The Endless Reconstruction

 More than 100 years ago, George Santayana wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Those who doubt these words are invited to watch the news and reconsider their opinions.

After the Allies won World War 1, they punished Germany with the Treaty of Versailles. They compelled Germany to pay reparations and to forfeit some territories. The leading cause of World War 2 was the Treaty of Versailles. The conditions caused by the treaty provided the necessary circumstances for the rise of Hitler. We are all familiar with what happened from there.

What does this have to do with Reconstruction? Glad you asked, let's move along. In the news the last few months, we have heard extensively about Jim Crow laws and the Jim Crow era. What caused the Jim Crow period? Reconstruction.

More than 50 years before the Allies punished Germany after the first World War, the North and the Radical Republicans punished the South after the Civil War. For the North, it was not enough that the Union Army had killed, burned, looted, pillaged, and raped their way across the South during the war, they needed to punish the South.

So, they held elections to elect blacks to political offices in the South. Of course, they banned many of the white citizens from voting in these elections. In their effort to empower blacks, they treated the other citizens differently. Sound familiar? The states in the South were run by the US military governors for years as Reconstruction slowly ended until it was finally ended in 1877. Just for the record, the South is the only part of the United States to have operated under military occupation.

Southern states had to ratify three amendments to the US Constitution to be re-admitted to the Union that the Supreme Court had ruled that they had never left anyway. What is the legal significance of a state having to ratify an amendment to rejoin a Union that they never left?  Does the ratification of an amendment by a state that is not in the Union even count?  Asking for a friend?

In the later years of the 19th Century as the South struggled to recover economically, manufacturers started opening plants in the South. As the cotton was already here, textile manufacturing was a major business. Since I am a confirmed capitalist, I must tell you that the location of most manufacturing plants is the result of a search for cheap labor. In a region such as the South after the Civil War, people were desperate for jobs. Here was the cheap labor that Northern manufacturers sought.

So, the Yankees who had attacked Southerners for slavery, brought to the South things like child labor, company towns, mill villages, company stores, company police, scrip instead of cash for pay and Tennessee Ernie Ford singing "I owe my soul to the company store." All of these things from the people who criticized plantations. Wasn't a textile mill village just a manufacturing plantation?

After the official end of Reconstruction, people in the South sought to reclaim their lives. Without the military to control the elections and the election results, the majority ruled again. A blind man could have seen the Jim Crow era coming. Where were all of the liberals then? They were busy using cheap labor in the South to produce their profits. They didn't care about minorities then and they don't really care today. They are looking for cheap labor.

Modern Demoncrats want to continue punishing the South. They are tearing down statues of Southern heroes. They have changed the names of military bases. They want to rewrite history to fit their outlook. The sad part is that most politicians don't know enough history to fill a 3X5 index card. They don't understand that you can't take away somebody's history and make it work. Note to Dims: When you get to hell, ask Hitler about this.

They want to remove anyone who ever owned slaves from history books. That's going to leave the history books pretty empty. It's wrong to judge people of the past by the moral standards of the present. 

In a few years, the government is supposed to release all of the information on John Kennedy and Martin Luther King. When they discover that their idols have feet of clay, we will get back to them on all those statues and street names. 

I have noticed that when liberals talk about integration protests and riots, they are always talking about incidents in Alabama or Georgia or South Carolina or some other southern states. In 1967, there were large riots in Detroit and Newark. Which Southern states are they in?  How about Watts in 1965? When was the last time that a Democrat talked about those places? Who knew Michigan was a Southern state? 

Great empires all eventually fail. Liberals might want to read up on that. Start with the British Empire.