A Plausible Lie

A rebuttal to the book The South Was Right by Ronald and Donald Kennedy;

by Dennis Wheeler

The Southern People and Equality of Opportunity

Introduction

The South Was Right is a very misleading book that dishonestly portrays the facts and issues pressing on the Southern people today. The book is not a handbook or guide for effective or honest Southern political activism; it is a dishonest distortion, a plausible lie; told to make the Old South and the Confederacy appear palatable to today’s equalitarian society.

While the authors (called Kennedy from here on out) point out the immoral, violent, and hypocritical nature of Abolitionists and equalitarians,. they never attack the equalitarian philosophy. No. In fact, whenever Kennedy speaks in moral terms, it becomes plainly evident that it is from exactly the equalitarian perspective against which our forefathers fought in the War for Southern Independence.

Still, Kennedy makes it clear he hates the Yankees. This reminds me of a line by the English poet Dryden in The Hind and the Panther:

"To abhor the makers, and their laws approve,

Is to hate traitors and the treason love."

I propose and will show that the Confederacy seceded and fought a war because the North intended to apply to the blacks the tenets of the Declaration of Independence pertaining to all men being equal and in possession of certain rights, the "self-evident" phrase.

You won't find this mentioned in The South Was Right despite the overwhelming body of evidence that substantiates it. And it is exactly this main tenet of Yankee equalitarianism that Kennedy wants to build a new South upon. This I will show.

The Plausible Lie

I want to quantify the plausible lie that is advanced in The South Was Right. It is this: "Everything in the Old South that is objectionable to today’s equalitarian society can be excused because the Yankees and others did the same things and even worse things. The view of history that the Yankees have taught to America is untrue and by gaining a correct perspective of the facts of history, one can come to see that the Old South really did not practice a socio-political system or way of life that people can reasonably condemn today, even by today’s standards."

This plausible lie is an argument that the South is to be forgiven of all its transgressions because, after all, "everybody was doing it." In The South Was Right, there is no polemic defense of the Old South in moral terms. Again, when Kennedy does express moral absolutes, they can easily be seen to be Jacobin and equalitarian in nature, as opposed to Christian and biblical in nature.

The False Use of Facts

Kennedy uses true facts to advocate untrue positions. In so doing, he leaves out facts that are pertinent to the issue at hand. In Anglo-Saxon society, the truth is held to contain the whole truth and nothing but the truth as well as the truth of the selection of facts given.

When Kennedy uses quotes by Southerners that express their opposition to slavery on one ground or another, but fails to include that despite their beliefs on slavery they were willing to fight to uphold the slaveowner’s right to own slaves, he is guilty of the false use of facts.

When he shows the Old South to be equalitarian in nature because a black boy lived in the Confederate White House with the Davis family, he is guilty of the false use of facts.

When he makes a case for the North being more segregated than the South, but fails to show that the South was based on a hierarchal social order in which blacks held the inferior position to the whites and were thus no competition to them, he is guilty of the false use of facts.

And when Kennedy advances causes for the War other than the cause of the War, he is guilty of the false use of facts.

The South Was Right is big on facts. But there are far too many instances of the false use of facts, wherein facts are used to prove something other than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This I will show.

An Irrational Self-Determination

The plausible lie told in The South Was Right intentionally misrepresents the truth, distorts the historical record, and defends the Old South without defending the principles of the Old South that were under attack in the War For Southern Independence and today; namely, the right of the Southern people to self-determination unfettered by the political influence of blacks and others.

Kennedy grants that the South has a right to self-determination free from the influence of Yankees. But those of another race, who are even more incompatible with us than the Yankees, he gladly allows them to "share" our self-determination.

He goes so far as to include the blacks in the Southern people, the very thing the South fought against. This I will show.

Kennedy purports to believe in self-determination and independence for the South. And he makes a great legal and moral case for these things. But when taken together with other things he believes, the self-determination he advances is illogical and irrational. Kennedy wants independence from Washington. But he wants blacks in the South included in the body politic of the new nation.

There has been a Civil War and a Civil Rights War in American history. The side favoring the inclusion of blacks into the body politic has won both wars and the South has lost both wars. Since Kennedy wants to include the blacks in the body politic, what would the South gain by independence from Washington? None that I can see.

The South Was Right is a book that is hostile to the South; it undermines the South and the Southern movement today. Kennedy does the best he can under the circumstances. But he is responsible for the circumstances — his equalitarian belief system.

