Reaction to Calls to Remove The Confederate Flag in South Carolina; Walmart to Drop All Confederate Flag Merch

I know where I stand.
Walmart just announced they are removing all Confederate flag products. I didn’t know they sold any. Not a popular item in Western PA.
Others are weighing in. Mitt Romney,got the ball rolling:


John Kasich and Scott Walker agree:


Rod Dreher at the American Conservative says take it down.
For reasons that make little sense to me, David French at National Review says leave it up.

It is Past Time to Remove the Confederate Flag in South Carolina

no Confederate flagGovernor Nikki Haley has called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina capitol and I agree with her.
Why did it take so long?
The argument that it is about heritage not white supremacy is a tired, silly argument. Anyone who understands how offensive the flag is would not display it. There can be no other reason but to send a message of intimidation.
Southern nationalists will go nuts but that isn’t reason enough to keep it. They are all over themselves trying to distance themselves from Dylann Roof while defending what Dylann Roof believes about African-Americans.
Of course, they have a right to hold and voice their opinion. However, so do I and other Americans who are tired of the deadly games they are playing.
There is a history to why the flag is there, but that is less important that the future. Removing it will symbolize the future of the state and send a clear message to the League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens that the cause really is lost.
 

Ten Years of Blogging: League of the South President Says Being a White Supremacist is Just Fine

I write about neo-Confederate groups which I describe as organizations which have members who wish the south would have won the Civil War. Most also  can be described as white supremacist or segregationist groups. Their numbers are small but they may play a role in radicalizing peripheral members of their movement (including disturbed ones like Charleston shooter Dylann Roof) to acts of violence (and acknowledged by a League of the South leader here). I have followed the League of the South most closely because of the involvement of Michael Peroutka and his Institute on the Constitution. Peroutka is a former board member of the League and current senior instructor David Whitney is the chaplain of the MD/VA state branch.
The League was mentioned briefly in the Washington Post article on the South Carolina shootings. While the group doesn’t figure in the tragedy directly, their materials are easily available on the web and they have moved toward more public demonstrations.
In one representative post, the League’s president Michael Hill reflects on how good it is to be a white supremacist:

In what is probably one of the clearest statements of the white supremacist views of the League of the South, organization president Michael Hill penned an article calling on League members to relish the white supremacist views of their Southern heroes. Anne Arundel County Council candidate and proud League of the South member Michael Peroutka told a news conference audience that he repudiated racists in the League and would pray for them. Well, he does know Michael Hill amd so he has some repudiating and praying to do. After reading the essay, I think Hill would just laugh at Peroutka’s prayers.

Hill reminds his readers that historically Confederates and their sympathizers saw the South as “white man’s country.”

“in 1928, historian Ulrich B. Phillips called the South “a white man’s country.” [“The Central Theme of Southern History,” American Historical Review 34 (October 1928), p. 31.] From the beginning of their history in the early 17th century, Southerners had taken this statement as an unchallenged fact, and the presence of an alien race in their midst drove it home with added emphasis. Few if any Southerners, or for that matter Northerners, believed in racial equality at the time of the War for Southern Independence nor in the decades to follow. That Phillips made his non-controversial (at the time) statement more than six decades after the end of that war speaks volumes about the stubbornness of what is now vilified as “white supremacy.” Thus, I think it is safe to say that our Confederate ancestors and their descendants for at least two generations would qualify as “racists” and “white supremacists” by today’s definitions of the terms.”

That is just fine with Hill, and as it should be.

It is easy to imagine an impressionable young person adopting their ideology and then figuring out how to put it all into practice.  Read the rest of the post here.

The Institute on the Constitution Posts Another Incorrect Quote Attribution – This Time They Get Thomas Paine Wrong

The Institute on the Constitution claims to be an educational outreach of Michael Peroutka’s law firm. Miseducational outreach would be a better term. They claim to teach about the founders but they often are sloppy and attribute things to the founders they didn’t say.
Once, they claimed Jefferson said something he didn’t say and then they botched George Washington as well.  Now, the target of false quotation is Thomas Paine.
Paine IOTC False Quote
Paine never said it; it most likely originated with Edward Abbey.
Note that it has been shared 1600 times. That’s a lot of ignorance for which IOTC is responsible.
For those keeping track, IOTC’s senior instructor is still listed as chaplain of the Maryland/Virginia chapter of the League of the South, a white supremacist organization.
Whitney MD chapter of LOS
How many churches who host IOTC courses know they are involved with an organization which is run by a former board member of a white supremacist group and which promotes the teaching of a current chaplain of a state chapter of that same white supremacist group?
 

Institute on the Constitution Posts Spurious Thomas Jefferson Quote

The Institute on the Constitution just can’t seem to get quotes right.
On their Facebook page, the neo-Confederate organization periodically features quotes they claim come from the founders. However, the quote are often spurious.  The most recent one attributed to Thomas Jefferson was posted earlier this month:
 

How fitting for the times we are in!www.theamericanview.com
Posted by Institute on the Constitution on Tuesday, April 7, 2015

This appears to be derived from Ayn Rand, but not said by Jefferson; so says Monticello.
This isn’t the first time. IOTC has promoted other false quotes (see here, and here).  If they can’t get easy stuff right, makes you wonder what they teach in their trainings. Actually, I don’t have to wonder since I have seen the video presentation of it. Not recommended (e.g., see here, and here)