The South Was Right! A New Edition for the 21st Century

By James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy

THE SOUTH WAS RIGHT! A NEW EDITION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

 

IN 1991, THE KENNEDY BROTHERS first published The South Was Right!, launching the modern movement of Southern awareness and activism. To date the first and second edition of this book has sold over 135,000 copies! 

 

Not for the faint of heart, The South Was Right! is an authoritative and well-documented study of the mythology behind "Civil War" history and its ongoing effects.

 

In their new edition for a 21st century audience, the Kennedys have updated their message to provide guidance for the harsh conditions against liberty and even the survival of the South that face us in this time.

 

If you love the South and long for liberty, you need this book!

 

PASSAGES FROM THE NEW EDITION

"The central theme of this book is that the Northern majority used unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral methods to change the Original Constitutional Republic of Sovereign States into a centralized, supreme, federal government that is now (2020) controlled by an evil leftist shadow government."

 

"Through aggressive war and post-war unconstitutional political acts, the Yankee Empire changed the nature of the government from a voluntary compact among sovereign states to an empire established by the Northern majority via the conquest of the numerical minority of the South."

 

"After Reconstruction the South accepted its secondary place in the newly created Yankee Empire in exchange for nominal control of the puppet governments foisted upon the Southern States and agreed not to secede from the newly created 'indivisible' nation. The Yankee Empire broke the bargain! The South is no longer 'patriotically' required to remain loyal to the Yankee Empire..."

 

"If Southerners continue to remain pacified subjects of a supreme federal government that is actively engaged in anti-South, cultural genocide, then the South will turn into another Detroit, Chicago, Zimbabwe or Venezuela…."

 

"If the ruling elites in Washington reject the demands of the people for a government more respectful of our rights, then it will be faced with the prospect of the Southern people—as well as people in conservative "red counties" across America following the lead of Lithuania (1990) and England via Brexit (2016) as we demand the right of self-determination."

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: SHOTWELL PUBLISHING
• Release date: Nov 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393230113

James Ronald Kennedy

RON AND HIS TWIN BROTHER DONNIE are the authors of the bestselling book The South Was Right! with more than 135,000 copies sold (2016).  The Kennedy Twins have written five books together; their latest book together was Punished with Poverty. Ron authored Reclaiming Liberty, Nullification: Why and How, Uncle Seth Fought the Yankees and Dixie Rising—Rules for Rebels. Ron is past Division Commander, Louisiana Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a life member of the Louisiana Division and the National SCV. He is a frequent speaker at SCV, Southern Heritage and other pro-Liberty groups. Ron received a Master in Health Administration (MHA) from Tulane University in New Orleans, a Master of Jurisprudence in Health Law (MJ) from Loyola University in Chicago, and a Bachelor’s degree from University of Louisiana Monroe. He retired in April 2015 after serving over 20 years as Vice President of Risk Management for a Louisiana based insurance company. More information about Ron and Donnie Kennedy can be found at KennedyTwins.com.

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Preface to the Third Edition

SINCE THE 1994 PUBLICATION of the second edition of The South Was Right! an evil, neo-Marxist shadow government has taken control of the United States. The evil, shadow government consists of leftist ideologues in the media, academia, political establishment, and their donor-class supporters both in the North and the South. With the fall of the old Communist world, Marxism changed its form but not its objectives¹. Neo-Marxists, composed of liberals, progressives, socialists, and other social justice warriors, replaced the older form of Marxism. Today, 2020, they dominate diverse organizations such as the mainline media, digital media, Black Lives Matter, ANTIFA, and other left-of-center organizations.

Everything associated with the traditional, conservative, Bible- Belt South has been demonized by the evil, leftist shadow government that now controls America’s social and political thinking. Evidence of the effectiveness of this evil, neo-Marxist shadow government can be seen in a 2020 opinion poll. The poll documented that most (77%) conservatives are afraid to openly express their political opinions². The America where freedom of speech and freedom of expression is a Constitutionally protected right no longer exists! This evil, leftist shadow government serves as the propaganda center that supports the Yankee Empire’s genocidal policy toward its captive nation— the Confederate States of America. The old North/South bargain or détente where the South agreed to remain passive and patriotic and not attempt to secede again in exchange for nominal control of our local, puppet governments—that agreement has been broken. We did not break the agreement, they broke it! This third edition explains how it happened, but more importantly it explains what the people of the occupied South can do about it. We make the point that relying on traditional political parties will not produce the necessary fundamental change in the current government if we are to survive as a free people.

