Sack of Rome by the Visigoths 24 August 410 by JN Sylvestre 1890

The statues and monuments honoring Confederate soldiers and their commanders were a tribute to American national reconciliation after the Civil War has ended in 1865. Now, an anti-American, anti-white cabal is calling for their desecration and removal because they allegedly are symbols of racism and slavery that bring painful memories of the past.

That is an unproven nonsense, or B.S. ~ using colloquial language.

The Civil War was not about slavery, although many tried to falsely portray it as such. After all, Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address, declared that he had no intention to impose the abolition of slavery on the South, leaving it to individual states to decide. The Civil War was mainly about excessive taxation of the productive South by the revenue-hungry North. The Confederate soldiers who gave their young lives in the War were not fighting in the defense of slavery, although some of them might think they were. They were told that they were defending their Confederate States from armed invasion from the Union. They were fighting against imposition of grossly uneven federal tariffs and duties that benefited the North at the expense of the South. There is no shred of credible evidence that they were all or predominantly racist or advocates of slavery. But now, every single Confederate soldier that died in that War has been posthumously declared a “racist” and a “slavery defender” as if their young lives lost in the War were waste that did not matter.

The charges of racism and defense of slavery leveled at the Confederacy as a whole is an unproven lie, as well as an insult to the Confederate fallen soldiers. Yet the federal and state authorities are acting upon these charges as if they were settled facts with total disregard of one of the most fundamental principles of American jurisprudence system: the presumption of innocence. As a result, the Confederates are deemed guilty as charged just because the mob accused them. That presumption of collective guilt in order to appease the mob and its animators is so wrong and un-American as is tolerance of today’s looting, burning, vandalizing, and violence perpetrated by the so-called “protesters” in order – ostensibly – to prevent even more “protests”.

Although the South lost the Civil War, the American people wanted to reconcile the once fighting factions and for a very good reason, the national unity. As a part of the painful reconciliation process, statues of Confederate soldiers and generals were erected. Now, these statues are being overthrown as if the rioting mobs would like to undo the reconciliation that took place after the Civil War was over. And, perhaps, it is their intention to undo it, indeed.

We are being fed with propaganda that public showing of statues of fallen Confederate soldiers and their generals brings painful memories to the black minority so they must be eradicated from the public square. But when the same propaganda is repeating ad nauseam stories about horrors of slavery, with NYT going to such extreme as declaring the year 1619 of the first shipment of slaves from Africa to American colonies as the actual beginning of the U.S. that forever defined the Republic as a “systemically racist” political system, then the argument that we need to stop reminding blacks about their painful past does not apply, anymore. The said propaganda is an instance of blatant hypocrisy, never mind the fact that so many of today’s American blacks have nothing in common with that history as their ancestors arrived to America after the slavery was abolished here, and some of the said ancestors might have own slaves, themselves, in their countries of origin.

Here is a lesson for us to learn from our accusers.

If a faction that seems so vehemently opposed to the after-Civil-War reconciliation is rioting, looting, vandalizing, attacking America, and demanding that we – the American white majority – accept the sole responsibility for their rebelliousness and asocial actions and remake the American Republic around their wants and natural propensities then we should know that reconciliation with that faction in the name of national unity is going to be a delusion. They are hostile to us and are not going to rest until they defeat us. Whatever voluntary concessions that we may offer to them now will just make them stronger and more likely to attack us and demand more in the future when they have a chance. Although none of us owned any slaves, and the ancestors of so many of us immigrated to America after the slavery was abolished here, we will always be treated as guilty from the very moment of our birth and punished time and again for the alleged sins that we have nothing to do with, just because of the whiteness of our skin. As if being born while white was some kind of a hate crime.

It seems particularly absurd that so many of those who accuse us of racism are devoted racists themselves. And, perhaps, it is the second lesson we should learn from them.

It really hurt my feelings when I learned of the “protesters” vandalizing statues of Confederate soldiers. If not for other reason, mothers of the fallen Confederate soldiers did not deserve such barbaric insults even though they passed away long time ago. After all, these soldiers were not invaders. They did not bring the war down on other people’s heads; the war was brought down on their heads.

Among other things, the “protesters” demonstrated a total lack of empathy for personal tragedies of the families of hundreds of thousands of the fallen soldiers. Like if their “outrage” with what happened a century and half ago would have the overriding veto power over our sense of empathy for the heart-breaking suffering of the mothers who survived their children a century and half ago. This kind of despicable behavior borders with psychopathy. There is no bigger psychological trauma than surviving one’s own child.

June 20, 2020

~ The Author ~
Mr. Dwyer has been a continuing contributor to the Federal Observer. Mark Andrew Dwyer’s recent columns are posted at:
https://federalobserver.com/?s=mark+andrew+dwyer
Links to his other commentaries can be found here: http://www.oocities.org/readerswrite/List_date.htm