Jan
07
2012
As for me, I am in favor of granting the Old South its independence from the United States of America. [See email from Human Events below.] The argument here is that there is a lot of myth and that the reality about the South was different. The reality was that 95% of the slaves were owned by 3% of the population. ( http://vaudc.org/confed_vets.html ) The poor boys from the South who fought and died had no financial stake in the war’s outcome. Not much different from today’s wars. The rich prosper through profiteering while the average folk die, suffer life-altering injuries, and pay for the war through increased taxes and reduced social services. (Iraq comes to mind.) [Parenthetically, I had two relatives fight for the Confederacy. They were brothers and they both died at Shiloh.]
WARNING: Human Events is a right-wing rag that has as much in common with objectivity as I do with the Pope.
Richard
PS – Happy New Year. This might be my last email from Human Events as I am opting out of virtually everything. And by the way, if you haven’t seen it, the January 2012 edition of the Smithsonian magazine is a real treat with articles on evotourism (swimming lizards, walking whales and early humans) as well as Gertrude Stein mobilizing modern art (we just went to an exhibit of the art she owned in San Francisco) as well as Roger Williams and the separation of church and state (remember, he was the Puritan minister who less Massachusetts and established Rhode Island.) A little more on this. The Puritans fled England because they didn’t like the manner in which the government was interfering in their religious beliefs and practices. So, what did they want to do here? The same thing. But not Roger Williams. Williams promoted the separation of church and state about 160 years before Jefferson and the others wrote it into our Constitution. [Read the article in this month's Smithsonian.] The primary Founding Fathers were anything but Christian. Most were Deists, believing essentially the same thing as Espinoza, Einstein and Hawking – that there may have been a superior force that created our universe but then departed to leave it to its own devices. As for Jefferson, there is his famous “Jefferson Bible,” in which he removed all miracles - http://www.pattonhq.com/links/uccministry/jeffbible.pdf .
On the myth that the Founding Fathers were Christians - http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/myth.html
Excerpt from Human Events Email:
The Civil War: Reality Was Different
Part of Regnery Publishing’s hugely popular Politically Incorrect Guide™ series, The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to the Civil War is a joyful myth-busting rebel yell that shatters today’s Leftist and demeaning stereotypes about the South and the Civil War — and shows why, in the words of G. K. Chesterton, “America and the whole world is crying out for the spirit of the Old South.”
Here, H.W. Crocker III profiles eminent — and colorful — military generals including the noble Lee, the controversial Sherman, the indefatigable Grant, the legendary Stonewall Jackson, and the notorious Nathan Bedford Forrest. He also includes thought-provoking chapters such as “The Civil War in Sixteen Battles You Should Know” and the most devastatingly politically incorrect chapter of all, “What if the South Had Won.”
Along the way, he reveals a huge number of little-known truths, including why Robert E. Lee had a higher regard for African-Americans than Lincoln did; how, if there had been no Civil War, the South would have abolished slavery peaceably (as every other country in the Western Hemisphere did in the Nineteenth century); and how the Confederate States of America might have helped the Allies win World War I sooner.
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Tags: Human Events, Old South
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