The C-Word: Is Confederate the new N-word?

The City of Charleston, South Carolina is about 40 miles from my front door. The Charleston area is my adopted home, having moved to the Lowcountry almost 15 years ago. Voted time and time again as the Best City in America and the Friendliest City in America, it is known locally as Chucktown but has another nickname as well: The Holy City. Charleston received this nickname for the overwhelming preponderance of churches that sprang up over the years and for a long-standing tradition of religious tolerance. 

The French Huguenot Church in Charleston

French Protestant Huguenots established a church in Charleston that still stands today, one of only two left in the United States. South Carolina allowed Jews to practice their faith without restriction and Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, founded in 1749 by Sephardic Jews from London, is the fourth-oldest Jewish congregation in the continental United States. And among our historic churches in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, also known as Mother Emanuel. Up until last Thursday, not many people outside of the area knew of Emanuel AME. Sadly, thanks to a 21-year old mentally ill racist turd from the Columbia area, the whole world knows the name of this church. 

Back in March I wrote about how the local papers and news outlets were hand-wringing over the panhandlers on the street corners and whether they were hurting the city’s image. I countered that we had bigger problems with the burgeoning number of shootings in the area, a problem that really hasn’t changed in the following weeks. Right after I wrote that, Charleston’s image problem took a swift kick in the solar plexus when a North Charleston city cop shot an unarmed black guy who, instead of just surrendering, decided to struggle and haul ass after a simple traffic stop. After being Tasered he kept on trying to flee, but instead of giving chase the cop inexplicably shot the man to death as he ran. He now faces murder charges.

The Charleston area (the shooting was not in the City of Charleston but in the larger suburb of North Charleston) kept its cool in the days and weeks following the shooting. There were protests, yes, but they were peaceful and respectful, despite the antagonism of out-of-state agitators from #blacklivesmatter and other groups who were quick to try and foment riots and hate, to no avail. The locals of Charleston did not rise to take the proffered race-bait. 

And just as the Lowcountry was putting this tragedy behind us, nine innocent people were gunned down in cold blood by a young man they welcomed into their prayer meeting. His own sister was the one to contact police when she recognized him in security video as he entered the church. He was apprehended without incident a couple hundred miles away in Shelby, NC when a motorist recognized his car.

The kid, a self-proclaimed white supremacist with a web-based manifesto and a belief that it was his mission to start a race war is now Inmate 0001518680 at the Charleston County jail, under 24-hour guard in cell 1141B. His cell is next to the cop who shot the unarmed black man, in 1140B. You'll note that I'm not using his name. Why give him any free publicity? From what I hear he's received no visitors, not even his own family. He sits in his cell staring at the walls. The only person to see him is his lawyer. So be it.

And, of course, as expected, outside agitators from various organizations have attempted to sow the seeds of discord and rile people up into riots and violence. And, of course, the awesome people of Charleston have refused to give in. Such an outpouring of love and strength and reconciliation and forgiveness has sprung up in the wake of this tragedy that it really makes me proud to live here among such great people. When you can gather eight to ten THOUSAND people of all races together to form a human chain hand-in-hand from one end of the Ravenel Bridge to the other across Charleston Harbor in a peaceful rally, that’s really saying something.

Charlestonians gathering out of love and harmony

Charleston Southern University players rally around fellow player Chris Singleton, whose mother was among the slain

The UnityRally atop the Ravenel Bridge

And it is NOT a small bridge

But sadly, just as expected, those who always seek to “never let a perfectly good crisis go to waste” are doing so, and those who seek to capitalize on tragedies to distract America from the secret goings-on in the political back room are also taking advantage of the convenient smokescreen and endless cast of Useful Idiots available to perpetrate their deeds. They even tried to say it was "white privilege" that the shooter was put in a bulletproof vest. Oh, please...

Yeah, well, the Charleston shooter didn't resist. He gave up when confronted and was arrested without incident. He wasn't a morbidly obese habitual offender arrested some 20 times before and resisted arrest for a minor ticketable offense and was so out of shape that the exertion of resisiting killed him. Yeah, the cops overreacted in that arrest, and that's pretty obvious, but y'know, when you fight the cops shit is gonna get real, and get real really fast... Just sayin', homie.

