One Is A Racist Symbol. The Other Is A Flag

Dixie Heritage News – Fri, Nov 17, 2017

This is a racist symbol…The other is a Flag!!

Last week we reported that the City of Savannah was conducting a survey. Now, after more than 5,000 survey responses, a task force must make recommendations about the Confederate monument in Georgia’s oldest city.

WTOC-TV reported that Savannah officials received 17 letters, 181 emails and more than 4,800 online survey responses after asking for input on the memorial. The comment deadline was Monday.

In August, Savannah Mayor Eddie DeLoach said he wanted “to expand the story this monument tells to be inclusive of all” Savannah residents. The 48-foot monument honors Confederate dead. DeLoach says he’d like to expand the monument to memorialize Union soldiers who died in the War since Georgia law prohibits removing any Confederate monument.

Now, Mayor DeLoach also wants state legislators to change the name of the Talmadge Memorial Bridge spanning the Savannah River because according to DeLoach, former Georgia Gov. Eugene Talmadge, who served in the 1930s and 1940s, was a racist.

Removing Confederate monuments, changing street names could prove to be costly measure

In Atlants, CBS46 reports that as a special committee makes recommendations to the Mayor and City Council on the removal and renaming of Confederate monuments and streets, the cost of making it all happen is moving to the forefront.

A final decision Monday night came down from an 11 person committee selected to decide the fate of Confederate monuments and street names in Atlanta.

The committee would like the city to remove the Peachtree Battle monument on Peachtree Battle Avenue, the James Calhoun portrait hanging inside the state house and the Peace Monument at Piedmont Park. The committee is also looking at changing the name of as many as 32 streets in the city that reference the Confederacy.

Changing street names will prove to be expensive. New signs must be made and city maps must be updated. Emergency responders, mapping companies and the U.S.P.S. and package delivery services will have to be notified.

The process to change the names won’t come quickly either. Once the city agrees on a new name, homeowners and renters on the street will be contacted and 75 percent of them have to agree on the change, under Atlanta city code.

Then, there’s public hearings where residents can voice their concerns. Afterward, the city council would have to vote yes or no on changing the name of the street.

And if the name is changed, what would you change it to? Some caution against naming a street after people, especially someone still living because it could come back to haunt the city if that person goes from being famous to infamous.

There are all things we could find out in the coming weeks. Mayor Kasim Reed expects to have the recommendations from the committee on his desk by November 20.

“CIVIL WAR,” COUP, OR MUTINY?

Trustees for The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill heard Wednesday from students who oppose a campus Confederate monument.

The trustees scheduled to hear from more than 30 speakers to document complaints against the statue of an anonymous rebel known as “Silent Sam” during its bimonthly meeting.

What is unclear is why Board Chair Haywood Cochrane is pushing this agenda when University Chancellor Carol Folt has already said State Law prevents the University from removing the statue.

KENTUCKY COMMISSION REFUSES TO TAKE ACTION

In follow-up to an ongoing story the leaders of the Kentucky Military Heritage Commission were silent Tuesday about the City of Lexington’s surprise removal last month of two Confederate statues from the lawn of the former Fayette County courthouse.

Tuesday marked the first meeting of the Commission since Lexington removed the statues. after state Attorney General Andy Beshear issued an opinion that said the commission does not have jurisdiction over the statues.

By law, the Kentucky Military Heritage Commission had to approve the removal of the statues and could order the City to restore them.

But the Lexington statues were not on the agenda of Tuesday’s meeting, and none of the five members mentioned them during the hour-long meeting in the Capitol Annex.

After the meeting, the commission’s chairman, Colonel M. Blaine Hedges, was asked by a reporter if the commission had any objections to the city’s removal of the statues.

Hedges, who is executive director of the Kentucky Commission on Military Affairs, said he was aware of the city’s actions “but the reality is that that scenario was not on the agenda today.”

Asked if the topic will be on the agenda of its next meeting, scheduled for May 15, 2018, Hedges said, “Sir, I will tell you it’s not on the agenda today.”

