Friday, August 12, 2011

Michael Lind on the Tea Party Caucus in Congress and the former Confederate states

Michael Lind on http://www.salon.com/ had this analysis of the Tea Party caucus in Congress.

http://www.salon.com/news/tea_parties/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/08/02/lind_tea_party

Lind is paying attention to the geography of politics.

See this blog on Michell Backmann and her neo-Confederacy.

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/08/michelle-bachmanns-neo-confederacy.html

I think the public is becoming aware of the mainstreaming of neo-Confederacy into the American conservative movement.

Obama considers Fort Monroe as a national monument

Politico has the following article about Obama considering Fort Monroe as a national monument. It is online here:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61247.html

A quote form the article:

"There are few more significant sites in terms of African-American history anywhere in the country, and using the Antiquities Act to preserve this special place makes sense after the Army hands over the site next month,” Warner said in a statement.

Built between 1819 and 1834, Fort Monroe was one of the few Union military installations in the South never occupied by Confederate forces during the Civil War.

Gen. Benjamin Butler made the "Contraband Decision" there in 1861 that kept slaves from being forced to return after they crossed Union lines. Thousands of slaves came to the site, which became known as “Freedom’s Fortress.”


Another excellent article about Ft. Monroe and the effort to make it into a national monument is online at the "News and Observer" here:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/07/17/1347261/freedom-shrine-at-highways-end.html


Michelle Bachmann's neo-Confederacy detailed in "The New Yorker."

This article in the "New Yorker" about Michelle Backmann covers her interests in neo-Confederate ideology, but I am not sure they recognize it as being neo-Confederate per see.

The article is at this link:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

Here is a quote from the article:

"While looking over Bachmann’s State Senate campaign Web site, I stumbled upon a list of book recommendations. The third book on the list, which appeared just before the Declaration of Independence and George Washington’s Farewell Address, is a 1997 biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins.

Wilkins is the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North. This revisionist take on the Civil War, known as the “theological war” thesis, had little resonance outside a small group of Southern historians until the mid-twentieth century, when Rushdoony and others began to popularize it in evangelical circles. In the book, Wilkins condemns “the radical abolitionists of New England” and writes that “most southerners strove to treat their slaves with respect and provide them with a sufficiency of goods for a comfortable, though—by modern standards—spare existence.”

African slaves brought to America, he argues, were essentially lucky: “Africa, like any other pagan country, was permeated by the cruelty and barbarism typical of unbelieving cultures.” Echoing Eidsmoe, Wilkins also approvingly cites Lee’s insistence that abolition could not come until “the sanctifying effects of Christianity” had time “to work in the black race and fit its people for freedom.”

If you want the background about Christian Reconstructionists and neo-Confederacy read the following article:

http://gis.depaul.edu/ehague/Articles/PUBLISHED%20CRAS%20ARTICLE.pdf

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Popular Posts Last 30 days

Popular Posts All Time