The bodies hadn’t yet gone fully cold on the morgue slabs before the usual suspects started screaming for more gun control. Of course, more laws are needed, right? I mean, criminals always follow the laws and never break them….you morons. Criminals don’t care about laws. Creating more laws on top of existing, unenforced laws is just making it look like you’re doing something when you aren’t. Creating more laws and bureaucratic boondoggles just serve to make life harder for law-abiding citizens to comply, and usually end up getting good people killed because they followed the rules when criminals don’t.

One of the first to flog the dead horse of gun control was That Man In Washington.

After delivering a frustrated speech about gun violence in Washington D.C., President Obama traveled to Santa Monica for a fundraiser with Hollywood star Tyler Perry for the Democratic National Committee, because golf first, politics second, national emergencies a distant third.

During the speech, he called for his supporters to mobilize against gun violence in order to change the current political environment that refused to act.

“If you’re dissatisfied that every few months we have a mass shooting in this country, killing innocent people, then I need you to mobilize and organize a constituency that says this is not normal and we are going to change it, and put pressure to elect people who insist on that change,” he said as the crowd applauded.

Of course they applauded. They’re sheep. You know, Barry, try telling your supporters to stop shooting each other every damned weekend in Chicago. That might help.

Earlier in the day, a more frustrated Obama insisted at the White House that mass shootings didn’t happen in other “advanced countries” and that it was time to make it harder for killers to get a gun.

“I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now,” he said. “But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it.”

Oh…so just saying there’s a problem means you have a clear conscience now because you said you know there’s a problem. And then you blame politics for why you aren’t actually doing anything.

 “Now is the time for mourning and healing, but let’s be clear. At some point we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence doesn’t happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this type of frequency.”

 Well…actually it DOES happen in other “advanced” countries. Agreed, maybe not as often as here, but we also have a hell of a lot more people in our country than in most other “advanced” countries and you kind of expect some things to happen more often when you have more people to potentially muck things up. The other mitigating factor is that most of those other “advanced” countries are also somewhat socialist and have really draconian laws against gun ownership. Rules that again don’t always stop a criminal from getting a gun or using some other weapon to kill ass loads of unarmed citizens who of course have no way to defend themselves.

And then, changing the subject, The Great One pledged: “I am committed to taking bold actions at home and abroad to cut carbon pollution.” The next day he told a gathering of the nation’s mayors in San Francisco that they had to prepare for climate change. Whatever. And then two days later, he flew on Air Force One to Palm Springs, where the next day he (what else?) played golf at Sunnylands. California is in the middle of a drought so severe that people are being jailed for watering their lawns or washing their cars and housed with rapists and murderers because California is batshit crazy and would rather farmland become a dustbowl than sacrifice a minnow (well, a smelt)… and the Idiot In Chief burned holes in the sky on a jumbo jet at taxpayer expense to go play golf yet again at a lush green freshly watered exclusive private estate golf course.

 

Then he flew to Charleston, because hey, no crisis can be left unattended, so he could photo op deliver the eulogy at the memorial for one of the slain church members, a man he admittedly barely knew. How does one give a 40-minute speech about a stranger to a packed house of over 5,000? Well, when you’re the Community Organizer In Chief, you get used to just blathering about things you know nothing about to people you neither know nor care about, prattling platitudes and empty promises. And then you sing the most out of key rendition of Amazing Grace ever heard after the crowd at first wouldn’t sing with you. Being that the song is an old Christian hymn, I was surprised Captain Koran knew the words.

And in other news…

The media was quick to pounce on a related issue and turn it sideways and shove it up America’s ass with a smile.

