Cesar Sayoc, Pipe Bombs and Conservative Hate

From what we know now the primary suspect in the pipe bombing campaign against Democrats and/or liberal "enemies" of Trump is a Republican. Fortunately, he or whoever sent these bombs was inept.

AVENTURA, Fla. — Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr., a South Florida man charged in connection with a string of bombs mailed to prominent Democrats, appeared to have a lively social media presence, where he frequently posted in right-wing circles and shared conservative news stories and condemnations of liberal politicians.

Mr. Sayoc, 56, appeared to post frequently in Facebook groups like “The Trump American Party” and “Vote Trump 2020” using an account with the name “Cesar Altieri Randazzo.” The account, which was suspended on Friday after reports that Mr. Sayoc was a suspect in the bombing case, shared photos of Mr. Sayoc attending political events and working out at the gym.

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, the account shared news stories from Breitbart, video clips from Fox News, and posts from pages like “Handcuffs for Hillary.” That year, the account included numerous photos and videos of Mr. Sayoc, a registered Republican, at a Trump campaign rally, wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Mr. Sayoc had been charged with five federal crimes, and faces up to 48 years in prison if convicted.

Mr. Sayoc has a lengthy criminal history in Florida dating back to 1991 that includes felony theft, drug and fraud charges, as well as being accused of threatening to use a bomb, public records show. In the bombing case, Mr. Sayoc was accused of threatening to “blow up” a Florida utility company and a customer service representative who he had called to protest a bill. The records listed Mr. Sayoc’s occupation as “manager.”

South Africa ANC Political Murders

It is a damn shame that people who struggled against the violent apartheid regime now have no problem murdering each other for money and power. I suppose that's the way it goes sometimes. Can you imagine living in a country in which power depends not on the vote but on who has more button men? That would be a pretty crappy place to live.

One could argue that political violence in South Africa is the inevitable blowback from apartheid-that people who have grown up impoverished and hating themselves with no strong social, economic, or political systems to safely channel dissent and disagreement will find it easy to use violence against each other. Even so, political murder is not normal. It is symptomatic of a sick society. The US has tons of problems but we're not yet at the point where it's normal for political party leaders to dispatch hit squads against dissenting members. Nancy Pelosi does not, whatever you might see on Fox News, threaten to murder Representatives who don't vote for her as party leader. Mitch McConnell is not sending goon squads to visit the families of Republican senators/congressmen who didn't vote to repeal ObamaCare. And no matter how much Clinton voters despise third party voters, so far neither Gary Johnson nor Jill Stein has been found in car trunks.

UMZIMKHULU, South Africa — Their fear faded as they raced back home, the bottle of Johnnie Walker getting lighter with each turn of the road. Soon, Sindiso Magaqa was clapping and bouncing behind the wheel of his beloved V8 Mercedes-Benz, pulling into familiar territory just before dark. Minutes later, men closed in with assault rifles. Mr. Magaqa reached for the gun under his seat — too late. One of his passengers saw flashes of light, dozens of them, from the spray of bullets pockmarking the doors. The ambush was exactly what Mr. Magaqa had feared. A few months before, a friend had been killed by gunmen in his front yard. Then, as another friend tried to open his front gate at night, a hit man crept out of the dark, shooting him dead.

Next came Mr. Magaqa, 34. Struck half a dozen times, he hung on for weeks in a hospital before dying last year. All of the assassination targets had one thing in common: They were members of the African National Congress who had spoken out against corruption in the party that defined their lives.

Bernie Sanders Supporter Shoots Republican Representatives and Police

There is still a lot that's going to be coming out on this story in the next few hours, let alone the next few days. So some of the details may change. Right now all we know is that a Bernie Sanders supporter, James Hodgkinson, shot at Republican members of Congress and Capitol Hill Police. 

Hodgkinson allegedly asked whether the Representatives, who were preparing for a sporting event, were Democrats or Republicans before he started shooting. Hodgkinson was wounded and has since died.

James T. Hodgkinson has been identified as the shooter who opened fire on Republican members of Congress Wednesday morning at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, the Washington Post reports. Hodgkinson, 66, is from Belleville, Illinois, the newspaper reports. A motive for the shooting is not yet known, but Hodgkinson’s Facebook page shows someone who had a high interest in politics, who supported Bernie Sanders during the presidential election and expressed anger with President Donald Trump and Republican Congressmen.

