To a pusillanimous Gen Xer poltroon

Click the Looney Tunes characters to hear their remarks
to Joe Cardella  at reVolt Magazine.

Bringing Down the Dixie Hicks byJoe Cardella, reVolt Magazine Once again I feel compelled to write about this incredibly tired issue of the confederate battle flag (I do apologize). Although it pains my very psyche to attack this subject again, I'm forced. The League of the South. Oh boy. This is the name of the group who most recently held a flag rally along the Biloxi beach, proclaiming the sovereignty of the "Old South." Let's start there. Appropriate meanings of the word "sovereignty" include supremacy, dominion, and power. The "Old South" is just that,old and gone. It has none of the characteristics of sovereignty. Appropriate meanings of the word "sovereignty" include supremacy, dominion, and power. The "Old South" is just that,old and gone. It has none of the characteristics of sovereignty. Yes, that's right Jefferson Davis, you are dead. The slave trade is gone, the plantations are gone, the only thing left is the good ole' boys. There's no more Tara, no more sippin' mint juleps on the front porch while Mammy watches the little baby bigots, and no more massa. This constant regurgitation of the case for "Southern Rights" is at the very least repugnant. We should have moved on by now. In fairness, the League states adamantly that they are not racist. They just wish to protect their Southern Heritage. That statement leads one to ask, "Just what is included under that label?" Does the right to enslave people fall under their idea of Southern Heritage? No matter how you twist the events of history, the war was over the right of the Southern states to own slaves. Abolishing slavery meant severely altering their way of life, so yes, the North was telling them they could not continue to live the way their Daddies did. The South in the 21st century is not a federalist nation, NOR SHOULD IT BE. The people who live here are different. Society is different. It is a dead era and should remain that way. The Confederate Battle Flag: should it fly? Should it come down? This is so terribly simple. It should come down. The flag was only used in battle. The war is over. The symbol used to identify the Confederate army. There no longer is a Confederate army. The symbol now signifies bigotry and hate. You see,the meanings of symbols change over time. For example, the Christian cross: before Jesus, seeing the cross was akin to seeing a Guillotine during the French Revolution. After Jesus, those who followed him adopted the symbol in honor of his sacrifice. The meaning changed. Another example: the swastika. Before Nazi Germany, it was an Irish symbol for good luck. When the Nazis adopted it for their national flag, it became a symbol of tyranny, bigotry, and genocide. Again, the meaning changed. People find the symbol of the army of the Confederate States of America, which was in essence fighting to keep slavery, offensive because the meaning of that symbol has changed. Because of the flag's ties to slavery, groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Neo-Nazis have adopted it. It is natural and right that the people who were oppressed by the "genteel South" be offended and outraged by the constant and determined effort of people such as the League of the South to keep that symbol a part of their every-day lives. And yet, this League complains that the symbols of their heritage are being erased and that there is "ethnic cleansing" going on. Let's all learn the meaning of the term "ethnic cleansing." Ethnic Cleansing is the attempted eradication of all members of a particular ethnic group. Do we see piles of anglo-celtic bodies in mass graves along our coastline? No. People, the symbols and products of a bygone era have a place: a museum. We can see plenty of swastikas in the Holocaust Museum. We can see plenty of Battle Flags in the many Civil War Museums throughout the country. We don't need to see them on our beaches. As a society of such diversity I believe it is important that we all know where we come from, yet it is equally important that we make sure the place we are going toward is an improvement.

