Monday, September 28, 2015

Speaking of Charles Manson Qualities....

Sez "Lamp" (aka "Liberty Lamp" aka "LibertyLip" aka "Lamprey") in a recent comment thread at XRoads....
Both Hines and Hill are off their gourd.

Hines is very much like the Connie for the LOSers, while Hill babbles racist overly dramatic cheerleading nonsense at his half witted followers all day, much like “red shirt Susie”.

I agree, he has a Charles Manson quality to him. Crazy-ass and conman all rolled into one.

They must all be following the same lunatic fringe guide book…

It’s where misfits can find other misfits to mumble with about their racist ideas.

Pretty interesting, coming from a demented, self-style "anti-racist" with a death fetish  -- as found on his/her Twitter account....


In the "Nazi-killin' bizznizz..."

 


From Nazi-killin' to kill whitey....  Why would anybody in their right mind think this is okay?

Tarot death card ... just lovely.

Dead body-style chalk outline photoshopped into a blowup of its own head.  Talk about outta his/her gourd....


God is a myth for weak-minded morons who cannot think for themselves... Yet atheism, in just one century, was responsible for murdering more human beings than any other ideology or religion ...  Murderous atheistic communism --  "strong-minded homicidal maniacs thinking for themselves...."

This is the kind of people who oppose Confederate heritage, much like the guttersnipes who carried profane signs, screamed and threatened at the Confederate rally in DC and stole and destroyed property (keyed cars, stole and ripped apart a flag).

These amoral "anti-racist" haters can make some white supremacists look lofty by comparison.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Congrats to the Virginia Flaggers on the Big Twelfth!

(Click pic to see the breathtaking image full size. Via Tredegar Droneworks)
The I-64 Savage's Station, Kershaw's Brigade Memorial Battle Flag

Rules and Exceptions in the Simpson Floggosphere

Remember this? Back in January, Simpson said he was gonna "confine" his commentary on Confederate heritage advocates to a weekly column for "run-of-the-mill" items?  Well, we knew, and he knew, he couldn't do it -- he's too obsessed -- so he gave himself some wiggle room with this: "Of course, there will be exceptions to the rule, but only in cases I find particularly interesting."

Hmmm....

So, we're up to week 38 of the 52-week year. There should be 38 weekly columns and some ... number of ... exceptions to the rule.

Thus far in 2015, Simpson has uploaded to XRoads 84 posts and/or comments about Confederate heritage. That would be ... lessee... 38 "weekly columns" and ... a whopping 46 "exceptions to the rule" that he found "particularly interesting."

Talk about yer wiggle room... It's bigger than the whole house.

Most of the 84 posts/comments are about the Virginia Flaggers....



And there are fourteen weeks left in the year.

The little man from sunny Arizona, home of grammar deficient universities ... a man of his word? Or a little man with a big obsession?

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Well, Can You Read It Now?

More proof that certain heritage haters have no use for the truth.

One of my comments at XRoads, about this photo of the plane banner taken by Judy Smith:
You can see I'm right, just from looking at the image. The letters are lying flat on the ground and so you can't read the words.  I'm sure Simpson can see that, too.  Nevertheless, he says:

Well, duh. What did I say? "...you can't read the words with the letters lying flat on the ground."

You can read part of the word Confederate, but not the whole word, and none of the other words.

So what it proves of what he said is that she was there and saw the banner before it flew, and that it was laid out on the ground before her. And it proves what I said.

Can YOU read this? The words down at the end of the banner OPPOSITE from where Judy snapped the photo? Look, I enlarged it some, to help out:

Nope. Can't read it.

I even outlined those letters of the banner that are readable in the photo... Well, some of the outlined letters are readable, anyway.


Past the first E in Confederate, the letters start distorting too badly for you to make them out. Most of the D disappears. From the R onward, the word Confederate is completely unreadable. Only the cross pieces of the T and last E are distinguishable from the shadows of the upright sections on the ground.

And beyond that, no words can be made out. The letters of the last two words are completely indistinguishable as letters, and thus the words they form are totally illegible.

If you didn't already know what the banner read, you might not even be able to make out Confederate in this photo.

Judy's vantage point was the same as her camera's. She saw what the camera saw, and the camera proves she couldn't read the banner -- only part of one word, Confederate, which is not the word being made much of.

What this also  proves is that the rest of Simpson's comment is steeped in his usual hate and lying.

Sure you could ...  You do it all the time, Simpson. You fabricate or hallucinate nearly everything you call Flagger dishonesty and stupidity.

The photographic evidence proves what I've said -- Judy couldn't see, let alone spell check, the last two words in the banner when she photographed them.  It disproves what Simpson claims.

But what does he care for truth and proof? When it comes to the Virginia Flaggers -- nothing.

(P.S., um "professor" -- it's Fuh-huh-hun-nee, not Fun-hun-hun-nee. Um, just as a reminder, you're employed by Arizona State University, right?)

