It should go without saying that there are two sides to every story, and I contend that if you do not know both, you should not have an opinion, or at least not offer it, and certainly not with a sword drawn. That is, if you are seeking the advancement of the truth or at least what is best or wisest.
For example, someone may tell me how someone else has done them dirty and they may in fact be right; or rather, we may both agree on what it means to be done-dirty and that this other person may have in fact checked all the boxes. But unless I have some ulterior motive or just want to enjoy the innate pleasure of gossiping or being on someone’s team, if I am to get at the truth I must know the other party’s side of the story.
On a grand scale this is not happening in our national discussion on American history and Southern history in particular. At all levels of discussion, Left and Right, it is simply taken for granted that the Confederacy was solely about slavery and Southerners were uniquely racists. This being true, all Southern emblems of that titanic struggle represent that evil and thus, like the swastika, should be removed. Likewise anything that is uniquely Southern may be stained by association and thus may be purged, e.g. Dixie State University’s decision to remove ‘Dixie’ from its name.
What we Conservatives (whatever it may be that we are trying to conserve) think about Southern history and the history of that war in particular is of supreme strategic importance to the long-term health of America, and some proof is in the intensity of hatred that the American Left has for the cultural South and especially all things Confederate.
The reason is simple and not the one the Left gives (i.e. that we are racist) but rather because the South remains to this day the backbone of American Conservatism. That great concentration of people (voters) who are instinctively opposed to the Left’s basic beliefs and assumptions about the nature of man and what he ought to do. The South is today, as it was back then, the great citadel that yet holds out against the madness of American Progressivism.
The South was right on many issues back then, and we are even more right today, and I posit that Union soldiers would be shocked at what has become of the country that they fought to keep united.
And to their descendants I will say that we are on the same side today. Reject the Left’s interpretation of the South. Hear again our side of the story, encourage us to be ourselves, and let us be united in the defence of our common country because you cannot win this war without the Fighting South.
M.C. Atkins
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Look Away... 