Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Chicago Is the Most Segregated City

Who would have thought that Chicago is the most segregated city in the US?  Blacks moved North to get away from segregation in the South.  Apparently going to Chicago did not help much.  Neither did going to Detroit, which more or less ceased to be a major American city after the black migration there.  It degenerated into a giant, poverty-stricken slum.  Whites in Chicago may be afraid that they will follow Detroit down the drain.  

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2015/12/21-chicago-race-inequality-reeves

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/end-segregated-century-racial-separation-americas-neighborhoods-1890-2010-5848.html


Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Why Is Trump Trying to Speak Yiddish?

Trump’s controversial use of the word “schlonged” in referring to Hillary’s 2008 campaign has been all over the news.  For me it raised the question of what is Trump’s connection to the Jewish community, since schlonged is apparently a corruption of the Yiddish word schlong.  What is Trump doing speaking Yiddish, even if he has the word wrong? 

I worry about Trump’s Jewish connections because the general image of Jews is as heartless, greedy, misers, often in the real estate business like Trump.  They appear to have no compunction about putting tenants who are behind in their rent out in the snow to freeze.  In their view, if the stupid, gullible Christians want to help them, so be it, but the Jews can watch them freeze to death and be content that they have complied with the law.  That’s probably one reason why Trump has done real estate business with Jews like the Kushners, so that they can do his dirty work. 

Of course Jews give lots of money to charities, but usually to Jewish charities, and usually not so much that it hurts their bottom line.  It is often to places like universities or hospitals that will put the donor’s name on a very public building to enhance his reputation. 

Interestingly, both Donald Trump’s daughter and Hillary Clinton’s daughter married Jews.  Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, has converted to Judaism, so that Donald’s grandchildren are definitely Jewish.  As far as I know, Chelsey Clinton has not converted to Judaism, so that it is less clear if Hillary’s granddaughter is Jewish, since Jews usually make the status of the mother, not the father, the deciding factor for the ethnicity of the child.  In any case, I would guess that both grandchildren have the right to be issued Israeli passports if they want them. 

Also interestingly, the fathers-in-law of both Ivanka and Chelsey are convicted felons for various types of financial crimes.  Ivanka’s father-in-law, the real estate mogul Charles Kushner, was convicted of tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering.  Chelsey’s father-in-law, politician Edward Mezvinsky, pled guilty to 31 felony charges of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud amounting to about $10 million. 

The characteristics of greediness and heartlessness often attributed to Jews are not solely theirs.  Charles Dickens’ Scrooge is presumably not Jewish, but has many of the same characteristics, which are highlighted by the story “A Christmas Carol” at this time of the year.  Nor does Mr. Potter, the mean banker in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” appear to be Jewish, although he has many of the same traits. 

So, maybe the problem is that Jews seem attracted to the real estate and banking professions, two that are often associated in popular mythology with cruel, heartless, greedy people, no matter what their ethnicity or religion.  Of course, Trump is also a real estate mogul, whose schoolyard bullying tactics in the Republican debates may illustrate that he has some of these same traits, despite being a Presbyterian.  I just didn’t start thinking about it until he started trying to speak Yiddish. 


Friday, October 23, 2015

Freedom Caucus Members

Here is a list of the Freedom Caucus members from Pew Research.  I’m guessing that most of these Congressional districts were gerrymandered to guarantee the election of a Republican, so that they have no concern abut being defeated by a Democrat.  They just have to out-Republican any primary candidate against them.  The people who live in these districts apparently believe that America is a doomed, failed nation that should commit suicide.  Most of them are probably good, ole white boys who long for the 1950s.  I do too, but it’s not coming back.  We need to see what we can make of what we’ve got now.  If the US goes down, where are they going to move?  Australia?  England?  China?  Sweden?  Poland?  Russia?  There are not a lot of countries out there today that are going to feel like 1950s America. 