National Republican politicians cower before the demands of this evil, neo-Marxist shadow government, while national Democrats provide political cover for the left-of-center shadow government’s riotous storm troopers. America’s once free press is now controlled by postmodern, neo-Marxists who maintain monopolistic control of public information. The mainline and digital media serve as the evil shadow government’s ministry of propaganda. These people are ideologically driven, they detest traditional Western Christian civilization’s definition of truth, civility, and due process under the law. Meanwhile the Globalist financial elites provide funding for left wing organizations such as Black Lives Matter while supplying campaign funds for (as in buy-off and control) elitist politicians in Washington, DC. The political elites, our ruling class in Washington, control and dispense the Yankee Empire’s perks, privileges, and power. They deal out special access to the bureaucratic Deep State, and special political favors to the supreme federal government’s protected minorities.

Neo-Marxists of every stripe (postmodernists, progressives, liberals, etc.) are actively destroying those permanent things on which our Western Christian civilization is based. The cultural genocide directed against all things Southern that we warned was coming in 1994 has now arrived. Today, Southerners are the only minority who are forced to allow our enemies to define our culture. Southerners are no longer allowed to define or celebrate our cultural heritage. We are in the same position as people in all other captive nations. The people of the South, Dixie, or the Bible-Belt³ are in a struggle for our very survival as a unique people. The following questions remain, Do Southerners still possess the courage to take their stand in Dixie? Do Southerners have the backbone necessary to establish their own provisional government in each state to bring pressure on our" wobbly, weak-kneed politicians? Our Provisional government will consist of people using their freedom to influence the elected government to protect and promote our constitutional rights and interests, specifically the submission to the states of our Sovereign State Constitutional Amendment. Provisional governments in each Southern state will be an organized pressure group and a lobbying force advancing traditional, conservative, American and Southern values in the state legislature and the public at large. If the sad day arrives when the state or federal government collapses, Southerners will have the framework for a replacement government already in place—otherwise, we will get another, even more left-of-center government that will not respect any of our rights.

John C. Calhoun noted that power can only be defeated by a counter-power and tendency by a counter-tendency. If Southerners continue to remain pacified subjects of a supreme federal government that is actively engaged in anti-South, cultural genocide, then the South will turn into another Detroit, Chicago, Zimbabwe or Venezuela. It took a little over a quarter of a century to go from where we were in 1994 to today but it will take only a few short years to go from where we are today, to Detroit, Chicago, Zimbabwe or Venezuela. Bible-Belt Southerners should understand the warning: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin⁴.

—James Ronald Kennedy & Walter Donald Kennedy, September 2020.

NOTES

1 For explanation of how postmodernists infiltrated America’s institutions of higher learning and, in the 1960s, began using universities to indoctrinate American youth into the ideology postmodern neo-Marxism see, Kennedy, James Roald, The Left’s Long March Through Our Institutions, Abbeville Institute, 06 January 2020.

2 Emily Ekins, Poll: 62% of Americans Say They Have Political Views They’re Afraid to Share. Cato Institute, 22 July 2020. tinyurl.com/y6929jcf [Accessed 7/27/2020].

3 The former Confederate States of America is known by many names but most of all it is known as our HOME.

4 Holy Bible Daniel, 5: 25-7, KJV. . . . This is the interpretation of the thing: Mene; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. Tekel; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Peres; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

Preface to 1994 Second Edition

NO OTHER WAR or event has captivated the imagination of the American public as the events known as the American Civil War. It is difficult to understand how an event that happened over 159 years ago (as of 2020) can still hold such sway over a people. All types of hobbies, including reenacting the actual battles of that war, have grown up around that conflict. Yet when we consider the scope of that war, the numbers killed, the amount of destruction of public and private property, and the fundamental change that the war had on the political, economic, and social condition of America, it is then that we begin to understand why the War for Southern Independence still holds captive the imagination and passions of so many people.

If war is supposed to settle disputes, we can say that the War for Southern Independence was a failure. Today, we cannot even agree on the correct name for that conflict. The causes of the war are still debated with great passion. But the War for Southern Independence did put an end to some disputes, if only for a while. To most Americans schooled in American (i.e., New England) history, the war settled the issue of African slavery, but more to the point, it settled the issue of Southern independence, or so we are told.

As children growing up in Mississippi, we would often hear and repeat the old cliché, The South shall rise again.* We never thought that anyone would take that statement seriously, for after all, we were the generation of children whose parents had fought the great patriotic war (World War II) and had positioned America as the foremost world power: And besides, we lived in a world beset by forces of international communism and the threat of nuclear war. The capitalist and the communist empires were competing to see which would rule the world. There was little or no place in that world for secession movements. How could anyone, North or South, ever think that the South would ever rise again and demand its rightful place in the family of free nations?

