If an elected official refers to the Civil War as the “War of Yankee Aggression” on the floor of the House of Representatives, is that something that is just a matter of free speech/opinion, or is it something that violates some rule or law? Is it something that the House can or should sanction or censure?
I ask this in all seriousness. I think there is a difference between what a private citizen says in public and what a public official says during official business. And the Yankees won the war and they enshrined that victory in law, including the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. If anyone thinks that the Civil War, which was instigated by the South before Lincoln could even be inaugurated, was a war of Yankee aggression, then don’t they think that the South was right to secede? And then don’t they think the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are illegitimate? And then don’t they think that the present Union is illegitimate? And then don’t they think that the abolition of slavery is illegitimate?
Doesn’t something in all of this violate the oath to protect and defend the Constitution? Can you just say that that the Civil War was a war of Yankee Aggression with impunity? I ask Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA). I ask you.
It should be a cause for ejection from the House. It represents (1) a blatant lie and (2) would have been a grounds for disenfranchisement as a rebel in the period 1865-1876. It was indeed a war of Southern rebellion at the thought that Abraham Lincoln would be their president and that they might eventually lose a vote on emeancipation. The South struck first. It was over 145 years ago; it’s time to lay it to rest. In retrospect, the Radical Republicans were right about one thing; there should have been a de-Dixiefication process.
There is certainly a difference between representative and private speech. What Broun has said is that he represents only a minority of people (maybe a minority for white people) in his district, and the rest of constituents can go to hell.
That said, it’s a clear play for attention in the Republican Party by producing a response on lefty blogs and to be “politically incorrect”. It’s the primary style of rhetoric of Republicans these days–a competition to something more outrageous that other outrageous Republicans. It’s juvenile and not fitting for a member of Congress.
A lot of Southerners say it ironically in quotes “the war of Yankee aggression”, but Broun is likely to be saying it as a straight-up opinion.
Tarheel Dem, it seems that at a minimum there should be some House procedure that allows for striking the comment from the record, or requiring a formal apology from the offending member (Broun in this case).
However, I agree that the likely result would be a “politically incorrect” sideshow that would play to the Republicans advantage, at least in the short/medium term.
Maybe Democrats could start referring to the “secessionist slaveocracy” that forced the Civil War upon the good people (North and South) of the US of A….
Right. There’s a real culture gap here.
I went to high school in the South in the Eighties. Here are my takeaways about the Civil War from my American History class:
And my school was more liberal than most in the region (although not that teacher). The school has a proud history of early integration and support for civil rights.
Needless to say, going away to college was a bit of a culture shock. Many, maybe most of my high school classmates stayed in the South for college, and I don’t know if they’ve ever been exposed to the perspective of the rest of the country. I don’t know if most of them could or would identify “War of Northern Aggression” as a factual error. Even if so, a lot of pro-Confederate sentimentality and denial about the reality of slavery and the role it played would still be there.
Fundamentally, I think the problem is that Reconstruction happened without ever producing any real apology or reflection on the institution of slavery – unlike, say, Germany after WWII. The denial lives on.
Just a different perspective. 🙂
My guess is that when he’s safely ensconced in his district, palling around with his local cronies, that he also refers to Martin Luther King Day as “James Earl Ray Day”, like many people I hear in my area. He probably also would call the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “The Nigger Liberation Act”; another local favorite you’re likely to hear around this neck of the woods if you happen to find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Ain’t it great to be a bigoted idiot with a good paying job in Washington?
Southerners have been calling the Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression” since before I was born, and they’ll still be calling it that after I die. I’d prefer to have these guys tell us what they really think instead of hiding it. At least we know what we’re dealing with.
The same treatment that Holocaust deniers get.
You are going to have to understand something about the Georgia 10TH Congressional District. The people there are a particularly stupid group of people. Having lived there and having taught in the public schools you won’t find a more willful group of people proud of their ignorance.
Paul Broun exemplifies their ignorance to a T.
And then there’s the University of Georgia in Athens, which does not have the number of non-Republicans to counter-balance the rest of the district.
To understand the mindset, this is the region that in the late 1960s gave Atlantan Lester Maddox (the axehandle governor) the highest proportion of the vote in the state. Nonetheless, Broun is appealing to the crazy end of the spectrum with his shtick.
why do southerners keep obsessing on the war they started and lost?