His book might win converts to a bastardized form of Southern nationalism through its false argumentation. But in the end, the tenets of this book will not stand. And any movement erected on its tenets cannot stand because those tenets are illogical, false, misleading, and contradictory. This I will show.

I. The Southern People

The first point we should cover concerns the nature and make-up of the Southern people. Who are the Southern people?

In The South Was Right Kennedy goes to great lengths to demonstrate how different the Yankees are from the Southern people. He quotes Professor Grady McWhiney: "But none of his critics have been able to refute Owsley’s basic theme of an Old South culturally dominated by plain folk whose ways were quite distinctive from those of Northerners." (pages 22-23)

Kennedy states: "Dr. McWhiney wrote that the War for Southern Independence was not so much a war of brother against brother as it was a war of culture against culture." (page 23)

He discusses the views on this topic of Anthony Trollope, David Hackett Fischer, John Adams, and George Mason. And then concludes this discussion by writing: "Thus we have the evaluation of the cultural differences between the North and the South made in colonial times by one of the Founding Fathers, a Virginia Anti-Federalist, an evaluation made at the time of the war by a foreign observer and two contemporaneous scholars, one from the North and one from the South. Notice that regardless of the time frame or their origins, all four described the North and South as culturally different and as distinct peoples." (pages 24-25)

In Kennedy’s view, the Yankees and the Southerners are different peoples. So far, so good. This is true and proper.

The rub comes in his perspective that blacks and whites in the South are a part of the same people. Kennedy makes statements such as: "Both black and white Southerners suffered as a result of our second-class economic status." (page 38) And also: "The issue of slavery, like the issue of race, has been used to keep the people of the South fighting one another while allowing the victors to enjoy the fruits of their victory. But never let us forget that the real issue of the war as the South saw it was liberty and freedom." (page 117)

And another quote: "Both black and white Southerners were needlessly subjected to the terror of starvation by terrorist acts of United States troops. From Virginia we find one of many examples of the sufferings borne by black Southerners...." (page 143)

From these statements and others, it is clear that Kennedy views both blacks and whites in the South as the same people, although he never addresses the issue didactically nor makes any syllogistical case for his position. For this reason I can't really respond to his argument that the blacks in the South are part of the Southern people. For he makes no such argument. He simply assumes this as fact and goes on from there.

A. Are the Blacks Southerners?

One of the best ways to deal with an argument is to reduce it to the absurd by showing the absurd nature of the logical ramifications of the argument. In the field of logic this is called reductio ad absurdum. Kennedy's position that Yankees are a different people from Southerners but blacks living in the South are the same people is quite easily shown to be an absurd proposition.

First, Kennedy argues briefly that the Southerners are Celts and the Yankees are Anglo-Saxons. (page 23) This is both doubtful and dubious. But if we grant it as true for the moment, we must see that the blacks living in the South are not Celts. They are therefore something other than Celts, something other than Southerners.

Second, the physical, psychological, and emotional differences between the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons is not nearly as wide as those differences are between the Celts and the Africans.

Third, concerning culture, history, and tradition, the same conclusion must be drawn. The culture, history, and traditions of the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons, while different, hold much more in common than does the culture of either of them compared to those of the Africans.

Fourth, Kennedy makes many statements about how the South and the Southerners are blamed for slavery, racism, and a host of other sins. While true, these things certainly cannot be said of the blacks living in the South.

Fifth, Kennedy complains again and again about the corrupt, tyrannical, despotic government in Washington. True Southerners agree with him. The blacks living in the South certainly don’t agree with him. They love the government in Washington. It holds their complete allegiance. It is their agent for appropriating the wealth of the Southern people to themselves through various welfare programs and civil rights laws that make them privileged characters in the workplace and in the society.

This should be clear from the results of the latest election. Blacks thought that their man in Washington, Bill Clinton, was in trouble. So they turned out en masse to save him from the evil whites of the Republican Party. Messages posted on the League of the South staff listserver bear witness to the fact that this event caught the attention of both Dr. Hill and George Kalas.

And sixth, the blacks and whites have lived in the South for nearly 400 years and remain easily distinguishable from one another. There has been virtually no blood admixture between them in legitimate society. They tend to live, worship, and socialize apart, not together. They are easily distinguishable physically, mentally, emotionally, aptitudinally, and in many other ways. By only the most Clintonesque twist of the truth can they be called the same people group.

B. Let the Confederates Speak

Besides these factors, I can say that the place "where the rubber has met the road" in the South’s struggle against tyranny and injustice, has been the issue of social and political equality for the blacks living in the South. The North has constantly tried to force the South to grant this equality to the blacks and the South has resisted at great cost.