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

How Liars Lie.... Again.

The recent quivering hate-denigrate-and-persecutefests at Simpson's and DeStroy's flogs have been fascinating to watch. Simpson, of course, can't post about the Virginia Flaggers without hatin' and denigratin' .... and DeStroy, who appears to be bucking for a job at the Southern Pecunious Lawyer Center, (watch out Mark Potok -- s/he's coming for your job!) gets quite a bit of hate on himself (or herself, as the case may be).

So I made a comment at XRoads about the recent plane banner-gate issue, truncated here to the salient points:

Notice I didn't say this was what happened. I simply said it was the simplest explanation for the banner misspelling. Note I also said, "the simplest explanation is usually the correct one" (emphasis added). I didn't say always the correct one, or the only correct one. Anybody that's edumuhcated and has reasonable reading comprehension skills ought to not need to have these things explained.

So look at DeStroy's blatant lie: 


Keep stories straight? There was no "story" to keep straight. I had seen no mention of it on any of my VaFlagger info feeds, so I surmised what might have happened and offered that surmise as an observation in my XRoads comment. My comment clearly indicated that I was offering a conjecture, not the stating exactly what happened. 

But DeStroy says "Con-job says on your post yesterday by phone." Nope. Ah, no, that's not what I said, DeStroy. I said, "...the simplest explanation is usually the correct one... Simplest explanation ... Whoever hired the plane/banner company did so by phone, stated what they wanted the banner to say, and assumed the banner people knew how to spell..."

But Simpson falls right into line....

How can one be caught in a Flagger lie when there was no lying, just a conjecture indicated by the phrase, "simplest explanation"? You'd think that, being a college professor (albeit at a University that gets their billboards wrong) Simpson would have enough on the ball upstairs ... um ... have enough on the ... um, be smart enough to distinguish between the two.

You know what? I believe he does. I believe he knows he was perpetrating a lie, pretending I had offered THE explanation, which contradicted Susan's, when I was simply surmising and suggesting.

Oh, and no, Simpson, I didn't write what DeStroy is implying. I wrote a suggestion, as you well know, or should know.

It's all another lesson in the blatant dishonesty and lack of integrity on the part of certain critics of Confederate heritage. As to why they do it, we'll leave that for later.

My YouTube Comment to the Young Jerks....

A group has made A FOOL out of themselves? How can that happen? You are too IGNORANT to do proper syntax and grammar (not to mention ARITHMETIC), and you're complaining about a flippin' TYPO?

You can't even get your flippin' FACTS straight. It was not a Black Lives Matter protest, dipsticks. It was a group that pompously calls itself Defenders for Freedom, Justice and Equality (its members obviously can't do proper grammar any more than YOU can). You ignoramuses, you don't even know what the flippin' group was PROTESTING. And this is supposed to be a NEWS group? The Young Turks? The Young Jerks is more like it. Maybe you need to learn some flippin' JOURNALISM and check your flippin' SOURCES for accuracy instead of getting in front of a camera and GUESSING, bimbo.

And what does your flippin' error after error prove? That pretend-journalism and TRUTH are INCOMPATIBLE? Did you even CALL anybody in VIRGINIA to get the FACTS? The grammar deficient Defenders of Freedom, Justice and Equality were protesting the VETERANS MEMORIALS on Monument Avenue, and the banner was to counter their idiocy. So if y'all aren't racists, what do you attribute your stupidity and IGNORANCE to?

All this has been covered and it is easily researched. The Virginia Flaggers paid for the plane and banner -- they didn't put it together themselves, dipsticks. The banner plane company did that. I don't know why -- but then, you don't either. Maybe they ran out of E's. But the point is, you are talking about something you know NOTHING about. You are passing judgment on people and events you know nothing about. You know what that makes you, aside from ignorant? It makes you HATEFUL BIGOTS. Congrats. You're worse than ANYBODY you're complaining about. 
My parting shot to the Young Jerks, whose video is titled, "Misspelling Confederates Prove How Dumb Racists Are" --  "So, when criminal punks vandalize monuments with misspelled grafitti -- Black Lives Mater -- what do you attribute their dumbness and ignorance to?"

Monday, September 21, 2015

Beware of Schadenfreude


Thanks to Border Ruffian for bringing this to our attention....

I guess Simpson works for a substandard university that can't use proper grammar on a flippin' BILLboard...

And he made fun of the spelling on a VaFlagger plane banner, and he quivered his extreme ridicule of the VaFlaggers themselves, because quivering, extreme ridicule is something he loves.... and here  he works for this haha top 100 idiotic university that can't even put a correct sentence together for a BILLboard seen by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands ... and it appears it was botched that way on several billboards.

