Oh, is that the same Reagan who laid a wreath at the SS mass-murderers’ graves at Bitburg, Germany?
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This is the worst kind of political cynicism and the saddest, most mealy-mouthed attempt to play it safe that I’ve seen in a very long while. I would almost get it if there were dozens of Republicans and moderates pushing back against efforts to take down Confederate monuments, but for fucks sake you’ve got the Senate Majority leader, a Senator from Kentucky, demanding that Kentucky remove it’s Jefferson Davis statue. AND his own governor has demanded the removal of Confederate flags. What political advantage does he possibly think exists wherein he goes into a Democratic primary equivocating over the Confederacy? Sit all the way down, sir!
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But we should also remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War, including slave holders in the Union Army
Just out of curiosity, are any of you Civil War history buffs who might know approximately how many actual slave owners actually fought in the Union Army?
He’s also really horrible at being a politician and wasn’t much of a US Senator when he was in office either. One term and he quit. For him to want to be President with 10 times the amount of responsibility…fuggedaboutit. I want a President that has compassion and understanding for all of America’s citizens and non-citizens alike. Not just their own narrow-assed view of the country.
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How about this? Instead of building more and more monuments to honor war dead from one war or another, we honor them by trying our absolute best not to have any more wars?
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The New Oxford American Dictionary defines obtuse as follows:
1 Annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand:
. . .
2.1 Not sharp-pointed or sharp-edged; blunt.
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Yes, the same Reagan that launched his 1980 Presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, MS… just a couple of miles from the location where 3 civil rights workers were murdered in the incident which inspired the movie Mississsippi Burning, where he gave a speech extolling “states rights”.
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Oh, okay, that Reagan. Got it.
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This is what’s infuriating about the rhetoric of the R’s who now say it should come down. Something like, “it was fine until the gunman took selfies with it and this is why we can’t have nice things.”
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I don’t understand his rationale for running. Seems like he and Chafee are in the “I’m retired and bored and I don’t like scrapbooking and golf” camp.
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Several years ago Webb wrote the book Born Fighting, a paean to the roles of the Scots-Irish in U.S. history. That book has become a sort of cultural touchstone for a lot of people in the Confederate heritage community, no doubt for many people who aren’t actually descended from the Scots-Irish. Although Webb didn’t intend it as such, his book has become part of the pseudo-Celtic cultural mythos that fuels modern white nationalist movements like the League of the South. Webb has bought into the Confederates-as-noble-men-fighting-for-a-bad-cause nonsense, and really needs to cut that off like a gangrenous limb.
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If it was a “battle” flag, why is it being waved 150 years later after the South waved the white flag in defeat? After 911, both parties told us the nation had to come together for the greater good of the United States of America. USA, USA, right?
Webb is receding back into irrelevance on the national stage at an alarmingly fast pace. He obviously would like to be politically correct with white supremacists than stand with the nation as a whole. I’m done with KKK enablers who pose as Centralist Democrats.
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Fun dayn moyl in gots oyern.
Webb was infinitely superior to George Allen. I suppose that’s a compliment of sorts.
So I guess he thought he’d be the perfect candidate, being able to keep Southerners with him instead of their being loyal to the GOP.
Miscalculate much, Jim?
I’m sure it’s true, because there were separate Union and Confederate regiments recruited for both sides from Kentucky, Tennessee (due to the strong Unionist element in NE TN), Virgina (because West Virginia seceded from Virginia at the war’s beginning, and of course Maryland. Here’s an example.
An interesting question is whether, say, the 1st Maryland (Union) ever lined up against the 1st Maryland (CSA) in any battle. Highly doubtful.
Edward Bates (MO) -at least as late as the 1840s - and Montgomery Blair (MD) - “from a slave-holding family” - were both in Lincoln’s cabinet, so there were definitely people around whose pro continued Union sentiment would have over-ridden their personal holding of slaves at the beginning of the war.
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After first posting to the above, I gave it another thought, and here’s a great example: Union General George Thomas, of Virginia, and a slave-owner. The “Rock of Chickamauga” was instrumental in saving a badly defeated Union Army south of Chattnooga.
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I haven’t a clue. George Thomas was a Virginian, but I have no idea whether he ever owned slaves.†
Hiram‡ Grant owned a slave he was gifted by his father-in-law in 1857, but apparently manumitted him in 1859.
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†Well, Wikipedia seems to provide the answer:
George Thomas, his sisters, and his widowed mother were forced to flee from their home and hide in the nearby woods during Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion.[5]
Benson Bobrick has suggested that while some repressive acts were enforced following the crushing of the revolt, Thomas took the lesson another way, seeing that slavery was so vile an institution that it had forced the slaves to act in violence. This was a major event in the formation of his views on slavery; that the idea of the contented slave in the care of a benevolent overlord was a sentimental myth.[6]
Christopher Einholf, in contrast wrote “For George Thomas, the view that slavery was needed as a way of controlling blacks was supported by his personal experience of Nat Turner’s Rebellion. … Thomas left no written record of his opinion on slavery, but the fact that he owned slaves during much of his life indicates that he was not opposed to it.”
‡ That’s Hiram Ulysses Grant. Where the hell he got the S from, I don’t remember.
Wow - love your name, Braxton
I see what you did there.
You hit the nail squarely. It makes me wonder if he’s thinking of switching parties. He certainly had no interest in building any kind of legacy as a Democratic Senator. Once upon a time I thought he had real potential as a national Democratic figure, but I’ve since concluded he’s just sort of a book-smart putz.
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