In response to criticism of the comparison in the cartoon below that such a comparison is "cheap and unjustifiable", I ended up writing the following comment (below the link):
I am not the one who asked, "what if the governor had been German?" But I did ask (at the time of the controversy) "How about a Nazi History Month?" The comparison is neither cheap, nor unjustifiable. Nazism had philosophis about society and politics that, had they not all been rooted in a notion that the Jews were the cause of all their problems, would be ideas that could be debated with critical analysis, if not even accepted. At the start there were many Jews who supported the Nazi Party and joined the cause, because they agreed with those philosophies. The fact that we can debate States' Rights vs. Federal Power, or the idea that Lincoln may have overstepped his authority as President, does not depend on recognizing and celebrating "Confederate History". One cannot - in any reasonable way - celebrate the history of a movement/philosophy/ideology/institution whose core was rotten and evil, and believed that other human beings were less simply because of some genetic factor. ... See MoreYes, the Confederacy had noble principles. Yes, there is plenty of reason to believe that slavery would have ended even in the Confederacy after couple of more decades. Yes, we have a federal government today that seems to forget the founding principles of the United States. Yes, a lot of that can be traced back to the Civil War era. Yes, had there never been slavery the Confederacy might still have ceceded from the Union and there still might have been a bloody Civil War over the rest of their principles. But the fact that the core of the Confederacy's complaint about States' Rights was an effort to protect their "traditional way of life" (ie, owning slaves that were treated not only as property, not only as sub-human creatures, but as THINGS with which they could do whatever they wanted, including but not limited to raping, deforming and killing), makes the entire institution evil, and all its complaints and ideals and philosophies moot. To celebrate "Confederate History" - and to "forget" to include any reference to slavery! - is to insult an entire race of people that, had the Confederacy not been quashed, might still be enslaved today. Just as to celebrate Nazi History would be an insult - a grotesque insult - to millions of us who, had the Nazis not been crushed, might today not even exist.
2 Comments:
I enjoyed your post. I can understand your point of view.
Keep blogging!!
This is Ibrahim from Israeli Uncensored News
12:50 AM
Seth, you hit the nail on the head. The Confederacy is as tainted by slavery as Lady Macbeth's hands are tainted with murder; there's no way to wash it out.
I'm in a group that does Civil War living history and, of course, we need Confederates. They are all good people and (as far as I can tell) not racist. Obviously their motivation isn't slavery, but neither do they try to deny it.
11:47 AM
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