Sunday, April 11, 2010

Sunday's Quote: Confederate History Month and, of course, race

April is Confederate History Month, and this year it has drawn more attention than usual.  A couple of days ago, President Obama rebuked Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell for leaving any mention of slavery out of his official proclamation, and earlier today the always entertaining Roland Martin labeled the Confederate soldier as a "domestic terrorist."

Martin exclaimed that the present-day defenders of the Confederacy "sound eerily similar to what we hear today from Muslim extremists who have pledged their lives to defend the honor of Allah and to defeat the infidels of the West."  He added, "If a Confederate soldier was merely doing his job in defending his homeland, honor and heritage, what are we to say about young Muslim radicals who say the exact same thing as their rationale for strapping bombs on their bodies and blowing up cafes and buildings?"

Astonishing, but such comments are to be expected from an individual who once compared the challengers of Obama's citizenship to Holocaust deniers.

I was among the nearly 800 people who offered a rebuttal to the Christian Science Monitor story (via Yahoo.com) about Governor McDonnell.  In my brief offering, I pondered why such a vast gathering of mostly underprivileged and non-slave-holding Southerners would form a volunteer army to battle against their brethren of the North while knowingly outnumbered, under-resourced and altogether unprepared to face a logistically superior opponent in the name of maintaining a slavery establishment that was perpetuated by a mere 6% of the Confederate populace.

My somewhat facetious, yet completely factual piece earned 10 "thumbs up," one "thumbs down," and a couple of nice comments that were on par with the considerable majority of impassioned, Southern-friendly comments.  Evidently there are more of us than I originally thought.

In light of the unyielding racial context that appears to envelop, if not dominate, every imaginable social, political, historical, religious and philosophical issue, I believe a recent quote sums up the present state of affairs:

"How Orwellian that the most racist members of American society, who built entire careers of fabricating evidence and defaming opponents -- an Al Sharpton, for example -- have become go-to national referees of suspected bias.  How weirder that one just pledges allegiance to the new agenda, and suddenly one is both more likely to say something racist in Reid- or Biden-fashion, and yet it is not racist at all."
-- from Victor Davis Hanson's "The New Rules of Racial Tolerance," March 30, 2010; respectfully borrowed from the Never Yet Melted blog

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