At the University of South Carolina is a striking classical Greek building known as the South Caroliniana Library. It was built in 1840 by the outstanding architect Robert Mills and was said to be the first American college building for a separate library.


The building anchors one side of the open end of a “horseshoe” of sturdy dignified buildings all built before the War for Southern Independence. Antebellum South Carolina College was intended to be and was a strong, recognised institution with an internationally distinguished faculty. The Library contained rare materials, including a first edition Audubon.


The Library escaped Sherman’s fires but South Carolina College did not escape Reconstruction and suffered the same decline as its impoverished state. In the World War II era some insightful people who loved their State, led by Robert Meriwether, formed a South Caroliniana Society. The Society was allowed to take over the Library for the keeping of its assiduously collected historical materials.


The Library thus for decades became busy as a major research institution, drawing outstanding historians from around the world to its collections.


In the early 2020s it was decided that the Library need “renovation,” a project completed in 2023.


I am not surprised to see the Library “brought up to date,” but I am abysmally disappointed at the extent of the “renovation.” Everything reflecting South Carolina history and culture is gone.


I expected the removal of the stone plaque to Preston Brooks, who thrashed the cowardly Charles Sumner of Massachusetts who had refused a duel for his insults. But I did not expect to see the entire removal of anything reminiscent of South Carolina. The Library is now full of trivial “exhibits” that would not be out of place in an Ohio museum. It has also become something of a center for African American materials and meetings, which is fine.


The greatest loss is the removal of the gallery of fine paintings of outstanding South Carolinians, including women, that once was a striking feature.


A few years ago, for more than a decade, the University had a President who had left Michigan just ahead of the sheriff. His tenure finally was ended when an out-of-state newspaper dug up documents from a landfill and he went to his proper place in the penitentiary. I mention this because this fellow tried to remove the portraits to the president’s mansion. But they were the property of the South Caroliniana Society, which blocked his attempt.


But the times have changed. The “renovated” Library has replaced the portraits with exhibits and inferior paintings of unknown people. The precious art has been moved and hidden in a closed room in the big modern library. Insider information tells me that one of the portraits is damaged and another missing. This remarkable vision of old South Carolina history and culture can no longer be seen in public.


​I cannot really blame what has happened on increased African American influence or on the Woke ideology pervasive in academic institutions. The real cause is that the leaders of the State have abandoned their heritage and created a world of Babbitry. They have yearned for a university that resembles the American mainstream, a second string Ohio State.  

The 17-year-old Emma LeConte kept a full diary during the havoc reeked by Sherman’s uniformed arsonists and looters on the city of Columbia, South Carolina, which she saw up close.


Incomplete and distorted versions of the diary have been made into books in the past. The true and complete thing has now been provided by two outstanding Southern historians—Karen Stokes and James Kibler. Shotwell Publishing has just brought out their work as The Diary of Emma Leconte: A Story of War and Survival, 1864-1865.


Emma lived on the South Carolina College campus in what is now known as Lieber College, a place where I spent a good deal of time in earlier and better years. Lieber is at the open end of what is called The Horseshoe, two lines of wonderful antebellum buildings. It is directly across from the now de-Southernised South Caroliniana Library, where I also spent a lot of time.


Emma was the daughter of Joseph LeConte, an eminent scientist and professor. She saw and heard what was going on during the December night when Sherman was at work intimidating women and old folks, destroying their houses and other city institutions, and looting the property of the population. She also observed and recorded the aftereffects. The liberators in blue did not spare the black people from their atrocities. On the positive side, some of the Union soldiers were so drunk that they perished in their own fires.


The college remained relatively unscathed, though in the midst of a large devastated area. It had a wall around it made up of sturdy buildings and was considered not to have much useful loot. Union soldiers did manage to set fire to the roofs of two buildings where wounded Southern soldiers were, but the wounded men were able to put out the fires.


Emma felt deeply the sufferings of her family and friends and townspeople, but she recorded facts.


