Washington Post: "Gov. McDonnell's airbrushing of Virginia history"

Think about it (0.00 / 0)

Just 150 years ago, here in Virginia, a class of human beings were still being legally treated as cattle -- worked to death, sold, bred, beaten, raped.  

We should have a Day of Atonement to remember this crime against humanity -- not a Confederate History Month to gloss over it.  

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by: kindler @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 12:08:37 PM UTC

No one wants to gloss over it (0.00 / 0)

Slavery is just as important as the other parts of the history of the war that should be told. I notice that other than briefly calling it a struggle for independence, McDonnell didn't talk about anything else in his statement.

You're fishing, Lowell.  

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by: Brian W. Schoeneman @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 13:53:07 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Brian, learn to read. (0.00 / 0)

I didn't write "gloss over it," kindler did. Anyway, you're dead wrong on this one, just admit it and stop being a blind apologist for every McDonnell and Kookinelli outrage.

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by: lowkell @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 14:26:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

As amazing as it sounds, (0.00 / 0)

I am capable of addressing two people in one post. The glossing over was a response to Kindler. The fishing was a response to the rest of the article.  

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by: Brian W. Schoeneman @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 17:10:47 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

What's really amazing (0.00 / 0)

is that you managed to be so totally wrong in one post.

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by: lowkell @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 17:12:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

That struggle for independence (0.00 / 0)

Okay, let's put slavery to one side, and talk about what Virginia did when it seceded in 1861 purely as an assertion of states' rights.

Is McDonell saying, and do you agree with him, that states have a right to secede, that it is reasonable to look at what Virginia did in 1861 as a justified assertion of its independence?  Were the secessionists insurrectionists, or freedom fighters?

Nobody defends slavery anymore, and I guess we should be happy for that sign of progress.  It's no longer acceptable to talk about the "property rights" of the slaveholders as if those were a legitimate concern that had to be addressed, therefore secession to secure those rights was justified.

But if slavery is a dead issue, states' rights is not.  Somebody who defends slavery is a whacko who doesn't merit serious attention because such people are way off on the margin.  But our very own Atttorney General, and one of our major political parties, believes that the book is still open on nullification and secession, those aren't off the table.  Our governor now sees fit to characterize what Virginia did in 1861 as an assertion of its right to independence.  

I don't think that we can have a functioning union unless nullification and secession are off the table, unless there are no independently derived "states' rights", unless the supremacy clause of the Constitution is accepted as the final and only word on the whole pseudo-question of states' rights.  I find any hint of disagreement on this question far more troubling than any defense of slavery, because slavery is a dead issue, defended only by powerless crazies, while "states' rights" has been taken up as a cause by one of our major political parties.

Our governor doesn't seem to agree with me.  He seems to think that Virginia was involved in a struggle for its independence in 1861, not in rebellion.  What do you think on this question?  

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by: Glen Tomkins @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 14:30:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

No, McDonnell isn't saying states have a right to secede (0.00 / 0)

They don't. The war and the Supreme Court have proven that. The books aren't open on nullification or secession, but the tension between the role of the states and the role of the federal government exists for a reason - that's how the founders wanted it.

History is a question of perspective. There will always be two sides, at least, to any story. The Civil War is no different. What bothers me is when people try and shoe horn everyone into believing their version based on their perspective.

Last night, the Orioles played Tampa Bay. In my eyes, the Orioles lost. In a TB fan's eyes, Tampa Bay won. In my eyes, we led the entire game and then blew it in the bottom of the ninth. In the TB fan's eyes, they kept it close, and came from behind in the ninth to win. Both are accurate, but how you characterize what happened depends on your point of view.

It is just as correct to call the war a war for southern independence as it is to call it a rebellion against the lawful government. Just as it is correct to call the American revolution the war for American independence and a rebellion against the crown. It depends on the point of view.  

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by: Brian W. Schoeneman @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 17:14:50 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You're obfuscating (4.00 / 1)

Of course, a lot depends on one's individual perspective.  But the question wasn't general, it was specific.  And people may call one thing by two different names and that may be correct from a relative perspective.  However, the way you name something certainly has meaning behind it.  If it is meaningless to call our war against the British a rebellion against the crown, why do we not call it that?  People who would use that name would have certain viewing about the war.

Why did McDonnell feel the need to call it "war between the states for independence"?

I honestly don't see why you feel the need to defend this.  McDonnell has in the past appeared to be an astute politician and he has clearly dropped the ball here.  The way he has worded this is obviously and unsurprisingly offensive.  Then he digs the hole deeper by saying: "there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia."  So, he focused on the ones he thought were important and that didn't include slavery.  

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by: tx2vadem @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 19:01:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It is only offensive if you're looking to be offended (1.00 / 1)

I've read the proclamation half a dozen times so far and I am still trying to figure out what is so amazingly offensive about it that it has sparked over half a dozen front page stories on this website. Is it well written? Not really. Would I have written it this way? No. I would have included a quote from the Gettysburg Address. I like to do that in statements about the war.

The fact that the war was fought over slavery ignores what actually happened on the ground here in Virginia. Slavery did not start in Virginia. Slavery did not end in Virginia. What did happen in Virginia was Manassass, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, Chancellorsville, the Peninsula Campaign, Virginia Capes, the Shenandoah campaign, the capital of the Confederacy, and Appamattox. All of those things are events that occurred or places to visit - which is the whole point of the month in the first place, to promote Civil War tourism on the eve of the sesquicentennial of the war. McDonnell wasn't trying to start a greater dialogue on the implications of the war, he was trying to proclaim a history month.

Come on. I don't think anyone in the Governor's office thought this issue would explode the way it has, but they probably should have, given the left's desire to smear Republicans as racist at the drop of a hat.  

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by: Brian W. Schoeneman @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 21:04:24 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I don't know what to say (4.00 / 1)

You are acting as if language has no meaning.  Media outlets around the country have picked up on this.  A lot of people outside this blog have commented on it.  If you are not seeing it, I don't know what else to tell you.  

As far as anyone in the Governor's office not thinking this would be an issue, I wonder why they didn't draw more attention to this proclamation themselves without the media needing to bring it to light.  Now maybe they are that dense, but I doubt it.

I'm not painting anyone as a racist.  What relevance does that have to my comment?

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by: tx2vadem @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 23:08:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Good luck getting Brian to listen. (0.00 / 0)

I swear, 99.9999% of people in the world could say something and he'd say they're all wrong. That's probably how he can resolve all the cognitive dissonance and other contradictions that come with being a Republican these days.  

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by: lowkell @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 23:10:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I heard McDonnell on WTOP briefly mention slavery (0.00 / 0)

But he did not sound apologetic about the omission in the proclamation.  I think Lowell's story has legs, and in my opinion, deservedly so.  The proclamation looks to be a clear instance of pandering (or worse).

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by: WestEndVoter @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 15:10:44 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You don't have to get inside McDonell's head on this one (0.00 / 0)

If he really wanted to recognize Civil War history, as he now claims, he would have made this Civil War History Month.  But he wanted to recognize the cause the Confederacy fought for, so he acceded to the request of a blatantly secessionist/slavery apology group, and declared a Confederate History Month.

Don't blame this on sloppy staff work.  Unless this governor simply doesn't read what his staff puts in front of him to sign, he meant to honor the cause of the Confederacy, not the collective tragedy that the Civil War was to all concerned.  If he doesn't read what he signs, that's a problem in and of itself, and not sloppy staff work either.

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by: Glen Tomkins @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 14:07:28 PM UTC

Agreed. (0.00 / 0)

Even if it WERE "sloppy staff work," by now he could have clarified, disciplined or fired the staffer, etc. He hasn't done that, and in fact he's made things MUCH worse by saying slavery wasn't one of the "most significant" periods in Virginia history.

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by: lowkell @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 14:27:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Fundamentally indigestible (0.00 / 0)

is how I'd describe this argument: 150 years later, America still has not digested the Civil War, despite constitutional amendments, despite the civil rights voting act, despite electing an African-American president.

I have decided that we never will completely digest these two different ways of looking at a federal system of government---- what I call historically the local barons protecting their local power versus the central power of the national king. The federal system has a built-in permanent tension between local jurisdictions and the national or federal government. It is a system for a journey, not a destination.

The Constitutional Convention was called because the Articles of Confederation were not working well, the system was not only a political failure, it was an economic and social failure---- yet the only way the framers of the Constitution could entice the slave-holding states to join in revising the Articles into a more effective Constitution was to set up a flawed federal system. This permitted the endurance of slavery and preserved the tribal rights of individual states. The patchwork inevitably led in an almost direct line to the Civil War some 70 years later.

I have had this discussion in one form or another with the Southern half of my family several times, beginning before World War II (on a different level, then, more cultural than political) and nothing has changed, the attitudes are the same with this generation as with the last.  

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by: Teddy Goodson @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 14:52:19 PM UTC

Yes, and no (0.00 / 0)

I certainly agree that de jure, legally and constitutionally, we haven't digested the divided sovereignty that the Founders "gifted" us with in the Constitution.  To get states (and to be fair, not just the slave states) to be willing to accept a new, federal, government for the whole nation, they had to pretend that the new system would let us have our cake and eat it too, and divide the exercise of sovereignty between this federal govt, and the govts of the several states.  The states could only be enticed to give up their independence to join the Union, by the false promise that they could retain that independence even after joining the Union.

But divided sovereignty is a logical and practical impossibility.  De facto, we have been one nation since the Constitution was accepted by the original 13 states.  There is no tension, creative or otherwise, between the federal govt, which is the only govt in these United States that anyone recognizes, and the supposedly still-sovereign states of which it is formed.  I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that, however they claim to feel about VA's supposed right to opt out of Obamacare, not one of your relatives would hesitate to brand as despicable traitors to their country anyone who even suggested that states with a majority who oppose the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations have even the shadow of a right to opt out of paying their share of taxes to support these ventures.  No one really believes in "states' rights", there is no tension whatsoever on that topic, and the right-wingers who bray the loudest on this topic are the most fervent and one-sided chauvinists for the absolute and undivided allegiance that we all owe to the US of A.  There are just some people who find it rhetorically convenient to assert some bit of the de jure trappings of states' rights whenever a vote or court decision at the federal level goes against them.

Of course we should bring the Constitution in line with actual practice, and get rid of the 2d and 10th Amendments, as well as Art IV, sec 4, and the provision in Art III for 50 separate "common" law traditions.  That didn't happen after the Civil War, which de facto brought down the curtain on states' rights, because the winners refused to ackowledge that they had violated Art IV, sec 4 after Ft. Sumter.  We've enshrined the Constitution, and are unable to recognize its fundamental and systemic flaws, even when we act practically as if they have no force.

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by: Glen Tomkins @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 16:13:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It's the word (0.00 / 0)

The problem with this isn't difficult -- it's the word "Confederacy."  And the real issue with that word isn't the Confederacy as it stood in the mid 1800's, but what it came to mean later on, especially in the early 1900's and then again during the Civil Rights Era.  It's an issue that stains both Democrats and Republicans during those times.  It's unfortunate that a historical word has such a loaded meaning, and thus makes it complicated to use.  But it does.  And it will for at least the forseeable future.

McDonnell knows this as well as anyone -- especially anyone living in Virginia where we take this stuff seriously (as we should.)  He deliberately chose to poke people in the eye with this resoluation.  I don't think he should be surprised when someone says, "Hey, that hurts!  Stop it!"  There were other things he could have called it, that would have had the same positive result and mitigated the negative reaction.  But he chose not to do that.

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by: GretchenLaskas @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 15:14:07 PM UTC

War for Southern Independence (0.00 / 0)

My issue with the proclamation was the tip o' the hat to the one of the South's preferred monikers (the other being the War of Northern Aggression, or something like that).  

From the first line of the proclamation:

WHEREAS,  April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse

In other words, this war was a War for Southern Independence, not slavery...

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by: WestEndVoter @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 15:34:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The South has never gotten over losing the (0.00 / 0)

War of Northern Agression or the "Late Unpleasantness"!

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by: TomPaine @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 15:41:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Clinging to a lost cause (0.00 / 0)

Is embedded: whole volumes have been written on this; some trace it to the Gaelic culture of Scotland, believe it or not, stronger in the South than the North.

Amateur psychology aside, the practical political effects are: states' rights, hatred of central authority, racism latent or otherwise, patriarchal religious fervor, corporate desire to control weaker political organizations when the federal is too powerful, distaste for inevitable change---- all congeal around a convenient, idealized Confederate logo. Actual history? Don't bother us with details.  

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by: Teddy Goodson @ Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 16:33:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]