Virginia's Governor: What's the Confederacy been up to lately?

[Mr.Moto]

@Hamlet

Why not? I mean on a large scale, I understand what I think you’re trying to say. Different times, different upbringings, different views of the world, and such. But slavery? In 1860? I can’t give you that one. Hell, I can’t even give it to you in 1783. I know all the rationalizations they had, and the bullshit excuses they made, for slavery, but I cannot agree that they should not have known it was wrong. They should have. And they had tens of thousands of people telling them it was. So, actually, yes, I can say that slavery was wrong in 1860 and those people should have known it.

Right. But even those people who regarded slavery as wrong didn’t do so in terms that resonate in the same way today. The most radical abolitionists were strident Christians of a rather fundamentalist bent. Lincoln, of course, wasn’t - but his understanding of the slavery issue was shot through with a belief that blacks were decidedly inferior in most respects to whites. He believed, though, that however inferior they might be they were entitled to be free and earn their own living.

[Duke]

@Bricker

I know that you cannot impute our understanding of the wrongness of slavery to those people that lived in 1860.

Yeah, I’m going to call bullshit on that, counselor. William Wilberforce had succeeded in getting the slave trade abolished in the British Empire in 1807, and the whole practice of slavery in 1833, because he convinced Parliament it was cruel and wrong.

Mexico banned slavery in 1829. So by 1833, both our neighbors to the north and south had banned slavery. They knew it was wrong by 1860. Hell, everyone on the planet knew it was wrong in 1860, except apparently our poor, benighted slaveowners in the South (OK, and maybe the Brazilians too).

Apparently what you “know” about history is about as valuable as a warm bucket of spit.

[Duke]

@Mr.Moto

Right. But even those people who regarded slavery as wrong didn’t do so in terms that resonate in the same way today. The most radical abolitionists were strident Christians of a rather fundamentalist bent.

So what you’re saying here is, since people like Wilberforce were fundamentalist, we heathens can’t understand or agree with his arguments, or his argument that the slave trade was cruel and inhuman can’t resonate? I’m not sure I agree with that.

[villa]

@Steve_MB

Then again, that raises similar issues – Stalin wasn’t exactly a figure of sweetness and light, either.

Yes and no. The Red Army was fighting a war of national and racial survival - the express intent of the army invading it was the extermination of a significant proportion of the Soviet Union, and the perpetual enslavement of the rest.

Even though the commander in chief was reprehensible, the cause wasn’t reprehensible in the same way. I don’t see the same ethical dilemma in memorializing the Red Army as being the same as memorializing the Wehrmacht.

Now, memorializing the SS is a simple decision - it shouldn’t happen. It was declared a criminal organization after the war, and it would be akin to memorializing the Mafia. Germany I think gets it right generally - remembering the tragic sacrifice of millions of its people, while not downplaying that the regime they were sacrificed by was fundamentally evil. It’s a lesson that the Confederacy boosters (as well as other groups possibly even including some sectors of Russia) could learn.

[you_with_the_face]

Still not seeing how the “morality is relative to person, place, and time” card has any relevance to this discussion. Not surprised that it’s been introduced, of course, but still. It’s pretty clear that it’s a red herring.

[Sampiro]

George Washington Custis Lee was the oldest son of Robert E. Lee, a direct descendant of Martha Washington and adopted descendant of George Washington, and through various family lines he had roots in Jamestown and was descended from or related to all of the First Families of Virginia- the Carters, the Randolphs, the Bollings, the Jeffersons were all in a fairly short genealogical walk. He graduated West Point, was a general in the Confederate army, did time in a Union prison camp, and later successfully sued the evil Yankee gub’mint to get reimbursed for the confiscation of Arlington ($150,000- the equivalent of a couple of million easily in modern money- moreso when you realize how much richer this made him than his contemporaries in Virginia) so his credentials as a Virginian and as a Confederate are pretty impeccable, the absolute wet dream of any social climbing Lost Causer.