Those interested in this book should also look for Joseph LeConte’s ‘Ware Sherman: A Journal of Three Months’ Personal Experience in the Last Days of the Confederacy. The book was published in 1937 by another of LeConte’s daughters, Caroline, with interesting drawings. The LSU Press brought out a version in 1999, but the work is now rare and hard to find.


LeConte and his brother John were Confederate scientists. He vividly describes the weeks following the fire, during which he made trips to the country to bring back food to devastated Columbia while avoiding being made prisoner by the Union. This is relatively unnoticed history.


Among other insufficiently noticed history was the good will shown by some Northerners after the war. Joseph and his brother were among the first professors to be appointed to the newly-established University of California at Berkely in the late 1860s. They were already distinguished, versatile, and prolific scientists and they were recommended by many of the distinguished scientific men of the time.


Their careers in California were long and honoured. Joseph became the president of several national societies and was noted, among other things, as a conservationist. It was the University of California Press that first published ‘Ware Sherman.”


While refamiliarising yourself with the destruction of Columbia, also take a look at A City Laid Waste, the 2005 edition of the work of the great William Gilmore Siimms, also a firsthand witness to the event who wrote shortly thereafter. His newspaper report, later a pamphlet, is called The Capture, Sack, and Destruction of the City of Columbia.


It is good to remember the destruction of Columbia which is greatly documented, although it was only one of hundreds of such happenings. There are people, including local carpetbaggers, who still retell Sherman’s lie that the fire was caused by Confederates.


Keep in mind what happened to our people, mine and yours, when their independence and self-rule was dishonourably suppressed by the invasion and conquest of their own government which they had founded and had until then supported with sacrifice.  

The U.S. government’s attack on Iran fails every rule of Christian “just war” theory. It trashes what little is left of the Constitution. And possibly worst of all, it is stupid.

Just war principles require action to be taken to protect the innocent or redress grave injury. They require that all peaceful alternatives are exhausted. The war initiated must have a reasonable chance of success. The rule of “proportionality” requires that the costs of action do not outweigh the intended benefit.

Churlishly, we attacked while negotiations were under way (like Japs at Pearl Harbor). We murdered the other country’s legitimate leaders, a gangsterism no honest government can justify. Iran offered no grave threat or injury to us. In fact, they sensibly avoided it. True, a half century ago, they violated our embassy in the midst of their revolution to overthrow the absurd “Shah” that we imposed on them. And they have a hostile-talking Islamic government. But they have accepted unjust sanctions and weapons inspections. They know it is not in their interest to provoke the U.S.

Incredibly, our Secretary of State said we had to go to war because our little client state was going to war whether we liked it or not. Such was the reason for sacrificing our blood and treasure. Our Founders would have considered this blatant TREASON against the American people.

The Israelis have been declaring for over 40 years that Iran will have nuclear weapons with a few weeks or so. This is a lie. The purpose of the lie is to make sure that Israel remains the only nuclear power in the region. President Kennedy was trying to prevent Israel getting nukes when he was killed.

Countries want nuclear weapons for defense, as a deterrent. They have not been used since 1945. It might be good if Iran had some, like a number of other countries. It would deter Israeli aggression and dominance.

And the U.S. undertook this attempt at regime change, apparently not having noticed that previous such attempts have been catastrophic failures. Our leaders learn nothing and are never held responsible for their mistakes. That is the opposite of government of, by, and for the people. Such leadership is a sign of decadent imperialism. New York thugs like Trump and pretty boys like Rubio cannot make statesmen. The top generals are not soldiers but have risen to the top as a— kissing and backstabbing bureaucrats.

Donald Trump promised to avoid such folly. But he has now joined George W. Bush as one of this century’s chief war criminals. How did that happen? We may never know.

We were told that once we murdered their leaders, the Iranians would rise up for democracy and peace. The media savants liked this because they see the Iranian dissidents as nice liberals like themselves. To them it seemed OK to bomb useless civilians for a higher good.

