This letter came yesterday and is also discussed in Tyler cover story out today, "The Battle for Downtown, Part I: Watkins v. JRA, et al." Pick it up for a primer of what is going on down there. And the cover story will be on the site this afternoon.

As predicted. Duh. Verbatim:

> Tea Party Express Endorses Chris
> McDaniel for U.S. Senate
>
> Jackson, MS – Tea Party Express, the
> nation’s largest Tea Party political
> action committee, endorsed Senator
> Chris McDaniel for U.S. Senate today
> in Jackson, Mississippi.
>
> Tea Party Express’ Chairman Amy Kremer
> said, “Tea Party Express is excited to
> endorse Senator Chris McDaniel. He is
> the kind of promising conservative
> leader that is desperately needed in
> Washington, D.C. McDaniel has shown
> unparalleled leadership in fighting
> for Mississippians against Obamacare
> and has donated his time and talents
> to defending his constituents against
> burdensome taxes and regulations."
>
> “McDaniel will face Senator Thad
> Cochran in the primary. Senator
> Cochran has served Mississippi with
> honor, but it has come time to send
> some fresh blood and ideas to D.C.,”
> Kremer said. “Washington has become a
> basin of failed solutions to address
> the growing debt and anemic economic
> growth. McDaniel has the passion and
> zeal to get things done and fight for
> what is right,” Kremer concluded.

Their press release just in about today's endorsement, verbatim:

> Tea Party Express Endorses Chris
> McDaniel for U.S. Senate
>
> Jackson, MS – Tea Party Express, the
> nation’s largest Tea Party political
> action committee, endorsed Senator
> Chris McDaniel for U.S. Senate today
> in Jackson, Mississippi.
>
> Tea Party Express’ Chairman Amy Kremer
> said, “Tea Party Express is excited to
> endorse Senator Chris McDaniel. He is
> the kind of promising conservative
> leader that is desperately needed in
> Washington, D.C. McDaniel has shown
> unparalleled leadership in fighting
> for Mississippians against Obamacare
> and has donated his time and talents
> to defending his constituents against
> burdensome taxes and regulations."
>
> “McDaniel will face Senator Thad
> Cochran in the primary. Senator
> Cochran has served Mississippi with
> honor, but it has come time to send
> some fresh blood and ideas to D.C.,”
> Kremer said. “Washington has become a
> basin of failed solutions to address
> the growing debt and anemic economic
> growth. McDaniel has the passion and
> zeal to get things done and fight for
> what is right,” Kremer concluded.

We all live under the burden of this dehumanization to this day, with the very different reactions to crime by and against people of different races and the assumptions made about people of different races. I know these habits and beliefs were drilled deeply into southerners during slavery and then Jim Crow times, but there is nothing about that that is justifiable. That burden of "lost cause" tragedy, and thus dedication to symbols of the Confederacy, is misplaced and is keeping this state on the bottom (and some others, too, but this is where I was born and raised, so it's the postage stamp I'm worried about).

It's seriously time for "lost cause" southerners to stop living in the past and lying to themselves and to each other about what the war and the Confederacy was about. It was about the right to buy, sell, torture and rape human beings--and the words of Confederate leaders prove it. It's time to learn that and use that knowledge to help move this state into a better future. If we can't get past these Confederate myths (and their symbols), we'll be stuck in time forever.

Another thing that strikes me about arguments like that is that it still takes the humanity out of what we're talking about: owning and abusing human beings. The curse we live under in the South is that the slave trade (and traders and buyers) did everything possible to make slaves inhumane to white people so that they could feel OK about the horrible practice. They didn't want to face what they were doing to other human beings. The Bible was even twisted to justify it. Yuck.

To this day, many people don't want to face what their relatives did to fellow human beings (which in many, many cases included rape). So when we talk about the civil war, it can't possibly be about slavery; it has to be about all the poor southerners who supported slavery and the white-supremacist caste system being offended that they couldn't continue doing those things. They fought under that flag to keep those institutions, and many died, and now we're supposed to be OK with the flag because their people fought under it to for the right to ... live in a slave state (if not have them). Can you see the pass that this argument gives to people?

It is unconscionable to ever take the humanity out of slavery and pretend that it was about "economics" and the right for southern states to do anything they damn well pleased. It is also unconscionable to take the humanity out of the state flag and refuse to see the pain that symbol causes so many people.

