Image via WikipediaNext Tuesday Confederate Memorial Day will be celebrated in North and South Carolina. I was reminded of an excellent column penned by Ann Coulter in her book "How to Talk to a Liberal if You Must." I thought it worth a repost here."The Battle Flag" by Ann Coulter
During the Democratic primaries for the 2004 presidential election, Howard Dean set off a tsunami of indignation when he said he wanted to be "the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" (just like Bill Clinton was the candidate for the guy with the Astro-turf in the bed of his pickup truck). John Kerry said he wanted to be "the candidate of the guy whose limo driver keeps a Confederate flag in the back window of his Towne Car" and Dennis Kucinich said he wanted to be "the candidate for the guys in the low-emission hybrid vehicles with the Confederate flags in them."
Like clockwork, every presidential election year the Confederate flag becomes a major campaign issue. This always thrills the Democrats, because it finally gives them an issue to run on: Their support for the Union side in the Civil War.
After Dean's contretemps, Al Sharpton denounced the Confederate flag as an "American swastika," saying, "Imagine if I said that I wanted to be the candidate of people with helmets and swastikas." After briefly considering a personal-injury lawsuit, Senator John Edwards lectured Dean, saying, "Let me tell you, the last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do." At first, Dean refused to apologize, prolonging the Democrats' joyous self-righteousness. Dean defended himself saying, "I think the Confederate flag is a racist symbol" -- apparently under the impression that it would help matters to explain that, yes, in fact, he did want to be the candidate of racists. But eventually Dean buckled and said it was Republicans' fault: "I think there are a lot of poor people who fly that flag because the Republicans have been dividing us by race since 1968 with their Southern race strategy." Carol Moseley Braun backed him up, saying the Democrats needed to "get past that racist strategy that the Republicans have foisted upon this country." Okay, so just for the record, this was Carol Moseley Braun urging someone not to play a race card.
In fact and needless to say, it is the Democrats who have turned the Confederate flag into a federal issue, because they relish nothing more than being morally indignant. Not about abortion, adultery, illegitimacy, the divorce rate, or a president molesting an intern and lying to federal investigators. Indeed, not about anything of any practical consequence. Democrats stake out a clear moral position only on the issue of slavery. Of course, when it mattered, they were on the wrong side of that issue, too.
In addition to expressing outrage over a nonissue, Democrats take sadistic pleasure in telling blacks that everyone hates them. Demonstrating their famous appreciation of "nuance," liberals believe the Confederate flag is pure evil and anyone who flies the flag is pure evil -- and George Bush is a moron who sees the world in simplistic black-and-white terms of good and evil. I guess that's what liberals mean by "nuance."
Despite recent revisionist history written by liberal know-nothings -- the "nuance" devotees -- the Civil War did not pit pure-of-heart Yankees against a mob of vicious racist Southerners. If it had, the North might not have fought so hard to keep Southerners as their fellow countrymen. President Lincoln -- the Great Emancipator himself -- wrote to the editor of the New York Tribune in August 1862, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." Indeed, Lincoln did not even issue the Emancipation Proclamation until well into the Civil War, and then largely as a war tactic. Yes, the South had slaves. Martin Luther King was an adulterer. Life is messy.
In his second inaugural address, Lincoln said the Civil War was God's retribution to both the North and the South for the institution of slavery. By allowing slavery to continue past God's appointed time, Lincoln said, all of us had sinned: God "gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came." Jerry Falwell, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Jerry Falwell... If only Falwell had said the9/11 terrorist attack was God's retribution for abortion, sodomy, and slavery, maybe liberals wouldn't have been so snippy. Six hundred thousand white men died to end the offense to God of slavery. Never have so many died to prove what "all men are created equal" means. God have mercy on us when the country is called to account for abortion.
What is commonly known as the "Confederate flag" -- by Vermonters, for example -- is the Southern Cross, the battle flag Confederate troops carried into the field. It was not the official flag of the Confederacy and never flew over any Confederate buildings. It was the flag of the Confederate army.
The great Confederate general Robert E. Lee opposed slavery and freed his slaves. Lee fought on the Confederate side because Virginia was his home and he thought Virginia had the right to be wrong. Lee was an honorable man as well as a great general. His men followed him, many of them hungry and barefoot, because of his personal qualities and because they lived in the South -- not because they held a brief for slavery. Shelby Foote describes perplexed Union soldiers asking a captured Confederate, poor and shoeless, why he was fighting when he clearly didn't own any slaves. The soldier answered, "Because you're down here." Indeed, a small number of blacks served in the Confederate army, presumably for reasons other than their vigorous support of slavery. At an abstract level, of course, the war was about slavery, but that's not why the soldiers fought. They didn't own slaves -- their honor is really inviolate.