House Freedom Caucus Members
All members are Republicans
Amash, Justin
MI-3
3
0.712
Blum, Rod
IA-1
1
0.532
Brat, David
VA-7
2
0.753
Bridenstine, Jim
OK-1
2
0.752
Brooks, Mo
AL-5
3
0.587
Buck, Ken
CO-4
1
0.693
Clawson, Curt
FL-19
2
0.669
Desantis, Ron
FL-6
2
0.676
DesJarlais, Scott
TN-4
3
0.568
Duncan, Jeff
SC-3
3
0.767
Fleming, John
LA-4
4
0.573
Franks, Trent
AZ-8
7
0.751
Garrett, Scott
NJ-5
7
0.690
Gosar, Paul
AZ-4
3
0.573
Griffith, Morgan
VA-9
3
0.514
Harris, Andy
MD-1
3
0.578
Hice, Jody
GA-10
1
0.700
Huelskamp, Tim
KS-1
3
0.756
Jordan, Jim (chairman)
OH-4
5
0.692
Labrador, Raúl
ID-1
3
0.734
Loudermilk, Barry
GA-11
1
0.729
Lummis, Cynthia
WY-At large
4
0.670
Meadows, Mark
NC-11
2
0.625
Mooney, Alex
WV-2
1
0.573
Mulvaney, Mick
SC-5
3
0.764
Palmer, Gary
AL-6
1
0.727
Pearce, Stevan
NM-2
6
0.467
Perry, Scott
PA-4
2
0.623
Posey, Bill
FL-8
4
0.490
Rothfus, Keith
PA-12
2
0.474
Salmon, Matthew
AZ-5
5
0.698
Sanford, Mark
SC-1
5
0.704
Schweikert, David
AZ-6
3
0.653
Stutzman, Marlin
IN-3
4
0.744
Weber, Randy
TX-14
2
0.797
Yoho, Ted
FL-3
2
0.720
MEDIAN
3
0.691


Friday, August 21, 2015

"Gone with the Wind" on TCM

Turner Classic Movies recently showed “Gone with the Wind” and a documentary about the making of the movie.  The documentary brings out how obsessed the whole United States was with the book and the movie, not just the South.  Part of its appeal is the love story, but part of it is the portrayal of the Old South.  The Southerners were portrayed as fighting for their homes and their way of life, not to preserve slavery, although slavery was an important element to their way of life.  Of course, relatively few Southerners lived on plantations, but those who did represented a gracious, polite, beautiful lifestyle that almost everyone admired.  In the movie, the black slaves and the white masters were not enemies.  This was probably truer for the slaves who worked in the household than those who worked in the fields, but it is probably a more accurate portrayal than the hatred that many people today claim existed.  After the war, the slaves had been freed, but many stuck with their families.  Many of those who did not were taken advantage of by carpetbaggers who came down from the North and used the freed slaves for their own personal gain, politically and financially. 

The hatred that blacks are showing today for Southerners is not a result of the old slavery days; it is part of a new struggle for political and financial power.  No one alive today was ever a slave.  Most blacks are six or seven generations removed from any ancestor who may have been a slave.  Segregation may have delayed and hindered their rise, but it was not slavery.  They were free to move to the North, the West, or to rebel against segregation in the South.  Legal segregation has now been gone for several generations.  Slavery and segregation are not the reason for any failure of blacks to become equal to all other races in America today.  This is illustrated by the fact that many blacks are equal to the members of any other race today.  Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey are examples of blacks who rose from poverty to be successful leaders of the nation.  Barak Obama is a special case whose upbringing was not typical of most blacks in America. 

The Confederate flag appears in “Gone with the Wind,” and it was not characterized as a symbol of racial hatred.  It was part of a war.  Courage in battle used to be respected for itself; today almost nobody in the US has any firsthand experience with combat.  Only about one percent serves in the military, most of those from lower classes who serve mainly because they need the money.  Of those who serve, the Navy and Air Force don’t see real combat; their lives are seldom at risk.  So, that cuts down the percentage of Americans familiar with combat.  Mainly Marines and Army infantry shoulder the load of combat with the enemy, along with the small group of members of the Special Forces from all branches.  So, the people who disparage the Confederate flag and the veterans it symbolizes have no idea what it is like to fight for their country, and probably would not fight for it.  As a Vietnam veteran, my views are colored by my coming home to widespread contempt for all veterans as baby-killing war criminals.  Today there is publicly much more sympathy for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, but I think a lot of it is political correctness, words of praise, but inward contempt or indifference for people that they think could not succeed in the civilian economy.  Contempt for the Confederate flag is just a part of a more generalized contempt for the military.  Otherwise, why don’t graduates of Ivy League schools join the military in large numbers?  Where are the elites who want to make American safer and stronger?  There aren’t any. 