A few weeks ago on the Yahoo Club "Confederate Society of America", someone posted a reference to an anti-Confederate editorial.  So I went to reVolt Magazine's website, skimmed the editorial written by Joe Cardella and titled "Bringing Down the Dixie Hicks."  Back at the CSA club, I posted my initial response, excerpted below: That photo is too dark to make out, but if it's him, he looks like an X-er, and that explains a lot.   X-ers who don't make the effort to become whole thinkers end up writing intellectual garbage like this. That's because they've been taught to cogitate with the primitive, reptilian brain (i.e., their emotional brain) rather than their cerebral cortex. They don't THINK... They FEEL. And thereby leave themselves and their arguments wide open for smashing to oblivion. I think I'll backsass this on my website over the next day or two... And, of course, send reVolt the URL. This is one of the reasons why I coined this phrase: "The South won't have to rise again; all we'll have to do is remain standing while the rest of America falls." I didn't have time to Backsass the editorial as soon as I wanted to, but I did post it on Free Republic (click HERE to see what the Freepers said about it).  A few days later, on my personal website, "For the Love of Dixie," this showed up on the guestbook: Date: 05/09/00 Guest: 3 (Reference ID: 70377) Name: 154 Email: onetokeovertheline@mailcity.com Homepage: http://neverfail.tripod.com Referred by: A Link from another Site Comments: I happen to be a good friend of the guy who wrote the anti-flag column in Revolt. I also read your reply to DeadRanger's post on the Yahoo message boards. I don't agree with anything you said, but at least I have to give you credit for criticizing us Revolt dudes publicly. The guy who posted that message you repiled to, we know him personally, and he has not told us this to our face.  One other thing: us Gen-Xers don't feel anything anymore, because it's really the "No Fun" age, and people like you try to take away all our fun. No can do. Revolt brings back the fun. Keep reading us. We are where it's at.  "Keep reading us," says 154.  I never started.  I looked around when I initially skimmed Cardella's hatchet job on Dixie, but there was little of interest to hold my attention People like me try to take away their fun?  How?  I wanted to write Mr. 154 and the "Revolt dudes" and tell them there's more to feel than just "fun" and more to life than just "feeling."  I couldn't help but wonder at the kind of beliefs and principles these "Revolt dudes" have.  At least one of them has joined the leftist crusade of lies and halftruths about our heritage designed to force Southerners to hate and repudiate our Confederate ancestors --  and to lock away their honored symbols in a museum.  In other words, they want to take away our heritage.  And they complain that we want to take away their fun? It didn't end there, though.  Seems the Mississippi League of the South didn't appreciate Cardella's public slander of their members, and the state chairman challenged him to a public debate. Guess what.  Cardella declined.  What a surprise. He did attempt to "explain" in writing that the purpose of his article was to show that the Confederate battle flag was the wrong one for the Biloxi beach display, and the 3rd National the correct one. Now, folks.  Read the editorial in the shaded area to the left, and tell me that's what it advocates.  No, it's obvious -- it's conspicuous -- that Cardella's aim is to slander Southerners in general who honor their heritage, and the League of the South in particular. When challenged about it, Cardella took the Xer's way of dealing with everything -- weaseling out of it.   For the details on  this sorry episode, go to FreeMississippi.org and read the editorial titled "Liberal Blood Has One Colour -- Yellow." Like Michael Trinkley, Ph.D., President of the Chicora Foundation, whose method for defending his words was to automatically delete a challenger's email, Cardella shows the liberal's tendency to cut and run when confronted with a difference of opinion.  (Read about Trinkley's cowardice HERE.)

