Never a More Pyrrhic Victory

Victors

  

I wanted to follow up on my last post about Cliven Bundy, where I alluded to something critical in our national character that lies at the root of much of what has consumed this country for the last 150 years.  This is something I have been working on for the last year or so, and had threaded through a number of posts, but I wanted to put the disparate elements into one coherent piece and actually start to draw some conclusions.

Simply put, you can explain a lot of the tensions in this country down to this simple set of facts:, the South knows that it lost the Civil War, but does not want to accept that fact; and the North knows it won the war, but fears that it actually lost it; and the West just wants to run away from the war.  I have detailed some of the reasons for this in previous posts, but I will sum it up in a brief statement, "Gone with the Wind" changed a nation's attitude towards the Civil War, and completely rewrote the sentiments on that conflict.  Simply put, a single book reframed the entire discussion, and tilted the weight of sympathy towards the South, and causing the North to be viewed as the unwarranted aggressor in the conflict. 

Let me explain.  The South overtly and obviously lost the War on the Battlefield.  They were virtually obliterated militarily by the Union and for almost a decade treated as an occupied country.  There are facts that everyone knows, however, the South, on some level, still lives in a state of denial which stops them from fully processing the reality.  Similarly, the North knows that it certainly won the war, but with the collapse of Reconstruction, it fears that it didn't achieve any meaningful victory.  Compound that with the shift in national perception initiated by Margaret Mitchell's book, and you shift the history to favor the South.  Then there is the West, which was founded by people, North and South, who were fleeing the war.  Perhaps not literally, but they could no longer live with the memories that confronted them everywhere they went and in everything they did and they had find a fresh start.

Before I fully explain this, and how it impacts our national character though, I would like to talk about the experiences that I had that led me to begin to develop this hypothesis.  I understand this is anecdotal, but there is quite a bit written on this subject to back up my observations.

It began to scratch at the back of my awareness when I first moved to the South.  Before moving to Savannah, the sum total of my experiences with the South were visiting my Great Aunt in Cape Coral Florida.  (and I realize that Southern Florida is NOT culturally the South, at least it hasn't been for a long time)  Other than those trips, I had never set foot in any part of the South.

When I was moving down to that part of the country, I stopped for gas in Murfreesboro and saw a T-Shirt that said the following; "It is better to have fought and lost than to have never have fought at all - the South shall rise again."   Later, I was lost in the backwoods of Georgia and came upon a compound surrounded by Confederate flags and fronted by a sign stating "And the Children of Ham shall ever be servants of Man.  Genesis 9:25."   Asking around, I discovered things like the fact that lists are still maintained in some quarters of the South that list who belongs to who, so that someday they can "reclaim their property."  All of this fleshed out the idea of Southern denialism.  They flat out couldn't accept that they lost the war, at least not on some fundamental and vital level.    

I do want to state here though, despite my serious problems with the South and Southern Culture, it is equally wrong to paint the entire region and everyone from there as illiterate, racist redneck Bible Thumpers.  There are many Southerners who don't idealize the Confederacy and slavery, and who utterly reject those atrocities, just like there are many Northern Racists who idolize the KKK.

But that stereotype lead to my realization about the North.  This also starts with an anecdote that occurred after moving back to the North.  One of my friends, at a social gathering, went into a complete diatribe against the South and everything Southern, painting with that broad brush that I just described.  Even though this person did not have any relatives with firsthand memory of the Civil War, it was still as personal an affront to him as it was to some of the Southerners I met in Savannah.

Then I went to Boston and Providence last summer.  This was the first time I had really been  in New England.  Although I lived in New York City, that isn't the North, nor really anything related to the Civil War.  In New York there is the attitude that there are two parts of America, The City, and then the Rest.  North/South issues are irrelevant there.  (I have also been to Hartford, but that was for a job interview so there really wasn't any chance to explore, and it didn't spark any thought)

What shocked me when I went to Providence was the fact that they proudly displayed two cannons from Gettysburg.  I found this odd, given Gettysburg had nothing to do with Rhode Island, other than possibly supplying troops and such.  But, this was significant.  Gettysburg was the definitive turning point in the Civil War, the point at which Northern Victory really became inevitable.  In a sense, displaying those cannons was as clear public statement about the Union Victory as the T-Shirt showed Confederate Denial.

