Let’s ignore the fact that this long-extinct nation was founded by Democrats who, in their secession documents, hysterically accused Republicans of posing a threat to their way of life. Conversely, what about the Confederacy should conservative Republicans respect, much less respect and promote?
It’s not just about the flag. Many people have framed this as a debate about whether the Confederate battle flag is “racist” or whether it is merely suppressed to please the gatekeepers of political correctness. But this is the wrong issue to debate. The real problem is not the Confederate flag, but everything it represents: slavery, of course, but also a way of life and a political system that goes against everything conservatives believe in. If you support capitalism, patriotism and constitutionalism and oppose the rule of an out-of-touch elite imposing its will on the majority, waving the Confederate flag does not look good on you.
For example, do you like capitalism? Supporting capitalism above all other failed economic systems seems to be the most fundamental principle of conservatism, along with individual freedom. But there was nothing capitalist about forcing enslaved people to work for free on your land. I just finished reading Thomas Sowell’s book “Redneck Blacks and White Liberals,” in which he describes how slavery so distorted Southern culture that many white Southerners became slothful and idle – a problem that would persist after the Civil War, when the entire region fell into disrepair. in poverty. Pro-slavery South Carolina senator John Calhoun predicted that the South would be in dire straits if slavery were abolished and white slaveholders were forced to lift a finger: “Even the poorest man will not do manual labor under any circumstances. He has too much pride for that.
Robert E. Lee himself was concerned about Southerners’ lack of work ethic, the result of decades of forcing others to do their work for them: “Our people are anti-work,” Lee wrote. “Our soldiers, officers, the community and the press all laugh at it and resist.”
This sounds like Occupy Wall Street or Antifa, not red-blooded, unrepentant Americans.
Modern Confederate apologists, including Ann Coulter, promote the image of Southern soldiers bravely entering battle to defend their homeland, not to defend slavery. It’s a romantic image long promoted by plantation tours and “Gone With the Wind,” but it’s not reality. The Confederate Army’s soiled secret was its massive desertion problem. In an armed force of less than a million men, it is believed that at least 100,000 Confederate soldiers deserted. Poorer states in Appalachia lost even more – in North Carolina, one in four Confederate soldiers deserted.
Contrary to Coulter’s image of a Southern army that had twice the passion and fighting spirit of the Union but simply fewer men, the truth is that the Civil War was never popular with the 75 percent of white Southerners who did not own slaves. Among poorer Southerners, slave owners were known as the “planter class.” Members of the planter class had money to pay replacement soldiers to fight on their behalf, causing deep resentment among their poorer white neighbors. The war was so unpopular in the mountainous regions of Appalachia that deserters actually formed their own militias to fight off Confederate forces trying to punish them. By comparison, of the 16 million Americans who fought in World War II, only 20,000 were charged with desertion.
Finally, Coulter and others who idealize the antebellum South portray Confederate soldiers as more brave, gracious, and braver than their Northern counterparts. This image is contradicted by reports from both sides about prison conditions. Last weekend I visited Johnson’s Island, a tiny outpost on Lake Erie where the Union Army imprisoned more than 2,000 Confederate soldiers for three years. Despite the harsh winters, prisoners wrote in their letters home how well they were treated. They had plenty of food, comfortable barracks, and even a shop where they could buy personal items. Of the more than 2,000 Confederates who passed through Johnson Island, only 200 were killed. Contrast this with the treatment of Northern prisoners at Andersonville, where over 13,000 soldiers died.
“The Yankee soldiers imprisoned there lived in the open, protected only by makeshift sheds called shebangs, built from scraps of wood and blankets,” describes the History Channel. “A creek ran through the area and provided water for Union soldiers; however, it has become a cesspool of disease and human waste.” Conditions at Andersonville were so deplorable that its commanding officer, Captain Henry Wirz, was tried and executed for war crimes.
Who more closely resembles the beloved image of the morally upright, supremely brave American soldier?
The most common reason why patriotic Americans should avoid glorifying the Confederacy is also the most obvious and compelling: The Confederate States of America were traitors to the United States. Yes, they were pardoned after the war in the interest of reunifying the Union, but the definition of high treason did not change. They were lucky: they were not tried for sedition, although they could have been.
The South has something to be proud of. Although I grew up in Ohio and currently live here, I graduated from high school in Texas. I travel frequently to the southern states. From the bicultural history of Texas to the French Quarter of New Orleans, the pirate taverns of Savannah, and the Gullah Geechee settlements of South Carolina, the history of the South is filled with affluent history, music, and literature, as well as TRUE multiculturalism – the kind that white liberals often struggle with and fail to address in their urban enclaves.
But slavery and the short-lived Confederate States of America are nothing to be proud of and need not be respected. It’s time to consign the Confederate flag to the dustbin of history – not because it is “politically incorrect,” but the battle flag of a country that no longer exists, representing a people who disliked the United States so much that they seceded and tried to separate themselves from it disconnect. start something better. It’s challenging to wave a Confederate flag and call yourself an American patriot.
