Tucker Carlson

I used to like watching him back in the days when he was a relatively sane conservative sparring on CNN and elsewhere. Now he seems to have gone off to whatever plain of reality is home to QAnon, MAGA, and outright Nazi apologists. All in all, rather depressing.

Revisionist History: Five myths about why the South seceded

One hundred fifty years after the Civil War began, we’re still fighting it — or at least fighting over its history. I’ve polled thousands of high school history teachers and spoken about the war to audiences across the country, and there is little agreement even about why the South seceded. Was it over slavery? States’ rights? Tariffs and taxes?

As the nation begins to commemorate the anniversaries of the war’s various battles — from Fort Sumter to Appomattox — let’s first dispense with some of the more prevalent myths about why it all began.

1. The South seceded over states’ rights.

Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery.

On Dec. 24, 1860, delegates at South Carolina’s secession convention adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” It noted “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” and protested that Northern states had failed to “fulfill their constitutional obligations” by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage. Slavery, not states’ rights, birthed the Civil War.

South Carolina was further upset that New York no longer allowed “slavery transit.” In the past, if Charleston gentry wanted to spend August in the Hamptons, they could bring their cook along. No longer — and South Carolina’s delegates were outraged. In addition, they objected that New England states let black men vote and tolerated abolitionist societies. According to South Carolina, states should not have the right to let their citizens assemble and speak freely when what they said threatened slavery.

Other seceding states echoed South Carolina. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its own secession declaration, passed Jan. 9, 1861. “Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of the earth. . . . A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

The South’s opposition to states’ rights is not surprising. Until the Civil War, Southern presidents and lawmakers had dominated the federal government. The people in power in Washington always oppose states’ rights. Doing so preserves their own.

Read the rest here.

Japanese prime minister’s visit to war shrine spurs new tension

SEOUL — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday visited a Shinto shrine that honors Japan’s war dead, including 14 war criminals, and is seen by Asian neighbors as a symbol of the nation’s unrepentant militarism.

The visit to Yasukuni Shrine, the first by a sitting Japanese leader in seven years, raises the prospect of even deeper hostility between an already isolated Tokyo and its neighbors. It also suggests that Abe, after a year of focusing on pragmatic, economic issues, is increasingly willing to play to his conservative base — a group that believes Japan has been unfairly vilified for its wartime past. 

Read the rest here.

The death of JFK and the rewriting of history by the Left

“Ex-Marine Asks Soviet Citizenship”

— Washington Post headline,

Nov. 1, 1959

(concerning Lee Harvey Oswald)

“He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It’s — it had to be some silly little Communist.”

— Jacqueline Kennedy,

Nov. 22, 1963

She thought it robbed his death of any meaning. But a meaning would be quickly manufactured to serve a new politics. First, however, an inconvenient fact — Oswald — had to be expunged from the story. So, just 24 months after the assassination, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the Kennedys’ kept historian, published a thousand-page history of the thousand-day presidency without mentioning the assassin.

The transformation of a murder by a marginal man into a killing by a sick culture began instantly — before Kennedy was buried. The afternoon of the assassination, Chief Justice Earl Warren ascribed Kennedy’s “martyrdom” to “the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots.” The next day, James Reston, the New York Times luminary, wrote in a front-page story that Kennedy was a victim of a “streak of violence in the American character,” noting especially “the violence of the extremists on the right.”

Read the rest here.

The Revolution Was A Failure

The easiest way of assessing whether the United States would have been better off without its revolution is to look at those English-speaking countries that rejected the American Revolution and retained the monarchy, particularly Canada, which experienced an influx of American refugees after the British defeat. The U.S. performance should also be assessed against the ideals the new country set for itself — namely, advancing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The new republic started advancing life and liberty by keeping a substantial part of its population enslaved. (This, at least, proves the frequent British put-down that Americans don’t have a sense of irony.) By contrast, in British-controlled Canada, the abolition of slavery began almost 20 years before the War of 1812, sometimes called America’s “Second Revolution.” A good number of free blacks fought with the British against the United States in that conflict, even participating in the burning of Washington. And if, as some scholars argue, the Civil War was the unfinished business of the American Revolution, then Americans — like the Russians — paid a very high human cost for their revolutions.

Read the rest here.

Vatican says "Jesus wife" papyrus is fake

An ancient papyrus fragment which a Harvard scholar says contains the first recorded mention that Jesus may have had a wife is a fake, the Vatican said Friday.

"Substantial reasons would lead one to conclude that the papyrus is indeed a clumsy forgery," the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said in an editorial by its editor, Gian Maria Vian. "In any case, it's a fake."

