Ex-Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham Links Civil War to 'Neo-Confederate' Conservatives
Writing in the April 10 edition of Parade magazine, former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Civil War by linking modern conservatives to the old Confederacy and bigotry against African Americans.
The journalist hinted, "This year, as the 2012 presidential campaign gets under way, two powerful forces will intersect: the commemorations of the Civil War and the opposition to President Obama’s policies."
After explaining that the Sons of Confederate Veterans in South Carolina hosted a "Secession Ball," Meacham predicted that "the rhetoric of resistance to Washington will inevitably resonate."
The author (see file photo at right) attempted to define and connect conservatives, some of whom he defined as "neo-Confederates," to southern racism:
Today, a new battle for history is being waged, with political conservatives casting the Civil War as a struggle against Big Government, with only tangential connections to slavery. These neo-Confederates contend that one can honor the South’s heritage without condoning its institutionalized racism. But as a historian and as a Southerner, I believe that is a losing cause. Without what our seventh vice president, John C. Calhoun, called the South’s “peculiar domestic institution,” there would have been no Civil War. There can be no revision of this inescapable reality.
[Emphasis added]
An April 2011 report by the Culture and Media Institute (part of the MRC), pointed out how journalists are attempting to associate the Civil War of 1861 to conservatives today:
Led by Chris Matthews, MSNBC's prime time hosts - Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell and Keith Olbermann (and Cenk Uygur, Olbermann's replacement) - are obsessed with drawing modern parallels to the politics that tore the nation apart a century and a half ago. The election of the nation's first black president, their theme goes, has awakened - especially in the South - the latent Confederate sympathies and secessionist tendencies of conservative America.
Oddly, towards the end of the piece, Meacham seemed to contradict the article's larger point: "And the Civil War’s true legacy is not about Big Government or today’s political skirmishing—it’s about a nation’s obligation to live up to the best part of itself. Slavery was an evil, and it had to be defeated."
Yet, his earlier examples cite but a few examples to prove that conservatives think of themselves as a modern day Confederacy.
This sort of attack shouldn't be surprising. Meacham previously invoked Timothy McVeigh and Lee Harvey Oswald to worry about Anti-Obama "hate."
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Comments
Meacham, Thank you
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:00pm.
If I'm understanding you correctly, the rise of Obama is a White Guilt thing.
Can we move ahead now?
It was not a civil war. It
Submitted by ricklail on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:16pm.
It was not a civil war. It was a war of independence. The south wanted to be independent of the north. I am a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I am proud of my southern heritage. My great great grandfathers where fighting for what they believed in. One great great grandfather gave his life at Bistoe Station, VA on October 14, 1863 for that belief.
Oh yeah. (deleted).
Submitted by Galvanic on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 4:12pm.
.(deleted -- I shouldn't have gotten down in the mud on this one)
The civil war ended in 1865. Get over it.
→ Secession Ball
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:32pm.
And every October 31st people dress up as some of the most depraved people that ever lived. Young girls dress as whores, men as murderers.
The Druids lorded over England before it was even England, but people still celebrate "Trick-or-Treat. Does that mean these people are all members of a marauding horde of religious extortionists?
Exactly.
Submitted by The Vet on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:03am.
And what do we celebrate every December 7th. A grisly surprise attack where we got our tushie handed back to us in a basket. Do we remember to re-energize ourselves to repel the yellow horde? Is that what history and remembering historical events is about now? Maybe redefine it and compare anyone we dislike to the various losing or offensive camps of history.
I Think I have a Better Understanding of Why Newsweek
Submitted by Comrade Jim on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:49pm.
Sold for $1.
IMHO, that was $1 more than
Submitted by Beukeboom on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 9:48am.
IMHO, that was $1 more than it is worth.
Jon Meacham, it is more like
Submitted by ForeverOnTheRight on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:51pm.
Jon Meacham, it is more like a revival of the spirit of the American Revolution. It is a yearning to be free from the oppressive tyranny of high taxes and big government. We do not want the tyranny of people slowly pushing us toward Godless socialism.
Wow! Talk about desperation.
