It’s a slow day here at Civil War Memory. For your consideration and amusement:
There needs to be a new organization. This new organization should not be based on blood, and ancestry. And, it need not be all male, or female. It does however need to be Christian, and it needs to be committed to vindicate the Cause, where the Cause is defined by the Confederate Constitution, minus those aspects which defend slavery. The South had and has much to offer in terms of ideas and concepts for governing America. The supreme sovereignty of the individual state, the meaning of republic, the original meanings to the words of the Constitution all are applicable to today’s world.
This new organization, Patriots of the Confederacy, Inc. should not be a not – for – profit and should not be intimidated or controlled by the government. Membership should be based on the spirit of the prospective member. The prospective member should be Christian or Jewish and practicing their faith. The prospective member should be required to take a written examination to demonstrate knowledge of what they will be committing too. This knowledge should be focused on the C.S. Constitution, the writings of Jefferson Davis and the lives of R. E. Lee, Stonewall and others. And it should include questions about the Charge. Further, the prospective member should demonstrate an understanding that this is not about history, it’s about America today, and how we can improve the condition of a nation by reintroducing the ideas which were at the heart of this nation when it was conceived.
The floor is yours.
Apologize for the Godwin-bait, but it reads like “absent the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler, and the whole multiple Wars of Aggression thing, Nazi Germany had really cool BLANK” meme….
Common answers: snappy uniforms, spiffy weapons, good highways, etc…
Best,
Vogl’s been banging that drum in a lot of his columns, for a long time. If only the United States had followed the Founders’ vision, which he perceives survived in its purest form in the Confederate constitution of 1861, then we could have avoided all the ugly things that plague us as a society now — Obamacare, Detroit bailouts, Wall Street excesses, decline of churchgoing, political distension, New Deal-era big gubmint, smart-alack teenagers, Snooki Polizzi, all of it. All those things, in Vogl’s (and others’) view are the direct and immediate outcome of the black Republicans and the election of 1860. Any events or trends or crises occurring in the intervening 150 years are irrelevant; it’s a timeline with two points, 1860 and today. It’s an appealing notion, of course, because it can never be disproven.
Sorry, I meant “political dissension,” not “political distension.” But that works, too.
Dissension or distension aside, I think you have a real point here, Andy.
I’m serious when I say this wishful society, or the League of the South, would be established as a country based on Western European culture and values. But I think you all know that. I think things like this are a response to the last 50 years in which America has become much more complex. I think people like this long for a world where they don’t have to think about race, multiculturalism, affirmative action, gender quality, GLBT rights and issues and non-Christian religions and languages. They world a world not complicated by all of those things- that’s why there are so many “shoulds” in their mission statement. And honestly, I can understand because the world IS complicated. the only problem is, you can’t avoid complicated because people are complicated.
My last few sentences should (there’s that “should” again, haha) have read like this:
They WANT a world not complicated by all of those things- that’s why there are so many “shoulds” in their mission statement. And honestly, I can understand that because the world IS complicated. the only problem is, you can’t avoid complicated because people are complicated.
It really shows that what we today think was simple in 1860 is misunderstood by so many people. It may appear that 1860 was simplistic to today’s people, but they’ve had 150 years of history to look back at it. If people from today went back and were living in 1860 they would find it was just as complicated then as life is today. The foggy perception of the good old days is just that, a foggy perception. When we begin to clear that fog those days aren’t so good.
What is really misleading is that if things were so simple in 1860 why did the country go to war over slavery? Obviously it wasn’t so simple. Plus what Andy said is really more to the point. These people like Vogl think they can wave a magic wand and everything in the past will be taken care of if one thing changed back 150 years ago. They think they can keep control of everything and that everyone will adhere to their political, religious beliefs, economic policies, etc. That’s pure fantasy because it is not possible. Without the ability to question the institutions that make up our world or to create change we would stagnate. I find it hilarious that these type of people scream about 1984 type concepts when they’re the ones that really are advocating them.
Well, looking on the bright side, they seem to recognize that slavery was a negative. However, the Confederacy without slavery would be like Baseball without baseballs. Completely missing its raison d’etre.
I counted five “shoulds” in one paragraph. Talk about a lack of freedom in a society. Still, the one “should” they left out is “It should be a society based on Western European culture and values.”