As I processed these revelations over the course of the summer, I really got angry, especially when at another social gathering, there were both Northerners and Southerners, and they began criticizing each other's part of the country.  I just basically wanted them to both shut up and stop wearing the War on their sleeves.  Seriously, it was a century and a half ago.  There isn't a single person alive today who even heard firsthand accounts of the war.  It is dead and buried., its over, done, finished, and it's time to move on.

That's when I realized that I, as a Westerner, am perpetuating the Western escape from the Civil War.  I, like most people in the West that I know, are sick of hearing about the war, sick of the recreations, sick of the tensions, sick of the TV shows, and just generally want everyone to shut up about it.  The war is over, we don't need to keep re-litigating it. 

But, being me, I couldn't just figure this out and move on from it, because I knew that this was a very important realization about the country, and why things are what they are, and why we are so polarized.    Before I go any further here, I want to say, the polarization of the country is no better or worse than it has been at any point for the last century and an half.  The reason we think it is worse is the result of two aligned factors. 

First, we see and hear about the tensions more now than previously.  This is partially because of the 24 hour news cycle, and partially because of the great internal migration of the last 30 years.  Before about 1970, if you were born in the North you generally stayed in the North (unless you moved to Florida, which is why Florida hasn't been "Southern" in a generation)  It was similar with the other regions of the country, except for people continuing to move West.  But, as with all of the Western migrations, North/South allegiance disintegrated at the Colorado/Kansas state line.   However, with the recent migrations across the nation, we are living in regions ideologically opposed to where we were brought up.  We don't like it one bit, when we have to live in places that give us culture shock, which is a typical ex-pat lament.  It is even worse when we are forced to think, "This is America and it's my home too, I shouldn't be feeling this way in my own country."  I know that firsthand, as it was a serious problem for me in Savannah.

The second reason that we think polarization is worse is because of the proliferation of news; in our media saturated environment we hear more and we know more, and most of it upsets us severely.  This works two ways.  First we hear a lot of voices condemning the other side for their essential evil and sharing all of the immoral, unnatural or even evil things that our opponents are doing.  Second, we hear what our government is doing, specifically, we hear when they are treating with the enemy.  And because we hear so many outrageous things that the enemy is doing, we hold our politicians feet to the fire in such a way that they cannot broker the kinds of deals that pasted the country together and created the illusion of a "United" States of America.

Now for my point after this lengthy exposition.  Much in this country can be explained through this filter:  the South rejects any political ideology espoused by the North, the North rejects any cultural ideology tied to the South and the West just wants to be left alone.

First, to look at the South, and their part in the play.  The South rejects Northern political solutions.  This stems from the Carpetbaggers and the Reconstruction, where Northerners tried to turn the South into their own little marionette, where they pulled the strings and made the puppet dance.  This may sound like I sympathize with the South, and perhaps I do a bit.  We made the same mistakes after World War I in Europe, which directly led to Fascism and Nazism, and ultimately to World War II.  Had we not punished the South, and instead embarked on an American version of the Marshall Plan, American might be a much different and more unified place.

By humiliating the South, the Union guaranteed inter-generational hate of the North, and anything that came from there.  Progressivism, Unions,  Equal Rights, Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, all of these things were Northern political solutions, pushed through by the Federal Government, and more of less imposed on the South.  Further, other than some brief anomalies, Northern politics and policies, regardless of party, have dominated in the Federal Government.  It is no surprise that the South is rabidly anti-government, and that disdain is the core of the Tea Party Ideology.  To the South, the Federal Government has become the symbol of Northern Aggression, and anything it does is therefore wrong.

But then, there is the Northern rejection of Southern Culture, that engenders equal derision and even hate in the Union States.  Southern Culture, specifically, their innate cultural conservatism and resistance to change, is what spurred the Civil War.  Rather than accept that slavery was rapidly becoming immoral, not just in the United States, but across the globe, the South stubbornly clung to the institution, to the point of tearing the country apart to try to preserve it. 

