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I'm responding to this:

Yet Another Example of Neoconfederate Racism and Lunacy

Al Mackey asks, "Gee, why would anyone think these folks had racist tendencies?"

Why would anyone think that?  Um, because they're bigots, maybe? 

Seriously, why does Al automatically assume that any discussion of race must flow from "racist tendencies"?  For that matter, what is a "racist tendency"?  Like so much else in the leftist lexicon, anything --  word or phrase -- connected to the root term "race" is not objectively defined anymore. It means whatever the user (i.e., the accuser) wishes. So a conversation about race is suddenly racism -- depending, of course, upon who is conversing....

When you consider that the whole country is currently in an uproar over what are commonly accepted as "racial issues" -- why is it surprising that some people in Southern heritage would address them? Everybody else is, ya know? I mean, it is accurate to describe the NAACP's objection to the Lee portrait as race-related, correct? So how can you address that without it being a racial issue?

As for Andy's questions regarding the comments by a poster named Dan Williams -- specifically, "But it is fair to ask why (1) that person thought such views as his would be welcomed there — and he’s not new to the group, having joined months ago — and (2) why the group continues to have him as a member. There doesn’t seem to be opprobrium for the man’s views, only that he posted them where it made the group look bad..." and Al's reply, "One thinks that a reasonable conclusion is they agree with him."
..
No, it is not a fair question to ask why that person thought such views would be welcome there -- unless you're asking only the person himself and you understand that his answers apply only to him. IOW, if  you're asking so that you can use that person's response as some sort of denunciation of the group, it is not only unfair to the group; it is dishonesty on the part of the one asking.

Andy may think he knows what goes on in other people's minds; he may think he can know their motives and beliefs just by reading a few lines of text on the Internet; he may whole-heartedly believe in his own clairvoyant ability, his own ESP -- but you know what? He doesn't know.  What he's doing is substituting his perception, his suspicions, his prejudices  for other people's thoughts, beliefs and intentions.

But, really, that's not what Andy's questioning is all about. Andy is attempting to portray the group and all its members as being responsible for attracting someone with such beliefs -- which is a particularly cockeyed, and all-too-common, leftist meme.

Al thinks it's reasonable to conclude that they agree with Williams. But it is not reasonable to conclude that. I've addressed this risible leftist belief here:  Unless You Say Yer Agin' It, You Must Be Fer It?

Do we know Williams joined the SHPG solely because he thought such views would be welcome there? Or could it possibly, just barely possibly be, that he joined to support Confederate heritage? Did that even occur to Andy? Probably not, and even if it did, Andy appears to be of the school that all the floggers belong to -- that supporting Confederate heritage is itself an act of racism.

Why does the group still have Williams as a member?  Well, most Southern heritage folks still think people have a right to their beliefs, even when they don't agree with them.

Andy Hall, P.I., after some hardboiled detective work, points out that Dan Williams is not a new member of the SHPG, but joined months ago. Great piece of research, just like The Batts research Andy's been back-patted and atta-boy'd for. But he didn't tell us whether Williams posted other objectionable stuff in the group before this. I suspect he, Williams, has not, because if he had, Andy would have linked to it -- maybe even pasted it at Mackey's blog, all nice and indented and italicized.

However, if Williams hasn't posted such in the SHPG before, this is his first infraction, iddinit?  And he was called on it and apologized for it, diddinhe?  Nevertheless, Andy presumably thinks Williams should be banned from the group.

Taking a cue from Andy, I did a little detective work of my own. I went to Dan Williams's timeline and scrolled back to the beginning.  He hasn't been on Facebook very long -- since August 2012. I saw a status in poor taste that referenced the "creepy a-- cracker" phrase that achieved noteriety recently during The Trial. I also saw statuses friendly to two black members of the heritage community....

I wonder why Andy didn't comment about that....

Some of the comments addressed by Al and Andy aren't even in the thread following the Quentin Fairchild editorial. I can't find the comment referencing Michelle Obama and the New Black Panthers finishing a history book for schools, but what's wrong with facetious criticism of unqualified people determining history curriculum? Floggers are comfortable enough with such criticism when THEY think the originator of the curriculum is unqualified.

The next facetious comment simply references the fact that these days, people are "taught" history by the popular culture (and accept it), including TV, movies and sensational celebrity trials.

I'm not certain why Mr. Mackey includes in his bellyaching about "racist tendencies" Bill Vallante's comment referencing the "Peace Monument" at Gettysburg, and his conclusion that the teaching of history in this country that has fallen victim to "historians" with an agenda, since it doesn't mention any racial issue at all. But because Mr. Mackey considers himself to be a historian, I suspect he included it because his widdle feewings are hurt over the criticism.

The response to Mr. Vallante by Karen Partridge Green also makes not a syllable of reference to race -- but it does urge parents to teach their children history that the public schools have either changed or left out. And we know how liberals feel about parents having any sort of influence over their kids at all, but especially over the "sacred" ground of politically correct history....

Al accuses Kent Green of having "heard the truth but has decided in his own mind that he’s not going to believe what the secessionists themselves have said about why they were seceding."  Of course, that is not what Mr. Green said at all. Nor is it "the truth." The truth is a lot bigger and more complex than that.  But Green's encapuslation of the war is the simplistic PC version Mackey, Hall and all the floggers promote and LABEL the truth.

The floggers certainly advocate that if you’re of Confederate heritage you should be ashamed (with Andy leading by example) because your ancestors were white supremacists who wanted to enslave an entire race of people -- when we know very well that most Confederates did not own slaves and fought mainly because a brutal army was bearing down on them and their homes and families.

I've seen it for years, and it still astounds me that educated people such as Mackey and his fellow floggers can see and read, over and over, in the very source documents, that other factors figured in secession and the war and yet they totally ignore them to focus with tunnel vision on slavery.

What do they think? That the secessionists were lying about all the other reasons? Yes, slavery was the primary one, no, it was not the only one. And one of the biggies these haters of white Confederates totally ignore -- and have suppressed in the past -- may be getting some notice. Finally. (Can't wait to see the gyrations from the floggers as they try to spin THIS.)

Thomas Fleming's "A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War" (Da Capo, 2013) is reviewed here by Winston Groom:

It's gratifying to me that Groom lays out some of the very same points I've been making for years. 

It also occurs to me to feel some grave concerns about poor Mr. Fleming. Boy, is he in for it from the PC crowd ... in for a verbal thrashing at the very least, but more likely a verbal drawing and quartering because, as we know, the Stalinista PC crowd -- particularly on matters of the civil war, and "racist tendencies" --  allows no differing opinions... indicating that political correctness is today's disease in the public mind, and it's just as as virulent as those of the past....  The floggers are living proof of that.