by Al Benson Jr.

The city of Fort Smith, Arkansas may be familiar to many people. It has been pictured in many Western movies. It is the city where Judge Isaac Parker, the “hanging judge” presided over his court. Judge Parker sentenced over 70 people to hang during his judicial career, and from what I have read over the years, they probably deserved it. Others who probably deserved it and didn’t get hung, through lawyers intervening in their cases one way or another. One movie I saw years ago, “True Grit” had one of Judge Parker’s marshals, played by John Wayne, referring to the legal representatives in Fort Smith as “pettifogging lawyers.”

I’ve only been to Fort Smith once, back in the 1970s, but I remember it as a distinctly Southern town. But that was then, not now. That insidious political disease known an Political Correctness (in reality it’s Cultural Marxism) has quietly seeped into many places in the South to the point where often you can hardly tell you are in the South anymore.

Suffice it to say that the public school system in Fort Smith has now imbibed in Cultural Marxism in regard to Confederate symbols like so many other places. Given the history of the public school system I guess we really shouldn’t be surprised. Untortunately, I am afraid that many who should know the real history don’t, and so they climb aboard the dumbed-down bandwagon also.

According to the Times Record a local attorney, Joey McCutchen (they aren’t all bad) is suing the Fort Smith School Board because of their decision to remove the Confederate flag, the “Dixie” fight song, and the school mascot from Southside High School in Fort Smith.

According to the Times Record article: “The move, according to a statement from the school district came after ‘giving great consideration to the continuing impact of perceived symbols of racism on the community, state, and nation’.” So we are removing all Confederate symbols all across the country now because they are “perceived symbols of racism.” They don’t actually have to be “racist” symbols–all they have to do is to be “perceived” as that and that’s more than enough for the usual knee’jerk reaction from all the politically correct types stepping out from under their leftist rocks.

McCutchen is suing the school board on behalf of a Fort Smith resident, Curtis Sorrells, and the suit cites violation of the open meetings provision of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.  The suit said that the publicized agenda for the June 23 School Board Committee of the Whole meeting called only for a closed meeting for discussion of Superintendent Benny Gooden’s yearly performance.  The purpose of this notice was to lead members of the public and media into believing that the meeting was solely to discuss a personnel issue and that the meeting would not be open to the public.”

It was at this closed meeting according to 5newsonline.com that “members voted to recommend changing Southside High School’s mascot and fight song. Fort Smith attorney Joey McCutchen filed the lawsuit claiming the school board violated the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act by holding a committee vote without notifying the public.” Well, yes, if you are going to work for the cultural demise of a large group of your students you obviously don’t want to do it openly. McCutchen said: “The school board did not say one word about why they were for or against, and that is concerning, so I think we, the voters, need to come out. We need to get a school board that will engage us in the process because that’s what our government stands for.” Actually it may be what government used to stand for. Nowadays it stands for whatever it can get away with! One Confederate flag supporter said “I’m tired of all the political bull.” Friend, you better hang onto your Confederate flag because all this ain’t going away any time soon.

We have to understand that all these incidents, and so many have been reported that you can’t cover them all, are all part of one fabric–one agenda–and most of these public schools are just itching to find a reason, any reason, to ban Confederate symbols of any kind. The only thing that will stop them is a massive turnout of local citizens protesting what they are trying to do, citizens telling them that if they remove Confederate symbols then their children will no longer attend that school but will find educational alternatives. They’d be better off finding educational alternatives anyway, but that’s the kind of thing school boards might respond to, as most local school districts get federal funding based on how many students attend their schools and if a particular school ends up losing 75-100 students that will adversely affect what they get from the feds. They can understand that.

The Fort Smith situation shows us a couple things. For one, there are some decent lawyers out there who do try to do the right thing. I have known, over the years, a handful of Christian lawyers who do strive to make their faith part of their law practice.

For another thing, we should start checking out on the Internet the number of these cases that have shown up since the Charleston shootings. I’ve done some of that and, believe me, they are legion and they all seem to follow a similar pattern, which means they are all part of a preconceived agenda. Hence they are not, in any way, locally spontaneous. All the people involved in different communities may not all know one another, but there is a common thread that runs through all these attempts at banning anything Confederate, whether it be in schools, whole towns, or wherever. These people are all operating off the same blueprint. So you have to ask–where did the blueprint come from?

As the Times Record article noted, Confederate symbols are perceived symbols of racism. That in no way makes the perception accurate, but then, the leftists and those who finance them really don’t care about that anyway. Their aim is to get people thinking in a certain direction that serves their purpose. Whether that direction is accurate or not (and it usually isn’t) makes not one iota of difference.

That this is a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the left should be apparent by looking at those who support it, the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center, along with a host of lesser leftist luminaries.  No one in their right mind could ever consider such groups as “objective” or “middle of the road” no matter what the “news” media tells us. So start checking out some of these outfits that promote ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide in regard to Confederate history and culture. You won’t like what you find if you do the homework. And when you do find it, you should heed the biblical admonition in Ephesians 5:11 and expose it.