Still Fighting the Civil War

"There is a war going on here. It is an ancient conflict, as war and time go in this country. The Civil War is like a ghost that has not yet made its peace and roams the land seeking solace, retribution, or vindication. It continues to exist, an event without temporal boundaries, an interminable struggle..."

-- David Goldfield, "Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History," 2002 - as quoted in Kevin Phillips "American Theocracy."


It wasn't until I was in my late teens, a budding sailor at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, that I realized the Civil War wasn't over. In my barracks, young men from the north and from the south, continued to battle. They harangued each other and insulted each other and eventually resorted to fisticuffs to take out their hatred for each other molded 100 years earlier by their ancestors.

Mr. Phillips, in his book, "American Theocracy," quoted above, comments on this ongoing feud between Yankees and Confederates: "To sharpen regional sentiment, southerners for generations used every opportunity and locale--from cemeteries, pulpits, and war memorials to parades and Confederate veteran's events--to promote their interpretation-cum-theology. Confederate memorials and statues spread even across border states that had sent more men to the northern armies than to the southern. Memory itself because a battlefield."

Thus, in recent years, we have had recurring battles as to the appropriateness of the Confederate battle flag flying over statehouses in Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina.

Now we have a new, similar skirmish brewing in Florida. Out in the Panhandle, perhaps the most regressive area of the state, a lawmaker has devised a new way to instigate hatred among Floridians.

Rep. Donald Brown, a Republican from DeFuniak Springs, has filed a bill (HB 1007) which would establish a "Confederate Heritage" license plate. It would "feature a shield displaying the rebel battle flag symbol surrounded by several flags from the Civil War era."

Brown claims that this would help the motoring public show pride in their heritage.

Do we really need people driving around showing pride in a heritage of secession, slavery, racism and backwoods religion?

This proposal is an apt illustration of what Phillips means when he notes "how deeply meaningful Civil War symbols remain in politics, especially racial politics."

Sheesh! Who needs such crap?