But there were some in 1860, both in the North and the South.  “Gone with the Wind” celebrates their patriotism, and I am glad that it does, because it is a trait that is dying out in America.  

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Ban Gang Symbols along with the Confederate Flag

If America wants to ban the public display of the Confederate flag, it should also ban the display of gang symbols.  Many more people die because of gang violence than because of violence related to the Confederate flag.  It is unlikely that Dylann Roof was motivated to kill the nine people in the Charleston church by the Confederate flag.  If the Confederate flag did not exist, it is likely that he would have done the same thing because of other factors, mainly racial prejudice, mental problems, and easy access to a gun.  The main reason these people died is because the United States and South Carolina failed to control the access to guns by people with homicidal tendencies.  Take away the Confederate flag, these people would still have been killed.  Take away the gun, and they would still be alive.  
In America today political correctness is becoming more important than free speech.  If America is going to limit the free speech of Southern Americans by banning the display of the Confederate flag, then it should also ban the display of gang symbols.  More people were killed in one weekend in Chicago than were killed in the Charleston church, probably all related to gang violence.  Gang members shoot to kill members of rival gangs.  People with Confederate flags don't shoot people with American flags, although they did during the Civil War.  People re-enact the Civil War, but they don't kill each other.  Gang members do.  It is sad that the black and Hispanic communities just accept black on black violence and Hispanic on Hispanic violence.  There is no excuse for a white policeman to shoot an unarmed black man, but one reason it happens is that the white policemen are scared.  They see the killing that takes place among the gangs, and they don't want to get shot.  Both communities need to work together to establish greater trust and security.  One of the main beneficiaries would be the black community itself.  
One way to begin to establish trust and security would be to eliminate the signs of gang territory, if the police can't eliminate the gangs themselves.  If they are going to limit Confederate flags, they should limit gang symbols as well.  

Sunday, July 12, 2015

What about Atticus?

I find it hard to get sucked up into all the handwringing about Harper Lee’s new book, “Go Tell a Watchman,” like that in the article about the book in the Wall Street Journal.  First, it’s not clear that Harper Lee would have published the book if she were healthy and of sound mind.  It seems likely that some of those close to her are using this old draft novel to make some money.  That may not be bad if Harper Lee needs some money for her care in her present condition.  But it that is the case, there is no basis for comparing this book to her earlier book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which she published in her prime. 

Secondly, I don’t think that the fact that Atticus may have had some segregationist leanings makes him a bad man.  He was a child of his times.  In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus defends a black man being prosecuted by the white establishment not because he is black, but because he is innocent.  I’m not sure the book says that he wanted to marry a black woman or take on a black law partner.  I’m not sure he was the white Martin Luther King that the WSJ article makes him out to be. 


I haven’t read the book, so if it says that Atticus participated in a lynching or joined the Ku Klux Klan, then maybe I have to revise my opinion.  But if he is a decent man who wants equal justice for all before the law, even though there is still some social discrimination in the South, then I don’t think that means he is so different from the Atticus in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  If those WSJ writers believe that America today is a perfect racial paradise where Atticus appears as a racist bigot, then they haven’t been reading their own newspaper this summer.  

