Wash. Times: "[H]as political correctness turned Robert E. Lee into a villain?"
An April 25 front-page Washington Times article by Robert Stacy McCain asked, "[H]as political correctness turned Robert E. Lee into a villain?" The article, headlined "Symposium to honor Lee, villain or 'the noblest ever'?" reported that six historians will debate the question at a "symposium commemorating the bicentennial of the Confederate commander's birth," which "[m]ore than 200 have registered to attend." McCain also quoted Brag Bowling, a "Richmond resident who helped organize" the symposium, saying, "Hostility to Confederate heritage 'has really gotten bad in the last decade.' " McCain has also written articles for the Times with the headlines, " 'Gentle ladies' of South keep Lee's legacy alive; Will mark Confederate leader's birthday" and "How the Democrats made loving Dixie a hate crime."
As Media Matters for America noted, Washington Times Editor-in-Chief Wesley Pruden is outspoken in his sympathy for neo-Confederate causes. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in 1998 he made a speech to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, in which he declared, "Southerners ... hold loyalty to two countries in our hearts." The second country is one "baptized 137 years ago on this very field in the blood of First Manassas, a country no longer at the mercy of the vicissitudes in the tangled affairs of men, a country that lives within us, a country that will endure for as long as men and women know love. ... God bless America, God bless the Confederate States of America, and God bless you all."
Further, Media Matters has noted that McCain, who is the assistant national editor at the Times, is a member of the League of the South, which the SPLC called "rife with white supremacists and racist ideology." The league's leader, J. Michael Hill, once declared: "The day of Southern guilt is over -- THE SOUTH WAS RIGHT -- and let us not forget that salient fact. NO APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY should be made. In both the Old and New Testaments slavery is sanctioned and regulated according to God's word." As the SPLC has noted, in 1998 McCain wrote a glowing obituary of former segregationist politician George Wallace for the Times in which he cited three history professors, not disclosing that all of them belonged to the League of the South.
In one of many examples of McCain's postings on right-wing discussion sites that journalist Michelangelo Signorile has documented, McCain wrote the following in 2005 on a website called Reclaiming the South:
[T]he media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sister-in-law, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us.
From the April 25 Washington Times article:
Winston Churchill called him "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived," and Theodore Roosevelt called him "the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth."
But has political correctness turned Robert E. Lee into a villain? That will be the question explored by six historians this weekend at a symposium commemorating the bicentennial of the Confederate commander's birth.
"We were afraid that Lee would not receive the honors he should get because of the prevailing political correctness," says Brag Bowling, a Richmond resident who helped organize Saturday's event at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel in Arlington.
The symposium will be the largest event of its kind this year honoring Lee, who was born Jan. 19, 1807.
The event site was chosen in part to be near the former Lee family home in Arlington (which now overlooks Arlington National Cemetery). He and his wife, Mary Custis Lee, were married there in 1831, and Mrs. Lee inherited her grandfather's mansion on his death in 1857.
The symposium site was chosen because of its proximity to Washington.
"We wanted to take this to the nation's capital," says Mr. Bowling, a national board member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is hosting the symposium. More than 200 have registered to attend.
"They're coming in from all over the country," he says. "I had one phone call ... from some guy in Norway. We've got people coming from California, Texas, Massachusetts -- all over the country, and from Canada."
Lee, the son of Revolutionary War hero "Light Horse Harry" Lee, was born in Westmoreland County, Va., and graduated from West Point. He served more than 30 years in the U.S. Army, distinguishing himself in the Mexican War as an aide to Gen. Winfield Scott.
Lee, who freed the slaves his wife inherited from the Custis family, called slavery "a moral and political evil" and opposed secession. After Virginia seceded in 1861, he resigned his commission in the U.S. Army rather than bear arms against "my native state."
Hostility to Confederate heritage "has really gotten bad in the last decade," says Mr. Bowling, who says that political correctness in academia and in the press often leads to "dishonoring Confederate soldiers and ignoring the true reasons why the South wished to secede."