The gunman was shot by two Capitol Hill Police officers who were at the scene as a security detail for Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, who was among those shot. The two police officers were also wounded, along with a staffer for Rep. Roger Williams of Texas and a lobbyist. Scalise and the officers are expected to survive.

Two Congressmen, Rep. Jeff Duncan and Rep. Ron DeSantis, described an encounter with a man who asked them if those practicing were “Republicans or Democrats” before the shooting. DeSantis, when shown a photo of Hodgkinson, confirmed he was the man who approached him, CNBC reports. Alexandria Police Chief Michael Brown said his officers and Capitol Police officers exchanged fire with the gunman.

The man suspected of opening fire on Republican members of the congressional baseball team early Wednesday morning was distraught over the election of President Trump and traveled to Washington in recent weeks to protest, his brother said on Wednesday. The suspect, James Thomas Hodgkinson, 66, of Belleville, Ill., died in a Washington hospital after a shootout with the police. “I know he wasn’t happy with the way things were going, the election results and stuff,” his brother, Michael Hodgkinson, said in a telephone interview shortly after he received the news on Wednesday. 

Orlando Massacre

Over the weekend a U.S. citizen of Afghan heritage and Islamic religion, Omar Mateen, committed the worst single gunman mass shooting in US history, killing at least 49 people. That number may rise. I can't write much on this now because the Day Job requirements have become more pressing while my Day Job overseer has become more demanding. That's how it goes when you work for other people. The thing I did find intriguing and yet unsurprising is how quickly everyone framed this atrocity according to their favored narrative or tribe. Some people on the left, who would have otherwise pontificated at length about the evils of homophobic heteronormative patriarchal Christian Republicanism had the gunman been of European Christian heritage, ignored the gunman's personal demons or religious motivations to focus on the gunman's ability to purchase an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Some people on the right were downright gleeful that the Orlando gunman wasn't a man of European Christian heritage. They only wished to discuss the wisdom of bringing in numerous immigrants from countries whose cultures are not as advanced as ours in terms of women's rights, gay rights or tolerance of different religions and lifestyles. Some of these immigrants or their 2nd generation children have proven to be problematic to say the least. Some people, including one Presidential candidate, would say this shows that members of group A are dangerous and should all be prevented from entering this country. Other Americans think that a different group is dangerous and should be prevented from owning weapons. I don't have a lot to say about this not only because I have supervisors who've made it clear that my attention is better spent elsewhere during the day (LOL) but also because I think almost everything has already been said. 

There are some people who do not like the 2nd Amendment and/or do not like the current interpretation of same. They do not think anyone who is not a police officer or in the military needs a semi-automatic rifle. They are quite willing to nibble away at or throw out protections when it comes to private civilian ownership of weapons. Other people venerate the 2nd amendment but have deep hostility towards the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments. They would love to have more government review and censorship of emails and social media, secret trials, incarceration without trial, preventive detention, stop-n-frisk and a general shift away from individual rights towards government control. The two sides really only differ in the details of which individual rights they find troublesome.  All I can say is have at it. There is a process for changing the Constitution. It's difficult for a reason. If you really want to get rid of private gun ownership, eliminate the 2nd Amendment. But you should bring a lot of friends because that's going to be a fight. There is simply no way that we can tell ahead of time who is going to be a responsible gun owner and who is not. There is no psychological test that will allow us to consistently say "Aha, this person will crack up." Short of outlawing semi-automatic weapons for everyone nothing could have prevented the gunman from legally purchasing his gun--at least nothing that I would find congruent with current civil liberties. But that's neither here nor there. Time is fleeting and back to the salt mines I must go. Bottom line is no matter how much you may dislike the fact that people can purchase an AR-15 or any other semi-automatic weapon, roughly a third to half of this country's population feels differently. And they vote too. This is going to happen again. Saying that people who think differently than you are nasty people with small private parts and warped sex drives or from the opposite POV are wimpy effeminate types who couldn't defend themselves against an aggressive fruit fly may make you feel better but it won't change a damn thing. Like it or not private gun ownership isn't going away. And neither is gun regulation.

