Into the PC Mist With the Confederate Dead

On a quiet hillside in Eastern Oklahoma, in an ancient graveyard that is no longer open to the public, a strikingly white, marble, military tombstone stands out. It reads “Edward Kumpe, born June 1843 Co. A, 6 Ark. Infantry, CSA.” His name also appears on another more public memorial in Little Rock, Arkansas which reads:

To the Memory of the Capital Guards
Company A
Sixth Arkansas Infantry Cleburne's Division 1861 - 1865"
When his Division defended, no odds could break its lines, when it attacked, no numbers resisted it's onslaught."
General William J. Hardee

Edward Kumpe was my great grandfather. He was a Confederate soldier. I refuse to be ashamed of that fact. My great grandfather served his state and his neighbors honorably during a difficult time in American history. It would be serious mistake to assume that he was a racist because he served under the Stars and Bars. After he was captured and released, he voluntarily moved to the Indian Territory and became a full citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He married a Cherokee woman.

The modern assumption that all Confederates were racist is not historically accurate. While there is no doubt that some perhaps many Confederates were racist, the best and brightest minds of the CSA saw slavery in a different light. For example, in 1856, Robert E. Lee wrote to a friend: “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race.” The deeply devout Stonewall Jackson committed civil disobedience before the South seceded by teaching blacks to read and write and by establishing regular Sunday Schools for blacks in Virginia near VMI where he was a professor. The “Stonewall of the West,” Arkansas General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, shortly before his tragic death proposed “that in order to reinforce the Confederate armies slavery would have to be abolished in a “reasonable time” and blacks be recruited for military service on the promise of their freedom.”

Many Confederates were Christian gentlemen in a culture that suffered from a terrible social problem with no good solutions. It takes incredible historical naivete’ to believe that the Civil War was fought over slavery. It was fought over markets and raw materials. Then, as now, blacks were simply pawns in a much larger game motivated by the political self interest of others.

I fear that in the next few months and years the last vestiges of Southern culture will be consigned to the dark, bottomless pool of political correctness and the noble flag that so many of my wife and I’s ancestors served under will be remembered solely for its association with the modern criminal scum who have defiled it. Our nation will be far worse for it.

The McKinney Police Officer and Life In The Hood

Thursday, as I was finishing up at the range, I noticed three folks who did not possess the normal physical characteristics of the usual patrons. (You can't say fit the profile anymore, that's politically incorrect.)  The usual patrons there are normally law enforcement types of various stripes, military and former military and serious sport shooters.  People from the streets of that neighborhood don't usually come in more than once, not because they are treated badly, but rather because they are not comfortable with the obvious law enforcement presence.  This day, there was only one clerk and he was engaged at the counter, trying to help a mid twenties man with his pants half way down his ass showing way too much dirty boxer short to all onlookers. Two other "youths" were wandering around the gun cases. It looked like a set up for a smash and grab robbery.

I turned around for a second and when I turned back a youth in his early twenties, wearing banger clothes and a red baseball cap, had an AR-15 pointed in my direction with the laser sight activated. My first thought was that there was a robbery in progress. No adult in their right mind waves a gun around like that.  In the split second before I went for my weapon, I saw the display base attached to the AR-15 in his hands. The idiot had picked up a non functioning display unit from the counter and was waving it around like a "gangsta."

When I approached home after a lunch meeting the day before, a tall black teenager was walking right up the double yellow line of the street in front of my house. As my car approached, he did not move and gave me a stare that dared me do anything about it.  In my neighborhood, if you see somebody walking toward you in the middle of the street if you're not thinking "carjacking" you are terminally naive.

As I backed into my driveway, watching the young man amble away down the middle of street, my mind went back to a spring afternoon a few years ago.  I heard a commotion in my driveway and looked out to see a Tulsa Police Officer trying to subdue a black teenager.  The young man being arrested was suddenly being "assisted" by two of his associates.  The situation turned nasty quick. Within moments, a crowd of about thirty black teenagers formed a ring around the officer and the subjects, a typical ghetto "violent crowd escalation" in criminal justice jargon.  Just as I was stepping out the door with my sawed off twelve gauge to aid the officer, a pair of campus police officers from the high school across the street waded into the fray and helped the officer take the subject and get away safely.

A few weeks before that, there had been another series of incidents.  A gang of about thirty or more black girls had taken to crossing the street from the nearby high school and passing their lunch hour in my neighbor's front yard. Some of them even lounged on the front porch.  They were loud, aggressive and left a mess every day.  They threatened the homeowners young wife who tried to make them leave.  Eventually, that situation was handled by campus police but we lost a good neighbor.  His young stay at home wife had apparently had enough and they soon moved out.

Two of our dearest friends are getting ready to sell their lovely home of many years.  It is a beautiful home that they have worked hard on over the years.  And, it is in what was until recently thought to be a very good neighborhood.  They shouldn't have to move again at their age.  Unfortunately, a nearby apartment complex apparently went to Section 8 public housing and others nearby apparently followed suit.  Now, our friends frequently have to run a gauntlet of defiant, rude apartment denizens who just stand in the middle of the street not allowing others to pass without risking a confrontation. And, they are wandering away from their own common areas and even the parks to meander through the nearby single family residential neighborhoods, often congregating in the streets and always spreading concern wherever they go.  Our friends have simply had enough and are leaving the city altogether.

If the people complaining about the McKinney police officer were forced to live in my neighborhood for a few weeks they would have applauded the officer who tried to control the situation. If they ever had to work a shift as a cop trying to control a mob, they would have bought the officer a beer.

Life in the hood is different and different rules apply.  Unfortunately, the hood is now going mobile and invading "nice" places like private pools in McKinney, Texas and naive people from "good neighborhoods" who are not accustomed to seeing force applied to protect them may just have to get used to it if they are going to have any kind of quality of life in their neighborhood.