It's Not History -- It's Anti-Heritage

 UPDATE ~ UPDATE ~ UPDATE 

Didn't I tell ya? These flogger guys feed off each other's blogs -- NOT about history, but about attacking heritage. Today, Brooks D. Simpson has joined in the current round of bash-the-Flaggers.  With references to Kevin's and Corey's posts on the same subject, he's posted 370 words of claimed indifference about a subject about which he has shown almost morbid interest in the past -- just like the other floggers.

One thing these floggers have never done, however, is explain WHY they post about the Flaggers -- or any other heritage advocates and their activities. The flogger claim is that they're interested in HISTORY. The Virginia Flaggers are CONTEMPORARY. Heritage activities are CONTEMPORARY. Why are these guys so eaten up with obsession -- and animosity -- for the flaggers?

Judging by the tone of his post and comments, Simpson has been about to bust a gut to post a derogatory critique of the Flaggers throughout his recent series of long, boring posts about the future of civil war history, and his trip to Gettysburg. His animosity for Southern heritage and those who honor it is so great, is such an obsession, he can't keep it contained with pretended indifference, and it just has to burst forth onto his blog from time to time.

One wonders why he even pretends indifference. The other floggers, while often touting their interest in history, don't try to hide their compulsion to denigrate heritage folks, most especially the Flaggers.  Especially when his indifference is so poorly executed and displayed. (3/30/13)

~END OF  UPDATE ~ 

Now Andy's trying his hand at psychoanalyzing, presumably without a license. He's posted a comment at Corey's blog about a post Corey made referencing Kevin's blog (what WOULD these floggers do without each other's blogs to inspire their own blog posts?) about -- you guessed it ... The Virginia Flaggers.

The floggers still haven't given a reasonable explanation (or any explanation at all, that I've found) why "history folks" who openly scorn "heritage folks" for putting heritage above history (so they say) turn right around and abandon history in order to attack heritage.

If anybody sees any history in this post or Andy's response,  please, do paste it in a comment here at Backsass. 

Andy's current effort at Corey's blog is to claim Virginia Flaggers are just into it for attention.  "I’ve never seen the Flaggers do anything that they don’t make, first and foremost, about them," he says.  (Emphasis Andy's.)

I'd be curious as to what Andy has seen the Flaggers do... and whether it was in person, or whether he "saw" it on the Internet. And, if he's getting his "views" from the Internet, who put them there? Someone hostile to the flaggers, or friendly to them, or neutral?

Even if Andy's source is neutral, he clearly is not. Anyone who writes crap like this is conspicuously displaying his hostility: "Even when they participate in larger functions, like the Decoration Day event in Fredericksburg or the memorial service at Sharpsburg, they go out of their way to make sure everybody knows that da Flaggers are in da house! (They call this establishing a 'Confederate presence.')" (Emphasis Andy's.)

Sounds to me like what they're doing IS establishing a Confederate presence. Of course, Andy is against a "Confederate presence" exactly as he is against Da Flaggers so naturally it's gonna leave a bad taste in his mouth, that he then spews it out in comments like this one (and numerous others at  his own blog).

Here's where he gets positively Freudian... "They’re very much like PETA — anything valid they have to say is quickly eclipsed by their shameless self-promotion and quest for public attention. It ultimately undermines their supposed goals of engaging the broader public, but I’m not sure they really care about that as much as the adulation of their small fan base, whose resentments demand more-or-less constant fluffing."

Let's deconstruct this.

"Anything valid they have to say..."  Why even bring this up?  Andy doesn't think ANYthing they say or do is valid.

"...eclipsed by shameless self-promotion and quest for public attention." I haven't noticed  either one from the Flaggers. I think these are phony labels Andy is putting on (1) the promotion of flagging, to inspire similar activity in other states and (2) showing the public the difference between people who honor their heritage and those who misuse it.

Of course Andy doesn't want the public to know about that. (Yes, folks, I can do remote psychoanalyzing, too.) He wants everyone to hate Confederate heritage, and to see anyone who honors it as inbred scum-sucking racist morons.

"It ultimately undermines their supposed goals of engaging the broader public..." he says, without a particle of substantiation, except his own bitter/sour disapproval. And why even mention this, as if he cares whether their goals are undermined, which he clearly does not.