The commission’s legal counsel, Will Adams, referred reporters’ questions to Cody Patterson, spokesman for the state Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet.

KIRBY SMITH STATUE ONE STEP CLOSER

A statue of someone who will look like Don King in drag, Mary McLeod Bethune, is getting support in both chambers of the State Legislature as a replacement for Confederate General Kirby Smith who has long represented Florida in the U.S. Capitol.

Over the objection of a senator who decried “cultural purging,” the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday voted 18-1 to support a proposal (SB 472 and SCR 184) aimed at replacing the statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith in the National Statuary Hall in Washington.

Sen. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican who is the descendant of a Confederate soldier and who has defended the Confederate flag and memorials, said Bethune is worthy of the honor. But Baxley added that he opposed “dishonoring” Smith.

“Regrettably, I can’t vote for this because I think it’s supporting a continuation of cultural purging and dishonoring those who came before us,” Baxley said.

The measures advanced, a bill and resolution, must now go through the Rules Committee to reach the Senate floor during the 2018 session, which starts in January.

In the House, the Government Accountability Committee has overwhelmingly supported its version of the statue replacement. The measure (HB 139) must get through the House Appropriations Committee before going before the full House.

More Hollywood Headlines

In Hollywood, Florida the renaming issue has been a contentious one for more than a year.

The commission decided to change the names in August after six hours of heated debate. Commissioners voted 6 to 0 Wednesday to change the names of three streets named for Confederate generals names of Robert E. Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Bell Hood to Freedom, Hope and Liberty.

Commissioner Peter Hernandez was the only commissioner to refuse to participate in the vote.

NON-HERITAGE NEWS EFFECTING THE SOUTHLAND

Civil asset forfeiture is basically a legal vehicle for police officers and “law enforcement” agents to STEAL the property of citizens, especially when no crime has been committed to justify a “confiscation.” That is why so many States have passed laws to prevent their police from engaging in these types of actions. So I have to question Jeff Sessions when he implements Federal incentives to local police to engage in what is clearly WRONG. Seems I’m not the only one asking the same.

A bipartisan group of senators is asking the Chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee to defund a Department of Justice effort to expand the use of civil asset forfeiture. ,

“DOJ’s reinstated policy allows state law enforcement officers to circumvent state limitations on civil forfeiture by turning seized property over to federal officials for forfeiture in exchange for up to 80% of the proceeds of the property. This perversely incentivizes local law enforcement to confiscate suspect property even where state laws forbid the practice,” said the letter to Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, was joined by fellow Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Mike Crapo of Idaho, along with Democrat Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Tom Udall of New Mexico, in signing the letter. Sen. Angus King, I-Vt., also signed the letter requesting the defunding of civil asset forfeiture expansion.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in July the Justice Department would expand its practice of civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement to seize any property they “allege is involved in a crime.” Police can then keep or sell the property, even if nit charges are filed (often they are not since the allegation was only intended to STEAL property, which could vary from cash to cars to real estate.

As the chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Shelby is working to negotiate an appropriations bill that includes the Justice Department’s funds for the 2018 fiscal year.

“We urge you to defund implementation of these practices,” the letter to Shelby read.

The House has also passed three amendments to block the Justice Department from reinstating the civil asset forfeiture expansion policy.

Paul Annetts in Georgia writes:

I replied to the Savannah survey in a positive and constructive manner; the monument-statute is our history and needs to stay as is.

Signage is ok if done in a positive and historical manner. It is our heritage!

My great-grand father, his brother and their father all fought honorably to protect their homeland against the oppressive tariff, etc. They will always be my hero’s!

I served with the Marines for 7 years and my last duty station was Beauford and I enjoyed Savannah. My Confederate roots are from Social Circle, Ga. but reach out to all across the South; these are my roots, my very blood!

History, whatever it may be, should never be changed; it personifies us as a Country.

Jonathan Varnell writes:

We live in North Carolina and from what you’ve described I’d say you are right on the NC SBC.

I would add however you’re well aware of “Protest”-ant,” heritage and Baptists even more so. No one as a go between – between us as individuals, God and Jesus.