I guess if the VaFlaggers are responsible for pilot error when ordering an airplane banner, Simpson is responsible when HIS flippin' university makes this kind of idiotic error. If not, why not? Why does he work with such inept people? Why doesn't he make certain they at least use correct grammar in their flippin' BILLboards? Does he not CARE how moronic his employer looks? Does he not care that an INSTITUTION of flippin' LEARNING can't use proper grammar in such a PUBLIC VENUE?

Pathetic. Just pathetic.

But that's what you court when you quiver and dance and joy in schadenfreude.

Can You Read This?


Saturday, September 19, 2015

Proof Positive Simpson Hates the Virginia Flaggers

He says he doesn't hate them -- he just finds them amusing. Actually, what he means by that (judging by the reality of his blog) it that he finds them to be fodder for his visceral lust to ridicule.

Of course, when you have to twist, distort, and sometimes outright lie about events and circumstances in order to make them ridicule-able, the claim that he finds them amusing shows itself to be a lie, and him a liar.

Take the latest gust of hate-ridicule at XRoads, over a misspelled airplane banner.

What the floggers desire most in their hearts is to paint heritage folks to be the most heinously evil people on earth. And what makes one heinously evil to these folks? Racism. Never mind that today, the word no longer has an objective definition -- everything from sandwiches to brassieres have been called racist in Obama's PC America. But specifics don't matter to these people, anyway. All that matters is evilizing people they don't like (partly because those people see history differently -- can you believe it? Hating somebody and trying to get others to hate them because you don't approve of their views of history?)

But anyway, the Virginia Flaggers have become a beloved force in Confederate heritage, and this, on top of the fact that they are ordinary, decent human beings and make the most minor, harmless mistakes and infractions, because nobody's perfect, infuriates Simpson and his like-minded friends and followers.

What's left? When school age kids from other groups are rioting, burning, stealing, vandalizing, these floggers lose their minds because some kids wear Confederate clothing to school and are "uncooperative" when school officials try to bully them about it. Never mind that they didn't then burn the schoolhouse down or bring a fake bomb/clock to school ... these kids are nevertheless the most evil school kids on earth, to observe the reaction of flogger-types.

Ditto the VaFlaggers. What's the WORST thing Simpson and Co. could get on them this weekend? A misspelling. A typo in an airplane banner.

The hurricane of ridicule from XRoads bespeaks the barely hidden rage of haters. Who flippin' cares if heroes is misspelled? Besides, how do they know the Flaggers were responsible for the misspelling?

I left a comment at XRoads that, applying Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is probably the correct one), the VaFlaggers probably contracted for the banner flight by phone, told the banner folks what they wanted it to say, and assumed they knew how to spell heroes.

It turns out I was wrong. Susan posted on Facebook that she did tell the banner guy the correct spelling.

Maybe he couldn't find another E. But whatever the reason, he got it wrong, not the VaFlaggers.

But why should Simpson and the rest of the flogger hate-band let a little thing like truth deprive them of a pleasurable, gut-quivering session of hate? With people like that, judging by their responses, truth takes a very distant second place to hate.


 And...


Friday, September 18, 2015

Confederate Students and the Knockout Game

So while Simpson and his Sick-o-fants are in an uproar over some "uncooperative" kids in Virginia  who wore Confederate-themed clothing to school and were harassed by the school for it, HERE's what they ignore. And ignore. And ignore.


This kind of thing is happening constantly, from one end of the country to the other. Yes, the media ignore most of it, but we have social media now, and a lot of it gets posted on Facebook...and people who constantly go over Facebook with a fine-toothed comb looking for Confederates who say bad words or support their heritage can certainly find this stuff.

But, of course, they are not interested in real crime and real criminals -- depending on skin-color, of course. Because to find it and acknowledge it might lend a certain amount of credibility to things evil "racists" have said on Facebook...

So while Leo and Andy Hall get all bent out of shape because kids in Mississippi and Georgia fly Confederate flags from their pickup trucks and exchange insults with screaming black crowds, pay attention to what they ignore.

I guess Simpson and his followers think black kids playing the knockout gang is okay ... or at least, not all that bad.  Not nearly as bad as wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt to school or flying a flag from a pickup truck bed. How do I know?  Well, they never mention it, never say they disapprove -- and by the standards they impose on others, you HAVE to get online --  where they can see it -- and SAY what you disapprove of -- and if you don't, that means you approve of it.

Since they don't publicly disapprove of the increasing level of crime committed by young blacks, they approve of it. But we know they disapprove of Confederates who simply TALK -- who don't beat anybody up, don't stomp on their heads, don't knock them off bikes and kick their ribs....

It's possible some have issued half-hearted condemnation of black violence, the knockout game, flash mobs, etc., but there's a reason why they have to be circumspect about it... as we shall see.