Friday, July 10, 2015

Confederates in National Cemeteries

I was surprised by the debate in Congress over whether Confederate flags could be placed on graves in national cemeteries, as reported in the New York Times.  I didn’t think Confederates would be buried in national cemeteries, almost by definition, but it turns out that they are.  There is even a Confederate section in Arlington Cemetery, which ironically used to be Robert E. Lee’s home, but was turned into a cemetery by the Union so that Lee could never go home to Arlington.  The Arlington Cemetery history of the section says that there were few or no Confederates in the cemetery until about 50 years after the war, when tempers had cooled and reconciliation was taking place.  It is sad that 100 years later, tempers are flaring again, and old hatreds are being stirred up.  The people stirring up these hatreds have even less idea what slavery was like than their grandfathers who were reconciling 100 years ago.  I suppose the blacks would argue that they were not part of the reconciliation 100 years ago, and can only get their revenge today when they have more political power. 

That position highlights the fact that black slaves did not free themselves.  They were freed by Northern white men.  It’s interesting that in hundreds of years of slavery in the South, including plantations with hundreds of slaves, there doesn’t seem to have been a serious slave uprising or revolt.  Certainly there were small ones, and there were many slaves who escaped to the North, but the slaves did not rise up and defeat their masters.  This is sort of the reverse side of the argument that the Civil War was all about slavery.  It was about slavery, but it was also about politics.  The South was an agrarian economy based heavily on slavery; the North was an industrializing economy, in many cases based on immigrant labor.  In many cases the immigrants were treated little better than slaves, although there were clear legal and moral differences between economic oppression, which still exists today, and slavery.  Nevertheless, these differences affected laws across the board.  How do you regulate or tax land versus labor?  In foreign trade, which is more important, cotton or iron?  As the US expanded westward, it was clear that if slavery did not expand, the industrial Congressional delegations would soon control the Congress, to the detriment of everything that benefited the South.  Therefore, the South felt that there had to be new slave states, if only to protect the political interests of the old slave states.  It was this impasse that led to the Civil War.  It was not started to free the slaves; it was started because the South believed that the only way it could protect its economic and political interests was to form its own country before it fell totally under the control of the North in the US Congress.  It was only after we were deep into the war, which turned out to be much bloodier and more costly than most people had expected, that Lincoln decided to free the slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863, well after the war started in 1861.  In any case, the slaves were freed almost entirely due to the efforts of white people, not due to the slaves themselves.  Even after the war, there does not seem to have been a significant uprising by the former slaves against their masters.  To hear the black community today, you would think that all of the former slaves should have slit the throats of their former masters as soon as the South surrendered to the North.  By and large that did not happen, which is to a large extent a tribute to the decency of the former slaves, but also to some extent due to the fact that there were personal bonds between master and slave which meant that not all of the slaves hated their masters.  Of course there were attacks on whites, and there was also a white response, which led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, among other ways of protecting white interests.  In any case, race warfare did not break out in the South after the war, despite its defeat by the North.  Reconstruction was supposed to give blacks political power, but by and large that was a failure.  It took about 100 years for the black community to really rise in rebellion and gain political power in the 1960s. 

One of the most striking images from the recent discussions about the Confederate flag in South Carolina was this one from the New York Times, which shows a black South Carolina legislator in a suit and tie, meeting with two good-old white boys in blue jeans carrying Confederate flags.  Who has the power in this image?  Who represents the future? 

On the cemetery issue, I first learned that there had been a reconciliation for Confederate soldiers when the United Daughters of the Confederacy asked if they could put a tombstone provided by the federal government on my great-grandfather’s grave.  My great-grandfather’s grave is in a local cemetery just a few blocks from where I grew up.  The plot never had any headstones, although there are about ten people buried there.  I don’t know why.  My grandfather knew this, and it did not seem to bother him.  Perhaps my great-grandfather had some personal object to tombstones.  In any case, at this late date, I agreed to allow the UDC to place the marker, which apparently cost them nothing since it was provided by the government.   In this local cemetery, Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile, Alabama, there is a Confederate cemetery that is not a US national cemetery.  I always heard that my great-grandfather won a prize for suggesting the inscription on the monument in the Confederate section, “The Confederate dead.” 

