Are you bummed about not being able to own African slaves, both because of your permanently doomed financial condition and also the anti-state’s-rights 13th amendment to the Constitution? Well we hope you are enjoying being an angry old white slob with a moldy sofa on your porch! Also, you may want to “subscribe” to the web page “Human Events,” in order to get a special bonus gift: The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to the Civil War. Haha, stupid slaves!
In case you’ve forgotten the 1980s — and if you’re American, you’ve forgotten basically everything before the LOST finale — “politically incorrect” is a Reagan-era term for pissed-off white guys who were just so pissed off that they couldn’t say racist/sexist things all the time, to everybody. And then, inexplicably, it began to describe overly sensitive language as used by academics and newspaper editors. (Your editor recalls the odd newsroom culture of the early 1990s, when he was prohibited from referring to a Mexican diplomat in California as “Mexican” because the paper’s style had changed to “Latino” or “Latina.”)
And then, anno anus 2010 arrived, and anything openly racist and vile was rebranded by wingnuts as “Politically Incorrect.”
He also includes thought-provoking chapters such as “The Civil War in Sixteen Battles You Should Know” and the most devastatingly politically incorrect chapter of all, “What if the South Had Won.”
This is the Politically Incorrect Guide that every Civil War buff and Southern partisan — and everyone who is tired of liberal self-hatred that vilifies America’s greatest heroes — will have to have on his bookshelf.
Haha, what if? Just speculatin’ is all. What if Barack Obama’s children could be sold as slaves and beaten to death without penalty? [Talking Points Memo]
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Good to know that Human Events considers people who committed treason against the United States “America’s greatest heroes”. Why do you hate America, Thomas Winter?
Finally, anno anus 2010. A year I can really get behind.
Why give away for free what could certainly be a best seller?
This must be a fake. They’d never call it “The Civil War” if they were truly Southern.
They aren’t even pretending to be decent anymore, are they?
You know, I’m starting to see the genius of people like Coulter, et al…this shit is so easy! Just make up stuff that tells assholes what they want to hear, pass it off as “the real story,” and BAM…NY Times best-seller.
A book explicitly aimed at “Southern partisans” — people who still say “the War of Northern Aggression” — is not only guaranteed to be politically incorrect, it’ll be historically incorrect as well.
I’m more interested in how smoking can be healthy.
And who says these jerkoffs can’t read? I guess this shows them! No doubt this classic Tome will be included in the Course Core Curriculum in Texas Public Schools along with the World History Books outlining how Jebus defeated the Jews while riding a Dinosaur.
[re=609968]JMP[/re]: Shooting — or even protesting — United States soldiers is only treason now, silly. Back then it was a matter of principled defiance.
You can take the boy out of the Mein Kampf…but you can’t take the Mein Kampf out of the boy.
[re=609971]actor212[/re]: The War of Northern Aggression, they call it. Further evidence that we should of hanged the leaders of that rebellion when it was over. They just resumed their old political and financial power positions and started to spread that bullshit about White Supremacy all over again. Once the North got tired of paying occupation troops in the 1870′s the blacks were fucked again. Still are in some places down there.
Well, when I’m in Gettysburg this month, I’ll be sure to remind the rebel re-enactors that it’s a long walk home.
And Ken, the Latino Ambassador? What country is Latino? Must have driven you mad until you got to the closest bar…
Look for this to be incorporated in to our schools history curriculum once Texas gets through with it.
Well I for one am grateful for the fact that someone Finally has the Courage to Tell It Like It Is.
…except that I have this weird feeling that we’ve been here before.. didn’t all this “I’m not scared to be politically incorrect!” crap go out in the mid-90s?
[re=609976]ttommyunger[/re]: I think it’s a pop-up book.
John Adams, America’s greatest hero, owned no slaves.
Is The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Famous Closeted Republicans coming soon?
Does it come with a box of Crayons?
[re=609983]whiskey tango foxtrot[/re]: You idiot, your favorite editor did point this out already. Sheesh. Sober up out there, already.
Hell, I remember when “politically correct” was a positive trait and was used to denote organizations that promoted equitable hiring, recycling, and being a good corporate citizen generally — before it was appropriated to describe some ominous state-imposed vocabulary restrictions and all that other bullshit. I think that was for about a week back in 1983.
A book? Really? Is readin’ really a strong point with this guy’s target audience?