Joining a highly charged academic debate over the authenticity of the text, written in ancient Egyptian Coptic, the newspaper published a lengthy analysis by expert Alberto Camplani of Rome's La Sapienza university, outlining doubts about the manuscript and urging extreme caution.

The fragment, which reads "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'" was unveiled by Harvard Professor Karen King as a text from the 4th century at a congress of Coptic Studies in Rome last week.

Read the rest here.

These sorts of cons pop up all the time. It can be amusing watching supposedly smart people being duped by really bad forgeries. Anyone remember Hitler's diaries?

Holocaust museum makes changes to exhibit on Pope Pius XII

Jerusalem, Israel, Jul 5, 2012 / 03:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial has made changes to a controversial exhibit on Pope Pius XII, presenting a more balanced view of his actions toward the Nazis and their Jewish victims.

Pave the Way Foundation President Gary Krupp, a prominent Jewish defender of Pope Pius XII, said his inter-religious group was “very pleased” with Yad Vashem's change of position, which “should show the world that it is truly an institution based on facts and truth.”

“The black legend against Pope Pius XII is being bleached white by the stark light of truth,” Krupp told CNA on July 5. Further research, he said, will show that the Pope, born Eugenio Pacelli, “was indeed a great hero to the Jewish people during our darkest years of the Shoah.”

Yad Vashem's new wall panel on Pius XII and the Vatican “presents a more complex picture than previously presented,” the museum said in a July 1 announcement, citing “research that has been done in the recent years” on the wartime Pope.

Read the rest here.

A Conspiracy of One (or the confessions of an ex-conspiracy nut)

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I generally have little use for the endless parade of conspiracy theories on all manner of topics, from 9-11 to Obama's birth certificate to Pearl Harbor revisionism.  So it may come as a bit of a shock for some to discover that yours truly was a card carrying conspiracy theorist on the subject of Jack Kennedy's assassination long before Oliver Stone brainwashed much of the world with what may be the most factually false film of any consequence produced in the last half century.

By time I graduated from High School I'd read a half dozen books and was quite convinced that Jack Kennedy had been killed by at least two gunmen.  I knew about the famous snap back of the president's head after the fatal shot which conclusively established he was shot from the front right.  I knew that Jack Ruby was all mobbed up.  And I was fairly sure that Oswald had been swimming in the deep end of the pool with the CIA.  What I didn't know, is that I was wrong. (See this video.)

I was committing a cardinal error by ignoring contrary evidence.  But seriously, who cared?  The Warren Commission was a whitewash.  Right?  No need to actually read any of it.  People like Mark Lane and David Lifton had explained in great detail how the Warren Commission and the FBI/CIA had lied through their teeth to the American people and the commission was just a smokescreen.

So in a magnificent piece of irony it is Oliver Stone who should probably get credit for lifting the scales of conspiracy mania from my eyes.  I saw his movie when it came out, and while I readily concede it was (and is) very entertaining, I was also deeply shaken by it.  The problem is that I knew a great deal about the Kennedy assassination, probably (not bragging here but being honest) much more than the average person on the street.  And I knew that factually his film was from start to finish a load of pure 100% gold plated bullshit.

It didn't take a social scientist to figure out that this movie was going to shape the public's view of the Kennedy murder on a scale and in ways that probably would never be correctable.  And if we were relying on something as dubious as Stone's movie to advance the cause proving a conspiracy, then I felt we (conspiracy theorists) had crossed a dangerous ethical line.  If Stone could make things up out of whole cloth how could we know others in the movement hadn't been doing the same thing?

The seeds of doubt had been planted.

Sometime within a year or so after that I secured a copy of the Warren Commission Report and became the only pro-conspiracy person I have met to actually read it.  Wasn't it dry?  No gin could ever touch it.  If the government did nothing else it had come up with a sure fire cure for insomnia.  But it was also fascinating and it was absolutely packed with facts not generally addressed by the advocates of conspiracy.  There was the substantial body of eye witnesses who saw Oswald shooting from the sixth floor window.  And others who saw him up close when he shot Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippet. The guns were all positively linked by ballistics to the two killings.  His fingerprints were on them both as well as the boxes in the snipers nest. Much of this I had already known but it is usually glossed over or ignored by advocates of conspiracy.  The WC laid it out in a manner that could not be ignored.