Uuummmm...., Mr. Bowling- the South wanted to secede so they could still have slave labor... states' rights withstanding, that was the central reason the confederates wanted to be their own country...
Further, Media Matters has noted that McCain, who is the [link to www.washingtontimes.com] color="#0052a3">assistant national editor at the Times, is a member of the [link to www.dixienet.org] color="#0052a3">League of the South, which the SPLC [link to www.splcenter.org] color="#0052a3">called "rife with white supremacists and racist ideology." The league's leader, J. Michael Hill, once [link to silverrights.blogspot.com] color="#0052a3">declared: "The day of Southern guilt is over -- THE SOUTH WAS RIGHT -- and let us not forget that salient fact. NO APOLOGIES FOR SLAVERY should be made. In both the Old and New Testaments slavery is sanctioned and regulated according to God's word."
Geez, can't a guy even hang out with a noble organization like this without the "PC Police" jumping all over him.
At least it's keeping the heat off of Lee's outspokenness against gay marriage.
Copy/pasting and linking seem beyond me today. Yikes!
I like the title... 'Villian or noblest ever...' YEP!- he's either PURE EVIL or the BEST EVER!! Great editing, moonie.... keep it up...
Good point. It's that black and white thinking that seems to be so popular among conservatives. Could it be that Lee had good qualities and some all-too-human flaws, as well? Is that too complicated?
Well, let's be honest... it's much easier for non-thinkers to grab hold of 'right or wrong' versus subtlety or nuance. We see that here all the time when the TROLL.66347291 crowd rolls through.
This is what I would say. Yes, slavery was the issue of the war. However, slavery was specifically protected by the Constitution at the time. Abraham Lincoln didn't like slavery, so he vowed to get rid of it.
Instead of going through the normal channels of Constitutional amendment, he was going to get rid of it unilaterally by decree, or at least it seemed that way.
Now, with all your nuance-seeing abilities, put yourself in the position of the South for just a moment. Imagine George W Bush stated he was going to completely and unilaterally write the 1st amendment out of the Constitution, and that websites like MediaMatters would be shut down. You don't think people would be clamoring for secession?
It's not exactly the same thing, but please, take your own suggestion and see that things aren't totally black and white. For instance, they voluntarily banned international slave trade in their constitution. The northern states like Massachusetts, New York, et al didn't shut down their slave imports until the 13th amendment forced them to.
"Now, with all your nuance-seeing abilities, put yourself in the position of the South for just a moment"
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Well of course I can't do that. Slavery was WRONG and will go down in history as one of the biggest societal endorsed wrong in history, my enemy. If they had prevailed I wouldn't be typing on the internet now. I would have been somewhere picking up socks, nay I would have found my way north.
There seems to be several things wrong with your take on this issue. Not the least of which is the conflating the first amendment to slave ownership. Exactly WHERE in the constitution does it specifically allow the RIGHT to own slaves? There is also the undeniable fact that Lincoln was NOT committed before the war to abolishing slavery in states where it was already legal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_on_slavery
Before the American Civil War and even in the war's early stages Lincoln said that the Constitution prohibited the federal government from abolishing slavery where it already existed.
Also societal norms change. Those changes are reflected in the legal political process. If you think they are wrong then win the argument. By your logic the South would have been within its rights to attempt to suceed AGAIN because the Federal government was forcing integration by making Jim Crow Laws illegal.
So much wrong in so few words.
slavery was specifically protected by the Constitution
The existence of slavery was implicitly recognized in the Constitution, but while it did not ban it, slavery was not "protected" by it at the time of the Civil War, and certainly not "specifically."
he was going to get rid of it unilaterally by decree, or at least it seemed that way
Lincoln was not actually an abolitionist and never took steps toward abolishing slavery completely. (Even the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued in 1863, long after secession, applied only to seceding states, not to any others.) What he did oppose was the extension of slavery into new territories and states. Not the same thing by any means.