Realistically, the “What if the South Had Won” chapter is probably all about how the free market, which was allowed to thrive in the Confederacy, magically figured out a few years later that slavery is bad. Because the free market always has society’s best intentions in mind.
Oh, so it’s ‘TruckTesticles’ to be correct, yes?
Generals Sherman and Grant, and President Lincoln, were America’s greatest heroes. Also.
Loved the chapter about all the hot tubbing at Andersonville.
Turns out there’s a whole series of these Politically Incorrect guides, and you can go to Amazon to read parts of them. So I’m reading the table of contents in the American History guide, and got to the part where “Marshall Nullifies the Declaration of Independence,” and that’s pretty much all I need to know right there.
[re=609991]Anonymous Office Zombie[/re]: It comes with a CD that gives a friendly little jingle every time you need to turn the page.
There is a cool movie that’s shown on Sundance or IFC, I think, called something like “CSA — Confederate States of America.” The whole premise is that the confederacy did win. We side with Germany in WWII. We aggressively colonize/enslave the Latinos/Latinas. There is a reservation on Long Island where Jews live. Lincoln died in Canadian exile, in humiliation. It’s interspersed with commercials for actual products from as recently as the ’50s maybe, like Nigger Hair Cigarettes. It’s a little rough as a film, but worth seeing.
and the most devastatingly politically incorrect chapter of all, “What if the South Had Won.”
ZOMG, nobody’s ever thought about that idea before! How novel! It’s not like Harry Turtledove doesn’t pay for his bitches and blow with that very idea! Maybe you, too, can give Lee Kalashnikovs! It’s almost as original as Nazis winning WWII!
Q: What if the South had won the Civil War?
A: A combination of the CSA making war with everybody between the Rio Grande and Tierra del Fuego (as predicted by Lincoln) and frequent, bloody conflict between the two resulting states while Hapsburgs play us for fools (as predicted by Hamilton, Madison and Jay). Shit’s been figured out since well before the War of Southern Butthurt began.
Well, OK, that only would have continued until the North, unburdened by Texas schoolbooks, figures out nuclear fission.
[re=609997]Katydid[/re]: Correction: It was in the Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution. The entire book looks like it’s a beaut.
More simply: “An Incorrect Guide to the Civil War.”
[re=610002]MarieDeGournay[/re]: Or, “The Civil War for Dummies.”
This little jewel is on the book’s cover:
Did you know…That the South had the moral high ground in the war (and the editorial support of the Vatican’s own newspaper)
I actually want the Constitution guide, just to see how these people think. Don’t worry about me, I’ve got Vicodin, so I’ll be OK.
If it wasn’t for liberal self-hatred, heck, the conquering Yankees could have enslaved the vanquished. It would have been very becoming for a New York salon of the 1870′s to have genteel southern slaves serving tea and pulling weeds in the garden. A perfect Wall Street commidity and so much better than employing those crude Irish servants.
Screechin’ Terry Jeffrey from Human Events has the most punchable face of any person I’ve ever watched on the teevee.
You know, Ken, this “Human Events” listserv could provide many, many hours of entertainment for you, for us, for humanity. Is it within the Wonkette annual budget for Subscriptions to Wingnut Bullshit to possibly spring for the one year, $69.95 value membership? This volcano of stupidity would certainly lead to many future page views…
I can’t wait to add this to my library.
More depictions of the Saintly Robert E. Lee.
Damning attacks on that turncoat Longstreet (the long-time buddy of The Butcher Grant, and the man who lost the war for the South on the Second Day of Gettysburg).
And actual videotape footage of the hundreds of thousands of blacks who rallied to The Cause, and fought side-by-side with their owners against the invading Blue-Bellies.
Rightttttttttttt . . . .
[Ideally, though, it will have a lot of pictures of guns. Particularly, the Le Mat Revolver.]
Hmmm… I’m surprised that the book doesn’t include a chapter speculating “What if the South Never Allowed Slavery?”
[re=610006]RoscoePColtraine[/re]: “Hey, anything that distracts the Protestant yanquis from arming the Juaristas must be moral!”
AHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH! Could you imagine Americans being even fatter and lazier than we already are? That’s just what Murphy and his law would require, slave labor to ensure that an entire region of America is even fatter than they could imagine being and more backwards from the complete lack of innovation or technology. Lard-ass Luddites. Can I get a Whooooaaaaaa, CSA?!1!! I’m sure that Canada wouldn’t have been too upset with a massive land annex; nor would England mind having the prodigal come back to the feast of steak-and-kidney pudding.
On the other hand, no one would notice most of these loud-mouthed douches that are out here squawking nowadays, because they would have nothing subversive or ignorant to talk about. So, there is that.
[re=610007]Katydid[/re]: I spent a memorable 45 minutes slouched in a chair at Barnes & Noble reading the Politically Incorrect Guide to Evolution. It was a compendium of idiotic and discredited arguments that went back to Lord Kelvin’s theory that the sun couldn’t possibly have lasted billions of years because it would have burned all its fuel long ago. It’s especially entertaining when creationists toss cosmology into the anti-evolution argument ’cause you know the two are vastly different if you’re approaching them from a scientific perspective, but both contradict the same page of the Bible so really they’re the same thing.
[re=609979]steverino247[/re]: It’s also known as the War Between The States and the Late Unpleasantness. Ha ha, those Southerners.
[re=609997]Katydid[/re]: I’m glad you posted these, because these are fascinating. Sadly, though, “pages 7-338 are not included in this book preview”. I was really looking forward to finding the parts about how much better the blacks had it under slaveowners and posting it, ah, sigh.
The excerpts from its companion, “the politically incorrect guide to the south”, are more clear; did you know that no slaves rose up against their masters during the civil war, because they respected Southern women too much and knew that they were “all family”? Thanks, politically incorrect guides! Oh, and the south has always been about low taxes and independent government, which is why they always lead the nation is siphoning Federal aid away from the North, you betcha.
I prefer the term “War of Northern Aggression”. Does it to you?
[re=609999]Fudgie the Whale[/re]: “CSA — Confederate States of America” is available for instant play on Netflix. Thanks.
I know of no main stream history of the Civil War that doesn’t spend ample time lauding the courage of Confederate soldier or the guile and knowledge of Confederate generals. The notion that Civil War history is somehow PC because it doesn’t validate the racist views of modern-day racists is utterly ridiculous.
That being said, I really want this book. For laffs.
What if Hitler had been shot by Groucho Marx?
What if I stepped on a butterfly back before they invented bishonen porn?
What if priests raped howler monkeys instead of little boys?
What if Glen Beck had been elected Mayor of Sexytime Palace?
What if Ronald Regan has been a hand model?
What if JFK was from Mars?
What if? What if? WHAT IF?
My mind is officially blown.
[re=609997]Katydid[/re]:
Hehehe. Is there a section on Regan’s ability to run marathons across the Indian Ocean?
What If® Lincoln hadn’t been shot, preventing his chickenshit successor Jackson from going soft on treason, running Reconstruction into the ground, and allowing neo-Confederate nonsense like this to flourish?
[re=609979]steverino247[/re]: When visiting the “High Water Mark” monument (where Pickett’s Charge was stopped), walk out to the stone wall, take off your cap and raise it in the air, and shout “Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!” as the Union Troops there that day did. This should scare the Confederate ghosts back to their own lines on Seminary Ridge.
We read this book last April during Confederate History Month at Dixie A & M University (DAMU REBELS CLASS OF 2012!) I’m a junior studying finance.
According to the site, the book was written because “America and the whole world is crying out for the spirit of the Old South.” That must explain all those pickup trucks in France, Denmark, and Argentina with Stars & Bars stickers on them.
Just so you know, the man on the cover of this book is Nathan Bedford Forrest, who would go on to found the Ku Klux Klan. Human Events isn’t even trying to be subtle. A more appropriate choice would have been Robert E. Lee of Jefferson Davis, you know the president and general, but they chose the KKK guy instead.
[re=610016]Mild Midwesterner[/re]: Or even “what if the South were not treasonous fucktards who lost?”.
[re=610043]McDuff[/re]: Ha!
[re=610049]dixiecrax[/re]: Seriously? And for laffs or for real?
[re=610026]Mad Brahms[/re]: “did you know that no slaves rose up against their masters during the civil war, because they respected Southern women too much and knew that they were “all family”?”
Or, maybe it was because of the white reaction to the Nat Turner rebellion (200+ dead in retaliation) and the fact that all they had to do was sit and wait for the Yankee army to roll into the neighborhood whereupon they fled to Union lines in droves. So much for family loyalty.