The issue is that of the Confederate battle flag that sits in a fenced memorial to South Carolina’s Civil War dead. The media, who may or may not have been acting on orders from the White House, was amazingly quick to seize on the fact that the Charleston shooter was a racist turd who hid behind the Confederate flag, and then had the balls to basically call anyone who didn’t call for the flag to be removed and eradicated from all existence a racist hate monger. When you start your newscasts (across the board, every mother-effing network as if it was scripted by some wonk at the White House Press Office) with “Flags across the State of South Carolina are flying at half-staff this evening, all except ONE, and that flag is the CONFEDERATE rebel flag…”, well, then of course you’re setting into motion the Insanity Train.

People haven’t been content just to call for the removal of said flag from the State House grounds of one state. The issue spun out of control and blew up so exponentially that it was hard to keep up with it. It devolved from a one-state memorial issue to a nationwide farcical witch hunt goat screw distraction fest and a game of political-correctness one-upmanship.

Several box-store retailers who have been content to make millions over the years selling items with the Confederate flag on them suddenly decided they would curry favor with the buying masses by saying they were no longer selling those items. Online retailers followed suit. Trouble with that is, they claimed to stop selling something offensive, all the while continuing to sell items like Che Guevara shirts and posters, Nazi swastika phone cases, and even ISIS products. C’mon, assholes; you can’t have it both ways. Either everything is offensive or nothing is offensive.

Then the politicians and the federal government jumped into the mix.

The Governor of Virginia, a longtime Obama bootlicker and former head of the DNC, is trying to rescind the license plates of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that genealogically traces its members’ ancestry to actual Confederate soldiers. Many states have SCV plates and have been just fine and dandy filling their coffers with the additional fees to the state DMV’s for these special plates on top of the usual annual registration fees. But these tags have the dreaded Confederate flag on them so they must be eradicated. Gift shops at national parks WHERE ACTUAL CIVIL WAR BATTLES were fought are refusing to sell Confederate flags. Apple pulled video games of Civil War battles from their App Store because they had the dreaded rebel flag in them. Warner Brothers pulled Dukes of Hazzard items because the General Lee car has a rebel flag on the roof. So, are they going to refund people millions of dollars that they made off these items over the decades? I didn’t think so.

 

I said quickly on Facebook that it was gonna get out of hand REALLY fast, and I was right. I said that within 30 days people would be getting fired over Confederate flag tattoos and schools would be forced to change their mascots from “Rebels”. Instead of 30 days it took less than 3 days. A local cop in North Charleston (of course) was fired for posting a picture to his personal Facebook account wearing rebel flag boxers. A veteran police sergeant with 19 years of service protecting his fellow citizens of all races cast aside for political correctness. RINO Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the de facto head of the Republican Party and the Senate Majority Leader, called for his state to remove the statue of Jefferson Davis in his state’s capital, because all he and Boehner ever do is cave in and appease the Left. The Democrat Mayor of New Orleans, brother of disgraced joke former Senator Mary Landrieu, wants to rename parks in the city that are named for Confederates and to pull down a statue of Robert E. Lee. The Democrat cesspit of Baltimore wants to rename a park for the same reasons. The National Cathedral is trying to remove stained glass panels that depict the Civil War because (gasp!) they show a Confederate flag. Monuments and memorials are being defaced with grafitti in multiple cities.

I guess spelling doesn't "mater"

 The term “Confederate” is now the C-word. It’s a dirty word to be banned from the (American) English lexicon as being offensive, most especially to people who use the n-word with impunity.

The scumbag Democrat mayor in Memphis wants to desecrate graves and actually disinter the corpses of a dead Confederate general and his wife and move them away from where African Americans might see them. I'm not making this up. Look it up if you don't believe me.

Look, I’m not a southern native despite being born south of the Mason Dixon Line. I am not a native of South Carolina though I dearly love my adopted home state. The Confederate flag wasn’t a deep-rooted part of my ancestry or heritage growing up. But I do tend to think pragmatically and realistically. Do I think the flag should be moved from its current location? Yes, but not because I am offended by it.

