Category Archives: States’ Rights

You Say McKinley; I Say Denali

America, Constitution, Federalism, Race, States' Rights

To me it seems natural and organic for the people of Alaska to name the hilly protrusions along their stomping ground.

Aaron Goldstein, at The American Spectator, doesn’t wish “to make mountains” of the fact that his Highness, Barack Obama, changed the name of Mount McKinley to Denali. Instead, Goldstein laments the president’s flouting of the Constitution or the federal scheme (not quite sure which).

Can we agree that federalism, like freedom, is long dead, and is the stuff of nostalgia?

The other thing I wonder about is the ease with which my fellow Americans offend native Americans (Indians), as opposed to the crippling fear they have of saying anything that might make blacks mad.

It’s to the credit of native Americans that they are less menacing.

Kurdish Separatists: They Fight ISIS, But Threaten Statists

Federalism, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Just War, Middle East, Nationhood, States' Rights

The Turks lump together as terrorists both the Islamic State and the paramilitary wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is fighting ISIS. “Kurds in Iraq and Syria are among the most formidable opponents of the extremist group.” And the US agrees. Americans, after all, hate separatists. It reminds them of their lost right of secession, removed by force by Abe Lincoln. Born of a loose confederation of independent states, Americans now favor a strong, overweening central state, and they want to see the same in the tribal lands of the Middle East.

Turkey’s military has been ramping up attacks on Kurdish separatists since last month. The government decided to join the U.S.-led military campaign against Islamic State while simultaneously launching assaults on the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Turkey.

MORE.

Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes

Ann Coulter, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Race, States' Rights, War

“Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes,” now on WND, offers a brief history lesson about the Confederate Battle Flag. An excerpt:

Fox News anchor Sean Hannity promised to provide a much-needed history of the much-maligned Confederate flag. For a moment, it seemed as though he and his guest, Mark Steyn, would deliver on the promise and lift the veil of ignorance. But no: The two showmen conducted a tactical tit-for-tat. They pinned the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia on the Southern Democrats (aka Dixiecrats). “I’m too sexy for my sheet,” sneered Steyn.

It fell to the woman who used to come across as the consummate Yankee supremacist to edify. The new Ann Coulter is indeed lovely:

Also on Fox, Ms. Coulter remarked that she was “appalled by” South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s call “for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol.” As “a student of American history,” Coulter offered that “the Confederate flag we’re [fussing] about never flew over an official Confederate building. It was a battle flag. It is to honor Robert E. Lee. And anyone who knows the first thing about military history knows that there is no greater army that ever took to the battle field than the Confederate Army.”

And anyone who knows the first thing about human valor knows that there was no man more valorous and courageous than Robert E. Lee, whose “two uncles signed the Declaration of Independence and [whose] father was a notable cavalry officer in the War for Independence.”

The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia—known as “Lee’s Army”—is not to be conflated with the “Stars and Bars,” which “became the official national flag of the Confederacy.” According to Sons of the South, the “first official use of the ‘Stars and Bars’ was at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis on March 4, 1861.” But because it resembled the “Stars and Stripes” flown by the Union, the “Stars and Bars” proved a liability during the Battle of Bull Run.

The confusion caused by the similarity in the flags was of great concern to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. He suggested that the Confederate national flag be changed to something completely different, to avoid confusion in battle in the future. This idea was rejected by the Confederate government. Beauregard then suggested that there should be two flags. One, the national flag, and the second one a battle flag, with the battle flag being completely different from the United States flag.

Originally, the flag whose history is being trampled today was a red square, not a rectangle. Atop it was the blue Southern Cross. In the cross were—still are—13 stars representing the 13 states in the Confederacy.

Wars are generally a rich man’s affair and a poor man’s fight. Yankees are fond of citing Confederacy officials in support of slavery and a war for slavery. Most Southerners, however, were not slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a “War for Southern Independence.” They rejected central coercion. Southerners believed a union that was entered voluntarily could be exited in the same way. As even establishment historian Paul Johnson concedes, “The South was protesting not only against the North’s interference in its ‘peculiar institution’ but against the growth of government generally.”

Lincoln grew government, markedly, in size and in predatory boldness. …

Read the rest. “Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes” is now on WND

Valor, Honor, Courage, Thy Name Is … Robert E. Lee

America, History, States' Rights

“The attacks on his name and fame in recent years coincide exactly with the progressive deterioration of all the higher values of American tradition,” laments Clyde Wilson about one of the great heroes of this nation, and certainly of mine: Robert E. Lee. (I admire Stonewall Jackson, but, if I’m not mistaken, he executed deserters. Can’t abide that.)

Your host outside “the plantation office building where Stonewall Jackson died in Guinea Station, Virginia.”
Outside the plantation office building where Stonewall Jackson died, Guinea Station, Virginia.

On January 19, “the birthday of one of the greatest of all Americans,” Clyde wrote the following:

… Robert E. Lee was born in Tidewater Virginia in 1807. Two uncles signed the Declaration of Independence and his father was a notable cavalry officer in the War for Independence. He was later to wed the granddaughter of Martha Washington.

He was graduated second in his class at West Point, an institution of which he was later a distinguished superintendent. As an army officer he worked on many useful engineering projects and was distinguished under fire in the Mexican War and later on the Texas frontier. Unlike the greatest figure on the other side of the great sectional conflict of 1861—1865, who was an inveterate office-seeker but never performed any service for his fellow citizens.

In 1861 he was offered command of all the armies of the United States, the height of a soldier’s ambition. But the path of honour commanded him to choose to defend his own people from invasion rather than do the bidding of the politicians who controlled the federal machinery in Washington.

His command of the Army of Northern Virginia is one of the greatest military epics of human history. By genius, daring, and the valour of his men he again and again defeated immensely larger and better supplied armies. He was aided by a lieutenant whose birthday is only two days later: “Stonewall,” born of January 21 in 1824. In the last days of the war his army inflicted casualties on the enemy that were greater than its own numbers, but he succumbed finally to an enemy commander willing to make any sacrifice of his men to exhaust the dwindling numbers of Confederates.

His actions after the war illustrate his nobility. …

MORE from Professor Wilson (whose review of my book is excerpted here).