They use both MORE everywhere but the SOUTH (almost as if the Confederate Battle Flag represents something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and racists merely try to steal its popularity--but only in places it IS popular.) Burning crosses are racist violences signature element, and racist groups EVERYWHERE march bearing crosses and the US flag. Yet THAT flag still flies above the SC capitol--and EVERY states, along with the WHITE House (figures, with a name like that; just living there proves Obama an uncle tom,) all military bases and EVERY government building down to the local POST OFFICE. Heaven help us: Rac/pist Culture truly IS EVERYWHERE11!1

The thing is, or rather, things are, the South has produced far more and bigger stuff than slavery and Jim Crow, much of which is so much less reprehensible it remains an integral and honored part of America. No one graduates HS unaware Washington and Jefferson owned (many) slaves, but that is not the primary focus on them in history class because that was not their primary role in America. Our Revolutionary War commander and first president--the Father of Our Country--was a Southerner, as was the author of the Declaration of Independence and third president. So was the primary author of the Constitution and fourth president. In fact, all but ONE of our first FIVE presidents were, and The Mother of Presidents bore several more later. The South also gave us the American model for the US Bill of Rights and Congress, as well as our first public university (again thanks to Jefferson.) Not only Washington, but his cavalry commander Lighthorse Harry Lee was a Southerner, as was his son, who married the daughter of the adopted son that was the only child George Washington ever had: Were America a monarchy rather than democracy, Robert E. Lee would have been our third KING rather than "just" one of our greatest and most honorable generals. The one who called slavery a "moral and political evil" and even a "greater evil to the white man than to the black race," and also disagreed with secession, yet resigned his Union commission and led the Confederate army (to paraphrase Shakespeare) not because he loved the US less, but loved Virginia more.

ALL the above, you see, applies to Virginia ALONE; the REST of the Southern states have given the US their own unique valuable contributions, and continue. Which, at the nations founding, included MD: Washington DC itself is part of the Souths legacy. Just as during the Revolution and Civil War, most of our best generals remain Southern: The supreme Allied commanders of BOTH WW II theaters were Southerners (Texans, in fact, though Ike left Denison as a child and claimed KS,) as was Patton, the greatest field general the US or perhaps ANY nation ever produced. MacArthur was a Yankee, but all he ever did was retreat in disgrace as the Navy saved his bacon, wait for the Marines to reopen a beachhead, then have the Navy haul him back for "his" triumph. Still enjoy blues? Because that is a purely Southern creation as well; turns out blacks are an integral part of the Souths legacy, too, and not just (nor, again, even primarily) as victims. From Americas founding till Reconstruction the South was synonymous with US education and culture, whose sole Northern enclave was Boston and its immediate vicinity: Afterward it was a burned out ruin, and has remained little more ever since.

It is inevitable millions of Southerners--whether or not racist--resent the fall from revered founders and leaders who had always been the nations wealthiest states to reviled traitors and rebels that have been the most impoverished states ever since. You know Faulkner: Was he a racist or did he hate the Old South? Or maybe NEITHER? Sure, the South brought much of that on itself: But not all; no one forced the Union Army to treat even rebellious COUNTRYMEN far worse than they had FOREIGN INVADERS in every previous war. No one forced Radical Republicans to occupy and administer the beaten South like a foreign invader either; Lincoln even tried to STOP them (wtf ever happened to "with malice toward none, with charity for all"?) but with him gone even the Reconstruction plan Johnson stiffened to avoid trouble failed that goal so badly it got him impeached: The North wanted (more) BLOOD, and was not about to stopped by a trivial thing like the war ending. And yet Jim Crow? That was a NATIONAL disgrace, because within a DECADE of the Civil War Republicans authorized Jim Crow IN PERPETUITY and ended Reconstruction completely in exchange for Southerners letting them steal the election of 1876 from the Democrats: The war that killed more Americans than all others COMBINED accomplished NOTHING because the victors preferred power to justice.

States rights against federal abuse meant something then and still do (and no, that something is not racism:) Because Southerners like Patrick Henry insisted on that at the nations founding. Try explaining to foreigners why sex with a 17-year-old is legal SOME places, and rape in others. Perhaps the best safeguard against mobocracy is that "If you don't like, it leave!" is largely VIABLE in the US, and not in the sense of "if you can get a passport and visa, then learn a completely different language." Pack your stuff in a trailer, shake that redneck hellholes dust off your shoes, and drive to some more enlightened (i.e. blue) state like WI or CA. States authority cannot trump individual rights any more than federal authority can state rights, but state rights remain valuable, valid and vital. The South simply fought the wrong war for the right reason, because everyone who thinks the majority of Southerners who lacked an inflation-adjusted $130,000 to drop on just ONE slave nonetheless died to preserve their "right" to something impossible is kidding themselves.