ConvoTracker: McDonnell’s Confederate Hangover and the Strange Chimera of the Modern Right

Edmund Zagorin is a senior at the University of Michigan majoring in Philosophy and International Affairs & Public Policy.  He is currently a member of the Michigan Policy Debate team.  He is also an editor of the student publication Superplus and an active member of Detroit Urban Debate Education (DUDE), a non-profit organization that works to increase opportunities for debate education in the metro Detroit area.

Many are now familiar with Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s ‘Confederate History Month,’ announced in a proclamation which failed to mention slavery. After the ensuing backlash from pundits and bloggers, the Governor managed to offend antiracist observers a second time with his retraction, which excused the omission by suggesting that in crafting the original proclamation, he had “focused on the ones [he] thought were most significant for Virginia.” Slavery, one must suppose, did not make the cut.

Like previous Civil War controversies, from history textbook entries to the display of the Confederate flag, this most recent outburst has given rise to a flurry of controversy which is virtually incoherent to those unfamiliar with Southern culture. The Civil War ended one hundred and forty-five years ago. No one who was alive during the Civil War is still alive, and most that fought in it were ancient during the childhood of our generation’s grandparents. Yet, somehow, the memory of the Confederacy remains a live issue, re-appearing out of nowhere to shock a wide variety of groups across the political spectrum and leave the rest of us wondering: didn’t we already settle this?

There are many theories why, try as we might, the Confederate hangover refuses to fade. One, put forward by John Meacham, editor of Newsweek, examines how the narrative of the Confederacy has perennially resurfaced during times of social unease among Southern whites, writing that the selective memory of the heroic Lost Cause “…is one way for the right — alienated, anxious and angry about the president, health care reform and all manner of threats, mostly imaginary — to express its unease with the Age of Obama, disguising hate as heritage.”

The problem with slavery, from the perspective of contemporary populist conservatives, is that it interferes with their mythical notion of the Founder’s “liberty” and “freedom” as “inalienable rights.” While many conservatives are only too happy to compare Obama’s health plan to human bondage, when the topic turns to the actual historical antecedents for their comparisons, the right has little to say. Those who will protest and throw teabags to valorize the individualism of the Sons of Liberty on this coming Tax Day will likely not mention that the heroic authors of the Constitution considered other humans as disposable, beat-able, rape-able property. Slavery is always getting in the way of the myth.

Few have come to the myth’s aid as vocally as Haley Barbour, the conservative governor of Mississippi, who responded to the controversy with glib savagery, an untroubled derisiveness almost begging to be taken as folksy. Dismissing the proclamation as irrelevant, he defended McDonnell’s omission of slavery from Confederate heritage, pointing to similar resolutions passed in his own state and others. Commenting on the event as a whole, he drawled “…it is not significant. It’s trying to make a big deal out of something that doesn’t matter for diddly.”

Neo-confederate symbolism is a bellwether for the contemporary Right, lost adrift a sea of clashing ideologies, desperately trying to find their foundational Truth in tradition of all stripes. Governor Barbour’s apathy is symptomatic of his larger movement’s lack of interest in finding the barest semblance of coherence; freedom, slavery, patriot, traitor; the words all run together in revisionist double-speak. The contradictions are certainly manifold; between upholding Confederate heritage and militant patriotism, between demanding freedom and honoring slave-owners, between defending “war on terror” national security and fondly recalling the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, between valorizing unity and celebrating secessionism. Consider CNN Political Analyst Roland Martin’s editorial titled “Were Confederate soldiers terrorists?”, which directly compares the rhetoric and arguments for jihadist terrorism against the West (“they imposed their Western values on us, invaded our land and so on”) with arguments supporting the racist violence of Confederate soldiers (“they imposed their anti-slavery values on us, invaded our land, and so on) .

After years of bombastic Manichean rhetoric of good and evil, us versus them, it is somewhat revelatory, if only in a twisted way, to see those conservatives who defended the concept of ‘America’ to the exclusion of all else, once again take up the mantle of the secessionist enemy. Those who once demanded wiretaps and secret detention to keep America safe have now returned to the narrative of justified treason to destroy and overthrow the once unquestionably pure and necessary federal government. The irony would be delicious, if it weren’t so obviously pathetic.

–Edmund Zagorin