Wow. As I said, I am continually amazed the raised voices generated by virtually any discussion of the Civil War.
Erik, you are free to have your opinions. I would, however, like to call your attention to the case of South Africa. There is little doubt that until recently, South Africa was one of the most oppressive nations on earth, and that the basis for this oppression was race. Certainly economics played a role in creating and maintaining Apartheid, but the main factor was race.
South Africans deliberately chose a path of reconciliation, knowing full well that monsters would go unpunished. Their neighbor to the north, Zimbabwe, did not choose that path, and a one-time grain exporter now faces a politically created famine. Now, while South Africa certainly has major problems, ask yourself where you would rather live 96 as a black or as a white.
Yes, both South Africa and Zimbabwe are different enough from Reconstruction-era America as to render my analogy vulnerable. It does illustrate that a society can choose to forgive even the greatest of atrocities. And note that I said forgive, NOT forget.
So, I stand by my opinion that romanticizing the Civil War is a bad idea, but an understandable one. In fact, one that I refuse to get my shorts in a twist about unless it's tied to a racist agenda.
Oh, and by the way, in my view, flying the 93Stars and Bars94 is the moral equivalent of flying the Nazi swastika. I suppose that92s the line that I, personally, am unwilling to cross.
I92m continually amazed at the ability of the USCW to cause raised voices, despite the fact that the shooting stopped almost 140 years ago.
For years, I held so tightly to the image of the CSA as the embodiment of evil, that my ears were effectively closed to any opinions to the contrary. I92m still convinced that the CSA, and the institution that it was founded to preserve, were evil. There is a place for apologists and moral relativism, but this is not one of them.
That said, I can now listen to people who think otherwise without getting angry. Why? Perhaps because I have traveled more in the South and understand that the story, and it92s retelling is pretty complicated. Or, it might be because I can see the potential for (and history of) acts of evil by the USA. No government, organization, society, or individual is completely evil, or innocent of evil.
It92s perfectly understandable that people would want to put a varnish of respectability or at least of justification over the actions of their ancestors. I92m willing to ignore most of it, just as I can ignore monuments to Robt. E. Lee in front of Southern courthouses. That said, what I cannot ignore is failure to learn the lessons of history, and condoning the contemporary evils that still haunt us as a legacy of the Civil War.
Evils such as using Southern anti-black sentiment to drive electoral strategy. Or deliberately disenfranchising African-Americans in ways that would be tolerated nowhere else. Or redlining. Or basing school funding on the property tax base. Or a host of other things that black Americans routinely deal with that spring from slavery and from the backlash against Reconstruction.
A little bit of romanticizing of R.E. Lee or the Confederacy pales in comparison, except when it ties into an oppressive agenda.
So, back to the original point 96 if Alan Barra wants to think that Lee was a better person than he probably was, or that the most terrible war in American history was something other than a bloody horror 96 it just discredits him. It92s disappointing, particularly in a publication like Salon, but not the end of the world. And it92s probably more of a reflection on the increased militarization of American culture, not an aggravating factor.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
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| 2004 | 1 |
| 2003 | 2 |
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