Say It Ain't So Already

The Civil War — a Liberal Fantasy

December 26, 2010 at 9:17 PM Leave a comment

I’m nodding off but I want to post this before I misplace the link:

Let’s Not Spin the Civil War

The Civil War is about to loom very large in the popular memory. We would do well to be candid about its causes and not allow the distortions of contemporary politics or long-standing myths to cloud our understanding of why the nation fell apart.

The coming year will mark the 150th anniversary of the onset of the conflict, which is usually dated to April 12, 1861, when Confederate batteries opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on federal troops occupying Fort Sumter. Union forces surrendered the next day, after 34 hours of shelling.

[...]

Why does getting the story right matter? As Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s recent difficulty with the history of the civil rights years demonstrates, there is to this day too much evasion of how integral race, racism and racial conflict are to our national story. We can take pride in our struggles to overcome the legacies of slavery and segregation. But we should not sanitize how contested and bloody the road to justice has been. We will dishonor the Civil War if we refuse to face up to the reason it was fought.

Oh God.   Fox is going to spend the next four months remaking history here.  The desired result?  Conservatives white southerners were never against “negroes” or slavery.  Heck no.  They “don’t remember it as being that bad” and it wasn’t that bad.  The whole thing is the “liberal media’s” fault.  They’ve been been making stuff up for 150 years.

Entry filed under: Dumbed Down, Education, Racism, Republicans, Including Wingers & "Moderates", Rumors, The "Liberal Media", Wars, We the People. Tags: .