, Basil Duke, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Joseph Shelby, Ben Hardin Helm, Richard Taylor and Roger Hanson to name a few. Ironically, perhaps the best-known Confederate military "Kentuckian" was not a native of the Blue Grass State but became a Kentuckian by choice. This, of course, was the magnificent John Hunt Morgan.

Space does not permit an extensive biography of all the noted Kentuckians affiliated with the Confederate Cause, but I would like to thumbnail a few.

Of the 425 Confederate generals, only eight reached the rank of full general (4-star equivalent) and two of these were native Kentuckians - Albert Sidney Johnston and John Bell Hood. Although each is historically linked more closely to Texas, both were native Kentuckians with Johnston having been born in Washington, Kentucky, and Hood in Owingsville. I think it can safely be said that the loss of General Johnston at Shiloh ranks with the loss of General Stonewall Jackson after Chancellorsville as the two greatest setbacks to the Confederate military effort during the War.

John C. Breckenridge was not only a superb military commander (his victory at New Market and his role in the Washington Raid with Jubal Early are both well-established in Confederate lore) but he was also a leading political figure having been Vice-President of the United States (under James Buchanan), a candidate for president (1860) and later the Secretary of War for the Confederacy.

I have long had an affinity for Ben Hardin Helm who was married to the sister of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln offered him a commission in the U.S. Army, Helm's response was that he would think about the offer and then would do what was right. He consulted with his friend, Robert E. Lee, and was told to follow his conscience and his honor. Not long afterward, Ben Helm notified Lincoln that he would be wearing the sacred gray. General Helm was mortally wounded at Chickamauga while leading his brigade, for the third time in one day, into the face of heavy enemy fire. When told later that evening that a fourth assault against the weakened enemy position had been successful, General Helm quietly said the word "Victory" and peacefully died.

Kentuckian Jo Shelby, linked closely with the action west of the Mississippi River, is often compared with Nathan Bedford Forrest for his fighting skills, audacity and effectiveness.

Simon Bolivar Buckner declined a commission as brigadier general in the U.S. Army before being appointed brigadier general in the Confederate Army. He was a superb commander who eventually reached the rank of lieutenant general. After the War, this outstanding leader was elected governor of the state.

I cannot end this article without giving special mention to John Hunt Morgan. Though born in Alabama, he became a Kentucky (and Southern) legend. Perhaps the word that would best describe the great Morgan is "bold". His raids behind enemy lines became the stuff of legend and brought fear to the Union Army. He was also adept at destroying enemy railroad lines. His exploits were so spectacular that the Southern press christened him "The Thunderbolt of the Confederacy". He was quite a man.

Well, I think it is evident that Kentucky can certainly be considered a Confederate state and that it is altogether fitting and proper for there to be a Confederate Park, with a battle flag flying, on Interstate 24 or any other highway in the Blue Grass State. Hopefully, there will be many more to come.

Before closing, let me give a shout-out to the Lt. Col. Thomas M. Nelson Camp #141 in Albany, Georgia, and its fine commander, James King. I had the pleasure, at the invitation of Commander King, to speak at the Annual Southwest Georgia Confederate Memorial Service held each April in Albany. I cannot tell you how impressed I was with the beautiful "Confederate Park" that was conceived and brought into existence by the camp. It is also maintained by those gentlemen. The day, the crowd, the setting, the artillery unit and color guard and the hospitality all made for a splendid occasion and, once again, reaffirmed to me how lucky and happy I am to be a Southerner. I was also very impresed with the fact that almost a dozen SCV camps were represented in the crowd. Altogether, just another splendid day in our beloved Southland.

DEO VINDICE

©1995-2012 SHNV

On The Web:   http://shnv.blogspot.com/2012/04/confederate-state-of-kentucky_20.html

 

Friday, April 20, 2012

Virginia State Flag Day

In April, 2011, York County, Virginia issued the attached proclamation, naming April 30th "Virginia State Flag Day" on the Sesquicentennial anniversary of the flag's adoption, and as a perpetual event.

A little history on how this came to be, from Billy Bearden...

"On January 28th, 2011, media reports stated that South Carolina, through legislation, celebrated it's 1st annual "State Flag Day" and it was on the occasion of it's 150th Anniversary.

On March 9th, 2011, media reports stated that Utah, through legislation, celebrated it's 1st annual "State Flag Day".

It was about this time I did a little historical research and re-discovered that the flag of my home state was on the verge of its Birthday, and felt as a patriotic Virginian it should also join the ranks of those sacred standards whose citizens and politicians honor with a special and unique "State Flag Day".

Ours is a state flag steeped deeply in Confederate History and Heritage. Her Birth was in Virginia Secession, Her 1st four years of existence was to fly over the brave Confederate soldiers and citizens of Virginia. It was Robert E Lee who gave it original luster, flying the flag made of the seal his own Father helped to create. The motto is world famous and has endured the test of time for eons. Even the beautiful Salute to the Virginia Flag was written by a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and is based directly on the Salute to the Confederate Flag.

This is a heritage and history I wish to protect, promote and preserve.

Sadly however, I did not find any official mention of such an event from Virginia. So I began to talk it up amongst my friends and connections via email and facebook. I also went as far as drawing up a rather small proposal for an official proclamation, and submitted it to various city (Hampton, Newport News, Lexington, New Kent County, James City County, Williamsburg, and York County) and state govt (Gov McDonnell) officials.

Out of all my meager efforts, only York County replied and issued a "Virginia State Flag Day" proclamation"
Fast forward to 2012 and the Virginia Flaggers are planning to celebrate Virginia State Flag Day by gathering in Yorktown on Saturday, April 28th. We will have the original proclamation on hand, and carry Virginia State Flags in recognition of the 151st anniversary of her birth, to coincide with the Sesquicentennial of the War Between the States.

We invite all to join us and be a part of the inaugural annual event that we hope will grow in scope and support each year!

Check out the Facebook event page here... http://www.facebook.com/events/224201941017805/

Contact: vaflagger@ comcast.net for more information.

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!

Susan Hathaway
Virginia Flaggers

©1995-2012 SHNV

On The Web:   http://shnv.blogspot.com/2012/04/virginia-state-flag-day_20.html

 

Updated: OPINION: Confederate Memorial Day has fallen victim to political correctness

Frank Gillispie
Thursday, April 19. 2012

It was not that long ago that Confederate Memorial Day was a big deal in Georgia.

I clearly remember the parades, the political speeches, the barbecue. But these happy days have fallen victim of “political correctness” and very little of the celebrations survives. All that is left is the occasional memorial program held by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and a paid holiday for state government workers.

Oh, you did not know that all state offices will be closed for the holiday. And just in case you forgot, Confederate Memorial Day is April 26. This year that falls on Thursday.

There is one major tradition still practiced for the holiday. Each year, the original Confederate Constitution is on display at the University of Georgia rare books library. That day it is unrolled and placed in a glass covered table along with a selection of other documents from the period. If you have never seen it, I suggest that you make the trip. It is a rare document and is only available that one day each year. The rest of the time, it is rolled and stored in a lead lined tube and locked in a vault.

Athens resident, Gen. T.R.R. Cobb was instrumental in writing the Confederate Constitution, which is patterned on the Federal Constitution with some key changes that many Constitutional scholars consider to be significant improvements on the original. Among the changes is a limit to federal spending without a super majority of Congress approving. It also give the President one six-year term and allows him to exercise a line item veto.

The Commerce United Daughters branch is having a dedication at Hebron Presbyterian Church on April 21 at 1 p.m. The program will include an escort of Confederate re-enactors in uniform and carrying period weapons.

Here in Madison County, the local Sons of Confederate Veterans will have a wreath laying and living history at the Confederate monument in Colbert. Activities will continue throughout the day. If you want to know more about your Confederate ancestors, come by and talk to the camp members and re-enactors.

There will be a good supply of documents and information about the War of Northern Aggression and the over 400 Madison County men who were members of the Confederate Army and Navy.

If you are unable to attend any of the memorial events, then turn to the Internet where you can find numerous pages devoted to Southern history and heritage.

However you can do it, I urge you to use Confederate Memorial Day as an opportunity to lean more about our history and heritage. Don’t let the politically correct crowd deprive you of your heritage. Join those of us who have adopted the slogan: “American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God!”

Copyright © 2008-2012 MainStreet Newspapers, Inc.

On The Web:   http://www.madisonjournaltoday.com/archives/5122-OPINION-Confederate-Memorial-Day-has-fallen-victim-to-political-correctness.html

 

Mama’s Boy disputes Confederate flag next door

By SEAN WARD
April 20, 2012

Local restaurant Mama’s Boy is a hot-spot for many University students, but the huge Confederate flag that flies a few feet away from the restaurant has made it a hot topic.

Mama’s Boy has been dealing with this dilemma for the last six years. When the owners of the restaurant acquired the lot of land on which to build, they knew there was a little space right next door that belonged to someone else, but had no idea that the owner would fly a large Confederate flag right next to the restaurant for the entire month of April every year.

To the owners of the restaurant, it is more than just a flag.

“It’s just a symbol of hatred to me and to most everyone else who sees it,” said Cooper Currin, the co-owner of Mama’s Boy. “That flag evokes strong anger, and it’s not a part of the South we need to commemorate.”

Owners of Mama’s Boy have posted signs in front of the restaurant that read “Not Our Flag” to try to combat the issue. They have even gone so far as to post updates on their Facebook page about it, but it still has not yielded the results they would like.

Currin receives three to four phone calls a day for the first few weeks that the flag is up and continues to speak with irate people by phone and through email for the rest of the month.

“All you can do is say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and move on with business,” she said.

After speaking with people who object to the flag, they often suggest the owners of Mama’s Boy change their official website to reflect their views on the issue.  To Currin, though, that is just another distraction from focusing on her business.

“It’s something that I just don’t want to have to deal with,” Currin said.

She said to customers, the owner of the flag has no image.

“People obviously want to be heard, but this guy is faceless and nameless to them,” she said.

She has even gone so far as to start handing out his phone number to people who have an issue with the flag.

Warren Blackmon, the owner of the flag, could not see it more differently.

Blackmon, who jokingly refers to himself as “The Whitest Blackmon in Town,” has been flying his flag in that spot since before Mama’s Boy was built and doesn’t plan to take it down.

“I’ve been flying a flag in that lot for 10 years,” Blackmon said. “Southerners should honor their heritage.”

Blackmon said he flies the Confederate battle flag every April to commemorate Confederate History Month.

Confederate History Month is recognized by six state governments, including Georgia, to recognize the history of the Confederate States of America.

“It doesn’t represent bigotry or racism, and I’m definitely not trying to stir anything up,” Blackmon said. “Just because I fly a Confederate flag doesn’t mean I’m in the KKK.”

Mama’s Boy has offered to buy the lot for $2,000, according to Blackmon, but until they pay his price of $140,000, the flag will stay.

For the 10 years Blackmon has been flying the flag, though, he has had problems with people who oppose it.

“I’ve had 37 flags stolen,” Blackmon said. “All of the people who stole them should be arrested.”

Blackmon also disagrees with owners of Mama’s Boy that having the flag nearby may deter customers.

“If anything, I think it helps them,” Blackmon said.  “It’s really easy to find when people say, ‘It’s right by the big flag.’”

Donnell Francis, a University senior from Lilburn, regularly eats at Mama’s Boy.  As an African-American student, he says that he is not bothered by the flag.

“It wouldn’t deter me from eating there,” Francis said. “I would just be curious as to why it was flying out front.”

Copyright © 2012 The Red and Black Publishing Company Inc.

On The Web:   http://redandblack.com/2012/04/20/mama%E2%80%99s-boy-disputes-confederate-flag-next-door/

 

CIVIL WAR OP-ED: Confederate Memorial Day in Dixie

Tuesday, April 17, 2012
By Calvin E. Johnson Jr.

Did you know that the first Memorial Day in America was held in the South in honor of both the soldiers of Union Blue and Confederate Gray?

Some folks call the War Between the States, 1861-1865, a lost cause but stories of the heroic- brave men and women who stood for Southern Independence are still cherished in the hearts and souls of many people throughout the South.

Why do people remember?

Tennessee Senator Edward Ward Carmack may have said it best in 1903; quote “The Confederate Soldiers were our kinfolk and our heroes. We testify to the country our enduring fidelity to their memory. We commemorate their valor and devotion. There were some things that were not surrendered at Appomattox. We did not surrender our rights and history; nor was it one of the conditions of surrender that unfriendly lips should be suffered to tell the story of that war or that unfriendly hands should write the epitaphs of the Confederate dead. We have the right to teach our children the true history of the war, the causes that led up to it and the principles involved.” unquote

That may be why….

The South still remembers the men and women of the Confederate States of America who came from all races and religions that include: Cuban born Confederate Colonel Ambrosio Jose Gonzales, Irish-born General Patrick R. Cleburne, Black Confederate drummer Bill Yopp, Mexican born Colonel Santos Benavides, Cherokee Born General Stand Watie and Jewish born Confederate Nurse Phoebe Pember who was the first female administrator of Chimboraza Hospital in Richmond, Virginia where she served until the end of the war.

In Richmond, Virginia there is a final resting place for Southern war dead. It is called the only Jewish military cemetery in the world outside the State of Israel. Here are the remains of Jewish soldiers who fought for the Confederacy.

A plaque was erected here by the Hebrew Ladies Memorial Association, organized in 1866, and lists the names of the soldiers buried here. The inscription reads:

"To the glory of God and in memory of The Hebrew Confederate Soldiers resting in this hallowed spot."

The State of Georgia has officially recognized April 26th as Confederate Memorial Day since 1874....And proclamations have been signed by Southern governors, commemorating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month since 1995.

Efforts to mark Confederate graves, erect monuments and hold memorial services were the idea of Mrs. Charles J. Williams. She was an educated and kind lady. Her husband served as Colonel of the 1st Georgia Regiment during the War Between the States. He died of disease in 1862, and was buried in his home town of Columbus, Georgia.

Mrs. Williams and her daughter visited his grave often and cleared the weeds, leaves and twigs from it, then placed flowers on it. Her daughter also pulled the weeds from other Confederate graves near her Father.

It saddened the little girl that their graves were unmarked. With tears of pride she said to her Mother, "These are my soldiers' graves." The daughter soon became ill and passed away in her childhood.

On a visit to the graves of her husband and daughter, Mrs. Williams looked at the unkept soldiers' graves and remembered her daughter as she cleaned the graves and what the little girl had said. She knew what she had to do.

Mrs. Williams wrote a letter that was published in Southern newspapers asking the women of the South for their help. She asked that memorial organizations be established to take care of the thousands of Confederate graves from the Potomac River to the Rio Grande. She also asked the state legislatures to set aside a day in April to remember the men who wore the gray. With her leadership April 26 was officially adopted in many states. She died in 1874, but not before her native state of Georgia adopted it as a legal holiday.

Johnson is a speaker, writer  of American Historical articles, the author of  “When America Stood for God, Family and Country” and Chairman of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Confederate History and Heritage Month Committee, http://confederateheritagemonth.com

The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans joins the nation in commemorating the Sesquicentennial--150th Anniversary of the War Between the States now through 2015. Read more at: http://www.150wbts.org/

On The Web:   http://www.huntingtonnews.net/29288

 

What Passes For Intelligence - SPLC Intelligence Report, Spring 2012

By Michael LeMieux
April 18, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

The spring “intelligence” report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been released and as usual it has little to do with intelligence and more to do with fear mongering and misdirection. As an intelligence analyst I know what an intelligence report is and this is not that.

They start off with identifying what they call “Patriot” groups in the United States in 2011. Now in my 56 years in this country I always thought of myself as a Patriot. I have served in the military, went to war, was awarded the Purple Heart, swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and always thought being a Patriot was a good thing.

Not these, ahem, intelligence analyst of the SPLC – they classify these groups as anti-government. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of anti-government groups around but just because citizens are wishing to hold government accountable, which is their duty, is admirable and does not make them “anti-government.” Maybe anti-unlawful government.

So how does a group get on this prestigious list? Evidently not hard at all; I personally know of a number of these “groups” that have only just started and have done nothing so far, and I mean absolutely nothing. In fact one group, and I’ll get to them later, has a total of 3 people involved, have only had a handful of meetings and have set up a rudimentary web page – that’s it. They must be very dangerous and scary to the “intelligence” folks at the SPLC.

They say they derive their list from “field reports, Patriot publications, the Internet, law enforcement sources and news reports.” Wow, the internet – really? Hmmm. So they search the internet for any group that may identify themselves as patriots and question government. First of all who are we to question government? They would not do anything wrong, would they? I mean they wouldn’t do things like waste public funds on expensive junkets to Hawaii, and Las Vegas (GSA) on the taxpayers dime, or tell the American people lies to get us into wars (Gulf of Tonkin, etc), cause massive economic ruin (Fannie & Freddie), or pass laws that affect us and exempt themselves, etc, etc, etc. But I digress.

So let’s take a look at some of what the SPLC passes off as “intelligence” these days.

First is the “Constitution Party,” now that is something to be frightened of. And what does the Constitution Party say they stand for that can frighten the SPLC so much to add them to a list of potential ne’er-do-wells?

According to the party platform, a legally recognized political party by the way, they proclaim – “We declare the platform of the Constitution Party to be predicated on the principles of The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States and The Bill of Rights According to the original intent of the Founding Fathers, these founding documents are the foundation of our Liberty and the Supreme Law of the Land.”

What I find interesting is that a party that espouses a position of freedom, liberty, under a basis of law comes as a threat to the SPLC yet nowhere in there list will you find any of the various “Communist Party” organizations that admittedly want to overthrow our existing system. The communist party openly wish to limit freedom and expand government largess and self-admit to being militant but they do not make the SPLC list. There are a number of American Muslim “militias” that have openly stated their hatred for the American culture and government; they are not on the list. But if you call for law, the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence to be your foundation then you must be up to no good, according to the SPLC.

How about the organization “Get Out Of Our House (GOOOH)?” Does that sound radical? GOOOH states: “It is a NON-PARTISAN plan to place citizen representatives on the ballot in 2012, ideally in the primary against the incumbent, competing for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The members of each district will have an honest opportunity to replace the career politicians…”

Here is an organization that works to get citizens involved in politics and especially those that will adhere to the Constitution and the founding principles of our country. Wow, that is really scary! Hmmm, I’m starting to see a theme here… but let’s look a bit further, shall we.

