Over at Politico, we have the following report on Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s view of the recent unpleasantness in the Old Dominion regarding that least interesting and most trivial of subjects, the oppression of tens of millions of Black Americans by their masters for, oh, two and a half centuries or so.
‘Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour thinks Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell didn’t need to apologize for failing to include a mention of slavery in a declaration of April as Confederation History Month ….
'When CNN “State of the Union” anchor Candy Crowley asked Barbour, a onetime lobbyist and former head of the RNC, if the slavery omission was a mistake, he said, “I don’t think so, my legislature has made an active holiday of Confederate Memorial Day… Anyone who thinks that you have to explain that slavery is a bad thing, it goes without saying… It’s sort of feeling that it’s a nit, it’s not significant, it’s trying to make a big deal.”’
Yes, why can’t we honor the men who fought and died to perpetuate one of the ugliest oppressions of the human spirit on record without having to mention the reason why they killed 300,000 of their fellow Americans? Southern troops murdered Black Union soldiers on sight, a kind of systemized savagery that would not be seen again until the days of Adolph Hitler. They captured free Blacks in northern states and sent them south into slavery. For a century and more they maintained a racist regime that denied Blacks all the basic rights of citizenship, a regime that would be in place to this day but for the Civil Rights Movement, a cause approximately 10,000 times more worthy of celebration than the Stars and Bars. But we don’t need to concern ourselves with nits like that, not when we can enjoy a mint julep and listen to the darkies strumming on their banjos in the moonlight.