Different individuals and groups have slightly different visions of what their “free South” utopia will look like, but in every case there’s an assumption that it will be populated entirely by like-minded people, without any acknowledgement or room for dissent. Michael Cushman (a.k.a. “PalmettoPatriot”), the grand potentate (or whatever) of the white nationalist Southern Nationalist Network, not long ago said in reference to yours truly, “there will be no room for traitors in a free South.” So yeah, that’s the sort of “freedom” they envision in the “free South.”
It’s also a dead giveaway that these people are dealing in a shared fantasy, and they know it.
His new title is “chancellor?” Well we know who started as chancellor!
You just had to go there. . . . 😉
Jews are Christians? Now, that is earth shattering.
“. . .it needs to be committed to vindicate the Cause, where the Cause is defined by the Confederate Constitution, minus those aspects which defend slavery.”
Wouldn’t that basically be the U.S. Constitution?
–ML
Hey, be fair! The president would be limited to one six-year term. That’s a huge, earth-shattering constitutional principle that the Confederacy bequeathed to world democracy.
“…minus those aspects which defend slavery.”
Good for a laugh, and it reminds me of a recent Daily Show episode. Some pundit had called Paul Ryan “Sarah Palin with substance and a paper trail,” which prompted Jon Stewart to point out that “you can’t say a thing is like another thing without the characteristics that define that thing!”
Well, my response is here:
http://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/secession-isnt-succeeding/
OK, I’ll bite. Is “the Charge” a reference to Pickett’s charge, or something more sublime?
I suspect it’s Stephen D. Lee’s 1906 Charge to the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
http://home.earthlink.net/~cssscv/id1.html
Or the United Confederate Veterans. Whatever.
Thanks!
“The Charge” is an invocation from S. D. Lee, the second C-in-C of the United Confederate Veterans (and black Confederate jokester), for the SCV to carry on the work of vindicating the Confederacy’s cause and the reputation of Confederate soldiers. It is something of a sacred writ within the SCV, and (like all sacred writs) is sometimes used as a blanket vindication for anything the organization does.
Vogl used to be 2nd Lt.Commander in the Texas Division of the SCV, but — so the scuttlebutt has it — was pushed out when he tried to drag the organization into modern-day, culture-war politics, which now seems to be his obsession with his columns at nolanchart-dot-com. I think those stories are likely true, given that he occasionally complains about the “grannies” in the SCV who aren’t living up to their obligations to their Confederate ancestors, and (as here) he calls for an entirely new organization in addition to the SCV and UDC, who (in his view) aren’t doing enough. Vogl currently styles himself as “chancellor” of the Confederate War College, an online subscription website he operates.
I think there is such a group already in SC, called Palmetto Patriots.
http://palmettopatriots.com/
Although I agree with the saying that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it, I find the emphasis of these groups to apply their version of history to politics of the current day stupefyingly bizarre.
Also, they tend to use the charge-related saying they have “Deo Vindice” to mean much more than it ought. It’s like they want secession to happen again but be successful this time. As for vindication of the cause, well, the reason (the cause) that the Confederate soldiers fought was because their state asked or forced them to. The soldiers were traitors to the USA, yet heroes to their state. And they likely didn’t feel like traitors because their states’ political leaders laid on the ideology real thick and because Northern troops were on the march. There you go, that’s it, vindication, done.
Finally, the notions of truth that they have are very strange. Just because someone from the south had an opinion doesn’t make their opinion a fact. For example, Jefferson Davis’s opinion was that secession could be accomplished peacefully, but that doesn’t mean that the south did indeed secede peacefully. The war came just the same.
” Jefferson Davis’s opinion was that secession could be accomplished peacefully, but that doesn’t mean that the south did indeed secede peacefully. The war came just the same.” The war came because the United States chose to prosecute it. The above comment is stupefyingly bizarre to borrow its author’s parlance.
Your word “because” indicates that you have made a conclusion and formed an opinion. I could say that the war came because of secession. That would also be an opinion. I think mine is the correct opinion, and yet I see how you could have your opinion. After all, your fact is true: Lincoln could have decided not to prosecute the war.