I will cover this more fully later, but let me give a few quotes that demonstrate that one of the points of conflict that led to war was that the North intended to apply the tenets of the Declaration of Independence that pertained to all men possessing equality to the blacks. The South would have none of this.

In The South Was Right, Kennedy prints the farewell speech of Jefferson Davis to the United States Senate. Davis told the Senate why the South was withdrawing from the Union. His words were these: "It has been a conviction of pressing necessity — it has been a belief that we are to be deprived, in the Union, of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us — which has brought Mississippi into her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races. The Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made. The communities were asserting that no man was born, to use the language of Mr. Jefferson, booted and spurred, to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal, meaning the men of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended to families; but all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the great principles they announced; these were the purposes for which they made their declaration; these were the ends to which their enunciation was directed."

Continuing: "They have no reference to the slave; else, how happened it, that, among the items of arraignment against George III, was, that he endeavored to do just what the North has been endeavoring of late to do, to stir up insurrection among our slaves. Had the Declaration announced that the negroes were free and equal, how was the prince to be arraigned for raising up insurrection among them? And how was this to be enumerated among the high crimes which caused the colonies to severe their connection with the mother country? When our constitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable; for there we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men — not even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower cast, only to be represented in the numerical portion of three-fifths."

I give Kennedy kudos for not editing this speech, but printing it as it was given. Nonetheless, it undermines his position that the blacks and the whites in the South comprise a single people. (Please keep this speech in mind, it will also be shown to undermine more of his positions as you read on.)

Other statements also show that the conflict centered around the equality and oneness of the blacks and the whites in the South. Alexander Stephens stated: "The relation of the black to the white race, or the proper status of the coloured population among us, was a question now of vastly more importance than when the old Constitution was formed. The order of subordination was nature's great law; philosophy taught that order as the normal condition of the African amongst European races. Upon this recognized principle of a proper subordination, let it be called slavery or what not, our State institutions were formed and rested. The new Confederation was entered into with this distinct understanding. This principle of the subordination of the inferior to the superior was the "corner-stone" on which it was formed."

And finally, the Texas Articles of Secession are very pointed: ""In all of the non-slaveholding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist even between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery -- proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color -- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the divine law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy -- the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races and show their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States....

"We hold, as undeniable truths, that the governments of the various States and of the Confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependant race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

"That, in this free government, all white men are, and of right ought to be, entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both, and desolation upon the fifteen slaveholding States."

While these are hard statements and difficult to read, they are the perspective of the Confederates. The sentiments expressed in The South Was Right do not express the sentiments of the Confederates. They express the sentiments of the Yankee Abolitionists against which the Confederates fought.

To claim allegiance to the South and the Confederacy we must either accept their beliefs as they come or decide on some logical and reasonable modifications given the change in today’s political and historical landscape.

The South Was Right does neither. It assumes the Abolitionist morality and, through a plausible lie, passes that off as the morality of the Confederacy.

II. Equality of Opportunity

The second point we should cover is that of "equality of opportunity." This is one of Kennedy’s favorite themes. His entire case for the social institution he wants to install in his new South is built upon this concept. It is integral to his system.

What you should see concerning his idea of "equality of opportunity" are three things:

(1) It attacks the traditional Southern position in exactly the same place the Yankee Abolitionists attacked it in 1861,

(2) It proposes the same social order as proposed by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s,

(3) It holds out as plausible the same foolish possibilities as were held out to the South by the liberals who wanted to end segregation in the 1960s.

In a nutshell, Kennedy takes the exact same position as the historical enemies of the South, repackages them, and tries to sell them to us again as something new and novel.

1. Revising Southern History

Attendant to these errors and hypocrisies are the mischaracterization of the South and the Confederates. He must drastically alter the historical South to make his liberal/Abolitionist scheme appear plausible. And in so doing, he performs the acts common to liberals, revising the South and its history, thus slandering its people and way of life.

Kennedy begins with a double standard, one for whites and a different one, a more lenient one, for blacks. He never states this double standard propositionally. But it is assumed and implied throughout The South Was Right. While never saying anything positive about Yankee founding fathers and the great contribution they made to the Constitution or the American way of life, Kennedy makes sure that he points out "our society has been influenced positively by the African-Americans." (page 85)

Further, Kennedy makes this statement: "We have been forced to endure such insults as busing, racial quotas, minority set-asides, affirmative action plans, reverse discrimination, and a discriminatory South-only Voting Rights Act, just to name a few. All this (and so much more that space does not allow its printing) in the name of human equality, and still we are no closer to appeasing the gods of Yankee liberalism than when our political leaders first began their groveling." (page 249) Notice that he lays no blame for these legal and social ills to the account of the blacks. His condemnation goes to the Yankees (whites). This is Kennedy's double-standard in action.