Uh Oh, a really scary group here – it’s the “Oath Keepers.” So what do the Oath Keepers stand for? Well, how about integrity of our elected officials, military personnel, police, and anyone that has sworn an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Wow, that is so scary I almost peed my pants. Not really, and out of fairness I will have to confess I know a bit about this group, I’m the President of the Nebraska Chapter of Oath Keepers and you know what? I will not apologize for being proud that I have lived up to my oath to support and defend the Constitution and all we ask is that our leaders do the same. But to the SPLC we need to be watched and placed on a scary list. Starting to see the common thread here? Let’s keep going.

The “Tenth Amendment Center” – for those that do not know, the Tenth Amendment is the one that says that any power not delegated to the federal government is reserved to the states and to the people. This was supposed to put the nail in the coffin of federal expansion of power by explicitly telling the federal government that they only have certain enumerated powers and all others belong to the states and the people.

Now the Tenth Amendment Center believes that the federal government should obey and abide by the Constitution and stay within those bounds. They state that the center: “Works to preserve and protect states’ rights and federalism through information and education.” What could be more harmful than information and education? Well, I guess if you’re the SPLC this group is really dangerous.

Next we have the “We the People” organization. We the people have been around for years and have ALWAYS worked within the law to get government to answer tough questions. You may have even heard of one of them, which was – “What law, specifically, in the code makes the average taxpayer liable for the income tax?” Now you might think that would be a rather funny thing to ask but do you realize in the past twenty years it has never been answered. They have petitioned the government many times, sent letters to nearly every congressman, posted large bounties in major national news media, and no one has been able to answer the question. Think that might be important to know? They won’t tell you and today you can be fined for even asking the question. How’s that for freedom.

Let’s look at the mission statement of the We the People organization to see what scares the SPLC so much; they state:

“The mission of the We The People organization is:

1. To protect, preserve and enhance the unalienable rights, liberties and freedoms of the people.
2. To teach people that under our system of governance all power comes from the people and all government is limited by our written constitutions.
3. To help people become better informed about the history and meaning of every provision of the Declaration of Independence and their State and federal constitutions.
4. To help people become better informed about what is really going on in government.
5. To help people become better informed about how to confront unconstitutional and illegal behavior by those wielding power in government at all levels.
6. To institutionalize vigilance by the ordinary, nonaligned citizen-voter-taxpayers”

Hmmm, let me see, rights, liberties, freedoms, constitution, becoming informed, confronting illegal behavior. These guys must be kooks. I bet they believe the Constitution is supposed to be followed by our government or something.

I’m going to step outside the common thread on this next one, only because I think this is a bit funny. They list as a dangerous, anti-government group that needs to watched as the notorious “eMilitary Manuals.” Really? I looked up their website and found that they are a business site that sells open source government books and manuals. They found a niche that people wanted and filled it. Wait a minute that sounds like capitalism. One of the very things the Constitution provided for, free commerce. Never mind this kind of sounds like it does follow along that common thread – oops I think I just gave it away. Anyway, let’s continue.

Here is a good one, the “Constitution Lobby of Nebraska.” You know what these radicals are trying to do? Well according to their website they state: “We will hold elected officials accountable, not just on election day, but every day, regardless of party affiliation and whether we voted for them. Individuals and small groups cannot prevail: it’s time for us to come together and do what we cannot do alone.”

What they plan on doing is assembling a group of constitutional lawyers and citizen lay-persons to watch over state and federal laws to determine if they align with state/federal constitutions and if not file petitions with the corresponding governments or bring legal action if necessary. Wow now that is really scary – using peaceful and lawful means to effect change. Remember earlier that I said I would point out an organization that has done nothing thus far? This is it – how do I know? I helped found it. We have only established the legal framework and filed for status with the government (still waiting), and have held only a few meetings so far. But we have made the big bad SPLC list without doing anything – I think maybe this SPLC “intelligence report” is looking more like a “report” and less of having any real intelligence.

Oh, wait a minute, that’s right the SPLC is in league with the unions which use strikes, intimidation, and violence to make changes. Maybe the rest of us are just a bit naïve and think that honor, truth, liberty, freedom, and keeping our oath means something.

I certainly do but I cannot attribute that to the SPLC based on the garbage they produce. They call this an “Intelligence Report” I would not, I would call this fear mongering, and self-serving to enlarge their target base. Remember it is THEIR mission to go against supposed hate groups and the more they can list the more they think they are needed.

You see I have been an intelligence analyst for nearly 20 years now, still am. I have given hundreds of REAL intelligence reports and I can tell you that this is by no stretch of the imagination an intelligence report. You see an intelligence report would back what they are saying with something that eludes the SPLC – facts - not just opinion or points of view.

Everything I have placed in this article can be found with a simple search on the internet. What really worries me is not that the SPLC publishes such unfounded misinformation; it is that the current administration and especially the Department of Homeland Security have a history of communication and sharing with the SPLC and that the SPLC is taken seriously by our government when so much of what they “report” is just plain wrong. The SPLC has been cited numerous times in state fusion center and DHS literature as being a credible source of their information. That, to me, is what is really scary.

And the thread that passes throughout this article that has garnered the ire of the SPLC? It is anyone one or any organization that stands for adherence to the Constitution as our founders intended it to be. What that tells me is the side of the Constitutional issue the SPLC appears to stand. But it might be asking a bit too much to have them add the SPLC to their own list.

© 2012 Michael LeMieux

On The Web:   http://www.newswithviews.com/LeMieux/michael161.htm

 

Scotland highlights the fragility of old empires in the 21st Century!

Scotland's quest for freedom is having affects across the globe and could ignite independence movements in the American South!
by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Wednesday, April 18, 2012

As recently as April 5th, warnings from Australia indicate that Scottish independence could have much broader effects on what remains of the British empire, presently known as the United Kingdom!  Australia's ties to the United Kingdom may be cut if Scotland gains her freedom!

Scotland's thirst for nationalism and independence seems quite a breath of fresh air in a world so consumed with globalism, one world government, and centralization of power.  And one has to wonder if the complete news blackout in America about Scotland and the process for a referendum on liberty there is because if the Scots persist, their actions could rock the world?

A previous column I wrote back on February 7th received a fair amount of attention from readers overseas. While most seem to be Pro-British, and thus blast my article for bias and a lack of knowledge of the subtleties of Political Correctness in the UK, there are the occasional Scots who seem to illustrate the feelings of hope expressed in my article. As to my bias,  I freely admit to it.  England, like the Yankees are occupiers.  They are a people not content to live within their own borders, or content to shape a utopia within their own people.  Instead, they see their role as savior of the world, and they did force their salvation on any people, anywhere, that they could conquer. Their military failures in America in two wars did not stop their desire to rule here.  Money, huge sums of it, and the behind scenes power of a monarch are present in America today.  But that's a much different, much more submerged story. Globalism is, after all, an economically driven phenomenon. The essence of it is to open global investment opportunities for large capital formations. It is quite as simple as that.  And since the Queen of England sits atop one of the world's largest family fortunes it seems only common sense to see her influence all over this newest of methods to impose British will on the world.

And if memory serves, the American Bushes are somehow blood related to English royalty; nice to keep all this money in the family and have kin so important in the ruling of "the colonies." across the pond.  I wonder where Romney fits in all of this?  We know he is a globalist, but I am talking about the blood lines.

So for a descendant with Scot and Irish blood, I can't help but be fascinated by what is occurring in Scotland.  Every ideology has within it the seeds of its own eventual demise.  In globalism there is the optimistic view that all nations across the planet can be integrated into one global economy, a kind of Tower of Babel.  That the politics, religions, history, personalities, and problems associated with the more than 200 nations of the world can somehow be smoothed out, a kind of Yankee reconstruction of the whole world,  so that open borders may eventually evolve into no borders.

Look at America and Mexico, where Senator Rubio ( a contrived conservative of the neo-Conservatives) just yesterday announced his plans for immigration reform.  How long will it take to remove the international boundary at the Rio Grande? Not sure, but the Bush's. Perry's. Rubio's of the US are working to make it a reality. Scotland is saying we want our boundaries and borders. We want our independence, and our nationalism! In Scotland, the referendum isn't just about William Wallace, but it could be a bell rung for all who yearn to be free of their occupiers. And in the United States that could mean the South!

The globalists are enacting policies that are anti-American.  Huge government debt, attempts to impose socialism, rejection of development of US energy reserves, selling off the US space industry, and a continued failure to secure the US borders are all obvious policies intended to remove the Super Power status of the United States.  But those who manipulate U.S. policy and are engineering the decline of a nation still in possession of vast natural resources may be once again underestimating the power of God, and the eternal longing for independence.  As America collapses, the example of Scotland may be that small light in the distance which brings an old dynamic back to the forefront, nationalism!

©2012 Mark Vogl

On The Web:   http://www.nolanchart.com/article9565-scotland-highlights-the-fragility-of-old-empires-in-the-21st-century.html

 

Why Richmond, Why?  Save Our Statues

By: Philip Riggan
Richmond.com
April 16, 2012

What can we do to Save Our Statues? - Me

These are tough economic times, but Richmond's statues already have jobs, they just need our tender loving care.

We're in a tough spot because we keep stressing how important tourism dollars are to our economy in Richmond and Virginia. Check figures from the Richmond Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau:

6 million travelers visit Richmond region annually
Travelers spend $1.75 billion here annually

Our statues are a part of why Richmond is "Easy to Love" and their jobs are to be tourist attractions and enhance the importance and significance of our city and its history.

Why should we care? How about a huge global event coming to our town? With the 2015 UCI Road World Championships coming to Richmond, it has been estimated:

400,000 spectators expected with $135 million economic impact statewide; $86 million in Richmond

There will be many Europeans among that group of visitors for the bike event and Richmond gets plenty of foreign visitors. Not to stereotype, but don't most Europeans appreciate statues, sculpture and history? Let's invest a little of that money we are expecting to bring in and give our statues a quick fix-up spit shine to welcome our guests?

Last week, Why Richmond, Why?!? tackled the question of why three statues on Monument Avenue are turning green. This week, let's figure out a way to fix it with Laura Cameron of Save Our Statues, which "seeks funding for its comprehensive, long-range plan to stabilize the 21 deteriorating statues on City property and assure their continued care," according to the website.

"Our approach is city funding for restoration, then we fund maintenance," Cameron said in an email. "Since the city has not funded the restoration of anything on Monument Avenue, Save Our Statues has no need to fund maintenance."

Cameron shared figures from a survey commissioned four years ago -- before the economy tanked -- by the Historic Monument Avenue and Fan District Foundation to estimate the restoration of all the city's statues. Cost for three statues on Monument Avenue are alarming:

Matthew Fontaine Maury: $120,000

Jefferson Davis: $120,000 for the metal, not the stone, which needs work

JEB Stuart: $65,000

"The statues on Monument Avenue, as best we can determine, were last done in the mid 1980s," she said. "No surprise that they look bad. [Robert E. Lee], of course, looks great, thanks to the Commonwealth of Virginia" which maintains the statue.

"Many people think green is picturesque and harmless and it is not," Cameron said of the . "I would assume corrosion would create holes that would allow all kinds of bad things into the metal.

"Our city's statues are among our glories. Few cities of our size have so many of such high quality, telling so many different stories...no one would disagree that the ones on Monument Avenue in particular are a big part of what make it one of the most beautiful streets in the world. It is truly sad that the Monument Avenue statues in particular could not be restored before the anniversary of the Civil War."

The group is currently seeking funds for the Christopher Columbus statue in Byrd Park, which Andrew Baxter of Bronze et al restored a couple of years ago. Check the before and after photos above to see what an oxidized and corroded statue looks like in comparison to a restored statue.

As for the statues under the city's care, “we had a professional assessment of the city’s statues and monuments done approximately three years ago, and based on that we have developed a prioritized list for conservation and maintenance,” said Dr. Norman C. Merrifield, director of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities. “We encourage the community to assist the Enrichmond Foundation in the establishment of endowments to provide for their care.”

©2012 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC

On The Web:   http://www2.richmond.com/news/2012/apr/16/why-richmond-why-save-our-statues-ar-1840260

 

Southern media spin about Dixie hurts the South!

The South is still enduring recontruction, Southern news media's PC reporting is detremental to its viewers!
by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Monday, April 16, 2012

Recently, reports about a new “Flags Across the South” project in Paducah, Ky received a less than favorable report by WPSD-TV there.

Are reporters at Southern stations naive, or are they knowingly repeating scar tactics and false representations of the Confederate battle flag to divide the South and repress Southern patriotism?  Do they know the history of the South, and of the Sons of Confederate Veterans?  And do they know that the Confederate battle flag is the most recognized symbol of the South in the entire world?  Have they ever realized that the South is the only region in the United States with a symbol and quasi national anthem!

Do they know that people across the world use the South's colors when acting against repressive, tyrannical, occupying governments? (See the Berlin Wall, and Afghanistan to start with.)  When is the last time any Southern media did a serious report on the Confederate flag or the heritage organizations, like the S.C.V. and U.D.C.?

Do they know that heritage organizations annually condemn racist groups for misuse of the Confederate colors?  I wonder if those reporters even know its Sesquicentennial (150th Anniversary) of the late unpleasantness?

These questions lead to even other questions.  Do Southern television stations intentionally hire from outside the South?  Are they in cahoots with the other media to make a vanilla America, stripped of her regional identities?  Is there an intentional plan to homogenize America?

The media are not the only Southerners delinquent in their love of the South.  The Southern heritage organizations do a pitiful job of media relations.  There is no national or state plans to encourage and help local camps to visit their local media, tv, radio, and print and familiarize them with the Sons of Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy, the history of the South, and the importance of knowing that the Rebel flag is an internationally known and revered symbol of the South.

Men like Michael Givens (present national Commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans), Chuck McMichael, Paul Gramling and Chris Sullivan are really good men whose heart is dedicated to the Cause. And they have help from others like Gene Hogan, the late Bazz Childress, and Chuck Rand.  Just this past weekend, in Jasper, Alabama, a local group of the S.C.V. , the Hutto Camp, held ceremonies to honor the Confederate Memorial in the town swuare.  A Copy if the remarks (titled Confederate Memorial Day and it's relevance today) is available at the Confederate War College. 

But, unfortantely, there are just too many in the SCV organization who obstruct real efforts to grow the organization, and most importantly vindicate the Cause.

To illustrate just how weak the SCV is in media work, when the Texas Division Press person was asked to circulate a Press Release state wide, he replied he did not have a state wide media contact list!  Now the media person in Texas is a good man, and held that position for a number of years, but because the Texas leadership failed to use him resulted in a Press person without a state wide list.  The grannies in Texas just sleep. (Not all in Texas are grannies, just the leadership, including most of the state board, known as the D.E.C.)

In any event, a statewide media contact list was generated in less than a day!  And the release went out. (If there are states that have plans handed down to their camps to approach local media, please annotate that at the end of this article so other states may benefit from your work.)  Compatriots (members of the S.C.V.) and their sisters in the U.D.C. across the South work hard to do what they can to vindicate the Cause. But a lot of the leadership of these organizations are just not up to the real work and confrontation required.

When you consider there are between 50 - 80 million living descendants of Confederate veterans in America today you would think Southern heritage organizations would be booming.  Activist organizations are springing up all over the South because the heritage organizations just are not combat effective in the Culture War. (See those organizations in other columns in America Today.)

But, back to the main point of the article.  It's time for Southerners to realize that you live in the South; that the South is a great place to live.  Southerners should be proud that the trends demonstrate a mass migration from the northeast and mid-west to the South.  And, that the Southern battle flag and Dixie are priceless trademarks of the South.  It’s time to get them out of the closet, polish them up, and re-educate both the northern immigrants and many born in here in the South to the honors and values of the Southern symbols and Southern people.  And there are black spokespersons, like H. K. Edgerton, who have spent decades of their lives telling the story of the South. They should be a big part of this regional renovation work.

It’s time to get the Southern media on the side of Dixie!  And if there are any Southern media who want to take this up, I would be more than willing to help you with an interview, contact me at johnyreb43@yahoo.com

Send your comments concerning the WPSD coverage to WPSD- TV100 Television Lane Paducah, KY 42003 Main - 270-415-1900 Fax - 270-415-1981 Newsroom - 270-415-2001 and encourage them to get up to date on the South!

©2012 Mark Vogl

On The Web:   http://www.nolanchart.com/article9560-southern-media-spin-about-dixie-hurts-the-south.html

 

Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Confederate Memorial Day and it’s relevance to now!
Speech by Mark Vogl

CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY
JASPER, ALABAMA
15 APRIL 2012

Good afternoon. I deeply appreciate this opportunity to visit with you today. It was probably fifteen years ago when I decided I want to make a life goal of speaking in every state of the old Confederacy. It turned out to be a great decision. Over the past fifteen years I have had the opportunity to meet and visit with groups of people like yourself, spread over thirteen states who love the values, history and legacy of the South. There are qualities about this group of people which is evident and which has made me very proud to be a part of them

Christianity is at the heart of these groups. There is an evident belief in Christ which is at the core of the character of the Southern people. While other regions of this nation would shy away from the term Bible Belt, Southerners are proud of that reputation and do not turn away from their God.

I have come to believe that the armies of Robert E. Lee, the armies of Mississippi and Tennessee were armored in Christ. I believe it was their deep faith in God, the Christian revivals which swept through these armies which were the reason for their success, their devotion to the Cause, and their ability to endure indescribable hardships while serving the Confederacy.

We all think of Robert E. Lee as one of America’s greatest military commanders. General Lee commanded forces which inflicted over a quarter of million casualties on the Yankee invaders.

Robert E. Lee was much more than a general. He was a Christian who believed God must be a part of his life, and a part of his army.

In his book “Christ in Camp,” J. William Jones, the Chaplain for Longstreet’s First Corps, Army of Northern Virginia tells a story.

On the 17 of April, 1860, at Louisa Court House, a group of men and boys gathered.

There is a young mother standing silently, repressing her want to cry. But a tear is running down her cheek. Her son and the men of his newly formed company stand in formation, preparing to move out, and join others from around the state. Her son was only 16, and had just recovered from a serious illness. He stood in the ranks, fussin’ and fidgeting with his uniform, and trying to seem at ease with the hundred or so men around him. His cap sat atop his mop of dark hair as if it were just placed there for the moment.
 

Someone asks the woman; Why are you crying, aren’t you willing for your son to go and serve his state?

The woman replies; “Certainly I am! I wish him to go, and would be ashamed of him if he were unwilling to go.”

The woman went on to explain that her fear was that the army would be a place where the boy would be exposed to vice, and sin, and she feared for his soul.

Before we go further, let’s consider this incident.