Here's another example of senseless black violence -- something you rarely ever see white kids do, even those wearing Confederate T-shirts ... follow the link to Facebook.  

https://www.facebook.com/135829769783307/videos/vb.135829769783307/1101778836521724/?type=2&theater

Posted by Grand Rapids Police Department on Monday, August 3, 2015

When Johnny Cooper of Hazel Green, Alabama, walked to D.C. with a Confederate flag and certain folks threw bottles at him and tried to run over him, Ohioguy said we're supposed to just understand that the site of the flag creates emotional responses of such magnitude, they can't help but want to be violent, and we should just understand...or something like that.

Frankly, I don't think flags have much to do with it. Most of the reports of black "teen" violence are not associated with the Confederate flag in any way. 

Meanwhile, Southerners who see their heritage lied about, crapped on and targeted for erasure are supposed to have no emotional response? We're supposed to accept the "interpretation" that floggers and other "progressive" critics put on it, as if only their views matter?

Ah, no. The answer is no.

Of course, floggers and floggerettes can't be as blind or as stupid as their silence suggests. They know about black crime; they just can't say so because ... well, just NOTICING it makes you a virulent racist. And if you don't interpret Confederate teens "uncooperativeness" in their choice of school garments as violent and racist and far worse than some black knockout game player, well that makes you a virulent racist.  If they are cornered, and have to admit knowing about it, well, the standard fallback for self-styled anti-racists  is to blame "white racism" and just "understand" the emotion behind it, a la Ohioguy.

Of course.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Just Some Comments In Passing ...

... to some of the folks at XRoads....

Simpson, nothing I wrote in the post you're lying about, or in the comments following it, indicates claiming victim status. It indicates other people are attempting to victimize us. Which isn't the same thing.

Sandi, hun, go play outside. (If you have to explain to people you're writing sarcasm by including "/sarcasm",  your attempt at sarcasm is a complete failure, capisce?)

Neal, your paraphrasing is totally in error.  Not even close to what I wrote and what Carl replied.

Ohioguy, you're missing the point, as usual.

Hyperbole, Ruminski? Well, you should know, I guess.

Lamp, no evidence the guttersnipes who opposed the rally were DC residents (not residence)... Coulda been from Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Jersey... Coulda been from anywhere so no evidence DC is their town. It's the nation's capitol and belongs to the whole country. Heritage folks have as much right to go there as any other bunch, although I personally have little regard for the place and no desire to go there. It's the location of the most corrupt institution on the face of the planet -- the U.S. government. Still, the heritage folks' behavior put that of the filthy "anti-racists" to shame.

LaSquisha, "Neo-Yankee" is as much a word as "Neo-Confederate" is. One concept of neo-yankee is, a philosophical heir of those who came down South 150 years ago to kill Southerners.

Bob Carey, keep working on it; stop trying to misunderstand. And consider the ill-advisedness of getting your info about us from people who hate us. Ain't reliable.

Michael/Fundrums .. All? We are ALL ... drama queens? ALL? You have a history of being inaccurately all-inclusive about heritage folks, don'cha?

Saturday, September 12, 2015

The Lure of Confrontation

I have to give De'Stroy credit for opening my eyes... well, no, not opening them. They've been open. Let's just say credit for putting more in my field of vision. For moving some less important things out of the way so I can see what's behind them that's far more crucial.

And folks, the evil is more extensive and better disguised than I ever knew. But I'm finding out now... 

Despite being colossal and monstrous, the evil is not invincible. It will be a challenge to learn about its nature and true extent ... and  to confront it. But the challenge, the learning, the confrontation do have their attraction, especially for somebody with an extra endowment of pure cussedness such as myself...

And Now for Something Completely Different

Going way back, here are three great tunes by Gerald Albright from his Bermuda Nights CD.  This man can play a saxophone, lemme tell ya. The album was released in 1988 and I discovered it in the early 1990s when a local radio station changed its overnight venue to smooth jazz.  And the music is just as great today as it was when I bought it.

This one, Truth, was what I purchased the CD for. It reminds me of driving to New Orleans to see the Saints play in the Bobby Hebert, Dome Patrol days.



When I got the CD, and heard Feeling Inside for the first time -- just one time -- it blew me away and instantly replaced Truth as my favorite.



And more recently, I've found Too Cool to be just what the title says -- too cool -- and it has become my third favorite on this CD.



It's not often I find three favorites on a single CD -- but Albright did it with Bermuda Nights....

Friday, September 11, 2015

Be Careful Out There

In case you haven't noticed, the hate and vitriol aimed toward Confederate heritage folks is rising alarmingly, and the incitement to violence against us grows.

The cowardly anonymous blogger I call De'Stroy posts dozens of images of heritage folks who are very clearly identifiable in them, and portrays them as contemptible -- after all, they pal around with "white nationalist" League of the Southers -- although I've never known League people to be violent.

You occasionally find non-credible threats on social media by folks in our community, but there is no evidence they were made to incite anyone to violence. They're virtually always an emotional response to some outrage against heritage, tradition, Christianity, etc. I have never seen any report of actual violence that was incited by this kind of non-credible threats. The closest thing is comments encouraging physical defense against violent attacks.