To Kennedy, Yankees — Northern whites — are the worst vermin on earth. They are castigated as far worse than blacks, although he never directly compares the two. And racist Southerners — those who won’t go along with the plausible lie he has concocted, are next in line to be berated. The only blacks Kennedy criticizes are those of the NAACP, who do not view the world through the eyes of a raceless individualist.

The truth is that the blacks have been far more immoral throughout American history than even the Yankees. The blacks have done far more harm to the South than the Yankees, especially the past 35 years.. They are a far bigger problem for the South today than the Yankees.

But none of this fits the plausible lie Kennedy spins in The South Was Right. And so he presents only a selective rendering of the facts. And leaves the other facts unstated -- such as black crime committed against Southerners and the denigrating effects black culture has exercised on Southern society since the Civil Rights Movement, although they bear on the situation with far more relevance than the ones he states.

Individual Liberty

Also, Kennedy revises the history of the traditional South by stating that it was a place that stood for individual liberty. Kennedy calls this "the individualistic heritage of the South." His full quote is this: "This concept, equality of results, is in direct opposition to the traditional individualistic belief of our Southern heritage." (page 247) I contest this perspective. The quotes I have given from Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, and the Texas Articles of Secession undeniably demonstrate that our people have carried a "group" identity with them that has been the touchstone upon which we have been attacked by the equalitarian United States.

It is the Yankee Abolitionists and later the Civil Rights proponents who held to a belief in individualism. Kennedy tacitly acknowledges this when he states: "The Northern liberals are now demanding that the central government provide equality of results. No longer satisfied with the concept of equality of opportunity, modern liberals, like the citizen of the former Soviet Union, are now preparing to reduce all to the equality of slavery." (page 247) Notice that he understands that the liberals at first demanded equality of opportunity but are now moving to a further step of demanding equality of results. Now who, pray tell, was it that the liberals were remonstrating against when they worked for equality of opportunity? Who was it in 1861 and 1961 that refused to go along with this first step to tyranny and slavery? It was the South; in both instances. The South stood against these forces of liberalism, the first program of which Kennedy has now excepted as valid and proper.

Richard Weaver gave this quote from a Confederate general commenting on our effort after the War: "Into the strange personnel of the Confederate Army... poured fighting bishops and prayer-holding generals, and through it swept waves of intense religious enthusiasm long lost to history. And when that army went down to defeat, the last barrier to the secular spirit of science, materialism, and democracy was vanquished."

It was the South that stood foursquare against democracy and the individualism it represented. Kennedy has revised our heritage and now has the South standing for the very issue she was attacked for standing against.

Kennedy bases his system of "equality of opportunity" on the words from the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." These are the very words that the caused the South to leave the Union and fight the War in the first place. Remember the above-quoted words of Jefferson Davis: "She [Mississippi] has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races."

Therefore, Kennedy is trying to do to the South exactly what the North was trying to do to her that provoked the War for Southern Independence. He wants to apply this ideal of equality across the racial line; the exact matter that provoked the War.

It is this dishonest position that is integral to Kennedy’s system. He wants a raceless and individualistic social order, just like Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights liberals initially campaigned for. He has acknowledged this.

Evolutionary History

To buttress this position, he resorts to an evolutionary view of moral history. Kennedy writes: "What then did Thomas Jefferson mean when he penned the `self-evident’ phrase? In the early days of the American Republic, the term referred to equality before God and the law. It was an open attack against the then-prevalent concept of the divine right of kings. Later in the American setting, it came to mean equality of opportunity (i.e., that no one should be arbitrarily barred from the rights protected by law or from access to public services)." (page 248)

Notice that he makes no case for his conclusion that the meaning of the phrase changed from one thing to another. He just arbitrarily announces it has changed. Obviously, the phrase has not changed. If it’s meaning changed, then something must have occurred to change it. It did. The Yankee victory in the War for Southern Independence occurred. Their equalitarianism demanded that the meaning of the phrase change. Kennedy has bought into their philosophy. Therefore, in his mind, the meaning of the phrase has changed.

So Kennedy has taken the "self-evident" clause from the Declaration of Independence, acknowledged that it meant what the South said it meant, and now declares that it means what the North said it meant.