We who grew up under the threat of a worldwide communist tyranny have lived to see the Berlin Wall come crashing down. We have seen the once mighty and perpetual union of the Soviet empire disappear from the world map. We have watched as little nations that were swallowed up by more powerful nations have reappeared on the stage of world events. Nations that had been denied the right of self-determination for generations are now, once again, free and independent states. In reality, secession has broken out worldwide! It looks as if world events have at last caught up with Southern history. For us die-hard Confederates, we feel as if God’s vindication is just around the corner.

In view of the events that have shaken our world in the past few years, it is time that we once again look at why the people of the South made the effort to become an independent nation. For after all, if secession is good for Lithuania, Slovenia, Croatia, and England via Brexit why was it not good for Dixie? The South Was Right! looks beyond the battles that were fought to discover the answer to the more important questions of why those battles were made necessary, and how the loss of that war has affected not only the South but all of America and in this third edition—what we can do to reclaim lost Constitutional liberty.

Readers of this book can tell by the title that they have fallen into the company of those who believe that the men and women of the South who fought for Southern independence were correct in their efforts. Don’t be dismayed. Every cause has its unbreakable defenders. We implore the skeptical and pacified Southerners to be open-minded enough to investigate the other side of this very unique coin, the War for Southern Independence.

In the spring of 1861, the call to arms went out across the South. The call was answered with enthusiasm. Why did people feel justified to answer that call? Most Americans today are unprepared to answer that question, but how could Southerners, who are possessed with the blood of those who fought for self-government and independence do otherwise? The answers to those questions will be found in the pages of this book.

You have in your hands a book different from any other book written about the South. The authors demonstrate that the South had legitimate reasons to assert its claim to independence. We demonstrate the legitimacy of the South’s claim of our right to recall our delegated powers and to establish a new government based upon the principle of the consent of the governed. We have demonstrated how this right, in addition to having been reserved by the states when they acceded into the Constitutional Union, was based in antiquity and is a part of our common tradition as English-speaking people. We demonstrate how our Southern nation was invaded and conquered by a cruel and ruthless enemy who despised our people. We demonstrate that our Southern history was perverted into a Yankee myth that is now used by our conquerors to justify their cruel oppression of our right to self-determination. This myth is used to brainwash each successive generation of Southern children into believing that we are all better off because we lost our war for Southern independence.

If all this book accomplishes is to bring these historical facts to light, this alone will mark it as most unusual. But it does more; it calls every true Southerner to consider our lot. Is this big, impersonal, overpowering, and dominating government, which demands our obedience to its every decree, the type of government we want for ourselves and our children? The authors have taken great pains to present to you, the reader, facts about the War for Southern Independence that most Americans have been denied the opportunity to read. This book looks into why the South went to war with such a sense of being right in its beliefs and considers the consequences for the South and for America as a result of the South losing the war.

This book is a call to action to all people who love liberty and truth. It calls upon Southerners to climb down from the stools of everlasting repentance and to take pride in their Southern heritage. What we have attempted to do is to awaken in the heart and mind of individual Southerners the repressed desire to once again be the master in their own home! Yes, that is right! We want every Southerner to awaken to the fact that no force on earth can prevent us from reclaiming our lost estate of Constitutional government if and when we decide to free ourselves. The South must put aside the illusion that she will one day be accepted as an equal in this left-of-center dominated nation. The South must put aside the illusion that the current government is the legitimate outgrowth of the original American Constitutional Republic of Sovereign States. These illusions are used by our conquerors to maintain the South’s entrapment in this unequal union. The South must reject these illusions and then begin its struggle to regain control of its destiny.

So that no one will be mistaken, let us say it once again; as Americans, Southerners have a right to economic equality with the rest of the nation, a right to a government based upon the free and unfettered consent of the governed, a right to control our local schools, a right to order our society according to the desire of the people. In a phrase, we deserve to be free!

This book will challenge (and most likely has already done so) many facts that are often accepted as common knowledge. For instance, the Yankee myth that declares that Appomattox settled everything and therefore Southerners must never again attempt to assert our right to a free and constitutional government. While the liberty of the Eastern European people to assert their right to free government is easily approved by the liberal media, this same right is denied the South. What is more important is the fact that as long as Southerners accept this Yankee myth of history, we deny the right of freedom to ourselves, our children, and generations of Southerners yet unborn!

