Rewriting history …

The Confederate battle flag has been taken down from the capitol grounds in South Carolina.

Northerners, black activists, and liberal Democrats everywhere are now pushing to have every symbol of the Confederacy and the soldiers who fought for it banished forever.

They’ve pressured retailers like Amazon, Walmart and others to stop selling anything that uses the battle flag in any way. Broadcasters have taken reruns of the old Dukes of Hazzard off the air just because the series featured a car called the General Lee with the battle flag painted on its roof. Congress is considering banning the display of the Confederate battle flag on the graves of Confederate soldiers buried in national cemeteries.

There’s even a move to tear down monuments to Confederate dead throughout the South, and perhaps destroy the Stone Mountain bas relief of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. There’s also pressure to purge the names of Confederate generals and statesmen from public schools, parks, and universities, as well as any statues or portraits memorializing them or any of their peers on state or Federal property.    

Proponents of all this are calling it a “turning point in history.”

To me, it’s eerily reminiscent of the Taliban demolishing the Buddha statues, ISIS taking sledge hammers to ancient artifacts, and the Communists rewriting history books to remove any mention of former leaders who fell from favor, and even airbrushing them out of famous photos. 

It creeps me out. It’s like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 wrapped up in one. 

Many of the generals and statesmen now being considered for “non-person” status were highly regarded in their day well beyond their role in the Civil War. 

Robert E. Lee was a top graduate of West Point, a hero of the Mexican-American War, and was on Lincoln’s short list to be commander of the Union Army before he resigned – reluctantly because he had misgivings about supporting slavery – to command Virginia’s army. After the war he was pardoned at the request of General Grant, and he served as the president of Washington College.   

Jefferson Davis was also a West Point graduate, fought in the Mexican-American War, was U.S. Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce, a Democrat Senator from Mississippi, and argued against secession before the Civil War. In fact, when he resigned from the Senate to support the South he called it the saddest day in his life.  In his later years he actively supported reconciliation with the North telling Southerners to be loyal to the Union. 

Stonewall Jackson’s tactics in the Civil War are still studied in military colleges worldwide today, not as examples of fighting to support slavery, but for their brilliance.   

In short, many of the leaders of the Confederacy and the Confederate armies were distinguished Americans in their own right. Like many of the soldiers under them, many fought primarily because they felt they had a greater duty to their states than to the Federal government. 

They are all long dead. As are the men who fought with and against them. There’s nothing to be served now by destroying monuments, removing portraits and names from schools and parks, and refusing to mark the graves of the Confederate dead. None of that will change what happened then, what happens now, or what may happen in the future.   

The Civil War is part of our history. Attempting to erase symbols of the defeated by the victors only serves to remind the vanquished of their loss.

The South suffered greatly during the Civil War and for many years after though Reconstruction, which was less about reconciliation and more about seeking retribution.  

It’s taken the better part of a century for the South to fully recover. The Civil War’s been over for almost 150 years and the South has largely moved on.

However, the North and race-baiters have not. 

Even today the prejudice against the South and its people by Northern politicians is ever present. That’s despite enormous strides in race relations there that have yet to be matched in the North. While there’s probably less racial animus in the South today than in many other places in this country, plus a greater commitment to integration, it’s still a convenient target for any demagogue who wants to fan the flames of racial division by invoking long-gone days of slavery, lynchings, and Jim Crow laws. 

Push hard enough and you will get a reaction. While you now can’t buy hats, jewelry or belt buckles with the battle flag at Walmart or Amazon, those retailers who still sell battle flags and merchandise with the battle flag are selling out.

Not because people want a symbol of slavery, but because people want a symbol of rebellion against the forces of political correctness and overreaching politicians and activists. 

So while vandals spray paint “Black lives matter” on monuments to long-dead Confederate soldiers and politicians, and activists attempt to expunge them and Confederate symbols like the battle flag from American history, it’s going to lead to a backlash. 

Expect to see more Confederate battle flags on display, not less, if this keeps up. Maybe not on government property, but certainly on private property.  And not just in the South.    

History is what it is. Not always what you want it to be. You rewrite it at your own peril. And when you try to alter history to serve your own needs, it can also alter the present in ways you might not like.