Are our political and military leaders too ignorant or too deluded by their power to notice facts that don’t fit their shallow view of the world? I doubt if any of our Congresspersons or generals actually know any relevant history. How many of them do you imagine can actually read an Iranian newspaper?

Iran is not Iraq. It is a big country of 90 million or so, with highly intelligent scientists, dedicated soldiers, and leaders who actually love and want to serve their people, unlike Western politicians. It is the heir of a once mighty Persian Empire. And, if Islamic extremists are a threat to us, why have our leaders been importing them in hundreds of thousands? For Diversity?


By following a sensible and moderate policy, Iran has managed to throw the American “cake walk” into a quagmire.

We are apparently expending our high ordinance at a serious rate. It cannot be replaced quickly because our “leaders” have shipped the factories overseas. It is reported that our billion dollar air craft carriers can’t get too close because they can easily be wiped out by enemy missiles. And the U.S.S. Gerald Ford had to be recalled because of sewage problems. Ironically appropriate for a warship named for the shallow man who was never elected and became President only by accident.

Sadly, Trump has destroyed all hope for the domestic reform that he promised. The Democrats will regain power and continue us into the Obama-Biden decadence that will finish of the dream of a free and honourable America.

The Last Half Century to the Present


Rather than continuing my detailed history of the Southern people I wish to comment on our situation at the moment, 2026, and prospects for the future.


We have never been in greater danger of losing our identity as of the South. The population has changed. There are rust belt refugees. Some of these are good people who have joined us for the right reasons, others not. Vast numbers of Mexicans, Asians of various sorts, and others populate our cities. It was on our former territory, Charlotte, that a depraved criminal immigrant murdered a legitimate immigrant. Such a thing would have been beyond imagining or comprehension 60 years ago when I was covering the Charlotte police beat for the local daily.


Our symbols have been subjected to malicious destruction, although that ridiculous campaign, an attempt to obliterate American as well as Southern history, has brought forth a good deal of opposition. A statue of Ceasar Rodney, a heroic signer of the Declaration of Independence, was removed because he, like almost all of the Founders, Northern and Southern, was the master of imported and native-born Africans.


A lot has been said about the South’s increasing prosperity in recent times. That is good, but I am of the impression that the rewards go disproportionately to bankers, developers, carpetbaggers, politicians, and bureaucrats. Working and middle class men and women are still enlisting in the imperial armed forces, real jobs being scarce in our looted economy.


Yet the South has a soul, unlike materialist mainstream America. We have always been able to absorb newcomers. A fourth of Confederate generals were Northern or foreign born. Many aspects of our culture and our history remain honoured by and attractive to civilised and intelligent people beyond our borders.


There were Southerners before there were “Americans.” Or to put it another way, Southerners were the first Americans. What we have known as the South existed more than two centuries before the U.S. government—now a bloated criminal empire unrecognisable to our Founders.


Even after our just and noble war for independence failed, we kept our identity. We were never quite acceptable as “Americans” and that did not bother us at all.


There are still millions of us. Beleaguered as our homeland has been, we have the truest connection to American origins of any of the motley groups now to be found in the United States.


It has been almost a century since Twelve Southerners issued I’ll Take My Stand. They hoped to provide a humane alternative to the standard American materialism, whether capitalist or collectivist. Their ideas are still true. Without Southern literature, music, humour, chivalric instincts, and manners “American” culture would be an impoverished thing of money and ideology.


We need to preserve the South in these difficult times because it is ours. But also, a Southerner is a good thing to be, a valuable contribution to waning Western civilisation.


I have been encouraged for some years now by the bright young people who have been reconnecting with their Southern roots in a society where no other real identity is to be found.


We need to remember who we are and promote and preserve our identity as a people in every way possible. Our people are sound in their hearts and some leaders have provided good direction in recent times. But we need a lot more leadership. History is not fixed and the future is to some extent ours to bring about.

​
James Warley Miles, South Carolina’s internationally recognised theologian, in 1863 said something we all should remember: “No people has ever wholly existed without a meaning.”