Were there errors and inaccuracies as many conspiracy advocates claim?  Yes.  But generally none that I could not dismiss as minor and the likely result of rushed editing.  The Warren Commission had not converted me.  But it had made it clear that I had been wrong to be taking all of my information from one side of a debate.  And more importantly it convinced me that Oswald had definitely been involved.  The evidence was too overwhelming.

I began going out of my way to read whatever I could find that was supportive of the lone gunman theory.  And at the time those pickings were thin.  One thing many people don't realize is that until about twenty years ago there was virtually no serious scholarship or works critical of the conspiracy theorists except the Warren Commission.  Even so my position was shifting.

I was coming to a conclusion which has colored my prejudice against the modern fetish with conspiracy to this day.  And that quite simply is believability.  There is an old saying, often attributed to Ben Franklin that three men can keep a secret only if two of them are dead.  To believe that Jack Kennedy was killed as a result of a broad conspiracy necessitates believing that a coverup occurred that would have had to extend through all of the highest levels of the government, and then down to more minor functionaries and law enforcement agents.  The number of people who would have had to be involved, AND KEPT THEIR MOUTHS SHUT, would had to have been quite large.  That was something I just could not buy into.  It is inconceivable to me that so many people would be involved in a vast coverup and not one would crack with so much as a death bed confession.  The same reasons made me doubt that most of the usual suspects (i,e. the mob or CIA) were involved.  People who think the mob was that disciplined don't really know much about them.  Someone would have talked.

Then there was the actual evidence. Time does not permit me to discuss each piece of allegedly pro-conspiracy evidence (I strongly recommend watching the linked video and the subsequent nine parts) but while still keeping an open mind; my opinion was shifting against conspiracy.  More and more the "evidence" I had relied on to prove a conspiracy was being shown to be misunderstood, or just plain wrong.  I was also discovering that at least some of the advocates of conspiracy, like Oliver Stone, were not above omitting, misstating or outright inventing facts when it served their purposes.

By the time Gerald Posner came out with his bombshell book "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993)," the first book to really discredit the conspiracy movement, I was already leaning in that direction.  Posner pretty much pushed me over the edge.  His book was not without some faults.  But in general it laid out a damning case against Oswald and refuted most of the more common arguments employed by the pro-conspiracy crowd.  Any residual doubts were utterly eradicated in 2007.

That was the year Vincent Bugliosi (the prosecutor of Charles Manson) published “Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”

Bugliosi's book is heavy reading, literally at 1600+ pages (using smaller than normal type font), don't drop it on your toes and remember to lift with your arms not your back.  It is the product of twenty years of research, about twice as long as the Warren Commission and infinitely more exhaustive.  In addition to the 1600+ pages are more than 1000(!) pages of end notes and citations that are mercifully on a CD.  Some of the end notes run several pages in their own right.

The book is divided into a number of different sections but begins with one of the more readable minute by minute narratives of what actually happened on that incredibly sad November weekend in 1963.  At a little over 300 pages that is a good sized book by itself.  Then you are treated to something almost totally ignored by historians of the Kennedy assassination from both sides of the conspiracy argument, a monumentally detailed biography of Lee Harvey Oswald.  How detailed?  Bugliosi provides street addresses and detailed descriptions of every rundown apartment or boarding house he ever lived in from childhood onwards.  And they were legion.  The author presents what is certainly the first real biography of a young man from a broken home, with above average intelligence who grows up determined to become "someone."  Oswald's discovery of Marxism at age 16 and how it turned a desperately lonely and impressionable young man into a political fanatic along with his entire sad and pathetic life is covered in such agonizing detail one is left feeling like some kind of sleazy voyeur.

Much of the rest of the book is dedicated to an equally detailed analysis of the evidence and then the  really hard part for me.  His absolutely brutal and relentless attack on the purveyors of conspiracy theories where he does not shrink from naming names.

Bugliosi doesn't want to just knock down the conspiracy theorists.  He wants to destroy them. He wants to hold them up for public ridicule and leave everyone laughing at them.  And for the most part he succeeds. This book doesn't settle with debunking them. It incinerates them in a nuclear fireball of facts coupled with irresistible logic and reason. 

Does this book have any weaknesses?  Yes, a rather big one.  The sheer size and exhaustive nature of the work all but guarantees that few will actually read it.  It took me a good six months to plow through the book and I have yet to meet anyone else who has read it.  Nor can I blame them. You would have to have a near obsession with the topic to attempt the work, that or perhaps be under an especially severe penance.

With that admitted caveat I will summarize the work and the conclusions I have reached on this subject after studying it for most of my life.