T. E. Lawrence, the famous Lawrence of Arabia, in his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom, noted that the effort to free the Arabic people from Turkish rule was accomplished not when the last battle had been won but when the majority of the Arabic people no longer accepted Turkish rule as legitimate. At that point they were free. It only remained for them to stay loyal to their belief in freedom long enough for the struggle to work out the details of when and how the Turks would leave. The same point is true today for us.

This is the message we are sending to our fellow Southerners. You are not free, because you do not believe you can be free. You are not free, because you do not believe in yourself. As the Holy Bible states, Where there is no vision the people perish. It is time for Southerners to catch that vision of freedom our Confederate forefathers had and to begin the struggle to turn a dream into reality. The rising of the moon will see a return of government as established by the Original Constitution, or if we cannot convince the evil, leftist shadow government that now controls America’s political thinking and society, then we shall work for the re-establishment of a Constitutional Republic known as the Confederate States of America!

Not since the end of the War for Southern Independence has such a dramatic challenge been issued to the American people. The struggle our Confederate forefathers made in the 1860s is not over. The principles of local self-government and State’s Rights, to include the explicit rights of nullification and secession, are viable and necessary in today’s otherwise impersonal world. The South has always been the enemy of big government. This is what motivated Southerners to take up arms in defense of Dixie in 1861. There must be a fundamental change in the current, overgrown, unresponsive, tax-and-spend supreme federal government. If the ruling elites in Washington reject the demands of the people for a government more respectful of our rights, then it will be faced with the prospect of the Southern people—as well as people in conservative red counties across America following the lead of Lithuania (1990) and England via Brexit (2016) as we demand the right of self-determination.

Deo Vindice

_______________________

* See James Ronald Kennedy, When Rebel Was Cool (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, LLC, 2020).

ONCE IT WAS COOL TO BE A REBEL

CHAPTER 1

WHEN REBEL WAS COOL

The only freedom that can last is a freedom embodied somewhere, rooted in a history, located in space, sanctioned by a genealogy, and blessed by a religious establishment.

— M. E. Bradford, PhD.

ONCE UPON A TIME in the South it was cool to be a rebel. There was a time when the nation took pride in America’s Confederate heritage. What happened? How did the United States of America mutate from a nation that honored our Confederate heroes and heritage, to a nation that actively dishonors, slanders, destroys, and censors all things that would present the South in an honorable light? How did our Southern society degenerate from a time when everyone in the stadium would stand when the public high school band played Dixie to the point where all things considered pro-South are barred and censored from our public schools and universities? How did this happen and how do we, who know the truth and therefore love our Southern heritage, respond?

The Yankee Empire Breaks Its Bargain With The Occupied South

After the South surrendered and the active phase of Reconstruction ended, there arose an unwritten but generally accepted North/South attitude of live and let live. The South would be left alone if it agreed never again to assert its right of self-determination and remained loyal to the new one nation indivisible that was created by Lincoln and the Republican Party. In the second edition (1994) we described it as a North/South détente. Détente is a Cold War term referring to the easing of strained relations between the Soviet Union and the United States for the common purpose of avoiding a nuclear war.¹ Even though the Southern people had a moral and legal right to self-determination, post-War they exchanged that right for the privilege of being left alone. Southern patriotic allegiance to the new order was maintained even though the post-War, supreme federal government created by Lincoln and the Republican Party was radically dissimilar from America’s original Constitutionally limited Republic of Sovereign States created by the Founding Fathers. To demonstrate their loyalty to the new government, generations of Southerners have pledged allegiance to one nation indivisible and sacrificed rivers of Southern blood while serving in the U.S. military in every war since Appomattox. In exchange for the privilege of being left alone, post-War Southerners abandoned the principles of the Declaration of Independence that plainly declared the unalienable right of any people—which includes Southerners—to alter or abolish any government and to institute a new government that would better defend and preserve their self-evident right to govern themselves. Southerners have served in the U.S. military fighting for the nation that claimed to offer liberty and justice for all, when that very nation—the United States of America—violently denied liberty to the Southern people and instead of justice the United States of America intentionally punished the Southern people with poverty.² Yet, even though Southerners kept their end of the bargain, the Yankee Empire and its sycophants have broken their end of the bargain. And as Daniel Webster declared, A bargain broken on one side is broken on all sides. Today the Yankee Empire no longer respects or even tolerates the South’s Confederate heritage. The question then remains, Why should Southerners continue keeping their end of the bargain?

Today, as we watch our Confederate monuments defaced, destroyed and removed; as we listen to conservative talking-heads slander our brave Confederate ancestors as traitors guilty of treason; and today as we learn about the U.S. military prohibiting the display of the Confederate flag while saying nothing about the display of gay rights or black lives matter flags; it has become apparent that the old bargain is over and a new game has begun. Southerners today owe their allegiance to the principles of the Declaration of Independence not to the Yankee Empire that is actively engaged in its anti-South campaign of cultural genocide. It is a sad state of affairs—especially sad for those of us who remember the days when the Yankee Empire kept its part of the bargain and actually tolerated and in some cases, promoted our Confederate heritage.

