The Truth Will Aggravate You

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Copied to post here.

In 2002 I had to decide whether I wanted to continue to hold to the " history" I had believed about the glorious United States of America for the previous 60 years of my life or to abandon all those comforting myths and embrace a cold, cruel and unpleasant truth. It wasn't easy. To embrace truth, I would lose the music of Sousa, the glory of the Stars and Stripes flying triumphantly in a brilliant blue sky, the heart-quickening glory of parades and patriotic panoply and exchange all that for a dark, relentless history of deceit, betrayal and death. Believe me when I tell you that it was a hard—but essential—decision.

Recently, I had a very excellent author and (Northern) historian ask me why I embraced what he called the "neo-Confederate" movement. After all, he stated, I seemed sufficiently intelligent to be "immune" from such nonsense. I simply told him that the facts of history demonstrated that the South was right and that the victory of the central government (and not the "Union" per se) had spelled slavery for all sections of the nation and for every race and ethnicity. Of course, he doesn't see it because the "history" I have chosen to believe as the result of research and study, he and those like him reject. Some, I do not doubt, reject it because they do not believe it, but others, I sincerely believe, reject because they cannot believe it because to do so would mean giving up all that I had to give up.

Indeed, "the truth will set you free," but sadly, most people choose slavery with ease over rigorous liberty.

Valerie Protopapas