So just because some so called “leaders,” swayed the convention does not mean their message will take hold on the Sunday congregation for those who know the truth. As I’ve always told my kids don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining (sorry for the language).

Those of you who read the Dixie Heritage Letter via Facebook may have noticed that last Friday’s post did not have a photo or illustration. The truth is that we made over 100 attempts to post a photo to Facebook last week and all of them resulted in a non-display.

Assuming that the censorship was limited to Facebook, you should be looking at a picture of Al Sharpton and a Confederate Flag. The Caption reads: “This is a racist symbol…The other is a Flag!!”

Bigotry Against White Southerners Is ALWAYS In Season
by Al Benson Jr.

As most honest people realize by now, liberals, socialists, and communists are all cultural Marxists, which means, for them, that it is perfectly permissible to do unto others what they condemn others (usually unrighteously) for doing unto them. In fact, for them, it’s mandatory. For them, their day is not complete unless they are actively assailing someone on the political or religious Right, while blaming those folks for even daring to defend themselves. “Condemn others and elevate yourself” is their watchword.

I read an interesting article on The Hill by Jacqueline Thomsen for November 12th, 2017, the headline for which was Poll: Nearly half of white Southerners feel like they’re under attack. All I can say to that is-it’s about time! White Southerners are under attack-and have been now for decades. Their culture, their history, their faith, even their Southern accents, are and have been under assault for longer than I care to think about. Most of them have been totally oblivious to it. It would really be nice if some of them, lots more of them, were starting to wake up and smell the coffee. It would be really nice to think they are finally starting to get the picture and beginning to push back!

Thomsen observed that “Nearly half of white Americans living in the South feel like they’re under attack, a new Winthrop University poll found. Forty six percent of white Southerners said they agree or strongly agree that white people are under attack in the U.S….And 30 percent of all respondents in the poll agreed when asked if America needs to protect and preserve its white European heritage. More than half the respondents disagreed with this statement. Forty percent of respondents said they believed that Confederate statues should remain as is.” However, 25 percent said some sort of plaque should be added to “contextualize” (adulterate) the meaning of the statue. I wonder if that 25 percent would feel the same way about a statue of Martin Luther King Jr or socialist Carl Schurz.

Problem is, you don’t dare try to “contextualize” anyone else’s history but that of the white folks. To do that to anyone else’s statues or cultural monuments would be politically incorrect (racist), but it’s perfectly okay to do it to those of the white folks. In fact, it’s part of the game. It’s called cultural genocide if you do it to anyone but white folks, but for the white folks it’s perfectly okay to do it. You see, it’s open season on them 24/7, all year. It’s good that some of them are finally beginning to wake up and realize what’s being done to them.

I have read so much Marxist drivel from college professors and other PH.Ds (piled higher and deeper) about how all whites should be ashamed of being white and should work to repudiate their “whiteness” while taking pains to embrace every other pagan culture out there to express their “solidarity” with the world, that it just about makes me sick. The Lord made all people who and what they are, and to openly repudiate what the Lord created, the way He created it, is a repudiation of God and His perfect plan. Not that this would bother some of those people. The same principle is true for those people that want sex changes. They refuse to be satisfied with what God made the way He made it, so they plan to improve on it. They seem to think they have more wisdom than God, which is untrue, not that you could convince them of it.

The same situation holds true for Southern accents. An article I read in The Washington Times for November 7th, by David Keene, noted, of a person he wrote about “…he could never vote for Mr. Carter (back in 1976) because of his ‘Southern accent’.” As a Southerner, he “talked funny.” Now I had my problems with Jimmy Carter and I didn’t vote for him, but it sure wasn’t because of him, as a Southerner, “talking funny.” His politics were much too cozy with those of David Rockefeller and the Trilateral Commission to suit me.

Could it be said that not voting for a person because you don’t like the way he talks makes you a bigot? Well, in the world of the cultural Marxist it doesn’t seem to-unless, of course, you are a Southerner! And if that happens to be the case, then, to those people, you are automatically a bigot-from the first breath you draw!