Normally, I guess most folks would think of Confederate Memorial Day as concerning the boy, the men in the ranks; all those men who endured the fear, the terrible wounds, the exhaustion, and death of battle.

But for moment, let’s think about the mother; her love for her son, her patriotism in offering her son. Her belief that it was right for him to face death for the South.

What about her values? Can you imagine today, an attitude like she demonstrated? Maybe here in Alabama you can. But not in this America, not across the nation. Who would say they would be ashamed of their boy if he did not go off to war?

Her real fears being for the boy’s soul. The mother’s priorities were straight. She thought of her son, and eternity, not her son and tomorrow. She was concerned with his soul, not his mortality.

These values were not created in some Ivy League college and taught en masse in public school. These values came from the Bible, and were taught in far flung homes distant from any centralized education system. The boy and the other men were standing in ranks because of the values if their mothers and fathers. These values did not have to be contrived by some distant Ph.D. These values had a source well above Harvard or Yale.

I would assert that it is this faith in God, this willingness to live life, to make decisions, to be a family on the Word of the Bible which made America great, and allowed the South to endure against a much stronger foe for as long as we did.

Later in “Christ in Camp,” Chaplain Jones attributes the religious environment within the Army of Northern Virginia to Generals Lee, Jackson, Stuart and others who saw the need for Christian teachings in the army, and made time for it, and led by example by attending the services with the men. And, they showed their Christianity in their daily actions, and treatment of one another and the men. Lee and the others were evangelists as much as they were soldiers.

It is this Christian faith which is now being tested and rejected within our nation. We have a President who publicly denied the Christian nature of the United States. No matter your politics, it’s time to sit down and consider what a denial of Christ means, a national denial.

Confederate Memorial Day provides an opportunity to consider this. In the Confederate Constitution, in the Preamble, the Southern founders called on Providence for His guidance and protection. Our Southern nation was founded on a belief in God, and said so right in the opening statement of its Constitution!

I believe Confederate Memorial Day has a second message, one that demonstrates how important just one seemingly average person can be in changing history.

Coming to you from East Texas, I would like to take a moment to share a story with you which you may not have heard. I want to tell you about a little known battle which meant nothing to the people of Alabama, at first.

It was a battle in Texas and occurred in the fall of 1863.

Texas was way out on the western flank of the Confederacy, and was only half settled when the South left the Union. Sam Houston and some others in Texas, travelled the state speaking against secession.

Unlike all the other Southern states Texas held a referendum on the question. The people would vote. Stay or leave. In the county I live in, Upshur County, the vote was 94% for secession. Across Texas it was about 75% for secession! And so Texas was the seventh state to secede.

Now Texas had a relatively small population, no rail roads to speak of, no manufacturing, and was far from the strategic centers of the war. So at first glance it would seem there should be no reason Abe Lincoln would have no serious desire to use resources in Texas. But, that’s not how it was.

Old Abe Lincoln could read a map. He saw that Texas was the only seceded state with a border on a foreign land, Mexico. And he knew the history of Texas and that Mexico would love to recapture Texas and the other lands in the southwest.

So from the very beginning of the war Lincoln put pressure on his generals to plant a flag in Texas. Lincoln wanted to warn off Mexico, that should Mexico attack Texas there would be a comeuppance to pay when the Union came to re-occupy Texas.

Though they had a whole war to fight, the Yankee generals were poked enough by the president to take measures to place a flag in Texas. The Gulf of Mexico and Yankee naval strength provided the means to plant the flag on the coast. And in October, 1862 they captured the City of Galveston.

At the time, Galveston was the largest city in Texas and the largest port west of the Mississippi River. Taking Galveston was a real victory for the north in the fight for the Trans Mississippi.

However, the Yankees applied the principle of Economy of Force in their operations around Galveston. In other words, they did not place a large occupying force in the City. They counted on a Yankee naval squadron of five ships to be the real force in holding Galveston and the bay. After all, there was no Confederate Navy out this far.

Henry Halleck, Chief of Staff for the Yankees, could relax, the President wanted Old Glory in Texas, and it was flying over Galveston. Now on to bigger things…thought Halleck.

But, an event occurred in Virginia which would change everything. General Lee had decided that Major General John McGruder had to go. And so, McGruder was sent to command the Department of Texas!

When he arrived, McGruder was bombarded with complaints from the Texas governor about the Yankees occupying Galveston, something must be done!

McGruder would focus on that problem, develop a plan, create a makeshift navy of sorts, made of cottonclads, and on New Year’s Eve, begin the movements intended to retake the city early on the morning of New Year’s Day. The fight was over before lunch, and the city was retaken. The Yankee flag was thrown out of Texas.

Lincoln was not happy. He told his generals you have lost Galveston, and I want Old Glory in Texas! Fix it.

Meanwhile in Texas, a small company of men, the Davis Guard was sent to a rough dirt fort which sat astride Sabine Pass. This group was from the Houston area and were all Irish Catholics. Fort Griffin at Sabine Pass had six canon and it was their job to hold the fort and defend the pass. The pass was a waterway from the Gulf of Mexico into Lake Sabine.

Meanwhile, in Washington and New Orleans the Yankee general staff had concocted a new plan for Texas. They would assemble a force of 5,000 soldiers at New Orleans, and move them by ship through Sabine Pass to Lake Sabine and occupy Port Neches. From there, they would march down the railroad to Beaumont, then on to Houston. Taking Houston would cut off Galveston from the rest of the state. In one move they would capture all of the south eastern coast of Texas.

Preparations were made and in September of 1863, a fleet of 22 ships left New Orleans for Sabine Pass.

Meanwhile, at Sabine Pass the Davis Guards under the leadership of Richard Dowling, a Lt., had done much. First, they had prepared the pass for a fight by placing colored aiming stakes in the water. These stakes would help them range and hit an enemy force.

Second, they developed a plan should the enemy attempt to come down the pass. Because there were less than fifty men, and their guns were inferior to the Yankees, Dowling realized he had to preserve his men’s lives long enough to inflict damage. So, in an unconventional step he told his men to load the guns aim them at the most distant stake, and then abandon the guns for the protection of the caves below the wall, where the powder and ball was stored. Dowling and one other man would stay on the walls, watching the enemies as they approached, endure the initial bombardment, and then call on the men when the Yankees were in range.

On the morning of September 7th a Yankee ship came into view in the Gulf of Mexico and the alarm was sounded in Fort Griffin. The guns were loaded and the Confederates waited to see what would happen.

The Yankee ship was the advance of the Union fleet. But the fleet sailed by the Yankee advance without seeing her, and when they arrived at Galveston realized they had gone too far, and turned around.

They arrived on the 8th. Now, the sea filled with a forrest of white masts.

A message arrived from the District headquarters. Dowling and his men were ordered to abandon the fort if they so choose. District was aware of the overwhelming strength of the Yankee fleet and proposed to fight the battle inland.

Dowling and the forty eight Irish Catholics refused to abandon the fort, and a donnybrook was set. Should the Yankees sail into Sabine pass, a fight would ensure.

Now Sabine Pass was about two miles wide, and eight miles long. Fort Griffen was set back, maybe five miles from the Gulf.

While the pass was two miles wide, only the center, about a half mile in width was deep enough to allow passage of the large Yankee ships. So the Yankees decided to form in two columns, with four warships upfront, followed by 18 transports.

The attack commenced, as the Yankee warships, two by two, entered the pass, and began their bombardment of the fort once they were in range. The Confederates did not respond.

Firing continued from the Yankees, but when the Confederates did not respond, the commanders came to believe the fort might be abandoned, and so slowed their firing while they sailed straight up the Pass.

When the ships finally came into range, Dowling called up his men, and all six guns fired in unison at the lead ship…striking it six times, once in the rudder. That ship careened off, and drove itself into the far bank.

Reloading the Irishmen focused on the second ship, firing another salvo, striking this ship six times. Again hitting the rudder, but also the steam engine, which exploded, burning and scolding a number of Union sailors. The screams were horrible as the ship lost control and drove into the bank right in front of the fort. The Irishmen pounded unmercifully.

The remainder of the fleet, seeing the carnage attempted to reverse course and panic ensued as the Irish peppered them with shot in melee of turning about!

In forty minutes, the Davis Guard of 48 men captured two Yankee warships, more than three hundred prisoners and drove the rest of the fleet back into the Gulf where they turned and headed back to New Orleans!

Texas was saved. But more than that, 48 men had defeated and run off an invasion of 5000 Yankee soldiers in 22 ships!

After the losses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the South seemed in a hopeless situation and then news came in from Texas of this unbelievable victory. Spirits were raised across the whole South as the story spread.

In Richmond, the Congress is reputed to have decided to cast the only medal ever awarded during the war, to the Davis Guard!

Today’s talk is intended first to remind us of a set a values long gone, but which are right to live by. We must place our trust in the Almighty God, and we must re-establish a Christian foundation for life.

Second, a few with the help of God can do miraculous things, as was accomplished at Sabine Pass by less than fifty men who would not leave their post, even when ordered to do so.

As Stonewall Jackson said, “Duty is ours, the consequences are God’s.” There is much to do if we are going to save America, but if we look to our ancestors we have been given the path to follow. Will we live to that path?

©1995-2012 SHNV

On The Web:   http://shnv.blogspot.com/2012/04/confederate-memorial-day-and-its.html

 

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Coopting the Christian South

It's okay to call yourself "Christian" and take a political stand in your church or in public IF - and only if - you support the liberal, big-government agenda. Therefore, the oh-so-politically-correct Charlotte Observer has no problem when ministers attack Amendment One, which would affirm traditional marriage in the North Carolina Constitution.

And if you support that same liberal, big-government agenda, it's also okay to affirm your Southern identity, as these two neoliberals do in an op-ed piece arguing against Amendment One. The piece even begins with the proud declaration, "We are native Southerners ..."

Maybe they are. But they're also yankeefied shills.

Southerners who promote traditional Southern values don't get the same polite deference from the corporate media. I wonder why?

On The Web:   http://www.lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2012/04/coopting-christian-south.html

 

Confederate flag raises concerns

Jason Hibbs
Apr 12, 2012

MCCRACKEN COUNTY, Ky. — A giant Confederate flag: that's what will soon be flying over a local community and near a busy interstate.

The group behind the flag and the memorial park where it will fly said they're not trying to stir up trouble.

But lots of people say that's happening anyway, so they are speaking out against the group's plans.

Among them are county leaders, who are coming out against it.

The flag will fly right along I-24 in Reidland.

The group commander said the parcel of land was given to the group by a man who has Confederate ancestors and wanted a Confederate memorial built.

It'll sit right beside Trader's Mall in Reidland.

It's not the memorial causing concerns. It's the message many fear the big Confederate flag will send.

"It's a good location," said John Suttles with the Sons of Confederate Veterans. "It's quiet here and it'd be a good place for a memorial park for people to come out here and sit."

The park is a $24,000, including ancestor bricks, plaques, markers and a big Confederate flag.

The flag pole was the first thing put on the property. Suttles said he's not sure when they'll raise the 12 foot by 18 foot symbol.

Some would rather they didn't raise it at all.

"I wouldn't have it in my front yard. I certainly wouldn't," said neighbor Jerry Vasseur, who lives right across the road.

But he knows he'll see it from his front yard every day.

"I just don't agree with it, surely don't," Vasseur said.

He fears what others will think of the community when they drive by. And he's not alone.

"We would prefer it not being there of course," McCracken County Deputy Judge Executive Doug Harnice said.

Harnice said the plans caught the county off guard and even though he doesn't like it, there's absolutely nothing he can do.

"It's a First Amendment thing," Harnice said. "First of all, he has the right to fly the flag on his property."

Suttles said his group is about history, not hate or racism.

"That's all they're wanting to teach any more is tolerance and we deserve tolerance, too," Suttles said.

But to Vasseur, it's history he'd like left behind

"I just don't know why we just cant let bygones be bygones and go on with our lives," Vasseur said.

Suttles said his group will allow people to buy bricks and put their ancestor's names on them. He's not sure when the park will be completed. Suttles said they are also considering putting state flags around the monument.

© 2011 WPSD-TV, LLC

On The Web:  http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/home/ticker/Confederate-flag-raises-concerns-147259225.html

 

Group plans to fly Confederate flag near Kentucky interstate

April 12, 2012
Associated Press

PADUCAH, Ky. –  A Confederate history organization has put up a flagpole in western Kentucky near Interstate 24 and plans to fly a large battle flag.

The pole is on private land in Reidland at exit 16.

The Paducah Sun reported Kentucky division commander John Suttles of the Sons of Confederate Veterans said the land for a memorial park was donated by a man who had Confederate ancestors.

Suttles said the park will contain, besides the flagpole, benches and a circle of bricks to represent fallen Confederate soldiers.

"We are doing this to honor ancestors," Suttles said. "It's the 150th anniversary of the war for Southern independence. People may have mixed feelings about this, but it is historic."

McCracken County Judge-Executive Van Newberry said that doesn't mean people seeing it won't form opinions about Paducah.

"There are people that view that flag with disdain," Newberry said. "It's going to be seen by travelers, and we don't need that. That's unfortunate."

But he said as long as the group follows county code as they are putting it up, it is protected by the First Amendment.

Sons of Confederate Veterans national executive director Ben Sewell said there are similar flags set up in places all over the South, including along Interstate 65 in Alabama. He said the idea is to put them in high-visibility spots.

"The flag was created to distinguish Confederate soldiers in the war," Sewell said. "Quite frankly, that is all it has ever stood for. It's other people who have put that stigma on it. It is a historical war flag."

A similar memorial was built in 1998 on private land bordering Interstate 65 at the southern edge of Nashville, Tenn.

It features an equestrian statute of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and 13 poles that display the Confederate battle flag and the flags of those states that were members of the Confederacy.

©2012 FOX News Network, LLC

On The Web:   http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/12/group-plans-to-fly-confederate-flag-near-kentucky-interstate/

 

The South: Not all Bubbas and banjos

Todd Leopold
CNN
Apr 14 2012

His name is Gerald Lester Watson Jr., but he goes by Bubba.

The newest Masters champion is a proud Bulldog, a graduate of the University of Georgia. He owns the General Lee, the Confederate flag-emblazoned car from "The Dukes of Hazzard." And he loves God and his momma: He thanked the former and hugged the latter at the tournament's final playoff hole.

How much more Southern can you get?

"Bubba's name echoed as much through the pines on Sunday as the roars. He was embraced in this Southern town as if he drank, smoked, hunted and fished," wrote the Augusta Chronicle's Scott Michaux, before adding, "In truth, Bubba doesn't do any of those things."

That's the thing about the South. It's got all those stereotypes, but it confounds you at every turn.

Never mind that Dixie can be as polyglot as any other part of the United States, with rising Hispanic and south Asian populations, the world's busiest airport and a thriving movie and television business. Never mind that Lowcountry South Carolina has little in common with the Florida Panhandle or Tennessee foothills, or that there's a growing purplish tinge among what's usually seen as a collection of dyed-in-the-cotton red states.

A century and a half after the Civil War -- and more than a generation after the presidential election of Jimmy Carter was supposed to herald the awakening of a "New South" -- the lower right-hand portion of the U.S. of A. is often pigeonholed as a tobacco-spittin', Bible-thumpin', gun-totin' (and worse) backwater. So go ahead, fry up the buckwheat cakes, spoon out the grits and cue the mockery. It's nothing new.

Stereotypes "are very longstanding," says David Davis, a literature and Southern studies professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, observing that they predate the American Revolution.

Like most stereotypes, he points out, they're based on people from one group or class judging people from another group or class, then generalizing based on those judgments -- in this case, wealthier, more urbanized Northerners looking down upon poorer, more rural Southerners. Though African-Americans were a major subject of Southern stereotypes a century ago, in the last few decades "African-American caricature has become less acceptable and white Southern caricature has taken its place," Davis says.

Why do the stereotypes persist?

Because they're constantly in play, Davis says. "We have one [group] that is imagining the South as an alternative space within the United States -- less modernized, less educated, more racist. It's America's Jekyll to its own Hyde," he says. On the other side, he says, there are Southerners who take pride in everything they consider disparaged, from the Confederate flag to country music.

Davis, a native of Butler, Georgia (population 2,000), observes the word "Southern" has come to be associated with opposition to the American norm. He teaches Southern studies, so students often ask him, "What is Northern studies?"

" 'Northern studies' is American studies. 'Southern' is the opposition to that," he says.

Or, as the North Carolina author Clyde Edgerton put it, "Because I was born in the South, I'm a Southerner. If I had been born in the North, the West or the Central Plains, I would be just a human being."

The South and the movies

Sure, other regions of the country have their own labels -- New England is full of flinty Yankees, Southern California is sunny and vapid, the West has rugged, outdoorsy types -- but the South, above them all, remains another country.

It was another country, for one thing -- the breakaway Confederacy of the Civil War. Its past is still romanticized, even as it has become as suburban, chain-stored and wired as the rest of America.

The tension between rural and urban, past and present looms large in many works about the South, particularly the film "Deliverance," which came out 40 years ago this year.

Based on a 1970 novel by James Dickey -- himself a well-off Atlanta boy -- the story concerns four businessmen from the big city who head to north Georgia for a canoeing trip through land about to be swallowed up by a dam project. They get more than they bargain for, grappling with challenging rapids, set upon by suspicious locals and fighting for their very lives.

But though "Deliverance" explores a variety of themes, the lasting images of the movie remain its stereotypes: the inbred-looking Banjo Boy (Billy Redden) who plays "Dueling Banjos" with Ronny Cox's character, and the mountain men who rape Ned Beatty's character, demanding he "squeal like a pig."

In that respect, says University of Tulsa cultural studies professor Robert Jackson, the film is "powerful and pernicious."

"It's had a tenacious hold on people's imaginations, establishing the hillbilly as a kind of menacing, premodern, medieval kind of figure," he says.

Even at the time it was made, the film's portrayals weren't thought of highly by residents of Rabun County, Georgia, where the movie was shot.

With rare exceptions, "every character ... was portrayed as very limited," the wife of one local actor told Atlanta magazine in an oral history of the film. "And that didn't make us feel good."

That feeling hasn't changed in 40 years, says Sarah Gillespie, a Rabun County native whose family has deep roots in the community.

"There are still a lot of people here locally who have hard feelings about the stereotypes the movie represented," she says.

Even today, Hollywood tends toward clumsiness when showcasing the South, engaging in broad cliches and broad accents with such films as "Steel Magnolias" and "Sweet Home Alabama." Last year's hit, "The Help," included a number of prissy, upscale female characters, the kind of Southern women who say "Bless your heart" as a way of inserting the knife, and was criticized for its sanitized look at the civil rights movement.

