Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen often raises hackles and eyebrows with his provocative columns, but he may have outdone himself with his latest one (How the South Finally Won, April 18), which more or less takes off where Joshua Zeitz' Dixie's Victory(American Heritage, Sept. 2002) ends. Quillen writes:
"The sesquicentennial commemoration of the American Civil War began last week with the 150th anniversary of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and the observations will continue for the next four years through the defeat of the Confederacy as its generals surrendered to Union commanders in 1865.
But one might make the argument that if you take the long view, the Confederacy actually triumphed. We can start with the Republican Party, founded in 1854 to oppose the Dixie way of life, but now a reflection of Southern attitudes. In capturing the Republican Party, the political descendants of the Confederates are accomplishing through politics what their ideological ancestors failed to accomplish on the battlefield."
This is true and more or less follows the line of reasoning of Zeitz. Though the latter doesn't go into the R-party inverting itself like Quillen does. Neither, however, explains how or why this political inversion occurred, or how the party that originally fought against slavery became the political descendants of those it fought against.
The reasons aren't hard to parse, and most historians trace them to the fall of 1963, when President John F. Kennedy enforced integration in Alabama and Mississippi by federalizing their state National Guards. Many Southerners, then white Democrats, became so outraged they switched allegiance to the Repukes...errr....Republicans after seeing their Jim Crow-based segregation shattered. The final cut was LBJ's Civil Rights legislation in 1965, which finalized the shift. It then became a matter of record when Richard Milhous Nixon deliberately used "the Southern strategy" to rack up huge electoral numbers in the South toward his 1968 victory over Hubert Humphrey.
Quillen is also spot on in observing:
"To be sure, chattel slavery has long been abolished in this nation. But you could consider slavery a form of cheap labor with no legal protections for the laborers. Now consider the GOP current efforts to bust unions, cut wages and benefits, and reduce workplace safety regulations.
In other words, one essence of the antebellum South's economic system is becoming part of the national economic system."
True, and we've beheld this in Wisconsin (with Scott Walker) as well as Ohio (with John Kasich) and Indiana. In each case gutting union power to make public workers de facto slaves. In the antebellum South this took the form of then freed slaves being kept on to work as sharecroppers, but having most of their meager wages garnished for boarding. Today's public worker slaves, are having large portions of their wages garnished to pay for benefits and health care, leaving them with little disposable income for mortgage payments, groceries or fuel.
Quillen's next point is also salient:
"One might also ponder income distribution in pre-war Dixie. It was extremely skewed with a few rich folks, mostly planters, sitting on most of the wealth, and outside of their slaves, lots of "poor white trash" scrounging for a meager livelihood at the bottom. It was close to feudal, sort of like the country you get with continued tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, ensuring there isn't much for the folks further down the ladder, especially after you privatize Medicare and cut Social Security."
True, and few people know this. One had an extremely inequitable society defined by tremendous disparity in access to resources. Even most whites lived at the level of indentured servants, though the racial clarion calls of the plantation owners were deft enough to entice them to forego their own interests and fight for the Confederacy (which regarded them as little better than expendable cannon fodder). Renunciation of the government was part and parcel of this mentality, and expressed itself not only in rejection of higher taxes but in opposing any external government injunctions. Thus, the infamous reply of one Georgia Senator to Stonewall Jackson's plea to have powers equal to Lincoln: "Ah will remain a Rebel even in this Confederacy!"
Quillen again:
"Lincoln and the Republicans of 1861 supported protective tariffs, not just to help finance the federal government, but also to support domestic industry and raise wages. The South supported free trade — South Carolina's first secession threat came in 1832 in opposition to "the tariff of abominations" — and today's GOP is a big supporter of free trade."
This is also key! And like the Confederates of old, the Repukes disdain any intake of money to pay for their wars or occupations. Already, even before Obama entered, they'd squandered over $3 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan and didn't offer to hike taxes one red cent and indeed, added insult to injury by tacking on tax CUTS in so-called wartime. (Which makes a mockery of the claim that it is "wartime")
And further:
"The Old South also opposed federal spending on "internal improvements" — canals, railroads, turnpikes and the like — in the first part of the 19th century. That is, investment in national infrastructure, and where does the anti-investment rhetoric come from today if not the GOP?"
Absolutely! And ever since the illegitimate ascension of Dumbya Bush to power (in 2001), stoking people to buy, buy, buy...despite starting a "war" ...not one damned thing was done to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. Like the Old South, which blamed its decay on 'carpetbaggers' and liberated black slaves, today's repukes blame it on liberals or "socialists" when they wouldn't recognize one of the latter if it bit them in the ass.
Quillen once again:
"Nor was the South big on spending for education. Southern senators and representatives blocked early efforts to establish state land-grant colleges. As for the local common schools, the illiteracy rate in Dixie, even among whites, was much higher than in the North, which supported public education. The Southern heritage of poorly funding public education is now a national Republican policy, which also involves taking money from the public coffers to support private religious schools."
Exactly so, and we know the whole voucher ruse is an elaborate bait and switch designed to defund public schools while not really helping those kids who go to alternatives via vouchers. Analysis of many voucher programs, including in Washington, DC and Milwaukee has shown they don't fulfill expectations, and scores attained on standardized tests are up to a standard deviation below the means expected in normal public schooling.
Quillen penultimately notes:
"When it comes to foreign policy, the South was expansionist and imperialistic, with designs for a "Golden Circle" of a slave-holder republic surrounding the Caribbean after the acquisition of Cuba and the rest of Mexico. The idea was to control their resources and bring "the blessings of republican government" to an unruly part of the world."
Indeed! And we now find this writ large as overall empire-building by the nation. Thus, the imperialistic aims of the Confederate South have now become endemic policy as this country is stretched across the globe in imperalist military occupations and committments, from Korea to Germany, to the Phillippines and Iraq, Afghanistan et al, all at a cost of hundreds of billions a year. (See the latest TIME, April 25, for how the military budget can easily be cut by $1 trillion or more).
And I save Quillen's best for last:
"When you look at contemporary culture, those who fly the stars and bars and esteem Nathan Bedford Forrest are somehow considered patriotic, rather than admirers of treason. Add all this up, and there's a strong argument that the Confederacy actually won the Civil War — not by force of arms, but by taking over the political party that had once been dedicated to its destruction.
Need I say more?
No comments:
Post a Comment