As I was researching the modern American rightwing and how
it had completely jettisoned the old conservative praise for limited
government, I was struck at how it had been captured by the NeoConfederate
South, the one part of our country to have formally rejected the Declaration of
Independence and ultimately the entire Western Enlightenment.  As Alexander Stephens, Vice-president of
the Confederacy,  said in 1860,

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the
agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the
proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate
cause of the late rupture and present revolution.

Similar sentiments exist in all the documents I have read justifying the decision to secede at state conventions to secede. 
As the right became Southern in sentiment it abandoned those
conservative arguments rooted in the American constitutional tradition.  This is why they no longer speak of limited government.  They do not believe in limited government, only in small government so oligarchs can otherwise rule.  

But to win outside the South they had to dissemble, and capture the undeserved label “patriotic.” To this end the new
Southern style ‘conservatives’ deny that slavery and racism brought on the Civil War as avidly as the
same people deny modern science and the constitution’s plain words about church
and state.  This is as honest as draft evading Dick Cheney and duty shirking George Bush arguing they were more patriotic that Gore or Kerry, who volunteered and served in Vietnam.  Same ethics, same tactics, same people.

As the NeoConfederate party has become more confident of
winning against a black President and the hated north, their self-restraint
seems to be breaking down their inner racism coming more and more to the front,
as the following links to explicitly racist actions by the Republican Party and
Tea Party indicate.

NAACP exposure of Tea Party racism.  

The Republican Party chair for Virginia’s largest city was
forced to step down after his email comparing Black to dogs was made public. 

Right wing proposed immigration law for Florida exempts
Canadians and western European
s from proving they are here legally.  

Texas voting registration organization aiming at minorities gets attacks and racist slurs from Tea Party people.

That’s just what I found for today.

Much historical information on the NeoConfederate influence in America can be found in Kevin Phillips American Theocracy.

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