Over the years I’ve been called a racist, an anti-Semite, an Islamaphobe, and a “deplorable” as well as several other things I do not care to list here. Most of these epithets are designed to stifle reasonable debate or discussion. Folks who get called these names need to realize that fact and keep talking anyway. When folks throw some of these names at me, I don’t let it stop me from saying what I have to say, and that bothers some of them, because nasty names are supposed to shut you up and they don’t always. I just tell them-I don’t care what you call me. Just don’t call me late for supper.

Gone with the Wind? Confederate Statues
By Bill Maxwell

Bill Maxwell is a liberal columnist for the Tampa Bay Times. In his most recent column for that paper Bill demonstrates that even a blind squirrel will find HALF of the acorn every so often.

In 2003, I was in Memphis doing research for an article about the militia movement when I learned that the Orpheum Theatre was showing Gone with the Wind. I had seen the 1939 Oscar-winning film a few times on television but never on the big screen.

I remember being struck for the first time by select words in the fade-in describing the South: “cavaliers,” “gallantry,” “knights” and “ladies fair.”

While reading the novel and watching the film on television, such terms did not stand out. But in the theater, with dramatic theme music playing and more than 1,000 rapt viewers all around, the terms took on ominous meaning. They hailed the end of a tradition, a class of people, “a dream remembered, a civilization gone with the wind,” as the fade-in states.

For nearly four hours, I was a captive of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). I left the theater in love with the film, having seen it in a new light.

So when I learned a few weeks ago that the Orpheum had ended its 34-year tradition of showing the film because it is “racially insensitive,” I was disappointed. Brett Batterson, president of the theater, said in a statement: “As an organization whose stated mission is to ‘entertain, educate and enlighten the communities it serves,’ the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a large segment of its local population.”

In reality, according to several news accounts, only a handful of black residents formally complained about the film. But during our current hyper-racial climate, the theater pulled Gone with the Wind to avoid further controversy.

The problem is that many people see Gone with the Wind as being equivalent to a Confederate monument, memorial or statue. It is not. The film, a work of art, was shown in the Orpheum, a private venue where customers freely chose to pay for the experience. Those who found the film objectionable chose not to pay to see it.
Confederate monuments, memorials and statues are not works of art. They are polemics, political declarations, that indict the North and all who oppose the South’s inhumanity. These polemics, more often than not, are placed on public property for all the wrong reasons.

Many are placed in front of buildings where government business is conducted. Why are statues of Confederate soldiers holding weapons placed in front of courthouses, where justice is ostensibly sought? Why do these statues contain inscriptions that glorify the treasonous rebel cause?

Gone with the Wind has nothing in common with these statues, and the Orpheum is wrongheaded to stop screening the film. No work of art – even the objectionable – should be destroyed or banished from an appropriate venue. The Orpheum is a privately owned and operated theater. Museums and graveyards are appropriate venues for the Civil War’s dead fighters.

Like many other African-Americans who have seen Gone with the Wind, I cringe each time the black characters Mammy, Prissy, Pork and Big Sam appear. Nothing in the film repels me more than the scene in which Prissy acknowledges that she lied when claiming she knew about childbirth. Faced with a real birth, she declares: “Lawsy, we’se got ter have a doctah! Ah doan know nuthin ’bout birthin’ babies!” When Scarlett slaps Prissy and starts to drag the slave across the landing, I can hardly watch. But I watch this and other acts of cruelty because I can intellectually place them in the context of the filmmakers’ desire to stay true to the novel, the original work of art.

Will the time come when other films such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Driving Miss Daisy are banned from television? After all, they also portray black characters in a negative light.

We should continue to make fine distinctions between discomforting art and hateful polemic. When we compare Gone with the Wind with a statue of Robert E. Lee, we cease to be rational. The film depicts the inevitable demise of a culture that treated humans atrociously. Statues of Lee celebrate that atrocity. We should not let Gone with the Wind become a casualty of the Trump era’s racial chaos.

Until Next Week,
Deo Vindice!
Chaplain Ed

Dixie Heritage
P.O. Box 618
Lowell, FL 32663