Back In The Day When Dixie Was Cool—A Personal Account

³

During the fifteen years in which the Kennedy Twins (James Ronald and Walter Donald Kennedy) grew-up, 1950 to 1965,⁴ the South celebrated the centennial of the War for Southern Independence—incorrectly referred to as the Civil War. It was a time of great celebrations and remembering the gallantry and sufferings of our relatives—grandfathers, or great grandfathers. Many families told and retold stories about their blood relatives who wore the gray in the War for Southern Independence. We all felt like we were there during the War because our grand or great-grandparents were there. Their blood flows through our veins—present tense not past tense. Local newspapers published stories and old photographs of the gatherings of local Confederate veterans—this was before Yankee corporations purchased most of our local Southern newspapers and turned them into monopolistic, left-wing, anti-South, scalawag rags. For example; during the Civil War Centennial the Louisiana Department of Education, a Baton Rouge Television station, numerous university professors and state newspapers worked together to produce the book Heritage of Valor-Louisiana in the War for Southern Independence. Today, Native Americans, Cherokees, attending United Confederate Veterans Reunion 1903 in New Orleans, Louisiana the local Baton Rouge newspaper, an advocate for removing Confederate monuments, refused to accept a paid ad defending Louisiana’s Confederate heritage.⁵ It was also the time before neo- Marxist professors took over taxpayer funded Southern Universities and began brainwashing Southern children with postmodernist, neo-Marxist propaganda disguised as education.⁶ It was a time when locally owned Southern newspapers published old photographs of Confederate veterans. Many of these photographs contained images of Black, Hispanic or Indian (Native American) Confederate veterans.⁷ It was a time when the people of the South were celebrating their family histories. It was a season to remember anew the honorable heritage of our Southern kith and kin. Southern scholar, Richard Weaver from North Carolina, implied an explanation of why Southerners would celebrate the War’s centennial with such enthusiasm. In The Southern Tradition at Bay he noted that it is only natural for a people to cling to the past when they have been robbed of their future. Richard Weaver understood what too many Southerners today refuse to admit; Lincoln and the Republican Party robbed Southerners of their Constitutional inheritance of self-government.⁸ Another Southern writer, William Faulkner from Mississippi, had one of the characters in his novel, Requiem for a Nun, declare, The past is never dead; it is not even past. In the South, history is a living thing because it is a family thing. Yankees and scallywag Southerners get their history from history books written by Yankees to glorify Yankee heroes and ideas, while hiding their hideous crimes; but Southerners…. we get our history from our families.

A few evil people have misused the flags and other symbols of the Confederate States of America. Those of us who honor our Southern heritage have no way to prevent evil people from misusing our Southern flags and symbols—just like we have no way to prevent neo-Nazis or Communists from using the U.S. flag. But just because a handful of evil people misappropriate the Confederate flag, this is not a legitimate reason to ban the display of our flag or to censor the truth of why our ancestors wore the gray in the War for Southern Independence. Such acts of censorship are a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free expression.⁹ Evil people have misappropriated the Holy Bible, the Christian Cross and the United States flag but that is no justification to ban their display, labeling or implying that people who honor those symbols are intrinsically evil. Such actual or implied slander is known in logic as the error of guilt by association or association fallacy. When an individual uses guilt by association he is demonstrating that he has no proof or evidence to support his accusation. It is a malicious attempt to demonize an innocent party by associating the innocent party with an evil person or ideology. We should judge people by their actions, the content of their character, not by the color of the flag they happen to be waving. Unfortunately, and for political reasons, secular humanist, and left-of-center political activists refuse to make this fundamental and logical distinction. They find it politically convenient to label all who treasure their Southern heritage as racists. Leftwing, politically correct enemies of the South use the claim of racism as a magic wand to make their opponent disappear or at least make them hide in the closet.¹⁰ The politically correct trend of attacking traditional American values and especially traditional Southern values, does not represent the traditional attitude of Americans in general or the attitude expressed in the past by the United States’ federal government.

