Exorcising Democrats' Confederate History

Why are progressives clamoring to remove many of America's mementos dedicated to the Old South? Generations later, can remnants of Civil War Democrats cause active psychological “harm”? That seems highly unlikely. However, what's real is the targeting of Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart and Jefferson Davis. If that's the liberal standard for destroying their icons, who has caused more recent and lasting damage than Barack Obama? Therefore, isn't it logical for them to purge both ancient root and modern branch? Yet, fear not, President Obama's safe from their revisionist historical pruning. It's only his antebellum counterparts who find themselves on the chopping block.

Let's pull some contextual threads from this spidery progressive web, shall we? Reportedly, Democrats in Alexandria, Virginia want to rename a main thoroughfare, Jefferson Davis Highway. Also, they want to move a statue on State Route 400 of a Confederate soldier, “Appomattox,” to the comparable obscurity of a nearby museum. Erected in 1889, is the presence of this unarmed Southerner—like the street named for the Confederacy's president—suddenly noxious to the average commuter? Do they trigger so much daily trauma that they're right to nix them? Not to be outshone, Fairfax County is embroiled in a two-year debate to strip Confederate General Stuart's name from one of its most racially diverse high schools. Their dragnet is not local however, it's a monstrosity cast widely across state lines as far as Louisiana.

As the left's revisionist hysteria is never satisfied, Stuart's famous contemporary General Robert E. Lee is targeted in both places. Atop a pillar since 1884, his towering figure was removed from its New Orleans perch last Friday after 133 years. (His was not the first to fall. On May 11th, the powers that be removed a statue from the Jefferson Davis memorial there. On Saturday, a display—the word “LOVE”—was found on its vacated platform.) Only time will tell if his Virginia likeness—mutely astride his majestic horse in Lee Park since 1924—will suffer the same “loving” fate. As the land was specifically donated to showcase this Southern soldier, is it right to unseat him after 93 years? What's more horrible here, destroying the vestiges of progressives' 19^th century past or the wasteful expenditure to taxpayers of $300,000 to do it?

Doesn't all history have a worthy place simply because it happened? How can eradicating the lessons that shaped our collective cultural experience ever be the “right” thing to do? Isn't the mind-set to wipe clean the landscape—of old dignitaries' names and harmless inanimate objects—really a fascist desire to ban ideas themselves? (Will these safe space liberal “do-gooders” advocate “Fahrenheit 451”-style book burning next?) Obviously, their predecessors' dual stains of slavery and segregation—never acknowledged or owned by them hereafter—are of lasting shame. Well, frankly, they should be. Hence, their current self-serving agenda to simply airbrush monuments out of existence.

To this end, their go-to narrative is one of distraction and manipulation. To the muddleheaded, the dishonest proclaim often repeated nonsense: America is “secretly racist”! In the same vein as “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” liberals have kind of a politically-motivated hysterical blindness. What of the widespread advancements since the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights movements? A prominent trend—the “black is beautiful” paradigm shift of the '60s and '70s—doesn't matter? Heck, these naysayers don't even acknowledge the cultural significance of the former occupant of the White House! So, concrete facts of societal progression are meaningless to them. Only their deluded aim to erase transgenerational political sins.

Seriously, it's been 152 years since the end of the Civil War! Only misguided spendthrifts waste today's public funds to “purify” the past. Obviously, historical footnotes—like the name of a road or a school, or four statues—have no magical power to corrupt anything of the now. What relevance to the day-to-day life experience of Americans do they really have? Very little, if any. In fact, their only intrinsic value are as markers showing where America has been—and how truly tolerant she has become!

Despite these ridiculous assertions, racism is not infused in the bronze edifices resembling long-dead Southerners. Likewise, it's not found in the hearts of persons striving to preserve them either. Interestingly, only Democrats' self-hatred persists with the passage of time. That liberal malady is seen in their psychological projection of guilt upon the rest us whose ancestors never owned a slave. Clearly, that's a problem better suited to the analyst's couch then the political realm. (On a related note, can our country be correctly viewed as innately “sexist” as Hillary Clinton is the latest nominee of her party—and the winner of the popular vote?) All elements described above encapsulate the schizophrenic thinking pervading every level of the Democratic Party.