And they were good soldiers. The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of military valor, a separation from the "Do as I say, not as I do" North. It symbolizes what F. Scott Fitzgerald called a romantic lost cause fought by charming people. Ask any male who ever played Civil War games as a boy if there was a marked preference for one side or the other. Invariably, little boys fight bitterly over who gets to play the Confederates. This obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with slavery: The preference for the South is based purely on the military criteria of little boys. Soldiers in the Confederate army were simply cooler than those in the Union army. They had better uniforms, better songs, and better generals. And they had the rebel yell. Who would you rather be -- J.E.B. Stuart in the dashing gray uniform and a plume in his hat or some clodhopper from Maine?
The Civil War was hideous as only civil wars can be. But the victors allowed the vanquished to go home knowing they had done their duty with unsurpassed courage and devotion. Because the South was treated with honor and respect, the war did not degenerate into an unending guerrilla war, as has happened with other nations' civil wars. Confederate soldiers became a romantic army of legend, not sullen losers.
When Confederate soldiers surrendered their arms, the Union general accepting the surrender, Joshua Chamberlain, ordered his men to salute the defeated army. In response, Confederate general John Gordon reared his horse and -- as Chamberlain described it -- "horse and rider made one motion, the horse's head swung down with a graceful bow and General Gordon dropped his sword point to his toe in salutation." General Ulysses S. Grant drew up generous surrender papers for Lee to sign, precluding trials for treason. After Lee had signed, General Grant ordered Union troops to turn over a portion of their food rations to hungry Confederate troops. Years later, Lee would allow his students to say no unkind words about Grant, calling him a great man who had honored the dignity of the South. When the news came to Washington that Robert E. Lee had surrendered, President Lincoln came out on the White House lawn to announce the South's defeat. He asked the band to play "Dixie." This was an unbelievable way to end a war -- and ensured that it really did end. Winston Churchill described the Civil War as the "last war fought between gentlemen." (Perhaps F. Scott Fitzgerald and Churchill should be banned along with the Confederate flag.)
It is the proud military heritage of the South that the Confederate flag represents -- a heritage that belongs to all Southerners, both black and white. The whole country's military history is shot through with Southerners. Obviously boys from all over fought in this country's wars, and fought bravely, but it is simply a fact that Southerners are overrepresented in this country's heroic annals.
These are just some of the sons of the South:
- Sergeant Alvin York, who received the Medal of Honor in World War I for leading seven men to capture 128 Germans, including four officers, was from Tennessee.
- The most decorated soldier of World War II, Audie Murphy, was from Texas.
- The first Marine awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II, Hank Elrod, was from Georgia.
- General Lucius Clay, commander of the Berlin Airlift, was from Georgia.
- General Dwight Eisenhower was born in Texas.
- Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the Pacific commander in chief of the Navy during World War II, was from Texas.
- General Douglas MacArthur, who commanded Allied forces in World War II in the Southwest Pacific, was from Arkansas.
- General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. troops in Vietnam, was from South Carolina.
- Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller, considered by many to be the greatest Marine ever and the only Marine to be awarded the Navy Cross five times for heroism and gallantry in combat, was from Virginia.
- Tommy Franks, the army general who led the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan after the attack of 9/11, grew up in Texas.
- Famous draft-dodger Bill Clinton was from Arkansas -- showing once again that the exception proves the rule.
Phil Caputo, author of the anti-Vietnam book Rumor of War, was one of the first Marines in Vietnam. He says all his best soldiers were Southerners: They could walk for hours and hit anything -- as he puts it -- just like their Confederate grandfathers.
In his book about World War II, Citizen Soldiers, Stephen Ambrose tells of the amazing feats of Lieutenant Waverly Wray from Batesville, Mississippi: "A Baptist, each month he sent half his pay home to help build a new church. He never swore.... He didn't drink, smoke, or chase girls. Some troopers called him 'The Deacon,' but in an admiring rather than critical way." With his "Deep South religious convictions," Wray's worst curse was to exclaim "John Brown!" -- referring to the abolitionist whose actions helped spark the Civil War. Wray single-handedly killed eight German officers by sneaking up on them "like the deer stalker he was," Ambrose writes. "You don't get more than one Wray to a division, or even to an army." There was only one like him in World War I, Ambrose reports -- "also a Southern boy."
The love of home that motivated Confederate soldiers would be transmitted generations later into a virulent patriotism in the South. James Webb, former secretary of the navy, describes Southern soldiers in his military novels whispering "and for the South" under their breath when saying their duty to their country (as if Southerners need to be reminded not to commit treason). They die at war not for Old Glory, "but for this vestige of lost hope called the South." When General George Pickett rallied his men before their history-making charge at Gettysburg, all he had to say was "Don't forget today that you are from old Virginia."