When The United States Government Thought Rebel Was Cool

In 1951 the United States Post Office issued commemorative stamps honoring the last United Confederate Veterans Reunion. In 1937 they also issued stamps honoring Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, as well as a 1955 stamp in the Liberty Series, featuring Robert E. Lee. They even issued a stamp commemorating the Confederate Memorial on Stone Mountain in Georgia in 1970.¹¹

Was the United States Post Office promoting slavery, racism, or white supremacy? Of course not! But today neo-Marxists insist that all public expressions honoring our Confederate ancestors must be prohibited, censored, or even punished! When the United States Navy named a submarine in honor of General Robert E. Lee—was this an expression of racism? Of course not! The U.S. Navy had another submarine named in honor of General Stonewall Jackson and the U.S. Army had a tank named for Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart.¹² Was this an effort on the part of the United States Department of Defense to promote slavery, racism, or white supremacy? Of course not! Yet the South’s neo-Marxist enemies—in the media and academia—claim that any expression honoring our Confederate ancestors is a mark of white privilege and racism—really? They make their biased, anti-South claims and their sycophants in the media, educational, and political establishments endorse their slander, even though there are no facts to support their false claims. In politically correct America, truth no longer matters! When on February 23, 1890, state Representative John F. Harris in Jackson, Mississippi, an African American Republican, declared his support for state appropriations to fund a monument honoring Confederate veterans on the Old Capital grounds in Jackson, Mississippi—was he, a black man, and former slave supporting slavery or white racism? Representative Harris proudly proclaimed:

I too, wore the gray, the same color my master wore. We stayed four long years, and if that war had gone on till now, I would have been there yet…I want to honor those brave men who died for their convictions.¹³

As a result of his advocacy in favor of the Confederate monument, all the black representatives in the Mississippi legislature voted in favor of funding the erection of the Confederate monument. No, it was not and is not about racism or slavery as the South’s enemies falsely and slanderously claim. Our leftist, postmodernists enemies make their claims, not in the service of truth, but in an intentional effort to slander and thereby silence (censor) Southerners who know the truth about why the North (under the leadership of Lincoln and the Republican Party) invaded the South. But the truth must be censored or else the invader’s false narrative will not survive.¹⁴ Our enemies use slander in a successful effort to censor (hide or obscure) the truth about why Lincoln and the Republican Party initiated a war of conquest against their former countrymen.

Confederate Generals, is that an attempt to promote racial division and hatred? Of course not! Yet our enemies today look back at the time when the nation was celebrating the heroism of the men who wore the Blue and Gray and claim they (neo-Marxists) now detect shades of white privilege, white supremacy, and racism. Yet, no one at the time associated such national honors with racism, white supremacy, or some disguised hate crime directed toward America’s black citizens.

In 1925 the United States mint issued a 50-cent coin with the images of Confederate Generals on Stone Mountain. No one accused the United States mint of being in favor of slavery, promoting white supremacy or racial hatred. It was done to honor the men who wore the gray in the War for Southern Independence. It also recognized the inherited valor of the sons and grandsons of the men who wore the gray. Sons and grandsons who have served in the U.S. military since Appomattox—1865.

The Kennedy Twins’ older brother, Alton Kennedy (1938-2018), was a member of the Mississippi National Guard which was part of the Dixie Division. When the sons of the South joined the Dixie Division and offered their lives in defense of our country, there was no thought of rejecting their service because of the name of their unit—the Dixie Division. Nor were there any objections raised to the unit’s band that proudly displayed the Confederate Battle flag. The Dixie Division also had their own anthem, the anthem’s words proudly boast of the unit’s heroic lineage, by blood and spirit, to the Confederate States Army—it included these proud words:

In the Days of Sixty-one, When Dixie took her stand

To the colors came her men, the finest in the land

Wheeler, Lee and Jackson all fought for the dear lost Cause

For the sunny Southland, its customs and laws.¹⁵

The Dixie Division and many other Southern units served in World War I and World War II—as well as wars before and since. We the people of Dixie once assumed that the effusion of Southern blood in defense of the United States of America while serving in America’s military had purchased the toleration, if not respect, of the American people for our proud Confederate heritage.

During World War II, the first American flag to fly over the captured Japanese fortress at Okinawa was a Confederate Battle Flag. A marine company put it there to honor their commander— who happened to be a South Carolinian—who suffered a paralyzing wound in the victorious assault.¹⁶

The proud tradition of military service by Southerners continues today. An article published in January, 2020 in the New York Times noted that Southerners are more likely to volunteer for the U.S. military than people from other sections of the U.S.

