If you don't have anything nice to say...

I don't know if any of you happened to read the NY Times opinion columnist Gail Collins' article called "A Confederacy of Dunces". Ms. Collins talks about how dumb southerners are and how we're all too stupid to realize why we really fought the Civil War- apparently, we're all inherent racist Republicans who skew history to suit our own purposes.

At least that's what I took away from this article. You can judge for yourself:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/opinion/08collins.html


I looked at Ms. Collins' bio and funny, I didn't see where she'd lived in the south or spent any time in the south- ever. I didn't see where she was a history major with an emphasis in Civil War Studies. It would appear that Ms. Collins has spent most of her time in New York City and Connecticut. It also seems Ms. Collins isn't an expert, but she writes like she is. And people believe her-you should read the comments after the article.

Ms. Collins decided that southern states chose to secede from the Union only because they wanted to keep slaves and celebrating Confederate History Month is shameful. It's shameful because the governor of Virginia didn't include slavery in that celebration and shameful because the Confederacy was bad.

The Confederacy was not bad. The Confederacy was the South's answer to a federal government pressing down with more and more regulation and interference. At that point in history, individual states functioned as individuals- the federal government had very little control over what states did. With more intrusion came the push-back, and when both sides reached a standoff, the southern states decided that being part of the Union wasn't in their best interests.

NO ONE would ever argue that slavery isn't wrong. You cannot buy, sell or own another human being because humans have free will. According to the website www.sedition.com "In the South, the sentiment against slavery was strong; it led some to believe that it would also come to an end there in due time... Nor did Southern men confine their sentiments to expressions of academic opinion. They accepted in 1787 the Ordinance which excluded slavery from the Northwest territory forever and also the Missouri Compromise, which shut it out of a vast section of the Louisiana territory."

Folks up north kept slaves, too. The same writer at sedition.com writes that when the Constitution was signed, there were as many "bondsmen in New York as in Georgia".

We will never, ever get past these racial issues if we don't stand up to people like Gail Collins. She's the person focused on race- not Governor McDonnell. Virginia's celebration of Confederate History isn't racist or stupid- it's simply a celebration of part of Virginia's history. Would Ms. Collins want to see a Black History Month as a celebration of slavery? True, it's part of black heritage- but most black people I know want to celebrate the achievements of those who came before them while also acknowledging the struggles. How is Governor McDonnell any different? Is it because he's white? She can't have it both ways. Why don't we all show Ms. Collins that we're not stupid and she's no expert- it doesn't matter where your from. You can send an email directly to Gail Collins at this address: http://www.nytimes.com/gst/emailus.html or by looking her up on the NY Times website.

I'm just sayin'...