Rick Perry of Texas is standing by the South over the issue of historic license plates! It's not politically saavy, but it's the right thing to do! by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The "race card" has often been played in recent American politics, and Texas Governor Rick Perry is once again under the gun. This time it concerns an application by an historic 501 C3 organization for license plates. The state, like most, if not all, other states allows not for profit organizations to apply for specialty plates. You see them for those who earned a Purple Heart, or for other causes. In this case the Sons of Confederate Veterans is in the process of applying for a plate. Most of the other Southern states already have the plate, sometimes, through Court cases. In Florida, the Courts have decided to play politics with the issue, and so the issue is all tied up in that state!
An interesting coincidence in Texas is there simultaneously an application by a group representing the Buffalo soldiers (African American cavalrymen who defended the US frontier after the Civil War) for a license plate. And in a bold move, offering a branch of peace, the Texas men of the Sons of Confederate Veterans have called for approval of the Buffalo soldier plate!
Rick Perry has said repeatedly Texans cannot forget their history, and given this is the 150th Anniversary of the War Between the States, it is timely to approve the plates for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The alternative will be a long expensive lawsuit, one which has been argued repeatedly.
But the real issue here is how diverse can America be? Can America accept that is estimated that somewhere between 50 - 80 million Americans today are descendants of Confederate soldiers!?
The Sons of Confederate Veterans is charged with vindicating the Cause of the Confederacy, and the soldiers who fought the Yankee invastion of the South.
For those who know their history, the Sesquicentennial (150th Anniversary) kind of highlights how different the Confederacy was from the Union. While most public school history teachers focus on slavery as the sole or larges difference, the Confederate Constitution evidences a wide range of differences which are actually debated in this year's election process. The Confederate Constitution provided an alternative American democracy that:
1. Included God in the Preamble of the Constitution calling on Him to provide guidance to the new nation. In effect, Southerners were asking the Christian God to the governing table of the Southern nation.
2. Re-stated the superiority of the states to the central government, even allowing states to remove "federal" appointed officials from office.
3. Barred earmarks, and required all bills to deal with only one issue at a time.
4. Required 2/3's of each House to vote to spend more than the President's budget, thus making runaway government spending like we have today almost impossible to happen.
5. Barred "federal" spending on bailing out industries, which today would have saved the United States trillions of dollars.
6. Centralize power to the President in those areas that were seen as federal, extended the president's term to six years, and prohibited re-election.
7. With respect to slavery, the Constitution outlawed the slave trade, but did tighten laws concerning slavery itself. Every nation has at least one sin, this was the South's. In today's America we have 50 million aborted children since Roe v. Wade, equally tragic to the slavery of 150 years ago.
There are great learning lessons from the Civil War if you take the time to read about it, and then think about it in context to modern day America. The South wasn't all wrong.
While there are many agnostics who deny God, I smile as I accept God's plan includes the Sesquicentennial and the issues which led to Secession to be discussed simultaneously to the 2012 election process.
For those evaluating Rick Perry as a Presidental candidate this issue may demonstrate some grit on his part. Besides the radical liberals and blacks, there are many in the north and west who don't understand the Confederate heritage of the South. They look down their nose at the regional pride of the South, or stereotype Southerners as the only racists in America, forgetting the racism in their own home town. Texans are different from New Yorkers, or Californians, ...but than again so are people from Michigan, Iowa, Tennessee, and every other state in America. It was the great diversity of the states which was one of America's great strengths taught in school when I was a young lad. Obama Care is just one more nail in state diversity and individual self reliance. Perry isn't running from the Southern colors when it could be politically advantageous to do that. Maybe he deserves a second thought.
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