Erasing a Country’s History Also Erases the Country

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

Recently I found on one of my bookshelves a book, Can the South Survive?, sent to me by the author two decades ago.  Obviously, I had never had time to read it. Curious, I gave it a quick read.  I found some good material and a lot of anger that deepened my understanding that many Southerners, who were not racists, viewed coerced desegregation of neighborhood schools and false accusations against Southerners as a second Reconstruction. The North Easterners enjoyed their virtue-signaling with their parodies and misrepresentations of Southern life.

The answer to the author’s 20-year old question is that the South did not survive.  As has been Washington’s way, John and Robert Kennedy relied on force not persuasion and lacked the patience for the  changes occurring in the South to bring about the desired result.  The matter was suddenly urgent, and forced social change was Washington’s means.  Kids who could walk to school in 5 or 10 minutes were now bused across town, an hour or more each way. Parent-Teacher Association meetings that had kept discipline under control and standards up were no longer possible given the long commutes.  The mixing of all economic classes and different behaviors in one Tower of Babel destroyed both discipline and standards.  In effect, integration was achieved at the expense of education.

The South’s second destruction at the hands of Washington happened in many ways.  Southern universities would not hire their own Ph.D. graduates.  Instead, they tried to gain Northern approval by hiring from the Ivy League, hoping some of the prestige would rub off on them.  This was a death knell for the Southern literature and historical traditions.  Southern writers and journalists gained Northern approval by parodying Southern culture.  Undefended and uncultivated the Southern tradition passed away.

History was rewritten.  The so-called “Civil War,” which it was not, became a war to free slaves, not to save the union as Lincoln said.  Important historical novels such as Gone With The Wind, became forbidden works of “racism” along with Uncle Remus, Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn.

White liberals began teaching blacks to hate white people for enslaving them despite the fact that all black slaves were enslaved by blacks in African slave wars and sold as slaves and that black enslavement was long underway before there were any Southern cotton plantations with need for a labor force.

Demonizing the South became a profession, one that paid well.

In the 21st century all that remained of the South were statues and memorials, and now they are gone. VMI, where Stonewall Jackson was professor, removed his statue. Richmond, Virginia, removed Robert E. Lee’s statue.  Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia prevented the Union Army from looting and burning Richmond.  But propaganda has turned Lee, Jackson, and all who resisted Lincoln’s invasion from  heros into  “racist oppressors.”

I remember reading an article in CounterPunch by some dope who accused Robert E. Lee of beating his 200 slaves and enjoying it.  Lee apparently owned one inherited slave, Nancy Ruffin and her three children, who looked after Lee’s mother. In 1935 Lee wrote to his brother that “these are all of the race in my possession. Lee’s will prepared in 1846 says “Nancy and her children” are to be “liberated so soon as it can be done to their advantage.”

Lee spent his life in the US Army fighting Indians and Mexicans for Washington and as Superintendent of West Point.  In his old age he defended  his state, Virginia, from northern invasion and lived on the battlefield. There was no place for slaves in his life.   

The slaves Lee had  contact with were those of his father-in-law.  When his father-in-law died, Lee had to settle the estate and pay off its debts. He worked the slaves to pay off the estate’s debts and executed a deed of manumission for all the enslaved people in the Custis estate.

Lee opposed secession. President Lincoln offered Lee Union Army command.  Present day Americans don’t understand that in those days Americans saw themselves primarily as citizens of states.  Lee refused the command, saying that he could not bring war to his own country.

When Lee realized that the South could not longer survive with its limited manpower and resources the North’s endless resources, he made his attempt on Washington in order to bring the war to an end, but success was denied him. Lee had lost Stonewall Jackson to friendly fire and Lee’s dashing cavalry general failed to inform him of the Union army’s movements.

Prior to his entry into Pennsylvania, Lee told the Army of Northern Virginia “that we make war only upon armed men.  We cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all those whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies.” [Lee is speaking of the war criminals, Union generals Sherman and Sheridan.]

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a five-star general who commanded the Normandy Invasion in the Second World War, had Lee’s portrait on the Oval Office wall during the eight years of his presidency.  Eisenhower said of Lee: “A nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul.”

Now we have a black Secretary of Defense taught by white liberals to hate white people, especially Southerners who fought in the “Civil War,” misusing his power to remove the Confederate memorial that stands over Confederate war dead buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery is land confiscated from Robert E. Lee by the US government.  Having stolen the land, Washington is now going to steal the fact that Confederate soldiers are  buried there.

These erasures of history are being carried out in order to please a few black political activists who have been indoctrinated to think the South fought to preserve slavery and not because the South was invaded.

As some blacks claim to be “offended,” history has to be erased.  Note that the people who are offended by the erasure of their history don’t count.  In other words, we are a country in which the preferences of a few blacks take precedence over the preferences of many whites.  And we call it a democracy.

Robert E. Lee served in exemplary fashion both the United States and the Confederate States of America.  He was highly regarded during his time and for more than a century after his death.  In recent years he has been besmirched by ignorant hate-mongers unfit to mention his name.  When greatness is denied and filth is honored, the country is dead.

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