I'd like to be there when you say it, just to see the looks in their eyes and their clenched fists!
They're going to tear the memorial down anyway, but thanks for getting some licks in from our side of the culture war.
July 6, 2015 at 8:42 AM
Anonymous said...
"- by such actions you validate the Klan's twisted hatred -- and you make their job of recruiting the gullible far easier than it otherwise would be."
And as they put up the statues in the first place, after usurping the "home rule" aspect of the origins of the Civil War thereby creating this "slavery" meme assigned to the Confederate Cause, this IS their purpose, Mike.
They were the Klan THEN and they REMAIN the Klan now. They just like to hide their true baseline reasoning, couching it in projection. I urge you to offer a rhetorical tidbit, on that point, along these lines....
"- by such actions you validate the Klan's twisted hatred -- and you make their job of recruiting the gullible far easier than it otherwise would be......could it be that is your ugly hidden agenda in spades? Are you engaging in projection now to slyly accomplish those long held goals of racial division, today playing that projection game to continue racist antics while blaming the rest of us (who actually don't care what a persons skin color is= choosing EQUALITY instead) for your own nefarious and contrived, not to mention pathetic, greed that is manifesting itself as an appetite for the Liberty of another?"
Mike, A demonstrable bloodline is a powerful thing in this context. It provides you with their "logic" - IE you are the black man who can say "nigger" because you are black. Use that "logic" against them! Turn their own garbage back upon them.
Also, there is this. Consider guilt by association factor. Turn that back upon them too. Ask them if they blame YOU for holding that flag BECAUSE you are WHITE! When they say 'NO" because its the only answer they can give you.....have a darker skinned friend stand up and say "well how about ME then?
And one more. They are seeking to EXERCISE the same "Home Rule" authority that the Confederacy was fighting FOR! Ask them if they realize that their attempt to do this, in and of itself, is a episode in uber hypocrisy - decrying the very thing they attempt to exercise. To fine hone the point - how would they react if Washington was commanding them to FLY this flag! Wouldn't they be claiming their own authority to decide for themselves? Hmmmmmm?
July 6, 2015 at 9:06 AM
Lisa said...
Good morning, Michael.
Beautiful. More speaking truth to power, which you do very well.
It's as the Texas spokesmen for Sons of Confederate Veterans said:What's more racist? Country that lived under a slave flag for 100 years or one that lived under it for four years? Takes only a few to stir something up and try and make something out of nothing. Wonder what would have happened had that whack job was a Oregon Ducks or Beavers fan and had their flags(lots of people here in Linn County OR.do.)Would of it been banned for some reason or the other. Sure you seen a few of said flags Mike.
July 6, 2015 at 1:06 PM
Anonymous said...
Politicians trying to move fast. Before the public realizes that calls for cleansing are mostly an astroturf campaign, the work of a handful of hacks and so-called community organizers, designed to set the stage for bigger targets.
July 6, 2015 at 10:07 PM
Anonymous said...
I wish you could have talked to the South Carolina Legislature and Alabama's Governor before it was too late. I would love to hear your talk before the City Council today. Perhaps it will be on the local newscasts tonight, or maybe some excerpts from it. By any chance, is your talk going to be videoed?
July 7, 2015 at 10:38 AM
[Image]
The next Birmingham City Council Meeting is on Tuesday, 7 July, at 9:30 AM. The website states:
To address the council during its regular meeting at 9:30 a.m. each Tuesday morning, you must sign the speakers list. The speakers list is placed in front of the council chamber door, on the 3rd floor of Birmingham City Hall (700 North 20th St.) at 9:00 a.m. and removed at 9:30 a.m.
I invite those of you who can to register to speak along with me. My comments will run more or less along these lines:
I am the great-great grandson of veterans who fought in the Union Army during the Civil War. For myself, I have also been a life-long opponent of the Ku Klux Klan and the neoNazis, fighting them at street level, where it costs. My life was threatened by members of the Aryan Republican Army after I embarrassed the FBI into arresting them. I am also an amateur historian who has done original work on the Unionists of Alabama as well as the 55th and 59th United States Colored Troops who fought valiantly at the battle of Brice's Crossroads in Mississippi. In short, I am no neo-Confederate.
My question to the city council of Birmingham is this:
Mindful of the Park Board's proposal of cultural cleansing by removing the Confederate statue in Linn Park, can someone tell me the functional difference between them and the collectivist cultural assassins of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria? And if you ratify this decision, how can you look yourselves in the mirror, you volunteers in a new American Taliban? I realize that you are members of America's collectivist party, the Democrats, but this proposal seems a bit much even for them. Of course the ex-Confederates who put up the statue were life-long Democrats, so I can see why the Park Board would like to engage in some Orwellian "down the memory hole" erasure of history. But functionally joining the Taliban for a little down home cultural cleansing of a part of history you don't want to remember? When, I wonder, will you and they carry this campaign of cultural cleansing to its logical conclusion and ask all the white folks to leave town so they (and you) can "feel more comfortable?"?