Paris, Terrorism and Politics

On Friday the 13th the group ISIS attacked a concert hall and stadium in Paris because well that's what they do. Over one hundred people died. Many more were wounded. The proximate cause was retaliation for France's support of the bombing campaign against ISIS targets in Syria. The deeper cause could be revenge for a long history of Western intervention in the region. And the deepest cause of all could be, well that the sorts of people who attack civilian targets are cowards and a$$holes. Today France struck back on the ground.The button men are all over the street looking for anyone and everyone who had something to do with the attacks. With few exceptions, these attacks will just make most people even stronger in their previously held convictions. People across the political spectrum immediately used 11-13 to demonize their political opponents or argue that events proved their pet political theory correct. If you are on the right these attacks may have strengthened your conviction that immigration or refugee movement (particularly of racially, culturally or religiously disparate people) needs to be slowed, halted or reversed. Unlike the United States, which theoretically has no formal or informal link between race, religion, ethnicity and citizenship, many other nations in the Old World, especially in Europe, are more or less ethnic homelands of very long standing. When you say that someone is French or German or Japanese that usually brings up a different image in your mind than to say someone is American. This has changed in Europe, particularly Western Europe after WW2, but there are plenty of shall we say self-proclaimed "indigenous Europeans" who strongly dislike these changes. That at least some of the people who carried out the attacks were apparently European nationals of non-European origin will give fuel to various political parties across Europe who want to stop any further demographic transformation. Many people who will vote for a LePen or a Orban are stone cold racists. Nevertheless just as the US didn't accept massive immigration from Germany during WW2, there just might be something to be said for not accepting immigration from countries you're currently bombing. Because some of those folks will surely hold grudges. The fact that some of these grudges are beyond ridiculous (the people who carried out the Madrid bombings were still po'd about the Reconquista) doesn't matter.

Now if you are of the Left you may see attacks like this as reminders that France must try harder to live up to the slogan of "liberty, fraternity and equality". Why, for example, does France apparently have more of a problem assimilating non-white non-Christian immigrants than the US does? Why has France outlawed Muslim headwear or in some cases refused to provide non-pork meals at public schools? You may argue that France needs to do more to make its Muslim immigrants welcome so that they no longer identify with a crazy warped version of end times Islam. This is not about political correctness as much as it's about building a society that is both fair and cohesive. You might ask why has the atrocity in Paris attracted so much attention when ISIS and fellow travelers have committed similar crimes in Kenya, Nigeria, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Some French who found the ISIS attack on Russia humorous are presumably no longer laughing. The West has been bombing in the Middle East, South Asia and the Horn of Africa almost non stop over the past twenty-five years or so. Has that worked? And turning to the US in particular, although some governors have claimed that they will refuse to accept any Syrian refugees and some Presidential candidates have suggested only accepting Christian refugees, the truth is that the law doesn't allow for religious discrimination in the refugee process. And the Federal government, not the 50 states, gets to decide refugee status. Governors can talk smack but in the face of a sufficiently determined President, they would have to shut up, take it and smile. But this is just demagoguery. The US has accepted fewer than 2000 Syrian refugees. Hilarious is not the word to use but it is blackly humorous how people's willingness to restrict civil liberties depends on whether they think they will use the liberty in question. Some people on the right don't think very highly of the Fourth, Fifth or Sixth Amendments so in the wake of 11-13 there are calls from that segment of society to increase surveillance, shut down mosques, establish government backdoors to encrypted communication, consider collective punishment and generally chip away at the presumption of innocence (at least for those people). The people calling for these steps are often the same folks who stoutly resist private background checks for all gun sales and are unmoved by arguments that saving lives requires limits on gun ownership. And some other people (often but not always on the Left) who would like to strongly discourage or even eliminate private gun ownership because somewhere somebody might commit a crime appear to be blithely unconcerned about letting in people who might want to get some payback on the country that bombed theirs. 

So what's the answer? The problem is that there is none. 

