Lincoln's War of Aggression (YouTube Video)

 Don't blame us for Lincoln's views on race. We report, you decide.

Some Questions For the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles

The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles has refused to issue license plates displaying the Sons of Confederate Veterans' logo, which features a Confederate battle flag.  The SCV sees the flag as symbolic of patriotism, sacrifice and resistance to tyranny.  The Texas DMV sees the flag as however it was portrayed in the last televised rerun of "Mississippi Burning."  Or what they were told about the War for Southern Independence in the third grade.  Or something.

Here are the questions about the matter that the Texas DMV officials should consider:

1.  Who is practicing censorship and suppression, the SCV or the DMV?
2.  Whose actions serve to restrict individual freedom, choice and expression?
3.  Who is trying to impose ignorance over knowledge?
4.  Who is dealing in negative stereotypes and attempting to stigmatize and ostracize thousands through the arm of government?
5.  Who is practicing the cultural equivalent of ethnic cleansing?
6.  Who is politicizing history like 1984?
7.  Who is honoring the thousands of Texans who served and died for the Confederacy, and who is dishonoring their memory by officially defining their flag as objectionable?

Note:  My Uncle, who took part in the Invasion of Normandy (D-Day) in World War II is buried in Dallas.  My great grandfather, a Confederate veteran, is buried in Acton Cemetery in Acton, Texas, close by the grave of Davy Crockett's wife, Elizabeth.

Mark Levin: A Flaming Ignoramus on the Civil War

I originally posted the article belon on February 6, 2010. Today, September 2, 2014, Mark Levin again displayed his ignorance on his radio show by praising Abraham Lincoln.  Mark no doubts thinks the Russians are terrible aggressors for invading the Ukraine this week -- and he'd be right.  For some reason, when Lincoln did the same thing, even more ruthlessly, in 1861, that was just fine.  Because American tyranny is good, because Old Glory, Stars and Stripes Forever.  Or something.

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Mark Levin is an excellent writer and has given a lot to the conservative movement.  However, his increasingly asinine remarks on the radio about the American Civil War and the Confederate States of America compel me to finally call him out.

Yesterday the Irate One stated that the Confederacy represented an "illegitimate form of government" based on "dangerous rebellion."  What a load of happy horse sh*t.  If that is true of the Confederacy, it is also true of the United States, who came into being in the same way:  through secession and a declaration of independence.  Furthermore, the Confederate States were not in "rebellion" to the Constitution or anything else.  They were merely exercising their right to self-government under the very American concept of "the consent of the governed."  They were merely following the legal means of seceding as outlined in textbooks at West Point, as commonly understood since the beginning of the American republic:  sovereign bodies that accede to a union of political states may also secede from the same union when it suits their needs and purposes to do so.  Abraham Lincoln himself stated as much in a speech to Congress while he himself was but a congressman:

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. 

Any government that forces a population into its fold through force is tyranny.  The Northern states were on the side of tyranny during the Civil War.  They did not fight to "free the slaves" as is commonly and erroneously taught to every third-grader; they fought to force the South back into a union it no longer wanted; the slaves were totally negotiable.  The Civil War was like most wars, fought over territorial control, the right to govern and the right to tax.  Similar situations today:  China's invasion of Tibet and its desire to annex Taiwan; Russia's desire to annex Georgia and its former colonies.

Abraham Lincoln was a flaming disaster to the United States, clearly the worst president in our history.  He started a war of tyranny and subjugation and killed 630,000 people in the process.  Yet, Lincoln is Mark Levin's hero.  It figures.

YOU'RE AN IDIOT, MARK.

Why We Fight For Right to Display the Confederate Flag

The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles has opposed issuing license plates that display the Confederate flag.  The Sons of Confederate Veterans sued the DMV for the ban, and won their case on appeal in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Now the Texas state Attorney General seeks to bring the argument to the Supreme Court. The fanatical cultural oppression by the Texas AG is outrageous.  But why do anti-flag fanatics seek to ban the Confederate flag?

The anti-flag forces seek to ban the flag to uphold their erroneous views as described below:

1.  That the Confederacy was evil and wrong "in fighting for slavery."

This view is wrong because the North did not go to war to end slavery, as is popularly but falsely believed, but to compel the Southern states to remain in a union that they no longer wanted. If the North was not fighting to end slavery, the South could not have been fighting to preserve it.  The myth that the North fought to end slavery was invented after the war to give a false aura of respectability to Northern aggression and to justify the enormous number of fatalities and widespread destruction.

