webb

From Jim Webb’s Facebook page:

This is an emotional time and we all need to think through these issues with a care that recognizes the need for change but also respects the complicated history of the Civil War. The Confederate Battle Flag has wrongly been used for racist and other purposes in recent decades. It should not be used in any way as a political symbol that divides us.

But we should also remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War, including slave holders in the Union Army from states such as Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, and that many non-slave holders fought for the South. It was in recognition of the character of soldiers on both sides that the federal government authorized the construction of the Confederate Memorial 100 years ago, on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.

This is a time for us to come together, and to recognize once more that our complex multicultural society is founded on the principle of mutual respect.

I couldn’t agree more.   Jim Webb is also a historian, known for his books on Vietnam and Appalachia.  He probably knows a great deal more about how the complexities of that phase of our history play out than the average bear.

 

Thanks goodness someone in a former leadership position is speaking out with a message of sanity rather than a knee-jerk reaction message of political opportunity.  I have felt enough South-Shaming the past 72 hours to last me a lifetime.

I am not going to self-flagellate because I am a southerner.  I don’t owe anyone any apologies.  I have tried to treat people of all races with respect my entire life.

I don’t plan on tearing down monuments or burning southern flags and replicas of Southern generals to prove that I am not a racist.  I won’t support renaming schools and other official buildings.  I won’t stop spending money because Jefferson, Washington, Jackson, Franklin, and Grant are represented on paper currency.  All were slave holders at one time or another in their lives.

Half of me comes from southern people.  I do not plan on renouncing these ancestors.  At least one, Drury Wood Burnley, served in the Confederate army down in Yorktown for about a year.  He was about 35 years old at the time of his service.  He was a family man and he had a raft of children.  He was my great-great grandfather. I am not ashamed of him at all.  He was just an ordinary Virginian, trying to make sense out of the confusing world he lived in.  I don’t know if he was drafted or if he enlisted.  There is no one left alive to ask.

I am not quite sure how removal of the battle flag of the army of Northern Virginia has morphed into  an entire movement to denounce everything southern as evil but it sure feels like it has.   Those doing the castigating need to be careful of the seeds that are being sewn.  How many good liberal southern girls are being “turned” by all this south-Shaming?  I am fighting the forces of darkness but right now I am not sure where those forces really are.

 

 

8 Thoughts to “Former Senator Jim Webb on the Confederate Flag and the Civil War”

  1. Lyssa

    “Mutual respect” – lost ideal.

  2. Starryflights

    I like Jim Webb. He is a leader. He makes a lot of sense. War saren’t simple. People don’t march off to war for simple reasons.

    “Fighting the forces of darkness” – really? Come on, Moon. It’s just a license plate.

  3. Cargosquid

    “I am not quite sure how removal of the battle flag of the army of Northern Virginia has morphed into an entire movement to denounce everything southern as evil but it sure feels like it has.”

    Moon, this sentence truly shows how naive and innocent you are when it comes to modern politics. Things have changed in just the last few years. PC and “social justice” are the tools of oppression now. Heck, APPLE has just removed every single Civil War game app from their store because of the flag. I expected this storm. The mainstream media hates the South and Southern conservatives.

    1. I am hardly naïve nor a southern conservative. I think you are so cocooned in your own conservatism that you don’t see what I am talking about. Just to dismiss me as naïve is off the mark.

      I also think if it keeps up there will be a horrible resistance from those of us who would be classified a centrist to left.

      I have been going through Facebook, committing friend and relative genocide with the unfriend button. Some of the people I am related to. They truly must be self loathing over their heritage.

  4. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    I don’t think you are a southern conservative. I said that the media hates them.

    If you are not naive, then I don’t know how to describe you if you are surprised by this witchhunt of all things confederate.

    As a number of people I read on the book of face have stated…and I paraphrase, “I have no interest in the Confederate Flag. But because of the current witchhunt, I am leaning towards buying one and flying it because “F#ck you.”

    I really do think that you’ve missed the growth of rabidly oppressive group think progressives on the liberal side.

    1. Ha, I wouldn’t think you would think I was a southern conservative. Far from it. However, I am a southerner, through and through.

      I am not surprised by the confederate disapproval. That has been around a long time. I am surprised at the depths to which hatred of all things southern has gone. There is a huge difference between the Confederacy and the South, at least in my mind. I believe part of my problem is that I live in northern Virginia.

      Confession: I have to admit to feeling a little bit like you described re Confederate flag. I wouldn’t fly one outside my house because I think it is just advertising you are a redneck but…part of me wanted to do it. I think what I am saying is, the all encompassing mass sweep of all that is southern is a inside view of how people become radicalized.

      I am also old enough to have known relatives who were children during the Civil War. They were ancient and I was very young but the stories they told go carried through my grandparents’ generation and my mothers. (Father was a yankee boy) History books also tell a story of poverty, fear, and hunger. Middle class people had to scrape by. Blacks suffered also. Let’s not forget what started all that Hell we won’t forgit sentiment. It didn’t start in the 1960’s. The seeds were sown and well nurtured during Reconstruction. I like to think we are far enough away from all that to move on. None of us alive today knew slavery or Reconstruction, despite what people say. (if you get my drift)

  5. Wolve

    The South will survive all this —- perhaps when everyone wakes up to the fact that this kind of strife is just what that crazy killer sad he wanted to instigate by his actions. This Yankee says grow up or give that lone wolf murderer his wish.

    1. C.
      The South survived a lot more than this blip on the radar screen. I just don’t like some of the attitudes. I have several relatives on Facebook that need to study history, including their own family history.

      I have no problem if people are ashamed of their family’s behavior. I do have a problem if people are ashamed of their family because of region where they lived.

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