The way I see it, 99% of the people calling for the flag to come down don't live here and so I sort of have to discount their opinion just a skosh. That said, a good 90% of the people crying about the possibility of the flag coming down have no real "southern heritage" that they can trace or claim. Maybe 10% are actually related down the line to someone who lived in the Confederate States and have tracked their lineage to such and are members of some sort of historical society. The rest just like to redneck it up. Literally. I actually had some bumpkin ask me where I got the cool blue and white rebel flag front plate on my car a few years ago, and I had to explain to him that my front plate was actually a Scottish saltire, from which the Confederate Southern Cross was designed.

While I'm all about free speech and expression, mayhaps it is time to take the flag down from the memorial outside the state house (yeah, despite all these a-holes in the media saying it flies over the state house, it hasn't done so since the summer of 1999 when it was moved from atop the rotunda to its current location at a war memorial at the north side of the state house grounds) and moved to a display case inside the building. I say this for practical pragmatic and realistic reasons: keeping it there invites people to climb the fence around the monument to rip it down, to be replaced at taxpayer expense. Should they damage said monument, again taxpayers will foot the bill to fix it. If said vigilante falls and busts his skull during this escapade, they'll sue the state. And probably win. And that harsh Carolina sun and stormy weather is hell on flags, so the flag needs replacing every few months at taxpayer expense.

NOTE: Yesterday THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED. A black woman hopped the fence and climbed the flagpole and cut the flag down. Again, things I predicted are happening at an exponentially faster rate than my original predictions figured on.

And while we have done a stellar job the past few years of drawing multibillion dollar business to the state, and most especially in the Charleston area, will said businesses (some owned by foreign interests) decide to move from our fair state and seek other locations to economically enrich? Will tourists stop flocking to the Friendliest City In America with full wallets? Boeing continues to add to it’s billion-dollar facility here. Bosch is a few miles away. BMW brings in thousands of cars at the Port of Charleston annually and has a plant upstate in Spartanburg. Daimler has a plant building vans here. Volvo is set to break ground on a plant here shortly. There are billions of dollars at stake here. I’m sure we can find a compromise somewhere.

So if we want to memorialize the South Carolinians who perished in the Civil War, why not display the battle flag they served under inside, in the nice air conditioning out of the sun and rain and wind and lightning, with a living history re-enactor standing by the explain the heritage of the flag, on a voluntary basis and not at taxpayer expense. They wanna celebrate their Confederate Southern Heritage, donate some time to do so.

By the way, Confederate soldiers are, by act of Congress, defined as American Veterans.  They should be afforded the same respect. Go here.

Speaking of heritage:  go here to see a former NAACP president defend the Confederate flag.

And this black woman defends the Confederate flag. Go here.

Instead, the media and the Left are leading an insane charge to literally eradicate a swath of American history. This is wrong. They call the flag and what it stood for hateful. Actually, that flag stood for a nation, or an attempt at a nation. Remember, at one point in time the United States flag was a flag of rebellion. The flag of the Confederate States represented their country. The states in the CSA felt that the government in Washington no longer represented them in their beliefs (and I could argue for another 3,000 words about how the American Civil War was not just fought over slavery) and that nation was represented by that flag. One can always argue semantics and try and counter every argument with a slavery argument and then present me with the whole Lincoln freed the slaves salvo.

However there are caveats to the Lincoln arguments, friends. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free anyone. It didn’t free any of the slaves in the North. The South didn’t recognize it, so really it was a moot point. It was a political tool issued in hopes of getting the southern slaves to rise up against the South and start a second front in the war from the inside. While Mr. Lincoln found slavery abhorrent and ran as an abolitionist, his main concern was not freeing the slaves.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."

Yeah, Mr. Lincoln had a few other choice quotes about the blacks in America.

“There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together”

 “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.”

“Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.”

And when asked about whether he would end slavery in the South before the seceded, he said “I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union, slavery or no slavery. He actually wanted to ship all the slaves back to Africa.

But I digress. It was after the war, when racist hate organizations sprang up and usurped the Confederate flag for their own evil purposes, that the flag became associated not with heritage or history but with hate.