In any case, it seems to me that descendants of Confederate veterans should be able to put Confederate flags on the graves of their ancestors if they want to, wherever they are buried, in private cemeteries, or in national cemeteries.  If there are no Confederates in a cemetery, I see no reason to have some law allowing the flag.  In fact I see no reason for a law of any kind on the subject.  People should be free to respect their ancestors however they want to.  It would not be appropriate to put Confederate flags on the graves of Union soldiers, or on the graves of black people, but it seems like common decency is enough to prevent that, and the cemeteries could control that like they do other things like defacing graves, or leaving improper memorials. 



Thursday, July 9, 2015

Confederate Flag Not About Racism

All the talk today is about how the Confederate flag represents racism, but to many Southerners, it represented a refusal to recognize defeat in the Civil War, like the old saying, “Save your Confederate money boys, the South will rise again.”  The South was physically destroyed, plundered and exhausted by the war, perhaps epitomized by Sherman’s march to the sea.  On top of this devastation was added the harsh terms of Reconstruction, under which the victors continued to oppress the defeated South.  Southerners needed ways to retain their pride under Northern oppression, and one way was to cling to symbols of the proud society they had had before the war, like the flag, like honoring those who fought in the war.  It was a way of maintaining their identity in the face of Northern pressure to eliminate it. 

This tradition of Southern pride in its identity lasted for a hundred years, but now, 150 years later, that tradition is dying out.  The country and the South are changing.  South Carolina’s governor is no longer a good, old, white boy, but an Indian-American woman.  Good, old, white boys are becoming a minority in their own land.  The newcomers, including  Latinos and the newly politically powerful black Southerners, have no interest in maintaining that old Southern identity.  They find it offensive. 

The current obsession with slavery in the South overlooks the fact that blacks and whites lived in relative harmony for hundreds of years in the South.  Even in times of slavery and segregation, there were blacks and whites who were friends despite the racial barriers and inequalities of the day.  Race relations today are on a more equal footing, but by no means perfect, as the unrest in Baltimore and St. Louis, and the huge number of black men in prison illustrate.  The Confederate flag was not the problem in St. Louis or Baltimore, nor is it in many of the cities with disproportionate numbers of black men in prison, like Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York. 

This may be the last generation to try to maintain the Southern legacy of the Civil War.  I grew up with my grandfather telling me stories about his father, who commanded Fort Powell at the entrance to Mobile Bay during the Battle of Mobile Bay.  He said that his father was leading on his arm against a wall of sandbags, when a cannonball went under his arm and into the wall of sandbags.  It did not explode but forever after he had sand embedded in his arm and side from the force of the cannonball hitting the sand.  He also fought at the Battle of Shiloh with his good friend George Dixon who went on to be the driving force behind the construction of the Confederate submarine the Hunley


I don’t think it is essential that the Confederate flag fly over the South Carolina capitol or have any other official government role, but it should not be banned from all public display as some sort of evil emblem.  It is not only about race, although race may always be associated with it by those who want to make the association.  An attempt to ban it today is just as much about racism as it was about racism in the 1860s.  People cheer for their hometown sports teams, for family members playing sports.  The love of the old South and the flag is sort of like the hopeless love of the Chicago Cubs, perpetual losers, but fan favorites.  The flag is to some extent a symbol of the fact that even if you lost, you can take pride in your effort.  You may have been defeated, but your spirit is not broken.  

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Is the Confederate Flag the Problem?

At the moment, the talking-head pundits have decided that the Confederate flag is the reason for racial animosity in the United States.  Do they really believe that if Walmart had banned the sale of Confederate flags, it would have prevented Dylann Roof from killing those nine people in Charleston?  If Walmart and other gun shops were more restrictive in selling guns, that might have made a difference, but Confederate flags would have made no difference.

If Dylann Roof had been a member of some organized militia where the flag was an integral part of military training, then I might have thought that there was some peripheral connection.  But he was a lone, unhappy gunman, just like those who have carried out multiple killings in American schools, theaters, and other churches.  This was not an organized attack carried out in military style under a flag representing the group.  This was a sick man who should never have been sold a gun.  Those who attack the flag rather than gun violence devalue to lives of those he killed.  America doesn’t care about those nine any more than it cared about the children killed in Newtown, the movie goers in Aurora, the Columbine victims, or any of the dozens of people who are killed weekly by gun violence, most of them black men killed by other black men.

