[Vision2020] Neo-Confederacy book

[keely emerinemix]

Visionaires (from my blog):

I've spent a lot of time over the last couple of days reading the
brand-new book Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction, by Euan Hague,
Heidi Beirich, and Edward H. Sebesta (University of Texas Press, 2008).


And why would that be?  Don't I have some pecan divinity to whip up for Christmas?

Ahhh,
but the double burner remains untouched. See, I live in a town where
the most prominent Christian minister is an avowed "paleo-confederate"
(this is somehow distinguished by him from "neo-Confederates," although
he's eager to embrace Dixie at every turn) whose close friend and
collaborator is a founding member of the League of the South, a group
of . . . ahem . . . "academics" who rabidly defend all that was true,
good, and beautiful about the Old South. 

This pastor and his
brother-in-arms published a book a few years ago lauding slavery as a
harmonious institution maligned by godless abolitionists then and
feminist sodomite-loving liberals now, and their foray into
academi-Dixia is embraced by neo-Confederates all over our country. In
addition, some of these defenders of the Stars and Bars (the
Confederate flag that displays the St. Andrews' Cross) regularly speak
at Christ Church's Trinity Fest. In fact, our own Douglas Wilson and
his Southern Slavery As It Was co-author, neo-Confederate Steve
Wilkins, both merit mention in the book -- Wilson, just a couple of
references; Wilkins, many more. 

I would chalk this interest in
a very odd interpretation of history up to the harmless academic
puttering of a few curmudgeons and quacks bent on re-creating Ol' Dixie
-- if it weren't so rife with absurdity no less sobering in its
strangeness. A little pseudo-historical bluster, I can handle; a
culture of bigotry in the name of "orthodox Christianity," I can't. I'm
only about a third of the way through the book, and I've set up sort of
a parlour game in my mind while reading it:

Are the
neo-Confederates mostly dangerous? (Many of the GOP's brightest stars
have flirted with neo-Confederate organizations, either seeking their
endorsements or lending them their support; former Mississippi Senator
Trent Lott assured the Sons of Confederate Veterans that "the spirit of
Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform.") (p.38)

Are
the neo-Confederates mostly evil? (Wilson and other pro-Confederates
revere Presbyterian theologian R.L. Dabney, who argued that social
equality in the South would "mix the blood of the heroes of Manassas
with this vile stream from the fens of Africa." League of the South
President Michael Hill offers this interpretation of the 14th
Amendment: ". . . wrong-headed liberal interpretations of the 14th
Amendment have turned Abraham Lincoln's malignant egalitarianism into
rights-based social policy . . for women, racial and ethnic minorities,
homosexuals, pedophiles, etc." And "Southern Patriot writer William L.
Cawthon opined in 1998 that "segregation is not evil or wrong. It is
simply a policy to promote the integrity of a group.")(p. 158,136)

Are
the neo-Confederates wildly heretical? (Sons of Confederate Veterans
Chaplain-in-Chief John Weaver said in 2001, "The Confederate flag
represents biblical government," and in 1994, Wilkins declares that "to
many Southerners, the defense of the Southern Cause became equivalent
to a defense of Christendom itself . . . " But maybe he's just
representing their views, not his own. Uh, no. He continues, "The War
of 1861 was a war of two different world views, one based upon the
Bible, the other, upon the minds of men.") (p.66, p. 63)

Or are they just simply nuts?

Consider:
The neo-Cconfederates are heavily vested in a theory of culture and
ethnicity that, while having almost nothing to do, actually, with
culture or ethnicity, conjures an idealized -- albeit utterly silly --
myth of a "race" of Southerners, or "Southrons," descended from the
ancient Celts: "The original settlers of the South," writes Michael W.
Masters in "Southern Patriot" magazine in 1995, "migrated from
Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Northern Ireland . . . and Ireland itself .
. . we share not only a common bloodline, but a common culture,
temperament, moral values, work ethic, folk ways, and a bond to the
land and to our own people that distinguishes us from other people in
other lands." He adds: "These traits, distinctly Southern, have
survived twenty centuries."

These traits, of course, are only
evidenced in white males, the neo-Confederates make abundantly,
despicably, tragically and vigorously clear.

Strange stuff, indeed.  

And they're in your town, Moscow.  Be sure you know what you're being "tolerant" of, please.


Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/



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