Does He or Doesn't He ... Know He's Lying?

When Perfesser Simpson takes a written passage out of context in order to come to an erroneous conclusion about Southern heritage and its advocates, does he not realize he's being dishonest? Is he so blinded by his hatred for us that he doesn't realize what he's doing?

Yes, dear readers, that is a rhetorical question. I believe he knows exactly what he's doing. I believe he purposely ignores and leaves out vital information in order to lie about what he wants to focus on.

Take this passage, for example, stolen from my 180 Degrees True South Facebook group and posted at Crossroads, unattributed (attributing it to "someone" is not sufficient).

… secession, the creation of the Confederacy, the South’s struggle for independence, the shabby treatment of the South by the “victors” for several generations after the war — these are unique, integral, defining components of our region and the cultural inheritance handed down to each generation of Southerners. These elements are MORE defining of the South than as slavery and racial issues.

Actually, I wrote it and you can see the entire post and thread, and see what he purposely leaves out, here:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/345813525448421/permalink/407254769304296/

To say Southerners with no Confederate ancestors cannot claim and celebrate their Confederate heritage is like saying immigrants to the US with no colonial/revolution era ancestors cannot claim and celebrate their American heritage.

Confederate heritage is an *integral* and *defining* part of Southern heritage. Secession, the creation of the Confederacy, the South's struggle for independence, the shabby treatment of the South by the "victors" for several generations after the war -- these are unique, integral, defining components of our region and the cultural inheritance handed down to each generation of Southerners. These elements are at least as defining as slavery and racial issues, which are not unique to the South, but part of northern heritage, too, despite the north's striving to ignore and downplay it, or to pretend that "fighting a war to free the slaves" (which they didn't do) somehow neutralizes their guilt in slavery.

But I'd like to hear other opinions on this. I think it's a very interesting topic.

I would amend the above to say that secession, the creation of the Confederacy, the South's struggle for independence, the shabby treatment of the South by the "victors" for several generations after the war --these are unique, integral, defining components of our region and the cultural inheritance handed down to each generation of Southerners. These elements are MORE defining of the South than as slavery and racial issues.

The first indication that the perfesser is lying his head off is that he chose NOT to include this:

Confederate heritage is an *integral* and *defining* part of Southern heritage.

Saying that Confederate heritage is part of Southern heritage -- even an integral and defining part -- implies that it is not the whole of Southern heritage, so there are other parts to Southern heritage. So what am I saying? He left that out so he could lie? Yep, that's what I'm saying.

By claiming that I'm claiming that these defining regional characteristics are the South's only characteristics, he's lying.  What I actually said was that these are defining of the South because the South is the only region where they occurred.   They are unique to the South, and thus define it -- that is, differentiate it -- from the rest of the country.

When I say, "These elements are MORE defining of the South than slavery and racial issues," that's because slavery and racial issues are not unique to the South. Slavery occurred in the North, so it is not unique to the South.  Racism occurred and continues to occur throughout the United  States, so it is not unique to the South.  But secession, the creation of the Confederacy, the South's struggle for independence, the shabby treatment of the South by the "victors" for several generations after the war -- these did not happen in New England, the Midwest or the West Coast. They are unique to Dixie.

That doesn't mean they negate all the South's other characteristics and history.  You'd have to be incredibly stupid or maliciously dishonest to come to that conclusion -- and while I may wonder whether the perfesser's book learning has somehow atrophied his common sense, I don't think he's incredibly stupid.  That leaves --  yep -- maliciously dishonest.
_____________________________
Graphic created by C. Ward