George Washington Custis Lee being a bit of a mouthful, he was better known by his nickname in the family; that nickname was Bunny. Descriptions of him all read “artistic”, “sensitive”, “complete gentleman around ladies”, “delicate features”, “great pride in personal appearance”. In spite of being the most eligible bachelor in Virginia (due to his pedigree and his fortune) Bunny never married. Bunny always traveled with his male valet, a former black slave man so indispensible to him they shared a bed even when on vacation and even though he lived in a mansion with servant’s quarters and guest bedrooms. When that valet left his service, his next live-in-valet was a young Asian man.

No way to prove it since the “Custis Lee Sex Ambrotypes” probably won’t be made available, but I think there’s enough circumstantial evidence to support that Bunny may have been a bit of a collateral ancestor of a friend of Dorothy. He was far from alone in this: George Pickett was married three times (though his family did not acknowledge the second marriage since it was to a Haida Indian) but was known for his fondness of good looking young men to grace his table and for the hours he spent curling and perfuming his hair. (His third wife, Sallie, writes of how passionate he was with the ladies and also wrote many of the other most exciting stories of the war in her memoirs- only problem with her memoirs is that there’s enough demonstrable crap in them to cast aspersions [she has herself dining as an honored guest with Abe and Mary Lincoln in Richmond when in fact she herself was in South Carolina and Mary was in D.C. at the time of the supposed dinner among other whoppers] and nobody else seemed to notice the fondness for the ladies. (His first two wives died in childbirth, which may be why, but that doesn’t explain traveling with a personal coiffure and choosing pretty boys as his orderlies.)

Patrick Cleburne- left Ireland, joined the Confederacy, continued writing long letters of yearning to a male friend in Ireland, never married (was semi-engaged but kept putting it off). There are others.

Anyway, the point is that I think on behalf of gay southerners there should be a special march for the benefit of the Governor (who for those not aware is one of the most militantly homophobic in the nation as well). And there’s even aflag for us. We can call it PICKETT’S PARADE! “For God, Cotton, Ireland and Bunny!” (Can’t go off any worse than Pickett’s Charge did.)

Not that participation in such a march would in any way suggest I don’t think he’s a half-sane bigoted racist pandering asswipe who’d have been far more welcome at Strom Thurmond’s house than at Mt. Vernon.

[eleanorigby]

@ToeJam

But it’s a beautiful place, and it’s really awesome for those with a love of history and seeing how things work. So yeah- there are PLENTY of Virginians who take pride in the rest of their history, day in and day out, but the problem is that certain groups tend to get all the press. Slavery sells, British Anti-colonialism not so much.

And the Jamestown living museum is fantastic. So, there is that…
Blacks were seen as genetically inferior back in the 1860s, which we consider racist today (and rightly so), but wrong thinking about ability does not provide umbrella coverage for owning someone else. Plenty of people knew and believed slavery to be wrong and wanted it abolished.

[Jackmannii]

@Duke

Yeah, I’m going to call bullshit on that, counselor. William Wilberforce had succeeded in getting the slave trade abolished in the British Empire in 1807, and the whole practice of slavery in 1833, because he convinced Parliament it was cruel and wrong.

Mexico banned slavery in 1829. So by 1833, both our neighbors to the north and south had banned slavery. They knew it was wrong by 1860. Hell, everyone on the planet knew it was wrong in 1860, except apparently our poor, benighted slaveowners in the South (OK, and maybe the Brazilians too).

Not that I disagree with your suggestion that the wrongness of slavery was a widespread concept around the globe by then, but the Russians barely squeaked in ahead of the southern U.S. as far as elimination of slavery (1861, serfdom abolished).

