Alien Drums

What are these people thinking?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a bill has been introduced in the Georgia General Assembly to designate April  as Confederate History and Heritage Month in the state. The second paragraph is the one that leaves me stratching my head.

“Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga) is the main sponsor of Senate Bill 283, which would encourage Georgians each April to honor the Confederacy, its history, soldiers and the people who ‘contributed to the cause of Southern Independence.’”

I’m all for teaching history, honest history; but honoring people who “contributed to the cause of Southern Independence” (note the capital “S” and “I”) should be anathema to Americans today.

In other words, read it this way. Let’s honor people who …

… contributed to sustaining the practice of owning other humans.

… contributed to the effort to divide the United States of America, which so many in the South today honor with great patriotism.

I grew up in the South (Texas) and live today in the South (Texas), but I repudiate this part of Southern and Texas history. The rebellion of the South to protect the institution of slavery and Southern identity was wrong. We should study this part of our history not to honor but to learn from mistakes, just as people in Germany today should study the blight of Nazism.

Yes, I just equated the Confederacy with Nazism. Both devalued human life because of arbitrary ethnic distinctions; no, they didn’t just devalue, they treated such people as non-human. That is a disgrace.

I’m a Christian, but I find it interesting that these two depravities surfaced in cultures that were primarily Christian (at least I think of Germany as primarily Lutheran in the early 20th century).

Nazism and slavery are of Satan. It shows just how badly people who say they follow Christ can be led astray by the spiritual force that seeks by lies and hate to pull all of creation away from God. That spiritual force apparently is still at work today, at least in Georgia.