The majority of military bases in the continental United States are named after Confederate officers -- Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, Fort Hood, Fort Polk, Fort Rucker. Are you beginning to see the pattern? Or consider this: When was the last time you heard a GI being interviewed on TV who didn't have a Southern accent? These are the guys who are in the military when there isn't even a war. It is career military people -- largely Southerners -- who are left with the job of drafting fresh-faced kids from civilian life and whipping them into shape when it's time to go to war. Southerners are truly America's warrior class. This is a shared cultural ethic among all Southerners, not just the "Sons of the Confederacy." And there are, incidentally, black members of "Sons of the Confederacy." In February 2003, just a few months before the Democrats were working themselves into a lather over Dean's remark about the Confederate flag, a Confederate funeral was held for Richard Quarls, whose unmarked grave had recently been unearthed. The memorial service was organized by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Though Quarls had died in 1925, the service was packed with about 150 people, including Quarls's descendants, community leaders, Civil War reenactors, and Confederate daughters. They sang "Dixie." Quarls's great-granddaughter told the newspapers, "He was a proud man and would have been honored to see this." The honored man was a former slave who had fought for the Confederacy.
The disproportionate number of blacks in the military is a reflection of the disproportionate number of Southerners in the military. Five black Marines were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for their service in Vietnam. In mind-boggling acts of heroism, they actually dove on exploding enemy grenades to protect their comrades. This is what they were trained to do. Three of the five were from the South.
In 2001, about 30 percent of blacks in Mississippi voted to keep the 1894 state flag, which displays the Confederate flag in the upper left corner. As Larry Elder has noted, would 30 percent of Jews vote to keep a swastika on a state flag? After touring the South, General Colin Powell concluded that there was no impediment to a black being elected president in America, noting that he received his strongest support from white Southerners.
Slavery is among the ugliest chapters in this nation's history -- the ugliest after abortion, which Democrats will get around to opposing in the year 3093. But it was not unique to this country and it was not unique to the South. The American flag could more plausibly be said to symbolize slavery than can the Confederate flag. Slavery was legal under the Stars and Stripes for more than seventy years -- far longer than any Confederate flag ever flew. The Ku Klux Klan did not begin using the Confederate flag until the fifties. Before that, they flew the Stars and Stripes. White-supremacist nuts living in their mothers' basements don't have a copyright to the Confederate battle flag any more than they own the copyright for the Chevy pickup truck or the Christian cross -- another symbol appropriated by the Klan.
And why does native African kinte cloth get a free pass? It is a historical fact that American slaves were purchased from their slave masters in Africa, where slavery exists in some parts to this day. Indeed, slavery is the only African institution America has ever adopted. But while some Americans express pride in their slave-trading ancestors by calling themselves "African-Americans" and donning African garb, pride in Confederate ancestors is deemed a hate crime. Perhaps, in a bid for the Catholic vote, Democrats could demand that those Masonic symbols be removed from the Great Seal of the United States. And how about the American eagle? The eagle is a bird of prey and hence offensive to rodents, a key Democrat constituency.
It is a vicious slander against the South to claim the Confederate battle flag represents admiration for slavery. It is pride in the South -- having nothing to do with race -- and its honorable military history that the Confederate battle flag represents, values that exist independently of the institution of slavery. Anyone who has ever met a Texan has an inkling of what Southern pride is about. Ever heard of a bar fight starting because somebody said something derogatory about the North? The battle flag symbolizes an ethic and honor that belongs to all the sons of the South.
Liberals love to cluck their tongues at such admiration for militaristic values. (The only time liberals pretend to like the military is when they claim to love soldiers so much they don't want them to get hurt fighting a war.) We do well to remember that it was disproportionately Southerners -- some wearing Confederate battle flags under their uniforms -- who formed the backbone of the military that threw back tyrants from Adolf Hitler to Saddam Hussein. Somebody had to engage in all those insane, mind-boggling acts of heroism, and it wasn't going to be graduates of Horace Mann High School (Anthony Lewis's alma mater). It was graduates of places like the Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute. Every year after the war was over, Civil War veterans used to return to Gettysburg to reenact the famous battle. On the 50th anniversary, as the Confederate veterans began reenacting Pickett's charge, the Northerners burst into tears and ran down the hill to embrace the Rebels, overcome with emotion at how insanely brave Pickett's charge had been. That's how much Union soldiers respected Confederate soldiers.
Man for man, the Confederate army was the greatest army the world had ever seen. It is outrageous for Northern liberals and race demagogues to try to turn the Confederate battle flag into a badge of shame, in the process spitting on America's gallant warrior class.
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