Why is it free speech, protected by law, to burn the American flag? It's just a piece of cloth, right? But it is not free speech any longer to fly, or buy, or soon even possess, a Confederate flag? It's just a piece of cloth right? This week the SCOTUS declared that same sex marriage was legal in all 50 states, and folks have been flying their rainbow flags in celebration. That’s a basic civil right for one group and freedom of expression while we are trying to eradicate and erase another flag and deny freedom of expression to another group.

Food for thought: what if I told you that decades ago a symbol that is revered by Buddhists and Hindus, a symbol sacred to their religion for thousands of years, was co-opted and perverted by a hate group? In ancient Sanskrit, the word "svastika" means "auspicious or lucky object". You'll see flower arrangements in a right-facing swastika at a Hindu funeral. I know this from personal experience. How many Poles were murdered in the name of the Nazi Swastika? MILLIONS. How many others? MILLIONS. As a man of Polish heritage, was I offended? Did I call for the removal of this hateful symbol? Of course not.

Hate the evil deeds. Hate the violence. Hate the bigotry. Hate the hate. Don't hate a symbol that was perverted by a few and deny its existence to the many.

And mark my words, dear readers… I guarantee you that before too long the Left will use this whole Confederate issue to begin to discredit and harangue all the frontrunner Republican Presidential candidates, as most of them are from Southern (ie: Confederate) states. Ted Cruz? Texas. Rick Perry? Texas. Rand Paul? Kentucky. Jeb Bush? Florida with ties to Texas and the Evil Bush Name. Marco Rubio? Florida. Mike Huckabee? The whole anti-gay-marriage issue will sink him long before they bring up Arkansas. Bobby Jindal? Louisiana.  If former RNC head Jim Gilmore runs, he’s from Virginia. And as RINO as he may be, Lyndsey Graham is still running as a Republican and he’s from Evil South Carolina, so he’s toast.  But ironically, the Left will never bring up Hillary Clinton’s being from Confederate Arkansas. Instead they’ll just say she’s a New York Liberal Democrat and they’ll eat it up like free government cheese.

Like they say, don’t let a crisis go to waste, and we are seeing it unfolding right before our eyes. The Left is seeking to erase history because they deem it offensive. Meanwhile, as we celebrate (and rightly so) the marriage equality of same sex couples nationwide, ISIS is throwing gays off the tops of buildings.  Isn’t THAT offensive? Che Guevara murdered thousands and imprisoned gays. Isn’t that offensive? But you can still buy his shit at Walmart.

  And idiots like Jay-Z still worship him. Oh Jay, you ignorant clownfish asshole....try looking up Che quotes on "the Negro".  Classic stuff like:

"The Negroes, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing..."---Che Guevara

Or how about this gem?

"The Negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent". —Che Guevara, upon returning from Africa.

Che murdered thousands, imprisoned thousands more, and was a noted racist, homophobe, and anti- Semite.

And ever the race-baiting grandstander, noted liar, grammatically-challenged idiot, and tax cheat Al Sharpton, demands the military remove "all remnants of the Confederacy" because a few of our bases are named for Confederate Generals. Bite me, you fraudulent huckster. You've never served a day in your life so your opinion on a military matter means absolutely NOTHING.

Just because a part of history was unpleasant and offensive, that doesn’t mean you can erase it like it never happened. The Holocaust happened. Millions were murdered by a hateful regime. But does Israel try to erase it from history? Quite the opposite. They make sure we never ever forget so that it never happens again. 

At this rate, the Left aren't gonna stop until every last person related to a Confederate, or doesn't support the eradication of this episode of history, has been rounded up and sent to a concentration trailer park.  At this rate this will be the next headline we see:

"...And today it was announced that Coca Cola and all Coke products will be banned and taken off the shelves. The man who invented the formula for Coke and founded the Coca Cola empire, John Stith Pemberton, served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Third Georgia Cavalry during the Civil War...."

Mr. Pemberton

Stay vigilant, friends.

"First they came ..." is a famous statement and provocative poem written by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

    First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

    Because I was not a Socialist.

    Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

    Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

    Because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

He said a few bad things but he also said a lot of good things.