(GA) Confederate Heritage? Forget it

[Charlie Brown]

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2007/03/18/0319edconfederate.html

State Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga) has proposed a splendid way to recognize Georgia's contributions to American history during a pivotal period in time. He wants to establish a permanent Confederate History and Heritage Month. What better manner to encourage tourism related to the Civil War and to demonstrate how far Georgia has come since then?

Mullis' proposal, Senate Bill 283, sailed through the Senate Rules Committee last week. If adopted by the General Assembly and signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue, April would be designated as the month to contemplate Confederate heritage. Elementary and secondary schools, as well as the state's universities, would be urged to incorporate that heritage in history lessons.

It's a wonderful idea. The senator's bill would do all of Georgia a service by reminding everyone of the desperate lengths to which the South was willing to go to preserve the cruelty and injustice of slavery.

Our children could work on their math by trying to estimate how many widows and orphans were left behind. Or on economics by calculating how badly the war damaged southern industry and agriculture and how long it delayed prosperity's arrival in the South.

Our children could tour Andersonville, where the Confederacy so starved and weakened Union prisoners that an appalling 13,000 died there.

Our children could ask why the terrible suffering occurred.

[Beelzebud]

1. From the same group of idiots that were so outraged at the immigration rallys with Mexican flags.

Remember how up in arms they were? "They want to fly the Mexican flag"

Whats more offensive? The Mexican flag, or the flag of treason and racism?

[BOSSHOG]

2. I get a chuckle from a bumper sticker down here

in Mississippi:

Heritage not Hate, words over a Confederate Flag.

[unpossibles]

3. how about the math of the number of slaves who died

before slavery was ended? I am doing photo research right now on a book about race and racism, and came across a photo of the man who allegedly fired the first shot of the war (Edmund Ruffin).



Right before he shot himself in the head, he wrote:

I here declare my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule -- to all political, social and business connection with the Yankees and to the Yankee race. Would that I could impress these sentiments, in their full force, on every living Southerner and bequeath them to every one yet to be born! May such sentiments be held universally in the outraged and down-trodden South, though in silence and stillness, until the now far-distant day shall arrive for just retribution for Yankee usurpation, oppression and atrocious outrages, and for deliverance and vengeance for the now ruined, subjugated and enslaved Southern States!

...And now with my latest writing and utterance, and with what will be near my latest breath, I here repeat and would willingly proclaim my unmitigated hatred to yankee rule--to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, and the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee race.

He killed himself soon after the war ended.

Sure, he was a Virginian and not a Georgian, but he's also an example of just how twisted the whole thing is. I don't understand why people fly the Confederate flag at all unless they are racists. To claim it is about heritage would be like me celebrating my partial German heritage with Nazi emblems: completely tasteless and ignorant.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. They could also write essays on the justice

of the first draft law in America, which was passed by the CSA, which allowed people who owned 20 or more slaves to stay at home while poor folks were required to go fight. Hmmm...they might even wish to compare the Southern social system, with wealth and privilege trumping honesty, hard work, etc with what we have today.