Threats, of course, are not in the heritage-hater's arsenal. These are tolerant progressives -- they would never stoop to making threats. But their methodology is to portray heritage defenders as the kind of people worthy of being targeted, although they aren't actually targeting them, don't you know. They'll gladly tell you they abhor violence. But the constant drum-beat of hatred for heritage folks by people like Brooks Simpson and De'Stroy will, sooner or later, have that effect. If violence is not the result they want, why are they encouraging it?

And their hate-mongering is on the Internet -- the WORLD WIDE WEB -- where anyone can see it, and be provoked by it. Presumably, that's what they want. There's no other way to interpret what they're doing.

These are dangerous times, and getting moreso. The social media campaign encouraging the theft and vandalism of Confederate flags on private property, the  Black Lives Matter and the F--- Yo Flag movements -- these are deliberately provocative. They are incitements to violence, particularly in crowds where a mob mentality can take hold quickly, like a flash fire. The recent response to a flag rally in the nation's capital illustrates this. Fortunately, due to the restraint of heritage folks, the mob was only successful at property damage and arson -- violence against the participants was averted.

As soon as I'm physically and medically able to do so, I will resume sidewalk-style activism, and at this point, I'm not particularly worried about violence in my area. There are lots of places far worse than northwest Florida. But as our heritage community grows and activism increases, we will be more likely to draw the attention of heritage haters and their, ah, " unintended" enforcers. So I will be taking my own advice and be constantly aware of my surroundings at events and prepared to dodge bullets, to pour oil on the troubled waters, as it were, if there is opportunity to do so, and avert confrontations that could result in violence.

Confederate activists everywhere, do the same. Prepare to de-escalate possible violence by avoiding confrontations, and hope that the hate being drummed up against you, your flags, your monuments, your heritage, stays online and doesn't materialize on the sidewalks of your community.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Special Dedication to Bob Carey

and his comrades at XRoads. Mr. Carey is extremely proud of  his union ancestor CORRECTION: his native state of New York for helping to hold the country together so it could become Ronald Reagan's City on a Hill.

I wonder what he thinks about the "F-- Yo Flag" movement. You can see the video at Facebook -- it's public -- at this link: https://www.facebook.com/van.mayes.9/videos/o.102103716808586/157314737941180/?type=2&theater   (Warning, extremely filthy language.)

(I've featured another video from this movement, here: http://mybacksass.blogspot.com/2015/07/fk-yo-flag-black-powah.html


Things like this put folks like the XRoads "anti-racist" crowd in a real quandry. You can get mad and show your righteous indignation when heritage folks don't show the proper respect for Old Gory, though I've never seen anyone on our side resort to blatant disrespect. If they've done it, it hasn't gotten wide play.

But the anti-racists can't criticize blacks for this breathtaking show of contempt for the US flag and, presumably, for the republic for which it stands, because that would be racist. Any criticism of blacks is racist. We're just supposed to understand what goshawful circumstances lead them to this point. Can't criticize their disrespect for the country and flag, can't criticize their thuggery at the D.C. flag rally, can't criticize riots, looting, arson because one of them got shot by a cop, even though the cop was cleared of wrongdoing by none other than Obama's Justice Department, can't criticize the filthy language and the sheer ignorance. Because. That. Would. Be. Racist.

Must be tough, being an anti-racist, when you look straight at reality and have to pretend it doesn't exist.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

The D.C. Rally -- What Simpson and De'Stroy Didn't Show You



Uncivilized behavior, provocation, and sheer thuggery featured here makes the imaginary "racism" De'Stroy and Simpson get all bothered about look intellectually and morally lofty by comparison....THIS is what the "anti-racist" critics of heritage folks have no problem with.

This 'n' That

My Latest Meme
Getting lots of shares on Facebook.


======================================================
If I Decide to Vote
I'll vote for Trump.

No, I don't believe he will save the country.  He can't; nobody can. It's not a matter of the country being "too far gone." It's because it's completely gone.  You can't save something that's already dead.

So, no, it's not for the country, but for people. I believe he may be able to do something about the economy and bring back jobs so people won't be hurting so bad. May even be able to help in other ways. I hope so.

======================================================
The Strange Case of Sandi Saunders
There's this woman, from somewhere in Virginia or North Carolina or someplace in North Dixie, who claims to be a Southerner who honors Confederates the right way. And she hates us heritage folks because we do it, in her estimation, the wrong way.

So she posts comments in various flogger flog threads, most often Simpson's XRoads, complaining to floggers and their sick-o-fants about how wrong we are and what evil people we are and talking real ugly about us, as if the floggers and floggerettes are her allies. I am truly dumbfounded by her utter cluelessness. They are not on her side; they do not share her purported respect for Confederates, and they do not applaud her "honoring" them correctly.

Sandy, hun. Open your eyes. Those people HATE the Confederacy. They hate us heritage folks. They don't care if you honor Confederates the right way -- they HATE Confederates.  Wake up. They are not your friends.