Or rather there is no quick answer or one that can be sufficiently dumbed down for Ben Carson to get it. I don't think that you can ever blame any sovereign nation state for taking swift action when someone murders your citizens and basically says "Yeah we did it. So what are you going to do about it b****?" But look at the Afghanistan War. It started as a righteous crusade to get Bin Laden and put the fear of God into the people who took down the Twin Towers. It is currently in a pointless stalemate featuring moral atrocities such as the bombing of wedding parties and hospitals and US soldiers being ordered to ignore child sex abuse. ISIS would not exist if the US had not post 9-11 gotten the bright idea to invade Iraq and thus further destabilize the entire region. The Taliban would not exist if Russia had not invaded Afghanistan, causing the US and Pakistan to arm and train people who would later execute 9-11. So will more intervention solve the problem? I doubt it. The only sort of intervention that might work would be a multi-generational crusade/colonial project that would put Western troops on the ground from Aleppo to Mecca. And that's not going to happen. All that can be done now is to manage the conflict. That's unsatisfactory but that's reality. This is going to include a lot more death and mayhem before things get better. Something else we can do is to start to put the squeeze on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to get with the program. Some elements in those nations provide ISIS material and ideological support. Some leaders in the Middle East simply don't see ISIS as the worst group. They have other concerns. I do think that there will be some permanent changes in how European nations manage and accept refugees and immigrants. That train has left the station. Expect certain political parties in Europe to find more success with messages of unabashed nationalism, immigrant restriction, xenophobia and not so hidden bigotry.

Je Suis Charlie: Paris Attack on Charlie Hebdo Offices

I think that one of the keystones of modern civilization is the ability to say, believe or write things which others find offensive without being killed for your expression of thoughts. I don't think that anyone who believes in freedom of speech can hold otherwise. And even people who aren't necessarily the biggest fans of free speech still usually aren't big fans of murder. So all right minded people deplored the Paris acts of murder directed against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. At least two armed French-Algerian men, presumably angered by satirical and scatological cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, stormed the magazine offices, killing twelve people and wounding eleven others. At this time the men are still at large. They are believed to be the brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi. 

On Wednesday, eight journalists - including the magazine's editor - died along with a caretaker and a visitor when masked men armed with assault rifles stormed the Charlie Hebdo offices during an editorial meeting. Eleven people were also wounded, some seriously. Two policemen were also killed.

Witnesses say the gunmen shouted "we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "we killed Charlie Hebdo", as well as "God is Great" in Arabic. The attackers fled to northern Paris before abandoning their car and hijacking a Renault Clio, police say. The magazine's office was firebombed in 2011. It had angered some Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of its irreverent take on news and current affairs.

These murders and attempted murders were immediately condemned by the overwhelming majority of Muslim leaders, religious and otherwise, in France and beyond. Nevertheless, the murders of French cartoonists for blasphemy feeds into the idea of a clash of civilizations, much beloved by extremists in all of the Abrahamic faiths. In this Manichean understanding, certain religions are simply incompatible. We must eliminate or suppress them. We can not possibly live with them. They are evil. Obviously "we" and "them" and "they" depends on who is speaking or writing. Strangely enough the people rushing to condemn all Muslims for the depraved acts of a few don't think that others should condemn all whites or all cops or all Christians for similar acts in the past  or the present. A Muslim acting badly reflects on all Muslims but a Christian acting badly is one individual. Right. Doesn't that seem a little, well, wrong?

In this country I am more worried about home grown indigenous right wing terror or a trigger happy cop than I am about some immigrant religious nutter or first generation resident. Given the size of the faith communities on the planet, it is a pipe dream to imagine that a faith you don't like could ever be eliminated but fundamentalists of any stripe tend not to deal in practicalities. No, what these murders could do is to increase the growing sentiment among some Europeans that there are too many Muslim immigrants and citizens already resident in Europe. Some people may start to wonder where is Charles Martel when you really need him.

Overnight, seven people believed to be connected to the Kouachi brothers were detained in the towns of Reims and Charleville-Mezieres, as well as in the Paris area. Cherif Kouachi was sentenced in 2008 to three years in prison for belonging to a Paris-based group sending jihadist fighters to Iraq. Following the shootings at the magazine, there appear to have been a number of revenge attacks on Muslims reported by French media, though nobody was hurt:

• Two shots were fired at a Muslim prayer room in the town of Port-la-Nouvelle in the southern region of Aude on Wednesday evening
• A Muslim family was shot at in their car in Caromb, in the southern region of Vaucluse
• Dummy grenades were thrown during the night at a mosque in Le Mans, western France
• The slogan "Death to Arabs" was daubed on the door of a mosque in Poitiers, central France, during the night
• A blast hit a kebab shop beside a mosque in Villefranche-sur-Saone in central France

LINK

European countries have traditionally been ethnic homelands and not settler states or targets for immigration The murders may increase the stigma around Islam. It is also important to make it clear that "free speech" in the abstract includes a lot of things that I do not like and that I think that most decent people would not like. Some which Charlie Hebdo published were roughly about the same quality and tone of work that Hustler owner Larry Flynt might have featured. Some cartoons were deliberately offensive. Worse, some of them just did not amuse. But I don't have to agree with them or find them funny to be upset that other people murdered the cartoonists. I feel very strongly about freedom of speech, the right to dissent, the right to have your own beliefs. If I want to reject your religious views that's my right. If I find them silly and harmful and decide to spend my time making fun of them that's also my right. Your moral choices when faced with that situation are to counterattack with your own speech, ignore me, or perhaps try to get me fired from my job. It's not a moral choice to beat me into submission or kill me. Not in the US or most Western countries anyway. Other countries have different ideas about mocking religion.