Imagine George W Bush stated
Since the argument about Lincoln on which this is based is bogus, it's unnecessary to address it.
The northern states like Massachusetts, New York, et al didn't shut down their slave imports until the 13th amendment forced them to.
I have no idea what you're talking about and neither do you. Something the Constitution did say about the slave trade was that importation of "such persons" could not be banned prior to 1808 - and it was banned by Congress as of January 1, 1808, the first day possible. There was absolutely no way northern states could be importing slaves 47 years later.
Interesting historical note, there were actually a group of abolitionists, such as Gerrit Smith, who argued that the Constitution strictly prohibited slavery and empowered the federal government to take action against states since they would, according to Smith and those agreed with him, be in a constant state of rebellion. In short, preserving slavery was an act of rebellion and thus suspended state jurisdiction which, by their acts of rebellion, would be open to federal intervention.
Also, Lincoln gave the South plenty of chances to come back into the Union without abolishing slavery. In September of 1862 he issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that the question of slavery would be left to any state that came back to the Union before January 1, 1863, and would be abolished afterwards in those that refused to return. So it was not Lincoln's aim from the beginning to abolish slavery, he only turned the issue of abolition into a weapon against the south.
A principal cause of the Civil War was not the South's fear of abolition in the "Old South", as that would have been nearly impossible to do in 1860 (by the way South thanks for letting us invade you so that Lincoln could free slaves in captured Confederate territory -- see Emancipation Proclamation), but rather the South's fear that Lincoln would not allow further export of slavery into the frontier. So a lot of what the Civil War came down to was the South was going to lose what had been disproportionate political power to an incoming Republican dominated government. That's a great reason to start a Civil War that cost the lives of 5% of the population, don't you think?
By the way, for comparing the First Amendment to Slavery, FU.
Finally, there was no slave import through the North, you ignorant.... Slave trade to the US was illegal after 1808, an one of the major roles of the US Navy throughout the first half of the 19th Century was hunting down and hanging slave traders violating the law.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on you. I guess I should be thanking your racist Southern forefathers for starting the Civil War (good move -- a bunch of backward cotton planters starting a war against an industrialized region with nearly twice your population), as it probably ended slavery in the South a good 30 or 40 years sooner. Thanks for playing JJ.
jjackson: "it's not exactly the same thing". you are not just whistling, uh.....dixie. [by the way, one of the best things elvis did in his later career was a stage medley of dixie and battle hymn of the republic. nothing radical or trying to justify the confederacy, just a wistful rememberance with an acknowledgement of the union point of view.]
ok people, leave the guy alone, i guess he has his facts a little messed up, so stop coming after him on your own self-righteous high horses condemming the man for screwing up a bit. You want to correct him thats fine, no reason to do it with a stick up ur back ends. and enough with the southern, redneck insults, u people are all the first to condem imus for his little insult that u all thought was racist, dont be hypocrits and start insulting the south by using stereotypes ( u know, the very things we all condem for other people to use, like black people have nappy hair, oooo i c its ok to insult white southerners ok ok gotcha). and for anyone trying to jump down my throat, i condem that too, so back off. im just asking to persent ur thoughts in a kind manner, not like jerks. good day
sound like you're the one doing the stereotyping.
and i understand the irony of myself using insults, i apologize
Who was insulting? Who other than you said 'redneck?'
Actually, slavery was not the major issue of the war - the secession of states breaking up the Union was the primary concern of Lincoln. As he said he wouldn't have freed any slaves if it meant he could save the union.
"ignoring the true reasons why the South wished to secede."
Here we go again. The Confederate apologists will come out of the woodwork and claim that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, and that Lincoln was a war criminal...etc.
This 'political correctness' phrase was created by conservatives as a trap to win an argument against their opponents. The trick here is not to play that game with the conservatives.