The U.S. government is not a government of, by, and for the people. It was a lie when Lincoln said it, and it is an even bigger lie now. 


There are many problems with that statement, but a major one is who are “the people”? Perhaps at the end of World War II Americans became almost one people, for the first and last time. Real national unity did not exist before that, and immigration and “diversity” ideology have destroyed any future hope for national unity. 


Even when it almost existed, national unity was mainly window dressing for the corporate state capitalism that Lincoln and his friends substituted for the honourable republicanism of the Southern founders. State capitalism is our ruling system - private ownership and profit with government support. Free markets don’t really exist wherever there is large -scale corporate power. Most of our wealth is now in the portfolios of billionaires, domestic and foreign, and most of our work shipped out to cheap labour places. 


How can “the people” rule when we no longer even know who the people are?Israelis and Palestinians protest and fight each other in our streets. Why are they even here with their problems irrelevant to the American “people”? 


A synagogue is attacked, it turns out by a Lebanese-born “citizen” angered by Israelis. Why were this citizen’s murdered children still in Lebanon or why was he here without them? And Iranian exiles are in our streets cheering on the war that is consuming our blood and treasure? Who are “the people”? 


How can the people rule when the unelected and untouchable Supreme Court has literally changed American society in major ways over the last three-quarters century - imposing “law” for ideological changes that “the people” never voted for or even approved of? How can “the people” rule when there are things we all know are true but are punished when we say them in public? When there is no real public debate and the agenda is controlled by very rich people who own the major media? When most Congresspersons answer to their supposed party interests rather than the interests of “the people”? 


Our rulers never feel punishment for their bad deeds. Bush the Lesser starts an illegal, dishonest, failed war and is re-elected. Joe Biden is suffering no embarrassment from having created vast unwanted demographic change in the American population. 


Foreign “regime change” has been a catastrophic failure, and Trump is doing it again despite all his promises. He is a betrayer of his people, almost the last remaining “Americans.” Just as we feared all along. Someone gave him good material to run on, but what we got was just another smart-aleck New Yorker who cannot resist the temptation of imperial power. 


We will probably never know all about the Epstein files. Some millionaire ought to hire a team to go through the vast collection and find the truth, but that will not happen. Has anyone explained why so much is redacted? What we do learn is that pedophilia is deep in our ruling class. They don’t feel the consequences of anything they do, so breaking a last taboo tempts them to show their power and superiority. 


Have you noticed that the people rioting against law enforcement in Minneapolis don’t seem to have jobs they need to go to? Have you noticed recently that when horrid savage crimes are committed the criminal has been arrested ten times previously but is somehow still out on the street? How does this happen? Do our courts provide justice for protected groups but not for us> 


Perhaps we are experiencing the inevitable decline of a society that makes the slick politician and war criminal Abe Lincoln its greatest hero and symbol. ​

​I saw an interview with a candidate for Governor of Iowa. He bragged about what a fine American tradition he and his State represent. His forebears were Germans who arrived in 1850. They are proud to have answered Abraham Lincoln’s call for troops to invade, devastate and conquer the South - whose people had been here two centuries earlier and founded America.


I suppose that is what he means by “Making America Great Again.” 


Over recent years I have had two different drug insurance companies. Both have provided information in 22 foreign languages. Must be a federal regulation to help immigrants. 


Iran: Yankees always think their killing people is good because they are righteous. When victims fight back they are defamed as atrociously evil. 


When will Southerners stop joining the military of the U.S. Deep State that hates us? The virtue of Patriotism is the love of one’s people, not of the government. Building better sources of employment for our young people would be a world-changing act of philanthropy if it could be done. 


What possible good can the attack on Iran do the American people? And Trump promised no more violent “regime change.” He is proved a liar, a betrayer of his base, and weak. At bottom he is a smart-aleck New York advertising man with delusions of grandeur just like his critics have said. 


