In Defense of Symbols: Southern and Otherwise

From: bernhard1848@gmail.com

Eminent Southern historian Sam Francis clearly saw that the demands to remove symbols of our Confederate past would not be confined to them alone, but "extends to symbols associated with other ethnic groups" and America's Western heritage in general.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

In Defense of Symbols: Southern and Otherwise

"One of the most ironic aspects of the attack on Southern symbols is that what is really a revolutionary onslaught, an attack intended to erase the symbols of a regional and even national heritage and thereby to alter the meaning of that heritage, is now supported by not only far-left groups like the NAACP and its racial allies but also by the ostensible conservatives.

In the last battle over the Confederate flag in South Carolina it was the Republicans who had to be watched and it was they who eventually voted to remove the flag from the capitol dome.

During the primaries last winter, it was Republican John McCain who first denounced the flag as a symbol of "racism and slavery" and then backed away from that statement, only to return to it again after the South Carolina primary. It was President George W. Bush who refused to say anything in support of the flag other than it was really a State issue, which was the easy way out, but it was Mr. Bush's administration in Texas that only recently ordered plaques commemorative of the Confederacy removed from the Texas Supreme Court building.

And it was the force of big business that demanded that South Carolina settle the flag controversy in a way that the NAACP would approve of because the continuation of the controversy, their spokesman said, would be disruptive to business.

[What I] would like to emphasize here today that the attack on the Confederate flag and Confederate symbols is merely a prelude, a kind of dress rehearsal, for a larger and even more radical attack on all symbols of American heritage and American civilization.

The attack on Confederate symbols is coming first simply because, given the demonization of the South and the Confederacy in recent years, they are easier targets. But make no mistake, these are not the last symbols that will come under attack, and already we can see the attacks beginning as those on the Confederate symbols succeed.

For example, in 1997 . . . the Orleans Parish [Louisiana] school board, with a 5-2 black majority, voted unanimously to change the name of George Washington Elementary to [black surgeon] Dr. Charles Richard Drew Elementary; the school itself is 91 percent black. [New Orleans "civil rights" leader Carl Galmon stated]: "To African Americans, George Washington has about as much meaning as David Duke."

In 1996, white former Marxist historian Conor Cruise O'Brien published an article in the Atlantic Monthly arguing that Thomas Jefferson should no longer be included in the national pantheon because of his "racism." And indeed, the [Jefferson's] Declaration [of Independence] itself, supposedly the document that serves as the very basis for racial equality in this country, is also rejected by black extremists. In February, 1999 in New Jersey [a bill to require public school students to memorize parts of the Declaration was withdrawn after] angry attacks on it by black lawmakers.

Indeed, it would probably be hard to find a figure from American history who has not come under attack from black racists. [Black reparations advocate Randall Robinson writes that] "America must dramatically reconfigure its symbolized picture of itself, its national parks, museums, monuments, statues, artworks must be recast in a way to include African-Americans."

It does not seem to matter to Mr. Robinson that the historical events many of these cultural monuments to the American past commemorate might not have included blacks; the past must be recreated to include them.

Of course, the major defeat for the flag so far has been in South Carolina, where the legislature voted to remove the flag from its place above the capitol dome and to put it on a monument nearby. That wasn't enough for the NAACP, which has refused to call off its boycott of the State and wants the flag removed. Last week, when the flag was actually removed, the NAACP's State director in South Carolina said, "The economic sanctions will continue until the flag no longer flies."

(Shots Fired, Sam Francis on America's Culture War, Peter B. Gemma, FGF Books, 2006, excerpts pp. 277-283)