I could also not refer to Japanese as Japanese in my publication in the 1990s. We were to refer to them as “offshore” according to my dipshit boss. Offshore what I would say, offshore oil well?
I for one am shocked. Shocked to find Ken Layne was part of the lamestream media in the 1990s. And remembers it. Ken: If you remember the 90s, you weren’t there.
[re=610032]Snarkalicious[/re]: Actually, I prefer “That Recent Unpleasantness”.
I don’t know that I agree with everything the book says, but the foreword by Jeff Sessions is really classy.
This book is written by a guy named Crocker. His family changed it at Ellis Island from the original: Bullshitter.
[re=610042]Fran Rogers[/re]: Johnson, not Jackson. As in “They shot old Abe, but his Johnson carried on.”[re=610052]Hooray For Anything[/re]: They exist. They are rare, thank God,but they exist.
[re=610062]Katydid[/re]:
Laffs.
But as a young junior highschooler at an Evangelical Private Segregation Academy in Metro Atlanta, we read very similar books. Such as the classic, United States History for Christian Schools by Bob Jones University Press (BJUP).
From the Amazon look inside feature, on the second page of the book:
“And South Carolinians rejoiced in a new birth of freedom-of government of the people, by the people, and for the people of South Carolina.”
Are they actually aware of what “freedom” means? Slavery also isn’t mentioned until page 6.
[re=609979]steverino247[/re]: The War of Northern Aggression, they call it. Further evidence that we should of hanged the leaders of that rebellion when it was over.
Exactly. Those traitors got off easy.
Also, the burning of Atlanta should be a federal holiday.
“I’m SO SO sorry that Confederate white southern Americans feel the least bit discriminated against (pauses to adjust some electrodes, make sure the straps are tight.) REALLY, REALLY I totally mean it, there’s been such injustice, they are absolutely correct, they should have their own historical and literary representation (background whine as capacitor array charges up, servos begin lifting lightning rod to the roof) in order to better correct real discrimination that exists to bar the politically-incorrect southerners from achieving unbiased acceptance for their unique perspective. (Dons welding goggles, pulls on industrial insulating gloves) I really think it’s best for all concerned – just excuse me for a minute while I finish up here (throws giant knife-edge switch, prompting gigantic BERZZZZURP electrical discharge, re-animating the corpse of William Tecumseh Sherman.) Of course, everyone is entitle to their opinion -
“General, your sword. It’s truly an honor.“
[re=610008]whiterabid[/re]: Absolutely. These dumb fucks keep being played for fools. Be a racist and sit smugly in your lawn chair (sans lawn b/c of foreclosure) with your broke ass. Meanwhile, these bullshit peddlers take a percentage of money from your liquor budget to empathize with the rich folks for making you unemployed (via lack of jobs, unemployment insurance and later, social security).
[re=610016]Mild Midwesterner[/re]: Well that won’t be the sequel. That’ll be: What if all them suffragette bitches stayed in the fucking house? And the most explosive chapter of all: What if they stayed barefoot?
[re=610026]Mad Brahms[/re]: Nat Turner called and said “I’ve got your fucking compendium right here.” (paraphrasing)
[re=610065]McDuff[/re]: Jeezus help me to type faster like other Wonketters. Thanks.
Also too: them motherfucking Southerners were petrified about the *Haitian* rebellion and how it might “spread”. (Like Blacks here needed motivation.) So the happy slave theory is extra, extra bullshit.
[re=610055]x111e7thst[/re]: Ah, shit! [re=610054]RBoucher[/re]: These motherfuckers are just running round in circles histerical at this point, huh?
Whenever I mourn the dismal decline of the publishing industry I eventually think of the end of Regnery and that makes me smile.
[re=609991]Anonymous Office Zombie[/re]: You betcha..readin’s up there with writin’n'rythmatic….and hangin’ ni**ers…
I recently saw an entire book store section devoted to this series, including this book… in Berkeley, CA. MIND == BLOWN
ah yes, another fine Regnery Publishing book.
Rengery Publishing was sued by it’s own right-wing kook authors for giving away so many books for basically free that they were being deprived of royalties.
“Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/books/07cons.html
This is how Right-Wing kook books immediately end up #1 on the New York Times best seller list.
