Stars and Bars

Mike Huckabee's recent remarks about the Confederate Flag remind us once again how pathetic our presidential candidates are and, much more importantly, how willing we are to avert our gaze from historical truth in the interest of not "offending" some rather offensive people.

Governor Huckabee told a crowd in South Carolina that, "if someone came to our state and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole." Such a concentrated dosage of historical ignorance, thinly-veiled racism, and embarrassingly petty behavior from a would-be president is somewhat surprising since, as we are constantly reminded on the "news", Mike Huckabee is such a "likable guy". He is, after all, a Christian Leader. And he lost 100 pounds!

Let's parse this line, which admittedly is pretty funny if seen in a vacuum. It starts "if someone came to our state." Now, we all know how much the south loves "states' rights". Specifically, they support the right of their states to commit treason against the nation and crimes of humanity against their own citizens. Also, they support the right to bitch incessantly about people "coming to their states" to exercise such nefarious designs as rural electrification and the guarantee of voting rights.

They resent the northern states even though, while we're not busy sodomizing each other in the back of a Starbucks after we tire of the latest issue of Moral Relativism Monthly, the northern states shift considerable wealth to the southern states.

"If someone came to our state" is meant to evoke the image of the hated Yankee carpetbagger, the self-righteous dilettante who refused to respect the south's right to....to what? To enslave human beings. To deny citizens the vote. To actively support terrorist organizations. To execute imprisoned army officers who dared to command black soldiers.

The amazing thing about the south's devotion to states' rights is that they never applied it to any remotely redeemable principle. Instead "states' rights" meant "the rights of states to deprive their citizens of rights." Nice principle. Is there anything more un-American? But the South didn't want to be American. They wanted to do their own despicable and medieval thing. And they resent losing. And they resent the welfare, though not enough to throw away the checks.

"If someone came to our state and told us what to do with our flag"...After evoking up spectres of northern imperialism, which had the despotic aim of allowing black people to live free and even, God forbid, vote, Huckabee refers to "our flag." He's clearly talking about the Stars and Bars, the flag of the Confederacy, although that flag was never the flag of South Carolina.

But, then again, Huckabee's not from South Carolina, so when he says "our flag", he's speaking of southerners. And he's speaking of the Stars and Bars, as if everyone in the south felt some transcendant attachment to a banner that symbolized, it must be screamed, nothing but treason and slavery. I'd be pissed if I lived in the south and was lumped in with that crowd.

"...we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole." Like I said, I am a connoisseur of low-brow humor, and this is pretty appealing in that sense. In another sense, though, it's rather disturbing. It's an ordained minister, who claims to be a serious contender for the most important job on earth, saying several times during campaign speeches that, if douche bag meddlers from the north ever tried to tell him what to do with his blood-soaked memento of tyranny and treason, he would sodomize them with a large pole. First of all, that's kind of a violent threat. Secondly, sodomy is illegal in South Carolina. Because of states' rights, no less!

This is a very thinly-veiled attack and it is one that merits attention. While the United States desperately needs an election that is not about replaying the Vietnam War again, we also need one that does not replay the Civil War. How clearly can I put it? Fuck the Confederacy. I say the same about the Nazis. I'm sure some of their soldiers were brave, but so what? They were wrong, and they fought for a vision that would have brought hell on earth for millions had it succeeded. Except the Confederates caused more American blood to be spilled than Hitler did.

While I consider myself to be a states' rights man, and I believe that far too much power has been aggregated to the federal government, and that that is the biggest institutional threat to the United States today, I would never dare adopt the insulting ruse that the Confederacy nobly sought to preserve local governance against tyrannical centralized power.

Their definition of states' right, it cannot be repeated enough, comes down to this: states should have the right to commit treason by waging war on the United States. States should have the right to deny people all civil, political, and human rights based upon their race. States should have the right to allow terrorist organizations to ensure that people will not vote, own significant amounts of property, or receive equitable returns from taxes based upon their race. That was what the Confederacy fought for, and that is why I say, "fuck them."

The South still, even after its unspeakable treason, holds wildly disproportionate influence over this country. They still boast a stranglehold over the Senate and the Electoral College. They still suck wealth from the wealthier regions of the country. And yes, they still bitch about Yankee interference.

The South needs to be called out, preferably by ending the fiction that they deserve any sort of concessions in term of representation in Congress. And secondly, they must not be indulged in this narcissistic fantasy that holds that treason can be spun into "a noble sacrifice". Treason, of course, to defend the principle of barbarism. Fuck them.

Part of this reckoning is to understand exactly what Mike Huckabee meant. He knew exactly what he was saying. Ask yourself whether his conduct, where he threatens to violently sodomize any number of people with a symbol of slavery for the sin of rejecting that symbol of slavery, strikes you as Christian behavior. If we adopt the Golden Rule, which we hear Huckabee prattle on about, we would be safe to assume that he secretly wishes to be sodomized by a swastika flag, since I assume he would "come down there and tell me what to do with" said flag if I were to fly one.

The Civil War is over. The south lost. They lost because the wages of sin is death. They betrayed this country and every ideal it stands for. Only don't tell them that. To them, we're the bad guys. People in the south disproportionally supportive of the idea that they have the right to tell people in Baghdad how to run their lives. But the idea that the federal government of the United States has the right to enforce the Voting Rights Act? Now that's tyranny.