The South . . . produces 20 percent more recruits than would be expected, based on its youth population. The states in the Northeast . . . produce 20 percent fewer. Fayetteville, N.C. . . . provided more than twice as many military enlistment contracts as Manhattan, even though Manhattan has eight times as many people.¹⁷

Today, neo-Marxist mobs are given virtually free reign to vandalize and destroy Confederate monuments. In modern America it is common for elected officials to ban the appearance of Confederate flags in public parades, while the monopolistic mainline media censors anything positive about the South. It has become apparent that national respect or at least tolerance for our Southern heritage no longer exists. This respect or toleration was supposedly purchased by the effusion of Southern blood in the defense of the United States of America since 1865. It is evident today that this assumed respect or tolerance no longer exists!¹⁸ The United States is losing more than it understands. Generations of left wing, neo-Marxist brainwashing in our taxpayer funded educational centers has created a dumbed-down, snowflake population unable to think rationally or discuss differing opinions while conducting themselves with decorum and civility. The sad fact is that our taxpayer funded universities have become neo-Marxist indoctrination centers.¹⁹

President Eisenhower was questioned why the President of the United States and former supreme commander of Allied forces in Western Europe during World War II would have a photograph of General Robert E. Lee in his presidential office? President Eisenhower wrote back:

General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause …Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God … he was noble as a leader and … unsullied as I read the pages of our history … a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul … Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.²⁰

When men of such high military, political, and social standing are willing to make public their respect for General Lee, it calls to question the character of those leftwing Northern apologists who attempt to smear General Lee’s South.

President John F. Kennedy, a World War II veteran, added his words of praise for the honorable traditions of the South. No one could honestly accuse President Kennedy of being a racist. But today, any American President, or for that matter any public official who utters words of praise for our Confederate ancestors, will be immediately assaulted by the left-of-center mainline press— something Justice Clarence Thomas referred to as a high-tech lynch mob.²¹ The leftwing media lynch mob and neo-Marxist storm- troopers falsely claim individuals daring to speak positively about the South are actually uttering code words or dog whistles favoring slavery and racism.²² President Kennedy’s words speak of tolerance, respect and civility. Such things are absent in modern America. Modern America is a postmodernist, secular humanist America that is dominated by the ideology of political correctness as espoused by neo-Marxist social justice warriors and neo-Marxist academicians who now control our universities.

President Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, was willing to honor the noble heritage of the South:

As a New Englander, I recognize that the South is still the land of Washington, who made our Nation, of Jefferson, who shaped its direction, and of Robert E. Lee who, after gallant failure, urged those who had followed him in bravery to reunite America in purpose and courage. ²³

The America that was willing to extend tolerance—let alone respect—toward the South and traditional Southerners who wish to honor the truth about our South; that America no longer exists! Is it an act of extremism to admit the obvious? Is it un-American to tell the truth about the way our current political system is treating we the people of Dixie? Is it unpatriotic to insist that the nation that alleges to be a nation with liberty and justice for all include Southerners? Where is the justice let alone the liberty for the traditional South?

Growing up in Dixie from 1950 to 1965 was a time when there were scores, if not hundreds, of public schools named for Confederate generals, schools with mascots known as Rebels or Colonels. Numerous businesses took on the name Southern, Dixie, or Rebel. A large railroad had several passenger trains named the Rebel.

The Louisville and Nashville Railroad was nicknamed the Dixie Line. The Dixie Flyer and the Dixie Flagler were popular passenger trains. Advertisements told of the ease to travel from Chicago, Cincinnati, or Boston by luxury passenger trains to the shores of Dixie. The popular Christmas song, There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays contains the line, From Pennsylvania folks are traveling down to Dixie’s sunny shore. Just a few decades ago, it was cool to be a rebel from the South. Government, business and entertainment had no problems with Dixie.

During the 1950s and mid-1960s, all across the South and in many Northern states, public schools joined in the centennial celebration of the War for Southern Independence. It was not unusual to see majorettes and school bands carrying Confederate flags.

Some of the United States’ best-known Generals were proud Southerners or honorable Northerners who respected the valor of the men who wore the gray in the War for Southern Independence. But that is no longer a part of our nation. Should we the people of the South, a people in whose veins flows the blood of the men who wore the gray in the War for Southern Independence—should we accept reality and quietly submit? Did America’s secular humanist society insist that homosexuals come out of the closet in order to free up the space so they could force traditional Southerners, who understand and respect their Confederate heritage, into the closet? With liberty and justice for all, except for Southerners! And remember what Lincoln taught us—empires are indivisible.

