Sometimes it just blows my mind...

In all the fallout of The Blame Game (tm) that the various people go through to justify their existence, nothing blows my mind more than the the vapid untruths they broadcast to try to a)defend their voyeurism and b) re-shape history.

The latest one? Several people and their buddies are passing around a blog wherein the blogger writing it is thrilled that Beauvior, Jefferson Davis's final home before he died, was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. Including the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library. See, in this guy's mind, JD was a traitor, he committed treason. So having the home of a traitor wiped out is justifiable. HaHa. He phrases it much nicer, couched in semi-civilized terms, but basically, he and his cohorts think this is a grand idea. Because not only did JD become a turncoat, but he led the nation in a bloody civil war that cost thousands of lives.

Yeah, it did.

But in the same mindset - I suppose we should level the 45th Infantry Division's museum in Oklahoma City. See, its totally dedicated to the "spoils of war" that the Division looted after Adolph Hitler and Germany fell to the Allies. Hitler's table linens, his cape, many of his personal items are in the museum. Thousands of Americans died in Germany before the Division got there. There's a chapel, too. Dedicated the victims of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Treblinka and the other gas chambers of the Final Solution.

Using this dude's mindset, we should dismantle the Holocaust Museum. And the Vietnam Wall.

Because, dude, thousands of people died in WWII and Vietnam, too.

According the government of Mexico - Travis was a traitor. But we have the Alamo, praising his last stand. Travis was on Mexican soil, in outright rebellion against the Mexican government. The USA stood by and didn't get involved because it wasn't an American cause. The USA let Travis, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Susanna & Angelina Dickerson and the others fight a losing battle and didn't lift a finger to help. Of course, once Texas was theirs, they glorified the fallen heroes. But using this dude's mindset again, Travis, Crockett and Bowie were traitors. So the Alamo should be dismantled, too.

Beauvior was a beautiful home belonging to a family who supported a cause they believed in. The people who went to war behind that leader BELIEVED in that cause. They died for that cause. When the war was over and the cost was counted, both sides still truly believed in their cause. Who is this blogger to negate or deny that their true belief in what they held dear was wrong?

The blogger is likening Jeff Davis to Saddam Hussein. Apparently, he didn't pay enough attention to history in school. Slavery was the catalyst used to whip up Northern sympathy. But the real issue of the Civil War was STATES RIGHTS. Did a state have the right to sell their goods and services to anyone, including EXCLUDING their sales to other states? A friend once told me that if you look at every war in history, the underlying cause is ALWAYS economics. The South had cotton. The North had cotton mills. When the North began undercutting the price of cotton to the point that Southern cotton growers thought unacceptable, the South started selling ALL their cotton to England and other countries. The north BLOCKADED Southern harbors to PREVENT those sales. Because the North, with no cotton to mill or sell - was going broke.

Slavery was a terrible injustice to a lot of people. But comparing Saddam Hussein to Jefferson Davis is wrong. SH ordered the murder of 30,000 Kurds in a chemical warfare experiment just to see if it would work, plus he simply didn't like the Kurds. Thousands of others were rounded up and murdered if they opposed his regime.

Jefferson Davis wasn't trying to wipe anyone off the face of the earth, just to see if it could be done - he was fighting for what he believed to be his country - a country where taxation without representation, the right to pursue business without the government taking it over, and the right for states to decide their own issues in an autonomous way were of paramount importance. He felt the Constitution Of The United States was being blatantly violated and he went to war over it. And a lot of his fellow Southerners felt the same way. They knew people would die. They knew slavery would become an issue. They knew all of this and they went to war anyway.

I'm not Southern. In fact, in many ways, I don't even understand some of the idealogy of the Southerners who still believe JD was right. States rights was an issue of contention even when I lived down there in the South.

And lest we forget, one of the framers of the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights...was a slave owner named Thomas Jefferson, whom Americans owe a debt of gratitude. Why is okay to have Monticello, built and farmed by slaves for TJ's entire life, and not have Beauvior?

Hiding our history, gloating when its destroyed, is a hell of a lot more irresponsible than showing the public historically significant facts, as ugly as they are. And by seeing them, we can only pray that such a thing may never be repeated.