All that said we should remember that in many aspects the US has greater freedom of speech than France. In the US, you can deny the Holocaust or make fun of it. If you're funny enough you can build a career out of telling racist jokes. You can suggest that Black people were better off under slavery and/or are less intelligent than everyone else. You can write books earnestly explaining how white people are genetic Ice Age mutations predisposed to violence or how your particular ethnic group just happens to be smarter than everyone else. In France such things can get you banned, fined or arrested. So it's not that France is some free speech paradise. It's not. If I were a French Muslim religious extremist I might well be peacefully agitating for my religious sensitivities to get the same free speech carve out as other people's ethnic or racial sensitivities. 

But the bottom line is that if your understanding of your religion requires you to kill people who make fun of it, then a modern secular society with separation of church and state is simply not for you. You should depart such a place at once and resettle in a country which features ruthlessly enforced blasphemy laws. You would be much happier and so would I. It's a win-win situation. Quite simple really. #JeSuisCharlie

What are your thoughts? 

BREAKING NEWS: Terrorist Attack at the Boston Marathon (VIDEO)

UPDATE: President Obama addressed the nation at 6:10pm: "Make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of  this!"

From ABC NEWS:  

Two bombs exploded in the packed streets near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing two people and injuring more than 70 others in a terrifying scene of shattered glass, billowing smoke, bloodstained pavement and severed limbs, authorities said.
  
A senior U.S. intelligence official said two other explosive devices were found near the end of the 26.2-mile course.

"They just started bringing people in with no limbs," said runner Tim Davey, of Richmond, Va. He said he and his wife, Lisa, tried to keep their children's eyes shielded from the gruesome scene inside a medical tent that had been set up to care for fatigued runners, but "they saw a lot."

"They just kept filling up with more and more casualties," Lisa Davey said. "Most everybody was conscious. They were very dazed."

There was no word on the motive or who may have launched the attack, and police said no suspect was in custody. Authorities in Washington said there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The twin blasts at the race took place almost simultaneously and about 100 yards apart, tearing limbs off numerous people, knocking spectators and at least one runner off their feet, shattering windows and sending smoke rising over the street.

Some 23,000 runners took part in the race, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious marathons. One of Boston's biggest annual events, the race winds up near Copley Square, not far from the landmark Prudential Center and the Boston Public Library.

Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis asked people to stay indoors or go back to their hotel rooms and avoid crowds as bomb squads methodically checked parcels and bags left along the race route. He said investigators didn't know whether the bombs were planted in mailboxes or trash cans.

He said authorities had received "no specific intelligence that anything was going to happen" at the race.

The Federal Aviation Administration barred low-flying aircraft from within 3.5 miles of the site.

President Barack Obama was briefed on the explosions by Homeland Security adviser Lisa Monaco. Obama also told Mayor Tom Menino and Gov. Deval Patrick that his administration would provide whatever support was needed, the White House said. (Continue Reading)

NJ Gov. Chris Christie: Enough with the Sharia Law Crap Already!!! (VIDEO)

In this country of ours, we have this document known as the Constitution.  You might have heard of it.  It guarantees that, in this country, we will always have a republican form of government where the people - and not monarchs, religious rulers, or even religion itself - are in control of what happens here.  This is spelled out quite plainly in Article IV of our Constitution for anybody who cares to read it.  But who are we kidding - Americans don't read the Constitution!!!  Especially the staunch conservative Bible-belt Americans who love to drone on about how Muslims are plotting to take over our country by using "Sharia Law."  Republican Presidential Candidate Herman Cain has even gone so far as to say he would absolutely not appoint a Muslim judge to any court because he is afraid they will attempt to implement Sharia Law in America.