The idea that someone as important and consequential in the world as John F Kennedy could be cut down in broad daylight, in front of scores of witnesses, while surrounded by armed police and Secret Service guards, by a life long loser with a $20.00 mail order rifle and no help is incredibly hard to accept.  Even today I really don't want to believe it.  But the evidence indicates that such is exactly what happened.  Lee Harvey Oswald, a complete zero twisted by radical left wing politics who desperately wanted to get his name in the history books shot and killed the President of the United States. And he did it alone.

Is a conspiracy impossible?  No.  But in all frankness it must be said that there is not now, nor has there ever been, any credible evidence indicating one.  And the weight of evidence against conspiracy is so overwhelming that I believe the idea no longer bears serious discussion.

Ugg

As I noted in an email to Dr. Tighe, idiocy like this makes me want to just rip my toenails out by the roots.  Dr. Tighe's assessment was wonderfully pithy while hitting the nail on the head.  The gentleman in question is mad.

Surprise! Churchill was really the villain in World War II

If you want to read some of the clap trap that passes for revisionist history these days take a look at this. If this were submitted to me as a paper I would have given it an F. Apparently Hitler's role in World War II is so trivial that his name is worth mentioning only in so far as Churchill at some point made some (probably grudging) compliments with respect to his perseverance.

The really unfortunate thing is that there are people who read this crap and actually take is seriously.

HT: The Young Fogey

Some random thoughts on slavery, historical revisionism and judging the past

Tawser I think raises an interesting point in his comment on a previous thread that I would like to expand on a bit. Let us assume (for the sake of discussion) that human civilization as we tend to understand it, is about 6000 years old. In that period I know of no civilization or culture of any great size or significance that did not have in some form or other slavery or compulsory servitude. Indeed, it was not until the late 18th century that any sort of really organized opposition to slavery was formed. And it was not until the 19th century that in Western Civilization slavery become a seriously controversial institution, where by the close of the century public opinion had shifted overwhelmingly against it.

And finally it was not until the 20th century that slavery as we understand it, was more or less suppressed (at least legally) throughout most of the world. Some very notable countries did not abolish it until the 1960's and Mauritania did not do so (ineffectually) until 1981 and again in 2007. Yet the institution is alive and well there to this day and practiced more or less openly in a number of countries according to most human rights groups.

A point worth considering (as a student of history) is a warning I got as an undergraduate. Take great care before judging people of another era by our own standards. In most cases, especially if going back more than a century, it is all but impossible to truly grasp or understand what it was to live and breath in their time. Books and letters can not convey how it was to be raised with a particular worldview that we would find laughable or barbaric.

Any common peasant whom we might somehow transport from Medieval Europe into the 21st century, and convince him/her that our technology was not witchcraft would nonetheless be appalled at our civilization. Looking at our society he would almost certainly say that we had sold our souls to the devil and were damned. That we had regressed to a form of paganism that would shame the ancient Romans. And according to his worldview he would be right.

Those who argue that the Civil War was not about slavery are simply wrong. Such opinions fly in the face of a mountain of historical evidence left by those who organized and promoted the secessionist movement. Almost to the man they openly affirmed that they were acting in defense of their rights... specifically the right to property. One need only read the Declaration on the Causes and Justifications of Secession drawn up by the South Carolina Convention to see this. Several of the other states drew up similar documents. The speeches of southern statesmen similarly leave no doubt as to their motives. Read the Cornerstone Address by Vice-President Alexander Stephens as but one example. Their writings bear further evidence. The Confederate Constitution goes to great lengths to affirm a right to property in the form of human slaves and forbids any governmental act that might interfere with that right. Diaries are full of condemnations of the "abolitionist Republicans" and their interference in Southern property rights. Southerners accused the Republicans of attempting to incite “servile insurrection.” Jefferson Davis devoted the first part of his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" to a defense of African Slavery. I could go on at great length. But the bottom line is that to argue that slavery was not the root cause and issue of the war is patently indefensible from an historical perspective.

All of this being said, I am careful to differentiate my revulsion for slavery from a condemnation of those who practiced it. They were raised to believe, and not without some historical justification, that it was the normal order of things. The racist beliefs of the white Plantation Aristocracy were not especially unusual and were held in similar regard by most in the North. The idea of racial equality would have been seen as ludicrous if not actually insane at the time by almost everyone, including Abraham Lincoln. Those who orchestrated the revolt of 1861 were essentially conservatives resisting an attack on what they saw as the natural order of the world and also on their economic livelihood which was dependent on slave labor.

