Jack Hunter condemns the Stereotyping of the Old South in the Charleston City Paper

"My entire adult life I have defended the Old South and the Southern cause in America's bloodiest war, not because I support slavery or racism, but despite it. The positive parallels between what the Confederacy was fighting for in 1861 and what the American colonists fought for in 1776 are many and obvious: republican democracy, political and economic freedom, independence, defense of one's homeland. But these causes are never obvious to critics who can only see the other parallel, that both the Old South and the 13 colonies were dependent upon, and protective of, the institution of slavery. 

 

In the United States today, the very concepts of states' rights, nullification, secession, and other examples of Jeffersonian democracy are routinely dismissed as racist doublespeak. When a number of states recently declared that they might attempt to nullify Obamacare, their critics emphasized the fact that there seemed to be a high degree of hostility toward America's first black president. Of course, this was coupled with the establishment's tried-and-true narrative that allowing states' rights is what the Old South was all about."

Complete article.