A Curious Little Blog

I have not written much about the removal of Confederate statues, even though my hometown, Charlottesville, is at the center of the controversy.  Honestly, I have a hopeless feeling about it and the subject makes me depressed.  I do feel that the issue is not being approached from the correct point of view by either side, so I wanted to give my perspective. Statues of Confederate commanders are not about slavery.  I have literally never heard anyone honour these men because they supported slavery, and only marginalized groups outside of the public discourse consider them as standing for anything racial.  The number of demonstrations recently, almost all including members of the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacist groups, gives a misleading impression of how these statues are viewed by most people.  I have no evidence that these protests were organized by members of the left, but I do believe that, if the left wanted to make a case for removing the statues, t...

It's the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War (actually earlier this month, but it is being celebrated the whole year), and with it comes a whole new debate about the Confederacy, the right of secession, and the use of the Confederate flag today.  While most people probably associate Southern apologists with conservatives, I have been seeing many attacks on the Confederacy and the flag from conservative sources, one of which goes so far as to nominate Jefferson Davis as the worst person in American history.  It probably is true that most Southern apologists are conservative, but it is apparently far from true that most conservatives are Southern apologists. This is unfortunate, because the case for secession is at the core a case for liberty.  This is, of course, a controversial statement, but I think a defensible one -- in fact, the only logical one.  Here, then, is a brief but long-considered defense of the Confederate States of America. The CSA st...