"The movie would have us believe that the racism of the time was the stuff of bridge clubs," wrote the Boston Globe's Wesley Morris.

'History without all the baggage'

Such criticism really comes to the fore when the subject turns to "Gone With the Wind," the 1939 blockbuster that gave the Civil War a sentimental sheen, as critics such as Roger Ebert have pointed out.

And yet, that nostalgia is key to understanding the fascination with Southern stereotypes, says Elizabeth Cook, a singer/songwriter and DJ for SiriusXM's Outlaw Country channel.

"People are all so romantic and nostalgic about the culture. People everywhere think of 'Gone With the Wind,' " she says.

Popular culture has a way of oversimplifying everything, says Tulsa's Jackson. He observes that television's representations of the South -- Andy Griffith's Mayberry, "The Dukes of Hazzard," "The Beverly Hillbillies" -- seldom delve into the challenging issues underneath.

"Mainstream network television is basically designed for 12-year-old viewers, so it's designed to be toothless and fun," he says. "What that means is that there's an invocation of history without all the baggage."

That's the kind of thing that drives Patterson Hood crazy.

Hood, the leader of the Athens, Georgia-based band the Drive-By Truckers, has thought about Southern images deeply. A number of Truckers' albums, including "Southern Rock Opera," "Decoration Day" and "The Dirty South," have been devoted to "bucking the myths" of Southern stereotypes. A series of songs on "The Dirty South" took an alternative view of "Walking Tall" sheriff Buford T. Pusser -- a determined foe of the gamblers and moonshiners in his Tennessee county -- while the title cut of "Decoration Day" was about a longstanding family feud.

He blames the persistence of Southern stereotypes on the twin bogeymen of media and politics -- but admits that both reflect certain truths.

"I think the decisions my fellow Southerners make in the voting booth makes us look like dumb-asses. We vote like stupid rednecks, so it's easy to pigeonhole us there," he says.

A fan of Bill Maher, Hood finds himself with mixed feelings when the "Real Time" comedian takes a shot at the region: "I'm tired of the constant barrage of his Southern stereotype jokes, but he's covering politics, and when he sends [Alexandra Pelosi] to Mississippi to interview people, she doesn't have to travel very far to find the dumb-ass to talk about our Kenyan Muslim president, so of course he's going to air that."

Cook, the DJ, makes herself into the joke, as she did during an appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman." Her background could be easily mocked -- her father served time for moonshining, and she's one of 11 kids with a family of half-siblings -- but she understands the humor in the situation.

"[My family has] always been very open and honest about our sordid past and our sordid present," she says. And the judgment of others doesn't bother her: "I embrace who I am. Everybody experiences prejudices."

Cooking something new?

There are other signs that the stereotypes are being turned inside out and used in unusual ways.

Rabun County's Gillespie is among those spearheading the Chattooga River Festival this June. The event, which was created to help preserve the river where "Deliverance" was shot, is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the film with appearances by actor Ronny Cox and a variety of other musicians. She notes that the film was key to making Rabun County a tourist draw and helping the Chattooga snare a "Wild and Scenic" designation protecting it from development.

"The movie put the area on the map," she says.

Hood points out that Southern cooking has become nationally known -- not just the kind popularized by Paula Deen, but inventive versions created by such restaurants as Husk in Charleston, South Carolina, and 5 & 10 in Athens, Georgia. And, he adds, Florence, Alabama, fashion designer Billy Reid has made a national splash.

Then, of course, there's literature and music, of which the South has a rich history. Authors William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers, among many, dealt with the South's contradictions in thoughtful, universal ways; their tradition has been carried on by Ron Rash, Jesmyn Ward and Daniel Wallace.

And musicians such as the Alabama Shakes, OutKast and Dead Confederate have broadened the idea of Southern rock, funk and soul.

That's the thing about stereotypes. In the end, they're too glib, too shorthand-quick to summarize a region -- or an individual. That should be obvious from Bubba Watson himself.

Yes, he's from small-town Florida, and he's already been described as a good ol' boy. But he's also a man who doesn't drink, smoke, hunt or fish, as Michaux noted. He carries a pink driver in honor of his father, who died of lung cancer. He's married to a native Canadian; the two recently adopted a child. Not exactly ... stereotypical.

And don't expect to see cheese grits on next year's Masters menu.

According to Sports Illustrated, when asked what the new green jacket holder will serve at next year's champions' dinner -- the traditional honor for a new Masters victor -- Watson's wife, Angie, predicted In-N-Out burgers.

They won't find those in Augusta. In fact, the nearest location of the California-based chain is in Texas.

Copyright 2012 by CNN NewSource. A

On The Web:   http://www.local10.com/news/The-South-Not-all-Bubbas-and-banjos/-/1717324/10778686/-/item/2/-/u98o47/-/index.html


 

Let's create a Confederate holiday!

Economics drives politics, if consumers buy Southern, the South will rise!
by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Let's create a Confederate Holiday!

One of the great lessons of America is that how people spend their money shapes our society!  Where money goes, politically correct follows.

Please consider what I have written above. Take a moment. Think about it. Do you agree that if people spend money on something that it becomes accepted in America?  If you said yes, than please consider what I propose below!

Economics and money drive what goes on in our world. In many respects economics drives politics. There are between 50 - 80 million Americans with Southern blood that goes back to the days of the Confederate States of America! That is a huge potenital market. Southern music, food, art, history, toys, are popular items. Even with Yankees!  3 million people a year visit Gettysburg, generating 300 million dollars a year in toursim for that little town.  In this new virtual world of the internet regions of the nation dont have to become homogenized into some vanilla America. We can survive. But, we have to think in terms of economics. What makes money stays around.

April is Confederate History month in the South. So I propose that like other holidays in America, you consider purchasing a gift for someone during Confederate history month and maybe even a card. But, I propose that both the gift and the card be oriented towards our Southern history and heritage. Now this will start small, because I know many who read this just wont have the vision to see. But, Christmas started small, Valentines Day, etc. They all started small and now are major marketing periods each year.

Want to see Confederate flags sold in Walmart?  Then buy one!  Want to see Confederate cards in Hallmark, create a demand for them, go to Hallmark and ask if they have any!  Want to hear Southern heritage music on the radio, buy a Jed Marum CD and send it to your favorite radio station!

Now, I won't mislead. I do have a Commissary at the Confederate War College where you can buy Confederate items.  And sure, I would love for you to stop by the Commissary and place an order!  But, there are other places to make purchases, Dixie Outfitters would be a great place! But dont just purchase something.  Purchase a gift, wrap it in Confederate wrapping paper and give it to a child, or someone you really care about!

Lets talk to our kids. Let's ask the creative ones to consider developing Confederate wrapping paper, and Confederate holiday cards!  Lets begin to listen to men like Jed Marum, The Majors and others who create Southern music. Lets buy books produced by Pro Southern creators like Charles Hayes who authored a comic strip book about the war, but one with a Southern perspective!

Some of these products are available at The Confederate War College Commissary. So sure I would love for you to stop by and make a purchase of a gift. But spread the word. Let's start something that continues and grows. Let's start something that attracts the attention of people with money to invest. The South owns the majority of the battlefields, the majority of places connected to the great war. These could be economic engines for the region!  We need a Confederate Disneyland!  Remember Six Flags had a Southern area when it first opened!  If you go to Sic Flags ask for that area!  When they appear confused point them back to their own history as an amusement Park!

Prove that there is a market for Southern goods. Spend your money on your heart.  Buy Southern.

©2012 Mark Vogl

On The Web:   http://www.nolanchart.com/article9551-lets-create-a-confederate-holiday.html

 

So Where Did Our Troubles Begin? Part Two

April 10, 2012
by Al Benson Jr.

Since all these rejections of the Reformed faith, which was the foundational cornerstone of the nation, only continued to grow and never diminish, it stands to reason that the problems the apostates brought in because of their unbelief had to affect the country.

During the late 1700s,  membership in the Congregational churches was comprised of 60% women, and by the early 1800s that figure had risen to 70%. Where were the men, who, according to Scripture, should have leadership rolls among God’s elect?  Because of unbelief they had apparently decided they were capable of building the republic without God’s help or guidance and so they stayed away from worship services in droves. Consequently, many ministers, seeing that their congregations were comprised of mainly women, began to tailor their sermons to them. which, in the eyes of many. made the churches to appear effeminate.

By the early 1800s, especially in Massachusetts, the Unitarians had become influential enough  that they were able to launch the nation’s first public school system as we know that system today. You have by now all heard of Horace Mann, the “father of the common schools.”  The “history” books belabor his “monumental” achievements in behalf of establishing public schools. They don’t bother to mention, however, that Mann was a Unitarian whose efforts to establish public education were driven by his hatred for church schools. By the time Mann appeared on the scene, many Christian assemblies were so thoroughly penetrated by apostasy that they eagerly went along with public education instead of opposing it as they should have.  Robert Owen, the socialist, was also in favor of public schools. He saw them as a vehicle for changing society, and who can honestly doubt that they have more than lived up to his expectations? So, from the beginning, the socialists recognized that it wasn’t about education. It was about indoctrination.

Logical thinking would require us to say that public education in this country was the fruit of apostasy. After the War Between the States, one of the first things the North did during what has euphemistically been called “reconstruction” was to shove public education down the throats of the Southern states. They brought Yankee schoolteachers down here to make sure it was done right and their textbooks were geared to show why the North was virtuous and the South was guilty of all manner of crimes against humanity. Unitarians had gained influential positions in both the abolitionist and “women’s rights” movements in the early 1800s. So had the spiritualists.

By the time the War Between the States was thrust upon us, the North had been so thoroughly “unitarianized”  that it was hardly recognizable in regard to the Christian faith it had repudiated.

All this time, the South was moving more and more toward the orthodox Christian faith and, indeed, might have been the springboard for national revival if given enough time. That could not be permitted to happen–hence the War.

Apostasy–rejection of the truth of Scripture and rejection of the Person and work of Christ Jesus, is the bottom-line reason for our national problems, both today and 150 years ago.  Our political and economic problems are merely symptoms of that apostasy.  If we continue to fail to recognize that fact, we will NEVER make any meaningful changes for the good of the country–and our current public education system will continue to make sure that we fail to recognize that fact.. That is part of its reason for being.

If we continue to think that all our troubles in this country started with FDR, or even in 1913, as bad a year as that was, our thinking is the result of an apostate reaction to Christianity that permeated this country long before we were born.  If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to do the homework like I had to.  Don’t take my word for it. Find out for yourselves, and then act, with prayer, on what you find.

On The Web:   http://revisedhistory.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/so-where-did-our-troubles-begin-part-two/

 

From: northcarolinasouth <northcarolinasouth@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 9, 2012
Subject: [NCSouth] Help in the Legal Battle to Save NC's Confederate Monuments
To: NCSouth@yahoogroups.com

The Historical Preservation Action Committee (HPAC) has joined forces with the North Carolina Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans to protect North Carolina's Confederate monuments in a big way. But they need your help. Send donations for legal fees to HPAC at P.O. Box 684, Reidsville, NC 27323.

When the City of Reidsville, NC decided to remove its Confederate monument last year, with no public process, it told the United Daughters of the Confederacy to move the monument to private property.

HPAC and the SCV have proven that the monument was public property and was entitled to be put to a public vote. Specifically, HPAC and the SCV have proven that:

- The Interstate Commerce Commission ruled in 1910 that the monument was property of the City of Reidsville, which means that the City must get a conservation agreement before removing the monument to private property.

- The monument was located in the right-of-way of a State Highway, which means that it can only be moved with a written permit from NCDOT and a vote from the State Historical Commission.

HPAC and the SCV took their case to NCDOT and the State Historical Commission, who denied their petition without answering the legal arguments. Therefore, HPAC and the SCV have appealed their case to North Carolina Superior Court. See details below from the Reidsville (NC) Review.

If the Reidsville monument can be removed without public process, then all Confederate monuments statewide can be removed without public process. This appeal is for all Confederate monuments on public property in North Carolina. You can stand with HPAC and the SCV in support of North Carolina's Confederate monuments by sending donations for legal fees to HPAC at P.O. Box 684, Reidsville, NC 27323.
___________________________________________
http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2012/apr/03/hpac-scv-file-lawsuit-against-reidsville-ar-1815763/
HPAC, SCV FILE LAWSUIT AGAINST REIDSVILLE

 

Podcast: Fighting for the Reidsville, NC Confederate monument

April 8, 2012
By Michael

This afternoon it was a pleasure to speak with a leading Southern heritage activist in the Old North State about his efforts to have the toppled Confederate soldier statue restored to its former position of honour in the centre of Reidsville, North Carolina. Jamie Funkhouser has been holding demonstrations in support of the statue since last August, standing in place of the Southern soldier and often joined by friends and fellow heritage activists. The local government of the City of Reidsville has violated State law by removing the statue and wishes to place it out of sight away from the downtown area. Mr Funkhouser, who has received a great deal of media attention for his role in the heritage fight, speaks about the history of the struggle over the statue and legal action that is under way to force city politicians to do the right thing and restore the monument. Check out Save the Reidsville Confederate Monument page on Facebook.

Click here for the audio (duration: 13:26)

On The Web:   http://southernnationalist.com/blog/2012/04/08/podcast-fighting-for-the-reidsville-nc-confederate-monument/

 

A celebration of Confederate flags at the capitol

Apr 7, 2012

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) Out on state capitol grounds, the Sons of Confederate Veterans observed the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States.

Attendees brought examples of flags used by Arkansas units and of the Confederate army during the Civil War. Those attending say the celebration is a reminder of sacrifices made by their ancestors.

Organizers say the celebration combined three separate events, the Arkansas Confederate History and Heritage Month, the Confederate Memorial Day and Confederate Flag Day.

Copyright ©2012 Arkansas Television Company

On The Web:   http://www.todaysthv.com/news/article/206032/2/A-celebration-of-Confederate-flags-at-the-capitol

 

Saturday, April 07, 2012

Is politics killing the SCV? Part I

Are liberals and Democrat compatriots dividing the SCV, and obstructing the Charge?
By Mark Vogl

Boy do I know how to stir the pot! But, the question is a real one.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans has a reputation among its members for lack of zeal in defending and promoting Southern heritage. Why? Are there people in the SCV who obstruct activities that could have an impact in the Culture war? This is the first of a two part series on the political parties, and a look at how they could be responsible for an impotent group of heritage organizations. While it will focus on the SCV, the UDC has certainly been “grannified” lately. It is the UDC that has pulled down the Confederate Flag from the Confederate old soldiers home in Richmond. So they are as guilty of political correctness as the SCV.

Our first look will be the Democrats, the liberals!

The foundations of the Sons of Confederate Veterans are anathema, contrary to the principles of the modern Democratic Party. Let’s take a look at the core values of the Sons of Confederate Veterans as prescribed by the Charge;

“To you, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we submit the vindication of the cause for which we fought; to your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, the perpetuation of those principles he loved and which made him glorious and which you also cherish. Remember it is your duty to see that the true history of the South is presented to future generations."

Above, I have highlighted in red the present tense actions held within the Charge which are the essence of the purpose of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the actions which each compatriot is to embrace as his own. These highlighted portions are the aspects of the Charge which are contrary to liberal political ideology and the precepts of the Democratic Party. So if an individual is both a member of the SCV and the Democratic Party he must find himself at the point of contradiction. Let’s look at this more closely to reveal the paradox.

The length and complexity of this article prohibits an extended discussion of the verbs emulation and perpetuation. As you read this article keep in mind that these verbs are why the SCV exists, and what members are supposed to be doing. If you emulate values, you live them. If you perpetuate values, you bring them from the past to the present.

Vindication of the cause. In Webster’s Dictionary the word vindicate is defined as:

1. to clear from criticism, suspicion, blame, 2. to defend A cause against opposition, 3. To justify. Vindication of the cause is the mission the Sons of Confederate Veterans are given. Vindication is an active verb, it means to do something.

And this something is more than marching in parades, or going to meetings, or holding ceremonies in cemeteries. While these actions certainly honor the dead, none of those actions would clear from criticism, or defend, or justify. Vindicate is something done through confrontation. Vindicate is something done through the presentation, explanation and defense in the face of opposition. And that opposition was created through Reconstruction.

But what is the Cause? This question requires a lot of thought and contemplation. Many compatriots can’t exactly put their arms around what the Cause is, or was. Many have not taken the time to consider this vitally important question. And, there is no brief authoritative answer.

Some would argue that the Cause was simply the defense of the original meaning of the Constitution as written in Philadelphia. Others would argue that the Cause is best understood by knowing the difference between the Confederate Constitution and the US Constitution. When studied it becomes quickly apparent that the CS Constitution was much more conservative than the US.

Within the CS Constitution is:

a. a call for God’s protection and guidance

b. subordination of the central government to the states

c. elimination of Congressional earmarks

d. prohibition of bail outs

e. limits on Congressional power, vis a vis the President

f. inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the original Constitution

g. limits on the central Courts vis a vis the states.

h. Citizenship, in terms of voting and holding office were based on Southern birth.

Simply put, under the Confederate Constitution, the central government could NOT have grown into the present day tyrant of the US government.

The values which the SCV are charged to defend are conservative values. Central among these values is an invitation to God to participate in the governance of the nation. Unlike the US Constitution, and the present day United States, the Confederate States of America clearly embraced its Christianity. The human secularism of today which establishes a flexible morality within the US, would not be present in a nation where God was the determiner of right and wrong.

When one considers that the Bible Belt has been the conservative core of America through its existence, the shedding of the liberal northeast would merely allow a greater expression of this Southern conservatism.

The SCV has shied from its purpose. Its purpose is NOT to be a Southern gentlemen’s club. Its purpose is not to be a large re-enactor organization. The purpose of the SCV is to vindicate the Cause. And the Cause is quintessential conservatism. And so, to limit the SCV, to distract it from its intended purpose, some working within the SCV have constructed false limitations within its governing documents.  Aggressive activity on the part of the membership to vindicate the cause is punishable by expulsion. When the South is assailed in the Culture War, when southern state governments act contrary to their own history, it is not the SCV which steps forward to lead the fight. The constitutions prohibit “political activity” cry lawyers. But they misinterpret “political activity” prescribed by the Internal Revenue Service, IRS so that they can block appropriate activities by the SCV membership.

