Confederates Weren’t Patriots, They Were Traitors

 There are over one thousand seven hundred monuments to the Confederacy in America today, from the four corners of the continental United States to most of the states in between, and including several of the former Union states. The Confederate flag is commonly found almost exclusively in many white homes and businesses, as stickers on cars and trucks, and even as part of the Mississippi state flag.

This is notable because America is the only nation today where those who fought a civil war against that nation are memorialized and even glorified with government approval and at the taxpayers’ expense. Those who support keeping Confederate monuments on public lands commonly make the argument that Confederates were Americans. Below is one such example of the argument:

The [Confederate] flag in dispute flew over the forces of the Confederate States of America, not the Confederate States of the South. The invocation of “America” in the name of the seceded nation was no accident, no casual holdover. It was deliberate. They were us and we were them — all Americans.

The founders of the Confederacy understood themselves as the real Americans, as those who had kept faith with the real American Constitution, as opposed to the compromise-laden failure enacted in 1789. They cast themselves as the true Americans, the true inheritors of the Revolutionary legacy of ordered liberty and political sovereignty. They were the champions of liberty, standing firm against the usurpations of the Northern hordes.

— Pittsburgh Post Gazette

The great majority of reactions to the preceding argument will be either positive or negative. Those who want to preserve the monuments and the display of the Confederate flag will agree, and those who want the monuments and flag off public grounds and off the taxpayers’ hands will disagree. Very few indeed will have held both opinions. I’m one of those who have.

As I’ve often written, I grew up in the very deepest of the Deep South, in the Mississippi Delta. The cemetery at the local Southern Baptist church holds the bones of my direct family line all the way back to 1870. I was steeped in southern culture which by its very nature includes the glorification of the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy. I sang loud-and-proud what was until 2016 the unofficial theme song of the Ole Miss Rebels, “Dixie.”

To most White people raised in the Deep South, that “Lost Cause” isn’t about slavery at all, but about their own freedom (yeah, ‘freedom’), being their own nation with their own laws and way of life, no matter the cost to others. Many of them identified strongly with William Wallace in the movie, Braveheart, for that very reason.

As a general rule, when in conflict with others, always try to bear in mind that the other person honestly believes himself or herself to be good and right. I’ve found it’s usually more effective in such discussions to acknowledge the other person’s earnestness and good intentions, for doing so tends to lead to more respectful and productive debate, even if you believe in your heart that the other person is as racist as the day is long.

This is called diplomacy, what Churchill pithily described as “the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”

Perhaps it might be beneficial to use the metaphor of a firearm. If the weapon itself is one’s desire to change the other person’s mind, and if diplomacy is the ability to aim, then historical fact and data that disprove rank assumption are the ammunition.

Here, then, is your ammo when it comes to discussions about Confederate monuments and the Confederate flag:

“The Confederates weren’t traitors — they were Americans!”
The response to this claim is the definition of treason which, as defined by Cornell Law School, refers to anyone who, owing allegiance to America, wages war against America. Every Confederate soldier was by definition committing treason. Are we then to have monuments to traitors, or fly their flag in places of honor?

“How could Confederate soldiers be traitors? The Confederacy had declared its own independence!”
The response here is even simpler: “Since when should a nation’s taxpayers pay for monuments to another country who waged war on that nation, much less fly the offending nation’s flag in places of honor?”

“The Civil War wasn’t about slavery — it was about states’ rights!” According to leaders during the Civil War, it was very much about slavery:

• Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, in what has since been called his “Cornerstone Speech”: “[Slavery] was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”
• Mississippi Articles of Secession: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world . . . There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”
• President Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address: “All knew that [slavery] was somehow the cause of the war.”

“We know slavery was wrong, and the Confederacy was wrong. Those monuments and the flag are only there to educate us, to remind us of our past and our heritage.”
Actually, no. A spike in the number of monuments occurred during two distinct periods. The first coincided with the enactment of Jim Crow laws in 1877 and lasted through the end of World War II, with most situated on courthouses and government land. The second period began in the mid-1950s and lasted through the late 1960s. But two landmark events transpired concurrently: Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Apologists claim such were erected on school grounds to help educate children, but the fact that so many immediately followed the Brown decision invalidates such a claim.

