I am

It’s easy to be on the wrong side of history, all you have to do is be born there. I don’t know whether any statues of Stalin are still standing in cities of Russia and the former Soviet Union, and I expect Hitler statues are illegal in Germany. But I did grow up in an era when Robert E. Lee was named softly, respectfully, affectionately, reverently. Unlike Jefferson Davis, General Lee was our eponymous father in an age when our grandparents were still struggling with the idea of honoring Abraham Lincoln; and General Sherman was reviled. I may be the last generation of that, but we grew up when family feelings were still raw, and I loved them, and I am what I am. Who are my people? I remember, still love.

A large portrait of General Lee hung over the fireplace mantlepiece of my college fraternity house, and KA pledges were taught that we should emulate his integrity and his honorable character as southern gentlemen. Religion aside, we were taught, and believed, that he was the best that we could be. And "one was a soldier, and one was a priest," Confederate General Leonidas Polk, a military academy graduate, was an Episcopal bishop.

I’m not going to forget all that, nor quit my heritage no matter how many statues are removed and flags lowered around the South, or Southern high schools renamed, or Old South Balls forbidden at colleges and stricken from spring calendars. I do not appreciate the flag that once ran chills down my spine being breezed hatefully through town from the beds of pickup trucks driven by defiant, ignorant, arrogant and contemptible white trash who have got to hate someone because there is no one who is lower than they are. But I may continue to stand quietly if ever again I hear a band playing “Dixie.” Although "Dixie" has become politically incorrect, if I can stand for “Florida, Our Alma Mater” and “Hail to the Victors Valiant” and the Navy Hymn, I can stand for “Dixie” and remember who I am. 

American and a Naval officer, I can and do stand and salute National Anthem, color guard and flag raised. But I am as much a Southerner as some whom I love dearly are Yankees and Midwesterners. Who I am isn’t going away in my lifetime, and though the time has come for reimagining and reimaging our history, I do understand but do not yet agree, appreciate or approve General Lee’s statues being removed and his memory and reputation desecrated. 

At the end of it, the Confederacy lost The War, thank God, and I am an American before almost anything else in my Being; I can hardly realize that I have been so fortunate, not to say blessed, to have been born and lived and be American. The violent demonstrations in Virginia are the evil doings of evil people, energized by evil politics and the evil state of our society. We don’t have to be “united” on everything, there is room for differences, but for our differences to be driven by hatred, and expressed as vicious, violent and murderous hate, signifies who and what we have become as a people, and I am ashamed, ashamed, ashamed. But I am.

DThos+

Pic: Lee statue in Charlottesville, VA