When Truth No Longer Matters
All we need to do is tell the truth. This simple phrase has been repeated for over a century.
When does truth not matter especially when it comes from a Southern point of view? What does it matter who tells the truth? Many people consider the truth to be anything, but their neo-Marxism agenda and they consider truth to be falsehood to be anything that supports traditional American values. Since the beginning this series of articles about the Civil War Era, people assume I am a Confederate through and through, I need to join the 21st Century, and how I love my slaves. Quite condescending isn’t it since we are all strangers on this platform. I could say, “Well, bless your little heart,” a popular saying I’ve heard many a time since moving to the South well over thirty years ago, but that wouldn’t make me any better of a person than the one who made the salacious remarks, would it?
For one, I was not raised that way, nor did I raise my children to be narrow-minded when it comes to both sides of a story. For those of you who wonder why I write about the War for Independence, a.k.a. The American Civil War, it is two-fold. I was born and raised in the North, Michigan to be exact. I’ve had a great interest in the events of the Civil War since I was a young teenager, after a family member moved his family to the Alabama. For years, I heard the talk behind their backs, you know what I’m talking about if you’re from the North, calling my sister-in-law’s family hillbillies, and other names of endearment of the same class. I knew the words cut deep, but I could not understand why until I got out of my comfort zone and explored the why’s of it all.
On each visit to the Southern state and surrounding states in my twenties with my own little family, I had come to love the genuine culture and the gentleness of the people. The history I learned about was nothing what I was taught in school and my thirst for more knowledge became a mission over the years especially after moving to South Carolina from Arizona.
I’ve done several family trees for clients since living here, and the research is fascinating and nothing like I, and the majority of us were taught in school. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans have yet to comprehend the fact that in the current politically correct U.S.A. it is impossible to have a civil discussion with our opponents. Most conservative Southerners do not realize who their opponents are, nor do they realize the pernicious nature of their opponent’s underlying philosophy when it comes down to anything from the South.
So how do we defend those permanent things in history which are a part of all our natural inheritance? How do you win a battle when your opponent does not accept values of truth, documented evidence and logic? One thing for certain, we cannot win by spending time and resources trying to convince others about the truthfulness of our claims. The majority of people like me who write about historical events, (and there are many on Substack), try to educate through research. So, there will be no frontal attacks back to those who wish to attack me as a Southerner or anything else other than the person I am. In the words of the scholar Mel Bradford, he warned, “With it we worship ourselves: falsify, and then forget our birthright…the rhetoric of easy hope can produce only the politics of discontentment.” Our enemies have their ideological roots in the pernicious soil of postmodernism. If over one hundred million corpses cannot convert anyone, what possible chance will our truths about the War ever have?
I leave all of you in peace this evening. I especially appreciate each and every one of you who have paid subscriptions, those who have made one-time donations, and those who have subscribed or are following this publication. I will continue to post to the best of my knowledge about many events without disrespect to anyone. Life is too short to be cynical. Always find Peace.
Tomorrow I will be posting Part 1 of the Hanging of Mary Surratt. G’night!
I was also born and raised in Yankee territory. As I write this I am deep into enemy territory. But I became an unapologetic, unreconstructed Confederate Rebel in heart, soul AND CONVICTION, after a few years of my own reading.
Gen. Lee and Stonewall are proud of you!
exactly why I like your column.
I just want to make two points. The first is my family were North Carolina refugees who escaped from being indentured. During the civil war they fought a guerilla war against troops to impress them into the southern service successful enough that they were finally left alone.
At the same time other Irish in New York were fighting federal (northern) troops attempts to impress them into fighting for the "freedom" of others when they felt they were being used as slaves by the NYC elite housed in tenements more squalor than any southern slave.
By the time I came around most of the family had migrated northward (opposite direction of your family.) None of them were educated but they had a family bible they taught themselves to read with and registered their genealogy all the way back to Ireland and Cromwell's seizing their land and sending them to America.
You might say my family history were both slaves/freedom fighters.
So here's where I find identity, and by the way, I have never found you to be supporting slavery or supremacy, but rather explaining the "southern psyche" imposed upon them by not just losing the war but having their noses rubbed in the shit leftover by the spoils of their land. So like them I grew up on the "lost cause" of the Irish.
If you try to force people into submission, well BF Skinner termed that negative reinforcement which actually simply turns people into harboring animosities and pretending into an obedience they don't believe in.
So Robert E. Lee may not be my hero but James Connolly is and I never sat foot in Ireland and more than likely never will.
Be that as it is,you are presenting important history because the war and its aftermath on both northern workers, southern whites and nearly every black person in America thereafter a sense of having been abused by America. And the second point is, for what it's worth cause I have 90 subscribers after three years, I am recommending your column and I am finishing up an interpretative article on Monica's Dark Corner which will conclude a six-part essay on freedom that will begin posting later today. So if you would like to view the series and send feedback I would appreciate it. And in part 5 & 6 when I write more directly on the Dark Corner, if you feel I misrepresent your column please feel free to correct my interpretation. But I hope I can do justice to your articles in my meager way.