Lexington
From: vaproto@optonline.net
To: tmanning1@triad.rr.com
Tim,
We need to get folks’ attention and the best way to do it is to make their point ours and our fault theirs. What do I mean? Here is what I would say if I were there – and I make it available to anyone who would like to use it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am here today to defend civil rights; to fight bigotry and demagoguery; to advance the cause of human worth without respect to race, religion or section and to promote the Principles of the Founding Fathers of this nation; that is, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For I say to you, that we have ranged against us those who would destroy our rights under God and the Constitution because of their irrational bigotry and through mendacious demagoguery. Those who defame our symbols, defame the worth of our ancestors and thus our worth. Most of all, they seek to destroy forever those Principles upon which this nation was founded, principles which, sadly, have been eroded over time—one hundred and fifty years of time, to be precise.
Today the institutions of our culture, social, political and even religious, speak a great deal about diversity and tolerance but they lie most foully. For their diversity is as limited as their tolerance and neither extends to those who meet here today and all those who are with us in spirit because they could not be with us in person. We are not permitted our diversity. Indeed, even when we do no more than quietly exist, there is not one among us who is unaware that we are not tolerated. Even our silence will not save us as the anti-Southern behemoth moves inexorably towards the extinction of the South as a living force in the nation. And there is a reason for this need! The South represents what little is left of those same Founding Principles previously noted. There are many quotes by men as diverse as Marx and Lee which make note of the fact that a people without a past are a people without a future. Indeed, they are an easy conquest since they have nothing by which to reference what is being demanded of them in the way of obedience to a central political authority. And when one has no reason to disobey and the threat of legal reprisal if one does, small wonder that a people without a culture are also a people without freedom.
Today, we can stand here and make known to a minor political entity our displeasure with their unilateral determination to spit in the face of Virginia’s history and heritage in order to curry favor with an ignorant and politically correct academia. But how long before not only our flags are banned, but we ourselves are put on notice that our viewpoint and our presence is unwanted and will be removed from the Public Square while the opposing viewpoint is welcomed and advanced. Those who believe that cooperation and appeasement will assure that we will be left some little crumb of our heritage—say our favorite Confederate hero like Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson—are even more ignorant of history than our foes! Indeed, we have tried cooperation. We have embraced appeasement. At every push—strengthened by the wicked use of that vile engine of extortion, the race card—we have seen fit to give way in hopes that our detractors would recognize that we do not believe as they say we believe. But, alas, every denial has led only to more and worse charges against us, charges supported by lies and myths put forth by many recognized and credentialed so-called historians and scholars. No proofs, however well sourced, no testimony no matter how objective, no facts no matter how well proven make any difference. All that matters is that we are ground down and crushed and that our heritage, heroes and symbols are consigned to the ash-heap of history if not to actual oblivion.
Well, my friends, if we cannot prevail with logic; if we cannot overcome with reason; if we cannot reach consensus with amicable objectivity then we have no choice but to stand and fight. Let the record show that it was WE who practiced logic, reason, objectivity and the hope of amicable consensus while it was our enemies who used extortion, naked political power, lies and deceit because they could not otherwise prevail. It would seem that the old Yankee maxims of “might makes right” and “the ends justify the means” is still being practiced in occupied Virginia and that the freedom we thought we had is an illusion. Thank you for your time.”
Val
