LOSE THE BATTLE, WIN THE WAR

An acquiantance - someone with whom speak occassionally, and who lives in the ATL and who attended Emory Law School with me, has, to put the matter delicately, noninsultingly, somewhat inaccuarately, and fascinatingly, a George Allen complex.

This person, whom I shall not name, is stuck in a past of his own choosing with respect to a certain issue - in stark contrast to his thoroughly forward-thinking stance on almost everything else.

That past is, shall I say, a fondness for the Confederacy and a contempt for the "Yankees" - the North. I am excluded from this contempt by him because, as he said, "I do not look down upon all things Southern." That is true. I look down upon something about everything, but not all things Southern.

What is fascinating about this person's penchant for the Confederacy is that he, like George Allen, is not quite what I would call a true Southerner. My acquaintance lived in Virginia until he was five (he was born - yes - in Appomattox County - a fact which most assuredly weighs upon him now but probably meant nothing to him at the time); his parents are not native Southerners; from the time he was five until he started high school, he lived in that most Southern of all states, Ohio; then he attended the University of Virginia (as his family moved back to Ohio, where it remains), then he attended Emory Law School; he now lives in Atlanta. Living in Atlanta really is not an imprimatur of Southernness. If my formative years were spent living in Ohio and Texas, I don't know if I'd call myself a true Deep Southerner...

My acquaintance loves making comments such as "The War of Northern Aggression"(the term he uses for the Civil War; this term is indeed an apt description in many ways; I would be more impressed if he and other "Southerners" knew a little bit more about history and thus the aggression that caused the civil war - this is denunciation by catchprhrase); "The Yankees (i.e. any Northern state) are at it again, acting like snobs" (by using this term, he is grouping people together as a lump - sometimes accurately, sometimes comically, most assuredly non-threateningly, and beyond a doubt, pointlessly), and so on. This person likes to remind himself and his audience that there is a division between North and South, if only in his mind.

With respect to his ability to recall the cultural markers of this division of this divide, though, I am less than impressed. One time we were discussing "Gone With the Wind." He likes quoting the lines he likes to quote from this movie. Curiously, he believed that the line that Scarlett stated right before intermission was "By god, I'll do anything to keep this land." (I believe, wink wink, it was, "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"). This misquote led me to question him as to a later line of dialogue in the film. I asked him, "Who said the line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." "Scarlett," he said. "Don't ever tell another Southerner you said that. Your secret is safe with me," I said.

But there is more. One would expect one with a fondness for the Confederacy to be at least somewhat conversant or schooled in the history of the Civil War. Not so with my acquaintance. He does not know any of the major battles, or the generals who conducted them, or what the precise reasons for the war were. Had he known this information, he might well indeed have gained a true appreciation for what EXACTLY the North did to the South that was aggressive. Embracement of symbology that is not derived from a sense of history is a dangerous thing - for the embracer can make up the history to justify his tastes.

Yet I wish my friend no ill will, and do not believe he is acting inappropriately. I do not believe, for example, that he believed in "the slave power," or that he liked the idea of brother figting brother, or of thousands of Americans dying in this bloody conflict. He can believe in whatever he wants - including his assertions, which I think are mostly tongue-in-cheek- that "Yankees" can act like clowns. I enjoyed getting to know his person, if for no other reason than to convince him that this is not always true. This person just happens to be really bright, and since the Civil War and Confederacy are obviously topics of interest of him, it would be great to engage him in a discussion on the details of these issues (not for the sake of argument, but for the sake of discussion), not in a discussion on rhetoric.

All of this talk of the Confederacy leads me to another point - one which does not immediately concern my acquaintance, and one which is not meant to criticize him - if anything - it is meant as praise. The South indeed lost the military battle as the Civil War. However, I believe it is fair to say that it, over time, won the struggle of ideas as to what kind of country this should be, and hence, won the war. A high-handed "Reconstruction," imposed by disingenuous Radical republicans who just wanted to stick it to the South, lasted until 1877. Sure, after that, we had Jim Crow, which constituted a blantant defiance of the laws.

But consider this: in 1948, when Strom Thurmond bolted from the Democrats to run on the Dixiecrat ticket, his calling card - the idea of "states' rights" - and the concomitant idea that these rights must be protected against federal interference -gained enormous traction - both as reflected by the 1948 election results and in elections beyond, particularly those of 1960 and 1968. Once Reagan came to power (having kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., a hotbed of states' rights sentiment), the country has not turned back from the idea that states' rights are not to be tampered with. This idea, fueled by post-Civil War southern resentment - has spread beyond the South - it has gone to the west, to the high plains, and even to the North, depending upon the issue at hand.

The South seceded from the Union because its states believed their sovereignty was being violated. We now have a Congress, a President, and a Supreme Court that is more receptive to the principle of state sovereignty than any federal government has been in modern history. In this sense, therefore, the South truly has won out. If it stopped looking beyond artificial labels of long past, it would see this, and take pride in it, and maybe then, one day, we could ALL take pride-North, South, East and West, in being Americans again.

One day.