Regarding my statement, the word “peacefully” is a judgment, an opinion. The southern states did declare secession. Judging whether it was done peacefully, for example, involves opinions about what time frame is important (3 months, 5 years?) amid a multitude of other questions.
These arguments sometimes remind me of Annie Hall. The male and female characters have very different opinions of the exact same fact. Here, you have the right to your opinion about who specifically is to blame for starting the war. I have the right to my opinion. I think we likely agree on the facts. Where I disagree is if you want to force me to accept your opinion as “truth”. Perhaps that’s your concern about what you think I’m asking you to do. If so, well, no, I’m not asking you to say that secession caused the war. All I’m asking is that you not call your opinions “truth” and that you not call my opinions “lies”
Who marched on whom or called for volunteers to put down secession? That isn’t a matter of opinion; it is documented fact. Perhaps you are of the opinion that secession in and of itself is a violent act. I don’t think the historical record will bear that out especially as the votes for secession were either in representative bodies or in plebiscites and conducted peacefully (Virginia’s first secession attempt failed until Lincoln called for invasion). Perhaps you are of the opinion that poor Lincoln ‘had no choice’ after secession but yet that isn’t quite true either. Or perhaps he had no choice after Sumter when the glorious flag was fired upon but that isn’t particularly true either as the flag has been fired on many times that didn’t require total war to restore its honor (Panay incident of 1937, USS Liberty 1967, Beirut 2003, Khobar Towers 1996). I am curious if the Iraqis I fought in Baghdad figured that ‘the war just came’ or if the actions of a certain American president might have had something to do with it.
Jack,
Of course Lincoln had the choice to allow the Deep South to secede without forcefully intervening, but as we all know he did not. We know that Lincoln and most Northerners as well as some Southerners believed that secession was illegal. The act itself was considered to be a violent rending of the nation. Just read newspapers from around the country. I highly recommend Russell McClintock’s book Lincoln and the Decision for War for a close analysis of how Americans understood secession and why they supported Lincoln’s eventual decision.
Jack,
Your perspective is clear from “invasion” and “Iraqis.” Of course many nonslaves in the southern states in the Civil War era felt and believed that the war was Lincoln’s war and that federal troops were invading. That was their perspective. They convinced a lot of people, but they did not win the war.
Lincoln’s perspective is that he felt that the southern states rebelled by declaring secession and forming a new Confederate government and that he felt that he had no choice but to put down the rebellion and save the union. He convinced a lot of people, and he did win the war.
Jefferson Davis predicted that Lincoln would not go to war; Jefferson Davis was wrong in that prediction. Lincoln did not start a war out of nowhere; secession was declared first. Lincoln told the leaders of the southern states that he would not get rid of slavery and that he would go to war if they declared secession. The leaders of the southern states didn’t believe him on either point.
To conclude, again, I think we likely agree on all of the facts. The perspectives on those facts are where we seem to disagree. And all I’m asking is that you not call your perspective “truth” and that you not call my perspective “lies”.
The disingenuity of your position lies, of course, in the fact — not opinion — that a major portion of the South’s population, the enslaved Black laboring classes, were totally excluded from the debate about secession, and indeed from any political or civil rights at all. The situation today, naturally, is quite different. Since the descendants of your layabout Confederate heroes no longer have this source of free labor at their disposal, and since enfranchised Black folks are now able to wield considerable political power (as witness President Obama’s significant though narrow victories in red states like Virginia and Florida), I frankly have no problem with some of the current chatter of secession, and would be happy to bid a fond farewell to bastions of reaction like Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama, along with their more recent no-soul brothers in enclaves like Arizona, if that is what the majority populations there so wish. One also has to recognize that there have been significant changes, over both distant and recent history, in what constitutes the demographic majorities in these areas, taking into account the growth of the Black and Latino electorates and a younger, more progressive community of white voters in states like Arizona, Texas, Florida and New Mexico.
Naturally, all of the valuable federal property (including the multiple and lucrative military base communities in Texas), and the national resources which have been developed through the largesse of government tax breaks and other kickbacks to the illusory “proprietors” of these resources, will have to reclaimed by the citizens of the United States of America before any sort secession arrangements could be finalized. Most likely, though, reality would dictate that most of these discussions are premature if not totally moot.