Iran is not Iraq or Syria. It is the ancient powerful Persia and it is by no means clear that most of its people really want a change. Facts indicate it is a long way from nuclear weapons which have been predicted for 47 years. It is now forbidden even the potential for nuclear weapons so that Israel can remain the only nuclear power in the region. That’s the simple and true explanation of the U.S. government initiating war. It is unreasonable to think we can forbid a large power from having even peaceful nuclear facilities. No significantly strong country can accept that. 


The “regime change” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were excused by the claim that we were retaliating against attacks. This time the U.S. is attacking because of an imaginary future danger. The President has gone to war by choice like any emperor or monarch of the past. 


And nobody has even noticed the final death of our poor old tattered Constitution where the President cannot launch a war without a considered vote of Congress. For a long time we have been tending for the President to become Emperor and now we are there. Julius Ceasar has abolished the Republic. 


Preemptive attacks of this scale are always morally dubious and productive of unintended consequences. Alas, Southerners are captives of the American Empire, and thus sharers in a sinful regime and subjects of an inevitable blowback.
​

1920—1970: The Era of Good Feelings

My synopsis of the history of the Southern people will henceforward be speculative. We may not have sufficient perspective now on the more recent past. There may be important undercurrents that are not noticed yet. 


I have called the half century after World War I an era of good feelings because, despite “Civil Rights” and other conflicts, it was a period when Southerners seemed to feel more comfortable as “Americans” and the rest of the country to accept them as such. 


Southerners were considered to be Americans, although with a bit of difference. The difference seemed to be accepted more favourably than previously. The South was often thought of as a seat of good times. Consider the popularity of two South Carolina dances - the “Charleston” in the 1920s and the “Shag” later on. Will Rogers, son of a Confederate officer, was one of the most popular of Americans and pioneered humourous radio commentary. 


Or consider such popular songs as “Nothin’ Could be Finah Than to Be in Carolina” or “Is It True What They Say about Dixie?.” And from the 1920s on, with radio, Southern music swept the civilised world. It was called “country and western” because that was more commercially viable than “Southern.”

  
“Gone with the Wind,” book and film, achieved international popularity. 


And during this era every thing important in American music came out of the South. And the greatest internationally recognised American literature was by Southerners. 


In the 1920s the South had some prosperity. Still it was said that the Great Depression of the 1930s was hardly noticed in the South because conditions were what had long been considered normal. And Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the South to be the No. 1 economic problem of the country. Genuine advance against endemic poverty did not really begin until after World War II and the South remains relatively the poorest region of America. 


During the troubled 1930s, Southern Agrarians in I’ll Take My Stand and Who Owns America? offered a humane Jeffersonian alternative to the existing reign of state capitalism and the offered remedy of socialism. Of course, their program had no chance in materialistic America, but it has remained an inspiration to many. And Big Business and progressivism combined in a coalition that became the ruling Deep State, combining state capitalism and socialism. As the Agrarians pointed out, they were simply two sides of a coin.  


Southerners embraced World War II and never showed the fascist tendencies of some other regions. Audie Murphy of Texas was the most decorated soldier and his fellow Texan Admiral Nimitz commanded the U.S. fleets in the Pacific. William Darby of Arkansas created the Army Rangers. Virginian George Patton was a spearhead of American forces in Europe and his fellow Virginian “Chesty” Puller was a Marine star. That is to mention only a few patriotic Southern contributions to the American cause. It was said that Japs hollered “To Hell with Roy Acuff!” before a charge and that Brits called the American air arm “the Royal Texas Air Force.” 


It does not seem that we got much credit or recognition for our service in that and later wars. In the postwar period the South was returned to its usual role as the red-headed stepchild and became the target of the Communist and other extreme left groups in Hollywood, the media, and among “intellectuals,” and Deep North politicians. Such people have always understood that Southerners are the only major obstacle to their agenda for America. 