And of course this book is also, “Yours Free!”
[re=610014]Neilist[/re]: Yeah, buddy! Any pistol that can also serve as a small shotgun is a serious boy-to!
Not that I, like, um, advocate unnecessarily possessing handguns or anything…
[re=609999]Fudgie the Whale[/re]: Yeah, I had to explain all the racial slurs to my wife. Which was funny since she is from the South and I spent most of my early years overseas.
[re=610112]Autochthon[/re]: =toy
[re=610007]Katydid[/re]: If this book were to be purchased by you and somehow to become available on the internet, as if by Kenyan magicks, I would owe you kudos and / or sexual favors.
I was particularly interested in the objections to Foghorn Leghorn as a negative depiction of southern manners (pg. 247).
[re=609974]Naked Bunny with a Whip[/re]: In the town my dad grew up in, in upstate New York, there is a civil war monument with a canon and all. The canon points south and the monument is dedicated to those who died in the “War of the Southern Rebellion”.
[re=610013]ArugulaTeleprompterz[/re]: Maybe we can convince Breitbart to “buy out” the listserv contents or something, convince him that it was infiltrated by Maoists.
Considering that the same arguments that were used in 1860 by the South for secession are the same ones that give life to the Tea Bagger Movement, it can only be a matter of time before something triggers a Second Civil War. Obviously, they forgot how it ended the last time.
[re=610093]dixiecrax[/re]: Oh thank God for laffs. Finally, some good news. And I’ve been to BJU, also for laffs, but it wasn’t funny. That’s one scary place.
[re=609999]Fudgie the Whale[/re]: Saw this was pretty good flick and will sober your shit up. We may have won the war but we lost reconstruction badly. Wasn’t until the bravest woman I ever heard of sat in the front of a bus and MLK got on the scene that we got back on the right track. Though if Lincoln had survived he probably would have kept those crackers in check.
Ken, the Wasilla Public Library called and they said you library card (re=609909) is expired and they want their copy of the book back.
Yeah, this bookkk is okkk. There is something wrong with the kkk on my kkkeyboard, it’s stuckkk.
Unfortunately, I have to correct Ken’s history a little bit – “politically correct/incorrect” first became popular back in the late ’60′s/early ’70′s as a way for the New Left to satirize concerns orthodox Marxists had about them. Then it became a generic term for people on the left to bash each other.
It probably would have died a merciful death back then, but the right picked up on it, likely by way of the ex-leftist neocons, and it’s been a cliche term for “obnoxious” ever since.
[re=610122]qwerty42[/re]: “War of the Southern Rebellion”….oh, goodness, yes. Whoever erected that statue just restored my faith in America.
By that logic America’s greatest heroes include:
Benedict Arnold
Tokyo Rose
The John Walker Spy Ring
The Rosenbergs
Aaron Burr
Aldrich Ames
Slavery. That’s almost as bad as paying taxes! Didn’t Alabama fight a war to stop slavery?
To be perfectly honest, political incorrectness, whatever the fuck that was, has been fully eclipsed and supplanted by patriotic correctness in the 21st century. Exhibit 4938: Elana Kagan having to declare undying fealty to the objectives of the military-industrial complex in front of a bunch of doughy GOP draft-dodgers.
and everyone who is tired of liberal self-hatred that vilifies America’s greatest heroes
Right, that’s the term for those that have engaged in armed insurrection against the United States: America’s Greatest Heroes. Not “America’s Greatest Traitors”, for it’s not as though armed insurrection is the very textbook definition of treason, but heroes, for their heroism in fighting other americans, with bullets, not votes, for the right to own other human beings, who were black, and therefore property.
Is there anyone else out here who still thinks it wasn’t a mistake not to hang the lot of them, for treason, after a Nuremburg-esque show-trial, immediately after we won?
Well, as a true grey southern man, I would just like to say, in my homespun folksy drawl that is always perceived as ignorance, that the war of aggression against the rights of white folk to drink mint juleps while the darkies were given good honest backbreaking uncompensated work and three, maybe one meal a day could nevah be summed up in a single volume. I am sure the sequel will be bettah. In my mind.
[re=610065]McDuff[/re]: Threat of execution, torture, and family being taken away does tend to make one a little fearful of rising up against those who own you.