But this isn't the only cultural touchstone that the South has imposed on the North.  Religiously based discrimination, Segregation, Creationism, distrust of Science, conservative religious morals, and all that follows from Confederate Culture has equally been imposed on the North.  This has been through both churches and through control of things like the Texas Board of Education which heavily influences textbook content for the entire country.  And just like most of the country's political solutions has been Northern Impositions, most of the nation's cultural development has been restrained and molded by Southern Culture.  Just like in the end, we have fairly strong Northern Federal Government model, most of our morality is Southern Christian.

And this creates a situation where the South hates all political solutions to problems, regardless of where that solution originates, and the North hates all Southern cultural impositions, again regardless of what type it is.  The Southerners still paint all politicians with the Carpetbagger brush, believing them to be fundamentally corrupt creatures, and the Northerners stereotype all Southerners with the Slaveholder image, considering them to be backward, ignorant racists.

And then there is the West, which really hates both sides of this fight and just wants to be left alone.  Many in the media conflate Western Libertarianism with Southern Tea Partyism, but they are actually quite different, although sometimes their goals align.  But sometimes the Western though aligns with the Northern Ferderalism as well. 

The Southern Tea Party wants to get government out of people's lives, so that religion can take over the guidance of the country.  It isn't anti-authoritarian, it is anti-government.  On the other hand, Western Libertarianism just wants to be basically anarchic to a greater or lesser extent.  They are not really pro-government, but they also aren't particularly sold on religious authority, or any sort of over-arching system of control.

Remember, the West was born out of escaping the conflict that tore the East apart.  It was also founded in a strong individualism because there wasn't much out here to rely on until recently.  In point of fact, even when I was a child, you pretty much kept six months of food, a good supply of water, and candles handy, because, in an emergency, you needed to be able to take care of yourself and family.  This has led to a kind of survivalist mentality among Westerners. 

But in even in that independence, there is something important wrapped up in it.  Even though you needed to take care of yourself, you still helped the community.  In the West, the community, whatever that might be, is far more important than it is back East.  Back East, you help the people you know, in the West, you help the people around you, even if you don't know them that well.

The other aspect of the independence of the Western mindset is basically, if I'm not hurting anyone, leave me the Hell alone.  Legalization of Pot, prostitution, gambling, isolationism, gun rights and anti-regulation are part and parcel of this worldview.  We have no problem with being left to our own resources, but we really don't like being told what to do, even if it is in our best interests. 

This leads to the West being relatively volatile in terms of national politics.  Our allegiances shift with the winds, sometimes we side with the Northern Politics, sometimes with the Southern Culture, but no one seems to realize out East that these are temporary alliances, because this group or that group just happens to be going in the direction we want to go.  We have no sense of commitment to either side.  Right now, because the politics of the North seem to be more about freedom, i.e. legalization, gay rights, etc, we tend to vote in that direction, sometimes.  But if Southern Culture seems to give more freedom, i.e. gun rights or reduced regulation, we will go that direction, sometimes.  And in the end we will go for whatever freedoms we want more at that moment.  We are a very fickle date, which neither party seems to recognize.

But in the end, I think this really frames what is going on in this country.  Northern Political Solutions vs. Southern Cultural Solutions vs. Western leave me alone solutions.  It will be interesting to see over the next decade if we can solve this, and overcome the bitter legacy of a War that honestly has been over for a century and a half.  Of course, that is just the Westerner in me talking.

The Revision of Cultural Nostalgia

Blindness

So, I haven’t blogged in quite a while, but recent events with Cliven Bundy have prompted me to write a sequel to my last post on the structure of racism.

Before I begin, I want to state clearly that I completely disagree with Bundy’s insensitive and inflammatory racial comments.  In no way is what I am saying a defense of him or his view, rather, it is an examination of Southern culture.  (And yes, he isn’t from the South, but his views are typically Southern none-the-less.)

So now for the kicker, Bundy most likely does not view his statement as racist.  He is probably confused and bewildered by the very accusation.  And at the root of that confusion is “Gone with the Wind,” and the re-imagining of the myth of the Antebellum South.

Despite popular belief, the South actually won the Civil War.

Oh, they lost the battle, and lost it decisively.  However, the Civil War didn’t end with Appomattox.  It didn’t actually end until Margaret Mitchell won the war, completely and decisively.

“How?” you might ask.  Easy, she completely recast the story of the Civil War.  She painted a picture of a noble and oppressed South, devastated by the tyrannical forces of Lincoln.  She depicted happy, contented slaves, who needed their wise masters to teach them how to live.  Most importantly, although subtly, she recast the war in terms of State’s Rights instead of being about slavery.