======================================================
Racism Defined
If you’re more interested in words than behavior, you likely do not agree with my concept of racism. But it is well illustrated in these two video clips from Rescue Me, where a group of firemen are being forced to take “sensitivity training” — apparently because a female fireman … fireperson? … complained about namecalling. Particularly listen to what the Dennis Leary character says at the end of the second video — if he goes into a burning building and refuses to rescue anyone except those of his own color, THEN he will take “sensitivity training.”





That fits my concept of racism — behavior, not words. Self-styled “anti-racists” and Confederate heritage critics are focused totally on words. When the words are objectionable AND the behavior matches, then you have a case. When they don’t match *I* go by the behavior.

If anyone says all sorts of nice things about, say, blacks folks, but then exhibits objectionable behavior toward them just because of their race, I wouldn’t trust the words, get it? By the same token, if somebody “talks racist” but doesn’t exhibit racist behavior toward someone, I’m not going to be overly concerned with what they say, particularly now, when the whole country is in a racial uproar. I may disapprove of that kind of language, but to me, how people treat others is what’s important.

I know a man, a rather well known heritage advocate and activist, who is excoriated as a “racist” by race-obsessed bloggers because of things he’s said, (generally namecalling) but this man does business with blacks, counts them among his clients, has cordial relationships with them, has interacted with them socially. Like the Dennis Leary character, his behavior negates his objectionable words. He is not a racist. But floggers don't care about how well he treats people of other races. They are about words only.

Friday, September 4, 2015

A Timely Warning

Considering how offended people are getting this days, this novel is bound to deeply offend folks. Married folks who love each other and stay faithful? Horrible! And this meme doesn't even mention anti-feminism in the story!


Thursday, September 3, 2015

My Reply to Judge Martin Clark

Read Clarks's statement explaining why he removed a portrait of Gen J.E.B. Stuart from a Patrick County Courtroom here.
________________

I have read your statement concerning your removal of the portrait of General J. E. B. Stuart from the Patrick County Circuit Court's courtroom, and first, I have to ask ... are you saying that the entire time the portrait has been in the courtroom, trials there have been perceived by participants as unfair, non-neutral and prejudiced? The perception is that nobody has received a fair trial in that courtroom?  I do not believe that, which means that your up and deciding to remove the portrait has no foundation in actual circumstances in the courtroom.

I am astounded by your baldfaced statement, "Confederate symbols are, simply put, offensive to African Americans." That means all of them -- or it certainly implies that -- and I believe that this is something you cannot know. There are approximately 41 million African Americans in the United States and I submit to you it is bigotry of the highest order to imagine they all think alike, and they all have the same beliefs -- about Gen. Stuart or anything else.  Indeed, that statement is as bigoted as you claim the Confederacy's founding principles are.

You further state, "Black men and women have a bona fide, objective, fact-based, historically grounded reason to find Confederate glorification offensive, and almost all of them do in fact take offense."

I have never heard anyone who makes the claim that Confederate flags and symbols are offensive to black Americans offer the slightest objective, verifiable substantiation of it. The few who do attempt to prove the claim echo the young man several years ago whose proof to me was, "Well, duh! How would YOU feel?"

You offered no substantiation at all, but I can assure you, "almost all" of them do not take offense. In fact, according to a 2011 poll by Pew Research, there are more blacks (45%) who are indifferent to the Confederate flag, than those who are offended by it (41%); and since the flag is considered the epitome of Confederate symbology, presumably other Confederate symbols, including Gen. Stuart's portrait, would be considered even less offensive.

These numbers are not new or unusual. In 2000, a Scripps Howard poll in Texas included this agree-or-disagree statement: "The Confederate flag symbolizes racism and slavery." The poll found that 10% of whites agreed with that statement, and 40% of blacks agreed. What that means, sir, is that 60% of  the blacks polled did NOT agree that the Confederate flag symbolized racism and slavery. Even today, after a ramped up culture-war crusade against Confederate history and symbols going back years, indeed, decades, a CNN poll taken after the Charleston tragedy found that almost 30% of blacks polled see the Confederate flag as more a symbol of Southern pride than racism. Overall, 57% of the respondents found the flag to be a symbol of Southern pride, and only 33% a symbol of racism.

Now permit me to address some of your comments about the Declarations of Causes. First, South Carolina was not the Confederacy; there were twelve other states in the CSA. Second, even Mississippi's document includes numerous other reasons for secession besides slavery. Were they not important? If not, why were they included? And since they were included, should we not conclude they were important to the people of that state? Third, only four states issued declarations of causes; but we do know that the states of the upper South did not secede with the first wave, but only after Lincoln attempted to force them to send troops to invade the seceded states. Besides, the secession declarations were by no means the only documents discussing the South's reasons for wanting separation from the union.

