The Man Deniers Fear The Most Vs Professor Kudzu

Well folks, it's a new month and with it a new anti-Confederate heritage regressive popping up to offer another flawed paradigm in the form of an article.

Strangely this time our extra special snowflakes actually claims to be a plant. No seriously, he does. I mean, I know that some people on the Opposition side of this fight claim to be a different gender than the one they are born as, but hey I have nothing against that.

But in all seriousness, this regressive snowflake, a New York born college professor from the College of Charleston has brought with him a rather interesting argument in favor of the repeal of the South Carolina Legislature's 2000 Heritage Act which prevents historical markers and monuments from being relocated or removed without the approval of the State Legislature -- a huge brick wall here in SC for those regressives across America engaged in the current cultural ethnic cleansing of Dixie.

This bizarre argument appeared on Sunday, September 3rd in The State newspaper in Columbia and can be read HERE and I will offer the article along with my rebuttal of the factual errors (and believe me there are many!) here at this blog. As always my responses are written in Confederate Red.

Please Enjoy!

 

The 21st century South Carolinian is no longer Confederate
A somewhat strange title, but I will explain why in the course of my response.

Joseph Kelly (edited by The Man Deniers Fear The Most, C.W. Roden)

I am kudzu.

So your green and grow rampantly?

My great-grandparents left Ireland in the 1880s. Ah so you ARE green! My ancestors left Ulster in the 1700s.  I was born in New York You have my sympathies there. and was already 15 when my parents put up our sign, Gone to Texas. I cannot join the Sons of Confederate Veterans, because I have no “direct or collateral family lines and kinship to a veteran.”Again you have my sympathies.

I believe there were soldiers whose suffering and sacrifice deserve respect, and I salute my friends who cherish the memory of the old gray uniform in their attics. And if you had left it at that, we wouldn't have a problem, but you just have to keep running off at the mouth don't you? But I dispute the Sons of Confederate Veterans when they say Johnny Reb fought for “the preservation of liberty and freedom.” Sure you do, sorta how people on your side tend to go. The mute eloquence of a slave badge at the Charleston Museum does more than I can to expose the folly of romanticizing the “cause.” You are aware that particular badge predates the War Between the States all the way back to the American Revolutionary War don't you? No? Pity. 

Yet like kudzu — and barbecue and peaches — I am just as Southern as the purest blood-descendant of Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard. You were born in New York until you were 15, so not really. You would be what some of us would call a "damnyankee." I personally have nothing against Northern-born Americans moving to and living in Dixie, my problem comes when one of them starts to do the sort of bullshit virtue signaling projection crap you are trying very badly to do now. 

 

In fact, most Southerners either cannot or will not qualify for membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans, or even the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which admits the descendants of those who gave even the slightest “Material Aid to the Cause.” If you refer to the fact that many Southerners today are born from people who moved here after 1865, you'd probably be right. But what does that have to do with the price of sweet tea -- also like kudzu, barbecue, peaches and Jazz music Southern. 

In 2016, 31.5 percent of South Carolinians were black, Asian, Hispanic or Native American. Most of whom are born from South Carolinians and are therefore just as Southern as yours truly. What's your point? And while most African-Americans have white ancestors, few join the Sons. You'd probably be amazed who all are members and supporters of the SCV and UDC respectively. Check out this blog for a number of posts detailing the ethnic diversity of Confederate heritage supporters.

 

That leaves the white folks, 68.5 percent, who might have roots in the Confederacy. But how many actually do? Well Kudzu, you're the alleged professor, you tell me? Oh wait, according to your bio, you're a director of Irish American Studies. News flash, not all white Southerners in South Carolina are Irish. Many are Ulster-Scots (Scots-Irish), German, French, and maybe some Austrian and Welsh thrown in.

The U. S. Census Bureau does not clearly track migration from state to state, but the University of Minnesota’s Population Center has crunched the data: A hundred years ago, the university reports, 95 percent of South Carolinians were born here. Today, only 58 percent are natives. Three percent are like me — born in New York; 5 percent come from the mid-West, and 4 percent are foreign-born. Altogether, 20 percent of white South Carolinians started from places that make it unlikely they would qualify for the Confederacy’s Sons or Daughters. Same could be said for the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution too, again what's your point? 