When a person uses the phrase 'political correctenss' against their opponent it would be valid only if the person making the accusation is apolitical.
Confederacy is synonymous with Jim Crow which means Confederacy is not apolitical therefore the Confederate apologists are playing a bad game with their political correctness accusation.
Actually, conservatives merely took the initiative in creating the term "political correctness".
Celebrating the Confederacy is celebrating treason. Many of these people are the same people who wrap themselves in the American flag and decry those who do not support this government or the war as traitors. I wonder if they have ever realized that little irony.
By the way, all these 'true reasons' Confederate apologists cite were created by former rebels to cover up the fact that they were wrong and not have to deal with losing. The south seceded to protect their immoral system of slavery, end of story.
Hey, my ancestors had the good sense to secede from Virginia because Virginia chose to secede from the Union.
WEST-damn-Virginia! (Country Roads!)
Celebrating Independence Day is celebrating treason too. Your point?
Your point?
So treason is unobjectionable? We'll remember that the next time some wingnut calls one of us traitors. We can just say "Your point?" and be done with it, yes?
There is a difference. We won the Revolution/War of the American Rebellion and freed ourselves from the British. Also, there was actual merit in that we were fighting because we had no representation and thus we fought against the tyranny of the British government. The Confederacy committed treason against the American government by leaving the Union and then committing an act of aggression against the United States government by firing on Fort Sumter. They were not seceding to leave tyranny but to preserve tyranny in the form of slavery. They seceded, of course, after they failed to continue to impose their will on the North. Once they lost power in the federal government, they just decided to leave it.
My whole point, though, is the irony of those who wave the flag and yell traitor at the left while celebrating the Confederacy, which committed treason against, and attacked militarily the government and the country they claim to wholeheartedly support.
All Americans support the 4th of July. Why does anyone support the Confederacy? Instead they should be supporting the Union for its ability to bring the states back together, not a bunch of people who fought to maintain their right to hold another group of people in bondage.
From what I gather, there is going to be a controversial debate.
Shouldn't MMFA at least wait until they hear what is said at the conference?
One of the great merits of the 1st Amendment is not only to learn other viewpoints, but to reconfirm, our own viewpoints. If these speakers make terrible arguments, great, that reinforces your own viewpoints.
But, it didn't even seem that Wash. Times really said anything??
Just urging that "controversial debate" along, LDOR. And providing an extended venue. And providing admission to a few of us who might never have delved into that mystique, that the Confederacy was a wonderful institution, worthy "citizen of 2 nations" allegiance.
Of course, we also get to sharpen the stakes for a round of vampyre-hunting. Would YOU like to play? Which do you want to be, a vampyre, or one of the associated collection of werewolves and demons?
Lee was neither the best nor the worst - but it does remain true that he took up arms in an insurrection against the nation. He was, by any legal meaning of the term, a traitor.
If, indeed, "Theodore Roosevelt called him 'the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth'" (and it sounds more like Winnie than TR) he was wrong.
Many years ago a professor at West Point gave his class a final exam with one question: Who was the better general, US Grant or Robert E. Lee? Actually, I recall my Grandfather asking me the same question about 1960.
The answer is rather brief: US Grant. He won.
bush would have hated grant. he was everything bush couldn't stand, unafraid to tell the truth, suffered fools poorly, and had a drink when he felt like it and didn't care who knew. the famous story is people complained to lincoln about grant's drinking, and lincoln said find out what he drinks and send my other generals a case. [i've been to the vicksburg battlefield. impressive.]
What is great about Grant is he discovered the tactics required to win the war early on, mainly that one had to siege the enemy and flank them rather than committing suicidal frontal assaults. Of course, he did the latter at Cold Harbor out of a bit of impatience, but never made that mistake again.
Lee on the other hand is only perceived as a great general because he was always on the defensive against generals who used the same tactics as he did. In the Civil War, if you were on the defensive against a frontal assault, you would most assuredly win. Of course, after seeing all this what did Lee order at Gettysburg? A frontal assault on the center of the Union line over a mile of ground. Not very smart if you ask me, and proof of Lee's true mediocrity as a general.