By the way, the Sons of Confederate Veterans website doesn’t seem to have any reaction to the governor’s backing down on the Confederate History Month proclamation (one would think the SCV is a trifle pissed over the Gov’s revised statement mentioning slavery as what provoked the Civil War).
Meantime though, don’t miss out on the SCV store, featuring Confederate Gifts and other goodies for everyone on your gift list - logo T-shirts, ball caps, a Georgia license plate with the “true” good ol’ flag, a genuine SCV regimental stripe bow tie and a set of impressive-looking medals signifying one’s (presumably non-combat) service in the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

[YogSothoth]

This is just another example of those fucking redneck Southerners loving the fact that their racist hick ancestors stood up to the “Northern Aggression”. Fuck you South, you’re nothing more than descendants of traitors, worse than the Communists and Socialist and Fascists you demonize so much because you actually tore the country apart with your insipid dedication to evil.

The Confederates were losers. They were traitors. They were evil racist slavedrivers. They didn’t give a fuck about states rights unless it was the right to make a black man eat shit at whitey’s command. The entire war was about the RIGHT to own slaves and they lost and have been bitter ever since.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@Nancarrow

You know what I just can’t stand about Adolf Hitler?

If I were the kind of person to steal great lines for signatures, I’d steal this one.

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

I can sort of cut them a break on womens’ issues, gender identity, and so on. I mean, defined gender roles aren’t inherently evil, given that there are obvious differences between men and women.

Owning people is a little bit different.

Really? White people and Black people might not be as physically or genetically different as men and women, but we’re distinct enough. The same bullshit reasons were used for slavery as for treating women pretty much like chattel, too.

[Sampiro]

@YogSosoth

This is just another example of those fucking redneck Southerners loving the fact that their racist hick ancestors stood up to the “Northern Aggression”. Fuck you South, you’re nothing more than descendants of traitors, worse than the Communists and Socialist and Fascists you demonize so much because you actually tore the country apart with your insipid dedication to evil.

The Confederates were losers. They were traitors. They were evil racist slavedrivers. They didn’t give a fuck about states rights unless it was the right to make a black man eat shit at whitey’s command. The entire war was about the RIGHT to own slaves and they lost and have been bitter ever since.

Slavery is racist and racism is bad. Accounting tens of millions of people (many of them black or biracial) as inferior for the deeds of their ancestors a century before they were born though is just common sense. (Just be glad you don’t live in Harry Potter-verse or some other world where they fight trolls.)

When the only think you have to offer any discussion is your absence, you owe it to yourself and others not to be stingy.

[Sampiro]

@Jackmannii

By the way, the Sons of Confederate Veterans website doesn’t seem to have any reaction to the governor’s backing down on the Confederate History Month proclamation (one would think the SCV is a trifle pissed over the Gov’s revised statement mentioning slavery as what provoked the Civil War).

I just heard a NPR article in which the president of the Virginia chapter basically gave a non-committal “we understand the necessity of it” comment.

For those not familiar with the SCV, they used to be just a run-of-the-mill ancestral group on par with the DAR or Daughters of the Alamo or whatever in which men, most of them old, got together to clean up Confederate graveyards or stage re-enactments (a more expensive and anal version of cowboys and Indians) and once in a blue moon fund some important contribution to history: a book on an overlooked aspect of the Civil War or an archaeological dig perhaps. I even donated to them when they were raising funds to buy part of the Bull Run battlefield that was endangered.
It’s true that their full grasp on the historical significance of the Civil War was usually about as impressive as that of your average Society for Creative Anachronism member- they romanticized the Confederacy and bought into the (absolutely universal- not just southern) notion that “If millions of people suffered and died for something then it must have been noble” notion, but generally they were as a group benign.
Now they’re not. There was a coup some years ago when the militant Lost Cause apologists took over the group and now they’re controlled by some of the most racist and xenophobic radical rightwingers and neo-secessionists. Many lifelong members dropped out; there are several “SCV in Exile” groups where they disavow any political statements or racism. The SCV as it stands is more of a White Citizens Council in training- though they do have black members and LOVE parading them around (“See, we ain’t racist! Jimmy there is a great-great grandson of a Confederate and he comes to all our meetin’s at our expense!”).