It's remarkable that white southerners embrace the symbol because the pain the war/reconstruction caused them, but will turn around and say that it's just a piece of cloth and why in the world would it offend black people (and other whites)?! This is remarkable selfishness at best. Southerners seceded and fought a war to keep slaves and lost--and they still can't get over the results? Do people today really wish the South had won?? It amazes me when someone tries to change the subject into questioning the motives of the north: seriously? I don't care if some yankees were in it for the wrong reason ultimately; what matters is that that horrible institution ended, even if the north and south together then allowed Jim Crow, black codes, etc., to turn us into terrorist land (and create the foundation for our inner-city problems today) through most of the 20th century.

*it represents the willingness of their relatives to fight for everything they believed in and to rebel against the general majority's desire to force them into changing their beliefs*

"Everything they believed in" that they were fighting for was the right to continue owning and hunting down and abusing slaves! They were "rebel"-ing against the majority's desire to force them into changing their beliefs that it was humane or moral or anything less than evil to own other human beings.

If you are right and people have *still* lulled themselves into believing that one can separate the willingness to fight for what they believed in from the fact that slavery is what they believed in -- then we need to bring a helluva lot of pressure on people to change their beliefs! Good golly! We can't coddle people who still think that way in the 21st century! That's a remarkable argument to make.

And if they, or you, can't see that people who want to change that damn flag have a "genuine interest in helping the state grow," I don't know how to respond to you. And I mean that respectfully because I can see that you are trying to be respectable.

Nah, you've earned a lifelong membership. ;-)

Thanks for asking the questions and giving me the chance to answer. I've told you before that some people probably think you're a plant, Bubba.

Whether or not you intended it, your question happens to be one of the talking points that slavery apologists try to use to deflect the fact that South fought the Civil War to preserve slavery and white supremacy.

I'll probably do a future column on just those talking points, and knock them down one by one.

And not to state the obvious, but the North was right on the question of slavery, which the Civil War was fought over. Does that mean that every northerner or every union soldier or every government official was on the union's side for the right reasons? Did the generals always fight fair? Of course not. That war was despicable on all sides.

But it was the right position to take, and the South refused to back down.

Now, did the north end up caving during Reconstruction, leaving decades of black codes, Jim Crow and Klan violence, all with the Confederate flag waving overhead? Absolutely. Were there northern slave traders and heathens? No doubt. Was the South unlucky due to the temptation of the riches that awaited in the rich sunshine under the hot sunshine that Mississippi said that only the black skin could bear? Of course. Would the same immigrants into "new" America have done the same thing up north had the climate been different? Probably.

But all of that, too, is beside the point of how despicable it is for the state of Mississippi to continue celebrating the Confederacy in our state flag like we're some 5-year-old sticking our tongue out at the teacher in kindergarten. Or some dude dumb enough to aim his pistol at his foot and pull the trigger.

Bubba, Lincoln's writings on the Civil War and slavery are fascinating -- especially when you watch their evolution.

If you hadn't noticed, the North's rationale for fighting the Civil War and freeing the slaves, which is complicated and varied and about wealth as well as genuine concern about human beings, is not the issue with us keeping the Confederate imbed in our state flag. And it is *completely* beside the point of this column, although many of you use it to try to change the subject away from hard truths.

The point is why the Confederacy, and the Confederate states, seceded and fought in the Civil War. It was to preserve the economic benefits of slavery as well as white "supremacy" over black people, as Confederacy Vice President Stephens so eloquently explained (see above). THAT is what the emblem in our flag represents, and THAT is what we as Mississippians need to finally freakin' face. He explained:

> With us, all of the white race,
> however high or low, rich or poor, are
> equal in the eye of the law. Not so
> with the negro. Subordination is his
> place. He, by nature, or by the curse
> against Canaan, is fitted for that
> condition which he occupies in our
> system. The architect, in the
> construction of buildings, lays the
> foundation with the proper
> material-the granite; then comes the
> brick or the marble. The substratum of
> our society is made of the material
> fitted by nature for it, and by
> experience we know that it is best,
> not only for the superior, but for the
> inferior race, that it should be so.
> It is, indeed, in conformity with the
> ordinance of the Creator. It is not
> for us to inquire into the wisdom of
> His ordinances, or to question them.
> For His own purposes, He has made one
> race to differ from another, as He has
> made “one star to differ from another
> star in glory.”

This sick thinking is what that flag stands for.

Bill, we don't have to pick one issue to "deal with." The flag is a huge issue for our perceptions of ourselves and others' perceptions of us. It sows divisions and contributes to brain drain. It hurts us economically. It keeps some employers out. It is a vital issue to discuss. And if you'd hadn't noticed, it's not the only one we talk about so act like it is. This is one of very few if any columns I've written about.

You doth protest too much.