"...but I’m not sure they really care about that as much as the adulation of their small fan base..."  So Andy views the support of the Flaggers by the heritage community as "adulation" by "fans"...  I wonder if that's anything like the "adulation" of "fans" showing up at his book signings, or the awed comments of blog visitors about his ship renderings...

And finally, "...whose resentments demand more-or-less constant fluffing."  Well, golly.  If the "resentment" of the Southern heritage community is so weak and/or artificial that it has to be "fluffed" why on earth is it such a visceral problem for the floggers?

No. Like all the floggers, Andy hates the heritage that we respect and honor. He will paint that heritage -- and our respect and honor -- in the worst possible light. Part of the reason why the Flaggers must do what they do for our heritage, is because people who hate it, like Andy, have for so long had the upper hand in public discourse and used it to influence the public to adopt the same hatred of Confederate heritage that they hold.

And now that Heritage folks are fighting back (and doing so with dignity and determination -- and fun!) it is really, really sticking in flogger craw. I mean, look at his risible PETA analogy. There is absolutely no comparison between PETA whack jobs and their insane demonstrations, and the Virginia Flaggers.  For Andy to make such a comparison, he either has to be knowingly lying, or so infuriated he can't tell fact from fantasy.

If history truly was what these floggers are interested in, they'd blog about history, and neither heritage nor anti-heritage would enter into it for them -- I doubt they'd even notice it. But history is not what they're interested in. It is a convenient excuse, a plausible cover, for indulging in their hatred of the Confederacy, its people, its memory, and the honor it receives from supporters and defenders today. And when someone challenges their hatred, it'll make your head spin how fast they abandon history to take up the tools of heritage-hatred -- the mocking, the ridicule, the lying...

Andy's At It Again ...

... doing two of the things he does best -- being a hypocrite and wielding his two-fisted double standard like a Highland claymore. Problem is, it rarely makes contact, let alone draw blood.

His current effort is to chronicle Flagger "failures" to get Mimi Elrod voted out of office, or to pressure Lexington businesses economically to support ending the city ordinance that bans flags (except official state and local flags) from flagstaffs attached to city-owned light poles.  I left a comment on his blog, but of course, he won't post it.  He's very thin-skinned that way...

My comment:

Andy, you're mighty eager to pronounce flagger efforts as failures because they don't accomplish within months what will likely require years; and because they don't accomplish within years what may take decades.

Do you know how long it took flag attackers in South Carolina to get the flag off the dome? How many years they introduced legislation to remove it that produced no result, session after legislation session? Did you counsel them to give up because they didn't get the flag removed the first time they tried?  Did you tsk-tsk the NAACP for hurting South Carolina's economy with their boycott. and post charts on line about it?

You seem disappointed that the flaggers and other heritage defenders are not short sighted and are in it for the long haul -- but mostly because they don't pay any attention to your periodic, very transparent -- but ultimately irrelevant -- carping meant to discourage them.

Hope you get some kind of enjoyment calling city officials in a state you don't live in and posting your little charts here because, as material meant to discourage flaggers, your efforts are a total bust (though it might get you some atta-boys and cyber slaps on the back from your fellow floggers).

BTW, if the flaggers -- many of whom are citizens of Virginia --  have no business being concerned with Lexington, how is it that you do? 

Wouldn't you love to hear Andy's answer to that last question?  We may as well forget about it, though. Hell will freeze over before Andy explains his penchant for engaging in what he berates others for.

Flogger "Scholarship"? (Smirk)

Flogger Al Mackey has recently featured two posts on his blog accusing the Georgia SCV of lying in videos, the first about the Corwin Amendment, the second about John Brown.

In the second, Mackey writes:

The video claimed that the first person killed was a free black man who tried to stop them.  Shepherd Hayward didn’t try to stop anyone. He worked as a baggage handler for the railroad  He was walking on the trestle, looking for the night watchman, when  he encountered Oliver Brown and Stewart Taylor.  They pointed rifles at him and told him to stop, but instead he turned around and was walking away from them, heading back to the office when they shot him.  [Source: David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist:  The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, p. 316]

Here is a screenshot of Mackey's source:

I was intrigued by the description of Hayward as bewildered. How'd Reynolds know that? Did Hayward say something to that effect before he died? And if he did, how do we know it wasn't delirium from blood loss? Or some other reason. In the End Notes, I found this reference:

Ah, a quote from Mr. Hayward. If a person were given an order, and didn't know what a word in the order meant, that could result in bewilderment, no doubt. The quote was apparently recorded in another book about John Brown. So I looked that one up and found this:

Note this in the above excerpt:

The command to halt probably meant as little to Hayward as it had to Higgins.