 

So now we’re up to more than 45 percent of South Carolinians who either are people of color or came from outside the South. People of color are not disqualified from membership in the SCV or UDC dude. Your argument is therefore invalid in that regard. 

That doesn’t include my own children, native Southerners whose ancestors were Northerners, or any natives whose ancestors moved to the South after 1865. At least your kids will have the honor of being native Southern at any rate. This means the portion of Southern whites who cannot claim any “direct or collateral family lines and kinship” to rebels is far more than 20 percent. We don’t know how much more, but with all the Northern flight South, it’s obvious that most S.C. bloodlines no longer trace back to the Confederacy. Did you also include in your calculations those Northerners who have Confederate ancestry? Let me see.....(skim skim skim)....humm, nope you didn't. Till you crunch those numbers, your argument, whatever it might be, is factually incomplete.

 

One might object that plenty of transplants romanticize the Confederacy. Just look at all those Ohioans who came down to Charlottesville. Ah, now we're getting to the TRUE motive behind this already tiresome article. True enough. But as Gibbs Knotts and Christopher Cooper demonstrate in their new book, The Resilience of Southern Identity, A book I've read after finding it in the cheap bin at Barnes and Noble when white Southerners become better educated (as they do in each generation), meaning more Left-wing indoctrinated they tend to stop identifying with Confederates. Yeah I suppose if you start thinking of yourselves in terms of collectivist mentalities, you stop identifying with those who promoted rugged individuality. It's sad but true. And young white Southerners do not romanticize the cause as much as their parents do. I don't actually know anyone who "romanticizes the cause" in the SCV or UDC. I know plenty of people who respect the Confederate soldier and who he was as an individual, and who appreciates the stories of the battles he fought to maintain Southern independence. Otherwise, no there is no "Moonlight and Magnolias Fest" at SCV and UDC functions. These folks more than cancel out the romanticizing Northerners.

What all of this means is that those who still revere the Confederacy — let us take Catherine Templeton as an example — suffer from an out-sized notion of themselves. If by "revere the Confederacy" you mean honoring the Confederate soldier's memory as an individual worthy of respect, then you would be right. Otherwise, you are again presenting a somewhat broad and less-than-accurate presentation of your point. 

“We’re standing on the shoulders of giants,” Templeton said, referring to her Confederate forebears. “And that’s why we are who we are, where we are.” 

We? Uh context please? Do you mean the Royal "we" in this case?

Templeton was talking to the Republican Party of Pickens County, Ah thank you, I was afraid you were going to leave us in suspense there. and perhaps her audience on that day actually was largely of Confederate descent. But the fact is that when Templeton says we, she’s talking about a minority: white Confederate romantics. Actually, I believe she is talking about Confederate descendants, who happen to make up a rather more diverse group of people that you appear to be presenting, Professor Kudzu. 

It’s easy to see how she makes this mistake. Especially when you're making an even bigger starting from a logical fallacy. People who qualify for the Sons of Confederate Veterans are far over-represented in the halls of power. LMAO! ROFL! Oh if only that were true. If so the whole Confederate Monument Kristallnacht thing would have been DOA. They ran the General Assembly as Democrats until Northern Democrats championed civil rights. Now they run it as Republicans. Ugh! Politics! The one thing you cannot escape from in America these days.

 

Deep down, they sense they are a dwindling minority. Just look at how they run scared of majority rule. Oh? That one I will leave for the end of this article. Leave aside all sorts of better-known political causes and consider simply the Heritage Act. And folks, this is what this entirely lengthy and somewhat tiresome article finally FINALLY comes to. 

