Public life is always a hoot…
People of sound mind and reasonable judgment in their personal
lives take on characters full of unwarranted confidence and intolerant
insistence in public.
The couple whose son has a “drug problem” wants the government
to start a nationwide treatment program.
The guy who can’t get his town sanitation department to pick up
the trash in front of his house wants to clean up a government on the other
side of the world.
The woman who is not sure she will need an umbrella is convinced
the planet is warming up.
It’s always easier to solve someone else’s problem than your
own. That’s one of the great advantages of living overseas: Public life is full
of other people’s problems.
Old
Stones
Imagine if a group of Americans proposed to abolish the First
Amendment, take away your favorite monuments, or introduce devil worship at
your church.
You would be outraged.
But when similar outrages happen in a foreign language… they are
mostly amusing and puzzling.
The show is a comedy, not a tragedy. As our friend Nassim Taleb
puts it, we have no “skin in the game.”
Overseas, we lack the cues, the context, and the emotional
connections to take them seriously.
We read the headlines; we shake our heads and smile. The local
myths and mysteries have no power over us.
So it was that when a group of leftist demonstrators marched
through Salta (Argentina) recently, we didn’t know what to make of it.
“What was that all about?” we asked.
Meanwhile, scuffles broke out in New Orleans. On one side were
demonstrators eager to pull down the statues of war heroes Robert E. Lee,
Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard. On the other side, demonstrators were
there to protect them.
ABC News:
Multiple people were arrested on Sunday as hundreds of
protesters clashed over the fate of Confederate monuments in New Orleans,
police said.
Three protesters were arrested and charged with disturbing the
peace on Sunday afternoon near Lee Circle in New Orleans after a fight broke
out at a Confederate monuments demonstration, according to the New Orleans
Police Department…
More than 700 people attended demonstrations on Sunday on both
sides of the city’s plans to remove three remaining Confederate monuments.
Then, vandals defaced the monument to P.G.T. Beauregard, draping
a sign on it that said: “This is historical violence, we say no.”
We’re not sure what that was supposed to mean. But we know where
our sympathies lie: with the stones.
War of
Liberation
Confederate General Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest
soldiers in American history. Compared to him, the gilded generals now
frequenting the White House—Mattis, McMaster, Kelly—are little more than paper
pushers.
But let’s look at P.G.T. Beauregard, the hero of the First
Battle of Bull Run.
Born on a sugar plantation in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana,
little Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard didn’t speak English until his parents
sent him to New York to learn it.
Thence, he got an appointment to West Point and began his
military career thereafter. He served his country in the Mexican-American War…
and then served as superintendent at West Point.
But when Louisiana declared independence, what was he to do?
Defend the homeland? Or fight against it?
We begin by correcting a common misunderstanding. Many people
call it the “Civil War,” which is not only oxymoronic but also incorrect.
A civil war is a fight between two or more factions for the
control of the government. The war that took place between 1861 and 1865 was
nothing of the sort.
Instead, it was a war of national liberation. The Southern
states seceded from the Union—a right announced in the founding document of the
U.S., the Declaration of Independence.
Thereafter, they never sought any control or even influence over
the remaining United States of America.
The government is always a way for the few to exploit the many.
The southerners wanted no more than to be ripped off and bossed around by their
own people.
Flattering
Narrative
But it’s been a long time since the war.
Facts degrade like carbon isotopes. Real knowledge declines by
the square of the time gone by and the magnitude of the event in question.
In its place, a simplified myth provides a soothing explanation,
leaving those who believe it dumber than they were had they known nothing at
all.
So the stage was set when Donald J. Trump came on the scene.
The New
York Times:
“People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think
about it, why?” he told his interviewer…
Mr. Trump followed up on the comment in a tweet on Monday night,
arguing that [Andrew] Jackson saw the Civil War coming and would have prevented
it had he not died 16 years earlier.
Why?
Almost immediately, the great and the good rose to the
challenge, denouncing Mr. Trump for daring to challenge the flattering
narrative.
In their minds, the “Civil War” had but one cause. Even Chelsea
Clinton let her Twitter fans know what it was immediately: “slavery.”
This made the war unavoidable, just, and heroic. Whipping the
South, at great cost, made sense because it wiped that stain from the national
escutcheon.
That is the only politically acceptable narrative for the “Civil
War” today.
Mission
to Protect
But the poor Little Creole!
It was much more complicated for P.G.T. Beauregard. He was
trained as a soldier. His mission was to protect his country… as commanded by
his civilian superiors.
Louisiana declared independence in January 1861. The Confederate
States of America then offered to make him a brigadier general. What was he to
say?
“No, thanks… I’ll stick with the Yankees.”
Judged by today’s sentiments, he might have refused service, citing
slavery (a classic win-lose deal—slave owners won while slaves lost) as a deal
breaker.
He might have led a demonstration, seated on the grass in front
of the state house playing guitars and singing Kumbaya. He could have asked for
gluten-free wafers in church, too.
But this was the 1860s, and his homeland was about to be invaded
by a foreign army.
In the event, Beauregard cast his lot with his fellow
Southerners. And when Lincoln sent his army into Virginia, he was ready for
them.
The Yankees attacked at Bull Run, Virginia, in July 1861.
Beauregard, in command of the Confederate Army there, counterattacked and drove
them back to their barracks in Washington, D.C.
Some military scholars believe Beauregard should have followed
up with a move against the capital. He might have captured the White House and
Congress… and brought the war to an early close.
Had he done so, who knows what would have happened?
Perhaps the nation would have been spared 1 million deaths.
Maybe slavery could have been ended in an orderly, nonviolent way.
And maybe Lincoln’s statues would now be hoisted up and carried
away.
Reprinted
with permission from International Man.
Bill Bonner is a New York Times bestselling author and founder of
Agora, one of the largest independent financial publishers in the world. If you
would like to read more of Bill’s essays, sign-up for his free daily e-letter
at Bill Bonner’s Diary of a Rogue Economist.
Copyright © 2017 Casey Research, LLC.
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