The Republican Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, apparently fed up with hearing about this Sharia Law propaganda from within his own party, hit back recently in response to his decision to appoint a Muslim judge to the bench:

Per yahoo news:

"Sharia law has nothing to do with this at all. It's crazy. It's crazy," Christie said at a press conference Wednesday. "The guy's an American citizen who has been an admitted lawyer to practice in the state of New Jersey, swearing an oath to uphold the laws of New Jersey, the constitution of the state of New Jersey, and the Constitution of the United States of America . . . .This Sharia law business is crap. It's just crazy. And I'm tired of dealing with the crazies."

QUESTIONS:
What are your thoughts on what Christie said?
What are your thoughts on the Sharia Law debate in general?

Nathan Bedford Forrest

“Alabama's gotten me so upset

Tennessee made me lose my rest

And everybody knows about Mississippi G****m”

-Nina Simone

JACKSON, Miss. - A fight is brewing in Mississippi over a proposal to issue specialty license plates honoring Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan. The Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans wants to sponsor a series of state-issued license plates to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which it calls the "War Between the States." The group proposes a different design each year between now and 2015, with Forrest slated for 2014.

"Seriously?" state NAACP president Derrick Johnson said when he was told about the Forrest plate. "Wow."

Forrest, a Tennessee native, is revered by some as a military genius and reviled by others for leading an 1864 massacre of black Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tenn. Forrest was a Klan grand wizard in Tennessee after the war.

Sons of Confederate Veterans member Greg Stewart said he believes Forrest distanced himself from the Klan later in life. It's a point many historians agree upon, though some believe it was too little, too late, because the Klan had already turned violent before Forrest left.

"If Christian redemption means anything — and we all want redemption, I think — he redeemed himself in his own time, in his own actions, in his own words," Stewart said. "We should respect that."

And here we go again.  As Faulkner wrote “The past is never dead. It’s not even past”.  This is true of America in general, the South in particular and perhaps Mississippi most of all.  This is ultimately what these constant battles over history are about-whether it is textbooks in Texas,  Michele Bachmann’s whitewashing of the Founding Fathers or the never ending battles over the Civil War and associated symbols.  Who gets to define history?  Who gets to tell the story? That’s the question.  Here’s what one eyewitness had to say about the Fort Pillow massacre:

Achilles Clark, a soldier with the 20th Tennessee cavalry, wrote to his sister immediately after the battle: "The slaughter was awful. Words cannot describe the scene. The poor, deluded, negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hands scream for mercy but they were ordered to their feet and then shot down. I, with several others, tried to stop the butchery, and at one time had partially succeeded, but General Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued. Finally our men became sick of blood and the firing ceased.”

From my POV there is simply no way to take nuanced views on the Civil War.  

The Confederates tried to break up the nation because they were concerned about their ability to keep slaves. They wanted to extend and protect slavery throughout the entire nation.  Don’t take my word for it. Read what they wrote.

The Civil War was the bloodiest war this nation ever fought.  More Americans died in the Civil War than died in World War II. The South lost. Slavery was ended. That was a good thing.  Not only did the South lose, it got its collective a$$ kicked, militarily speaking.  However a horrible thing happened postbellum. For a variety of reasons- political, pragmatic, racial and cultural- the South never really admitted that it was wrong.  

 

Unlike post-WWII Germany the South never had to face up to its crimes and indeed the North ultimately lacked the interest or resources to force it to do so. These were after all Americans. There was money to be made and reconciliation to accomplish. So the Black narrative of what the war was about or what slavery was like was ignored and the myth of the Lost Cause and the gentlemanly rebel took hold. Obviously these myths still resonate with many people today. The US thus lost a chance to save itself another 100 or so years of segregation, murder and exploitation.

Now I really don’t care what people put on their vehicle or what sort of shirt they wear.  

But I do draw the line at state endorsement of a man who led an armed rebellion against the United States. 

Ironically however Forrest's last recorded speech in 1875 was given to an early Black civil rights group. In this speech he supposedly urged racial reconciliation and may have defended voting rights for Blacks.

Go figure.

Is this just a question of if you don’t like the proposed license plate don’t get one?

Do you see any First Amendment issue here?   

Why are there some Americans who grasp so tightly to a belief that the Confederacy was a good thing?

Where are the Germans who hold similar views about the Nazis?   

If John Newton (slave trader and author of Amazing Grace) can be redeemed , why not Nathan Bedford Forrest?