You know how much I think about the civil war every day? Less than .0005%. It’s only when someone like Booman brings it up. I don’t know if it’s the heat or the stupidity, but a lot of these legislators can’t let it go that their states started a war, got their asses handed to them, and to the victor goes the spoils.
broun is no different than many other race-obsessed crybabies I’ve met from the south. not that every southerner is a race-obsessed crybaby, a lot of southerners are really awesome decent people.
it makes me wonder if your average german sits around griping about the war of US aggression and the fuckin’ jews started it.
Southerners might think about the Civil War more often because it’s hard to go more than a few miles without passing an Historic Marker detailing some battle event or troop encampment. I pass three of them traveling the two or so miles between my house and the post office.
Where you live, you’re constantly, perhaps subconsciously, reminded of the War for Independence–a triumph. All over the South, we’re reminded of defeat and the rest of the country will never, ever let us forget it. Some of us accept that Might was Right in this case; others defensively reject feeling subjugated and fall into fanciful delusions.
I hope this helps you understand the “obsession.”
Nobody outside of the old Confederacy thinks about the Civil War, so it is untrue to say that the “rest of the country will never, ever let them forget it.” The rest of the nation moved on over a century ago.
I lived 31 adult years in the South, both Carolinas, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama, and never heard a Northener boast about the Civil War, anywhere, north or south of the Mason-Dixie Line. Only born Southeners give a shit about it now.
I had a job interview in North Carolina back in the 80’s with a company president who adorned his office with civil war memorabilia with big pix of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. He started in on how great Lee and Jackson were, when I cut him off by stating that Lee was responsible for killing more Americans than Hitler. That job offer I turned down.
It’s exactly because they lost it. They know what it is to be an occupied territory, although the post-Civil War occupation was so gentle that power returned to the same folks in a decade. It’s the sting of being defeated. Plus the failure of the US government to de-Dixiefy Dixie before readmitting them to the Union in an election that ended in the House of Representatives.
It’s the same reason that the Cherokee remember the Trail of Tears or the Lakota Wounded Knee.
It has nothing to do with the opinions of the justness of the cause except as that becomes a rationalization for why they despise outsiders.
Example. I just came back from a Solidarity rally of union rights. There were over 500 gathered at the NC State Capitol, maybe as many as a thousand at the peak of the rally. On the opposite side of the street under the watchful eye of five Raleigh police were about 30-50 Tea Party types and probably 7 or 8 bullhorns. During the rally, when a union supporter from NC spoke, the crowd on the other side of the street chanted “Yankee go home. Yankee go home.” There were few Yankees speaking, and most speakers were native Tarheels.
The people there are a particularly stupid group of people
bwahhahahahaha got that right! lol
just a sore loser.
I recently watched the 1940 movie Tobacco Road set in rural Georgia during the Depression. Change “sharecroppers” to “Teabaggers” and it’s updated.
They literally bow to the landowner when he pays them a visit. A religious lady appears every so often who just starts singing hymns, the action comes to a halt and everyone just joins in regardless of their feelings and when she disappears they return to being rotten to one another. Etc.
Nothing has changed.
It is a matter of free speech, and whether it is a makes sense as an opinion or not, one place that you do want it expressed is on the floors of Congress. All wars are wars of aggression, no matter which side you are on. That is the reason why wars in themselves do not settle issues, they just decide who is going to dominate the discussion for some period of time.
From a States Rights point of view (and believe me, I don’t believe the States Rights point of view is supported in the U.S. Constitution either before or after the Civil War) unless it is expressly written into the Constitution it is left up to the voting majority of a State. Free Speech, unless it is yelling “fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire, is expressly written into the Constitution. Likewise is regulation of Interstate Commerce. The Congressman should not be prevented from expressing an opinion whether or not it is based on fact or sound reasoning.
Of late I have often wondered what the Tea Party members have meant by “wanting to return to the Constitution as written by our Founding Fathers.” I have come to believe that what it really means is that all laws should be fashioned only to benefit themselves and their liberty individually, with no other obligations to the community at large or even to their neighbors. It is a type of Libertarianism that wants their own rights to be superior to their neighbors, especially if the neighbor does not live directly next door. It is the Golden Rule – “He who has the gold makes the rules” (by the way to my knowledge, neither version of the Golden Rule is contained in the Constitution.)
As i always told my southern bred ex—we won the war. GET OVER IT. He really hated it when I said it. Now, after 30 years in VA I am thrilled to be out of the south. THRILLED. No more blatent racism, no more bat shit crazy conservatives, no more apathetic workers who constantly vote against their best interests–I could go on and on. And the best is no more Confederate flags hanging all over the place.
Yay.