RSS Feed MenuVirginia Governor Bob McDonnell is in the news for reviving the tradition of issuing a proclamation declaring April as “Confederate History Month.” His two Democratic predecessors did not issue such a proclamation.
Not surprisingly, this is causing a bit of a stir among civil rights groups. David Frum, who has the proclamation in full, thinks the document is “anodyne” and not endorsing slavery.
Looking at the document, it does seem rather bland, and I doubt that McDonnell is trying to start some kind of culture war or as Frum said a lust for Confederate nostalgia.
But while it may be “inoffensive” on one level, it is still pretty bad and will hurt the GOP in the long run. As James Joyner notes, this will open up old racial wounds:
I agree with McDonnell and SCV spokesman Brandon Dorsey that the legacy of the Civil War is complicated and I understand the desire to honor the sacrifices of one’s ancestors and to remind people that the war was about more than slavery and that, in any case, the men who fought it — on both sides — were motivated by other issues. Even in the north, the war was about Union, not abolition.
But proclaiming Confederate History Month, much less after it had ceased being customary, reopens old wounds while doing next to nothing to heal them. The classic Simpsons answer, “Slavery it is, sir!” is what people will remember about the war. And flying the Confederate flag and otherwise glorifying the war is simply offensive to most black Americans and quite a few others. And, as Hardy Jackson, as ardent a lover of the South as any man alive, taught me, it’s simply bad manners to go around hurting people’s feelings for no good reason.
While this statement might be “meaningless” it does make it look like, yet again, Republicans don’t care about African-Americans. I don’t think McDonnell did this to hurt the feelings of African-American Virginians, but it does that just the same. While there might have been other causes that helped start the Civil War, we all know the main cause was slavery. Issuing a proclamation for people who for the most part supported keeping my ancestors in chains is a tad bit offensive and is hurtful. The proclamation allows blacks to believe that the GOP does not care about them.
The best thing that McDonnell could have done is just not issue a proclamation. Leave the history of the Civil War to the historians.
ottovbvs // Apr 7, 2010 at 6:29 pm
“I don’t think McDonnell did this to hurt the feelings of African-American Virginians, but it does that just the same.”
……I’m sure he didn’t…..it had a much less abstract reason……to consolidate his base…..and please can we get rid of the fiction that the civil war was about anything other than than the perpetuation of slavery in existing slave states and its extension to new states joining the union
Oskar // Apr 7, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Ottovbvs, Herbert Marcuse would be very proud of you. Apparently ift is perfectly OK to praise Stalin and the bUkranian Holomodor (Walter Duranty still has his Pulitzer) but not the Old Confederacy. Talk about double standards!
civil monster // Apr 7, 2010 at 9:06 pm
I can not understand how any one would equate the civil war as a struggle over slavery. I don’t think you would find many black historians who think so. I certainly don’t know any black people who do. The war was about the Union. Lincoln fought it to save his job. What other option did he have? Black people were certainly freed in no way but name after the war. Equality was not even seriously considered for 100 years after war. The very idea came as a shock to the whole nation when it did. Ken Burns like to portray the Civil War and the century after as a nation struggling with its conscience. Quite a long tussle. And both contestants were half asleep.
No. This man McDonnell is in trouble, not because he’s a racist but because he decided his political position was a good platform for some honesty. He is simply careless. Politics is in love gibberish. Which is exactly what his apparently honest statements have created and always will, in politics.
ottovbvs // Apr 7, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Oskar // Apr 7, 2010 at 8:53 pm
“Ottovbvs, Herbert Marcuse would be very proud of you. Apparently ift is perfectly OK to praise Stalin and the bUkranian Holomodor ”
…..Get a life buddy……I’ve never praised Stalin….since on another thread you’re accusing someone else of praising Stalin…..I assume your suffering from some sort of Stalin mania
Oskar // Apr 7, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Ottovbvs, in 2003 Ukranian Americans requested that the New York Times and the Pulitzer Board rescind Walter Duranty’s 1932 Pulitzer Prize for his lie filled reports from the USSR in re Stalin’s Five Year Plan during which millions of Ukranians died from famine (Holomodor). Both the Times and the Pulitzer Board arrogantly refused. So, according to two components of this nation’s Marcusian ruling class, Stalin is noble and good while the Old Confederacy is bad. It is a hell of a note when one can not criticize the worst mass murderer in history in what is alleged to be a free country.
ottovbvs // Apr 7, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Oskar // Apr 7, 2010 at 9:43 pm
……..Apparently you think my name is Duranty or maybe a member of the Sulzberger family…..neither is so…….and in any case what has any of this do with the American civil war….outside of your own fevered brain that is?
