Chris Jepson: Do drive ol'Dixie down

“~ Why I Am a Daughter of the Confederacy ~ I am a Daughter of the Confederacy because I was born a Daughter of the Confederacy . . . a heritage so rich in honor and glory. . . I do not consider the cause . . . to be lost or forgotten. Rather, I am extremely proud of the fact that he [ancestor] was a part of it.”— As proclaimed on the United Daughters of the Confederacy website

What if? What if after WWII, the descendants of Nazis created social clubs to publicly glorify and remember the noble lost cause of the National Socialist German Workers' Party? What if the German government, decades after WWII, issued a postage stamp commemorating the final glorious reunion of former Nazi soldiers? What if the Daughters of Nazism organized to honor the memory of their ancestors who so nobly fought to protect the homeland from imperialists and communists? What if Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, had German high schools named after him?

I think it’s safe to say we’d find such glorification offensive. That Nazism was an abomination, almost without historical precedent, is undeniable. Yet, we Americans continue to glorify and honor a horror (the Confederacy/slavery) that was unquestionably as egregious as anything the Nazis perpetrated. The Nazis were in power but 12 years and were repudiated by the German people. American slavery (and Jim Crow) was in effect for more than 300 years, and to this day the Confederacy is glorified as a noble cause.

How is it that the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust are identified as the abominations they were, yet the Confederacy (slavery) gets a pass that somehow, losing in the defense of slavery was noble? Oh, apologists will argue, the Confederacy, the Civil War was never about slavery – it was about states rights (freedom, ironically). Yes, of course, just as Nazism was about the future of the German people.

We’ve all watched “Gone With The Wind” too many times. How plantation slaves just gratefully shuffled along, singing hosannas and willingly participating in their own subjugation as Uncle Toms’ and mammies to their beneficent and gentle owners. They’re so very thankful and appreciative for three meals and a roof over their head. What a crock.

Oh, and those noble Southern boys of the Confederacy. Gloriously dying for the cause? Uh, tell me again the cause? Freedom! Freedom! Yes, freedom for white boys to enslave. Such a noble cause. Just ask the Sons & Daughters of the Confederacy.

Every American should see the recently released movie “12 Years A Slave.” It is based on the true story of a free black man living in New York who was kidnapped into slavery and transported to the South in the 1840s. Any, and I mean any, romantic ideas you have about the antebellum South will be disabused. No more “Gone With The Wind” nobility of cause. Slavery was horrific, indefensible and was—shamefully—pivotal in the establishment of the United States. It is a scourge on our history, and to listen to Southern apologists defend the Confederacy as something noble and worth commemorating is a distortion of history and fact and is insulting to black Americans, nay, to all Americans.

It is no stretch to equate Nazism with the Confederacy. Both dealt with the marginalization and destruction of human beings in a state-sanctioned, authorized manner. To denounce one and glorify the other is historically ignorant, hypocritical and appalling.