Huh? Probably? Well, did it or didn't it? Saying something "probably" happened is one way a writer can get across a point he wants to make without providing substantiation.

(And don't you just love that passive voice?  "...a bullet passed through his body..."  Perhaps it was just hanging in the air, waiting for a body to come by that it could "pass" itself "through."  Nothing about it being fired from a gun though we can assume it was fired by Brown or Taylor, despite this author's seeming reluctance to point a finger at them even in so obvious a situation.)

The reference to Higgins was accompanied by an asterisk, so I checked the bottom of the page and found this:

Well, well, well, well, welllllll.... So Reynolds' reference to the quote "proving" Hayward's "bewilderment" wasn't spoken by Hayward at all, though anyone reading the page note would assume so. It was spoken by a different person altogether. Villard assures us that the command to halt probably meant as little to Hayward as it meant to the man quoted, Patrick Higgins, though there is nothing in these passages to substantiate Hayward's "bewilderment" or the claim that the command "probably" meant little to him. So we really don't know that, do we?

So from Villard we have a quote from a different person used to suggest that Hayward didn't understand the command to halt; and based on that, Reynolds states, with no reservation or qualification (not even a "probably"), that Hayward was "bewildered."

Is that how flogger "scholarship" works? A quote by one person is used to suggest the mental state of an entirely different person, though there's nothing referenced to substantiate the connection?  It was just "probably" that way?

And speaking of lying, let's go back to Mackey's first reference -- the paragraph by David S. Reynolds, which ends with this whopper:

"A black man was the first casualty of the war for black liberation."

War for black liberation?  There was no "war for black liberation." The so-called civil war was for the purpose of violently bullying the seceded states back into the union. "Freeing slaves" was tacked on well into the war to give the north's "cause" (greed) the illusion of moral superiority.

I ask again, is that how flogger scholarship works? Cite a source and imply that is supports your contention but don't bother to substantiate it? Just expect your readers to accept your "take" on it?

Ah, no. I already suspect that their true motives include demonizing white Southerners, past and future and that will have a direct influence on their writings.

Al Mackey's beliefs (expressed to me in a discussion group I'm no longer a member of) about Julia Ward Howe's declaration that abolitionists wanted to "blow up" the union, further illustrate the flogger-style faith in unsubstantiated (i.e., made up, fabricated) "history." I've already referenced that HERE

What a bunch of hypocrites.

We Are All Just Prisoners Here

Corey sez, "As for taking the money for Ft. Sumter...your (sic) kidding me right... give in to secessionists?"

Why not?  There's nothing wrong with secession.

Corey's concept of "union" is "a prison for states." A sort of political Hotel California where "you can check out any time you like but you can never leave."

The colonial patriots did not fight a war for independence from the crown just to incarcerate themselves and their posterity in a prison for states for all time.

It's Corey's Turn to Lie

Flogger Corey Meyer has big, fat lyin' headline at his blog which reads, "Susan Hathaway Despises USCT History." As "proof" he posts a screenshot of a Facebook post where Susan informs members that the taxpayer supported Virginia Sesquicentennial Commission is promoting a book about USCT Troops from Virginia.

I know Corey has been paying attention, so he can't use ignorance as an excuse; but the primary complaint about the commission is that it has from the beginning insulted Confederates who fought for Virginia by ignoring their service and sacrifice, and promoting everything else under the sun, including those who warred on and subjugated Virginia and her people.

If the Sesquicentennial Commission had not chosen to spit on Virginia's Confederate defenders and their history and heritage, it likely wouldn't be such a big deal that Virginians who traitorously supported the Union be recognized.  But that is not the case. 

Corey knows this.  He chooses to lie about it. Par for the course for floggers ... much of what they write about Southern Heritage advocates and activists is lies.  But just how superior is moral superiority based on fraud and falsehood (and just how moral)?