Lost Cause and Hitler signs

Sometimes I think history has already changed.

I don't know when it may have happened officially, but there must have been a meeting (probably several), and some of us were left out.

Tomorrow marks tax day as well as the middle of Confederate History Month in Virginia, my former home. Tomorrow I will have to drive past people angry about doing their share, ignore their Hitler signs and continue to hold the line on the history I was taught.

Maybe I was too busy to notice, but somehow history has become debatable. Somewhere along the line, the notion that slavery was the central issue of the Civil War now inspires eye rolling. It's become bleeding heart to mention it. Somehow, FDR's New Deal now apparently made the Depression worse. To suggest otherwise is apparently "socialist."

I don't mean to sound elite (and I do like an occasional latte), but such notions are foolish. And, if anyone wants to wave the stars and bars (and it has nothing to do with the Dukes of Hazard), I cannot take that person seriously.

I understand that facts create dissonance and that the natural human response is to create consonance through rationalization, but this is getting ridiculous. Rationalization isn't supposed to take the form of revisionist history.

The Civil War was absolutely about states rights... to own slaves. The second part of the sentence matters. There were other states rights issues to be sure, but the slavery issue more than any other inspired war. It was one of the few actual manifestations of a domino effect. The Dred Scott case, debate about whether new states could allow slavery, the drawing of a line in the sand and the threat of the destruction of Southern economies without free labor all piled up. Loss of slavery meant loss of their way of life and economy and they chose to fight for that and not for morality.

But, we often forget that the Civil War clearly proved that the whole is greater than separate parts. Union trumps bickering factions every time. Any Civil War book will explain how keeping Southern "independent" states marching together was like herding cats. As a result, they lost the war, and, yes, that is a good thing.

All that aside, the South was against morality by attempting to preserve bondage for an entire race. Whatever conservative ideology people today may wish to bestow upon that part of history, it cannot be separated from slavery. It just can't.

Slavery is our nation's original sin. It is forever marked on our country by a scar that even appears on our Constitution, which specifically forbade any discussion of the slavery question until 1808.

The scar is still so fresh that there are people still active in the workforce today who went to segregated schools. A speaker at the March on Washington, where MLK described his dream, still serves in Congress. His name is John Lewis and he was beaten to within an inch of his life in Selma, Alabama. He still serves in Congress and the man who beat him still lives.

Here is a taste of Mr. Lewis at the DNC in 2008 (I was there).





The scar is still so fresh that a regional section of a generation still in the workforce went to segregated schools and drank from segregated water fountains. Its time to stop trying to minimize race when we talk about our nation.

The same rationalization of ideology led to the denigration of the New Deal even though my great-grandfather and great-grandmother praised FDR for saving their family until the day each died. Now that they aren't here anymore, people convince themselves of whatever is convenient.

The same rationalization caused Texas to change its school history books to exclude Thomas Jefferson from "enlightened thinkers" (!!!) and to flip-flop the amount of coverage given to FDR and Ronald Reagan despite the obvious difference in level of influence.

Never more has the following phrase seemed more timely: "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts."