Writes Christopher Check in the Chicago Daily Observer (5/8/08):
“If you are looking for a sign of hope, however, look at Congressman Walter B. Jones of North Carolina’s 3rd congressional district. Since 1995 this Republican congressman held his seat unopposed from within his party. In Tuesday’s primary, however, he faced a challenger for the first time. Why? Because three years ago, the very man who introduced legislation changing the name of french fries to Freedom Fries converted from one of the Iraq War’s biggest supporters to one of its fiercest critics.
His conservatism is beyond reproach: tough on immigration, a strong supporter of American manufacturing, 100 percent pro-life, unwavering on Second Amendment rights, a firm defender of marriage and family, et cetera.
Nonetheless, his challenger, Joe McLaughlin attempted to paint Jones as a liberal. Why opposing foreign wars of imperialism makes one a liberal is not clear. (Perhaps George Washington was a liberal.) In any case, McLaughlin thought he had a big advantage: the 3rd congressional district includes Camp Lejeune, home of the Second Marine Division, and is heavily populated by veterans. Surely our men in uniform would not support “cut-and-run” Jones.
McLaughlin was wrong. Way wrong. Veterans and active duty servicemen alike are all too aware that they are the ones shedding their blood and losing their limbs (and their minds) while the Pearles and Kristols of the world plan their next adventure. The men in uniform in Jones’s district know that he is their best friend in Congress. His support of the troops is not the mile-wide-and-millimeter-deep jingoism of yellow ribbons and bumper stickers. It is the support of a man who attends the funerals at Camp Lejeune and sees young boys who will never know their fathers. It is the support of a man who realizes America’s security is jeopardized not strengthened by this war.
With nearly 60 percent of the votes, Jones beat McLaughlin handily. And he beat him in Onslow County, where Camp Lejeune is located (and where McLaughlin served as commissioner), as well as in Wayne County, the home of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
While the rest of the Republican Party (especially in this state) is on its back gasping for life, conservatives might take a look and see how goodness and truth, and devotion to principle, played on Tuesday in North Carolina.”
May 10th is Confederate Memorial Day in South Carolina and as usual the holiday will likely pass with less fanfare than some might like. That a holiday to honor the Confederate dead doesn’t get as much attention as their flag says more about today’s politics than it does yesterday’s soldiers.
For us modern folks, it is the flag that first comes to mind upon hearing the word “Confederate” and how one feels about the South’s most famous symbol is the key to how we feel about everything else associated with it. Some insist that the Confederate flag stands for bravery and sacrifice while others believe it stands for slavery. Some contend that it stands for regional pride while others consider it a symbol of racism.
The Confederate flag is not the first symbol in history to have double meaning. There’s little doubt Muslims during the Crusades had as negative a view of the Christian cross as their opponents did a favorable one. Englishman likely had a different feeling about the Union Jack than those in India and elsewhere who watched as foreigners colonized their homeland. And the American Indian, no doubt, has had a love/hate relationship with Old Glory for centuries. Yet no reasonable man would dare suggest that Christians, the English or Americans surrender their most cherished symbols.
Black Southerners are not without reason in their distaste for the Confederate flag. But does their distaste discount white Southerners’ affection? Should the worst aspect attributed to a symbol, however accurate or inaccurate, define that symbol for everyone?
For example, many black Americans have made African heritage a symbol of pride. Should the fact that more enslavement and slave trading occurred in Africa by Africans than it ever did in the entire West, discount African symbolism entirely?
Many have compared the Confederate flag to the Nazi swastika as an irredeemable symbol that stands exclusively for ‘hate’ and hate alone. But to compare Nazism, an imperial philosophy defined exclusively by anti-Semitism and white supremacy, with the War for Southern Independence, a struggle for national sovereignty not unlike the American Revolution, is absurd. That Adolf Hitler targeted a certain ethnic group for annihilation is as certain as the fact that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee did not. And whereas the swastika represented the singular vision of a race-obsessed dictator, Confederate imagery grew out of the Christian and American character of the Southern people, from the St. Andrews Cross that adorns the battle flag to the 13 stars that define the red, white and blue banner.
Mutual respect does not necessarily entail mutual understanding, and just like the cultural divide in hip-hop and country music, a black American doesn’t have to understand Robert E. Lee anymore than a white American needs to understand Malcolm X. What has happened to the Confederate flag is that those who neither like it nor understand it have been allowed to define it exclusively, which would be like reading a history of the Boston Red Sox written by the New York Yankees. Both groups belong to the same game and play on the same field, but naturally have entirely different perspectives.
Whether the Confederate flag stays with us or continues to wither on the vine, it is but one symptom of a much larger problem. Political correctness and multicultural philosophy have rendered too many white Americans defenseless against those who would gladly rob them of their cultural inheritance just out of spite. It was Martin Luther King Jr. who said “a nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.” And with the increasing attacks on traditional American symbols, everything from Christmas to Christopher Columbus in recent years, you can bet the ongoing destruction of the Confederate flag is but the first downpayment.
Outside of pro wrestling, what I know about sports you could fit in a thimble. But I do know about neocons. This is great (thanks to Justin Raimondo at Takimag.com):
“Should we be worried the Mariners are baseball’s equivalent of the Bush Administration? Fiscally undisciplined with negligible positive returns? Check. Marketed as veteran leadership despite any veterans with leadership experience? Check. Sloppy management reinforced with sloppy execution on the ground? Check.”
“Kudos last night to North Carolina voters for nominating B.J. Lawson, a bonified Ron Paul Republican to the nomination for the 4th Congressional District and re-electing Walter Jones Jr. to the sixth CD. Jones was the only GOP member of Congress to endorse Paul for President.
This is important because while Lawson faces an uphillclimb in a heavily Democratic district, just the fact he won the district puts it Ron Paul’s hands. Given the way the GOP divies up its delegates to its national convention by Congressional District, controlling a district is a big deal and means Ron Paul’s Republicans are going to have influence and power within the party in the future regardless what happens this fall.
Jones’ election is also important to show Republicans that opposing the war, even in a district filled with military bases, is not a political death sentence. Voters do actually respect Congressmen who take a stand even if they may disagree with it (or maybe they privately agree. If they thought Jones was cut-in-run peacenik, wouldn’t the margin have been just a little closer than 2-to-1?).”
“What is clear, by now, is that the War Party is openly rooting for Hillary: see the Weekly Standard for the neocons’ paean to Hillary the war goddess. Before the Obama surge nearly wiped her out, she was sounding like Obama in his denunciations of the “war that should never have been fought,” i.e., Iraq, yet she shifted gears rather abruptly and began presenting herself as a lunch-bucket know-nothing pro-war demagogue who could pass for Joe Lieberman in drag.
The Weekly Standard-ites are all atwitter at the new Hillary, the woman who “may still be a nanny-state type in some of her policies, but in her own life she seems more and more of a Social Darwinian, refusing to lose, and insisting on shaping her destiny.” She’s a “fighter” – never mind what she’s fighting for – who’s been through a lot. Of course, the same can be said of Ron Paul, yet we don’t hear any praise coming to him from Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, and the neocon Right. The reason for this newfound enthusiasm for the Woman the Right Used to Hate is twofold: She isn’t Obama, and she is sounding more and more like McCain when it comes to foreign policy, the premier issue as far as the neocons are concerned.”
“This is very good news: Huckabee + Paul gets 20% in North Carolina; Huckabee + Paul + Romney gets 23% in Indiana. If you add in the “no preference” vote in NC, then the anti-McCain vote jumps up to 27%. Some of this might be a flailing protest vote–which isn’t a bad start in my opinion!”
“Since 9/11, our leaders have given every reason for Islamic terrorism except those which include the hard evidence. As the former head of the CIA unit tracking Osama Bin Laden, Michael Scheuer writes, “On no other foreign policy issue since the Cold War’s end has the truth been so easy to establish on the basis of hard facts but so hard for Americans to see — primarily because their leaders eagerly distort or ignore the truth. At day’s end, each (leader) is ready to intervene abroad to champion abstractions such as democracy rather than U.S. interests, each is ready to spend the lives of soldiers and Marines to do so, and each advances the Islamist cause by failing to see that Muslim hatred is motivated by U.S. interventionism more than any other factor.”
As a 22-year veteran of the most hands-on terrorist-monitoring unit of the CIA, one might think Scheuer would know a thing or two about what motivates radical Islam.”
From columnist Steve Chapman in today’s (5/4/08) Chicago Tribune:
“Can a presidential candidate justify a long and friendly relationship with someone who, back in the 1970s, extolled violence and committed crimes in the name of a radical ideology–and who has never shown remorse or admitted error? When the candidate in question is Barack Obama, John McCain says no. But when the candidate in question is John McCain, he’s not so sure.
Obama has been justly criticized for his ties to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, who in 1995 hosted a campaign event for Obama and in 2001 gave him a $200 contribution. The two have also served together on the board of a foundation. When their connection became known, McCain minced no words: “I think not only a repudiation but an apology for ever having anything to do with an unrepentant terrorist is due the American people.”
What McCain didn’t mention is that he has his own Bill Ayers–in the form of G. Gordon Liddy. Now a conservative radio talk-show host, Liddy spent more than 4 years in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. That was just one element of what Liddy did, and proposed to do, in a secret White House effort to subvert the Constitution. Far from repudiating him, McCain has embraced him.
How close are McCain and Liddy? At least as close as Obama and Ayers appear to be. In 1998, Liddy’s home was the site of a McCain fundraiser. Over the years, he has made at least four contributions totaling $5,000 to the senator’s campaigns–including $1,000 this year.
Last November, McCain went on his radio show. Liddy greeted him as “an old friend,” and McCain sounded like one. “I’m proud of you, I’m proud of your family,” he gushed. “It’s always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.”
Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn’t disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?
Liddy was in the thick of the biggest political scandal in American history–and one of the greatest threats to the rule of law. He has said he has no regrets about what he did, insisting that he went to jail as “a prisoner of war.”
All this may sound like ancient history. But it’s from the same era as the bombings Ayers helped carry out as a member of the Weather Underground. And Liddy’s penchant for extreme solutions has not abated.
In 1994, after the disastrous federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, he gave some advice to his listeners: “Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests. . . . Kill the sons of bitches.”
From columnist Frank Rich in today’s (5/4/08) New York Times:
“Mr. McCain says he does not endorse any of Mr. Hagee’s calumnies, any more than Barack Obama endorses Mr. Wright’s. But those who try to give Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case. It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee’s church.
That defense implies, incorrectly, that Mr. McCain was a passive recipient of this bigot’s endorsement. In fact, by his own account, Mr. McCain sought out Mr. Hagee, who is perhaps best known for trying to drum up a pre-emptive “holy war” with Iran. (This preacher’s rantings may tell us more about Mr. McCain’s policy views than Mr. Wright’s tell us about Mr. Obama’s.) Even after Mr. Hagee’s Catholic bashing bubbled up in the mainstream media, Mr. McCain still did not reject and denounce him, as Mr. Obama did an unsolicited endorser, Louis Farrakhan, at the urging of Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton. Mr. McCain instead told George Stephanopoulos two Sundays ago that while he condemns any “anti-anything” remarks by Mr. Hagee, he is still “glad to have his endorsement.”
I wonder if Mr. McCain would have given the same answer had Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted him with the graphic video of the pastor in full “Great Whore” glory. But Mr. McCain didn’t have to fear so rude a transgression. Mr. Hagee’s videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr. Wright’s. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn’t have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man.”
Read the entire column. This is good stuff and reflects the point I’ve been trying to make about the absurdity of guilt-by-association politics.
The "Southern Avenger" Jack Hunter is a conservative commentator (WTMA 1250 AM talk radio) and columnist (Charleston City Paper) living in Charleston, South Carolina.
