Commander's Column: How Do We Respond To PC
Run Amuck?
I received an email recently presenting Thomas Fleming’s
latest book, A Disease in the Public
Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War. The email article penned by Thomas
DiLorenzo provided an analysis of the book and portrayed Fleming as a
mainstream revisionist historian, darling of PBS and NPR. But Fleming has “discovered historical
truths” that Dr. Clyde Wilson, Distinguished Professor of History at South
Carolina, SCV member and regular contributor to the Confederate Veteran magazine, has frequently written about for some
time. In an essay entitled “The Yankee Problem in American History”, Wilson
pointed out that “the term [Yankee] historically (was used) to designate that
peculiar ethnic group descended from New Englanders, who can be easily
recognized by their arrogance, hypocrisy, greed, and lack of congeniality,
[and] for ordering other people around . . . .
They are the chosen saints whose mission is to make America, and the
world, into the perfection of their own image.”
“Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Professor Wilson continues, “is a
museum-quality specimen of the Yankee – self-righteous, ruthless, and self-aggrandizing.” We know the Yankee abolitionists were
certainly of this ilk and of course Lincoln himself. Today, it seems anyone working inside the
Washington DC beltway is of this sort, infringing on our personal liberties in
the spirit of knowing better than those of us who cling to our Bibles and guns.
I
also received from Commander Rhodes of the Ft. Blakeley Camp an amazing photo
of Bill Lundy, Florida’s last Confederate veteran, standing in front of a Super
Sabre jet in 1955 with his beard and cane.
His life saw the world change in amazing ways, from Forrest’s cavalry
and Pelham’s artillery to the nuclear age and supersonic aircraft. Think about the nation’s moral foundation
from the colonization in the 1600s to the establishment of the United States in
the late 1700s, the evolution from the Salem witch trials and executions to a
Constitution which, among core principles, provided freedom of religion. From the late 1700s through the period of the
WBTS, at least in the South, there was still a spirit of self-determination and
liberty and a romanticism and chivalry in the social order. Compare that to today, with the victimized
welfare state, feminism, and the LGBT minority demanding marital rights--and
getting them. I read in the Confederate Veteran the article on
Emancipation without the WBTS and noted that it stated unequivocally that
slavery was a moral wrong, a blemish.
But again, the slave holders were a product of their time. Two hundred years before the WBTS, slavery
was quite literally embraced throughout the colonies and fortunes were made and
the colonies in North America as well as in South America and the Caribbean
were largely built with the assistance of slave labor. Over the course of two hundred years though,
those who espoused and embraced emancipation ran the gamut from the
abolitionists in the North to the very leaders of the Confederacy like Lee and
Davis.
Now, just a relatively-short 150 years after the
destruction of the antebellum South, the LGBT’s are equating their “struggle”
to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and are making huge advances, from
marital rights to altered church theologies and practices to total acceptance
in mainstream media and corporate America boardrooms. Atheists have removed prayer from the schools
and the Ten Commandments from the courthouses.
Unborn children are slaughtered by the thousands as a form of birth
control in “women’s health clinics”. The Common Core curriculum indoctrinates
our children whilst the student’s basic education lags to ensure that the least
common denominator is advanced and ultimately rewarded with affirmative action
benefits. Uncontrolled illegal
immigration and rewarding unwed mothers with cradle-to-grave welfare checks and
WIC cards for their lack of self-control and responsibility. Wall Street and corporate executives earn
millions in annual bonuses practicing a bastardized capitalism, picking winners
and losers through special-interest lobbying while regulations stifle
neighborhood entrepreneurship. But, rest
assured, all these judicial fiats and social and economic programs have been
constructed and decreed by those who know better than we do what’s best for
us.
Shudder with me if you can imagine America in 150 or 200
years from now. Where will technology
carry us? What will the progressives do
to alter our communities, our culture, our families and our moral
comprehension? What will historical
revisionists of that day and age condemn us for today--our Christianity,
clinging to our Southern heritage and traditions? What will become of us, Sons of Confederate
Veterans? What will become of our
country? What can we do? I trust you exercised your right to vote in
the elections on November 4th and participated in this democratic
process. Get involved to whatever extent
you can in local political and social organizations where you can fellowship
and work with people of like mind and help shape and direct the evolution of
the issues and agenda affecting your family and community. Correspond regularly with your elected
representatives. Renew your membership in
the SCV. Yes, your membership is the
single most important thing you can do to support our organization and our
efforts in community involvement and activities, public relations and
education, to “ensure that the true history of the South is presented to future
generations”. The information I have
says the Dragoons only lost one camp member during the recently completed
renewal period. I want to thank each and
every one of you personally for your continued support of the SCV and the
Dragoons. Get involved in your camp and
your community to make it better and a formidable force to oppose the
politically-correct progressives and to “perpetuate those principles which (our
Confederate ancestors) loved and which you love also, and those ideals which
made him glorious”.
Stuart Waldo