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Shutting Up the Pusillanimous Poltroons by Connie Ward, 180 Degrees True South The League of the South. Oh boy. This is the name of the group who most recently held a flag rally along the Biloxi beach, proclaiming the sovereignty of the "Old South." Let's start there.  Appropriate meanings of the word "sovereignty" include supremacy, dominion, and power. The "Old South" is just that,old and gone. It has none of the characteristics of sovereignty.  I attended both the rally and the earlier conference, and I remember no such proclamation.  I'm not a member of the League of the South, but I've met a number of people who are and I've read much of its literature.  While the League does show great respect to our Confederate and colonial forebears and seeks to reestablish the principles that both the Confederacy and the U.S.A. were founded on, their focus is the future South's sovereignty.  The League is a Southern Nationalist organization. The "Old South" is just that, old and gone. It has none of the characteristics of sovereignty. Yes, that's right Jefferson Davis, you are dead. The slave trade is gone, the plantations are gone, the only thing left is the good ole' boys. There's no more Tara, no more sippin' mint juleps on the front porch while Mammy watches the little baby bigots, and no more massa. This constant regurgitation of the case for "Southern Rights" is at the very least repugnant. We should have moved on by now. This is where you, Mr. Cardella -- supposedly a sensitive Xer deeply concerned with people's feelings -- turn nasty and start reading straight from the NAACP script: the totality of the Old South was slavery and all Southerners were barbaric racist slaveowners and bigots, even the babies?  This isn't even relevant to the modern Southern movement's desire for independence, but one must take (or make) every opportunity to evilize the Old South, eh, Cardella? In fact, you are wrong about the plantations being gone.  There's one left, in the District of Columbia, and all Americans are semi-slaves to the federal Massa. And exactly what "constant regurgitation for the case of  'Southern Rights'" are you talking about?  The issue of States Rights is not a Southern thing -- unless you consider Arizona, Hawaii and Alaska Southern? In fairness, the League states adamantly that they are not racist. Fairness. Oh, yeah, right.  "...the League states adamantly that they are not racist," is a biased and unfair statement itself, simply because of the adverb "adamantly."  They don't state it adamantly.  They simply state it and their actions confirm it.  You Xers have been conditioned to believe (1) anything you designate as racist IS racist and (2) racism is the most hideous evil of which mankind is capable.  Some things designated as "racist," in fact, are not; and, as bad as racism can be,  there are other things that are much worse.  It's interesting that the people who are attempting to create hatred of our heritage based on phony racism charges are often the very ones who defend things that are far, far worse. Does the right to enslave people fall under their idea of Southern Heritage?  (Uh, no.  No more than it falls under American, European and African heritage.)  No matter how you twist the events of history, the war was over the right of the Southern states to own slaves. (No it wasn't. Aby-baby brought slavery into it well into the war; so what were they fighting for up until then?)  Abolishing slavery meant severely altering their way of life, so yes, the North was telling them they could not continue to live the way their Daddies did. The war was not "over the right of the Southern states to own slaves."  States didn't own slaves. What does it take to get people to acknowledge and accept the truth if they're unwilling to part with the lies they're embracing so tightly?  My Confederate-soldier ancestors didn't own slaves and neither did their Daddies.  The "way of life" the North was attempting to take away from these nonslaveholders was liberty and self-government, as guaranteed to them by the Constitution.  But, of course, when you have been conditioned with a slaveocentric bias, you can't see anything but that. The South in the 21st century is not a federalist nation, NOR SHOULD IT BE. The people who live here are different. Society is different. It is a dead era and should remain that way. The era of liberty and self-government is indeed a dead era, and the Southern Nationalist movement thinks its worth reviving, and believe me, we're not interested in a federalist Southern nation.  We've already got that system, and it's exactly what Southern Nationalists want to be free of.  It's interesting that you evidently believe that the drive for independence we see in countries all around the globe isn't appropriate for the people of the South.  The people are "different" now.  Society is "different."  Liberty shouldn't mean anything to them.  We should all knuckle under to our Massas in the big plantation on the Potomac. The flag was only used in battle. The war is over. The symbol used to identify the Confederate army. There no longer is a Confederate army. The symbol now signifies bigotry and hate. From the statement recently issued by dozens of college professors (read and learn, Cardella), the battle flag in its now familiar form is understood all over the world, from Helsinki to Timbuctu, as the symbol not only of the Confederacy but also of the American South.  As such, it represents not only the Civil War, but all three and a half centuries of a unique and admirable Southern culture. It also represents around the world a symbol of gallant defiance of authoritarian governments. In that use it has been often displayed in recent years in European countries escaping from communist captivity. It is natural and right that the people who were oppressed by the "genteel South" be offended and outraged by the constant and determined effort of people such as the League of the South to keep that symbol a part of their every-day lives. In the first place, the people who were "oppressed" by the "genteel South" are all dead.  It is impossible for them to be offended and outraged -- by anything.  In the second place, the "genteel Southeners" were only a small portion of the people the flag originally represented.  Is the U.S. flag only a symbol of the northeastern industrialists?  Should the descendants of the factory workers oppressed and exploited by the industrialists be offended by the U.S. flag?  Should we hide it away  in a museum if they are? Let's all learn the meaning of the term "ethnic cleansing." Ethnic Cleansing is the attempted eradication of all members of a particular ethnic group. Do we see piles of anglo-celtic bodies in mass graves along our coastline? No. You will if things continue as they are now.  Do you know how ethnic cleansing starts in a "civilized" culture, Cardella?  It starts with demonization and evilization of the group chosen for "cleansing."  People don't wake up one morning and, out of the clear blue, start throwing others in the gulag and standing them before the firing squad.  They have to first be conditioned -- convinced that the targeted group is evil, and deserves its fate.  That is the beginning stage of ethnic cleansing and that's where the South is today.  When you make the bigoted statement that the flag symbolizes bigotry and hatred, you are implying that all who honor it are bigots and haters.  We already have "hate-crimes" laws on the books in this country which make it okay, good, and right to hate -- as long as it's "haters" you're hating.  And, of course, the designation of "haters" is fluid and elastic.  Right now its meaning is rapidly coming to include traditional Southerners who honor their heritage.  President Clinton has already compared us to Serbians, step one in officially conditioning the country to accept what's in store for us. At the League conference,  J.J. Johnson, had this to say about the importance of preserving public displays of our heritage symbols:  "Suppose they make you get rid of the flag because it's a 'reminder of slavery.'  So are the monuments, so they'll have to get rid of them too.  So they wipe out everything connected to your heritage...  And what happens after that?  What happens when it's all gone and you ask, 'Is that all?  Are there any other reminders of slavery?' and they say, 'Yeah.  You.'" The only reason it hasn't already started already is because they haven't figured out a way to take our firearms without starting a coast-to-coast war. We can see plenty of Battle Flags in the many Civil War Museums throughout the country. We don't need to see them on our beaches.  As a society of such diversity I believe it is important that we all know where we come from, yet it is equally important that we make sure the place we are going toward is an improvement. Then join the League of the South and start working toward the improvement of restoring liberty and self-government.  Understand that this "society of diversity" doesn't believe it's important that we all know where we come from -- quite the opposite for some of us.  If you're not going to contribute to the improvement, at least stop working against it. PUT THE BATTLE FLAG BACK UP!

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