The question of how many Orthodox saints condemned slavery is an interesting one though not necessarily conclusive in any way. My guess is probably very few did so. As I noted above. The last one hundred and fifty years or so represent the first tick on the clock of human civilization in which there has been a massive shift of opinion against slavery. When one considers that in contrast to 6000 years or more of world history one is left with the inescapable conclusion that we are indeed radicals, revolutionaries and yes... liberals.

(Comments: I note several comments by Owen the Ochlophobist in the previous thread. In order to preserve continuity in the discussion please post your comments there.)

Celebrating Secession Without the Slaves

ATLANTA — The Civil War, the most wrenching and bloody episode in American history, may not seem like much of a cause for celebration, especially in the South.

And yet, as the 150th anniversary of the four-year conflict gets under way, some groups in the old Confederacy are planning at least a certain amount of hoopla, chiefly around the glory days of secession, when 11 states declared their sovereignty under a banner of states’ rights and broke from the union.

The events include a “secession ball” in the former slave port of Charleston (“a joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink,” says the invitation), which will be replicated on a smaller scale in other cities. A parade is being planned in Montgomery, Ala., along with a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.

In addition, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and some of its local chapters are preparing various television commercials that they hope to show next year. “All we wanted was to be left alone to govern ourselves,” says one ad from the group’s Georgia Division.

That some — even now — are honoring secession, with barely a nod to the role of slavery, underscores how divisive a topic the war remains, with Americans continuing to debate its causes, its meaning and its legacy.

“We in the South, who have been kicked around for an awfully long time and are accused of being racist, we would just like the truth to be known,” said Michael Givens, commander-in-chief of the Sons, explaining the reason for the television ads. While there were many causes of the war, he said, “our people were only fighting to protect themselves from an invasion and for their independence.”

Read the rest here.

Russian President Medvedev attacks historical revisionists and the cult of Stalin

President Medvedev has issued a stinging repudiation of the Soviet Union, condemning it as a totalitarian state that had deprived Russians of their basic rights.

He also condemned Joseph Stalin’s record of repression before Victory Day celebrations on Sunday marking the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, an event that many elderly Russians attribute to the leadership of the Soviet dictator.

The President’s outspoken verdict on Russia’s Soviet legacy contrasted sharply with that of his predecessor Vladimir Putin, who called the collapse of the Communist state “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. Mr Putin, the Prime Minister, has also been much more equivocal about Stalin.

Mr Medvedev said that Stalin had committed unforgivable crimes regardless of any progress made by the Soviet Union under his rule. In an interview with Izvestia newspaper that was also broadcast on state television, he rejected arguments that Stalin was responsible for the victory over Hitler in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.

“The Great Patriotic War was won by our people, not by Stalin or even the generals,” Mr Medvedev said. “Their role was undoubtedly very serious but, at the same time, the people won the war at the cost of great efforts and a huge number of lives.

“Stalin committed mass crimes against the people. And despite the fact that he worked a lot, despite the fact that under his leadership the country achieved successes, what was done to his own people cannot be forgiven.”

Read the rest here.

The Russian Orthodox Church also recently issued a strongly worded attack on the renewed veneration of Stalin.

Quote of the day

"Stalin is our father, our idol. The historical truth should be glorified."

-Sergei Obukhov (Russian Member of Parliament- Communist Party)

From a Newsweek article on the revival of Stalin's cult in Russia.

Erasing the "G" Word

God Bless America

Normally, I'm for keeping church and state out of each other's business as much as humanly possible, mostly to protect religion from government intrusion and idolatry, but also to protect us from zealots who think Jesus wears an American flag lapel pin.

Inserting "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance and adding "In God We Trust" to our money diminishes religious faith, which recognizes no national borders or economic systems. And it disrespects America's pluralistic promise.

But lately, I'm beginning to think that evangelical Christians who are complaining about the "War on God in America" have a point.

"There's a terrible movement to rewrite our history and obscure our faith," J. Randy Forbes, a Republican congressman from Virginia, told the National Review this week.

I don't know about a movement, but things are getting a bit suspicious.

Take the new $621 million capitol Visitor Center, which opened this week to mixed reviews. Among the critics were Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican who several weeks ago noticed that something was missing from a center's replica of the House Speaker's rostrum. The words "In God We Trust" -- engraved over the actual rostrum in 1962 -- were not included in the replica.

The center identified "E. Pluribus Unum" (rather than "In God We Trust") as the official national motto. Displays deleted these words from Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance; "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind..."; and the words "in the Year of Our Lord" from Article 7 of the Constitution.

Read the rest here.