Restoring Tolerance and Respect for Our Confederate Heritage

Over the past 55 years we the people of Dixie have allowed the South’s neo-Marxist enemies to steal from us and future Southern generations the toleration and respect that our Southern heritage deserves—respect and toleration that we earned by an outpouring of Southern blood in every war since Appomattox. This American respect, or at least toleration, was purchased by generations of Southern soldiers, sailors, and airmen who poured out their blood in defense of America’s so-called reunited country.²⁴ The rejection of the nation’s respect or toleration for our Southern heritage was not accomplished by logic, the use of civil discussion, and debate, or constitutional due process. It was achieved in the late twentieth century by the use of militant and extreme social and political force.²⁵ Senator John C. Calhoun warned us, Power can only be resisted by power—and tendency only by tendency.²⁶ In other words, a force (power) that is determined to exterminate an entire culture can only be successfully resisted by a counter force (power). We the people of Dixie have failed in our duty to develop and use our own social and political force (power) to protect and advance our Southern heritage—how else can we explain the radical and insidious anti- Southern shift that has occurred over the past 55 years? Asking such penetrating questions will raise the wrath of pacified and apathetic Southerners in the Southern heritage movement. Why? Because people are usually not happy when their contentment is disturbed. It causes them to become angry because they are well aware that they have no alternative other than passive acceptance of contemporary leftwing political and social reality.

Pacified Southerners prefer to remain secretly hidden in the closet, where they can quietly meet, eat and retreat, while the U.S. military bans Southern symbols and flags; while Southern students who have been indoctrinated/brainwashed in taxpayer funded educational institutions destroy Confederate monuments; while local elected conservative leaders prohibit Confederate reenactors from marching in public parades; and while the media slanderously labels anyone daring to resist their neo-Marxist agenda as a white supremacist. The pacified crowd presents themselves as being old and wise but as T.E. Lawrence noted in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, such men are not old and wise, they are just tired and defeated. But there is an alternative.

It has become painfully obvious to all but self-deluded Southern conservatives that the effort to destroy our Southern heritage is but a small part of a greater campaign of postmodern, neo-Marxists to destroy Western civilization.* They then plan to replace traditional Western Christian civilization with their utopian dream of a Godless, socialist order based upon government enforced social/economic equality of outcome. In our modern-day secular humanist America, appeals to the Constitution are pointless! Why? Because as John C. Calhoun pointed out, no section, article or word of the Constitution is self-enforcing.²⁷ For example, an appeal to the first amendment’s freedom of speech is effective only if the federal government decides to honor said protection. The current federal government has no problem ignoring the protections enumerated in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and when necessary will ignore other constitutionally protected rights—even the vaunted Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms. Political force can only be countered by political force; social tendency can only be countered by social tendency. Protecting our Southern heritage is a vital part of protecting all of our rights and liberties as Americans.

Organizing a counter-force to regain our Constitutional rights as Americans is detailed in Dixie Rising-Rules for Rebels.²⁸ With upwards of 70% of the South’s population still holding a positive view of the South—we have the potential to overthrow the leftist ruling elites who now dominate American society. We have the capability to win this fight—but first we must take the audacious step to become actively engaged in the fight. We must acknowledge that those who broke the bargain are the ones who nullified the South’s pledge not to reassert its inalienable right of self-determination. We are now freed from unconditional loyalty to the puppet governments (state and federal) foisted upon us by post-War Republicans. Whether we realize it or not—we have the potential not only to make Rebel cool again but to reclaim a government based upon the free and unfettered consent of the governed. We now have the opportunity to reclaim the Constitutional rights of nullification and secession as well as to be the catalyst for the creation of sanctuary counties for every red county (conservative voting counties) in America! Perhaps even the creation of new states consisting of red counties suffering under the oppressions of liberal blue states. The Yankee Empire and its neo-Marxist allies broke the bargain and now we have a new game to play—a game that will lead to freedom for all who honor traditional Christian, and American values!

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* Western civilization is a society based upon Old and New Testament values, reason, democratic principles and a reverence for traditions based upon generations of trial and error. It is a society that rejects radicalism while evolving cautiously over time. It is a society that tempers human reason with humility and the knowledge that perfecting man or human society is not a job for god-government.

NOTES

1 Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/detente [Accessed 6/6/2020].

2 See, Kennedy & Kennedy, Punished With Poverty-the Suffering South (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2017).

3 See James Ronald Kennedy, When Rebel Was Cool: Growing up in Dixie (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing , 2020). This book details what it was like growing up in Dixie during the years of the Civil War Centennial (1950-65).

4 We were born in 1947 but our memories begin around 1950.

5 See James Ronald Kennedy, Ad Too Hot to Print-Censorship in Action. Abbeville Institute, 21 June 2017, tinyurl.com/y2l6vp9a.

6 See James Ronald Kennedy The Left’s Long March Through Southern Institutions. Abbeville Institute, 06 January 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yxqtbm2e and "Truth No Longer