Southern Democratic leadership in Congress - Richard Russell, Fritz Hollings, Sam Ervin, William Fulbright, Herman Talmadge - exercised considerable conservative influence on a country that moved leftward after World War II. Much more so than the Republican Party which never in its entire existence has conserved anything except corporate profits. The disappearance of the old-fashioned Southern Democrats has left the country with little check on leftward legislation.

 
George Wallace of Alabama won some Northern Democratic presidential primaries, forcing the Republicans reluctantly and insincerely to embrace the “social Issues” he had raised. He won 13% as an independent candidate in the national election of 1968, depriving both Nixon and Humphrey of a majority.  


Despite Civil Rights conflict, the Civil War Centennial observance in the 1960s was mostly an exhibit of good feelings. The war was treated usually as an American experience to be shared. President Eisenhower had a portrait of R.E. Lee in the Oval Office, The entrance of the Truman Presidential Library was adorned with an equestrian painting of Lee and Stonewall Jackson. John F. Kennedy was photographed making a speech in front of a Confederate flag.


The Diaspora. This is one of the most important matters in the history of the Southern people. Beginning with World I and up until fairly recent times several million black and white Southern people moved to the North and West, seeking a living. This is the opposite of recent times when affluent Northerners moved South to escape cold, taxes and crime. For a poignant view of Southern experience in the diaspora see Harriette Arnow, The Dollmaker. 


The Southern diaspora had some effect on the North where the more conservative areas have Southern settlement. The fate of black Southerners who moved North was on the whole unfortunate. The first generation of African American immigrants from the South worked hard, founded churches, and moved into the middle class. But dysfunctional ghettoes grew in the big cities among the Northern-born black people. Of course, the Yankee politicians and savants blamed the conditions the North had created on slavery and segregation in the South, despite the fact that the conditions are worse the further they are in distance and time from the South.  


When there were deadly race riots in Chicago and Detroit during World War II, the media blamed it on “Southern hillbillies,” people who had come there to work. Study indicates that the riots were between white ethnics and northern-born blacks - not a hillbilly in sight. Phony virtue signaling in regard to the race question has always been the Northern position. 


Of course, central to Southern history is the 1954 Supreme Court decision banning legal segregation and the Civil Rights events that followed. Southern white people were reluctant to give up the status quo they were familiar with and feared that enforced integration would lead to societal deterioration. 


But in the end a greatly significant happening in American history has been the quiet Southern acceptance of an integrated society. We will never be given credit, but generally speaking the South is the least segregated and most racially harmonious region of America. Before the 1970s it was never even admitted that race was a national and not just a Southern question. Nobody could claim that after the riots in Northern cities. Now there is a net migration of black Americans from the North back to South and they avow that they feel more comfortable in the South. 


In 1965 there were two events that promised perils for Southerners and indeed all Americans. The Civil Rights Act resulted in unprecedented federal interference and control in private society. The Immigration Act opened the way for an ongoing campaign to substitute Third Worlders for the American population. Both bills passed Congress with most Republicans voting for them and flattering themselves on their egalitarian and progressive virtue. All but a handful of the negative votes came from the South.  


The Civil Rights bill passed because it was assumed it was only to be applied to the South. It greatly expanded the power of Deep State bureaucrats and federal judges to further subvert the Constitution with exercise of irresponsible power. 


The next half century from 1970 would become a period of threat and trial for the Southern people.  ​

Donald Trump evidently cares about his fame. But no matter what the course of future history will be, Donald Trump will not be remembered as a “good” President. His abandonment of those of us who hoped he was the last chance for reform of the U.S. ruling regime guarantees that. Nor will he be remembered as a good man. His subservience to the Israeli agenda has destroyed the image of courage and independent thinking that many of us admired him for.


He has not cut spending. Every Republican president in the last half century has promised spending cuts and has lied, and Trump is the same. None of us understood what the “Big Beautiful Bill” was about and it seemed a surrender to the Establishment.


He has not refrained from foreign regime change adventures as he pledged to do.

He seems at times to be swinging blindly. Why concentrate on Venezuela and Greenland when the Ukrainian and Gaza disasters continue unalleviated? Provocation of Iran is a foolhardy enterprise.