Oskar // Apr 7, 2010 at 10:10 pm
OK, ottovbvs, understood. You are a Holomodor denier. Look, idiot, in a nation where the tenets of Walter Duranty, Stalin and Marcuse thoroughly permeate the ruling class obviously praising the Old Confederacy is going to be crminalized.
CAPryde // Apr 8, 2010 at 12:49 am
“OK, ottovbvs, understood. You are a Holomodor denier. Look, idiot, in a nation where the tenets of Walter Duranty, Stalin and Marcuse thoroughly permeate the ruling class obviously praising the Old Confederacy is going to be crminalized.”
These comments and this line of argument seem really . . . bizarre. Reading them feels like walking a long ways for a short glass of water, as we say in Texas.
I’ll cop to that being an ad hominem attack, but I felt like it needed to be said.
Oskar // Apr 8, 2010 at 12:56 am
CAPryde: It must be bizarre in your eyes to be opposed to the greatest mass murderer in history and his acolytes who impose thought control here in what is supposed to be a free country. Oh, wait please excuse me, you and ottovbvs deny that millions of Ukrainians died in Stalin’s famine. I may be bizarre in your eyes but such is the price for being a nonconformist here in the United States of Marcusia.
mlloyd // Apr 8, 2010 at 1:21 am
It was a terrible oversight on McDonnell’s part, because the civil war was 100% about slavery. (States’ rights… to do what? A way of life… based on what?). In fairness, his apology this evening was a pretty stand-up statement.
you and ottovbvs deny that millions of Ukrainians died in Stalin’s famine.
Nobody anywhere here has done anything like that. It is far from obvious why you would choose to be obsessed with an 80-year-old Pulitzer Prize. But hey, the Greeks are still mad about losing Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, and their Balkan neighbors aren’t any more averse to lengthy grudges. So hate and obsess away! I suppose it’s a part of being human. Please be advised, though, that what you’re saying makes no sense.
Oskar // Apr 8, 2010 at 1:32 am
mlloyd, perhaps being opposed to Stalin’s brutal policies makes no sense to you (or perhaps you approve of said policies) but to some of us evil is evil whether it occurred 80 years ago or 80 seconds ago. Hate and obsess? Well, you have drug out the “H” word! Disagree with the Frankfurt School worldview or disaprove of Stalin and you are a hater.
Go Dog Go! // Apr 8, 2010 at 5:29 am
Why not just celebrate “Nazi History Month” while we’re at it? This is impossibly stupid, both historically and politically. If we wanted to further reinforce the GOP’s racist roots and difficulty with minorities, this accomplished the mission, spectacularly.
mlloyd // Apr 8, 2010 at 8:26 am
Sigh. I’ll type really slowly so that you can understand, Oskar.
Nobody here has defended anything Stalin ever did.
The governor of Virginia coming out and saying that the Confederacy is the bees knees is not the same thing as a Pulitzer Prize that was awarded 80 years ago.
Nobody here has even defended the awarding of the prize!
We are talking about something that happened yesterday, not 80 years ago. Nobody anywhere that I have ever met has any sympathy for Stalin. It is not clear to me why he is forefront in your mind. He died 35 years before I was born. He really isn’t the alpha and omega of all today’s political debates.
Stalin was almost unfathomably evil and he is disliked and disapproved of by everyone. There’s no doubt about that.
I hope this helps you.
Oskar // Apr 8, 2010 at 10:35 am
Well, mlloyd, thank you. You are the first person on this board to say Stalin is evil. The others like ottovbvs have steadfastly refused to do this. I can respect your views even if I do not agree with them.
Red Phillips // Apr 8, 2010 at 11:24 am
The anti-right to secession loud mouths certainly need to leave the history to someone else, because they are doing such a poor job of appealing to it themselves. And that is when they even bother. Mostly they just stamp their feet that secession must be illegal, it just must, because they wish it to be so and then start regurgitating Cultural Marxism like good little graduates of the Frankfurt School.