America is spiraling out of control, rushing towards socialism because the guardians of conservatism, the original intent of the Constitution, and those charged with the vindication of the Cause are hobbled by liberals infested within the organization. Membership within the SCV refuses to climb, despite a potential base of 40 million, because Southern patriots dedicated to the cause find no real commitment within the SCV. The grannies stay, those who want to vindicate the Cause learn they can do more outside the SCV.

To prevent an open discussion of the failures of the SCV, a kangaroo justice system which provides anonymity to accuser, judge and jury rail roads out those who would publicly address the failings of the SCV. The liberals have castrated what could be a conservative goliath in the Culture War, and they will do everything possible to use “the Chicago way” to silence or discredit those who see the conspiracy.

The SCV should be on the frontlines of the Culture War. Instead it is locked in constant internal disputes. The liberals have infested not just the SCV but institutions all across the South. At the Museum of the Confederacy a battle rages which illustrates this point. A VMI grad, SCV and MOS&B member, serving as the Director of the museum prohibited the flying of any Confederate flag at the grand opening of its newest extension! The participation of the Maryland Division Color Guard at this event demonstrates just how divided the SCV is.

The liberals are not the majority within the SCV, at least not from what I have observed in travelling to camps across the South. But many of the liberals are in the governing positions of the respective divisions. The liberals are effective operators who do not show their colors often. They work together, silently, discreetly to hobble the SCV.

©1995-2012 SHNV

On The Web:   http://shnv.blogspot.com/2012/04/is-politics-killing-scv-part-i.html

 

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Sons of Confederate Veterans seeks to protect Broad Street monument
By Bianca Cain Johnson
Staff Writer

A century and a half after the American Civil War, Augusta’s Sons of Confederate Veterans has another fight on their hands – trying to protect the 1878 memorial monument from skateboarders.

“We’re just trying to preserve it,” said Quartermaster Joe Winstead, who spent two days this week on a project at the steps of the monument in the 700 block of Broad Street.

When it first became an issue, the group pulled more than $1,200 from its dues to put up short, thick posts and a heavy black chain around the 76-foot-tall Georgia granite and Italian marble monument. Winstead said he hoped it would prevent further damage. Instead it appears the barrier provides an additional challenge for the skateboarders.

“They have no respect,” he said of the monument that was dedicated in 1878. “When they chip off the steps, there’s nothing we can do. It’s gone forever.”

Already the steps are blackened and scarred from the frequent contact with the boards. The posts and fence, installed less than a month ago by members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, will also have to pulled up and replaced at members’ expense.

“Everything we’ve done came out of pocket,” Winstead said. “The city didn’t spend a dime, but we didn’t ask them to.”

On several occasions, members have spotted skateboarders at the site but have been unable to catch them.

Richmond County code 3-8-17 prohibits use of skateboards and skates on any street, alley, sidewalk, park, median or parking area between the levee and Walton Way and between Fourth and 15th streets. Anyone found in violation will be charged with a misdemeanor, officials said.

The members of the local chapter of Sons of Con­federate Veterans are working on another out-of-pocket project at the steps of the monument, but they’re concerned the new project could also be damaged if the skateboard vandalism isn’t stopped.

The members are filling in holes in the sidewalk where trees once grew and planning to add granite pavers in the gaps. Families can then purchase recognition for engraving an ancestors name for $50.

© 2012 The Augusta Chronicle

On The Web:   http://m.chronicle.augusta.com/latest-news/2012-04-03/sons-confederate-veterans-seeks-protect-broad-street-monument?v=1333520608

 

Comments deserve a discussion, not hatred

The Daily Progress
April 04, 2012

Everybody has a right to an opinion.

Especially when that opinion involves a legitimate community issue.

Charlottesville Councilor Kristin Szakos has been subjected to vicious criticism since she asked, at a Virginia Festival of the Book discussion session with a Civil War historian, whether Charlottesville’s Confederate-related statues should be “torn down” or “balanced out.”

For the record, let us repeat: This newspaper opposes tearing down the monuments recognizing Confederate personages — one of which has the distinction of being regarded as one of the country’s finest equestrian statues.

But we also oppose, vehemently, the offensive, unwarranted treatment that has been handed out to Ms. Szakos and her family as a result of her comment.

At this week’s City Council meeting, she reported that one detractor called her home and said the following to one of her children: “Tell your mother that she’s a F’in whore and to get her F’in hands off our heritage.”

There is no excuse for this. Absolutely none.

This sort of personal attack, against an innocent child no less, suggests that the attacker can neither explain, defend nor justify his opinion and has nothing left to rely on except emotion in the form of hatred and anger.

Apart from the moral issue regarding personal attacks, there is a practical one: Those kinds of emotions, and that kind of behavior, are counterproductive. Instead of winning converts to the cause, they turn people away in disgust.

If such emotions and such behavior are perceived to represent the pro-monument position, then many fair-minded people will reject that position.

Ms. Szakos reported just such a reaction from someone who originally had gone online to comment in support of the monuments but who, when he saw the venom being spewed there, decided that perhaps they should be “torn down” from their current prominent sites and moved to a different location.

Should they?

That is one opinion.

Opinion deserves to be expressed, as does any debate that flows from it.

But again, let us make clear: It is reasoned debate that is needed, not mindless rants and verbal garbage.

How else but through reasoned debate can a civilized community deal with controversy?

The Founding Fathers believed in this principle. They built a new country on the belief that debate clears the path to the truth.

Thomas Cooper, one of Thomas Jefferson’s most esteemed colleagues, the man he appointed as one of the University of Virginia’s first professors, put it this way: “… [N]othing can bring the good to light, or expose the evil, but full and free discussion.”

Personal attacks are the antithesis of this. Personal attacks inhibit free discussion — if not kill it outright.

Personal attacks are wrong. They are wrong. They are wrong.

©2012 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC

On The Web:   http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2012/apr/04/comments-deserve-discussion-not-hatred-ar-1816105/

 

A Belle's Eye View

Confederate History Month has come under fire from those most in need of it

Wednesday, April 4, 2012
CHRISTINE BARR

In addition to being Women’s History Month, April is, for many Southern states, Confederate History Month.

On this, the sesquicentennial of the Late Unpleasantness, it is a commemoration which has come under fire from those most in need of it.

It confounds those who can only respond with “WE won the war — get over it” that all these years later that there remains a contingent of highly educated, highly motivated scholars, historians and everyday people who refuse to “get over” the trampling of the U.S. Constitution and the betrayal of the principles of the first American Revolution.

Try as they might, the enemies of the truth cannot stamp out the desire of the true sons and daughters of the Confederacy to make sure their ancestors’ sacrifices and motivation are not forgotten. Confederate history is important because it is American history; to try and sweep it under the rug is to ignore the constitutional issues which to this day underlie many of the political issues of today.

But there are those who are trying their absolute best to pretend that the story of the War Between the States can be told from one perspective, and one only. One of the main ways they are attempting to do this is by continuing their attacks on the flags of the Confederate States of America.

In Richmond, Va., the last capital of the CSA, is the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.. It was built on the grounds of the Robert E. Lee Camp 1, known popularly as the “Old Soldiers’ Home,” opened in 1884 and purchased and supported by the donations of Union and Confederate veterans.

When the last occupant died, the land was deeded to the state, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Virginia Historical Society were established on the land. There are only two remaining buildings from its past — Robinson House, the headquarters of the camp, and the Confederate War Memorial Chapel (also known as the Pelham Chapel).

In 1993 the chapel was leased to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who flew Confederate flags from what was, after all, a Confederate memorial. In 2010, when the lease was renewed ,the VMFA asked that the flags be removed.

Since that time, a dedicated group of citizens, lead by Susan Hathaway, have stood outside the Museum with Confederate flags. The good news is they have had many opportunities to educate interested passers-by as to what the VMFA had done in the name of political correctness.

The continuing efforts to erase the Confederacy and all traces of it in Virginia, and especially Richmond, continues under the auspices, ironically, of the Museum of the Confederacy. A new museum is opening in Appomattox, and while apparently Confederate flags may be displayed inside, only state flags will fly in front — 14 state flags in the order they left the Union, and the U.S.flag.

“Appomattox is a metaphor for the reunification of the country,” S. Waite Rawls III, president and CEO of the museum, said. “To put the Confederate flag into that display would be a historical untruth.”

I am a bit flummoxed by this statement. Wasn’t Robert E. Lee at Appomattox as the representative of the Confederate States of America? Who exactly was being reunified if not the CSA and the USA? As was pointed out by a banner flown over the museum at Appomattox, “Reunification by bayonet.” But what do I know — I’m only 47.

In reference to the VMFA flaggers and others opposed to the museum’s refusal to fly a CSA flag, Rawls stated, “They have a different approach to educating the public than we do. We have 122 years of experience in doing it. They don’t.”

I thought I looked good for 47, but man! He looks really good for 122. Or perhaps he is arguing that the institution has 122 years’ experience, in which case I would point out that the founders of the museum would no more approve of his stand than do the flaggers.

It is richly ironic that he is claiming to be a part of a heritage he is working hard to ignore. He has argued that his is the Museum OF the Confederacy, not FOR it. He is ignoring part of the museum’s own history — the man is at least consistent — it is descended from the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, which was decidedly pro-Confederate.

The founders of that august body are undoubtedly rolling in their graves. Rawl’s Confederate ancestors are surely hanging their haloed-heads in shame at their turn-coat descendent, whose attack on the CSA has resulted in the Sons of Confederate Veterans beginning the process of pulling his membership.

Yes, it is easy to make the Yankees the good guys and the Confederates the bad. Yankees can then sit in smug, arrogant self-satisfaction, lying to themselves that their ancestors were totally in the right, facts be d---ed.

But the reason Confederate History Month is so important is to remind citizens that to see that conflict in strictly black and white requires ignoring too many forgotten facts and too many complicated political truths.

Gen. Stephen D. Lee knew what we would be facing when he charged the SCV: “We submit the vindication of the cause for which we fought: to your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldier’s good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, and the perpetuation of those principles he loved and which made him glorious and which you also cherish.

“Remember, it is your duty to see that the true history of the South is presented to future generations.”

Copyright © 2012 The Paris Post-Intelligencer

On The Web:   http://www.parispi.net/articles/2012/04/04/opinion/columns/doc4f7c74502c1a9121008563.txt

 

Groups protest exclusion of Confederate flag at Museum

Wednesday, April 4, 2012
By STEPHANIE A.JAMES
Staff Writer

The opening of the Appomattox branch of the Museum of the Confederacy drew a crowd in the hundreds, but among them were protesters that had a gripe about the Confederate battle flag not being flown outside of the museum.

The protests were primarily peaceful, including an airplane that flew overhead prior to the ribbon-cutting for the opening of the museum. The plane carried a banner that with a Confederate flag that read “Reunification by bayonet SCV 1896.”
 

Prior to the opening, 14 state flags and the United States flag were raised at the “reunification promenade.”

After the raising of the flags, some of the protesters circled around the United States pole waving Confederate flags in protest.

Willie Wells, sergeant for the Mechanized Cavalry, said the group was protesting since Museum President and CEO Waite Rawls made the decision not to have the Confederate battle flag flown outside of the museum despite numerous requests from the Sons of the Confederate Veterans to do so.

“Both flags should be displayed. Both sides came together at the surrender,” said Wells, who described Appomattox as a sacred place.

He said he heard that the reason Rawls would not allow the flag to be flown was so the museum would not risk losing supporters.

Wells, as a member of the museum, toured the museum during a “soft opening” earlier last week. He said he saw controversial exhibits that raised concern as well as sparking questions about their relevance.

For instance, Wells said there was a display of transvestite Rue Paul wearing a dress bearing a Confederate flag. The display was part of a collection of exhibits to show how the Confederate flag is used in present day and its symbolism.

The display has since been removed.

When asked about the exhibit, Rawls said that some displays did not work.

There is a collection of over 20 Confederate flags inside of the museum.

Members of the Mechanized Cavalry, clad in biker attire, travel to different locations to promote their heritage.

The Mechanized Cavalry were not the only group with concerns about the Confederate battle flag not being displayed. Another protesting group was the Third National Flag of the Confederacy.

The Virginia Flaggers, a group that includes members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, voiced their concerns through e-mail correspondence to the museum, said Rawls.

A reunification promenade outside of the museum features 14 flags that seceded and then reunited after the Civil War.

“We made a decision to do a reunification promenade. Everything about Appomattox is the reunification of the country,” said Rawls also noting that in the pledge of allegiance the word indivisible is used. Prior to the Civil War, the word indivisible was not used to describe the country.

The issue of the museum not featuring a Confederate flag began brewing several weeks prior to the museum’s open. There were several media reports and information as to why the museum chose not to feature a Confederate flag.

Even word got out – inaccurately – that the Town of Appomattox had a say in the matter.

During a meeting last week, town council member Steve Conner wanted to set the record straight by stating that the town did not have anything to do with the museum’s flag choice.

Rawls contends that both suggestions were rumors.

© Copyright 2012, Times-Virginian, Appomattox, VA

On The Web:   http://www.wpcva.com/times-virginian/news/local/article_ccd3df60-7e59-11e1-9f38-0019bb2963f4.html

 

HPAC, SCV file lawsuit against Reidsville

By: Danielle Battaglia
GoDanRiver.com
April 03, 2012

Two organizations have filed lawsuits against the city of Reidsville and three state organizations in another attempt to return the Reidsville Confederate Monument to the roundabout at Scales and Morehead streets.

The Historic Preservation Action Committee (HPAC) and the North Carolina Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) had their attorney, Peter H. Ledford, file a lawsuit against the city of Reidsville, the N.C. Department of Transportation (NCDOT), the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources (NCDCR) and the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).
 

The lawsuit was filed in response to the actions each organization took in regards to the Reidsville Confederate Monument, which stood in the intersection of Scales Street and West Morehead Street for 101 years. The monument was shattered last May after a Greensboro man, Mark Anthony Vincent, drove his car into the monument. The statue on top broke into pieces but the base remained, for the most part, intact, though shifted from its original position.

Reidsville city officials received notice of the lawsuit March 26. Reidsville Mayor James K. Festerman and City Manager Michael Pearce both said they really couldn’t comment on the document, as they had just received it, but they had turned it over to city attorney William McLeod to look over. The city has 30 days to respond.

Many HPAC members do not live in the city, including HPAC spokesperson and Rockingham County resident Ira Tilley, who explained the thought process behind the lawsuit.

“Unfortunately, you know, the city took the monument down without going through the proper channels, which would have been to contact NCDCR and NCDOT,” Tilley said. “We’re having to bring the NCDCR and DOT into this because they ruled (in a declaratory ruling filed Dec. 7) we have no standing.”

The local chapter of the UDC has been vocal about the issue and has often stood with HPAC during its protests outside City Hall since the May 23 accident. Now the UDC, on a state level, is being sued.

“As far as the UDC is concerned, she is maintaining, she meaning Ms. (Aileen) Ezell (President of the state UDC) maintains for some reason she thinks, I know partly why, Mr. Pearce told her that they (the UDC) own the monument, but she believes in her heart for some reason that they own all the monuments in North Carolina and they don’t,” Tilley said. “It’s public property, which is why we’re having to include them.”

Ezell said Monday morning she has not been served with papers and has no knowledge of a lawsuit.

Tilley said he knows for a fact the state owns the monument. NCDOT denied owning it in its declaratory ruling saying, “Petitioners are incorrect – NCDOT has never acquired title or control over either the Property or the Monument.”

NCDOT said in the ruling the city owns the property and always has. However, the real issue isn’t who owns the land, but who owns the monument itself.

Both NCDCR and NCDOT said in their respective rulings HPAC had no right to bring forth a declaratory ruling because “they are not the persons aggrieved.”

However, HPAC provided a list of people claiming to have been economically impacted by the removal of the monument. Twelve of the 15 people listed were called regarding this claim, though only four, including Tilley, could be reached for comment.

Chris McMichael, owner of First Tee, which was listed as being economically impacted, said, “I don’t think it’s affected my business. Of course we’ve supported them by doing the t-shirts and the magnets, trying to help the committee and I don’t think it’s hurt our business as far as retail or manufacturing, but, you know, we’re just trying to do all we can to help that group move forward.”

Dean Craddock, owner of Craddock’s Studio of Photography, said, “It’s kind of hard to tell. This whole area has been, Reidsville has been, so economically depressed for a number of years, and an issue like this does not help Reidsville because it’s negative. It’s negative. We need positive things for Reidsville.”

Craddock said suing the city is not a negative thing, but a positive move to get the monument back up.

Both Craddock and McMichael have lived in Reidsville most of their lives and see the historical impact the monument has on the city. Obie Chambers of Obie Chambers and Associates Surveying said he sides with HPAC because of his interest in the historical aspect of the issue, but declined further comment.

Craddock said the monument was dedicated to all the veterans from Rockingham County who fought in the Civil War. Craddock said this has nothing to do with race, and racism came into the argument because the Civil War involved slaves. “A lot of them were black slaves,” said Craddock, “but a lot fought and died for the Confederate army.” Craddock said the issue is removing a piece of history, and placing the monument in Greenview Cemetery, which, he said, is like burying history.

Neither Craddock nor McMichael knew much about the lawsuit, but both said they support HPAC and the decisions they are making in order to rebuild the monument in the Scales Street intersection.

Tilley said, “We’re doing this regretfully, we’re not happy about doing this. We know we have a lot to do to try to get this resolved. That’s all we basically want. We want what’s done right.”

Tilley said he wants the monument placed back in the intersection and then, if people don’t like it, they can come before the city council and complain, but at least this way, it’s done through the proper channels. Tilley said if it is returned to the intersection, but later taken down, then he would be sorry to see it go, but he would accept it.

The Will of the People, a political watchdog group based in Rockingham County, has also gotten involved in the movement, according to Tilley. He said in a meeting held last week, Thomas S. Harrington, chair of the group, asked for a motion to adopt a resolution to support HPAC. Tilley said the motion passed unanimously, “with applause.”

The monument isn’t the only historical property in Reidsville currently at risk. Chinqua Penn, a mansion built in the 1920s by the Penn family, which unlike the monument brings economic contributions to the community through tours and wedding packages, is up for auction, including the home and its artifacts. However, HPAC is currently not fighting for the mansion to be saved despite being an advocate for historic preservation. Tilley said he’s only one person and he had thought about making phone calls but hasn’t made them thus far.

Tilley also said the organization was formed after the monument was moved and thus, it’s fighting for the monument right now.

Asked what he thinks will come from the lawsuit, Tilley replied, “I’m an optimistic kind of person, and I’m expecting they’ll agree to do the right thing and put it back. From there it’s up to the people.”

