Virginia Republican Governors And Verbal Disconnect

Is there something in the water in Richmond, or is it just come kind of casual disregard for thinking before talking? One word, "macaca," probably did in the previous Republican governor of Virginia, and nobody really even knows what the heck it means. But if it can be taken as a racial slur, it will. Now newly-installed governor Bob McDonnell seems to have joined the parade.

Fortunately, it's not election time, and Virginia chief executive, Republican Bob McDonnell, has plenty of time to get this flap behind him. It's completely possible for a Southern governor to celebrate Confederate history honorably and fairly. But to ignore the issue of slavery in such a celebration is naive, foolish, and as could be expected, offensive to the descendants of former slaves. An Obama-style apology doesn't have to be included. And the issue is a fine way of bringing up how far we've come since the Civil War and Jim Crow. After all, it was the Republican Party that ended slavery, and Southern Democrats who fought tooth and nail to preserve Jim Crow.

America is now in the throes of a titanic battle between the forces of big government and those who oppose the extension of the power of the central government to control all aspects of our lives. In a more faraway time, that battle centered around states' rights, a rallying cry of slaveholders, and later of segregationists. Today, the rights of the states are at the heart of the great debate, and leaving slavery out of a celebration of the Confederacy only stirs up the left's conflation of states' rights with racism.

Nobody needs to work very hard to convince me that this was not Governor McDonnell's intention. But why hand the liberals the ammunition to shoot us with? How could a smart politician not realize that slavery is such an inherent part of the story of America, the Civil War, and the ongoing striving for the perfection embodied in the Declaration and the Constitution as to be impossible to ignore or sweep under the rug? We know very well that any rhetorical excess or omission by the liberals will be ignored or underplayed by the MSM. But we know equally well that one unintentional, but major slip on the part of a Republican will be pounced on immediately as a sign of hatred and racism. And if McDonnell didn't know that from his reading of history, he should certainly have been able to see it as it has been used very recently against the Tea Party movement.

Patrick Buchanan defends McDonnell by pointing out that General Sherman was the big bad boy of the Civil War. Now how is that helpful? The tu quoque argument accomplishes nothing, and rehashing the excesses of any Union Civil War general does nothing to fend off the argument that most of them did what they did, at least partially, to end slavery. Pointing out Lincoln's statement that he would not free a single slave if it meant the Union could be saved serves no purpose either. It certainly doesn't say anything about Lincoln's alternative plans to end slavery by some means other than a bloody war among brothers.

McDonnell's tribute to the Confederacy has much to recommend it. Certainly, the argument remains that if the federal government becomes tyrannical, there is nothing in the Constitution specifically prohibiting the states from seceding from the union. Certainly, the Confederates had a strong argument that the rights of the states to determine their own future within Constitutional bounds and without interference from the central government, and that argument is alive and well today (as it should be, I might add).

Many--perhaps most--Southerners fought for their sovereign states and their concept of freedom during the Civil War. Few were actually slave-holders. Many actually opposed slavery on moral and religious grounds. But to deny (or simply ignore) that slavery was a major element of the War is to deny simple reality. Even economic analyses of the Civil War that pit the industrial north against the agricultural south cannot ignore the simple economics of slavery, let alone its moral and religious implications. To praise the Confederacy without reference to slavery is to deny the struggle to restore the Union where slavery was prohibited. West Virginia would still be part of Virginia if it were not for this dichotomy (Sen. Robert Byrd and the KKK notwithstanding).

Good men can fight in the name of a bad cause. And so it was for many Southerners. But expecting people to believe that slavery was not part of the Southern cause is just plain nonsensical. Ignoring slavery in a speech about the Confederacy while failing to praise the progress that has been made, particularly over the past forty years, was a stupid omission and a failure of vision. McDonnell could have used the opportunity to both praise the South for its embrace of racial equality, while pointing out that one of his predecessors as governor of Virginia was the descendant of former slaves.

What you and I may say to each other, or even to a limited audience about the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and current race relations has little national effect. Most of our fellows discussing the topic are of like mind, or at least recognize that we are discussing a fairly narrow aspect of a particular issue. This is not true for a major elected official who has just come off a surprise victory running on the issues of smaller government, independence of the states, and unity. In any major address, such a person must think carefully about what he is saying, and whether there is something in (or missing from) his address that would offend a major portion of the electorate. McDonnell's praise of the Confederacy without any mention of slavery was offensive to blacks, and frankly quite mystifying to people like me.

McDonnell has, shall we say, revised and extended his remarks. It will be used against him in the future, but probably won't have much effect if he turns Virginia's economy around ahead of that of the national economy. I hope that McDonnell has learned something about speaking entirely benignly about the Confederacy as if anyone else might not have the same warm feelings. I don't believe for one minute that McDonnell is a racist. But for God's sake, governor, please don't make any more obvious mistakes in a major address. It's one thing to use the word "macaca" and have it used against you as a racist statement. But it's quite another to open up a highway of criticism (some of it deserved, most of it not) by ignoring an issue as big as slavery.

I can think highly of Robert E. Lee for his loyalty to Virginia and the independence of the states without pretending that slavery was such a minor issue in the Civil War as to deserve being left out of the dialogue about the Confederacy. I can deeply admire the Founding Fathers without ignoring the fact that slavery was already risking the existence of the new republic at the very time of its founding. But if I make the mistake of omission that McDonnell made--so what? I'm not a governor of a state that is only now recovering from the after-effects of the Civil War, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement of the 60s.