In truth, tangible proof of America's well-established—and ever-expanding—pattern of embracing and celebrating diversity is everywhere! What of commonplace interracial marriage or the recent legalization of gay marriage? So, is it fair to automatically demonize a Republican simply for expressing a history-protecting impulse? Virginia's firebrand GOP gubernatorial hopeful Corey Stewart recently said:

“There’s all kinds of things that offend people, but that [removal] doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t make it so [fix the past]. This [the statue of Robert E. Lee] is a part of our history; if you don’t like our history, that’s too damn bad.”

Well, precisely. What's crystal clear is the Democrats have a cringeworthy history. Understandably, they're desperate to annihilate any reminders of the irrefutable and indefensible. Chief among them is their sole ownership of two infamous institutions: Virginia's antebellum past (read: slaveholding) and white supremacy (read: creating the Ku Klux Klan). As Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union, his party has a duty to safeguard the other side's artifacts for posterity. Without them as silent witnesses, falsely tarring conservatives with their own ongoing record of misdeeds becomes easy. If successful, all that would remain is a nebulous war of words for progressives to dominate. As George Santayana wisely advised: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Ironically, destroying America's Confederate past also diminishes her freedom-loving future.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog

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Krazy Kollege Kids!

“I was an unmitigated nuisance … by that time I was nearing the end of my schooldays, which I look back on as the most completely wasted and mischievous part of my life.” – George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925

In this generation, perhaps there's nothing more troubling than the befuddled thinking of young progressives. Unfortunately, examples are everywhere. In “Calexit” California, the state university in Los Angles embraces segregated, black-only housing. Not to be outdone, in lily-white Pennsylvania, Elizabethtown College's Democrats wear a 21^st century version of the Scarlet Letter: plain white puzzle pieces publicly proclaiming their imaginary genetic solidarity with 19^th century slaveholders. Now, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the left's political fun house finds expression in clown car antics there. These snowflakes demand free tuition for all black students due to their wrongheaded claim of “systemic racism”. So, are the rational to believe that prejudice is magically solved by promoting new race-based discrimination?

In America of 2017, the belief in deep-seeded societal bigotry is utter hogwash! Why do these millennials pretend to live in an antebellum time warp? Recall, slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln in 1865: 152 years ago! It's idiotic to ignore the reality that our culture has radically evolved for the better since then. Today, the celebration of diversity—and tolerance of differences—is widespread.

Specifically, this modern trend was seeded by the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Indeed, the effects of those policies have germinated in our society for over 50 years. Don't the clear results of those strides count for anything? Apparently not to these collegians with their petulant demands and polarizing behavior.

Remember, any human society is inherently imperfect. Therefore, human conflict based upon dissimilar perceptions will always exist. Yet, these students' militant insistence on race-based unequal treatment—in the name of Orwellian fairness—is beyond bizarre. It's equivalent to proclaiming peace while actively making war. These hysterical know-nothings imagine an external enemy: a psychological projection of their own youthful ignorance.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog

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Whitey's Scarlet Letter: “P” For Privilege

“Discussions about race are often perceived as being only open to people of color, but I think it is just as important for white people to partake in conversations about race. No matter how accepting someone is, that doesn’t stop them from being part of a system based on centuries of inequality.” – Aileen Ida, president of the College Democrats, Elizabethtown College

In 2017, how else can adolescent angst be expressed except to tilt at imaginary windmills? Is Aileen Ida simply ignorant of this American age of near universal acceptance of differences? Indeed, concrete evidence is obvious everywhere. Until last month, did she miss the fact that a black man has been president for the last eight years? How about our tolerance for the new institution of gay marriage? Why the public self-flagellation by students at Elizabethtown College, a small liberal arts school in lily-white Lancaster County, Pennsylvania?

Beyond their ivied walls, these safe-spacers can't cope with the new reality of Trump's America. After all, their party, the Democrats, are in political purgatory: backbenchers in government, exposed as a regional party in urban centers on both coasts that don't include them! Thus, they wear cultist lapel pins—shaped like plain white puzzle pieces—to demonstrate they “don't fit in anywhere”.

Naturally, they don't comprehend the true meaning of their symbolism. They frame their attention-grabbing antics as some kind of wacky multigenerational genetic guilt. Perhaps some of their ancestors were slaveholders, but if so, so what? It's a safe bet these computer savvy know-nothings haven't checked on ancestry.com. Thus, they self-shame by pretending to be distant offspring of theoretical 19^th century white oppressors? No wonder they're progressives; that's dopey thinking of the highest order! A modern riff on thought-crime from George Orwell's totalitarian classic “1984”.