 

If most Charlestonians wanted to rename Calhoun Street after Mother Emmanuel, Pickens County would stop us. I wouldn't care if they did. So long as Confederate romantics heritage and civil rights defenders retain a mere 34 percent of either the House or the Senate, they can force Charleston to continue honoring the architects of white supremacy. LMAO! The "architects of white supremacy"?! ROFL! Oh....my.....gawd! Kudzu, you are funny little transplant here (okay maybe a little pun intended there!). So what you are saying -- you, a credited professor of Irish-American Studies -- is the John C. Calhoun was an "architect" of racial supremacy?! Really?! LMFAO! So what you are trying to tell everyone in this article is that white supremacist doctrines did not exist until John C. Calhoun (who by the way died before the CSA was even conceived) came along? Nevermind the centuries of white European colonization and exploitation in other parts of the world before Calhoun was even born. Yet somehow white supremacist doctrines did not exist until he was born?! LOL! You are destroying your own paradigm simply by presuming your own intellectual superiority to those reading your words....and failing big time at it! Forget about taking Calhoun off his pedestal. Without the go-ahead from Pickens County and its like-minded romantics, the most we can do is slap a new plaque near the thing, proclaiming, “This statue was erected at the dawn of Jim Crow to intimidate black Charlestonians.” LOL in truth you can't even do that without State Legislative support. Also I would love to know -- based on research mind you -- just how many black (let alone white) Charlestonians these days even know who Calhoun actually was. Sadly very few I would wager. 

 

When an act of government subjects all of the people to the will of an antiquated minority, it must be abolished. Whoa dude! Are you talking about....no, you couldn't be?! S-s-secession?! Maybe you better clarify your sentence here.

The Heritage Act was championed by then-Sen. Glenn McConnell, and then-Sen. Robert Ford-D and several others in a bipartisan effort across party and racial lines I might add, but don't take my word for it, it is clear in the Legislative records for anyone to find. whom I’ve learned to respect since he became my boss a few years ago. So I take it on faith that it meant simply to prevent the situation in which we swap out our public monuments every time control shifts in the Legislature.

Prudence, indeed, dictates that statues and long-established street names should not be changed for light and transient causes. Glad we agree on that much, Professor Kudzu.

But when an act of government obstructs the considered and reasoned will of the majority, and subjects all of the people to the will of an antiquated minority, that act must be abolished. You have yet to present a reasonable argument that this has been the case. 

Repeal the Heritage Act. 

With that I will leave you with my own final challenge based on your previous words: (imagine whinny Leftist new-castrati voice here) "Deep down, they sense they are a dwindling minority. Just look at how they run scared of majority rule." So my challenge here is, you really believe your own hype here, why not a binding statewide referendum? You know like the one that your side opposed during the Confederate flag debate in 2000 and later in 2015? If you really believe that the people in South Carolina who support the memory of the Confederate soldier are such a minority now based on racial lines, "better education" and demographic changes, then what do you have to worry about? Should be a slam-dunk huh? 

But you won't do that because.....reasons. Oh well. Still, you've been entertaining Professor Kudzu. Okay, not really, but I did have fun taking apart your flawed narrative, so I guess that will have to count. 

Now for my final thoughts. 

 

Demographics do change in a country, this much is true. But a strong cultural identity like the one that makes up the vast patchwork quilt that is Southern heritage has room in it for everyone who calls themselves a proud Southerner -- yes even those who are not necessarily born here by birth. It knows no ethnicity, but embraces all that live here and their various cultural origins as part of the whole, including, yes Confederate descendants no matter their color or creed. 

Even if it could actually be said that Confederate descendants represented a minority, or probably might be in the next couple of decades, this would in no significant way diminish the overall importance of that part of our shared Southern cultural identity. 

Confederate heritage is not something that diminishes that diversity, it is in fact a part of the wider Southern heritage and American historical heritage. Its removal for the sake of political correctness and misguided collectivist virtue signaling for a political ideology that may very well be on the decline would in turn be the thing that would diminish the overall value of the whole.

Well folks, once again another anti-Confederate heritage regressive's rhetoric and logic has been shown for the intellectual fraud that it is. I certainly hope y'all enjoyed my counterpoints and learned something from them. 

Have a Wonderful Dixie Day, and y'all come back now, ya hear?