Virginia governor Bob McDonald is getting some heat for his declaring April to be Confederate History Month. That declaration reads: (emp add)
WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse; and
WHEREAS, Virginia has long recognized her Confederate history, the numerous civil war battlefields that mark every region of the state, the leaders and individuals in the Army, Navy and at home who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today; and
WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to reflect upon our Commonwealth’s shared history, to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present; and
WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders, and the study of this time period should reflect upon and learn from this painful part of our history; and
WHEREAS, Confederate historical sites such as the White House of the Confederacy are open for people to visit in Richmond today; and
WHEREAS, all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed by the insurmountable numbers and resources of the Union Army, the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace, following the instruction of General Robert E. Lee of Virginia, who wrote that, “...all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace."; and
WHEREAS, this defining chapter in Virginia’s history should not be forgotten, but instead should be studied, understood and remembered by all Virginians, both in the context of the time in which it took place, but also in the context of the time in which we live, and this study and remembrance takes on particular importance as the Commonwealth prepares to welcome the nation and the world to visit Virginia for the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the Civil War, a four-year period in which the exploration of our history can benefit all;
(etc)
If you're going to talk about "the people of Virginia" joining the Confederacy, then you've got to include West Virginia, which also was in the Confederacy for a few years. And then you have to explain why it seceded. (The historical developments were fairly complex.
McDonald should have issued a joint declaration with West Virginia celebrating the Confederacy. But that would never happen.
Palin is given to meandering phraseology of a kind suggesting someone more commenting on impressions as they enter and leave her head rather than constructing insights about them
Part of why Palin speaks the way she does is that she has grown up squarely within a period of American history when the old-fashioned sense of a speech as a carefully planned recitation, and public pronouncements as performative oratory, has been quite obsolete.
The most concrete observation by the writer, John McWhorter, is this:
Palin frequently displaces statements with an appended “there,” as in “We realize that more and more Americans are starting to see the light there...” But where? Why the distancing gesture? At another time, she referred to Condoleezza Rice trying to “forge that peace.” That peace? You mean that peace way over there — as opposed to the peace that you as Vice-President would have been responsible for forging? She’s far, far away from that peace.
All of us use there and that in this way in casual speech — it’s a way of placing topics as separate from us on a kind of abstract “desktop” that the conversation encompasses. “The people in accounting down there think they can just ....” But Palin, doing this even when speaking to the whole nation, is no further outside of her head than we are when talking about what’s going on at work over a beer. The issues, American people, you name it, are “there” — in other words, not in her head 24/7. She hasn’t given them much thought before; they are not her. They’re that, over there.
This reminds me of toddlers who speak from inside their own experience in a related way: they will come up to you and comment about something said by a neighbor you’ve never met, or recount to you the plot of an episode of a TV show they have no way of knowing you’ve ever heard of. Palin strings her words together as if she were doing it for herself
The writer goes on to look at various utterances that Palin has assembled, and finds peculiarities (e.g. converting an adjective to an adverb because - look out! - it's got to "make sense" with a noun that's suddenly emerged from her thoughts).
While this is mostly armchair analysis and speculation, what I'd really be interested to know is, how well does Palin communicate in a task-oriented environment? Fishing. Driving to point A. Assembling a bicycle. Does she speak in the manner that most of us expect of her, or does she clearly articulate the what, the how, the where, necessary to move forward? Does she give the impression that necessary equipment is "there" (where it should be), when in fact it's not? Only someone who has seen her function in a task-oriented environment would know.
Glum about the economy and the future of this country? Don't worry folks, in the coming years the United States population will surge. A whole lot. And that enormous labor pool, by my reckoning, will get paid really well (just ignore the fact that it's really businesses that benefit from such situations).
Over at FrumForum, what we'd call a moderate Republican has penned How the GOP Purged Me.
Of interest are two excerpts. First this:
I voted for Nixon and for Reagan. ... I voted for Clinton, twice. I thought he was the best Republican president since Ike. No, I did not make a mistake. Bill Clinton was closer ideologically to Eisenhower and Nixon than Bush I and II could ever be. I thought that Clinton practiced and articulated true Republican ideology in his fiscal discipline, job creation, smart tax cuts, and foreign policy better than anyone since Ike.
I agree, which makes me wonder why so many Democrats were, and remain, thrilled by Bill Clinton.
Then there's this:
Then something happened in the 1990s. The leaders of the GOP grew belligerent. They became too religious, almost zealots. They became intolerant. They began searching for purity in Republican thought and doctrine. Ideology blinded them. I continued to vote Republican, but with a certain unease. Deep down I knew that a schism happened between the modern Republican Party and the one I grew up with. During the fight over the impeachment of President Clinton, the ugly face of the Republican Party was brought to the surface. Empty rhetoric, ideological intolerance, vengeance, and religious zealotry became the common currency.
That development is something I associate with Newt Gingrich and his takeover of the Republican party. Gingrich really did start the move to eliminate moderates from within the Republican party.
As far as the priest abuse stories go, 'something in the moral/cultural/theological climate of the 1960s and 1970s encouraged a spike in sexual abuse', and I should know, I was there to witness it.
