“In my opinion, a man in public life must think always of the public welfare. He must be careful not to mix his private and personal interests with his public actions,” said President Harry Truman, in his 1955 essay “A Public Man Must Live in the Present,” which he recorded for the This I Believe series.
I invite you to look at what the President of the Senate of South Carolina, Sen. Glenn F. McConnell, says and does as a leader in our state government. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Secession Camp #4, and I believe that Sen. McConnell uses his public power to serve the SCV instead of serving the people of South Carolina.
Here’s one example. John M. Coski, the Historian and Library Director at The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, relates the following story about Sen. McConnell in The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem:
When SCANA, a private power company that provides most of South Carolina’s energy, adopted an anti-flag policy in 2002, outraged employees found a powerful ally in Senator Glenn McConnell, president pro tempore of the state Senate and owner of a North Charleston Confederate memorabilia store. SCANA prohibited its employees from driving company vehicles to Maurice’s Barbecue, a business that displayed the Confederate battle flag and whose owner appeared to defend slavery because it brought blacks to a better life in America. The SCV threatened to sue SCANA; Senator Glenn McConnell proposed a bill to strip SCANA of state contracts and to issue licenses to competitors.
Why did Sen. McConnell move to take contracts away from SCANA? Did he think that SCANA’s service or cost was a problem for the public? No, Sen. McConnell did what he did because of his private business selling Confederate memorabilia and his personal affiliations with the SCV.
Here’s a second contrast. Further on in President Harry Truman’s essay, he said the following:
I believe that we should remove the last barriers which stand between millions of our people and their birthright. There can be no justifiable reason for discrimination because of ancestry, or religion, or race, or color.
I believe that to inspire the people of the world whose freedom is in jeopardy, and to restore hope to those who have already lost their civil liberties, we must correct the remaining imperfections in our own democracy.
What inspiring language does Sen. McConnell use to unify South Carolinians? On ABC’s Nightline on Monday, July 26, 1999, Sen. McConnell said, “We will teach generations to come about the honor of these people [Confederate soldiers] and if they are going to choose the road of trying to stereotype us as racists and as hate mongers, then we are forever divided.” He also said that he is “disgusted and sickened by the political rhetoric and people say it’s an emblem of racism, it’s an emblem of hate, it’s shameful and all of this. How do they think we feel when it’s the emblem of our ancestors? They hurt our feelings.”
Senator Glenn F. McConnell doesn’t want to remove barriers or to correct imperfections in our democracy. Just the opposite, he wants to create a barrier to unity and to discourage people from voicing their opinions about our government.
This brings us to our third contrast. President Harry Truman said, “A public man should not worry constantly about the verdict of history or what future generations will say about him. He must live in the present; make his decisions for the right on the facts as he sees them and history will take care of itself.” In contrast, Senator Glenn F. McConnell focuses on the charge of the SCV, to vindicate the cause for which the Confederate soldiers fought, and he pledges to use the power he has in state government to push his view of the Confederacy on generations to come.
General Robert E. Lee saw the facts correctly when he surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. After 4 years of expensive, destructive, bloody, brutal, and deadly warfare that almost destroyed our nation, Gen. Lee summoned the courage and the fortitude to do the honorable thing that he knew had to be done. He knew that present and future generations would be affected by his decision, yet he found the courage to put the public welfare front and center in his words and in his deeds. The soldiers under his command respected him greatly and abided by his decision. General Robert E. Lee’s words and actions led to the reunification and rebirth of our United States of America.
In 2000, when the Confederate flag was removed from the flagpole atop the dome, and another one was raised on a flagpole on the Statehouse grounds, Sen. Glenn F. McConnell ludicrously compared his fight (which he won) in the political battle about where to fly the Confederate flag to the Confederate soldiers’ fight in the Civil War. He said, “We’re pretty much at the crossroads of history, like they [the Confederate soldiers] were that day at Appomattox. And I hope that we leave this day not making the same mistake that was made after that war. Because, as Lee would say, looking back on the way Reconstruction went, ‘Had I known that we would be treated this way, I would not have surrendered at Appomattox.’” It’s hard to believe, but yes, a moment of oratorical weakness of Gen. Lee has completely obscured his heroic and honorable action in the mind of Sen. McConnell.
What are the facts as Sen. McConnell sees them? Well, in 2000, Sen. McConnell couldn’t admit that the Confederacy was dead. He wouldn’t agree to placing the Confederate flag in a glass case at the Confederate Soldier Monument because, he said, “Encasement represents entombment.” Senator Glenn F. McConnell said in the Nightline discussion that when he sees the Confederate flag he sees “the red, white and blue and the blood of sacrifice that ran through that battle and the people that carried that flag.” Senator Glenn F. McConnell lives in the past, in the time of the Confederate soldier, and he can’t see the facts any other way.