In other words, the erection of the monuments was quite literally an effort to preserve white supremacy by providing grand-scale tributes in prominent locations to serve as physical reminders of white supremacy. Sadly, the building of such monuments has continued through the present day, with at least fifteen being built since 2010, two of which were on courthouse grounds.

“Why do you have to keep shoving slavery and Jim Crow in my face? I wasn’t even alive then!”
This is perhaps the most common retort, and is usually made in frustration or even anger. Diplomacy is key here.

• The proper response is to ask in return why they insist on reminding Blacks of the slavery and Jim Crow laws that were forced upon them. After all, that’s what those monuments and that flag were meant to do in the first place, to remind Blacks of slavery, Jim Crow, and white supremacy.

Most White Confederate sympathizers in the Deep South believe in the Confederacy’s “Lost Cause” ethos, but it’s more of a mythos. Southern hospitality is real, but the racist tyranny the Deep South imposed and still attempt to impose is just as real.

There are nations — Russia, China, and France come to mind — which still celebrate past tyrannies wherein so many of their own populations were killed or enslaved. But there are more nations —Italy, Uganda, Cambodia, Germany, and many others — that learned to not glorify tyranny, to not celebrate the grand-scale crimes against humanity of their respective pasts. Our nation’s history clearly shows that that we have thus far chosen the former example.

Fortunately, times change and societies change, and such choices can never be written in stone. Most Americans acknowledge slavery as this nation’s original sin and greatest crime against humanity, even without the added iniquity of a century of Jim Crow laws. We do not look wistfully back at the Japanese Internment or the Chinese Exclusion Act. We no longer see General Custer as a hero, but as someone who received richly-deserved comeuppance during the Native American genocide.

Why, then, does a significant portion of the American population to this day still lionize those who literally committed treason in order to preserve and perpetuate white supremacy? America has learned to reject the crimes, but has not yet learned to reject those who committed those crimes.

It’s long past time that our nation came to grips with the prejudice that to this day still poisons our national discourse. The Confederate flag and monuments to Confederate leaders need to be removed from public property. More importantly, the government needs to ensure that every schoolchild is shown that even by the laws of the time, those who fought for the Confederacy were not heroes, but traitors.

Yes, traitors.

And that those traitors fought to preserve their “right” to own men, women, and children as property, and to do with those slaves as they would, up to and including rape and murder. No, such men must not be lionized. Even Lee, as cruel and brutal as we now know him to have been, knew there should be no monuments to him, or to anyone of the Confederacy which had been defeated on the field of battle. When asked to attend a meeting concerning such monuments, Lee replied, as documented by New York Times:

I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.

What new weapons on show at huge parade say about China's military strength

 Tessa Wong - BBC News, Asia Digital Reporter

China has unveiled a range of new weapons, drones and other military hardware in a massive parade that many see as a clear message to the United States and its allies.

The event saw Xi Jinping host more than 20 foreign heads of state, including Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, both of whom rely on China for economic support and more.

It was a display of Xi's growing power on the world stage, and of China's military prowess - the show included the "Guam killer" missile, the "loyal wingman" drone and even robotic wolves.

Beyond the hype and shiny new weaponry, what did we learn?

Here are our five takeaways.

1. How well can China deploy its weapons?

What was clear from Wednesday's display was that China has been able to quickly produce a diverse range of weapons.

Ten years ago, the military technology they put on show tended to be "rudimentary copies" of far more advanced equipment invented by the US, notes Michael Raska, assistant professor in the military transformations programme at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

But this parade revealed a more innovative and diverse range of weapons, particularly drones and missiles - a reflection of how advanced their defence-industrial complex has become.

China's top-down structure and significant resources enable it to churn out new weapons faster than many other countries, points out Alexander Neill, an adjunct fellow with the Pacific Forum.

It can also produce them in huge quantities, giving it a battlefield advantage where it can overwhelm the enemy.

"China has the ability to churn out munitions, ships, all these platforms... the state can just make these directives and off they go," Mr Neill says.

But how well can China's military integrate these weapons systems?

"They can show off these flashy advanced platforms, but are they organisationally agile to use them in the way they want to?" Dr Raska asks.

