Confederates

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The perennial debate about honoring Confederate heroes is on again.  And again argued primarily on present-day political sensibilities.

Argued by one "side" from our current certainty that slavery (which the Confederacy identified as central to its "cause") is flat-our wrong: and by the other "side," from the "patriotic" Americanist certainty that rebellion against tyrannical government is a sacred "right" (as is every "free" American individuals' "right" to define "tyranny" according to their personal tastes).

Both arguments are based on historically-recent moral standards.  I find the debate wrong-footed, on both sides.

As a Christian, I'm convinced the moral standards for human beings were set by God long ago (basically what Jews called "the law"), and are immutable.  So I believe the actions of people in previous centuries were subject that moral standard, as we are today.  That's why it only makes sense to operate, and judge, by those time-tested ("traditional") standards...and not by our current personal perception of right and wrong. 

My view is theistic; but those who don't believe in any kind of God-given "law" can also acknowledge a "traditional" moral-standard for human beings.  They are welcomed to believe that mankind worked out a trustworthy standard of values for human behavior, by a few millennia of real-life experience.

(If God deems some actions and mindsets "right" and beneficial, and others harmful, and "bad;" I'm satisfied He built them into operative reality just that way.  And I'm certain He gave human beings the ability to discern what real-life actions "work" to our good, and which don't: whether or not we credit Him for reality's operating as it does...or our ability to perceive it.)

But under neither "traditional" standard should any honest person honor or idolize Confederate individuals, or their "cause."

Some argue that Confederate leaders should be honored because they were honorable men.  That in their personal morality, they were upright and honest..."good" men.  And that even if the argument is about slavery, many Confederate leaders hated slavery.

All of that is true, for some or many Confederate leaders.  But their personal morality is not the basis on which they've been honored these many years.  They've been honored for their actions as public figures, as national civic "heroes" and models.  And those are the exact reasons they should never be honored.

Virtually all high-level Confederate officials and generals took an oath,  as Congressmen or U.S. military officers, to defend the United States, and uphold its Constitution.  The definitive fact of their public careers was that they broke that oath, and waged war on their own nation and people.  And it is specifically on that fact...on their "Confederate" identity and deeds...that they are idolized.

Honoring oath-breakers and traitors is a perversion of any traditional moral code.  Those of our day who do so for self-serving political ends unmistakably show what they most deeply value...and who they most deeply are.