We'll Do It Our Way

(With a nod to the Chairman of the Board.)

A response to Michael Rodgers, who left a comment following Do Scorn and Derision Destroy Intelligence? But before I get to that, I want to mention a couple of observations I've made about Mr. Rodgers, based on his comments about the Pelham Chapel flags flying "anachronistically and against protocol."

This betrays a rigid, authoritarian mindset. It's the antithesis of liberty. What's sacred about "chronisticy" (to coin another term) and "protocol"? Who says everything must conform to such arbitrary requirements? (What if the pole is fiberglass and the halyards are polyester? Is that not allowed because these materials didn't exist in the 1860s?) The only reason the floggers make this kind of argument is to stop the VaFlaggers in particular, and Southern heritage folks in general, from honoring Confederate heritage, using whatever cockamamie excuse whatever.

Now, to Mr. Rodgers' comments about the extreme and disgusting derision of the VaFlaggers activities by his flogger buddies.

What they are expressing the most is revulsion at the wasted effort towards an honorable goal.

That is complete hooey. Utter bullcrap from one end to the other. Total shuck, up, down and sideways. They are expressing their disdain for white Southerners, past and present for being lowest form of humanity on the planet -- "wacists" and "white supwemacists"-- with the exception of themselves, of course, if they happen to be Southern (like Hall and Baker). That's what lies behind their whole approach.

If your goal is to remember the service and sacrifice of Confederate soldiers, then your goal is an honorable one and you have many more colleagues than you currently believe that you have.

Not from floggers and their followers. One can remember the service and sacrifice of Confederate soldiers and still spit on their motives, their concerns, their beliefs, their culture, and generally portray them as earth's greatest scourge and the lowest form of humanity. I suspect flogger types are willing to acknowledge the service of Confederate soldiers, because if all memory of them is wiped out, it will make the righteous armies of the north look supremely foolish for coming South to fight ... what? The air? To shoot at pines and magnolias?

Kevin Levin and Andy Hall, among others, certainly want to propagate remembrances of all of the soldiers of the Civil War, including, yes absolutely including, Confederate soldiers.

Yeah, they want to propagate remembrances of Confederate soldiers as the scum who fought to keep an ENTIRE RACE in BONDAGE and gave them no more rights than HEAD OF CABBAGE, blah, blah, blah. Andy's motivation comes through repeatedly, loud and clear not only in blog posts but in the "about" posts introducing his blog.

The primary motivation of civil war floggers is the demonization of white Southerners, past and present. They may try to disguise it with what they evidently perceive to be "fair" treatment in their blogs and occasional comments in posts to have on hand for plausible deniability. (Smirk.) Their true motivation punches through frequently, for all to see.

If what Flaggers and other groups (such as the SCV) were doing was more clearly designed to solely and unequivocally promote that one honorable goal, the support would skyrocket and the disdain would disappear.

If there were nobody going toe to toe with these floggers in defense of Confederate soldiers, if the floggers had free rein and nobody to question them, demonization of Confederates in particular, and white Southerners in general, past and present, is what would skyrocket, Mr. Rodgers. So we should sell out our forebears and go along with the notion of solely and unequivocally promoting Confederate soldiers as diabolical enslavers -- i.e., the most evil people on earth -- who, it so happened, could fight good?

No. The answer is no.

We'll do it our way, and the disapprovers and deriders can huff and puff all they want to.