These three depictions turned public opinion toward the South being the victim, not the aggressor in the conflict.  No longer was the story that the South was willing to tear the Union apart simply to keep owning other humans, instead, it was a noble fight for local government taking precedence over an overreaching and monstrous Federalism.

One hundred and forty nine years after the formal peace accord, the Southern Myth of the tyranny of “Big Government” is now the prime paradigm in the land.  For all intents and purposes, the Federal Government is paralyzed and neutered.  They are so frightened they can’t actually enforce a just and valid law requiring nominal grazing fees for running cattle on public lands.  And, believe me, it was fear that stopped the removal of the cattle; had they proceeded, it would likely have sparked an actual rebellion in Nevada.  Probably not a revolution or civil war, but certainly a conflict on par with Shay’s Rebellion.  Worse, that rebellion could have spread out of control and into other states and regions.  It might have taken years to calm the turmoil in the country, sparked by a single act.

Further, you can see the actuality of the victory in the fact that many Americans hate and fear the Government.  They view the government through the Regan filter of “the scariest words in the English Language are ‘I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.’”  When you view Federalism and a strong central authority as the most dangerous thing in the world, the Union has ultimately lost the war.

But to return to the original point, in addition to fully buying into the Mitchellian myth of the tyrannical Feds, Bundy has bought the story of the “happy slave” hook line and sinker.  This is a common trope in the South, where people cannot wrap their brains around the abject horror of American Slavery, which was actually the MOST abominable version of slavery the world has ever seen.  Period. 

The reason for that is, in American Slavery, not only did you own people, but you had the right to sell families apart from each other.  You could sell a small child from his parents, a wife from her husband.  In fact, actual marriage between slaves was a criminal offense.  No where else in history was this ability to split families allowed.  Further, it was punishable by death to teach a slave to read or write, or give them any education.  Both teacher and pupil faced this punishment.

But people in the South, and even in the rest of this country refuse to own up to this reality.  They like to think that it wasn’t in slave owners interests to abuse their slaves and that they would obviously care for them as a valuable asset.  It’s natural, because this is such a horrific time in American History, and it comforts us to think we were kindly masters.  However, that is a lie we are telling ourselves.  We were brutal, vicious and evil at that time, and no amount of whitewashing will ever erase that fact.  The reality was not “Gone with the Wind,” it was “12 Years a Slave.”

But Cliven Bundy is a product of the myth.  He is a person, like many others in America, who actually believes that the African American population was better off as slaves.  Thanks to Margaret Mitchell, we think the slaves were well cared for, maybe as well as a pampered pet, or something like that.  And as such, he probably genuinely believes that his statement shows compassion and caring for the Black population of Nevada and of the USA.

Further, mix in the idea that federal assistance is akin to slavery, and you have a view that many Americans are still slaves; slaves to a nameless faceless bureaucracy intent on draining away all that is good and right in the world.  Suddenly you have a picture that Bundy thinks the benevolent Plantation Owner who loved his slaves like a person loves their pets is a far better slavery than slavery to the evil that is the Federal Government.

In his view, slavery gave the people purpose, skills and a reason to live, and welfare takes away all of that and replaces it with a godless communism.  And in that view, communism is far less free than actual slavery.  (Ignore the fact that the social safety net is not communism, and isn’t really even socialism, the Far Right and Tea Party refuse to see the distinction, so I will paint the world through their filter.)

And by this token, he is, to his way of thinking, being compassionate and caring.  He thinks that people were actually better off as literal property, as opposed to virtual possessions.  And he isn’t the only one.  Many politicians and even average Americans hold this view.

And ultimately, this is the danger of nostalgic myth.  Because we like to paint the world of the past in a coat of rosy happiness, we do not learn the actual lessons of the past.  People, even educated people, in refusing to come to terms with our atrocities, and coloring history with a haze of nostalgia pop off and make claims like Bundy did.

And when that takes full root in society, we repeat the sins of the past, and have to again suffer the punishment for those sins.