Oh, how these young Democrats yearn for Hester Prynne's America of 1850. When slavery, oppression and bigotry were real! At least when the fictional Ms. Prynne wore her Scarlet Letter, she was guilty of adultery. However, these “cultural warriors”—these champions of convoluted fairness—have very little to legitimately object to. So, the witless and coddled define themselves by false projection and historical misappropriation. A twisted millennial fantasy of a white bogeyman, seen exclusively in their dormitory mirrors.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog

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Resegregating Obama's America

“The amazing aftermath of Birmingham, the sweeping Negro Revolution, revealed to people all over the land that there are no outsiders in all these fifty states of America. … The bell of man's inhumanity to man does not toll for any one man [or student group]. It tolls for you, for me, for all of us.” – Martin Luther King, on racial discrimination

In 2016, hard-fought '50s and '60s social gains have been eroded at California State University Los Angeles. Leave it to deluded millennials—wholly ignorant of the meaning of Civil Rights struggles—to thumb their entitled noses at Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka), 347 U.S. 483 (1954). In that historic integration decision the Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools based upon the superficiality of race unconstitutional. So, today that landmark determination is suddenly wrong? In Obama's America separate is suddenly equal—and preferential?

Furthermore, in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1968—which guarantees equal housing opportunities regardless of race, color, creed or national origin—“guilty” school officials have capitulated to requests by the CSLA Black Student Union to provide race-exclusive housing (at the Halisi Scholars Black Living-Learning Community). Only in the city known for liberal nutcases could an educational institution claim “... learning experiences that are inclusive and non-discriminatory” while simultaneously promoting a blatantly exclusionary policy. Is this George “1984” Orwell's dystopian Ministry of Inclusion at work?

Will this topsy-turvy generation also come to believe that retro black-only water fountains or lunch counters are good ideas? You know, the same “white-only” facilities that their grandparents risked life and limb to undo 60 years ago? In any case, how is black-focused housing not just a variation of theme: racial discrimination to everyone else? The very inhumanity—a hurtful skin-deep consideration—that MLK railed against?

It's a little spoken of 21^st century conceit that black people can never be racists, only victims as such. This faulty assumption stems from our country's unfortunate involvement with slavery that ended in the 19^th century. Of course, given the passage of time—and the natural evolution of social attitudes—only antiquated propaganda is promoted, not causal connections. Specifically, these false narratives are built around urban myths. One primary example is Michael Brown's 'hands up, don't shoot' which never happened. In turn, the social unrest fomented—based upon big MSM lies—has spread like wildfire to the coasts (fueled by George Soros' funding of Black Lives Matter anarchy). Related specifically to CSLA, how can Los Angeles—one of the most proudly multicultural and cosmopolitan U.S. cities—also be a hotbed for armies of racially motivated “microaggressors”?

Are these malcontents afraid of their own shadows on sunny days? Such perceptions defy reality—and common sense. One reasonably assumes these aggrieved CSLA students would see racism in a bowl of cornflakes and chocolate milk. In the real world, these coddled “safe spacers” fool no one with their politically correct demands. Ironically, while they claim nebulous slights, these isolationists do actual damage that is both thoughtless and intentional. Is it right to arbitrarily demonize the rest of the collegiate community?

In truth, regardless of skin color, any person who negatively evaluates another on the basis of race is, by definition, that. One does not overcome racism by promoting the same lifestyle and mind-set that is so despised in others. Beyond introductory courses in U.S. history and law, these jaded and time warped youngsters need a serious reality check. Rare “microaggressions” notwithstanding, 21^st century America is so widely tolerant, it's quietly integrated. For additional proof, one need only consider the ethnicity of the current commander-in-chief. What of the collective character demonstrated by their faithful countrymen—in two elections—who made Mr. Obama's presidency a fact? These “sheltered” CSLA students should embrace these disregarded millions they hide from in their black-only housing.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog

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One Huckster Hawks Another

“I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.” — President Obama on Hillary Clinton

“His brain has not only been washed, as they say ... It has been dry-cleaned.” — Khigh Dhiegh, as Dr. Yen Lo from the 1962 classic film “The Manchurian Candidate”