Alexander Stephens comments about negroes in the Cornerstone Speech is, frankly, less offensive than those of famous abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, who wrote, in A Trip To Cuba in 1860, "The negro of the North is the ideal negro; it is the negro refined by white culture, elevated by white blood, instructed even by white iniquity; -- the negro among negroes is a coarse, grinning, flat-footed, thick-skulled creature, ugly as Caliban, lazy as the laziest of brutes, chiefly ambitious to be of no use to any in the world. View him as you will, his stock in trade is small; -- he has but the tangible of instincts of all creatures, -- love of life, of ease and of offspring. For all else, he must go to school to the white race, and his discipline must be long and laborious. Nassau, and all that we saw of it, suggested to us the unwelcome question whether compulsory labor be not better than none...."

Compulsory labor? Is that not slavery? What kind of abolitionist supported slavery? And Howe's words imply that she was far from alone in these views. What this means, sir, is that belief in black inferiority was hardly confined to the Confederacy, and it did not end in the United States at Appomattox Courthouse. You may bring up the argument that the Confederacy was founded on that belief -- but what do you make of the fact that the nation that warred against the Confederacy, ostensibly founded on the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, then enabled and promoted slavery for eighty-nine years, and continued to Constitutionally recognize it while it was making war on the South, and did not remove that recognition until after the Confederacy ceased to exist? There is nothing in that for African Americans to be offended by?

Few if any Confederate heritage advocates celebrate the Confederacy because of its relationship to slavery. The celebration is for those men who made up the Confederate military, over 90% of whom owned no slaves and were not fighting to protect slavery. THIS is part of the history you are overlooking, and I will not mumble abstractions at you. Those men were fighting to protect homes, families and communities from an army superior in number and arms that was swarming across their land. A study of thousands of their letters by James McPherson, a historian by no means friendly to the Confederacy, confirms this.

Take a quick look at the enemy they were fighting -- an army that burned homes, barns, even whole towns, dozens of them, many of which had no military significance. What they couldn't steal, they burned ... stored food, farming implements so no more food could be grown, crops in the field. They shot pet dogs for sport; they killed livestock and threw carcasses into streams and wells to contaminate the water and create disease in civilians at at time when there was no medicine (because the great humanitarian Lincoln had blockaded medicine), stabled horses in church sanctuaries just for spite and dug up fresh corpses looking for valuables.

Let's not forget General Sherman's orders to kill civilians:
Hdqrs. Military Division of the Mississippi,
In the Field, Rome, Ga., October 29, 1864
Brigadier-General Watkins, Calhoun, Ga.:

Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired on from Resaca to Kingston?

W.T. Sherman,
Major-General, Commanding.
 The reply he received:
Calhoun, October 30, 1864

Major-General Sherman:

My men killed some of those fellows two or three days since, and I had their houses burned. Watkins is not here, but I will carry out your instructions thoroughly and leave the country east of the road uninhabitable, if necessary.

E.M. McCook,
Brigadier-General
Confederate symbols, particularly the flag, not only represent the courage and valor, grit, determination, endurance and nobility of the Confederate soldier, who fought against that barbarous enemy, but the unimaginable suffering and death they experienced, not only on the battlefield, but in the north's POW camps. At Hellmira, (Elmira NY) Confederate POWS were fed potato peels and had to drink water befouled with sewage. One doctor there bragged that he had killed more Rebs than any union soldier by withholding medicine and blankets (which there was plenty of). The yanks built "observation decks" above the camp and charged townspeople 15c to sit there and watch the suffering of Confederate POWS in a land of plenty. Some townspeople were moved to donate bankets and such to the care of the soldiers, but camp officials refused to distribute them. Hellmira's death rate was about the same as Andersonville's in the South, where there was no donations to withhold, little food for either guards or prisoners.

There was no deliberate torture at Andersonville. It was so horrific because there was no food, no medicine (again, thanks to Lincoln's blockade), and the union refused prisoner exchanges. The north had plenty of food, blankets and medicine but deliberately withheld them from Confederate POWS. All the POW camps were overcrowded, though the union could have built more accommodations. At Camp Douglas, overflow prisoners slept in tents during the Chicago winter, as at Hellmira. Well, they spent the night in the tents; but sleep? Guards fired guns through the tents and barracks throughout the night to create sleep deprivation. They made prisoners sit bare-bottomed on blocks of ice. Made them sit astride a narrow rail raised high in the air, with weights on their ankles, for hours, and when they were taken down, they couldn't walk.

Makes you proud to be an American, don't it?

I could go on and on -- there's LOTS more history like this, but you get the point, probably more than you want to.

The "American flag" you mentioned is more properly called the U.S. flag, because Confederate flags are American flags for the same reason the US flag is -- the CSA was "...of America." And the U.S. flag is far, far from untarnished.

Here's some more history you are overlooking. Whatever sins one believes are attached to Confederate flags and symbols, the same and worse are attached to those of the USA. The United States was born in treason and rebellion. Confederacy -- slavery for 4 years. Under the US flag -- slavery for 89 years... this in a country founded on "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with ... liberty."

