Mythbusting the CSA 0

At Balloon Juice, Dennis G. takes aim at the “Myth of Southern Honor.”

I think he could have worded his thesis with more felicity, so I’ll deconstruct it as a preface. He’s referring to the idea that the Civil War was a struggle of honor for some sort of ideal on the part of the secessionists.

He is not arguing that individuals on either side may or may not have conducted themselves with personal honor (and in some case, as always in war, dishonor) in battle.

The myth of which he speaks is one of those used by the monied classes to sell secession to the mass of voters (the other two were “States’ rights” and inherent racial superiority as cloaks for defining a class of persons as property in perpetuity).

I am not sure that I agree with the part I’ve emphasized in the excerpt below, but, for all practical purposes, he’s so correct as to nevermind:

There are many myths about the Confederacy, but one of the biggest is that it was a political movement built around honor. It wasn’t. It was a movement built around protecting a system of stolen labor and the ‘rights’ of a selective few to grossly profit from that system. Selling ideas of honor, states rights and outright racism was how a small group of 19th century Southern Oligarchs built an army to fight for injustice. Ever since their defeat these Confederates and their idealogical descendants have worked hard to spin their treasonous racist enterprise into an honorable ‘lost cause’ and in recent decades they have completely captured the Republican Party and the modern conservative movement.

Republicans used the odious Southern strategy to capture the bigot vote.

Now the bigot vote has captured the Republican Party.

Image via Kiko’s House.