The American Civil War is proof. It’s no good winning a war if you’re going to lose the peace that follows. While the North got the war’s “W” in real time, the Confederacy, in the long term, got the “W” that counts. Reconstruction should have begun to undo slavery’s myriad harms – to the slaves themselves and to America. But, racism plus greed is a powerful force. And racism wasn’t exclusive to the American South. Even before the ink was dry on the surrender documents at Appomattox, Confederates were taking their act west. Today, there are pockets of the Dakotas, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho and Western Oregon and Washington where Confederate flags fly freely – and always have. They join all those pockets of the South where the Neo-Confederacy lives on still.

That really is our problem. The Confederacy did not die. It shape-shifted and spread out. For a detailed analysis of this process, I highly recommend Heather Cox Richardson’s excellent “How The South Won The Civil War“.

Neo-Confederacy Rises

Neo-Confederacy destroyed Reconstruction. It saw democracy forming in the South and strangled it. Even when Reconstruction tried to reassert itself – via the Civil Rights movement and Act in the 1960’s – Neo-Confederacy blunted its gains. Between gerrymandering, poll taxes, bullshit legislation and terror campaigns, Neo-Confederates squashed democracy across the South.

Until just this past year, Alabama managed to gerrymander most of its Black population into one Congressional district. The map significantly disenfranchised Alabama’s black population. Though they are more than a quarter of Alabama’s population, the map gave them only 14% of its representation. If Neo-Confederates could have their way, Alabama’s Black population would get zero percent of its representation – the same as slaves would get.

Slavery Equals Wage Theft

At its bottom line, slavery is about wage theft. The slave owner gets his slave’s work product for free – minus whatever it costs to feed, clothe and house the slave (the costs of doing slave business). So long as the margin between cost and work product is big enough, slavery makes economic sense to the slavers. Though literal slavery ended with Juneteenth (not Appomattox), that was only, really, on paper.

Actual slavery lived on. Every opposition to a minimum wage? That’s slavery talking. Anti-unionism? Pro-slavery management. Company towns? Slave towns.

Greed justified slavery economically, racism (and the Bible) justified slavery morally.

Professor Richardson also authored another excellent history – “To Make Men Free: A History Of The Republican Party“. In that terrific book, she describes how “The Party Of Lincoln” morphed over time – as did the Democratic Party. Perversely, Republicans became the very Confederates who hated them (starting with Lincoln).

Nixon’s Southern Strategy

Nixon’s Southern Strategy brought the Dixiecrats (who were old style Southern Democrats not modern Progressive Democrats) into the Republican fold where they fit perfectly.

Because racism, greed – and the Neo-Confederacy – had seized control of the GOP like parasitic wasps turning other insects into zombies.

Neo-Confederacy has entirely consumed the Republican Party. Its goal now is to consume the rest of us.

Unfortunately for them, America – in particular America’s population – has changed significantly. We’re waaaaaaaay too big for Neo-Confederacy to eat. They don’t know it yet. We don’t realize either.

Zombies, Republicans & Cancer

Neo-Confederacy – a zombie itself – will never die. All we can do – the rest of America – is manage this disease. The means staying vigilant – like it was actual cancer.

In a cultural sense, that’s what Neo-Confederacy is to democracy: cancer. The GOP is a dead man walking.

They’ve infected America – no doubt about it. But, diversity is our immune system’s response. Diversity, the rule of law and voting.

I believe wholeheartedly that while we’ll never cure ourselves of Neo-Confederacy, we will learn to live with it. Meaning – to live vigilantly.