Northern states abolished slavery within their borders, (but sold rather than freed their slaves, mostly to reduce their states' black populations) but they were still armpit deep in slavery. Northern textile interests got rich processing slave-grown cotton in their mills. New England maritime interests got rich shipping slave-grown cotton to Europe. Northern banks got rich financing the purchase of plantations and slaves, and northern insurance companies got rich insuring slaves. Basically, the economies of both north and South rested on slavery; the main difference between the regions was that the slaves were domiciled in the South. If the north had really wanted to end slavery, they didn't have to send an army to kill Southerners. All they had to do was quit buying the cotton. Why do you suppose they didn't?

Lincoln had to sell the war to the north on "preserving the union" (which sounded like "keeping the cotton flowing northward unimpeded") because if he'd said he wanted soldiers to go south and free slaves, nobody would have volunteered.

If the South had truly cared only about slavery, they could have returned to the union at Lincoln's invitation and ratified the Corwin Amendment. But they preferred political independence to protected-forever slavery.  This is also seen in the mission of Duncan Kenner to Europe late in the war, offering to emancipate the slaves in exchange for recognition of the Confederacy by Britain and France.  Unfortunately, it occurred too late in the war to do any good, but it still stands as a historical fact that when push came to shove, the Confederates preferred political independence from D.C. to keeping slavery.

And after the war, it was official policy of the Grant Administration to kill off the buffalo to genocide the Plains Indians by starvation and take their land for white settlers. Under the US flag, southwestern Indians were imprisoned in concentration camps artfully called "reservations" in conditions worse than plantation slavery. Let's not forget the imprisonment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WWII. CIA mind control experiments on unsuspecting subjects, and its possible involvement in torture in Central America. My Lai. Kent State. Abu Ghraib.

THAT is just a few of the things that tarnish your U.S. Flag. Frankly, by comparison, the sins of the Confederacy don't look all that bad.

Everything you mentioned about the South in your last paragraph is emphatically NOT far, far distant from the battlefields of the 1860s. In fact, those aspects of Southern culture and heritage are irrevocably linked to the Confederacy, the war and its aftermath.

The flag that originally symbolized the soldiers who fought and died beneath it acquired more history and culture, and thus more meaning, with each generation. Thus, the five or six generations of Southerners following the civil war, and their culture, and the events they lived, contributed to the growing, deepening meaning of the flag.

Not everything that contributes meaning to the flag and the heritage it represents is positive and honor-worthy, but it is simply wrong to totally define it by the negatives, as you are attempting to do.

What contributes to the post-war symbolism of the flag most people are determined to ignore? Well, the seven decades or so of grinding poverty endured by huge numbers of Southerners, black and white, because northern money and industrialists deliberately prevented industry from developing in the South.

After the war, carpetbaggers came south and bought miles of virgin timber land and paid Southerners, black and white, slave wages to work in their sawmills, and kept them in perpetual debt with their "company stores." Discriminatory freight rates deliberately kept industry from developing in the South, and kept a huge percentage of the Southern population in poverty. For those who've never heard of discriminatory freight rates, or their impact on the South, here's an introduction.... http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cescott/freight.html

In any case, while Cornelius Vanderbilt II and other wealthy northern industrialists were building 100-room "cottages" in Newport, Southerners were dying in epidemics of pellagra and hookworm, thanks to their poverty diets of fatback and cornbread...

Our forebears' "grit and courage" you mentioned that got them through those hard times were the same grit and courage they showed on the battlefield and on the home front when the union army was laying waste to the South.

And it hasn't ended. The flag you honor is continually tarnished with the misbegotten deeds of the federal government and its decaying culture. The government has illegally run guns to barbarous Mexican drug cartels that got a U.S. border agent murdered, and to Islamic terrorists in Libya that got a U.S ambassador and four others murdered ... A medical "agency" that receives federal funds illegally (and horrifically) selling the body parts of aborted babies ... a president who has encouraged racial unrest resulting in riots, burning, looting and the murder of policemen... and that is just a small overview of what's happening in our rapidly deteriorating country.

The current war against Confederate heritage, which your action is a part of, is based on a lie -- the lie that results from focusing solely and totally on slavery, and blotting out everything else, from some misguided concern about black Americans that sees them as too immature and thin-skinned to deal with the misfortunes of the past. Just remember that their past also includes being sold into slavery by their own people back in west Africa.

Understand something. Southerners who love their heritage, including the Confederacy (which is under sustained attack from government, business and industry, the educational establishment and the popular culture), will no longer stand by and see it trashed and dishonored in preparation for its erasure.

My position, which is shared by a growing number of people, is that nothing -- not secession, not "preserving the union," not ending slavery, not anything -- justified the union's barbaric war on the South.

Put the portrait back where it belongs.