« The Call | Main | Freedom, Tolerance and Justice »

Agitators

Once upon a time there was a country and a people beset by war. Thousands of people died in the war, civilians and soldiers. In the end, the country was occupied by a foreign power. The defeated army fled the invading army from the battlefield with their weapons in hand and ran into the country to mingle with the civilian population. One of the defeated generals began to form a group to fight back as an insurgency against the occupying power. This group took the form of a secret society, one that had the direct support of part of the population.

This group began to terrorize the countryside, harassing, threatening and killing members of the populace that supported the occupying army and its new rules which flew in the face of cultural values that the people of the defeated country had lived with for years.

Eventually, the occupying army “pulled out” The secret society thrived, and many more people died. For years afterward, it was simply unsafe for certain people to walk in certain parts of town. Public killings and bombings of public places were common and almost never persecuted, as the secret society had infiltrated its members into the police force and into the judiciary.

So were talking about Iraq again, right? Oh no dear reader, this is you and me I’m talking about. This is Mississippi and the rest of the Confederate States of America. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest didn’t like the fact that his country had been defeated, and he and his band of “dead enders” created an organization called the “Ku Klux Klan”. They terrorized the newly emancipated black population and anyone who supported them. For 100 years, black men were lynched with disturbing regularity in the south. General Forrest wrapped himself in the flag and perverted the bible and sold his secret society as a way for the men who had been defeated to maintain their honor and sacred heritage.

He used that platform of hate to justify terror against a civilian population to take revenge for his defeat at the hands of a superior army on the battlefield.

For 100 years after the end of the Civil War, the Klan was tolerated in southern society. That is, until a social movement began to empower the African American population with voting rights. This infuriated the Klan. When the “freedom riders” or “outside agitators” began to come into the south to register voters, the Klan took action and intimidated and killed people who volunteered to help bring dignity to the lives of people who were oppressed.

Now, what kind of person would look at the Klan and say they were justified because of the illegal occupation of their country by the foreign troops? What kind of person would say that the African Americans who were killed by the Klan didn’t deserve our protection? What kind of person would look at men like James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner and say that they are the very reason that the Klan exists? And that if we wanted the Klan to go away, we had better leave the south and not antagonize them? What kind of person would say that church bombings were in retaliation for our lack of respect for the culture of the south?

What kind of person would turn their back on black people in the south?

It’s the same kind of person that thinks the insurgents are justified in killing American troops and Iraqi Civilians.

It’s the same kind of person who sneers at the idea of Iraqi Democracy since they “know” that not only is 'democracy a sham', the Arabs don’t really want it and besides, "who are we to impose it them'?

What kind of person would turn their back on black people in the south? It’s The same kind who turns their back on the Iraqi people and their struggle to be free.

Nathan Bedford Forest wasn’t justified in starting the Klan, and Zawahiri and Bin Laden aren’t justified in starting Al-queda, and to support their ideology by justifying it in those terms is to take steps to get measured for your very own white sheet and pointy dunce cap.

You don’t think so? When you hear a leftist talk about the war in Iraq replace the term “Iraqi” with “darkie” in their rhetoric and see if you recognize the sound of bigotry in those “oh so thoughtful, considerate and caring” people of the left. In my ears and eyes the people posting on Democratic Underground don’t sound a whole lot different from George Wallace and his pack of thugs in the 1960’s.

When you see men dressed like this:

Try to remember that the only difference between these guys and other men that dress like this

Is that the former cant manage to get enough starch in their sheets to make a proper peak in their dunce caps. In every way that can be measured, both these groups are the same, with the same goals. Notice that both groups hide their faces in shame. In poker, they call that a “tell”.

The Klan didn’t go away because of sanctions and peace treaties. It went away under force of arms and consistent work by the FBI and law enforcement that made it a priority to bring the terror to an end. It went away because the people who once looked the other way and helped enable the daily bigotry of their lives began to stop supporting the ideas that lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. It became socially unacceptable to be a bigot the day that television broadcast pictures of people being hit with fire hoses and set upon by dogs by the police. The ugliness of bigotry was brought into the living rooms and for the first time and people were repulsed by the inhumanity of it. When that happened, the Klan began to find itself out of favor. 40 years later the Klan is no longer a threat to the lives of most people and in most parts of the country, black people participate in government and daily life at a level unheard of for the people of the 1960s, and we are all better for it.

Brave men and women died in the process of bringing civil rights to the people of the south. If “all men are created equal” then the concept of civil rights cannot stop at our border. Our world is too small to look the other way when other people are being slaughtered in the streets.

Liberals once looked at the Klan and knew it as a true enemy of mankind. I wonder how different the world would be if the force of western liberalism was to understand that the Klan has simply moved its headquarters to the middle east. I wonder how much faster the war would be over and how many fewer people who have to die if the left were to understand that there is only one world where the rights of minorities, homosexuals, jews, catholics, agnostics and women are assured and protected by law. Heres a clue to my leftist friends, its not the world in which the insurgents win against the "Imperialist Americans". You may not like it here lefties, but were the only game you got, you might as well try to make it work instead of helping the very people who want to kill you just for sport.

One day the people of Iraq will look back on their struggle to be free and they will take an accounting of those who helped and those who stood blocking the schoolhouse door. They day will come when the left hangs its head in shame for its empowering of the modern day Klan.

(Update: Cindy Sheehan can now count on Klan member David Duke for support. Thanks for illustrating my point perfectly Dave! )

Yeah, I know what you mean, I feel like I need a shower after I visit his site....

Posted @ August 13, 2005 12:19 AM | Current Affairs

Posted by: Sissy Willis at August 13, 2005 06:55 AM

Posted by: Aviatrix at August 13, 2005 09:08 AM

Posted by: David St Lawrence at August 13, 2005 08:56 PM

Posted by: nativeaz05 at August 14, 2005 05:14 PM

Posted by: Rider at August 16, 2005 05:01 AM