As a boy, I was asked by our social studies teacher which famous person I admired most. I answered Robert E. Lee. Lindsey Graham reminded me of my boyhood choice in a recent news article, in which he said Yea to removing the Confederate Flag from public buildings, but Nay to renaming all the roads and schools that are named after Robert E. Lee.

Curious, I looked up the Wikipedia article on Robert E. Lee. My education on history is not all-encompassing. I know the general outline of Western history, but the details about specific individuals tends to be murky. Prior to reading the Wikipedia article, I had a negative view of Lee, although I despised him for the side he chose. His decision to serve the South is morally equivalent to Ernst Rommel's decision to serve the Nazi state. At least Rommel got what he deserved in the end.

Turns out Robert E. Lee was a right devil, about as evil as they come, and a racist through and through. Anyone who defends him today is either ignorant of history or a racist, one of the two, with no exceptions. The way Lee treated his slaves was inexcusable, and his defiance of his dead father-in-law's will is also inexcusable. Lee was a liar, a torturer, a kidnapper, and a murderer, all told, and those who defend him would defend anything and anybody, and their words can be disregarded in all cases. The only reason I liked Lee as a boy was because the history books I read were full of lies and omissions, written by liars with no concern for the truth. Such books should be located in all libraries and destroyed before they get into the hands of impressionable young minds. Their paper can be recycled to make books that tell a more balanced and truthful version of history.

My grandmother used to tell me "The War of Northern Aggression" was started by the invading Northern armies because they were against states' rights. She was wrong, told wrong by the wrong-headed men in her life. The real reason the South started the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter is because the rich slaveowners insisted, not merely on keeping their slaves, but extending slavery into new territories out West, in order to improve their representation in Congress and open up new opportunities for slave-based agriculture in those territories. They were not simply defending slavery, but wanting to expand it all over the Western Hemisphere, to eventually include Cuba, Mexico, and Central and South America. The Civil War was about States' Rights only in the sense of the right to secede from the Union. If you believe slavery is morally right, only then can you sympathize with the Confederacy, but if you do, then you would believe absolutely anything is right, and that there is no right or wrong at all. Lincoln pointed this out in his speeches and letters many times.

Someone I admire is Abraham Lincoln. He was amazing, and his speeches and letters are still worth reading today as an example of what politicians can be if they try hard enough and resist the temptation to go into service for the rich. I think Lincoln had his heart in the right place and had a brilliant mind for politics. He probably had some gay experiences in his early life, based on the letters he wrote to an old buddy.

Unfortunately, his predecessor, slavery-loving Buchanan, certainly was exclusively gay, and set a rather bad example. Fortunately, there are a couple of other gay Presidents to offset that stain on history.

I get mad as hell when I read about people defending Robert E. Lee or anything about the old Confederacy. It was a bad time, a very great evil, and they want to enshrine a stinking turd as though it were a sacred cross. Drop that rag in the wastebasket and forget about the ignorant fools that died for it. The rebels deserved to die, a thousand times over, and each of us would be duty-bound to kill them now, if they were still warring against the Union.