Red Phillips // Apr 8, 2010 at 11:33 am
Oskar, you simply don’t get it. Haven’t you read Animal Farm? All the animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. Who can be bothered by a few million dead dirty Ukrainian peasants or a few hundred thousand dead evil Southerners, when we have the death and injustice done to designated victims classes to flagellate ourselves about? Ritualized self-loathing is so much more fun than perspective and honesty.
DFL // Apr 8, 2010 at 12:13 pm
People who don’t stand up for their people, dead or alive, deserve to be stomped on. McDonnell did the right thing initially because he owes it to his people and supporters. He owes nothing to those who oppose them. So he need not have cowered as he most recently did.
sinz54 // Apr 8, 2010 at 12:21 pm
DFL: He owes nothing to those who oppose them.
As governor, McDonnell has the responsibility to represent all the people of his state. Not just the people who voted for him. We have too much rabid partisanship among our elected officials as it is.
This wink-wink, nudge-nudge business about the Civil War has to stop. It was fought to decide a great cause. And it has been decided: No state of the United States has the right to violate the Bill of Rights.
sinz54 // Apr 8, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Red Phillips: Mostly they just stamp their feet that secession must be illegal, it just must
I’m not as bothered by secession.
If states wanted to leave the Union today, I wouldn’t reflexively respond “No.” Heck, I would gladly negotiate a trade with Canada in which we give them Maine and Vermont in exchange for Alberta. (Vermont is so Canadian it belongs in Canada anyway. But Albertans think like Americans.)
I’m bothered about why the Southern states threatened to leave the Union in 1860. They did it to preserve the right to treat black people as subhumans.
What has changed between the 19th century and the 21st, is that now we believe in the equality of all men before God, black or white. That wasn’t true in 1860.
And it’s time that the governors of the Southern states make that clear in their proclamations about Confederate heritage: We’ve learned something that the people of the 19th century didn’t know: Blacks are equal to whites.
ottovbvs // Apr 8, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Oskar // Apr 7, 2010 at 10:10 pm
“OK, ottovbvs, understood. You are a Holomodor denier. Look, idiot,”
……if I knew what a Holomodor was it might help…..is it something you keep cigars in
Oskar // Apr 8, 2010 at 10:35 am
“Well, mlloyd, thank you. You are the first person on this board to say Stalin is evil. The others like ottovbvs have steadfastly refused to do this’
…….Well once you’d claimed I’d praised Stalin but when challenged to produce evidence failed to do so……. I decided to treat your contributions with the levity they deserve
ottovbvs // Apr 8, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Red Phillips // Apr 8, 2010 at 11:24 am
“The anti-right to secession loud mouths certainly need to leave the history to someone else, because they are doing such a poor job of appealing to it themselves. And that is when they even bother. Mostly they just stamp their feet that secession must be illegal, it just must, because they wish it to be so and then start regurgitating Cultural Marxism like good little graduates of the Frankfurt School.”
……”Have you ever noticed” as Andy Rooney used to say, how justifications for the attempted destruction of the union in defence of slavery by white supremacists and confederacy freaks always follow the same well worn path:
1. The civil war wasn’t about slavery it was about nullification, tariffs, states rights etc etc…..when this fig leaf is torn away it’s onto
2. Sterile arguments about legalisms where southern claims about secessionary rights are countered by presidential powers or specific clauses in the constitution about rewriting sections of it. Ultimately futile of course because the duly elected president of the day and the congress believed they had the powers to preserve the union and successfully implemented them.
3. Finally scraping the bottom of the barrel it’s casuistic arguments about reverse racism or cultural marxism, or false continuums (the founders were traitors also), and assorted other bs.
……Mr Phillips we have a good idea where you’re coming from and every post makes it clearer
Oskar // Apr 8, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Ottovbvs, the Holomodor is the name for the horrific famine in 1932-33 in the Ukraine under the auspices of Stalin and the Five Year Plan. Apparently, Marcusians like yourself think mass starvation is a matter to joke about.
ottovbvs // Apr 8, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Oskar // Apr 8, 2010 at 3:30 pm
“Ottovbvs, the Holomodor is the name for the horrific famine in 1932-33 in the Ukraine under the auspices of Stalin and the Five Year Plan. Apparently, Marcusians like yourself think mass starvation is a matter to joke about.”
……Since I didn’t know what it was how could I be joking about mass starvation?