Tilley said HPAC hopes the lawsuit doesn’t have to go to trial, but the ball is in the city’s court right now.

NCDCR declined further comment on the lawsuit and, as of early last week, NCDOT officials hadn’t received papers regarding the lawsuit and didn’t return phone calls Monday requesting further comment.

Meanwhile, Reidsville hasn’t seen the last of the monument. According to a press release issued by the UDC in December, it is to be replaced and placed in the Greenview Cemetery near the graves of Confederate soldiers.

©2012 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC

On The Web:   http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2012/apr/03/hpac-scv-file-lawsuit-against-reidsville-ar-1815763/

 

April 3, 2012

A Shiloh Confederate ... you may not know
Gregg Clemmer
DC Civil War Heritage Examiner

The 150th anniversary of America’s bloodiest battle—up to that time—is being commemorated at Shiloh National Military Park all this week. In addition to two huge re-enactments outside the park, the National Park Service is hosting not only ranger-led battlefield hikes, interpretative programs, and car caravan tours, but the film premier of Shiloh-Fiery Trial and a free concert at the Shiloh Visitor Center by acclaimed Civil War composer and musician Bobby Horton on the evening of April 6.

Yet perhaps the commemoration’s most poignant moment will be the Grand Illumination at dusk on April 7, when 23,746 luminaries are placed throughout the park to remind all visitors of the devastating human loss suffered by America, North and South.

Many students of the war know Shiloh is where the South lost one of its most highly regarded generals, Albert Sidney Johnston. And where composer Will S. Hays, a correspondent with the Louisville Democrat, was inspired to compose “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh,” which turned Johnny Clem into a household name and spurred Samuel J. Muscroft to write a play under the same name in 1870, which contemporary accounts say was second in popularity only to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Yet one of the truly forgotten participants, indeed a Confederate who became a casualty himself, authored the following passage, vividly describing the shock of his going into battle for the first time:

I tried hard to see some living thing to shoot at, but it appeared absurd to be blazing away at shadows. But, still advancing, firing as we moved, I, at last, saw a row of little globes of pearly smoke streaked with crimson, breaking-out, with sportive quickness, from a long line of bluey figures in front; and, simultaneously, there broke upon our ears an appalling crash of sound, the series of fusillades following one another with startling suddenness, which suggested to my somewhat moidered sense a mountain upheaved, with huge rocks tumbling and thundering down a slope, and the echoes rumbling and receding through space. Again and again, these loud and quick explosions were repeated, seemingly with increased violence, until they rose to the highest pitch of fury, and in unbroken continuity. All the world seemed involved in one tremendous ruin!

This private in the “Dixie Grays,” Company E, 6th Arkansas Regiment, would be captured the next day. Fearful of the prisoner of war camps, he signed on as a galvanized Yankee when he got to Harper’s Ferry in June, his tour in infantry blue lasting just 18 days when the Union army discharged him after he came down with a severe case of dysentery. Subsequent service on several merchant ships ultimately led to his enlistment in the United States Navy where he was assigned to the USS Minnesota as a record keeper. And when the war ended, he probably was the only individual who could claim to have served in the Confederate Army, Union Army, and Union Navy.

Yet the world would not know of Private Henry Morton Stanley from the bloody fields of western Tennessee’s Pittsburg Landing… but instead from a quest he made into the depths of the African “dark continent” six years after Appomattox. His expedition which required some 200 porters, battled tsetse flies, malaria, and sleeping sickness through 700 miles of tropical jungle over six months before arriving in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. Then, as he described events that tenth day November, 1871,

All around me was the immense crowd, hushed and expectant, and wondering how the scene would develop itself. Under all these circumstances I could do not more than exercise some restraint and reserve, so I walked up to him, and, doffing my helmet, bowed and said in an inquiring tone,---

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

© 2006-2012 Clarity Digital Group LLC

On The Web:   http://www.examiner.com/civil-war-heritage-in-washington-dc/a-shiloh-confederate-you-may-not-know?CID=examiner_alerts_article

 

Tue, Apr. 3, 2012

Civil War deaths much higher, analysis concludes
By Peter Mucha

America's most devastating war was far deadlier than textbooks say, according to a historian whose conclusions are finding support among experts.

The true death toll was probably about 750,000 - 20 percent higher than the traditionally quoted figure of 620,000 - and might have been as high as 850,000, according to J. David Hacker of New York's Binghamton University.

Even the old figure exceeded the combinted U.S. death toll of all conflicts from the American Revolution through the Korean War.

Hacker's conclusions, published in the December issue of the journal Civil War History, are "already gaining acceptance from scholars," the New York Times reported today.

The journal called the article "among the most consequential pieces" it has ever published, and Columbia historian Eric Foner told the Times the study "further elevates the significance of the Civil War" and "helps you understand, particularly in the South with a much smaller population, what a devastating experience this was."

"I have always been convinced that the consensus figure of 620,000 is too low, and especially that the figure of 260,000 Confederate dead is definitely too low," said Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson, according to a news release from the university.

The old estimate assumed similar death rates from disease for Union and Confederate soldiers, even though the North probably had better medical care.

Hacker arrived at his conclusions after studying improved census data released mostly in the last decade, the news release said.

After looking at reported male and female survival rates from 1850 to 1860, and from 1870 to 1880, he developed a baseline for typical death rates.

Then, looking at the data from 1870 - the Census after the war - he realized a lot more men were missing than the old death estimate could explain.

His new estimate suggested at least 650,000 died, and perhaps as many as 850,000.

"Roughly two out of three men who died in the war died from disease" - everything from diarrhea and measles to typhoid and malaria, Hacker said. "The war took men from all over the country and brought them all together into camps that became very filthy very quickly."

The range is wide because of several uncertainties, Hacker has admitted. After such a war, the next Census was understandably unreliable - a problem he tried to circumvent by comparing underreporting for both genders.

Also, there was no way to tease out the death toll for civilians, or pin down fatalities for each side, especially since men from border states fought on both sides.

The higher death toll also means tens of thousands more widows and orphans, Hacker pointed out to the Times.

On The Web:   http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20120403_Civil_War_deaths_much_higher__analysis_concludes.html

 

Suggestion to consider removing Va. Confederate statues brings firestorm on council member

By: Media General News Service | Winston-Salem Journal
April 03, 2012

A Charlottesville, Va., city council member decried what she saw as a "firestorm of vitriol and hatred" that came her way after she publicly floated the idea of tearing down Civil War statues.

In an emotional speech at Monday's council meeting, Kristin Szakos said she expected her comments at a Virginia Festival of the Book event last month to "ruffle some feathers" and start conversations, but she didn't expect the hatred directed toward her in online comments, emails and phone calls to her house.

"Tell your mother that she's (an expletive) and to get her (expletive) hands off our heritage," Szakos recounted a caller saying to her daughter.

Szakos stood by the need to have the conversation.

"I'd like to know what you think about it, but please do me a favor, if you want to call me names or be hateful, don't do it through my kids," Szakos said.

After a March 22 speech by historian Edward Ayers, Szakos asked about Confederate statues and whether the city should talk about tearing them down or balancing them out.

"By the gasps around me, you'd have thought I'd asked if it was OK to torture puppies," Szakos said Monday.

Szakos said she was told she had stirred up disharmony between races, warned that violence would ensue if she pursued taking statues down and that she didn't understand Southern heritage.

Not all comments were negative or hateful, Szakos said, recalling one person who had originally gone to an online comment section to suggest the statues were purely historical and have no other meaning.

"But after reading the bigotry and some of the other comments, I realized the statues may still represent something hateful to a small but vocal subset of our community," Szakos said, quoting the comment. "If it turns out this is true, and these are not just Internet trolls, I would be amenable to moving the statues to a new, specific historical and educational setting. And replacing them in our municipal parks with something that represents the community we live in today."

Szakos said she doesn't believe that the worst comments came from city residents, but insisted that the "hate-filled bigotry" she experienced reminded her of her childhood in Mississippi, when her parents suffered abuse for standing up for civil rights and a neighbor's house was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan.

"The South does have a proud heritage," Szakos said. "The heritage of those like my parents and others who fought for equal rights in the 1960s and still do today; the heritage of countless enslaved parents who taught their children to believe in themselves in a society that considered them property; the heritage of people who farmed and loved this land before the Europeans came ... I'm proud of our Southern heritage. So proud that it saddened me to see it reduced to two Confederate generals and the myth of the superiority of a proud, noble, slave-holding South, in which only a few held power."

©2012 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC

On The Web:   http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2012/apr/03/suggestion-to-consider-removing-va-confederate-sta-ar-2121523/

 

New Museum of the Confederacy Protested for Not Flying the Confederate Flag

April 2, 2012

The Museum of the Confederacy opened its new location in Appomattox, Virginia on Saturday, with a re-enactment of the famous handshake at Appomattox Court House 147 years ago between Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Union General Ulysses S. Grant. But there was quite a bit of hand-wringing and fist-shaking going on at the opening ceremony too, as Southern heritage groups protested the Richmond-based museum’s decision not to fly the Confederate flag outside its new outpost.

The new museum features a display of 14 state flags and the American flag outside its building, but much to the chagrin of Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Virginia Flaggers, no Confederate flag. To protest the decision, the two groups co-sponsored a small plane to fly over the opening ceremony with a Confederate battle flag, along with a banner inscribed with the words: “Reunification by bayonet SCV 1896.”

That slogan, a reference to the reunification symbolized by the handshake between Lee and Grant that took place a century-and-a-half ago, is the curatorial theme of the new museum. “Appomattox is a metaphor for the reunification of the country,” Museum of the Confederacy director Waite Rawls told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “To put the Confederate flag into that display would be a historical untruth.”

That spirit of reconciliation didn’t seem to sway the protesters. Members of the SCV Mechanized Cavalry walked the grounds of the new museum during its opening with Confederate flags to draw attention to their absence from the official outdoor display.

Meanwhile members of the Virginia Flaggers — whose offer to pay for a Confederate flag to be added to the museum was declined — were stationed near the museum’s driveway with a sign that read “Cultural bigots destroying southern heritage.” Susan Hathaway, a spokesperson for the group, told ABC 13: “It’s pretty hard to support a museum that seems to us to be more worried about political correctness than honoring the veterans.”

Predictably, comments on stories reporting about the protest range from measured and reasonable — “I call for all Southern Men to boycott this sorry scalawag run museum” — to calmly terrifying:

As long as people like Rawls can walk freely without having to worry about his security, nothing will change. He’s basically giving southerners a middle finger and daring you to do anything about it.

— Benjamin Sutton

Copyright © 2012, Louise Blouin Media

On The Web:   http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2012/04/02/new-museum-of-the-confederacy-protested-for-not-flying-the-confederate-flag/

 

Some Results of Unbelief

April 5, 2012
by Al Benson Jr.

The Holy Scriptures warn in many places against God’s elect having anything to do with fortune tellers, astrologers, and those who seek to communicate with the dead. Leviticus 19:31, 20:6, and Deuteronomy 18:11 record some of these warnings. Those who profess a belief in the Holy Scriptures and in the Christian faith are exhorted to avoid these activities as they would the plague.  Deuteronomy 18:12 says: “For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord:…”  The truth presented in Scripture is that all who seek to deal in these forbidden areas, those who seek to communicate with the dead, are, in reality, influenced by what they do come into contact with.  And what they come into contact with is not really deceased friends or relatives, it’s not dear old Uncle Harry from Hoboken, but is, in reality, something infinitely more demonic.

We hear much today about satanic activity and increased occult incidents, as though this were something that had suddenly sprung up in the last couple decades.  In truth, activities in these realms has been going on for thousands of years, else the Lord would not have issued the prohibitions He did in the Old Testament Scriptures. Does anyone remember King Saul and the Witch of Endor?

Even in this country such activities are not new.  Many well-known personalities in our own history have been caught up in these forbidden practices.  One of the most well-known during the 19th century was author Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of that infamous propaganda piece Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet, along with her prominent brother, Henry Ward Beecher, were two of the children of Rev. Lyman Beecher, a mostly orthodox Calvinist preacher. He struggled with the concept of “free moral agency” and free will, a debate which still continues today, with many sincere people on both sides of the question. Although orthodox in most areas, Rev. Beecher’s struggle in this area was a costly problem for his family. In time just about all of his children departed from his mostly Reformed faith,. some to slide into outright apostasy. Henry Ward Beecher, for all his reputation as a preacher and orator of national importance, tossed aside sound biblical doctrines throughout his life as if he were discarding old, used overcoats. Finally, near the end of his days, he was, for all practical purposes, a Unitarian in spirit if not in name.

And then came Harriet Beecher Stowe’s departures into spiritualism. This initially started, according to Milton Rugoff, in his book The Beechers, in 1843, when Harriet visited her brother Henry and his wife. Henry started “mesmerizing” (hypnotizing) Harriet, an experience she described on page 267 of Rugoff’s book. According to Rugoff, Harriet was convinced that she ‘had been brought to the verge of the spirit land.’”  This particular session so frightened Henry Beecher’s wife that she would not even stay in the same room where it occurred.  Harriet later consorted with at least two other hypnotists and became intrigued with this concept as a way of communication with the spirit world–something she should have had nothing to do with according to biblical prohibitions.  She, like brother Henry, had departed from her father’s faith and the further away she got, the more bizarre her activities became.

By 1851 she was writing installments of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.. That propaganda piece (and that’s all it was) was so well touted that, within a few years,  Abraham Lincoln, when meeting Harriet personally, referred to her as “the little lady who started the big war.” Maybe he thought that was as good a way as any to get him off the hook. Even though Harriet’s work was propaganda, it did rouse strong feelings on both sides.

At this point, I have a question, which I don’t think anyone else has asked up until now.. My question is–if Harriet persisted in her experiments into the “spirit” world (and we know she was heavily into this in later years), then to just what extent did this kind of activity influence what she wrote in Uncle Tom’s Cabin? I believe it is worth raising the question as to what influences may have been present when Harriet wrote. Where did some of her ideas as expressed in the book, come from? Were they really hers? Or was there another source?  Harriet did write other books, but this was easily the most influential nationally.

Harriet’s son, Henry, (probably named for her brother) drowned in the Connecticut River on July 9, 1857. This threw Harriet into a depression that lasted for months. She was concerned about her son’s eternal destination, as she was unsure of his relationship with God when he died. To ease her feelings, Harriet resorted to spiritualism in an attempt to contact her dead son. According to Rugoff, other family members were into this sort of thing. Even he husband, Calvin Stowe, also had “visions” and said he also often saw his dead first wife. You have to wonder, if Harriet and her family had not abandoned sound biblical teaching they probably would not have gotten involved in all this to begin with. In an article written for a newspaper after her son’s death, Harriet sought to connect spiritualism with biblical miracles–another great error on her part.

For all his problems with election vs. free will, old Lyman Beecher would never have countenanced his children’s slide into apostasy. Yet his own theological struggles may well have helped to create the problem.

You may look at all this and say “interesting bit of history, but, so what?” Look at this country’s history from a Christian perspective.  Ask yourself, what has apostasy had to do with the decline of America in the last 150 or more years. The biblical answer is “much in every way.”

People such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher had a tremendous influence on the direction this country took during the middle-to-late 1800s. If these people, and many others we could name, were indeed traveling the road of apostasy, whether they realized it or not, then what kind of influence did they exert on the country as a whole?

Years ago, Rev. Ennio Cugini of the Clayville Church in Foster, Rhode Island, told me that all of America’s problems could, in one form or another, be traced back to the root cause of apostasy (a falling away from biblical faith and truth). At that time I did not fully grasp all that his statement implied.I must say that, at this point in time, I have to agree with him.  If our country was begun (from 1620 or shortly before in Virginia), with a Christian foundation. heritage, and history, and people have willingly departed from that,  can we honestly expect anything but tribulations and problems?  God said “This is the way, walk ye in it.” We have not done so. Do we expect a Sovereign God to bless disobedience?  If we do, then we are even dumber than the Communists give us credit for being.

Were this country to return to its biblical, Reformation roots in repentance, seeking God’s forgiveness and direction, we might have a chance. Nothing less will suffice. In the Bible we have the truth about our lost condition, so let us begin to give heed to that truth, that whatever actions we take may be undertaken with the undergirding  power and authority of God’s Word.

On The Web:   http://revisedhistory.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/some-results-of-unbelief/

 

CIVIL WAR HAS BEGUN: AMERICA IS FATALLY DECEIVED

By Greg Evensen
April 1, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

The war of northern aggression began forming in the 1840’s as the government even then, moved further and further away from a constitutional republic. Vitriolic debate about growing, indifferent central taxation coursed through the halls of Congress in the 1850’s. Dire threats were taking shape by 1858, and there was no turning back by 1860. For those who understand our Republic and the efforts to sustain freedom, in spite of all out war waged upon it then and since the end of the last internal struggle, the federal economic/banking/political/internationalist/police state has had but one goal. That is, the internal destruction of the sovereign states and the imposition of a socialist government tyranny under the ongoing protection of the federal court system and the threat of military intervention to achieve the final dark victory against the American people.

Mirroring the run up time frame to our first “civil war” (regardless of your position) the past 100 years at a minimum, have witnessed the attainment of expansionist socialist government benchmarks in every area of public life. As a result, we are now hovering at the doorstep of open warfare with government and virtually all government agencies.

I am convinced that “evolution” does exist, only not in the theory that you would expect. The fact is that government in general has evolved from a modest and necessary central coordinating point between the outside world and the state governments into a world crushing behemoth that knows no bounds, nor restraint, except in its devouring of more rights, freedoms, money, resources and common sense with every move it makes. Being the ravenous beast it has become, there is no apparent way to slow or stop it, short of its destruction. Those who have raised and fed the beast simply shove more “food” its way with an outcome predictable and fatal to those living with it.

Home and church schooling has evolved into values killing public education. Rational, theoretical universities have become radical beds of dark indoctrination that have mutated into world governance training centers led by amoral communist adherents producing evil minions like Bill Ayers, Eric Holder, and Barack Obama. Family physicians have evolved into factory pharmacy shills dancing on puppet strings to the insurance companies. Community banks have evolved into enforcers for the Federal Reserve’s nation killing currency manipulation. Churches are “tax-exempt” wastelands to pastoral Biblical liars and denominational slick programming, preaching everything socially unimportant yet void of truth about the only Savior of mankind, Jesus Christ.

Is there a way to truly measure how far we have come in America towards complete and utter national ruin? Perhaps this quote will give you some measure of the void that stands between ALL of us and those who “govern” us at this moment.