He adds that it won't be easy because the Chinese military is massive and untested, given it has not been involved in a significant war for decades.

2. China is focusing on missiles to counter the US

China has rolled out plenty of missiles, including some new variants.

These include the Dongfeng-61, which is capable of carrying multiple warheads in its nosecone; the Dongfeng-5C intercontinental ballistic missile which could be launched from northern China and hit the US; and the "Guam Killer" Dongfeng-26D intermediate range missile, which could hit key US military bases in Guam.

There were also several hypersonic anti-ship missiles such as the YJ-17 and YJ-19, which can fly very fast and maneuver unpredictably to evade anti-missile systems.

There's a reason for this focus on missiles.

China has been developing missiles and rocket forces as a key part of its deterrence strategy - and to counter the US' naval superiority, Mr Neill says.

The US Navy is unrivalled in the world with the largest fleet of aircraft carriers and carrier strike groups - China still lags behind on that count.

But, Mr Neill points out, some in the Western defence community are increasingly arguing that these strike groups are vulnerable, as they are effectively "sitting ducks" for any missile attacks.

Beijing is not only strengthening deterrence, but is also creating a "second strike capability," he says - a country's ability to launch a retaliatory strike if attacked.

Other notable weapons included the much-talked about LY-1 laser weapon, which is basically a giant laser that could burn or disable electronics or even blind pilots; and an assortment of fifth-generation stealth fighter jets including the J-20 and J-35 planes.

3. China is going all the way with AI and drones

There were a wide range of drones, some of them AI-powered, but the one that grabbed eyeballs was the AJX-002 giant submarine drone.

Also known as an extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle (XLUUV) measuring up to 20m (65ft) in length, it could possibly do surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

China also showed off its GJ-11 stealth attack drone, dubbed the "loyal wingman", which can fly alongside a manned fighter jet and aid it in its attacks.

Besides an array of conventional aerial drones, there were also "robotic wolves". Experts say these could be used for a variety of tasks from reconnaissance and sweeping for mines, to hunting down enemy soldiers.

The drone display shows a clear direction that China wants to take with its military strategy, where it "not only wants to augment, but replace traditional structures".

It has clearly taken lessons from the Ukraine war, where one can "just throw drones at the enemy" to wear down their defences, Dr Raska notes.

"Alacrity in the kill chain matters," adds Mr Neill, pointing out that in a fast-moving battle, decisions have to be made in "nanoseconds" to defeat the enemy and gain the upper hand – which is what AI can do.

Many countries are still concerned about deploying AI in their military systems and asking "how comfortable are we in putting AI in the kill chain", he adds.

But China is very comfortable with that, Dr Raska says. "They believe they can control AI. They are going all the way to integrate it into their systems."

4. China may have the technology, but the US still has an edge

The parade clearly shows that China is catching up quickly with the US in its military technology, and has the resources to build up a huge arsenal of weapons.

But the US still maintains an edge in terms of operations, experts say.

The US military "excels" because there is a "bottom-up" culture where units on the ground can make decisions as the situation evolves and alter their fighting strategies, Dr Raska notes. This makes them more agile in a battle.

China, on the other hand, is "top-down" where "they can have flashy platforms and systems but they will not move a finger until they receive an order from the top", he adds.

"The Chinese think its technology that creates deterrence. They believe that will deter the US... but at the operational level, there have been instances which show they may not be as good as they say they are", Dr Raska says, pointing to recent encounters such as an incident last month when a Chinese warship rammed one of its own smaller vessels as they confronted the Philippine coast guard.

5. The parade was a weapons sales pitch – and a chance to show the US a united front

With the leaders of more than two dozen countries invited to the event, the parade of weapons and tanks was essentially a giant sales pitch on Chinese arms to potential buyers, Mr Neill points out.

Some of the countries in attendance such as Myanmar are already known to be buying huge quantities of Chinese weapons. But the chance to sell to new customers or increase orders is how the Chinese government can extend its influence globally, Dr Raska notes.

The parade was attended by some heads of state while most Western leaders shied away from it

Among the key clients were those standing front and centre with Xi – Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.

The three presented a united front as they walked to the parade together and stood on stage.