If this were a group of cranks it wouldn’t be so annoying- cranks are like whales in that they can be dangerous but they’re also fairly easy to avoid. What’s bad though is for those like me who enjoy researching the Civil War and don’t have any desire to romanticize it, because the SCV owns and operates some of the most important museums and historical sites. The Museum of the Confederacy (which includes the Richmond White House and MANY unreproduced manuscripts and rare artifacts of extreme historical value) is their flagship, but they also control Beauvoir (Davis’s postbellum home) and other house museums in the south.

I recently reviewed a 3-disc documentary on Jefferson Davis that was produced by one of their members- a zillionaire old bastard who owns several homes associated with Davis- in which I said basically “It’s extremely biased, but not without merit- the pictures and some of the interviews are actually good if you ignore Thomas Dilorenzo and realize that the producers are not the least bit objective”. I’ve since crossed swords with said old fart on several websites; there was absolutely nothing remotely ignoble about Jefferson Davis after all. (If you’re wondering how it deals with his order to execute all blacks in Federal uniform or with his incredibly racist views on Mexicans and Indians or even such non-racist vices as his extramarital affairs, the answer is “by not mentioning them at all- in a 6 hour documentary”.)

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Shot_From_Guns

Really? White people and Black people might not be as physically or genetically different as men and women, but we’re distinct enough. The same bullshit reasons were used for slavery as for treating women pretty much like chattel, too.

I’m not saying that enslaving women is okay. I’m not even saying that defined gender roles for men and women are okay. I’m saying they’re understandable, to a degree.

[Sampiro]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

I’m not saying that enslaving women is okay. I’m not even saying that defined gender roles for men and women are okay. I’m saying they’re understandable, to a degree.

I have the same notion of slavery in the historical context. To me it’s barbaric and inhumane obviously, but imagining living in a world where it had always existed, where the Bible was as big as television as a factor in people’s lives and entertainments and the Bible seemed to have no real problem with it, and where indentured servitude and apprenticeships (both of which involved working without being paid for men who could legally whip you and whose service you could not legally leave) where people went to prison for indebtedness, the smell of raw sewage was a daily occurrence, baby coffins and animal entrails were commonly sold items and few people owned furniture that was made in a store, it wouldn’t seem as alien or as viscerally or morally repugnant.

[JKellyMap]

@Duke

So what you’re saying here is, since people like Wilberforce were fundamentalist, we heathens can’t understand or agree with his arguments, or his argument that the slave trade was cruel and inhuman can’t resonate? I’m not sure I agree with that.

I think he was referring to the fact that, in the 1850’s and even later, only a small percentage of “Northerners” agreed with John Brown that blacks were entirely deserving of equal treatment as human beings with exactly the same potential as whites. Brown could truly say, without condescension, that his “best friends” were black…and that was very unusual then, anywhere. Heck, it’s not all that common even today.

[YogSothoth]

@Sampiro

Slavery is racist and racism is bad. Accounting tens of millions of people (many of them black or biracial) as inferior for the deeds of their ancestors a century before they were born though is just common sense. (Just be glad you don’t live in Harry Potter-verse or some other world where they fight trolls.)

When the only think you have to offer any discussion is your absence, you owe it to yourself and others not to be stingy.

These buck-toothed banjo sodomizers are of the same ilk that took up arms against their fellow Americans 150 years ago. They are not simply guilty be association. That distinction is blurred when the same racist KKK right-wingers are now espousing the exact same bullshit about states rights as the cousin-fucking brother-husbands were back then.

Slavery was evil then and you would not be so kind to someone wanting to bring slavery back. You tell the sumbitch he’s wrong now as his ancestors were wrong then.

“States rights” is a douche-baggy euphemism created by those who, to their credit, were a little bit wary of defending the whipping and chaining up of black people for the pre-skinheads’ amusement. It was ALL about the ability not to have the government put its boot up your ass when you are forcing your penis into black women. These same shitheads grew up, had children, some half-black, who had more offspring who eventually were the ancestors for the Faux Aryan Nation asshats that are right now proclaiming that the Confederates were anything but racist fucks.