If there ever have been two corrupt, amoral birds of a feather (not including hubby Bill), they are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. BHO's self-serving effort to sell her damaged goods (read: Benghazi, “Clinton Cash” influence peddling etc.) to the voters is a quid pro quo arrangement to preserve his disastrous legacy (which Donald Trump will undoubtedly undo). That is the primary reason Mr. Obama is endorsing unindicted liar Hillary. He, like she, cares not one whit about fate of America, only with retaining the presidency as a prize. They are two polarizing anti-American Sal Alinsky radicals playing a scripted political patty-cake. For them, it's all about incompetent (and/or corrupt) rule via acidic cultural destruction (read: social division by race, class, gender, orientation etc.). Make no mistake, the last 7 ½ years has been a progressive hellhole of their collective fascist design. They maintain political power indirectly by distracting the public (read: trivial bathroom issues), and directly by exploiting ancient white guilt and continuing black “victimhood.”

Mr. Obama is likely the worst president ever—up until 2017. A rudderless Western apologist and a hard leftist ideologue. At least America's first black president began as an unknown. An empty emblem that the American people foolishly pinned their idealistic hopes to. Yet, Hillary Clinton is a known quantity—and none of it is good. Indeed, 40 years of scandals and lawbreaking (read: unambiguous Server-gate criminality) rightfully dog—and define—her. Outrageously, Mrs. Clinton still has a real opportunity to take America to even more ruinous, unimaginable depths. It's a binary 50/50 proposition between her and Mr. Trump. No contest in modern times could be more clearly defined. An American cultural heartbeat as significant as JFK's Assassination or Reagan's Revolution. A fork in the road between outsider Trump's Reaganesque optimism versus insider Hillary's Clintonian cynicism.

The current empty suit that resides in the Oval Office pushes an empty skirt with only failure as their shared accomplishment. Likewise, he ran on the superficiality of his race, she on the triviality of her gender. At best, she's been a placeholder as secretary of state, junior senator from New York and 8 years as first lady. Perhaps no American politician has been more bought and paid for (by foreign and domestic interests). She views the presidency as her own personal garage sale—of American influence—to the highest bidder.

Washington Times columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. has aptly pointed out in “The Certifiable Candidate” that Hillary Clinton is a complete phony. He wrote:

“The blue of her eyes is, as with practically everything else about her, a studied fake. She wears blue contact lenses. Her blue eyes look a muddy brown without her cosmetic lenses. As for her “dyed blonde hair,” for all I know she is bald. When [Great Britain's foreign minister] Boris [Johnson] speaks of her putting him in mind of a “sadistic nurse in a mental institution....”

Is Hillary Clinton a real-life political version of Annie Wilkes (a psychotic nurse played to Oscar glory by actress Kathy Bates) in “Misery” (1990)? Well, the misery part of the Obama Administration (of which Hillary was a central part) is certainly true. To continue the analogy, do citizens comprising the languishing body politic really want someone who will double down on Obama's failed policies? Even worse, given her complete absence of character, would any sane person want her immoral, American-hating ministrations bedside for the next 4 or 8 years? Homicidal Annie Wilkes put it simply to her ailing captive, writer Paul Sheldon: “Because if I die, you die.”

The future of America hangs in the balance. So, too, does the freedom-loving Western world. Therefore, the price of electing another empty symbol of hypothetical “progress” is too high.

Donald Trump is the right person to be the next commander-in-chief. With a focused and practical workingman's vigor, he will restore domestic tranquility while rebuilding America's prosperity at home. Indeed, when one is the genuine article, respect is automatically and instinctively given. Thus, as projected light is to shadow, progressives like Hillary and Obama are exposed as the morally bankrupt fakers they are. Inert and useless fluff of unrealized dreams—and true-life nightmares.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog

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Conjuring Civil War’s ghost in post-racial America

Why is The Washington Post’s resident Don Quixote tilting at the windmills of history in Obama’s post-racial America?   While the adage that “those that don’t know history are bound to repeat it,” the opposite extreme is Courtland Milloy whose myopic focus on Civil War struggles—fortunately and mercifully exactly 150 years now long over—ignore the passage of time and the clear evolution of America into a more accepting society.  Indeed, what greater proof of this new reality (inconceivable to people in Lincoln’s time) could there be: a black man is currently cooling his heels in the White House for a second term.  Mr. Milloy’s two beefs are a waste of valuable newspaper column space: he laments the supposed ignorance of the millennial generation claiming they don’t even realize that the Civil War was fought over the forced enslavement of black people; and he sees subtle racism in the fact that the general public sees more value in monuments depicting “battles and generals” rather than “freedom and slavery” at a military park in Fredericksburg, VA.  Undoubtedly, for many, slavery was a bummer pre-1865 and it sure is an irrelevant downer to Jane Q. Public and her brood now. 