History, in all its twists and turns, must be preserved, not sanitized according to the hysteria of the moment and that's what this is -- racist, collectivist hysteria. In your own way, you are as bad as the Klan -- by such actions you validate the Klan's twisted hatred -- and you make their job of recruiting the gullible far easier than it otherwise would be.
If you want to do something, why don't you commemorate the veterans of the 55th and 59th United States Colored Troops, some of whom moved to Birmingham after the war and are buried here? Put up a statue to THEM in Linn Park. For that matter, why don't you remember the black Confederates who fought for the South? Try building up the historical memory of history -- warts and all -- rather than attempting to culturally cleanse it in some collectivist, Orwellian hysteria.
If the City Council supports this decision of the Park Board, you are no better than the Taliban, the Khmer Rouge, ISIS or any other gang of collectivist criminals-against-history who would destroy what makes them unhappy.
There is no right codified in the Constitution to be protected against being offended, by history (which is beyond changing) or anything else for that matter. Deal with it, like American adults. Not as spiteful, collectivist Taliban terrorists with sledge hammers.
"I intend to protest the actions of the Birmingham Taliban and their campaign of cultural cleansing at the next meeting of the Birmingham City Council."
6 Comments -
I'd like to be there when you say it, just to see the looks in their eyes and their clenched fists!
They're going to tear the memorial down anyway, but thanks for getting some licks in from our side of the culture war.
July 6, 2015 at 8:42 AM
"- by such actions you validate the Klan's twisted hatred -- and you make their job of recruiting the gullible far easier than it otherwise would be."
And as they put up the statues in the first place, after usurping the "home rule" aspect of the origins of the Civil War thereby creating this "slavery" meme assigned to the Confederate Cause, this IS their purpose, Mike.
They were the Klan THEN and they REMAIN the Klan now. They just like to hide their true baseline reasoning, couching it in projection. I urge you to offer a rhetorical tidbit, on that point, along these lines....
"- by such actions you validate the Klan's twisted hatred -- and you make their job of recruiting the gullible far easier than it otherwise would be......could it be that is your ugly hidden agenda in spades? Are you engaging in projection now to slyly accomplish those long held goals of racial division, today playing that projection game to continue racist antics while blaming the rest of us (who actually don't care what a persons skin color is= choosing EQUALITY instead) for your own nefarious and contrived, not to mention pathetic, greed that is manifesting itself as an appetite for the Liberty of another?"
Mike, A demonstrable bloodline is a powerful thing in this context. It provides you with their "logic" - IE you are the black man who can say "nigger" because you are black. Use that "logic" against them! Turn their own garbage back upon them.
Also, there is this. Consider guilt by association factor. Turn that back upon them too. Ask them if they blame YOU for holding that flag BECAUSE you are WHITE! When they say 'NO" because its the only answer they can give you.....have a darker skinned friend stand up and say "well how about ME then?
And one more. They are seeking to EXERCISE the same "Home Rule" authority that the Confederacy was fighting FOR! Ask them if they realize that their attempt to do this, in and of itself, is a episode in uber hypocrisy - decrying the very thing they attempt to exercise. To fine hone the point - how would they react if Washington was commanding them to FLY this flag! Wouldn't they be claiming their own authority to decide for themselves? Hmmmmmm?
July 6, 2015 at 9:06 AM
Good morning, Michael.
Beautiful. More speaking truth to power, which you do very well.
My thoughts and prayers are with you.
Much love,
Lisa
July 6, 2015 at 9:37 AM
It's as the Texas spokesmen for Sons of Confederate Veterans said:What's more racist? Country that lived under a slave flag for 100 years or one that lived under it for four years? Takes only a few to stir something up and try and make something out of nothing. Wonder what would have happened had that whack job was a Oregon Ducks or Beavers fan and had their flags(lots of people here in Linn County OR.do.)Would of it been banned for some reason or the other. Sure you seen a few of said flags Mike.
July 6, 2015 at 1:06 PM
Politicians trying to move fast. Before the public realizes that calls for cleansing are mostly an astroturf campaign, the work of a handful of hacks and so-called community organizers, designed to set the stage for bigger targets.
July 6, 2015 at 10:07 PM
I wish you could have talked to the South Carolina Legislature and Alabama's Governor before it was too late. I would love to hear your talk before the City Council today. Perhaps it will be on the local newscasts tonight, or maybe some excerpts from it. By any chance, is your talk going to be videoed?
July 7, 2015 at 10:38 AM