Redstate

Posted at 1:47pm on Jun. 11, 2008 With a Rebel Yell: Jim Webb hearts the Confederate States of America.

An attractive Veep for Obama? No, just another dumb guy.

By Mark Kilmer

In 1861, the United States of America went to war after being attacked at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in April 12 of that year. The war drained the nation's blood until the Confederate States of America surrendered to the U.S.A. in Virginia, at the Appomattox Court House, on April 9, 1865. Those were painful years followed by additional painful years of reconstruction and humiliation. When all is said and done, the war ultimately ended the institution of African slavery in the Confederate States of America and drew them back into the United States, for that we should all be thankful.

Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia) is not. If he had his druthers, the CSA would have won that war and the several States would have retained the right to allow their citizens to hold slaves. Politico.com writer David Mark does not put it that way in his his article on Webb at that web site yesterday, but it is how it reads.

He [Jim Webb] has suggested many times that while the Confederacy is a symbol to many of the racist legacy of slavery and segregation, for others it simply reflects Southern pride. In a June 1990 speech in front of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, posted on his personal website, he lauded the rebels’ “gallantry,” which he said “is still misunderstood by most Americans.”

Webb, a descendant of Confederate officers, also voiced sympathy for the notion of state sovereignty as it was understood in the early 1860s, and seemed to suggest that states were justified in trying to secede.

“Most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty rather than slavery,” he said. “Love of the Union was palpably stronger in the South than in the North before the war — just as overt patriotism is today — but it was tempered by a strong belief that state sovereignty existed prior to the Constitution and that it had never been surrendered.”

The sovereignty was the power to enslave human beings if the State so chose. Love of the Union was palpably weaker in the South than in the north as the war started, and that is self-evident. The South split. And, Webb argues, the war was in part fought over the right of the Slave States to split from the United States of America if they so opted. But I do not mean this or any subsequent discussion to continue that war. We're here to look at Jim Webb.

Jim Webb has been a rather dunderheaded spokesperson for Barack Obama, and he is considered a short-lister in Barry's veep musings.

Read On….

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