06.24.15
Wind from the South
Today’s quote, from Ann Coulter, on what is probably a bog standard belief among the dead-enders:
The Confederate flag we’re talking about never flew over an official Confederate building. It was a battle flag. It is to honor Robert E. Lee. And anyone who knows the first thing about military history, knows that there is no greater army that ever took the field than the Confederate Army.
This is what you might call overcompensation from the tribe which, today, is still very aggrieved over defeat long ago.
Anyway, “Pickett’s Charge,” comes to mind. Against a second string Union commander, that was certainly a brilliant tactical stroke.
Without getting into the weeds on military details, I recommend Shelby Foote’s excellent three volume history of the Civil War. Reading it is a serious investment of time but also something of a thorough education. Foote was born in Mississippi.
As predicted and after all they talk, they still couldn’t bring themselves to do the right thing.
And from Kleagle Ted Nugent, more expertise on the Lost Cause:
One metro Detroit native who’s been known to sport T-shirts featuring the Confederate flag is “Motor City Madman??? musician Ted Nugent.
But, he said, he wouldn’t raise the flag, or wear it, today.
The Confederate flag, Nugent told WWJ’s Laura Bonnell, did not in any way represent hate in his earlier days as a performer.
“Back when I would wear a Confederate flag on stage — along with an American flag and a POW flag and a ‘Don’t tread on me’ flag — I would be on tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd, and there wasn’t a racist thought to be found,??? Nugent said.
[Colloquially, this is watcha call “a likely story.”]
The issue with the flag, Nugent said, is more about political correctness than anything else.
Nugent said to some the flag is simply about the history of the south, and defended those who defend its continued display.
“I have to acknowledge — I think we all do — there’s an awful lot of information, an awful lot of people out there that believe the stars and bars, the Confederate flag, represents something heroic and something worth standing up for.???
No link.
Frank said,
June 25, 2015 at 8:44 am
Pretzel logic: It’s a thing.
George Smith said,
June 25, 2015 at 3:32 pm
As predicted, he went one even worse in his weekly column. I may get to it. Or not, since it’s just more hate speech.
anon said,
June 26, 2015 at 7:33 pm
Hmm, so now they fly it to “honor Robert E. Lee and the best army every to take the field,” right?
If it was such a good army, why didn’t they win?
George Smith said,
June 27, 2015 at 12:24 pm
Yes, USA Today went so far as to dig up someone calling him probably the country’s greatest general.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/25/military-ok-confederate-flag-now/29307077/
This, is reads, is something in the spirit of “reconciliation,” which is another code word for old Dixie’s resentment and overcompensation by shoving their patriotism and skill at soldiering up front whenever possible. Of course, we can easily read about the Citadel, a military academy, regularly hided by Florida State in college football, too, a game that always takes on a certain expected overtone.
From the USA Today piece:
Today, more than 40% of all military recruits come from the South, according to Defense Department statistics. By comparison, fewer than 15% are natives of the Northeast.
Moreover, there are military facilities everywhere in the South. More than one-third of the nation’s troops — about 420,000 — are based in Virginia, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia alone.
This was noted in the movie Boogeyman, years ago, the documentary about Lee Atwater, who perfected Nixon’s Southern Strategy of racial animus as an inspiration for the southern white Republican voter. The movie had a couple historians and authors talking about how one southern sentiment was of deep resentment over defeat in battle. As a consequence, there’s a retaliatory resentment toward the northeast and an overcompensation in military tradition, one where they are at the front of the line in always proclaiming a willingness to fight and die in the defense of freedom and America. It’s an inflammatory moment; actually the entire movie is and something of a must see for its unblinking accuracy.
I’m not going to link it today but it’s easy to find on Youtube.
You can contemplate the big famous military bases that are named after Confederate generals, both of whom were ultimately pretty bad leaders: Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood. About the best that can be said was they were mediocre to lousy on the battlefield.
I came away from my readings of Foote’s civil war history with the impression that most of the generals in the war were fairly poor. It was all battles of slow maneuver, strategic attrition, making field fortifications, retreats and horrendous mistakes in huge engagements leading to mass slaughters. Other dead-enders that are infrequently waved around as great military men from the Confederacy: Nathan Bedford Forrest and Kirby Smith.
Then there’s also the super-carrier named after someone lost to history, a racist senator from Mississippi, John Stennis, who was a Dixie “Democrat” before the entire region flipped to Republican after Johnson’s civil rights legislation.
Why a CVN, nicknamed the Johnny Reb, was named after him is anybody’s guess. More “reconciliation” and papering over, I suppose.
George Smith said,
June 27, 2015 at 1:28 pm
See also CVN Carl Vinson, named after another lost-to-history white American racist, Georgia, who served in the House as a Democrat.