Submitted by Beukeboom on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:55pm.
Wow! Talk about desperation.
A theme is uh, uh, uh, uh ,uh emerging
Submitted by Tomorama on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 4:14pm.
This realm of reasoning..................................... has been popping up for a week or so and ESPECIALLY on this "network" meaning THE DUMB SOUTHERN RACIST REDNECKS.
Also, I have noticed (I use many sources and blog on many sites) the use of the phrasing "They are continually voting against their own best interests" meaning us dumb Middle to lower Republicans everywhere else.
Almost as IF a tweet or memo was sent out by someone...............................
I must just be a crazy, paranoid, racist, tea bagger.
Apparently he missed the part
Submitted by Thoreau on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 4:51pm.
Apparently he missed the part where the civil war was a war of NORTHERN AGGRESSION. They invaded the Southern States, not the other way around. These socialist dbags need to at least grasp a clue before they try to up the ante with analogies.
Get over it
Submitted by Galvanic on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 7:06pm.
The Confederacy was a government focused on preserving an evil institution. And it lost.
As a proud citizen of the North,,
Submitted by brutony1 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 7:14pm.
It was YOUS people that started the war, but we finished it! I hate this crap about War of Northern Aggression! Thats just a liberal way to explain the loss! We came, we saw, we kicked your asses! And you learned your lesson-so,dont rekindle old feuds!
When will liberals WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE! -Me
They Lost.
Submitted by Unsane on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 7:22pm.
Repeat after me:
The South Lost The Civil War.
And it was the Civil War, NOT the "War of Northern Aggression", NOT the "War for Southern Independence".
"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)
Thoreau
Submitted by MightyMouth on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 7:43pm.
The south tired to break the constituion by electing its own president. The lawfully and constitutionally elected President could not allow this to occur. Hence the War of Constitutional Aggression.
Wow, Meachum, you sure you
Submitted by jdhawk on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 5:09pm.
Wow, Meachum, you sure you want to go down that road? After all, it was Lincoln, a member of the the GOP that attempted to save the union and free the slaves. It was dimocrats that were against the Civil War and against freeing the slaves.
Following the Civil War, you have long list of dimocrats running the southern states at all levels of government. After the Civil War and for many decades if one declared oneself a Republican in the South, you could expect any range of actions from being beat up to hung next to African Americans
Of course, the KKK was on off shoot of the dimocrat party and has survived in various incarnations to this day. In fact, it was just a few years ago, that the dimocrats had a long standing senator, Senator "Sheets" Byrd in office that was a high ranking member of the KKK in his youth.
The racism and bigotry was institutionalized in the dimocrat party and in fact, if it hadn't been for Republicans, the Civil Rights bill and Voters Rights bill would never have passed.
Were there and are there Republicans that are bigots and racists, I expect so. That doesn't excuse Meachum from attempting to vilifying the vast majority that arent' without first acknowledging those of his own party that institutionalized for over a century.
No wonder why Newsweeks sales were so low...
Submitted by brutony1 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 7:16pm.
It had trouble being sold for a dollar-ONE Dollar! MeaCHUMP truly is a clueless, friggin lib! NewsWEAK and Time are just the NY Slimes printed on better paper!
When will liberals WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE! -Me
'Neo-Confederate' Conservatives = Patriotic Democrats.
Submitted by Avitar on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 7:51pm.
It was a hundred years after the war and the nomination of Barry Goldwarer that finally made being a Republican semi-respectable in the South. The retro-Confederates like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter still won't give an inch. Only after the retro-Confederates fall completely off the left side will being a Republican be a lock for election.
I grew up far enough in the south in Indiana that there was a kid who recruited for the KKK. Forty years later in 2008 I saw the kid on TV at a political rally. The rally was for Obama. When it came to hating blacks, hating Jews and hating business he was willing to give up one of the three.
I knew it...
Submitted by fatboy on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 8:32pm.
I just knew that w/ all the recent consternation by the MSM over The Civil War, some liberal idiot would find a way to blame it on Bush...OK, Republicans! How predictable. ROFLMAO!
Slavery is the ultimate form
Submitted by robert108 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:18pm.