Senator Glenn F. McConnell’s belief that hurt feelings are sufficient cause for promoting divisiveness echo South Carolina’s Declaration of Secession, the document in which the leaders of South Carolina listed their reasons for seceding from the United States of America:
Those [non slave-holding] states have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the states and recognized by the constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other states. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes, and those who remain have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
The “property” and the “societies” that these S.C. leaders were referring to were slaves and abolitionist groups, respectively. These leaders hated the abolitionists for calling slaveholding “sinful,” and they hated, by association, all people who lived in the non-slaveholding states. This hatred of people who live in the northern states continues today. For example, last week on the ominously-titled radio show, Radio Free Dixie, the host Lourie (Larry) Salley declared that the people of the south, both black and white together, are distinctly different from the people of the north. While I am extremely pleased that Mr. Salley is racially inclusive in his descriptions, I find his geographically-based divisiveness abhorrent.
Mr. Salley spoke about a recent incident, where he came upon a couple at the Statehouse. The couple was visiting from Iowa, and instead of welcoming them like a good Southern gentleman who knows and understands what Southern hospitality is all about, he told them that their ancestors probably took some of his ancestors’ silver. In my opinion, it’s the flying Confederate flag that incited him to behave in such a way. No wonder the NAACP warns people not to vacation here.
Mr. Salley spoke about illegal immigration and about border fencing, saying that he was more concerned (by a ratio of 10 or 20 to 1) with immigration into the south from the north than from Mexico. Our state senate, led by Sen. Glenn F. McConnell, is discussing many illegal immigration bills right now. I seriously wonder if he will try to get a law passed that says that if you were not born south of the Mason-Dixon line, then you are an illegal immigrant.
I far prefer the enlightened opinions on immigration of South Carolina’s U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham. At a recent event, he encouraged us all to focus on what it means to be an American. Senator Lindsay Graham said, “An American is an idea. No group owns being an American. Nobody owns this. It’s an idea that’s unique to the planet.” When we were attacked on 9/11, even Le Monde understood the present situation in this new millennium. They declared, “We are all Americans.” Lourie Salley doesn’t get it. Senator Glenn F. McConnell doesn’t get it. They both live in the past.
It’s time for people in power in government to understand their responsibility — like the tagline in Spider-man, “with great power comes great responsibility.” If our leaders in public life won’t think always of the public welfare, won’t put their feelings and their personal interests aside, won’t see even the most obvious facts, and won’t live in the present, then it’s time for we the people to cast our judgment and vote them out of office.
11 Comments
February 25, 2008 at 2:05 pm
First of all, your earlier incoherent thoughts lead me to doubt that you wrote a blog as structured and uniformly focused as this one on your own. Second of all, you should check the history on those that you choose to quote. Harry Truman’s mother came from a staunchly Confederate Missouri family, and Harry Truman himself picked a well-known picture of Lee and Jackson for the entrance lobby of his presidential library. Oh, and President Harry Truman was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans as well.
February 25, 2008 at 5:04 pm
The point is that President Harry Truman knew how to separate his personal interests from his public duty. In contrast, Sen. Glenn F. McConnell does not.
February 26, 2008 at 9:07 am
“Our history is what it is,” U.S. House of Representatives Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said shortly after his 31-minute speech before the 170-member Legislature.
“The Confederate flag is a part of what we all have to deal with. If you look at the real history, I don’t think any of us ought to be ashamed of what that history is. We ought to celebrate it for what it was. You put everything in its proper perspective and you think about tomorrow.”
Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina’s 6th District and the third highest-ranking leader in Congress, used the state’s motto, “While I breathe, I hope,” to call politicians to put partisanship aside to move South Carolina forward.
“We’ve been too busy in recent years erecting barriers among us, which are harmful to the long-range best interests of our state and country,” he said. “It’s time we come together.”
In the commanding voice of a minister’s son, Clyburn centered his message on equal educational opportunities, the economic development of the Interstate 95 corridor through the advancement of alternative fuel sources and environmental protections and recovery, specifically of drinking water sources.
Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell said Clyburn left the Legislature with a few concrete recommendations.
“I think what’s important is the message that our diversity gives us the great promise of working together to solve the problems of the future,” said McConnell, R-Charleston.
“Clyburn has unique insight. He has risen into the political system during the decades that this state was undergoing a transformation to put into practice equal rights for all people,” McConnell said. “He’s seen the South Carolina of old and the South Carolina of new. Rather than have a message of bitterness, he brings forth a message of, ‘Let’s move together and build hope.’ ”
http://democraticwhip.house.gov/newsroom/2007/04/11/we_all_need_each_other.html
February 26, 2008 at 9:34 am
Will the flag be the last Confederate symbol that you attack? School names have been changed. Street names. On and on. Will statues be next?
And what about other things that people find offensive? Must the offended people be of color?And save the ignorant statement about the many, many Whites that are offended by the Confederate flag. They, as well as Blacks, are a drop in the bucket. But back to offensive things. Who decides?How many does it take to whine before something is officially offensive? If people are offended by a man of God who lied and frequented whores, should that person have his name on public schools? Statues? Or do some people and things get a pass? What is the criteria for that pass? Does the US flag get a pass? 89 years of slavery and genocide of the Red race. Pass? MLK. Pass? Do you honestly think that by not telling the truth about someone will make the disgusting facts in their life disappear? Yeah, it’s working for Lincoln.