That was a message to the US, Mr Neill says: if America wanted to really challenge them it would mean "fighting them on several potential theatres at the same time – the Korean peninsula, Taiwan Straits, and Ukraine".

"And if you consider it, putting pressure on the US on all three domains, it may fail in one of those theatres."

当世界失去了道德会怎样？

 编者：当历史的画卷在人们面前徐徐展开的时候，有多少人能够停下来，回顾过去，然后问自己，也问大家，“这真是我们想要的去的方向吗”？

法律是社会的底线，道德在法律之上。如果道德水平得到提高，那么人们的行为准则也更趋于善，或者说更接近于人性光辉的一面，所谓“仓廪实而知礼节”。与之相反，道德水平的跌落，也就让人们的行为更接近于人性恶的一面，所谓“末世乱相”也就是这个意思。

民选的特朗普政府，和侵略者普京站在一起的画面告诉我们：这个世界失去了道德。民主的本意在于对人民意志的尊重。它首先发源于对于人民经济利益的尊重，而后引申为对人民政治权力的尊重。由此，也引发出“对一个人的不公，就是对所有人的不公”。当所有人都会为某一个人遭受的不公而愤慨的时候，“强权就是公理”这个历史上不断重复的人类的灾难，就走到了尽头。“强权不能战胜公理”，就可能成为事实。这是社会道德的呼唤，也是二战后国家秩序的基石。

而当美国和俄国站在一起的时候，这个基石就不再存在了。它代表着“强权就是公理”。我杀了你的人，占了你的地，那又怎样？只要你打不过我，你就只能签下城下之盟。而当强权又重回人间的时候，人类的灾难也就又会重新开始。

强权的背后，是贪婪。这世界上最不缺的恐怕就是人性的贪婪了。当强权看到它又可以为所欲为的时候，大大小小的强权就会又开始摩拳擦掌，跃跃欲试了。这个世界失去道德会怎样？会变得更加不安宁，更加危险，也更加黑暗。

Trump has betrayed Ukraine, making the world immeasurably more dangerous

 Opinion by Daniel Hannan

This is a straightforward defeat. A defeat, not just for Ukraine, but for the values which the Anglosphere and its allies have upheld since 1941, to the immense benefit of the human race. Aggression is being rewarded. Borders are being changed by force. A brittle dictatorship has defeated a Western alliance with a combined economy forty times larger than its own. The prestige of the democracies is suffering a Suez-level hit.

As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska – a venue surely proposed by the Kremlin, both to demonstrate that Putin is again welcome in the United States and to suggest that there is nothing terribly new about ceding territory – all the momentum is with the Russian leader.

From the moment he took office, Trump has been wheedling and conciliatory with Putin, aggressive and bullying with Volodymyr Zelensky. Who can say what animates him? Perhaps he can’t forgive Zelensky for his cameo role in l’affaire Hunter Biden; perhaps, as conspiracy theorists claim, Putin has kompromat on him; or perhaps it is simply Trump’s customary deference towards dictators.

Frankly, it doesn’t much matter. Whatever his motives, Trump has behaved exactly as a Russian asset would, not only vis-à-vis Ukraine, but also by making aggressive territorial claims against Denmark and threatening Canada with annexation. His tariff policies have caused as much disruption to Western economies as his sanctions have to Russia. Putin could not have wished for more.

We do not know how much has already been settled, and there are still details to be hammered out. But the broad outlines of the proposed ceasefire deal can be glimpsed in leaks to both American and Russian media.

Putin will hang on to most of what he has seized – not just the territories he occupied in 2014, but many of the lands he has conquered since 2022 and even, according to some briefings, those parts of Donetsk that are currently under Ukrainian control. Sanctions will be eased, and we might even see more economic collaboration between the US and Russia than before 2014. In any event, the US will stop supplying weapons to Ukraine.

These concessions constitute a colossal Russian victory, regardless of what is decided on Ukraine’s Nato aspirations, formal recognition of Russian sovereignty in Crimea or precisely where the lines are frozen.