Further, does the insipidly scribbling columnist Milloy really subscribe to the idea that the millennial generation—hooked into technological everything—does not know, for example, of the Oscar winning Steven Spielberg film “Lincoln” (2012)?  The truth is the racist culture embodied by the Old South is literally “Gone with the Wind” in America of 2015.  The “point” Mr. Milloy wishes to peddle in his ‘slavery’ column is White Guilt for things that happened to people no longer alive by people no longer living: six generations ago. 

Somehow this august generation should feel guilty for not erecting enough monuments to the vaguely eluded to “contributions of slaves” although Mr. Milloy—in his righteous fervor—never bothers to specifically articulate what those contributions were.  That is likely because he does not know—because the rest of the world has already moved on from this unfortunate chapter of American history—a point he clearly “misses” as he berates his readership for missing “his point.”

The greater “point” that Mr. Milloy doesn’t deal with in his column are the massive present-day problems that affect the black community happening in this time: 50 percent of Afro-American children aborted in the womb; out-of-wedlock births for blacks are over 72 percent; 90 percent of blacks in America are killed by members of their own race per 2012 crime statistics—to name just a few.  No doubt there is still work to be done.  However, the present is called the “present” for good reason: the “now” is the only place constructive societal change can be undertaken.

However, today is not as bleak as Mr. Milloy’s ‘slavery’ column would have the uninformed reader incorrectly infer about America of 2015.  To a great extent, we are actually living in a post-racial and inclusive society. There are Afro-Americans at every level of government, the private sector, the arts and sports.  Interracial marriages are commonplace and their children are vibrant, fully embraced members of our society.  Moreover, Eminem notwithstanding, rap music—a principally black form of artistic expression—is mainstream American music.  Likewise, black athletes and entertainers (recent Oscar winners include: Denzel Washington, Halle Barry, Morgan Freeman, Whoopie Goldberg and Jennifer Hudson) are lionized with an almost God-like status universally by white and black young people.  Indeed, blacks have taken over popular culture: movies "Be like Mike" (2002) and its sequel "Be Like Mike 2" (2006) are flattering references to NBA superstar Michael Jordan (whose $200.00 Air Jordan sneakers are highly sought after).  In this same vein, the white youth of today have eagerly integrated the rather questionable language and fashion sense of their black idols from Mr. T-style necklaces and jewelry to baggy jeans that hang down exposing the backside of the wearer. 

In every way possible, the dominant white culture has repeatedly extended the hand of friendship (through equal employment statutes, civil rights and social welfare programs) to our black American brothers.  It is their persistent resistance to accept our integrative overtures due to 150 year old historical grievances—never-ending and reiterated by Mr. Obama last week and echoed in Mr. Milloy’s July 1^st salt-in-the-wound “historical” column—that have nothing whatsoever to do with the current generation that populates America. 

To demonstrate how far we have come, there used to be a "one-drop rule" for a person of mixed race to determine that individual's non-white identity.  Being white, as close to white as possible—or even better "passing for white"—was a necessary mechanism of economic survival when racism ran rampant in America of the past.  Today, we have Rachel Dolezal, disgraced former president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington: a white woman who lied about her racial identity and passed herself off as black (a position that definitely would have landed her in the mad house in Lincoln’s time).

Since Mr. Milloy likes to wade in the annals of history he should follow the sage advice of the Ancient Greeks who said: “Only speak well of the dead” (related to both sides of the Civil War).  I would therefore encourage Mr. Milloy (and Mr. Obama) to join the rest of us in the 21^st century.  Their enslaved ancestors, if they had any, would have found the waters better than fine—a comparable paradise of tolerance—more than worthy of commemoration at that military park in Fredericksburg, VA that the public of today would flock to, with pride.

http://www.americanthinker.com/author/david_l_hunter/

re. Courtland Milloy's 'Is America ready to deal with slavery, or just continue to miss the point?' (Washington Post, June 30, 2015)