The Confederacy: Guardian of a Crime Against Humanity

It could be that America has never truly cared about its slaves, except for how bad those slaves made America look. That’s why we can have this debate about monuments to Confederate generals, (when there should be no need for debate, at all).

America has consistently sought to portray the antebellum South in romantic terms – with its genteel aristocracy, southern belles… oh, and “soft laughter from the negro quarters.” It was all a veneer – an affectatious delicacy beneath which rolled the total dehumanization of an entire race of people. We know this. Yet, we, enlightened people, succumb over and over to the romance that gives high priority to the imagination, and little to reason. How else to explain a nation that will revile the infamous Revolutionary, Benedict Arnold, yet revere his traitorous Confederate cousins?

There are over 700 Confederate monuments, most of which are dispersed throughout the former Confederate states. These are not monuments to heroism, as most Confederate sympathizers would have us believe.  They are the face of America’s crime against humanity. 

For the Neo-Nazi, the White Supremacist, the KKK, the Confederacy is a shield. It is the symbol of their America – defiant white men standing up to a federal government that dare be inclusive at their expense; that dare put blacks and Jews on a plane meant to be the sole inheritance of white people.

The other night, on Fox News, Dr. Charles Krauthammer lauded a monument to Confederate soldiers for their valor against overwhelming odds. But, did those soldiers fight any more valiantly that did Hitler’s Wehrmacht, who were outnumbered by the Allies 5-to-1, and still nearly won the day?

The Nazi cause was no less ignoble than the Confederate cause. Yet, there are no monuments to Erwin Rommel, Heinz Guderian, or Eric von Manstein, arguably three of the greatest military generals that ever lived.  Why is that? Because no one is allowed – and rightfully so – to romanticize what the Nazis did to the Jewish people. Yet, it is okay to romanticize a Confederacy that propagated evils against an innocent race of people America is yet to admit to:  unspeakable acts beneath that veneer of Southern gentility – rampant pedophilia – visited upon chained black children; crimes chained mothers and fathers could not protect against. Erect a Confederate monument to that!

History exists. It cannot be changed, nor erased. Memory, on the other hand, can be formed and re-formed. Robert E Lee, as the military arm of the Confederacy, sought to defeat the United States of America so that slavery could survive and, ideally, spread. That is historical fact. Today, many American’s, nonetheless, memorialize Lee – call him “America’s most beloved general”; (even more “beloved” than Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general who defeated Lee and literally saved this country!) Reconcile that. 

Now, people across this nation – many young people who have already cast off their fathers’ prejudices – tear at these Confederate statues with their bare hands, as though they instinctively know it is their future they fight for; as though they know in their gut that for the future to be realized, all of the colors of America must be fully enfranchised. That can only happen absent the Confederate shadow that looms over this nation – a presence that has been elevated to honor when all it deserves is infamy.

Take down the Confederate monuments, now. Put them in museums. Then, let us all visit those museums, and show our children the truth of this nation – how it once condoned evil, and then fought mightily to vanquish it. Put the Confederacy behind shatterproof glass, and pray that the hate it represents never rises again. 

Knowledge of Good and Evil

America does not want North Korea to have a nuclear weapon. Hell, North Korea does not want America to have nuclear weapons. What does that matter? This isn't Augusta, where gentlemen Confederates could bar the door against men of color. This isn't a gentlemen's club at all.

America did not let Russia into the nuclear club; it did not let Red China in. Those two behemoths barged in. Same for the rest of them. Do you think America would have agreed to India and Pakistan joining the club? Not on your life. They, too, had to kick the door in. North Korea has kicked like mad at that same door. For them, as for the other nuclear-armed states, it is an existential matter. Such matters cannot be decided by other men and other nations. Nations must decide that for themselves. Either way, there will be consequences.  

America opened this Pandora's Box in 1945 and immediately proceeded to drop her calamity upon the Japanese people. Since then, nations big and small have yearned for such power. Power. That's what it is. Of course, we do not want anyone else to have that power. But, it is not up to us. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil exists. America first plucked its deadly fruit, (but could neither fence it off or cut it down.) Others were bound to follow.  

Nothing is so coveted by the world's militaries as a nuclear weapon. The ultimate deterrent - it is the equalizer, like the Colt .45 of the Old West that made little men the equal of big men. Yet, nothing is so evil as a single bomb whose sole purpose is to incinerate millions, and make shambles of nations for generations, and beyond. 

That door will not hold. More nations will get this great and evil weapon. One nation will use it. Only God knows what awful chain of events that will unleash.