Kennedy needs to be told the same thing that the U.S. Senate needed to be told, and was told, by Jefferson Davis: "The Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made. The communities were asserting that no man was born, to use the language of Mr. Jefferson, booted and spurred, to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal, meaning the men of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended to families; but all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. There were the great principles they announced; these were the purposes for which they made their declaration; these were the ends to which their enunciation was directed. They have no reference to the slave...."

The phrase has not changed. The meaning of the phrase has not changed. What has changed is the philosophy of the country and this new philosophy cannot live with the true and accurate meaning of that phrase. And so a decree to change the meaning has been made. The decree is dishonest, another plausible lie. But the new dishonest meaning allows the equalitarians to rule with the semblance of a direct connection back to the founding fathers. Kennedy has now joined in the dishonest ruse with them and pushes their new ideal.

Never let it be lost on us, that Kennedy’s bait-and-switch on the meaning of the Declaration of Independence is exactly the point on which the North attacked the South in the War for Southern Independence!

Gandhi, King, and Kennedy

I would also add that when laying out his vision of a future South as a place of equality of opportunity, Kennedy appeals to the example of Mahatma Gandhi. "When Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu, was pressed by certain Moslems to reserve a specific number of jobs for minorities regardless of their qualifications, he objected. Gandhi, who was probably this century’s purest (if not only) humanitarian spirit, declared his stand on quotas thusly...." (page 250) (Kennedy next gives a quote by Gandhi against the quota system in hiring government employees.)

Every Christian should cringe in agony from Kennedy’s perspective on Gandhi. We know that Gandhi was a godless pagan. We know that he too was an integrationist. And we know that tens and hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in ethnic wars because of his raceless individualism. And this is the model Kennedy would have us employ in a new South.

We also know that he was the model drawn upon by Martin Luther King. So it is now no wonder that Kennedy supports the same program as that of King; he salutes and reveres the same role model. And it should not go unnoticed that King's program has also resulted in a terrible outbreak of violence, mayhem, and murder in the South. Since the blacks achieved the equality of opportunity, they have murdered thousands upon thousands of Southerners, raped thousands upon thousands of Southern women, and robbed millions and millions of Southern homes, businesses, and automobiles.

The South has become much more like Gandhi's India since the program promoted by Gandhi, King, and Kennedy has been implemented.

2. Evolutionary Morality

Now how does Kennedy square these two incompatible positions, the desire for a raceless, individualistic social order with the South’s historic rebellion against the same? He revises morality. He holds to an evolutionary view of moral history in which mankind has somehow learned to overcome "racism."

His words are these: "One fact that no historian can dispute is that nowhere in Europe or America were blacks granted the rights that whites enjoyed. The very nature of civilized society in that day would not allow for equal rights under the law. The principle of the innate worth of each individual was yet to be propounded." (pages 116-117)

So here you see his attack upon the Bible and the Christian religion. He is saying that something has occurred since the time of the War to usher in a new morality to mankind. This implies that the revelation of ethics God gave to mankind in the Bible was incomplete. And it implies that people today are to be judged by a different standard than they were then. And it also implies that some event or chain of events has taken place since the end of the War that renders mankind liable to judgement under this new morality.

First, I dispute that any principle of morality has been discovered as new since the end of the War. The Christian Church has held the truth in its entirety for many centuries before that time. The innate worth of each individual was understood even from Old Testament passages, hundreds and thousands of years before the time of Christ.

Second, the thing that is new, the thing that is novel, is Kennedy’s philosophy. He has accepted the equalitarian philosophy of the Abolitionists. He has become reconstructed, despite his protests to the contrary. For he has accepted the Abolitionists’ basic presupposition: "The South must allow the full social and political participation of all persons living in the South regardless of race, creed, or color, or else be racists, bigots, and hatemongers."

I invite Mr. Kennedy to explain to us what event or chain of events has taken place since the War that has ushered in this new morality. The only thing that I can think of is that the new Humanist savior, Martin Luther King, has come, died for our sins, and risen again and now all men are bound to obey his law. If Mr. Kennedy or anyone else can come up with some other plausible explanation, I would love to hear it.

I think the fact is that Kennedy has accepted the Abolitionist proposition that to withhold full social or political participation from any individual on the basis of race or religion is to deny the innate worth of that individual. And this position is fully refuted in Robert L. Dabney’s An Anti-Biblical Theory of Rights, so I won’t go into it here.