To understand the scale of the West’s defeat, we need to remember why we were backing Ukraine in the first place. Not because we thought that Zelensky was brave or handsome or even particularly democratic. Not because we believed that Ukrainians were kinder or more amusing than their Russian cousins. Not even because, long before 2022, Russia had been buzzing our airspace and overseeing cyberattacks against our infrastructure and had, on two occasions, committed acts of war against us when it ordered its operatives to carry out lethal attacks on British soil (against Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and, unsuccessfully, against Sergei Skripal in 2018).

No, we are backing Ukraine because it is the wronged party. We are sending it weapons because it was attacked without provocation by a neighbour to whom it presented no threat. We are training its soldiers because, when Ukraine agreed to hand over its nuclear arsenal in 1994, it did so in exchange for an explicit promise that its independence would be respected within its existing borders – a promise guaranteed by Britain, the United States and (never forget) Russia.

The idea that countries should not help themselves to slices of territory is not some ancient and immutable principle. On the contrary, it dates in its current form from exactly 84 years ago, August 1941, when Churchill and Roosevelt met in Newfoundland and agreed to the Atlantic Charter, a set of rules that they wanted to shape the post-war world. Land should not be annexed by force, nor borders altered without the consent of local people. Aggression should not be rewarded. Raw materials should be accessible on world markets and sea-lanes kept open, so that there would be less incentive to invade a neighbour. Democracy and self-determination should be encouraged over autocracy.

When these ideals were proclaimed, the United States was still neutral. Four months later, after Pearl Harbor, the Atlantic Charter informed the war aims of the Allies. Its principles went on to shape the UN Charter and the Nato alliance. It is true that they were sometimes violated, for we live in an imperfect world. But they at least remained the aspiration. Until now.

It cannot be sufficiently stressed that our interest in Ukraine was to uphold the international order under which mankind had flourished since 1945. It was never about Zelensky, however gallant his initial response to the invasion.

Trumpians like to point to corruption and illiberalism in Ukraine as though they invalidate the premise of our assistance. But our 1994 guarantee was never conditional on who was in government, or what kind of government it was.

There is nothing new here. Poland was hardly a model democracy when Britain guaranteed its sovereignty in March 1939. Józef Piłsudski’s 1926 coup had created an autocratic regime which, while it stopped well short of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany or the USSR, none the less harassed dissidents and censored media.

In much the same way, Ukraine today, while nowhere near Russian levels of despotism, is far from being a free country. This should not surprise us. As Roger Scruton used to say, the worst sin of communism was to destroy civil associations, making it hard to build the trust on which an open society must rest.

Over the past three weeks, Zelensky’s international credit has fallen almost as low as his domestic ratings. Crowds have been protesting against his decision to move against an anti-corruption body after it pointed to irregularities in some state contracts.

Few things are worse for a country’s morale than the sense that its leaders are enriching themselves, for corruption in wartime means funds that were supposed to go into artillery are disappearing into bank accounts in Cyprus.

I was unsurprised by the protests. I have watched over three years as Zelensky has weakened local government and purged critical mayors. A case might be made in wartime for cracking down on pro-Russian parties; but he cracked down almost as hard on the pro-Western parties.

Eighteen months ago, I was supposed to be sharing a platform in the US with the former Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, but he was banned from attending. I wanted to make more of a fuss, but MPs from his party begged me not to, as they did not want to hurt Ukraine’s international image.

None of this should make the slightest difference to our policy. But I fear that it will, because support for Ukraine has been presented as a goodies-and-baddies issue rather than a question of defending territorial integrity and national sovereignty. We somehow seem to find those aims sterile, dull and inadequate.

Just as Tony Blair once claimed in a party conference speech that we had joined the Second World War to end Nazism (when in fact we joined to defend Poland), so we now imagine that we came to the aid of Ukraine because Zelensky is nicer than Putin.

It may in fact now be Zelensky who has the greater incentive to keep fighting, since his presidency will not survive peace on anything like the terms proposed. But, to repeat, that does not alter the fundamentals. We were backing and supplying Ukraine because the world order that was born after 1945 lifted our species to unprecedented heights of peace and prosperity.

When Putin gets to keep the better part of his spoils, and furious Ukrainians eject their regime, every tinpot dictator in the world will get the message. Nato, the most powerful alliance on the planet, would not protect one of its friends. The old order is over. The world of the Atlantic Charter has gone. Something altogether colder and darker is on its way.