2  That the Confederate flag's display is "a painful reminder of racism and slavery."

This view is self-serving, in that the American flag is, historically, far more associated with African slavery than the Confederate flag.  Its goal is to scapegoat the South for an institution that was well-entrenched decades before there was a Southern Confederacy, and to deny the massive culpability of the North in the support and expansion of the institution.  

3.  That the Confederate South is solely responsible for the institution of African slavery.

Again, this is to scapegoat the Confederacy -- see rebuttal of No 2 above.  Northern states were heavily involved in the slave trade before the Civil War, and other countries both sold and used slave labor, e.g. Portugal, England, France, Cuba, Brazil and the West Indies.

4.  That the Confederate flag is "racially insensitive."

This view is is in support of race-huckstering groups like the NAACP, who are totally ineffective at solving the problems of their constituents, e.g. school drop-outs, poverty, illegitimacy, absent fathers and crime.  So they attack the Confederate flag instead, so they can point to some kind of success, however meaningless.  They must validate their otherwise feckless existence by scapegoating the flag.

6.  That the only possible interpretation of the flag's display is to express race hatred.

Although it is true that the flag has sometimes been misused by hate groups, those same groups have likewise used the American flag and the Celtic Cross.  However, all of these symbols mean many things to many people, and no one has the right to limit individual interpretations to the lowest common denominator.  For example, some might see the American flag as the flag of the genocide of the Plains Indians or the unconstitutional interment of Japanese Americans, or the imperialism of annexing Hawaii and deposing its queen.  However, like the American flag, the Confederate flag should be seen in a much wider context.

We fight for the flag for these reasons:

1.  We insist that the Confederacy be accorded a respectable place in American history.  The scapegoating of the South, and the slanderous falsehoods against it must not be the official position of any federal or state agency.

2.  We refuse to allow the Confederate flag to be used as a bogeyman to disrespect our ancestors, their descendants, their country, Southern history, or the Southern section of the nation.

3.  We refuse to allow our viewpoint on history to be repressed by "viewpoint discrimination," such as that practiced by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles.  We refuse to be acquiescent in the legal proliferation of negative stereotypes of Southerners who are proud of their ancestors and who cherish Southern symbols like the Confederate flag.  The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles seeks to enforce its bigotry through legalization, and we will not quietly go along.

4.  We refuse to acquiesce to official slander of Southern history or culture, by allowing federal or state governments to ban the Confederate flag, or to define it as "the flag of slavery, racism and oppression."

We will never stop fighting for an honorable place for Confederates in American history.  We will never give up.

My Letter to Governor Jerry Brown Re: California Bill to Ban the Confederate Flag

Today I finally had enough, and wrote to Governor Brown.  That correspondence is below.

September 1, 2014

Governor Jerry Brown

c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173

Sacramento, CA 95814

Re:  Proposed Ban on Confederate Flag in California

Dear Governor Brown:

I understand that a bill to ban the Confederate flag in California has been passed by the state legislature.  It now sits on your desk awaiting signature.  I am asking you not to sign it.  It is a blatant violation of the First Amendment, and if passed, we will litigate the matter in federal court.  You will lose.

The Confederate flag is a sacred heritage symbol to millions of Americans, both white and black, particularly those who are descendants of Confederate soldiers, sailors and marines.  We do not display it to offend anyone, or to express hatred of anyone, but as a symbol of who we are and where we came from.  It is a tribe symbol, representing our families, our ancestors, our people, their culture and their history.  If some are offended by the sight of the Confederate flag, you can be sure that we are equally offended by their uninformed and unfounded hostility.  They pretend to know what’s in our hearts, and they haven’t the slightest idea.  Their efforts to ban the flag both insult us and slander us.

Those who seek to ban the flag do so out of ignorance, and seek to make their ignorance the law of the land.  They seek to politicize American history, making any alternative views of that history illegal, shameful and suppressed.  Such efforts are totalitarian and oppressive, no matter how “honorable” they pretend to be.  

For the sake of freedom of expression, inquiry and association, please do not sign that bill.

Sincerely yours,

  

Stogie [full name redacted]

Life Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans

Cc:  Isadore Hall III, D-Compton

2200 W. Artesia Blvd. Suite 210

Compton, CA 90220