3. A New Social Order

Having seen that Kennedy attacks the South on exactly the same point the Yankees did in 1861, and how he holds forth the same program of raceless, color-blind individualism that Martin Luther King held forth, Let’s look at how he holds out the same foolish possibilities for the new social order that the liberals held out to the South in the 1960s.

Like all liberals, Kennedy wants to be judged by the "goodness" of his intentions and not the tragic results of his actions. He speaks at length against the policy of "equality of result." Kennedy opposes socialistic programs such as quotas, affirmative action, minority set-asides, force busing, etc.

Here then is Kennedy's moral polemic for the new South he wants to erect: "Equality of opportunity, equality before the law, and especially a realization that all people stand as equals before God are all important aspects of the Southern National political philosophy. (The latter is not meant as a theological statement but only to stress the point that all people are equally valuable and therefore not `expendable' from an ethical perspective.) Results in each person's life must depend upon the individual's personal talents, skill, motivation, and intelligence." (page 251)

Kennedy stops short of predicting how well his program will work or that the South will become a great nation within the family of nations because of his program. But you should never lose sight of the fact that Kennedy's system is essentially a restatement of the rhetoric that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave us 35 years ago; he too wanted to build a color-blind society of raceless individuals. And the results have been disastrous.

The first problem with this is that the blacks and other minorities have no intention of acting like raceless individuals the way Kennedy envisions. He acts as if the South’s problems are presently caused by the North, when the truth is that the South’s problems today are caused by the fruit of the North’s victory, namely, the social and political equality of the blacks with the Southern people. (Add to this the terrible immigration policy that is bringing in millions and millions of other non-European peoples to the South.) They will not act like raceless individuals. They never have acted like raceless individualists. They continue to act in concert, using their votes to elect candidates that use their votes to appropriate everything the Southern people have to their own accounts.

The past 35 years have proven this proposition beyond a reasonable doubt. The elections of 1998 were but the icing on the cake.

Nonetheless, Kennedy holds out the same foolish possibilities that were held out to the South in the Civil Rights era: we can all act as one people and have equality of opportunity without enforcing an equality of result.

The second problem with his program is that trying to build a society is that it is at variance with the God-ordained program of separate peoples and separate nations instituted in Genesis 9-11 to keep mankind from uniting in defiance and rebellion against God and His Kingdom. Kennedy has about as much chance of success at building a new Southern society in equality with the blacks as he does of turning back the incoming tide with a broom.

This is exactly the system that has been in place for the past 35 years. It has not worked. It will not work. Kennedy's ridiculous perspective that the racial problems in the South are caused by conspiratorial action by the Yankees is a simple cop-out, a way he can address the South's problems without attacking the equalitarian social order instituted because of the Yankee victories in the Civil War and the Civil Rights War.

Finally, Kennedy does indeed put forth a few qualifications for voting. He wants the registered voter to be able to read and write, be a tax-payer, not be on the welfare dole, etc. He takes these guidelines from John Stuart Mill. But in reality, these qualifications are all enemies to the principle of equality of opportunity.

In truth, there is no equality of opportunity. There will always be inequities of talent, ability, family, etc. It is just a useless abstraction. So by equality of opportunity, Kennedy only means that it is wrong to discriminate against someone on the basis of race, creed, or color. Again, intrinsically, this is the same system we have in place now. It is a restatement of the Martin Luther King, Jr. position. It is the very system the South has despised and fought against through the decades. But now a son of the South has repackaged it and sent it to us as our salvation.

This is hypocrisy to the nth degree. It is dishonest and a violation of the ninth commandment (Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.) for Kennedy to push this on us as though it represents the views of the South.

If he wants to believe it, fine. If he wants to construct a new political order based on it, have at it. But he needs to remove his perspective that he stands for the principles of the Confederates or the historic South. That is a lie. He stands against the principles of the Confederates and the historic South. For Kennedy to display the Confederate Battle Flag in conjunction with his system is a slander against the men who fought under that banner.

True Southerners are duty bound to oppose him in his nefarious efforts.

The Rebuttal to the Kennedy Brothers' book The South Was Right.
   A Plausible Lie, click here for the INTRODUCTION
"There is a cancer of dishonesty and deceit running through a portion of the current Southern movement. Much of it, I'm convinced, springs from the book The South Was Right. In my rebuttal I show that the Kennedy Brothers take the same position as the Yankees on the two issues upon which the North has attacked the South. Don't miss it!"

-- Dennis Wheeler (Reclaiming the South)

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TO PART TWO

BACK TO THE INTRODUCTION

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