See today's editorial "Remembering the Civil War."
It includes this truth:
"Remembering [the Civil War] at significant milestones is not only right, but also helpful and even necessary to understanding the shared history of a diverse country once at war with itself."
It also includes this, a request: "Remembering so tragic an event as the Civil War, though, must be, above all, civil." An attitude and a hope with which we can all agree.
All except the lowlife who wrote the editorial. For he or she immediately went on an uncivil attack:
South Carolina's Secession Gala -- hoop skirts, frock coats and all -- which last Sunday marked the day of the first secession among the Confederate states, carried the particularly bad odor of glorifying an Old South of elegance and extravagant wealth built and supported by human slavery."Celebrating the Holocaust." In an editorial calling for civility.
Reports of other events -- all, like the gala, privately sponsored -- seem similarly nostalgic for the Lost Cause: a re-enactment in Georgia of the state's 1861 secession convention; a mock swearing-in of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Alabama.
Events that led up to the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, fought in defense of slavery.
No wonder Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama conference of the NAACP, recoiled, saying, "It's almost like celebrating the Holocaust."
Is that civil?
To the editorialist, a plea: Let those people in South Carolina have their fun. They do you no harm.
Another: Learn the meaning of the word toleration.
Then look up the word hypocrisy.