What the campaign does do is try to equate Confederate veterans with SS prison guards at Auschwitz.  It gives non-Southerners a reason to hate Southerners, but the haters of the South pour gasoline on the fires of race hatred.  They feel good about it, because they can characterize Southerners as “evil” and hence deserving of hatred.

I don’t think the Civil War soldiers saw it that way, although some may have.  I think the Confederacy was seen as a defeated army, but a respected one.  Each side knew that at certain times and places the other side had fought bravely and well.  They may not have liked each other, but I doubt that many would have described the men they fought against as “evil,” except in cases where they were evil by mistreating prisoners, mistreating civilians, etc.  Of course, there are no more Civil War veterans left to say what they really felt, but published reflections on the war don’t dwell on either side being “evil.”  Certainly Lincoln and Lee were men of high ideals, and the South would probably have fared better after the war if another lone crazy man, John Wilkes Booth, had not assassinated Lincoln.

When only one percent of Americans serve in the military today, it means that 99 percent don’t really understand what war and military service are like.  There is a tendency among the 99% to think that any war and any soldier is evil, because as they say, “War is hell.”  But at some time in its existence almost every great nation has had to fight to continue to survive.  I have often wondered what it would have been like to be forced to serve as a humble private in the German army, fight under horrible conditions on the Russian front, and then come home to Germany in a defeated army.  One difference was that after World War II, one of the victors, the United States, organized a huge relief effort, the Marshall Plan, to help Germany.  Nothing like that would happen today where there is only hatred directed at the losing Confederate army, although the Confederate soldiers fellow Americans.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Bye-Bye Confederate Flag

The Supreme Court decision turns out to have been no assault on the Confederate flag compared to what has happened after the killings in Charleston.  I don't really care so much whether South Carolina removes the flag from the capitol grounds.  I am distressed that the shootings have made the flag into a symbol of evil, which is what I wanted least of all.  The opponents are attacking the flag on the grounds that it represents racism and evil, the very things I did not want it to represent.  So, like the rest of the old South, the flag is "gone with the wind."  Although there was slavery in the South, there was also a genteel. polite, dignified way of life that is lots in the hatred and vitriol of today's society.  While there were a lot of slaves who hated their masters, I don't think they all did.  It was definitely not an equal relationship, but despite the social discrimination, I'm sure that in many cases the slaves were the stronger partners when the whites and blacks all lived and worked together.
I am worried that because of the strength of the backlash against the old South, there will be a backlash against the Founding Fathers, many of whom were slave owners from Virginia.  In the long term this will tend to undermine the Constitutional rule of law.  The US will gradually become a different country.  Many people will think it is better, but old guys like me will probably not think so, depending on what it turns into.

If slavery is so bad, what do the Jews say about Abraham, the founder of Judaism, who owned slavers an had a son by one of his slaves, Hagar, which made his wife so jealous that she made him send Hagar and his son into the desert, where they would have died if they had not been saved by a miracle?  Times change, but I don't think that Jews are going to renounce their religion because Abraham owned slaves.

There are many people who hate the Bible because it, at least the Old Testament, accepts the practice of slavery, but there are also many people who love the Bible despite that.  Similarly, with the old South, you can love the good parts, without loving the bad parts.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Disappointing Supreme Court Decision on Confederate Flag Tag

I was disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, reported in the New York Times.  I really don't care about the Confederate flag on the Texas license plate so much.  I am mainly concerned about the its ratification of the idea that the Confederate battle flag is some sort of hate symbol, like the swastika.  I am  more disappointed in the Texas decision to bar the flag than by the Supreme Court decision approving it.

Apparently because of the unfavorable associations with the Confederate battle flag, the Sons of Confederate Veterans mainly use the Confederate national flag, which has thick horizontal stripes and  a field in the upper left, much like the United States' flag.  That's okay, but most people don't recognize it as a symbol of the Confederacy.  It could be a state flag, or some organization's flag.  So, the problem with the battle flag is the association with the Confederacy, and its implication that the South is evil.

