Nothing Says Patriotism Like Celebrating Lincoln’s Assassination

“Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery. Where in the world are the Negroes better off today than in America?”
— Jack Kershaw, League of the South board member, 1998

Talk about misplaced loyalty. Conservatives claim to be patriots, but patriotic to what cause? It is certainly not the cause of the United States Constitution. They have proven that time and again since 2008’s election of Barack H. Obama to the presidency.

Even though they say they are “real” Americans, they have shown that they hate Obama more than they love America, and if what they say is true, why are they palling around with people who will be celebrating the death of the man who freed the slaves? We have already seen hardcore neo-Confederate Walter Kennedy call Lincoln a Commie, but come on!

Warren Throckmorton noted yesterday in his blog at Patheos that the League of the South has plans to do just that. In an article titled “Honoring John Wilkes Booth,” League of the South president Michael Hill writes:

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The League of the South looks to the present and future. However, from time to time we do look back at our past.
This 14th of April will mark the 150th anniversary of John Wilkes Booth’s execution of the tyrant Abraham Lincoln. The League will, in some form or fashion, celebrate this event. We remember Booth’s diary entry: “Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment.” A century and a half after the fact, The League of the South thanks Mr. Booth for his service to the South and to humanity.

Stay tuned . . .

Michael Hill

It’s almost as though these guys are a bunch of vampires who took mistook the film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter as a biopic.

A tyrant, they are calling him. Which, of course, is what they have been calling the man who is president because of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the war he waged in the cause of the Constitution. This “tyrant” is the guy who said, at his Second Inaugural Address,

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…. ”

Because tyrants are all about charity.

Lincoln of course, was assassinated on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. by actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.

In case you are not yet familiar with these traitors, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) explains,

The League of the South is a neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by “European Americans.” The league believes the “godly” nation it wants to form should be run by an “Anglo-Celtic” (read: white) elite that would establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities.

The League claims there is “not a dime’s worth of difference” between Republicans and Democrats, and Hill has said,

Just so there’s no chance that you’ll confuse The League with the GOP or any other ‘conservative’ group, here’s what we stand for: The survival, well being, and independence of the Southern people. And by ‘the Southern people,’ we mean White Southerners who are not afraid to stand for the people of their race and region.

So ask yourself: which political party is most friendly to this point of view? As is by now well known, Republicans, including Rand Paul, have close dealings with secessionist neo-Confederates, being that they have a common hatred of all things American.

Some, including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have flirted with the idea of secession and other Red States have done the next best thing – we even saw secessionist thought rear its ugly head here in Wisconsin last election. Republicans have been attempting to nullify federal authority in their states, including that of the U.S. Constitution itself.

You might remember another Republican who is loved by the League, Maryland Republican Michael Peroutka, whom PFAW calls a “neo-Confederate activist and theocrat,” and who also happens to be a buddy of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, another Republican.

As Right Wing Watch is reporting,

Peroutka is more than a friend and ideological ally to Moore: he has funded Moore’s activism for more than a decade, and in 2012 bankrolled Moore’s successful campaign for the top seat on the Alabama Supreme Court.

Peroutka won a seat on the Anne Arundel, Maryland, County Council this year, and as Throckmorton reminds us, Peroutka, though no longer a member of the League, “thanked Hill for the League’s support in [his] November election” and in 2012 proclaimed he shared Hill’s ideals, if they can be called that.

Peroutka, when he was running for president under the Constitution Party ticket in 2004, himself attacked the Republican Party as “antithetical to the interests of the people of America” before switching to the GOP. But if Peroutka is willing to use the GOP to further his own goals, the GOP has shown itself more than willing to do the same.

So if the League claims there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, you won’t find them supporting Democrats, or Democrats relying on their support (though the theocratic Constitution Party did run a candidate as a Democrat in 2014).

It is quite clear what the League is about…

…and their aims closely coincide with the ethnic nationalism of the Republican Party. Those aims, as should be clear by now, have nothing to do with either embracing or supporting the founding ideals of the United States of America.

The South lost the Civil War, but you would not know it from right wing politics in 2015.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.