Know Thy Place

Placism

A couple of months ago, I was reading a very interesting book called "Better Off Without 'Em," which is an exploration of Southern culture, and how, for all intents and purposes the South really is a distinct country from the rest of the United States.  The book is on the whole, very interesting, but it is pretty much a condemnation of the South.  A lot of it is on the money, but it is harsh.  And I should say here, any part of the country could be dissected like that and a negative book written on it.  As much as I love the West, we are also very different from the rest of the country and we have cultural normatives out here that can really frustrate and upset who did not grow up here.

However, in the book, he introduced a concept that I had never heard of before, but now that I know about it, it is a perfect explanation of many things going on in the country right now, especially things in the South, and things in the Presidential race.

The concept is called Placism.  Placism is similar to racism, and in fact, they often go hand in hand with each other, but it is possible to be a placist and not a racist, or visa versa.  In fact in the South, poor white people face many of the same Placism challenges that minorities do.  The basic idea of placism parallels classism; with placism, as long as you remain in your place, and don't try to challenge the social structure, you can get along just fine.  Step outside of that box, and all hell will descend on you.

After reading about it, I realized that I had actually known about it while I was living in the South but I just ascribed it to run of the mill racism.  The episode that sticks in my mind was a conversation I had with the woman who ran the diner that I frequently ate lunch at.  She told me about an incident with her daughter's new job in Birmingham.  Her daughter had gotten an MBA, and gotten a good, although entry level, job in an investment company.  On her first day on the job, her new boss told her, "There are many opportunities here for a person like you, as long as you know your place and don't try to rise above yourself."

And that is the core of the problem.  There are many opportunities for someone, as long as they don't try to rise above themselves.  In other words, they cannot show up decent upper class white folks.  They cannot be visibly smarter, more skilled, or more accomplished that their "betters."

Once I started looking at my experiences in the South through this filter, things began to make more sense to me.  For example, as I have pointed out before, on the evening news, no matter who won the game, they would almost always show a white guy scoring a point against a black guy.  For example, they never showed a black guy making a basket, unless both teams were entirely black.  I had thought of that as racist, which is probably a part of it, but now, through the new filter, I realize that it was a visual to show cultural dominance.  Black people cannot show up white people.

Another point that is explained by placism was the faculty and staff demographic where I taught.  There were very few African-American faculty members, but there were a number of foreign born black faculty.  The staff had many African-Americans, but typically, they were in subservient roles such as security guards and administrative assistants.  There were a few in middle management, but the upper echelon of the school, both in faculty and administrative roles was exclusively white.

While on the surface, that looks like racism, it goes deeper than that.  If it was racism, why could foreign blacks get slots on the faculty while African-Americans didn't?  Placism, and the fact that educated people from other countries exist outside of the normal class structure, is a better explanation. 

And I would like to note, skilled foreigners often exist outside of normal class structures, no matter what country you are dealing with.  I applied for, and was interviewed for, several jobs in the United Kingdom, which is a notoriously class-ridden society.  I talked to a few American ex-pats living there, and they told me that they had no problems moving between the classes, and everyone accepted them.  Class in this case was strictly for the natives.  Similarly, one only needs to look at the percentages of foreign born doctors and engineers to see that in action in our country.

However, this does not translate down to the unskilled or semi-skilled end of the spectrum.  The uneducated immigrant faces the worst sort of Placism imaginable.  Back to my personal work situation, African-Americans comprised almost all of the security force at the college.  Although it was a low paying, more or less dead end job, there was a certain dignity that came from the responsibility of keeping the college secure.  The janitorial staff, which is the lowest end of the scale, was entirely Hispanic immigrant. 

And this is the norm everywhere.  Anyplace you go in this country, the first generation low skill immigrants are shoved into menial, and often degrading, jobs.  The doors to education and social improvement are closed and barred to them.  It is only the second or third generation that is allowed to break out of the placist role that is assigned to them. 

And then, that often only happens if they do not look different from the rest of the people.  The Irish were, in their day, treated just like Mexican immigrants are today, however, once they lost the accent, they could easily blend in with the rest of society.  Still, you only need to look at the occasional and very subtle discrimination of "gingers" to know that one segment of the Irish, the one that looks different, is still not as fully assimilated as the rest of them.  Being a redhead won't block you from a job or an education, but, I can say from personal experience, it does limit your dating options.

