Wednesday, May 11, 2005

"Lest We Forget" ? NEVER!

“Lest We Forget”? NEVER

The months of April and May, in the Southland are precious. For it is during these two months we celebrate our Confederate Ancestors. The Classic, Epic, Legendary exploits of the Confederate Soldier are emblazoned across the pages of World History. His deeds are lauded the world over, save in the United States of America. Here he is called a traitor, a rebel, and those are just the “nice” names he is called.

Here in the Southland, in Dixie, no finer example of manhood can be found… anywhere. We love our Men in Gray with a burning passion that transcends time. Our bodies carry the memory of their exploits in it’s very DNA. Our blood is their blood. It flows hot in our veins.

Just yesterday, I stood in a cemetery and watch as a father and his son, went quietly to each simple white headstone with “CV” upon it, and lovingly placed a small Confederate Battle Flag just in front of the headstone. Turns out this man, and his son, have been doing this for some years now. He wants no public acknowledgement for his act of love and kindness. Why, then, does he do it? He feels he must. The gratitude he feels for the sacrifices made by the Confederate Soldier burns in all Southerners. It is a flame, which will not be extinguished.

To northern friends who will never understand… who cannot understand, our love for the “Lost Cause’, we advise you, tread softly with your criticism of our heritage, our culture, our heroes, our flags. For the CSA is more than a memory. It lives today as surely as it lived in 1861. With every attempt by those who hate the South to denigrate our Southern Icons, the South grows stronger. The CSA grows stronger. It lies quietly, yet vibrant, with the burning passion of the Southern people to realize the dream the CSA was denied it’s right to fulfill.

The CSA lives in the hearts of all Southerners. It exists as surely as the human heart cries out for freedom and liberty. The Southern heart yearns for the rights it was denied at the point of a bayonet. It’s forced union with people of a totally different culture has been strained these 140 years since the guns were silenced at Appomattox, Virginia. Those forced bonds only fuel the fires of our memories, memories of a time past when our brave young men, and old men, badly dressed and often barefooted, marched forth to meet the invading army of a fledgling world superpower and fight it to a stand still for four long, bloody, years. They did it in the name of Southern Rights and Southern Independence.

The honor of those men is sacred to us as Southerners. As we gather amongst their graves we speak in hushed tones of reverence for their deeds and the motivation that drove them to hurl themselves at an army threatening their homes. We know that Southerners alive today are but echoes of those men. For in our veins flows their blood, their DNA. In our hearts burns the passion of the men in Gray. It is an eternal flame. Forever it will light our paths as we struggle our way through the lies, distortions, and dishonor, heaped upon the South by those whose actions are rooted in ignorance and hatred of a people whose pride in their heritage and history is a palpable, living, breathing thing, indeed, a way of life, which those who do not understand can never partake.

Forget? Never! We cannot. It is our history, our story. They are our heroes. We are their children. As Children of Heroes we can do no other.

Your Obedient Servant,

“Longstreet”

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