No U.S. President or Congress can defy Israel but Trump is in a position where he might have exerted a bit of restraint.


Why the resistance to Epstein full exposure? Nobody thinks Trump is guilty of child molesting. Is he resisting exposure of other people to whom he is closely connected?


Yet we have to admit that he has done some good things. It is said that over 300,000 people have left the federal bureaucracy (although many of them have doubtless retired with fat pensions). How deep his reforms of the unconstitutional Deep State regime have gone and whether they will last remains to be seen.


He has brought some spirit of populism into the inert leadership of the Republican party. Is it enough or will they revert to their comfortable blank agenda?


His fooling around with tariffs, it is said, has brought $30 billion into the Treasury, raising a faint hope of control of the deficit. But it has not been sufficiently explained to the people. Is there hope that American industrial power is being renewed? Where is the evidence? I fear that the rising generations are little interested in acquiring skills and working hard. They have been raised in an economy in which financial manipulation, not production, is the path to wealth.


And the illegal immigrant issue has been addressed. We can be certain that no other possible President of either party would ever have addressed or even discussed this issue. That makes Trump a historic reformer, even as a failure, if nothing else.


As far as we can tell, the border has been made more secure and a lot of bad characters have been deported---possibly not nearly enough given the millions of illegals. The process has been poorly handled and Leninist revolutionaries have managed to bring it into question. Most Americans are in favour of removing illegals, but it has not been properly explained to them. “Virtuous” Republicans are running away from a policy that seems unrespectable and a threat to Midwestern niceness. The hope for removals may well be dead for the future.


Trump may have revealed that the administrative regime cannot be defeated and is our only possible future. And that it has made the Presidency too much for any one person.

Public officials in Minnesota - governor, attorney general, and mayor - are resisting enforcement of legitimate immigration law and encouraging their citizens to physically interfere with federal law enforcement. They have absurdly and perversely used States’ Rights arguments to justify their actions. There has even been ridiculous mention of the 10th Amendment which has been a dead letter for 175 years.


Not to be outdone in historical ignorance and distortion, the Republicans are taking them seriously. History professor V.D. Hanson, who became a celebrity Republican spokesman by superficially trashing Southerners as traitors, has just informed us that Minnesota governor Walz is a “Confederate.” Some other “conservative” writers have broadcast similar opinions.


Not surprising, since blaming Southerners for everything bad has been stock-in-trade for the Republican Party since its creation in the 1850s. The worst thing these people can think of to say about the Minnesota leftist insurgents is that they are “Southern.” Even though Minnesota is in every way probably the single most un-Southern State in the Union.


The historical misunderstanding of these “conservative” spokesmen is monumental and can only be explained by ignorance or malicious bias. The felon Republican celebrity commentator Dinesh D’souza started this nonsense a while back by calling the Democrats “the party of slavery and segregation.” That is true, but it is absolutely absurdly irrelevant to make that a reason for voting against today’s Democrats. This kind of superficial demagogic talking point is standard Republican talk. If these people had any shame they would not even pretend to be qualified to discuss history, but of course they have no shame.


When the Southern States seceded they elected delegates to a convention of the sovereign people. Both on the hustings and in the conventions the question was openly and vigourously discussed and secession won a majority of the voters. The conventions, just exactly like the conventions that had ratified the U.S. Constitution, repealed that ratification and were then out of the Union.


And of course States’ Rights and State sovereignty had been a major, perhaps even a majority, opinion in the entire life of the Union up to 1860, something Hanson and his imitators can’t seem to grasp. Secession was not revolutionary resistance to the federal government. It was a constitutional and democratic process until Lincoln declared that the States were simply gangs of lawbreakers.


​Why can’t these people face the fact that the Minnesota insurgents are acting out of a Leninist playbook for popular revolt? They prefer instead to trash us and our forebears. Tim Walz is not a Confederate. He is more like John Brown who thinks his righteousness allows him to engage in crime.