Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Reprinted from issue 829, July 12, 2015

Note: they are saying, on the Internet today, that, in addition to tearing down the Jefferson Memorial, there are plans to dig up the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and throw them away or exile them somewhere. True, Forrest was the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, but only those who care not to be know-nothing pimpleheads are aware the he intended it to be valiant guerrilla resistance to the brutal, occupying Union. It went wrong in other hands. I can’t think of a lower, scummier act than this one, and I will do what I can so that these ghouls can’t look at themselves in a mirror.

It is July of 2015, I am a longtime Internet columnist, and I find myself with so many remarkable events occurring around me, I don’t know what to write about. I am struck by the stupidity and evil of the controversy over the battle flag of the Confederate States of America.

I have never cared much for that flag, to tell the truth. I largely grew up in the South, in northern Florida and Texas, and when I was young, the kind of people who reveled in that flag were best describable metaphorically as that part of the body related to waste elimination.

However, I was aware, as most objectors to the Confederate flag don’t seem to be (or won’t admit they are), that the overwhelming majority of 19th century Southerners owned no slaves, had no interest whatever in slavery, and that they were most concerned with keeping hordes of unshaven, slovenly Union recruits from stealing their crops, killing their livestock, burning their homes, and raping their women—in short, many of the concerns we have today. In time, I learned that the vast majority of Northerners didn’t want to free the slaves, as massive numbers of newly-freed blacks would be a threat to their jobs.

I have fought against slavery, in one form or another, all my life. I know slavery when I see it. I have offered conclusive evidence, in the past, that the War of 1860-1865 had little or nothing to do with slavery. I know it goes against everything you’ve been taught by the government indoctrination system we call the public schools, but it’s undeniably true. If the war was about slavery, then why was the capitol dome in Washington being rebuilt, throughout the war by slaves? Why did abolitionist Frederick Douglass demand, almost until the end of the war, that it be made to be about slavery?

Why did Confederate General Robert E. Lee detest slavery and own no slaves, (Confederate President Jefferson Davis was an abolitionist at heart, as well) whereas Union General Ulysses S. Grant did? Why did Treasury Secretary and Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, so-called “brains of the Confederacy” have a black girlfriend, whom he risked his life and freedom to stop for, and marry on his way to Europe (where he became a member of the British parliament) at the end of the war?

Yes, there were a handful of aristocratic slaveholders who quacked about preserving their “peculiar institution”. Idiots are everywhere. How about the massive numbers on the left who would turn civilization inside-out to eliminate “global warming”, a problem that doesn’t exist? I wonder how elitist Republicans-In-Name-Only who support this vile purge would feel about it if the stars on the flag were dollar signs.

If liberals hate and fear the Confederate flag and it isn’t about slavery, why are they so hysterical about it? Partly because, as I have said elsewhere, it represents the most successful (and expensive) rebellion, so far, against their authority. More important, the government,in 1860, was paid for—80%—by taxes from the South. And Lincoln had promised to double or triple Southern taxes if he was elected. Fort Sumter, where the war began, was a customs collection house.

The War between the States was a tax revolt. 620,000 individuals were coldly murdered because the South was unwilling to pay for Northern industrialists’ opulent mansions, luxurious coaches, and pheasant dinners. And the “Southern Cross” remains a potent symbol of that tax revolt.

It was also a token of Thomas Jefferson’s belief that a little rebellion, now and again, is good for the country. Of course the utter scum are trying to render Jefferson himself a non-person. I think I understand the problems he faced, and the internal struggles he had to deal with. I intend to write about them at length, and in a way that liberals will be unable to counter. I, myself, will remain forever loyal to the first real American, the greatest American who ever lived.

When I was very young, and about to start Kindergarten, my mother took me aside and told me that I would be meeting “colored” people for the first time, and other people who held them in contempt because of the color of their skin. She said such people feel very small themselves and desperately need somebody to look down on, which is the root of racism.

(Ironically my first and best school friend turned out to be a skinny black girl at least a foot taller than I was. I can remember her frilly pleated pink dress as if she were standing before me today.)

The salient fact is, liberals, of the sort who cling bitterly to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and want to be called “progressives” because they have dirtied their original label the way a baby dirties its diapers, urgently need to look down on the people of “Flyover Country” as ignorant rustics, unaware that “rednecks” on average, usually outrank them in terms of income, education—and common decency.

So, If liberals do manage to suppress the ancient symbol of revolt against oppressive authority, unconstitutional usurpation, and punitive taxation, you can relax. I guarantee a new symbol will be found.