My cousin grew up in Virginny and when she was young, she had a children’s book (from her parents I think who are definitely not Go South Go types) that was a glowing biography of Robert E Lee. The book had it that Lee didn’t really care much about what the Civil War was about or what side was fighting for but just loved Virginia so much that whatever the state decided to do, he’d fight for that side. What a hero.
[re=610014]Neilist[/re]: Ah the very cool Le Mat pocket shotgun. A must-have for every Civ War reenactor – even though very few soliers actually carried one. JEB Stuart had one and you can too!
[re=610043]McDuff[/re]: Um, I’ve actually done that. I have a Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman BBQ Tour of the South T-shirt that I wear when I visit Gettysburg. Being large (6’7″ over 300) helps, I’ll admit.
[re=610054]RBoucher[/re]: Recognized him immediately. They are not being subtle and the intent is to remind certain people of “their place.”
[re=610098]glamourdammerung[/re]: Hood (the CSA commander) was responsible for Atlanta’s burning. I think the city you’re thinking of is Columbia, SC, but that’s a matter of dispute as well. Then, as now, insurgents like to blow shit up and kill innocents to make the victors look bad.
[re=610099]snideinplainsight[/re]: Where may I send a contribution toward paying your electric bill? Or perhaps I could interest you in a “Human Genome” project. We’re raising a number of boys in Lancaster, Ohio. They all lost their fathers about age 9 and…
[re=610159]ManchuCandidate[/re]: Well, maybe our new euphemism for “traitors” and “enemy spies” and “foreign agents” could now be “America’s greatest heroes”. I say we take this, and run with it.
Anyways, does anyone think that one lady who is one of that group of America’s greatest heroes that they found out about just recently is crazy hot? I’m just saying, I’d devulge national secrets to her, any day.
[re=610112]Autochthon[/re]: Ninja’d
[re=610206]steverino247[/re]: I do the whole “Fredericksburg” shout everytime I visit Gettysburg. It’s a great way to gig the ghosts of all those stupid frontal-attack-on-entrenched-position generals on both sides of the War of the Rebellion.
For an antidote to this wingnut history, go to http://www.troubadourinteractive.com. It’s subscription-based, but hey, free is generally worth what you pay for it.
[re=610099]snideinplainsight[/re]: “It took me 62,000 men and 10,000 horses to do what I did to Georgia in 1864. Now, you say I can do the same thing with 100 of these metal monsters called ‘tanks’ and 5,000 men? Sir, which direction is Savannah and where is my mount? Time is a-wasting!”
[re=609976]ttommyunger[/re]: There’s an audiobook version available for those who find reading difficult.
“Ulysses S. Grant – A horse-loving boy”
I’m looking forward to the politcally incorrect guide to World War II and the so-called holocaust.
How menny tapes iz in nat box?
Duzit have pitchers?
Imagine how hard it would have been to get cloture on Obamacare had the South won…
Brrr. These assholes scare the shite outta me.
[re=610268]Manos: Hands of Fate[/re]: They’ll probably also have the politically incorrect guides to the Crusades (killing Muslims is awesome) and, though no one will expect it, the Spanish Inquisition.
needs moar bitterness
[re=610052]Hooray For Anything[/re]: you forgot soul food resturants in austraila
[re=610238]McDuff[/re]: I’ll be there Saturday to Thursday and again the next week. It’s the “Scratch and Sniff” tour of the battlefield. Takes a while…
I guess reality is just another name for political correctness.
[re=610268]Manos: Hands of Fate[/re]: Willis Carto, (who also published many of Ron Paul’s early screeds) has the “myth of the Jewish Holocaust” market covered pretty well.
[re=610206]steverino247[/re]: I would even be content if they taught the correct version of Atlanta burning, you know the whole “rednecks burned it down because they got their asses stomped after starting a fight with America”. As long as the “getting stomped” part is in there, I am pretty agreeable.
I looked inside as much as Amazon would let me, but I never saw the chapter devoted to Colonel Angus.
[re=610099]snideinplainsight[/re]: I see a movie treatment in your future.
[re=610493]glamourdammerung[/re]: John Bell Hood was not the man to put in charge at Atlanta, as events proved. The main reason Lee, et al, looked so good at first is because most of the officer corps left and went South, leaving Lincoln with nobody to lead. Union volunteers were led by politically connected (or unreliable) officers and it took time to train up the Army to where it could actually go on the offensive and win. And McClellan didn’t help any, either. The CSA was screwed with the loss of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in early July 1863, but it still took almost two years to end the fighting. Never underestimate the Power of Crazy. “It’s only a flesh wound!” (And yes, that was a poke at Hood.)
