Southern Avenger Breaks His Silence

I wish I had time to comment further on this, but I have a lot I want to get done this week. But I did want to commend Jack Hunter for writing this. There are some things I think he needs to think about more deeply, and I wish Ron Paul could be nearly as forthright as he is, but this is what I was hoping for when the Southern Avenger story broke. Good for you, Jack.

Read the whole thing here.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

More Race Problems from the Pauls

It's as if the Paul family just drives vans around white neighborhoods in the South playing 'Dixie' and whatever fool chases it like an ice cream truck gets a job on staff:

[Rand] Paul hired Jack Hunter, 39, to help write his book The Tea Party Goes to Washington during his 2010 Senate run. Hunter joined Paul’s office as his social media director in August 2012.

From 1999 to 2012, Hunter was a South Carolina radio shock jock known as the “Southern Avenger.” He has weighed in on issues such as racial pride and Hispanic immigration, and stated his support for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
During public appearances, Hunter often wore a mask on which was printed a Confederate flag.

Prior to his radio career, while in his 20s, Hunter was a chairman in the League of the South, which “advocates the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic.”

Read the whole thing at the Free Beacon here.

States' Rights vs. Individual Rights

I have an essay up over at Libertarianism.org in which I argue that the "States' Rights" argument for the Confederate secession is an argument that sides with the prerogatives of the state over the inalienable rights of the individual. This has ruffled some feathers within the libertarian community, despite its veracity. If a state has a right of exit that individuals in that state do not (through no crime of their own) then clearly the state's "rights" are preferred over those of the individual.

This doesn't sit well with people who claim that the South was somehow fighting for liberty. Southern "liberty" was a false one because, within a rights framework, a man does not have the liberty to enslave another man.

You'd think people who define their politics as one of liberty would understand that.

Read it here.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Take the White Man, Kill the Nigger

So, in honor of my current governor Bob McDonnell's declaration of April as Confederate History Month, I thought I'd note a couple of the more overlooked battles of the "War of Northern Aggression." The first is the Battle of Fort Pillow on April 12, 1864:

A Union report of that day:

All the wounded who had strength enough to speak agreed that after the fort was taken an indiscriminate slaughter of our troops was carried on by the enemy with a furious and vindictive savageness which was never equaled by the most merciless of the Indian tribes. Around on every side horrible testimony to the truth of this statement could be seen. Bodies with gaping wounds, some bayoneted through the eyes, some with skulls beaten through, others with hideous wounds as if their bowels had been ripped open with bowie-knives, plainly told that but little quarter was shown to our troops. Strewn from the fort to the river bank, in the ravines and hollows, behind logs and under the brush where they had crept for protection from the assassins who pursued them, we found bodies bayoneted, beaten, and shot to death, showing how cold-blooded and persistent was the slaughter of our unfortunate troops.

War is hell, obviously. But there was something different about this battle. Most of the "unfortunate troops" that had been slaughtered--many of whom were murdered after surrender--were black. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate lieutenant general who ordered the attack on Fort Pillow and the future co-founder of the Ku Klux Klan, said:

"It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that nigra soldiers cannot cope with Southerners."

In his report to his superiors, Forrest wrote:

We captured 164 Federals, 75 negro troops, and about 40 negro women and children, and after removing everything of value as far as able to do so, the warehouses, tents, &c., were destroyed by fire.

And the Union accounts of the forces inside Fort Pillow before the attack:

Our garrison at Fort Pillow, consisting of some 350 colored troops and 200 of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, refusing to surrender, the place was carried by assault about 3 p.m. of 12th instant.

Such gentility. Such honor. Such...a remarkable disparity in the race of the dead.

That summer, at a battle known as "The Crater" near Petersburg, Virginia, a trapped regiment of black soldiers--along with many whites--threw down their weapons and surrendered under intense Confederate fire. The Southern response: "Take the white man, kill the nigger."

And so they did.

As I've noted before, there is a strand of libertarianism that defends the South, secession, and the Confederacy--some go so far as to hold the Defenders of the Lost Cause to be beacons of liberty. The federalist rhetoric employed by the Confederacy does not hold up to scrutiny, (ahem, Fugitive Slave Law). Furthermore, it is astonishing to me that federalist principles are held to be more meaningful than the plight of the millions of people in bondage--and, indeed, as they were invoked by the CSA to maintain that bondage--by modern day apologists, and audaciously in the name of "liberty."

Cloaking the murderous racism and slavery of the Confederacy in terms of liberty is offensive to me, and should be to all people who hold the integrity of the individual as something dear to them.  Slavery is anathema to liberty, and the facts clearly show that the Confederacy was founded to preserve chattel slavery. Any good points Confederates may have made about federalism while furthering their crimes can never negate the original evil that undergirded the Confederacy's foundation and existence.