AshenShard, I love what Shelby Foote said about Lee and Gettysburg, which is that Pickett's Charge is the price the South paid for Lee's brilliance.
And one could argue that Arlington Cemetary is one lasting price that Lee paid for service to the Confederacy, since it was built on his estate.
That is one of the major tragedies concerning Lee. He chose to serve his state over his country, because that is where he lived, yet almost immediately after the war started Arlington was occupied by the Union.
Gen. Grant also realized something that was very difficult to grasp. During the Civil War it was more dangerous for an army to remain in camp then it was to go out and fight. More soldiers died from sickness and disease than battlefield wounds. Stonewall Jackson moved his camp every week or do even in winter. Grant also understood he had far more soldiers than Lee. That's why he wouldn't agree to exchange prisoners. Of course, some Union soldiers didn't like the attrition concept - "Isn't my life worth as much as a Reb's?" and they were right
Cold Harbor was a horrible experience. Read "Not War But Murder" if you want to read a fascinating book on a terrible subject.
Back in the day, school children were taught that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. That isn't true. However, there can be no serious discussion about the fact that the Civil War was fought over slavery. If one buys the arguement that the causes of the war were economic, the most basic pillar of the Southern economy was slavery.
Lincoln came to realize that slavery was a moral wrong. James McPherson wrote an excellent book about the battle of Antetiam (sp?) as the turning point of the war. Lincoln took a tremendous chance when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation - but he did it because he came to believe it was the right thing to do.
And if you ever heard Alister Cooke talk about the cotton mill workers of Manchester England going for years without work because they didn't want to support the South by using cotton grown by slaves - you will never forget it!
I agree the North didn't fight the war to free the slaves. But the South sure as Hell fought the war to keep them slaves.
Truly patriotic Americans also hold loyalty to 2 America's in their hearts : the one that existed before buscho turned it into a corrupt fascist corporatocracy and the mass murdering war criminal enterprise it has become. The confederacy apologists are correct in pointing out that the bible sanctions and seems to condone slavery, esp the writings of Paul. Slave owners used to herd up their belongings on Sunday and read to them from the Pauline letters to encourage passive resignation and place the stamp of divine legitimacy upon their savage inhumanity. African Americans were clever however in that they subverted this new religion being foisted upon them by aligning themselves with the identity of the Jews in bondage in Egypt seeking exodus. The mainstream "christian" churches indeed approved of slavery well into the last century and was the reason the Southern Baptists formed in rejection of allowing blacks to join. It is no surprise that this evil organization is one of the backbones of the republican machine. This is why the mongrelization of politics with religion must be stopped. If the fundamentalist text of the mainstream religion sanctions slavery, then it is appropriate to colonize Iraq and "regulate" the brown skinned "knuckle draggers' who live there sitting on our oil. The immorality of slavery and the complicity that mainstream "christian" churches had in it's perpetuation in the nation well beyond any other developed nation in the world should give you an idea of the "family values" and "moral compass" those on the right and esp the religious right are always crowing about.
I agree with the folks upthread who noted that while Lee was a brilliant tactician, he fought, in part, for something vile, for slavery is America's greatest shame.
There are some great, complex, and compassionate comments in this thread and the quality of the comments is why I love being part of this community.
Has political correctness turned into the right's favorite excuse? They have created their own political correctness by labelling all criticism as overly sensitive PC.
it's reality that turned Lee into a villain... and that hostility toward the Confederate flag? hmm, maybe because it symbolizes divisions - between the races, between the North and South... that's all best put behind us... some people cling to the past, no matter how bad it was...
with the help of the wash times/ hannity/savage/limbaugh/coulter/fox news
THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
THAT IS A SAD STATE FOR OUR COUNTRY.BIGOTRY LIVES THOUGH THESE PEOPLE