BY JAMES NIMMO
By their own words and deeds the southerners of the 1850s and ‘60s have communicated to us in the 21st Century the motivations they had for voting to leave the United States and instigate a civil war to continue their heritage and way of social life which in their own words included slavery.
Anyone who can use a web browser and is literate enough to use a public library – a time capsule of words – can find contemporary newspapers and official legislative journals that document the social attitudes and economic necessities that convinced many citizens of the American South to vote to remove themselves from the Union.
Due to profound differences in geographical and economic situations I think these southern states should have been allowed to form a separate country in 1861 and they should separate now in 2015 if that’s the will of the states so choosing.
But for ill-educated citizens and the government officials elected by them to continue to whine, protest, and foment disinformation about their history of the 19th Century as a heritage that did not support and need slavery to continue cancels the rest of us from thinking we need to respect this blatant form of brainwashing and hoodwinking.
Willful ignorance, semantic word play, and tactical confusion need no accommodation, publicly or privately, from those who understand history and human deceit.
– James Nimmo lives in Oklahoma City and is a frequent contributor to The Oklahoma Observer
