MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT

Isaac Mayfield

I love the South and the Southern people. For most of my life I have felt a need to defend the South and it's honor. This defensiveness came primarily from the feeling that many Northerners looked down their noses at the Southern people. We are seen sometimes as ignorant hicks. I remember watching the Christmas parade in Nashville once, when I was a child, and several men, who I believe were soldiers from Fort Campbell, were making fun of our parade and of the crowd. They all had Northern accents. In the age of social media, more media exposure, the growing popularity of Country music and the fact that so many Northerners are moving South to escape the tyranny of Northern cities and states, the South is respected much more today than even 30 years ago. The fact that the South lost the Civil War didn't help either. I can't tell you how many times Northerners have thrown that fact up to me.

As someone who has studied that conflict from the age of seven I came to realize early in my life that the war was about slavery, more to the point, it was over the expansion of slavery. I have never been a Southern apologist but my view of the Confederacy has always been ambiguous at best. I would defend the Confederacy in those areas that I felt that I could. Such as the bravery of the average Southern soldier and their willingness to endure such incredible hardship. As a veteran I know that people enlist for patriotic and ideological reasons but they also enlist for a variety of other reasons. Some want to see the world or any place other than the place that they grew up in. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves or part of something that might give meaning to their lives. Or it might be something as simple as they want to wear a uniform and impress the girls. Even if they joined for patriotic or ideological reasons once they have survived combat many times those reasons take a back seat to the fact that the soldier feels an overwhelming loyalty to their comrades. Their main goal in life is simply not to let them down. This is why men can continue fighting even though they know that their cause is lost. Such as the Army of Tennessee at the battle of Nashville or the Army of Northern Virginia on the march to Appomattox. This is the same reason many American soldiers continued the good fight during the last years of the Vietnam war even though they knew our leaders had no intention of winning that war. When you read the personal accounts of men such as Sam Watkins of the Confederate Army of Tennessee you come away with the feeling that many, if not most of these men were good and decent men although their cause was flawed.

This is the way that I have always seen the Southern white people as a whole. Especially when I was growing up and as a young adult. Most were basically good people. Many were burdened down with a stereotypical bigotry about black people that they were raised with. Blacks are also burdened down with a stereotypical bigotry of white people that they are raised with. The problem of bigotry has diminished a great deal among white people today but it still exists. Regardless of what era you were raised in it is ultimately the responsibility of the individual to overcome their own prejudices. Although I was never burdened with the problem of prejudice because of my upbringing I was naive about the Confederate battle flag and what it meant to black people. On our honeymoon in 1968 I bought a 3x5 Confederate battle flag that I carried with me the entire 4 years that I was in the Air Force. I saw it as a symbol of my Southern birth and heritage and I wanted people to know where I was from. It bothered me to see other Southerners who seemed to be ashamed of, or resentful of their Southern roots. Overseas that flag caused me pain because of how certain blacks in our detachment reacted to it when I placed it on the wall over my bunk in the barracks. I stood my ground and left the flag up there because of my principles at the time. If I knew then what I know today I would not have bought the flag or have put it on my wall.

The reason that I am changing my view of history today is because I don't see the Civil War as a North vs South conflict anymore. I see it as a Democrat party vs. the Republican party conflict. I don't say this as a Republican because I am not a Republican. My political philosophy is Conservative yet I vote Republican out of necessity. I only came to this conclusion of history a few years ago. Dinesh D' Souza is greatly responsible for this change. After watching his movies on the subject and listening to him debate people on the history of slavery and the Civil War I realized that he was exactly right. It was not a North verses South issue. It was a Democrat Party vs. Republican party issue. The Democrat party was the party of slavery. It was the party that started the Civil War. Democrats in the North opposed the Emancipation Proclamation. Northern Democrat Copperheads tried to undermine the Northern war effort. Democrats in New York lynched blacks from light poles in the New York draft riots of 1863. Democrat General George McClellan was opposed to the emancipation of slaves and wanted a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. Some historians have even argued that this is why McClellan did not aggressively pursue a victory over the Confederate army. The Democrats were the party that opposed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. They were the party of Jim Crow, the KKK and lynching. The party that opposed suffrage for women and interned American's of Japanese descent during WW2. It was a racist, anti-semitic, anti- Catholic former Klansman, Hugo Black, that destroyed America's tradition of religious liberty, in the Everson vs. the Board of Education decision in 1947 because of his bias toward the Catholic church and who was placed on the Supreme Court by Democrat Franklin Roosevelt.

They were the party that formed the Dixiecrat Party in 1948 to oppose a civil rights plank in the Democrat party platform pushed by Harry Truman. The Democrat party in the South opposed the Brown vs. the Board of Education Supreme Court decision desegregating the Souths public schools. They opposed the 1957, 60, and 64, Civil Rights Acts. They also opposed the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. These legislative acts could not have been passed without the support of the Republican party. The modern Democrat party will acknowledge their racist history but they have done an excellent job perpetrating the myth that that was all in the past. They teach that in the 1960's there was the big switch. The Democrats became the friend of black people and the racists all fled from the Democrat Party to the Republican party because of their anger and frustration over the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Of the Dixiecrats who opposed the Civil rights only one senator and one congressman changed over to the Republican party. The real exodus by blacks to the Democrat party happened in 1936 because blacks perceived that they were beneficiaries of Roosevelt's New Deal programs.