“I will not allow my oppressors to dictate to me the means of my resistance.” (Credit to follow shortly) A prisoner of war, perhaps? A former French defender from Nazi occupied Europe? A Chinese dissident?

A Russian peasant from Stalin’s Soviet dream state? Before I give you the source, could you imagine yourself in a national catastrophe so great that you were forced to adopt this position so that the armed legions swarming through the country would have no doubt recognizing your iron clad resolve? Have you embraced this level of ABSOLUTE resistance to what is now unfolding in the United States of America? We will either choose this day, life and the struggle that we must now endure for our failure to safeguard freedom in our homes, churches, schools and government, or our only choice will be to count the moments before we attain our eternal life in either Heaven or Hell. The ultimate final breakdown of the two options left to us. Life----or death.

As you leave our historical Republic in the pages of history, let’s conduct an exit interview and see where you stand before becoming a death state citizen.

PART ONE:
Do you excuse every human indignity government agencies create?

Do you laugh at and imitate immoral conduct where you see it?

Do you agree with comedians who demean Christian women or Christian ideals?

Do you laugh at serious Christian positions made to look bad by the subversive American Civil Liberties Union or Homeland Security partner the communist leaning Southern Poverty Law Center?

Do you accept Muslim extremism in schools or on city streets because “it is only fair” and the “Christian” thing to do, while supporting atheist haters that demand an end to all things edifying Jesus?

Does the evil now observable in our nation through the FBI surveillance programs, FDA tyranny in poisoned food production, killer vaccinations, USDA SWAT teams invading natural product farms and overseeing GMO fields, police developing and using crowd dispersing microwave weapons, sonic disruptors, and compliance light weapons, chemical trails in our skies, staffing advertisements for internment camps, and abortion as a procedure so comfortable we consider it a health benefit, alarm you at all?

Did you ever reach a point where you could clearly see that the people in America who warned you of this insidious slide in to an ongoing climate of deceit, distraction, disinterest in anything that did not entertain you, and destructive to all moral and civic actions, was happening to you?

Did you decide that self-deception was favorable to knowing the truth?

PART TWO:
Death has become the symbol of America and our national flag has become the “Jolly Roger” flag of pirate days, the skull and crossbones. We may not manufacture anything anymore, but we can wage warfare like real professionals. Death is our trademark if you provide abortion, death comes from our food, death comes from our skies, death is found in perverted sexual activities, death is growing in our fields, death is crawling the unclean floors of our hospitals, death is the sweetener in soft drinks, death in smoking, death in dietary obesity, death to border security, death is found in illicit drugs, death by drones, death by euthanasia, death by Tasar, death by cops if you move wrong, death by government edict, and of course it all results in the death of freedom, common sense, morality, responsibility, accountability, liberty, a noble personal destiny, and death ultimately to your soul.

All of the above are examples of governmental, regulatory, military action, police enforcement, corporate policy, and regulatory sanctioned “lawful” death. ----When law becomes evil and tyrannical, then revolution becomes our duty.

The man who is attributed with the quote I gave is a person I neither hold in any regard nor respect. His life reflected huge amounts of hypocrisy, deceit and subversive links. However, the quote reflects an enduring reality regardless of the point of originality. Have we come full circle……perhaps?

---------Martin Luther King is the reputed author.

King was regarded as a “leader” in a cultural struggle that took on the status quo within the “government.” It resonated because people felt oppression and knew instinctively that it was wrong. What happened?

Why was it wrong then, yet we tolerate that oppression today not as a race of people, but as an entire nation?

It is in part because we had no entitlement culture in America in 1957? People were not receiving subsidies for behavior. They knew that government actions were wrong and had to change. As production, medicine and government were all reflective of basic expansion that refined life without defining it even then, we were on a dangerous slope. “Innocent growth” in all venues of American life opened up new possibilities for the exact kinds of change that Barack Obama and Congress sought to use to rule, control and buy the population masses and city cultures without limitation. The more that we desired the more we received as long as Washington was granted the “right” to regulate us into “get the government goodies” chains right up to the slamming of the steel door of our national prison.

You have elected the “Prince of Death” in the White House and he is killing off our liberties. You are “served” by the Congress of Extermination. It is the end of self-government as we have known it. Democrat, Republican, Independent, it makes no difference. This game has a pre-planned deadly end that will be played to the very last---UNLESS---the current “Pre-Civil War” debate is now engaged in earnest with no nice guy attitude for those engaged in its rhetoric. The time for decisive action is immediate. The need for men and women of valor to conduct this side of the struggle is great. A handful of protestors will only be arrested, charged and put away. Huge numbers in the streets as in 1960, with the “We Shall Overcome” efforts, are as critical now as they were then, only ALL Americans are in this struggle and have a stake in its outcome. Until you see it as that, then no amount of justification or encouragement will make any difference at all.

We either win this one together and we do it now before any more Defense Authorization Act measures are enacted, or Presidential Executive Orders are renewed claiming autocratic authority over everything is signed making all resistance criminal or we lose. Even discussing it will be a crime.

Then, no matter what you think, the only option will be open warfare and much worse than in 1861. Time is almost gone. Forcing an American renewal will not happen in the corrupted courts nor in a shameless complicit congress. It must now happen in the gymnasiums, parks, ball fields and can I hope---the church sanctuaries of America with a revised “Black Robed Regiment?”

Liz and I and the staff here continue to train families, individuals, moms, granddads, teens and all those who want to be self-sufficient and capable of mastering essential skill we teach for whatever is down the road. You may have the resource materials available at the website and schedule a slot for our training as listed there as well. Slots are filling now and we are limited to 30 for each class. This is our best “camp” yet in terms of tactics, shooting skills, woodland foraging, home and perimeter defense, compass/starlight navigation, low profile campfires, etc. Go to www.theheartlandusa.com.

We will be on the road as well, but most of those are restricted to the sponsoring groups only.

On Monday, April 15th at 6:00pm I will begin hosting a new radio show again on the Revelation Radio Network. We will comment, train and discuss the important issues as long as we can stay on the air. You are invited to be a part of it.

Jesus said, “Upon this House I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18. He meant upon His own life. He has achieved that and the church, the body of true believers, lives not through cathedrals or seminaries but in the undiluted scriptural word of God found ONLY in the Holy Bible. Spend some time there, reflect upon all of these truths, contemplate our nation’s plight and pray for guidance as we face these days together. May God richly bless and protect your household.

© 2012 Greg Evensen

On The Web:   http://www.newswithviews.com/Evensen/greg172.htm

 

Is there a Southern movement? Part II.

Things are heating up in the South, and much more could be written about the South.
by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Monday, April 2, 2012

As disputes across Virginia between authorities and Southern patriots unfold, I decided to do a follow up article on the Southern movement.

In Part II we will focus more on people who are active in fighting the political correctness cancer which has infested much of the South’s institutions and heritage organizations.  And, we will we talk with Dr. Hill, President of the League of the South.  

The Flaggers in Richmond

Has the South found its own version of Sarah Palin?  I could not help but think that as I talked with Susan Hathaway in a late night telephone interview for this article.

Mrs. Hathaway started her protest of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 29 weeks ago.  Her initial flagging efforts were to get the Museum to reverse its policy regarding the removal of the Confederate Colors at the Confederate chapel.  In the beginning there was just one lone flagger, herself.  She said that within three weeks three people were gathering for the protest.  And now, twenty nine weeks later she normally has 15 Flaggers to stand with her one day a week from 3 Pm to dusk.  “The days are getting longer as dusk moves later and later,” she kidded as she told me about her activities that day.

These Flaggers, mothers, grandfathers, children sometimes, are sure dangerous folks.  The Museum of the Confederacy lays on extra security when they know the flaggers will be around. So, Susan and the other leaders switch the days, just to give the museum a little heartburn.  “The longer this goes on, the more the museum tries to intimidate us with extra security and tougher restrictions on where we can walk.” said Susan.   

The Flaggers are combining their protests for the flying of a flag at the Chapel, and protesting the Museum of the Confederacy which is only a short distance away.

When asked about the media coverage, Susan said that generally the news coverage has been pretty fair, “50 – 50,” especially the television coverage.  “You have to understand, we are in the museum district of Richmond, which is very liberal.  There are Obama stickers everywhere.  But, we do meet people who are supportive of our efforts, and the media has been better than I thought it would be.”

When a news story about the Museum ran without any coverage of the Flaggers, Susan knew to pick up the phone and give the reporter a call.  That call resulted in a second article, one she believes was favorable to the flaggers’ goal.

Susan gives a lot credit to Billy Bearden of Georgia, and Grayson Jennings of Richmond. “Those two guys have been real advisers to our efforts.  They know how to do things like we are attempting.”  Billy Bearden had been active in the fights about the Georgia state flag almost twenty years ago.

The Flaggers have not just been protestors in the streets.  Mrs. Hathaway reports that the Flaggers have been active at committee meetings at the state legislature.  She believes her groups activities helped kill three different bills while they were still in Committee.  One bill was going to change President’s Day in Virginia to Lincoln’s Day.  Another bill was going to create a Slavery commission, which translates to establishing a platform to discuss reparations.

Though these are activities the Sons of Confederate Veterans (S.C.V.) and United Daughters of the Confederacy should be active in, it seems this ad hoc group of Southern patriots is doing more, with much less, to meet General Lee’s Charge.

But, Susan speaks very highly of Michael Givens, Commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  “I have been very impressed with Michael,” Susan said.  “He is trying to coordinate activities between the large heritage groups.” Susan was full of kind compliments for Commander Givens.          

Givens had issued a letter to the S.C.V. general membership after the national board of director issued a resolution calling for a boycott of the Appomattox Grand Opening March 31st.

While Susan was not willing to divulge future planning for operations, she did say they were working on a couple things.

“I would love to see these kinds of activity spread spontaneously across the South,” Susan wished quietly as we ended our call.  Her prayers are not hers alone, as patriots all across the South have been disappointed with the lack of action by the heritage organizations.   

The Southern Nationalist Network (SNN)

At 6500 hits per week, Michael Cushman’s SNN will get more than three hundred thousand hits per year!  And Cushman’s site is different from many other Southern websites in that he provides both written stories and podcasts.  The podcasts feature audio interviews with southern patriots concerning a wide variety of issues.  This site is a reliable source of news concerning the southern nationalist movement.   

Michael Cushman, 35 years old, is a fella of who knows his subject matter. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in History from the University of South Carolina at Aiken, but he insists he learned much more after he graduated, than while he was in class.  Michael was formerly a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, but like so many other former S.C.V. members Michael became disillusioned by the “granny” attitudes prevalent in so much of the organization.  And through our discussion – interview I came to have great respect for Michael’s insights.

Michael’s first experience with the S.C.V. was when troubles sprang up in Aiken, South Carolina.  There was a movement afoot to rename Wade Hampton Avenue, Martin Luther King Avenue.  The local S.C.V. camp sprang into action to prevent this action by the City Council. But Michael was disappointed that the camp did not use the money it had collected for the fight, and the momentum the camp had gained in its successful fight to do more.

Aiken is a very wealthy town, “almost all Yankees now.  Pretty much all of the Southerners have been pushed out. Mostly wealthy Yankees now.” Said Michael.  The SCV has a big camp and they do a lot, but they pledge to the US Flag.  “I have always been more radical than the SCV.” “The SCV maintains memorials, and they run the Battle of Aiken.”

Michael decided to use his efforts for a more aggressive campaign, the result is his work on the internet.  He believes there is still “a nation, an ethnic group and a culture” that exists within the modern South.

Michael said “Secession is the fundamental right which is the only real meaningful check on a centralized government.”  I could hear Donnie Kennedy in Michael’s words.

Many in the Southern movement believe what Michael said next;  “The US empire is on the way out… if we can preserve our national identity and prevent an amalgamation and assimilation within a larger group we may still persevere in creating a free South.”

Michael introduced a new observation I had not heard before: “There is a huge generational schism between old Southerners and the new South, younger southerners are not as assimilated into the U.S.”  Michael believes that many younger people see the decline and collapse of America more readily than older people. He says that these younger people have a grasp of the original intent of the Founders of the united States.  

The Southern Nationalist Network is about 18 months old, and is an upgrade from Michael’s first website, the Southern Liberation Media News.  Michael does not have advertising on his site, but he does accept donations to help offset the cost of running a news network.  Michael said this is not a money making venture.

In closing our talk, Michael made a statement which seems to echo across all the people I talk to within the Southern movement; “A southerner will always know another Southerner.”

In the first article I did mention the League of the South.  But the information provided was from their website and secondary interviews.  This time I went straight to the man who has been the President of the League for its 18 years of existence, Dr. Michael Hill.

The League of the South

Dr. Hill earned his Ph.D in History at the University of Alabama.  Dr. Hill was cordial and frank in our discussion.  He explained that the League formed in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in June of 1994 in response to actions against the South, and because the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other heritage organizations were not organized for the purpose Dr. Hill and others had in mind.  The purpose of the League is:

“The League of the South is a Southern Nationalist organization whose ultimate goal is a free and independent Southern republic. To reach this goal, we intend to create the climate for a free South among our people by 1) de-legitimating the American Empire at every opportunity; 2) by proving our willingness to be servant-leaders to the Southern people; and 3) by making The League of the South a strong, viable organization that will lead us to Southern independence.”

More simply stated the goal of the League is: “To advance the cultural, social, economic, and political well-being and independence of the Southern people by all honourable means.”

On its home page the League rejects the notion that it is a revolutionary outfit intending to overthrow the U.S. government.  The League also rejects racism.  A very important thing since any new southern nation would have a strong Afro-American and Mexican influence.

Presently, the League has between four thousand and six thousand members.  Most of the members reside in the South, but there are sizable memberships in New York and California.

Dr. Hill explained: “We believe that there is still an Anglo Celtic core in the South (western Christendom) culturally close enough to be common.” He went on to say that the cultural homogenization of the American people is eroding the Southern culture and that many in the South have been influenced by Yankee occupation of the South and Reconstructionist history.  What occupation could not do, nationalized television and radio are doing.

I asked Dr. Hill if he had seen an increase in membership as a result of the Sesquicentennial and he replied no. But, he said there were two spikes in membership recently. The first occurred when President Bush conducted the first bail out, the second after the election of President Barack Obama.

The League is not a democratic organization.  Leaders are selected from the top.  The League has a national office, state chapters, and local chapters.  Authority is generously delegated down through the states to the local chapters.  I sensed there was a goal to get a chapter in every county in the South.

While the League is not a heritage organization and does not organize or work on heritage defense issues like the battles occurring in Richmond, Appomattox, and Lexington many members of the League work with other Southern patriots on these type issues.

Dr. Hill said that the Southern National Congress came into existence in large part because the leadership of the League felt their needed to be a political voice for the South.  However, Dr. Hill insisted that the League and the Congress were two separate organizations, each operating independent of the other.  “More than half the delegates who attend the annual Congress meetings are members of the League,” Hill said.

Dr. Hill said that the majority of the work being done by the League is organizational.  Much effort is being expended in organizing local chapters across the South and establishing an internal communications system that could withstand disruption caused by a natural or political emergency.  Dr. Hill believes the United States is in a state of decline and could actually cease to exist as a result of a number of ongoing trends.  If it does, he says he wants the League to be prepared for such an eventuality.

The Southern Partisan Reader

Tim Manning is a prolific writer and activist in the South.  His website, the Southern Partisan Reader is a warehouse of essays concerning the South.  Tim is published continually through the Southern Heritage News and Views.  Among other activities, Tim is responsible for the educational material associated with the Stephen D. Lee Institute, an educational arm of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Tim is a very well read thinker who believes  “The melting pot is a concept of social conditioning intended to create a cultural flavor which begin at the end of the 19th century.  This new influence was not American, southern, or Christian.  There is no conservative movement in America any more…”  It was not just the Southern states who were reconstructed.

When asked if there was a Southern movement, Tim replied:  “Asking it in the singular?  No.  Are there Southern movements?  Yes. A lot of the different movements are becoming more aware of that there is a general consensus of opinion and thought.”  But Tim acknowledges that much of what the South was is gone.  “The South today is not philosophically different from the rest of the nation," however elements are. distinctively different from the rest of the country in many vital respects, especially amoung more devout Christians, but still it is very reconstructed.

When you talk to Tim about his life experience and his opinions of present day America you hear a kind of disappointment widespread amongst many men who consider themselves Southern: “We have not found that the people of this nation were interested in the view of the founder’s.” Tim’s view touched a nerve with me.  As I believe the exercise of citizenship within our nation has collapsed in most Americans to a very a small materially centered attitude.  What we each receive from government seems to be at the essence of our individual citizenship, and we have ignored or rejected the legacy of liberty passed down to us.

One historic reality, white washed out of the politically correct version of the causes for secession that the South of 1860, was the Southern belief it was holding true to the original Constitution.  The North and Abe Lincoln sought a more powerful central government to use political power to assist commercial activity and shape the nation.  The South hoped to keep central government at arm’s length on most domestic issues and allow commerce to occur unfettered.  For the South, If there was to be molding of commerce it should occur in the states, allowing the sovereignty of the states to be preserved.   

Manning is more open to the idea that the South is not ethnically what it once was.  He said: “The South is not a monolithic cultureand never has been for any significant period of time.”  But Manning also expresses a wide spread disappointment that regionalism on television has vanished, and that the centralized control of national television is quickly dissipating the Southern identity.   “We would like to see the qualities of the South aired in the modern media.”

When asked about the Southern National Congress, Manning said they formed “because they see the U.S. as disintegrating.”  This reflects a theme espoused by Virginian Patrick Buchanan in many of his books.  

While Manning readily admits to influx of Mexican and Yankee settlers in large parts of the South, he asserts; “A lot of people in the South consider themselves as much a unique group as any other nationality.  There are a group of people in the South who are distinct. When our speakers speak to groups you can see lights come on as they recognize that they do feel like the speaker is saying.”

When I made the comment that many people in the South, including some in the Sons of Confederate Veterans, are ashamed of being from the South, Tim replied; “I believe your observation is a great one.  This is the natural result of years of the indoctrinational conditioning that we call 'reconstruction' or 'yankeefication'.”

Living in North Carolina, Tim Manning is on one of the front lines of the evolving South.  The high tech triangle which has risen in central Carolina brought with it about 45,000 higher income high tech workers (most from outside Carolina)  who could be the swing vote in that state which will decide its choice on election day.

On the movement

Manning’s comment that there are many movements in the South appears to be the most accurate.  There is no revolutionary movement that I can find.  There is no one who wants to over throw the government or force secession.