The entire point of the Confederacy was to be able to dismember black people like legos in peace. The Union rightfully took that power away from them, forcefully, while burning their decrepit Sodoms and shit-stained Gomorrahs to the ground to teach them a lesson, a lesson that took another hundred years for them to fully learn, and they’re still bitching ever since.

A Confederate History Month might as well be Stalin Mustache Fetishes month, that is about how American these pea-brained donkey blowers are. They are trying to revive an evil, racist regime’s memories due to the simple fact of the proximity of their atrocities, and whitewashing the worst of it out of convenience. This governor should be dragged before Congress to explain why he hates America so much and so should anyone who defends him.

[Sampiro]

A bit off topic, but speaking of John Brown: according to recent news reports his farm and gravesite in North Elba, New York, open to the public through NPS, are in serious danger of closing due to budget cuts and low visitation. The Jefferson Davis arrest site in Irwinville, GA, closed a couple of years ago when the NPS gave it up, whereupon the state of Georgia took it over, whereupon after budget cuts the county took it over, and now it’s open only occasionally.

While neither of these sites nor the many others that are threatened are vital in their significance in history, I hate to see any site of historical significance close. If Governor McDonnell wanted to do something to promote and honor history and sacrifice other than empty pandering to the “down with the fags/up with the flags (U.S.A. & C.S.A.)” lovers of “Baby Jesus and his pal the Fetus” good ol’ boys he sees as his (“is you is or is you ain’t my”) ‘constitchency’ then Virginia offers a million opportunities in endangered historic sites he could fund with some of his discretionary budget or at least appeal to private donations to assist with since most historic sites are hurting with the bad economy, and many once closed may never reopen even when times are better.

My opinion is that he knew absofuckinglutely well from the get-go he was going to rescind his “let’s honor the Confederates” spiel once the inevitable shitstorm came (which nobody with 9 functioning neurons could not have predicted). Instead it’s a free empty gesture that gets him love from the camo and ammo crowd, only really pisses off the blacks, intellectuals, liberals and overlap thereof who didn’t vote for him anyway, costs him nothing and boosts his cred. He sees himself as on the rise.

[Sampiro]

@YogSosoth

These buck-toothed banjo sodomizers are of the same ilk that took up arms against their fellow Americans 150 years ago. They are not simply guilty be association. That distinction is blurred when the same racist KKK right-wingers are now espousing the exact same bullshit about states rights as the cousin-fucking brother-husbands were back then.

Handpuppets being somewhat difficult to employ on a message board, I’m at a loss of how to explain this to you in such a way that even you can understand. This is not a debate on the war and I’m not arguing states rights or slavery or anything else. I take strong offense when you say (emphasis mine)

Fuck you South, you’re nothing more than descendants of traitors, worse than the Communists and Socialist and Fascists you demonize so much because you actually tore the country apart with your insipid dedication to evil.

Unless you happen to be referring specifically to Olin Teabody South the famed taxidermist, bartender, white supremacist and estrogen manufacturer, then you are insulting everybody I am related to and most of the people I know. That’s a group that is unbelievably wide in their opinions and their personalities and their politics, though I guarantee you that every last damned one of them is a better person than you. I reiterate. It also puts you on the exact same intellectual and moral footing as a Klan member: one idiot denouncing millions for their ancestry is the same as another doing so.

So you seem to have nothing to add but more employments of the word ‘Fuck’ which I can do myself and really they aren’t that necessary when I do it, and your absence. That being the case

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKFUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKFUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKFUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

takes care of the first part of what you can contribute and, alas, only you can provide your absence.

[eleanorigby]

IOW, a savvy bit of politicking. Pity he’s so good at it.
ETA: Well, Fuck.

[Frank]

@Bricker

So in short… yeah, I get it, the Confederacy had heroes and they acted with great honor. But since the cause they supported is one we now understand is one of grave evil, I think we ought to shut up about the honor and the heroism out of respect for the other feelings that those reminders must inevitably cause.

I would hope that all those of us who oppose you politically will note this post. Also, at some point, I would hope that some of my fellow liberals on this board will cease treating you like shit, and will instead start treating you as an honorable opponent.