In the 1964 presidential election there was a deep South Democrat backlash because of Lyndon Johnson's support of the Civil Rights Act. Five deep South states voted for Goldwater. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. The year 1964 was a fluke and out of character for Southern Democrats. Goldwater and Reagan were opposed to 1964 Civil Rights Act for good reason. They argued correctly, that we already had a civil rights act that was called the 14th Amendment. I agree with this assessment. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the1965 Voting Rights Act were redundant and not needed. In addition they had problems with a couple of provisions of the bill. All the Federal government had to do was enforce the 14th Amendment. A new bill was not needed. Holding this opinion from a Constitutional perspective did not make Goldwater and Reagan racist. Both Goldwater and Reagan have been branded as racist because of their stand on this issue. Goldwater even had a meeting with Johnson prior to the election asking that race not be exploited as an issue in the presidential election campaign that year. Because of Goldwater being against the passage of the Civil Rights Act this gave white Southerners, who opposed it for racist reasons, a reason to vote against the Democrat party that year. Goldwater knew that he would be defeated because he was running against the ghost of John Kennedy. He only ran to lay the foundation for the modern Constitutional Conservative movement which would later carry Reagan into the White House. Goldwater was commander of the Arizona Air National Guard and he desegregated his forces a few years before Truman desegregated the U.S. military. Whenever the Navajo Indians were snowed in during the Arizona winters as a pilot he flew in needed supplies of food and water until the roads cleared. Being half Jewish he also experienced bigotry. He told the story of being asked to leave a golf course because he was a Jew. He replied that he was only half Jewish and wanted to know if he could play nine holes.

The political left has made a lot out of Nixon's Southern strategy in the 1968 presidential election. As if he was trying to appeal to the racist deep South. Actually Nixon's Southern strategy was aimed at winning back the more moderate upper South states like Tennessee and Virginia that Eisenhower won in the 1952 and 56 presidential election. The deep South states that for the most part voted for Goldwater in 1964 voted for segregationist George Wallace in 1968. Nixon was not a racist. He had a long history of speaking out against racial injustice and was a lifelong member of the NAACP. Nixon was responsible for advancing the cause of Affirmative action as president although I never agreed with the quota system developed under Nixon. Nixon not only won all the South in 1972 but every state in the Union with the exception of Massachusetts. It wasn't until the 1990's that Southerners began voting Republican on a regular basis, not only in the presidential races, but in the congressional races. By then their votes were not influenced by race but constitutional issues such as protection of the 2nd Amendment, abortion, religious liberty, economic policies and maintaining a strong national defense. As the South became less racist it became more Republican. It voted overwhelmingly Republican in the 1994 congressional elections. Thirty years after the passage if the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

I knew the oppressive, authoritarian, history of the Democrat party but even I bought into the Democrat lie that the roles of Republican party and Democrat party had changed in the 1960's. Dinesh D' Souza challenged my view of history. Now, I see the Democrat Party as the same old racist and authoritarian party that it always was. The only thing that has changed is that they are now controlled by the Communist party. Which makes sense now. Karl Marx was a racist and the Communist party has a long history of racism. Communism is authoritarian so why wouldn't you take over America's most authoritarian political party. You see it's influence on Adolf Hitler's racial policies in the 1930's, such as the Nuremburg laws. The attempted extermination of the black race through abortion and sterilization laws. The transfer of the Southern plantation system to the inner city plantation system of today. Blacks were dependent for their livelihood on the Southern plantation system run by Democrats and many are dependent for their livelihood living on the modern day plantation system of the inner city. This also holds true for the Indian reservations such as Pine Ridge and the Hispanic barrios in LA.

The emasculation of the male black in the slave system continues today through the welfare policies of the Democrats that pay black woman money to have children and discourages the black family from having a male presence in the home thereby marginalizing the role of the black male in society. Their race baiting in the old South was a policy of divide and conquer which continues to this day. The Democrat party's main mission in life is to divert the focus from their sins by creating divisions among the people. They just sit back and laugh at our ignorance and naivete. Now it's the masked against the unmasked, the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, black against white, homosexual against straight people, women against men, pro choice against pro life, and supporters of the 2nd Amendment against those who hate guns and don't understand them.

Seeing firsthand now that the Democrat Party is out to destroy this country I no longer honor their flags and monuments. Do I want them torn down? No, because they remind us of the history of the Democrat party. Never forget that the Democrats put those monuments up in the first place. Now they want to erase all the reminders of their sinful past. We always need to be reminded of that. Over the years I have studied the genealogy of my family. I always assumed that if I was related to Civil War soldiers they would all be Confederate. I was surprised to learn that of the 6 Civil War soldiers that I have found in my genealogy, 4 of the 6 were Union soldiers. They were my great great grandfather Isaac Mayfield, my great uncles William and Jacob Mayfield. There was another great great grandfather, James McKinley Frogge. Isaac, William and Jacob were in the same regiment, Company K 13th Kentucky Infantry. Isaac died of tuberculosis on December 13, 1862. William and Jacob survived the war. Jacob ended up in Ardmore Oklahoma before he died and is buried there. James Mckinley Frogge was a farrier in the 13th Kentucky Cavalry. I had two Confederate relatives. My great great grandfather Goodman Seagraves who fought in the 4th Tennessee Cavalry and an uncle named William C. Brown of the 4th Tennessee Cavalry "Murray's". Finding out about my great great grandfather Isaac Mayfield jogged my memory because I remembered my grandmother talking about him when I was a small child being a Union soldier and dying during the war but I didn't really know at the time who she was talking about. I can't confirm this but I read somewhere that Isaac was an abolitionist and if true I am glad to know that. I have a bumper sticker that reads " Ruin a liberals day by reciting historical fact" A true leftists day will never be ruined by historical fact. They could care less about historical fact. Their narrative is all that they care about. The only people that I target is those that are willing to learn the truth.