The folks most obvious in the Confederate uniforms, the re-enactors and the Sons of Confederate Veterans are probably the least concerned with any future South.  Their view is backward.  They seem focused on the history.  While the Charge of the Sons of Confederate Veterans is in the present tense, “vindicate the Cause,” a large number of them do not see vindicate for its definition in the dictionary. They do not see justification of the Cause for its political ramifications.  And many like Waite Rawl at the Museum of the Confederacy are more comfortable in allowing the dust of history to bury the patriotic zeal that was the South.

One group missing from this article is African Americans.  They are an intregal part of the future of the South.  They have been an intregal part of the South from its earliest moments.  During the War for Southern Independence, it was the African American community which did not revolt, but remained loyal to the South, who made the plantations work and were part of the home front infrastructure for the war.  And many blacks fought for the South, as freed man and slave.  Their contributions have been sorely under reported because it is inconvenient history.  But in any new South, black Southerners would be essential.    

Some in the Southern movement believe America is collapsing across a broad front, morally, financially, culturally, and with respect to its origination.  A common thread I have found, even when not openly articulated, is that “we are waiting.”  We are waiting for the day when without us, and not because of us, chaos will erupt.  At that point new political arrangements will have to be made.  And at that point, the South may re-emerge as a nation.

©2012 Mark Vogl

On The Web:   http://www.nolanchart.com/article9511-is-there-a-southern-movement-part-ii.html

 

Was Fort Sumter the 1860s Gulf of Tonkin Incident?

April 1, 2012
by Al Benson Jr.

Most who have learned accurate history by learning to read between the lines realize that the federal government has gotten this country into a batch of situations we’d be better off not being in or having been in.

Anyone “remember the Maine?” This was the ship the Spanish supposedly blew up that got us into the Spanish American War. Then there was the Lusitania during World War One that was blown up with over a hundred American passengers on it.That pretty much ensured that we would get into World War One with the Germans supposedly torpedoing passenger ships. Turns out the Lusitania was carrying ammunition to Europe as well as passengers. I could name a few others but you get the idea. All this government needs is what passes for a lame excuse and they will have us in another war day after tomorrow if possible. You have to wonder what will be the manufactured crises for getting us into a war with Iran. Rest assured that because some folks in Washington want us at war with Iran it will probably happen. Remember the “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq? Seems they never found any, but the story got us into that country to promote “democracy” via invasion.

Again, if you read history, you will note that there was opposition in the Northern states to fighting a war against the South. In fact opposition was rampant in the North. Not everyone north of Mason/Dixon was willing to back “Honest” Abe’s Unitarian-inspired plan to place the federal bayonet at the throat of an orthodox Christian South.

Lincoln, shrewd pragmatist that he was, realized he had opposition to a war both in the North and the West (Mid-West)  and so he used the firing on Fort Sumter to rouse the war spirit in his own back yard where it had been notably lacking up to that point. Supposedly the nation now had to go to war because the United States flag had been fired upon.  But, from Charles E. Minor’s book The Real Lincoln (not to be confused with Thomas DiLorenzo’s book of the same name) we learn that the United States flag had been fired upon in the same place two months earlier, a fact which has been strangely ignored. The steamer Star of the West had been sent two months earlier, on January 9, 1861, with food and two hundred recruits to relieve the garrison at Fort Sumter. At that time the flag was fired upon, struck twice, and the steamer retired. The main problem there was probably the two hundred recruits.

William Howard Russell, a war correspondent for the London Times wrote to that paper from America stating: “It is absurd to assert…that the sudden outburst when Fort Sumter was fired upon was caused by the insult to the flag. Why, the flag had been fired on long before Sumter was attacked;…it had been torn down from United States arsenals and forts all over the South and fired upon when the federal flag was flying from the Star of the West.” One might be led (only if he had a suspicious mind, of course) to ask if Fort Sumter was the War of Northern Aggression’s Gulf of Tonkin incident!

Lincoln’s concept of state secession being forbidden was not exactly unanimous  in the North. On November 9, 1860, the Democratic newspaper New York Herald editorialized on Lincoln’s election and said: “For less than this our fathers seceded from Great Britain.” It’s worthy of note that the editorialist realized that our separation from Great Britain was, indeed, secession. The Declaration of Independence was, in reality, a secession document, but the history books don’t dwell on that too much. The paper also stated that federal coercion of seceding states should be out of the question. The paper reiterated the “right to break the tie of the confederacy as a nation might break a treaty, and to repel coercion as a nation might repel invasion.”

Hugh McCullough, who was later to be Lincoln’s third treasury secretary, while traveling through the Midwest, said: “In traveling through Southern Indiana in the autumn of 1860 and the following winter, I was amazed and disheartened by the general prevalence of the non-coercive sentiment…As far as I could learn, the same opposition to coercion prevailed to a considerable extent in the other free states bordering upon the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and I could not help feeling that the Union…had no deep hold on the affection of the people…The sentiment of Southern Illinois was in sympathy with that of the people of Southern Indiana.”  Stop and analyze what McCullough was saying. There was very little sentiment, at least in the lower parts of the Midwest, in favor of the federal government coercing the Southern states to remain in the Union. It seemed to pain McCullough no end that many, if not most, in the Midwest were unwilling to see the Union preserved by the federal government standing with a jack-booted heel upon the neck of a prostrate South. And the lack of affection toward the Union was no doubt due to the fact that most people in the Midwestern states felt more of an allegiance to their individual states than to a centralized “Union” in Washington.  It would seem that McCullough was, from his comments, of the exact same statist mindset that Lincoln embraced (Yankee Marxism).

Back to Fort Sumter. In 1927, Paul S. Whitcomb, whose family ties hark back to Vermont, wrote an article for Tyler’s Quarterly Magazine. In part, Mr. Whitcomb stated: “If South Carolina had the right to secede she had the right to take Fort Sumter. Lincoln’s policy of sitting tight and forcing the South to make the first move was identical to that of Bismarck. ‘Success’ Bismarck said ‘essentially depends upon the impression which the origination of the war makes upon us and others; it is important that we should be the party attacked.” Read that one again, folks.That is exactly what “Honest Abe” did–maneuvered the situation to make sure the South fired the first shot! Wasn’t that “honest” of him? Lincoln needed just such a situation to force the country to accept a war that few really wanted, North or South.

Today’s “history” books (and I use the term “history” in the loosest possible sense) seldom inform you that the South sent a delegation to Washington to negotiate a peaceful settlement dealing with the question of secession, as well as how the South would pay for federal property that had been taken. Not only was the commission snubbed, but Lincoln sent an armed squadron to resupply the fort with food, and to reinforce it. Lincoln was persuaded by nine state governors to bring on the war “and to have it started by getting South Carolina to fire on Fort Sumter.” These nine “war governors” are mentioned in both The Real Lincoln (page 257) and in Robert L. Dabney’s Discussions–Volume 4  (pages 98-99).

According to Dabney, quoting material received from Colonel John Baldwin, the radical Yankee governors spoke in this vein: “War is precisely the thing we should desire. Our party interests have everything to lose by a peaceable settlement of this trouble, and everything to gain by collision.  For a generation we have been ‘the outs’; now at last we are ‘the ins.’ While in opposition it was very well to prate of Constitution and of rights; but now we are the government and mean to continue so; and our interest is to have a strong and centralized government.” We were about to have a revolution of the same sort that prevailed in France. You have to wonder, how much different were these Republican governors than the party hacks that run things today? Their statement could well be played in 2012 just as it was in 1860. The same identical  Yankee/Marxist mindset is present now that was present then.

So, heeding this advice, Lincoln prepared for war, but it had to be done in such a way as to make the South look like the bad guys, the aggressors. Lincoln looked beyond the attack on Sumter, which his activities encouraged, and saw in it the way he needed to unite the North behind his war schemes.

Although many in the North became convinced by the Machiavellian  plans of Lincoln, everyone did not. There was still Northern opposition to a war, and out of that grew what has been called the Copperhead Movement. Lincoln still had to find a way to deal with that and he did so in a dictatorial method that has set an ugly precedent for our own day.

On The Web:   http://revisedhistory.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/was-fort-sumter-the-1860s-gulf-of-tonkin-incident/

 

“Reconstruction” never really ended.

March 31, 2012
By Al Benson Jr.

Several years ago author John Chodes wrote an article about education in the South during “reconstruction.” He observed that, although Yankee public school teachers flocked to the South after the War, supposedly to educate all those ignorant rubes in the backwater south, their real intent with public (government) education was not the promotion of readin, writin, and rithmetic, but rather to teach “the rebel’s children respect for national authority.”

That and the systematic rewriting of history in the South, especially in regard to what the War of Northern Aggression was really all about, was the main function of public education in the South. It was, to be sure, all a major part of the “reconstruction” program—a cultural revolution that was instituted to make sure the South was brainwashed into such submissiveness that she would never again entertain the thought of daring to defend her God-given rights. To that end, even today, public schools must be safe, but never free.

The first phase of “reconstruction” lasted 12 years, and then the federal troops left, after the carpetbaggers had stolen all that was worth taking. It seemed at that point, as if the federal government was going to back off a little, maybe even leave the South alone for awhile. Well, not completely alone—they left that propaganda vehicle called the public school system firmly in place to do its insidious work and make sure the “rebel’s children” were taught that respect for “national authority.”

Then, along in the early 1950s it was time for the second phase of “reconstruction” to be put into place, with all the “civil rights” and desegregation problems—most of which had been caused in the first place by the first phase of “reconstruction.” This was a classic Marxist tactic. Create a problem, let it fester awhile, and then come back into the situation to “solve” that problem with a solution that always restricts people’s liberty even further.

Having accomplished massive federal intrusion into what little remained of the affairs of the states during the 1950s-70s, the feds and their leftist stooges turned, in the late 80s and the decade of the 90s to their final goal—total destruction of any remembrance of the former Southern culture, via a relentless cultural war on Confederate symbols, statues, flags, you name it. The public schools played their part in this campaign when they finally abandoned all pretense of diversity and started to toss out students for wearing Confederate symbols—the same way they tossed God out when He was no longer convenient as window dressing for their purposes. The war against Southern symbols and flags has continued at a frantic pace since then. My files are full of articles about students that have been tossed out, send home, barred from having a Confederate bumper sticker on their car or truck, all in the name of “peace and safety.” It seems the white Southern kids are called upon to surrender their heritage, while everybody else gets a pass.

You have to begin to understand that this is the real intent of “reconstruction”—the submission of the Christian South to the deities of the New World Order. “Reconstruction” (political correctness) has never been allowed to deviate from that agenda from when it was instituted in the mid-1860s until now. After all it was Karl Marx that first used the term “reconstruction” when he talked about Lincoln and his efforts at “the reconstruction of a social world.” You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize he was referring to the South.

We are now in a third phase of “reconstruction” the total destruction of our Christian history and heritage and, unless we begin to wake up and start getting our kids out of public schools, this may be the last phase needed.

Perhaps we need to get on our knees before a sovereign God and ask His guidance as to what we need to do to resist. “Ye that love the Lord hate evil.”

On The Web:   http://revisedhistory.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/reconstruction-never-really-ended/

 

March 30, 2012
Virginia city defends limits on Confederate flags

Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va. — The city of Lexington is defending its decision to keep the Confederate battle flag off of municipal light poles, arguing that allowing that banner to fly on city-owned property could open the door to all sorts of offensive messages.

A June 11 hearing is scheduled in U.S. District Court in Roanoke on the city’s bid to toss out a lawsuit filed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which claims the ordinance violates its free speech.
 

Attorneys for the city of Lexington argue in their motion that the ordinance does not prevent the self-identified Southern heritage group or others from flying the flag within the city. The ordinance only limits what flags can fly on city-owned light poles.

If Lexington was compelled to let Confederate flags fly on the city poles, “an infinite number of interest groups would suddenly have standing to compel localities to fly nongovernmental flags from government-controlled flag standards,” attorneys wrote in a brief filed this month.

“Organizations dedicated to reviving fascism or white supremacy, for instance, could force the city to fly Nazi swastikas or the Ku Klux Klan emblems from city-owned flag standards,” attorneys argued. “Organizations dedicated to communism could force the city to fly the hammer and sickle.”

The Sons of Confederate Veterans filed suit in January claiming the city ordinance adopted in September violates its constitutional free speech and due process rights. It also claimed the city ordinance violated a 1993 consent decree that blocked Lexington’s attempt to ban the display of the Confederate flag during a parade honoring Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

Jackson and another Confederate icon, Robert E. Lee, are buried in Lexington and both had strong ties to the city of approximately 7,000.

City officials said they adopted the ordinance after they received hundreds of complaints in January 2011 when Confederate flags were put in holders on light poles to mark Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday in Virginia. Some callers complained that the flag is divisive and a symbol of the South’s defense of slavery, officials said.

The flags were provided by SCV, and the city authorized them to be flown on the city poles. The SCV also paid for city workers to install the flags on approximately 40 poles.

The new ordinance states that only the city, Virginia and U.S. flags can be flown on downtown light poles.

The ordinance does not limit other public displays of the Confederate flag within the city.

“SCV is free to carry and display the Confederate flag prominently on these same sidewalks, as both the consent decree and the flag ordinance maker clear,” the city attorneys wrote.

The lawsuit names the city of Lexington, seven city council members and the city manager, T. Jon Ellestad.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans rallied supporters last September when the city conducted a hearing on the ordinance. Opponents said it was an affront to the men who fought in the Civil War in defense of the South.

The Confederate battle flag, with its diagonal cross and 13 stars, has been a lightning rod in the South, particularly among black Southerners.

The NAACP launched an economic boycott of South Carolina in 1999 about the Confederate flag that flew atop the Statehouse dome and in the chambers of the House and Senate.

A compromise in 2000 moved the flag to a monument outside the Statehouse.

© 2012 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.

On The Web:   http://bdtonline.com/vanews/x1437243220/Virginia-city-defends-limits-on-Confederate-flags

 

‘Flaggers’ Protest Weekly In Richmond
By Scott C. Boyd
(April 2012 Civil War News)

RICHMOND, Va. – The decision of a state-run museum to prohibit the display of Confederate flags outside the historic Confederate chapel it controls has prompted an ongoing protest by Southern heritage activists in front of the museum every weekend since last October.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond controls the historic Pelham Chapel — also known as the Confederate Memorial Chapel — on its grounds. Its $1 a year lease with the Sons of Confederate Veterans for the chapel barred the outside flags.

The property dates from the 1883 sale of a house and 36 acres to R.E. Lee Camp No. 1, Confederate Veterans, for a Confederate soldiers’ camp, or home.

Donors to the home included Union veterans from Lynn, Mass., who gave the chapel organ. The chapel, which features stained-glass windows and hand-hewn pews, was dedicated to Confederate war dead in 1887.

The house and chapel are all that remain of the camp, which operated from 1885 to 1941. After the last veterans died the property was deeded to the commonwealth.

By Executive Order 35 in 1991, the VMFA acts as the governor’s agent in leasing the chapel to the SCV. Lee-Jackson Camp No. 1 of Richmond opens the chapel for tours. The lease is renewed every five years.

At its March 31, 2010, meeting the VMFA Board of Trustees’ Executive Committee unanimously passed two motions concerning the chapel: First, the museum would not renew the existing lease as written. Second, the museum “is opposed to flying the Confederate Battle Flag or any of its derivatives on the Museum property.”

The lease in 1999, which was renewed in 2004, allowed Camp No. 1 “to hang the Camp’s two Confederate flags only from the hardware permanently installed outside on the front of the Chapel porch to honor the memory of the Confederate dead who are memorialized at this site and premises.”

The new five-year lease read “Confederate national flags and battle flags may be prominently displayed at all times inside the sanctuary of this War Memorial to honor the memory of the dead Confederate soldiers, sailors and marines to whom the premises is dedicated, but no such flags may be flown on the exterior of the premises.”

According to several people familiar with the negotiations, the VMFA presented the new lease to the SCV on a “take it or leave it” basis. The SCV signed it on May 19, 2010.

The Flaggers

The newly formed Virginia Flaggers began “flagging” the VMFA on Oct. 1, 2011, and has done so every Saturday since then, according to spokesperson Susan Hathaway.

Flagging is when people demonstrate peacefully at a site by carrying and waving Confederate flags there. Hathaway’s group stands on street corners around the art museum’s buildings in downtown Richmond holding Confederate flags to protest the VMFA’s exclusion of Confederate flags from the chapel porch.
 

Although the group is not affiliated with the SCV or United Daughters of the Confederacy, eight of the nine flaggers present when Civil War News interviewed them said they belong to these hereditary Confederate heritage groups.

Hathaway wrote to VMFA Director Alex Nyerges last Oct. 25 that the ban on exterior flags more than a year earlier “is a direct insult to our ancestors, and the 260,000 Confederate soldiers who died during the war, who are memorialized by the Chapel and its designation as a War Memorial.”

She told him the Saturday flaggers talk to people who did not know about the lease provision and distribute fliers detailing the museum’s discrimination against American veterans. “Several people were so angered after hearing our story and reading the literature, that they turned around and did not visit the Museum as they had planned.”

She wrote, “We would ask that you not insult our intelligence … and call the act what it really is … a bow to political correctness and an affront to the men who built that Chapel in memory of their fallen comrades.”

Nyerges’ written response on Oct. 28 noted that “A review of documents and images dating back to the time of the Soldiers’ Home and through subsequent decades after the Commonwealth acquired the property in 1941 reveal that no flags hung from the Chapel.”

Lee-Jackson Camp No. 1 hung the battle flags after it began leasing the chapel in 1993. “When renewing that lease in 2010, VMFA asked that the flags be removed, which returned the historic structure to its original appearance,” Nyerges wrote.

This echoes what VMFA Chief Officer, Collections and Facilities Management, Stephen D. Bonadies said in an interview: “Our perspective is, what is historically appropriate and accurate?”

He said the museum takes its mission to interpret the Confederate memorial park site seriously. He noted that the VMFA has spent $250,000 on maintenance for the chapel since 1998, including a new roof, exterior paint and restoration of some of the stained-glass windows.

Over the past year, the VMFA has placed four interpretive signs on the grounds which tell the story of the Confederate Soldiers’ Home.

Bonadies said the VMFA is trying to interpret the postbellum era, when the soldiers’ home was established on the site. He also met with Hathaway in October.

“There is no reason to install a flag on the chapel,” he said.

“We are not going anywhere,” she recently said of the flaggers. “We’re in it for the long haul. We’ll be out there until the flags come back up.”

On The Web:   http://www.civilwarnews.com/archive/articles/2012/april/protest-041205.htm