Meanwhile, in Missouri: http://www.tabloidprodigy.com/?p=15802
[re=610539]steverino247[/re]:
Sir!
Other than that your entire premise (“the Federals didn’t know how to fight at the beginning of the war, etc.”) is utterly inconsistent with (1) the first part of the Pennisular Campaign (in which the Army of the Potomac chased the Confederates to within a few miles of Richmond;(2) the string of Union victories in the West — you make an interesting point.
That point being that ignorance of American history in general, and the Civil War in particular, is regrettable common, regardless of the politics of the ignoramus doing the spouting.
Whatever their other qualities, Robert E. Lee was a great general; and the Army of Northern Virgina a great military formation. Neither ever lost a battle in which there was anything close to parity between the Federal and Union forces. And some of their victories were military genius, under any definition, e.g., Chancellorville.
Even the losses/ties (e.g., Antietam, Gettysburg) are worth studying. Any competent military historian knows that the true test of a commander/army is how they handle a loss/retreat. For example, Erich Von Manstein was a Nazi bastard of the first order. But his handling of the retreat on the Eastern front was magnificent.
John Bell Hood? Yes, Atlanta showed that he didn’t have what it took to command an Army (and maybe shouldn’t have been given a Corps earlier). But at that point, the Confederates had so many generals killed or wounded that the options were limited. And Hood was, if nothing else, a fighter (unlike the man he replaced, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston).
How many people today (including Wonkies) would have the physical courage to do anything close to what Hood did? After losing the use of an arm at Gettysburg, and a leg (amputated just below the hip) at Chickamuga, he took command at Atlanta. Sure, he lost — by making the sort of frontal assaults that had marked his entire career. But he didn’t quit.
[Hell, after the war, crippled, Hood married, fathered eleven children, ran an insurance business, and was engaged in philanthropic causes. Rather than just lying around moaning about How Bad Things Were.]
I hate Wingnut History – Left or Right. And I really hate the “Lost Cause” bullshit that Southerners usually spout. That said, the Confederates had their moments. As one moderately authoritative source once wrote:
“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us . . . .”
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, by U.S. Grant
[On surrender of Lee]
Respectfully
Neilist,
ASSHOLE Endowed Chair of the Department of History and Exploding Things
I wonder if this book mentions the part about the war wherein the South got its ass kicked by a bunch of Northerners.
Of course, no one would even consider secession now, because of the orbiting constellation of CIA rail guns.
Oh, Jeez, I wasn’t supposed to say that! Forget I said anything about the rail guns!
But yes, a radically activist re-interpretation of the second amendment to guarantee everyone the right to own handguns is a great idea! For a well-regulated militia and all.
With “”Political Incorrectness”" (how many sets of quotes does one need around the term?) you can “say racist/sexist things all the time, to everybody” and feel like a heroic iconoclast (rebel?) in doing so.
Ken: At a weekly with a woman editor, in an otherwise boring little service feature about a taco stand, I had a joke paragraph involving George H.W. Bush fantasizing about giving Hillary Clinton a spanking while snacking on fried pork skins taken out because it involved “violence against women.”
[re=610196]Wonderman[/re]: [re=610054]RBoucher[/re]: [re=609968]JMP[/re]: [re=610049]dixiecrax[/re]: [re=609980]freakishlystrong[/re]: Isn’t this the History text distributed by the “Allies States of America” in that Jericho television programme from a few years ago?
[re=610589]Spike[/re]: It will be mentioned in passing, like the North Korea press’s write-up of the first DPRK game of this year’s World Cup group-play. No mention of loss, just a simple, “DPRK allowed three Brazilian goals while scoring one of its own”.
1-3 victory!
Y’know, the fact is that about 90 percent of Southerners are descended from people who DIDN’T want to secede from the Union, and got shanghaied by a bunch of rich fuckers who rigged the secession conventions. The planterocracy who started the Civil War and got all those sharecroppers/subsistance farmers killed were basically the Southern equivalent of Nazis. So I’m betting there will be a big “politically incorrect” pro-Nazi movement in Germany 100 years from now.
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