But in this day and age, not for long. Too much info out there.Schools can only teach lies for so long before somebody will ask ‘the’ question. Right? So, when does your campaign to remove all MLK things start? NO??? Why not. A lot of people are offended! This is a preacher. He lied and cheated on his wife with paid whores. He cheated his way through college. Aren’t you offended? A little bit? Or does he get the “pass”. That’s what I thought. It’s called hypocricy. And that makes everything you write worthless.
February 26, 2008 at 9:44 am
Jo, Sen. McConnell is gloating. Rep. Clyburn is correct, and so am I. Neither of us have a message of bitterness. When people point out things that are wrong, they are not sowing bitterness, they are trying to resolve bitterness that you and Sen. McConnell want swept under the rug because you think you’ve won, when what you’ve really done is made fools of yourselves and all of us.
Steve, I want the flag down because it shouldn’t be flying where our state laws are made. You can rant about MLK all you want, but what does that have to do with whether or not the Confederacy is dead? It’s not about being offended. It’s about what’s right.
February 26, 2008 at 11:15 am
Nope…
Contrary to what you may think, I do not have a horse in this race. However, it is evident that you do a well and laughable job of making a fool of yourself without any help at all. Whoa, this thing just got way too inflamed for me.
Have fun.
February 26, 2008 at 1:22 pm
All I hear is about being offended. The Confederacy is dead. Got it. But the flag is located at a monument to the Confederates of SC. Has nothing to do with”where the laws are made”. You say it’s about doing right? According to who? The flag was removed from the dome to a monument honoring the dead. But to people like you, that’s not good enough. It will never be enough until all things Confederate are removed. Why dance around it? And I’m not ranting about MLK. I’m just pointing out that it is hypocritical and wrong(not right) to pick and choose what you think should stay and which should go according to what only offends you.Until I see you trying to remove all symbols at the Capitol that offend some people, I will take your flag attacks as nothing more than a personal agenda that has no merit in trying to do what’s right.
February 26, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Some people who love the Confederate flag sometimes say that they hate when anybody flies it improperly. Well, we’re flying it improperly by flying it from our Statehouse grounds.
A flying flag is symbolically alive, and the Confederacy is dead. Flying it where our laws are made is ridiculous. The flying flag is not part of the Confederate Soldier Monument, as anyone can see.
Hey, the Confederate soldier doesn’t even want to look at it! I hear him saying, “They dishonor me by pretending that I won when I did not.”
The Confederate flag will be taken down from where it flies on the Statehouse grounds because it doesn’t belong there. It’s not about what offends who.
February 26, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Jo,
Deeds not words are what make a man. Go talk to anyone who truly understands that, for example a Catholic priest or nun, and ask that person to translate the information you posted about Rep. Clyburn and Sen. McConnell.
What Rep. Clyburn is saying is, “You claim to want to work for social justice. So I’ll ask you nicely to do it.” And what Sen. McConnell is clearly saying is, “Since you asked nicely, perhaps I can find a few crumbs off my plate to give you. Have a nice day.”
March 28, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I should add some more info about Larry Salley.
1) He’s the author of “The NAACP is the Klan with the Tan,” which is about his efforts to protest at the SC NAACP’s King Day at the Dome.
My response: The Klan tortured and murdered people with brutal violence, and they created a climate of fear and brutality by lynching, whipping, beating, cussing, and all manner of disgusting behavior, all the while hiding themselves behind pointy hats.
The NAACP works for social justice through legal processes, is dedicated to inspiring all people to achieve their fullest potential, and is completely open and forthright, all the while dressing in suits and ties, without disguise.
Mr. Salley laments, “I do wish that the ’sons of former slaves, and slave owners, could sit down at the table of brotherhood’ and find a path to real ‘liberty and justice, for all.’” The way I see it is as follows:
The NAACP made the food and the table and the chairs and the seats and decorated the hall and sent out invitations. Mr. Salley received his invitation, declared that the NAACP is racist and illegitimate because the invitation wasn’t engraved, and then picketed and protested the dinner instead of joining in the feast of discussion.
2) According to http://www.savethescv.org, “Mr. Salley is a member of the SCV and the League of the South in South Carolina (www.sclos.org/). In September 2003, Salley boasted about the League’s progress in that state and revealed his vision for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. This is what he wrote:”
3) More about the South Carolina League of the South
a) The South Carolina League of the South has its own “Take That Flag Down” idea — They say, LET’S GET THOSE STATE FLAGS UP AND THOSE FEDERAL FLAGS DOWN!
b) According to their newsletter, the following occurred at their eighth annual convention:
June 12, 2008 at 6:04 pm
It is interesting to note that Pres. Truman, through the U.S. Postal service, had First Day Issue postal envelopes issued that had the Confederate battle flag printed on them, some in color.