Blacks and Hispanics, except for the very light skinned, tend to get locked into certain roles permanently.  And furthermore, the people who are very light skinned, almost indistinguishable from white people, have many more opportunities available.  You can see this in this Harvard Study.

So how does this concept of Placism translate to Presidential politics.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both rose above their station, and both have been more viciously attacked than any President since the Reconstruction.

Bill Clinton faced the same placism issues as President Obama.  He came from a poor background, and he rose to the pinnacle of American society.  And the Right never forgave him for it.  They tried to destroy him and stop him from having any legacy.  Specifically, they wanted to show that a person from his socio-economic background was not equipped to be President, because the inspiration of Bill Clinton was that anyone, from any background, CAN become president.  He was the first truly middle class president since Truman, and we all know how that ended.  (Truman ended up for years on the worst president list; he's better now.)

And Bill Clinton set the stage for President Obama, who also does not come from the background that we expect of our national leaders.  Racism does play a part in the hatred of Obama, and I will not deny that.  There are many people who cry, in coded words, I don't want a black man as my President.  But that isn't the full story, it is only half of it.

Similarly, not all possible aspects of Placism are in play with the President.  Remember my example of the foreign black faculty and remember, Barack Obama's father was not born in this country.  As my mentor Joe said, shortly after Obama's victory, "It is no accident that our first black President was not descended from slaves."  He explained that, at least for the first black President, he could not have won with the baggage of slavery in his past.  Again, Joe was talking about Placism, I just didn't catch on. 

However, that said, Placism is still strongly at work in most aspects of the hatred of Obama.  Obama was raised by a single mother, he came from a relatively poor background, certainly middle class at best.  Also since his father was foreign, he carries the Placist taint of "not one of us" that you see in the Birther attacks. 

Look at the other attacks on him and you can see Placism all through them.  He got where he is because of affirmative action, which means, he could never have gotten into Harvard on his own accord.  He was a community organizer, which means, he worked in poor communities filled with poor people.  He's lazy and incompetent, which means, no one from his background has the skills to run the country.

And the single worst thing that he did; he beat a rich old white man out to become President.  He showed him up in a landslide.  He made him look bad.  He rose above his station.  He didn't know his place.

And that is nothing compared to the Hell that will open up when he beats Mitt Romney, the ultimate scion of who the Placists think "should be President."  The poor black kid wiped the floor with the rich man who is entitled to be President because of "Who he is."

It will be an interesting four years.

Hate Not Heritage

Symbols

It is time, that we as Americans recognized a simple truth - there is nothing honorable about the Confederate Flag.  It is a symbol no less polarizing or horrifying than the Nazi Flag.  And in saying this, I am not pulling the Nazi card, where people today conflate a relatively minor atrocity (or something they disagree with) with Nazi Germany.

I have stated this as a point of actual, on par, comparison.  (Yes, more people died during World War Two, but how many millions died under the yoke of slavery in the United States in the 200 years that it was legal?)

When I first moved to the South to take a job in Savannah, I passed through a gas station in Tennessee that had a large amount of merchandise that displayed the Confederate Flag.  Coming from Colorado where the Confederate flag is considered at best an inappropriate thing to display, these products shocked me.  Most upsetting of all was one T-shirt that read, "It is better to have fought and lost than to never have fought at all; the South shall rise again."

I realized in that moment that even though 150 years have passed since the start of the Civil War, the South still thinks it was in the right.  And in that moment, I also realized that I would never be able to call the South "home."  I might live there, but that would be all that I would do.  I also realized that I needed to leave that part of the country as soon as I could.

I have now left, never to return.  And that vow is brought about in no small part because of the attitude in the South toward the Civil War and the Confederate Flag. 

First, I want to state, the Civil War was entirely about Slavery, specifically, about the South refusing to accept the end of it.  If you read historical accounts of the time, you will discover that this is the truth.  At the time, the South did not even try to hide that fact.  They came right out and said that they would go to war before they would allow any further restrictions on slavery.

It is only a historical revisionist attempt to state that the war was not about slavery, it was about state's rights.  The right of the state that it was about was the "right" to own other people.  Americans need to stop thinking that "Gone With the Wind." is a historical document, it is one of the most vile reconstructions of history ever perpetrated in America.