Slavery is the ultimate form of Dem/Marxist class warfare.
Slavery for All
Submitted by m1xram on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 5:55am.
Very good, was wondering when someone would hit on this particular hypocrisy. Here's a guy trying to implement socialist slavery while calling others racists and slavery supporters because they have southern ancestors. I guess he isn't a racist as he wants to make us all slaves equally.
The opposite of Left is Freedom.
Secession back on the menu?
Submitted by NattyGreene on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 9:37am.
Disclaimer - This post is a thought experiment, not an endorsement of secession or Lost Cause ideology.
Meacham is a monotonous drone, but I actually think that discussion of how our Civil War history relates to our present fiscal crisis is not as crazy as it might initially sound.
If New York, California, and other other liberal bastions go bankrupt, might not solvent states begin to consider radical alternatives to never ending bail-outs of their free-spending brethren? You would probably say that they could not possibly consider secession as a remedy - that all the states have become too dependent on Federal dollars to ever secede again. But what if Social Security and Medicare go officially bankrupt? What if the Federal government's fiscal inaction leads to a debt crisis, the dollar loses its status as world reserve currency, and highway money and other Federal pork dries up?
Consider that the political and economic positions of conservatives (30-40%of the population) and socialists/liberals (20% of the population) have become virtually irreconcilable... that the latter views the former with outright contempt... that citizens with these ideological outlooks have been concentrated in certain states and regions. This situation is not that dissimilar from pre-Civil War America, where the economic interests, ideology, and social structures of North and South had become unreconcilable.
Really, if you look at the worst case fiscal scenario, which is rapidly becoming the likely scenario, 25 years down the road, WHY NOT secede from the Union? How likely is it that, in 2036, New England and California are going to wage total war on Texas to keep it in the Union? How many foreign powers would back the Federal government the next go 'round given their antipathy to the United States?
The pre-Civil War South held fast to slavery as much for economic reasons as for social/racist ones. Keep in mind that in the South's agrarian economy, if you were an "elite" most of your wealth was tied up in slaves and land. And without the slaves, you couldn't produce the same income from the land. So, the threat of emancipation held not just the prospect of social upheaval, but also absolute economic ruin for the deep South states (a threat that was borne out during Reconstruction and not overcome until WWII). I make this point not to apologize for any of my Southern ancestors, but to highlight how people faced with the potential for economic ruin will resort to extreme measures to prevent said ruin. Hence, if Arizona has a choice of going down the drain with the Union or seceding and having a fresh start... Again, why not secede?
In conclusion, I wish our political leaders were a little more familiar with their history. They might see that the road we are on can lead to far worse things tha stagflation, high interest rates, and a 24x7 Glenn Beck cable channel.
Something else to consider
Submitted by Unsane on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 7:49pm.
Let me suggest a different angle.
Let's say NY, CA or IL or some other Leftist states go insolvent. Let's further say that - this being 25 years down the road or so - a string of TEA Party led political victories lead many other states and the federal government to be on a more sound fiscal footing.
So, they go insolvent, and go hat in hand to the federal government, whining to be bailed out.
What if the federal government agrees - but with one, little, tiny condition: they revert to being territories. The federal government assumes all those states' debt, BUT they revert to being territories and when re-admitted to the Union as states, they MUST have state constitutions written to the point where they do not allow themselves to go insolvent again (balanced budget clauses, etc).
What say y'all?
"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)
They are exactly alike!
Submitted by Master-of-Disaster on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:04pm.
The election of 2012 is a direct parallel to the Civil War, The War Between the States, The War of Northern Aggression, The War for Southern Independence, or as they say in Charleston, The Time of the Great Unpleasantness. This is definitely a time of great unpleasantness and We the People are going to change that! It is all about content of character now. The Civil War and the subsequent Civil Rights Movement have led us to set aside old prejudices and bigotry. You are now evaluated solely by your deeds, your ideology, your character, your experience, and your patriotism. Obama is sorely lacking in all of them and so yes, this is very much like the Civil War and you are not going to intimidate us into submission Mr. President, and neither will your lapdog media.