Today's murder of nine people at an African-American church in Charleston, as reported in the NYT,  did not help.  It's hard to say what would lead to an abnormal act like that.  Southern discrimination against blacks over the years may have contributed, but that would have been irrelevant to the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, to the school shooting in Connecticut, or to the original school shooting in Columbine, for example.  They were all just senseless violence.  All of the shooters were probably unstable for reasons that may never be known.  There have been many episodes of police mistreatment of blacks recently, but they have occurred in the north and the south, South Carolina and New York, Maryland and Missouri, as well as other places.  All of these shootings may have more to do with the widespread prevalence of guns in America, which means continual threats to police, and a more general predilection for violence than exists in Europe, for example.  In any case, I don't think there is a clear link to something especially evil about the South.

Southerners whose ancestors fought in the Civil War should be able to commemorate their service.  Despite slavery, thee were many good things about the old South.  American society seems determined to make it seem evil.  I hope there will be some support for the good that it embodied, although it appears that there will be fewer and fewer people who have the heritage and inclination to do so.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Sons of Confederate Veterans

I attended a meeting of a local Sons of Confederate Veterans group.  I have been a descendant of a Confederate veteran for a long time, but had never done anything official about it.  I was moved to do something when the NYT ran an article reporting that Texas would not allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans to have a vanity license tag with the Confederate flag on it.  I never cared much about flying the Confederate flag, but I always considered it part of my heritage.  When I went to college I took a flag with me to hang on the wall in Illinois, and it turned out that my roommate frpm California had been demonstrating for civil rights in the South.  We worked out some arrangement under which I hung it somewhere he couldn't see it.

Although some people see it as a symbol of racism and oppression, it also memorializes the sacrifices of those Southerners who fought under it.  My main beef with those who object to the flag is that they imply that my great-grandfather was a bad man simply because he fought for the South in the Civil War.  I don't think that he was.  He was born in Iowa, married a girl from New York, and never owned slaves.  But he loved his fellow Southerners and the South after he adopted it as his home.  I think I should be allowed to pay tribute to him as part of my right to free speech, if nothing else, although I think it is a part of American history, and it should not be swept under the carpet.

A number of the people who hate the Confederate flag also hate the founding fathers of the United States who came from the South, like Jefferson, Washington, and Madison.  I see the possibility of a strong push to modify the Constitution to make the Untied States more politically correct, but in fact what this is likely to mean is that the oppressed will become the oppressors, and justice will still be lacking.  What is needed is a little politeness and common sense on both sides.

Monday, March 30, 2015

Texas Confederates

I was very disappointed to see in the NYT that Texas has refused a specialty license plate to the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  My great-grandfather fought under the Confederate flag; I think I should be able to memorialize that fact if I want to.  The Confederate flag is not a symbol of hate; it symbolizes the bravery and camaraderie of those who fought for the Confederate states, about half of the total United States at that time.  This was not a small group of malcontents.  It was a large political and military grouping that for a while had a chance of defeating the Union forces and creating the Confederacy as a separate nation.  Of course, there were serious repercussions to the Southern loss, brought home by the harsh Reconstruction imposed by the North after Lincoln's assassination.  After Reconstruction there was a mending of the animosity between the North and the South, but now that animosity seems to be returning.

I don't mind if blacks or Union descendants want to commemorate their hardships and victories, but I don't think they should prevent Confederate descendants from commemorating their ancestors' hardships and losses.  History is written by the victors, but the United States is not supposed to be like the old Soviet Union of Communist China.  The US is supposed to preserve freedom of expression.

In a way this license tag case is a minor case going before the Supreme Court, but it illustrates trends in today's society.  One hundred years ago, the problem was discrimination by whites against blacks.  Now we find blacks leading discrimination against whites.  It's understandable, but not good for the country, witness the animosity flaring every day in Washington.  The United States may be edging back toward the same depths of disagreement that almost destroyed it in the 1860s.  While blacks in Texas are attacking whites for wanting to display the Confederate flag, a significant number of Republicans are attacking President Obama simply because he is black.