So I will say again, the Civil War was about one thing, the South's desire to own people, and the Confederate Flag is the banner that they rallied around in that rebellion.

The actual symbol on the Confederate Flag, the Saint Andrew's Cross, is not an evil symbol, any more than the original swastika is evil.  Both symbols have become perverted and changed out of their original form.  The inverted Swastika that comprises the Nazi flag has become a symbol of hate, divorced from it's original positive meanings, just as the Saint Andrew's Cross is perverted by the addition of the stars and the red field it is displayed on. 

I would see bumper stickers all over the South that proudly displayed the Confederate Flag paired with the statement "Heritage not Hate."  Let's look at that.

If it is about heritage, it is about a heritage of causing a needless war that killed more Americans than all other the other wars we have fought as a country COMBINED.  More American soldiers died in the Civil War than died in the rest of our 200+ year military history put together.  And it was a war of choice, a war that happened solely because the Southern States knew that sooner or later slavery would be ended.  The South sunk the United States in a ocean of blood, just for the right to own other human beings. 

Some heritage.  It makes a person proud.

 Again, this is all fact, not spin, and can be easily sourced.  I would start with the excellent book "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" by James W. Loewen.  Or better yet, just examine The "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union" where South Carolina specifically holds up the rights of slave owners above "State's Rights."  (Which blows a hole in that entire "State's Rights" falsehood)  Another damning document is Mississippi's "Declaration of the Immediate Cause" which says, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world."  If you read the actual documents of the time, you see that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.

These attitudes towards slavery have not died with the end of the Civil War, they've not died with the Civil Rights Movement, they've not even died with the election of a black President.  In the South, there is still a deep, although rarely voiced, desire to bring back the institution.

I first discovered this shortly after moving to Savannah.  I went driving around the region, trying to discover the land in which I was now living.  I got lost in the backwoods of Georgia, to the point that I started listening for banjos.  I came upon what I can only describe as a compound, ringed by Confederate Flags.  In front of the compound was a billboard that read "And the children of Ham shall ever be servants of Man."  This is a direct reference to Genesis 9:25, which is the bible verse used to not only justify the slavery of Africans, but to state that it is God's Will that they be slaves.  (Africans have been interpreted by Biblical scholars to be the "Children of Ham.")

I wanted to pull the car over and take a picture of the sign, but as a long haired "Yankee" driving a small British sports car, I decided that it was in the interest of my continued health and well being that I drove quickly on.

After seeing this, I asked one of the Administrative Assistants at work about it.  She grew up in Savannah, and as a black woman growing up there, she was quite familiar with the racism in the South.  She informed me that she was certain, that if they put the issue to a vote, and only whites were allowed to cast a ballot, that they would vote overwhelmingly to reinstitute slavery.  She said that she personally had met people who got angry every time they saw an African-American who was not wearing shackles.

After this incident, I was speaking with another friend of mine who knows a couple of white supremacists.  (I need to note, he is not one himself, but he comes into contact with them through his line of work)  He informed me that there are lists out there that document who owns who so that when slavery is returned, the owners can take back their property.

This is not ancient history, this is the underbelly of modern America.  An underbelly that rallies around the Confederate flag as the symbol of it's goals as surely as the neo-Nazis rally around the Swastika.

In my last few weeks in the South, I saw a pickup truck with large Confederate Flags plastered on the sides and a sign in the back window that read, "Vote 2012, it's time to take back the plantation."  He was driving with this sign, proudly, through the streets of Savannah, with no fear of reprisal what so ever.  The boldness of this astonished and terrified me.

A symbol is a powerful thing.  It can raise up armies, it can turn brother against brother, it can tear a country apart.

That is what the Confederate Flag is.  And that is it's power, and why it must be repudiated by all Americans.

I saw another bumper sticker down there that said, "Bring back the Old South."  I wish I could have asked the car's owner what part of the Old South did he want to bring back?  Did he want to bring back the shackles, the chains, the whips, the beatings, the forced labor, the degradation, the humiliation, the forced rapes, the families torn apart, the dogs, the grinding of an entire race into the dirt, the boots on the throats of people who did nothing wrong except to be born a different color?

We need to accept that, for a large segment of the American population, the flapping of the Confederate Flag will always carry the sound of the rattle of a slave's chains.