Where do they find these people? Lincoln Haters

[andyjackson1828]

HOT SPRINGS - In a conference room at the Velda Rose Hotel, about 75 people have shown up for a full day of Lincoln-bashing. One of the featured speakers, Sam Dickson of Atlanta, notes that it's not a bad turnout for a town the size of Hot Springs. Especially considering that tickets are $50 apiece (lunch included).

Dickson compliments those in attendance, saying "If there's to be a future for White European Christians on this continent - and that's very much in doubt," it will be thanks to groups like this one, "that save the memories of what we were."

Abraham Lincoln has been dead 140 years; a stranger in town might wonder why people are holding a hatred party for someone who's been gone so long. What has he done to them lately? Well, lately the Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission discovered that a 3-foot-high bronze statue of the 16th president that the commission had owned since the 1960s is a more important and valuable work than the commissioners had realized. They decided to display it more prominently, in the Hot Springs Civic and Convention Center. Members of the Hot Springs chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans noticed, and objected to the statue's exhibition on city property, calling Lincoln a "war criminal" among other things. When the Advertising and Promotion Commission stood fast, the SCV decided that "education" about Lincoln was in order.

The gathering today is officially called a "Seminar on Abraham Lincoln - Truth Vs. Myth" and is sponsored by James M. Keller Camp 648 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. That's the Hot Springs branch. The commander, Loy Mauch of Bismarck, says it's the largest SCV camp in Arkansas, with 111 members. Don Dukes of Hot Springs, lieutenant commander of the Arkansas Division (that is, top dog in the statewide organization), is also present. He says there are about 20 camps in Arkansas - Jonesboro, Little Rock, Fayetteville, etc. - with a total membership of over 500.

The rest at...

http://www.arktimes.com/040206coverstorya.html

[DrWeird]

1. The South, mostly.

Did they ever get around to building that big old statue of Lincoln in Richmond yet? Sure hope so.

[Cooley Hurd]

2. Google "southern" and "heritage" & see what you get...

Google southern+heritage...

Scary stuff!

[Archae]

3. Lincoln is "too liberal" for these knuckledraggers.

These two paragraphs say it all:

Dickson may be the best speaker of the seminar participants. He also may be the one most likely to say something that might be called "extremist" or "racist." Generally, the speakers are fairly careful about their remarks; a listener has the impression they'd like to say more, but they know the media are present. Besides his dark broodings about the future of white Christians, Dickson says "Scratch a liberal and you'll find a Communist," "Lincoln is a keystone in the arch of this whole evil system that is destroying our country," "Most people today believe that the races are equal. Two generations ago, nobody believed that." He speaks admiringly of Ann Coulter.

Though this is not a League of the South meeting, several of the participants have League connections. Dickson is a member of the League, and according to a League web site, Mauch is head of the group's West Arkansas chapter. Dickson is also a member of the board of directors of the Council of Conservative Citizens. Descended from the old White Citizens Councils who fought integration in the 1950s and '60s, the CCC is widely regarded as racist. Trent Lott and other politicians have gotten in trouble when their dealings with the CCC were exposed.

[On the Road]

4. Their Numbers are Legion

and they can be found south of the Mason Dixon line.

Until a couple of years ago, the state song of Mayland (!) had an oblique reference to Lincoln as a "tyrant." Some high school kids made an issue of it and it was changed.

[wellstone_democrat]

5. "war criminal?" That's rich...

Last I checked boys, *armed rebellion* against your legally constituted government was the *crime.* Try a conference on Jefferson Davis if you feel the need to assign figures in the 1860s "war criminal" status.

If the CSA had *won* the war this would make "some" sense. The problem is, my Hot Springs friends, victors write the history and determine whether a "rebel leader" is a hero/martyr or a criminal involved in insurrection.

But, hopefully this will keep some of them busy on thinking about something other than how to torment the rest of us...

[bluestateguy]

6. I've got it! I know how Democrats can win the South!

Lincoln bashing! Just think, this is how we can get the conservative white men in the South to vote for us. "Vote the way you shot boys!" Remind white southerners that it was Republicans who "invaded" the South and that it was the Republican, General Sherman, who tore up Georgia and the Carolinas. It was Republicans who instituted a repressive Reconstruction plan. It was Republicans who destroyed the antebellum southern way of life. That would be sure to win the white southern vote.

[forgethell]

14. They remembered it for 100 years,

do you think they decided to move on?

[Burma Jones]

7. In Charleston SC, they refer to it as the War of Northern Aggression

So Lincoln is an aggressuh.

[no_hypocrisy]

8. Abraham Lincoln went on record in favor of the Dred Scott decision.

Shouldn't they cut him some slack for that position?

BTW he wasn't necessarily in favor of continuing slave ownership. He just didn't want judicial activism to capitulate the country into division, in other words, to save the union no matter what.

[PragMantisT]

9. What a coincidence!!

The former director of the Ark state National organization for Women was in Hot Springs today to announce a challenge for the Senate seat of Blanche Lincoln.

I used to like Blanche, but she seems to be going along with * on a regular basis these days.

At least she ain't Tommy Robbingsome or Mike Schmuckabee (never met a criminal working in the governor's mansion he didn't like).

[liberalhistorian]

10. Someone needs to remind

these idiots who fired the first shot in the Civil War, and who actually started it! I'm so fucking sick of the many versions of the Confederate Order of Whatever Ignorance is Being Peddled Today acting like it's 1864 and not 2004, and always whining about what pitiful little victims the South and Southerners were, and how horrible the North was, etc., etc., when THEY STARTED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE! The war is OVER, GET OVER IT!

I recently saw a book in my bookstore called The South Was Right!, it was apparently about how the South had the right to secede and be its own country, and the North was a horrible monster for not just stepping back and letting it happen, blahblahblahblahblah. Where the hell do these idiots come from, anyway, off of an 1860's time machine?

People and groups like that make the entire South look ignorant and backwards, reinforcing its racist and ignorant reputation, and that's grossly unfair to the majority of Southerners.

Poor Lincoln could never seem to catch a break in life or in death. His wife was Southern and her family sympathized with the Confederacy, he caught no end of holy hell in the North for that.

[Sophree]

15. It goes both ways.

Southerners and Northerners are taught 2 different versions of the Civil War and I think this is part of the problem.

Northerners too often blame Southerners and assume all of them were racist, pro-slavery, etc. when many of them were fighting for their families, homes, states.

Southerners ignore how difficult it must have been for Lincoln, and how he sacrificed his life in the end for the country.

Acknowledging the loss, bravery, and sacrifice on both sides would be a step in the right direction.

[rasputin1952]

11. If this was not so absurd, it would be amusing...

it also sets a reference point for how hatred is passed on from generation to generation. Life in the shadows must be so frightening.

O8)

[hatrack]

12. News flash for these clowns:

The North won, the South lost. Deal with it.

[LincolnMcGrath]

13. They Hate Me?