SBC Baptist Press - FIRST-PERSON: Passing the baton of history: "The sins of America are many. Among the most blatant are the insistence on the right to kill pre-born humans, the protection of pornography and the legitimizing of perversion as normal and healthy. While these and other moral failings are signs that the United States is far from healthy, a more subtle sign could be just as telling.

In his book "When Nations Die," historian Jim Nelson Black cites 10 warning signs of a culture in crisis. Among the trends that indicate a society has stopped making history and is in the process of becoming history is ?the loss of respect for tradition.?"

Thanks to the Parish for pointing to this example of stupidity from the Baptist Press.

The stupidity is wide spread in this post, and Parish points to the obsession with the military as well as extending rights and recognition to gays and other minorities. I would like to point to a few other stupidities.

I love the fact that he bases this moronic column on someone he calls "historian" Jim Nelson Black. I did some google searching and except for being lauded by such luminaries as D. James Kennedy, and supposedly teaching at Dallas Baptist University, I can find no background on this guy. He evidently has a doctorate, but in what and from where I have no idea. But you can see how this works. People like this pastor would probably dismiss me as a part of the liberal elite and not take my Ph.D., in American history seriously. My analysis would be tainted by secularism, or beer, or my association with gays, or something. But that doesn't mean that thumpers like this guy don't respect academic authority. No sir! It just means that they look elsewhere until they find someone they can reference with the title "historian."

This guy has written a book called "When Nations Die." And how do nations die? Evidently, because they forget tradition. The good author of this essay evidently uses Black's book to support this, waxing all sorts of nostalgic over the issue of Memorial Day. He moans that "only 28%" of Americans recognize the significance of this day and takes it back to its roots in post Civil War America.

All of it is true, as far as it goes. But this just goes to show how bad some "history" is. This analysis (or should I say "analysis") misses the underlying sentiment of that Memorial day creation to heal the wounds of the Civil War. To do that, many from the North recognized that they would have to figure out a way to give the Southern fighters a pass. After all, these were traitors who had taken up arms against their own government. In a different reality, they could have all been imprisoned (or worse) for this crime. So, to give the South an "out," people started discussing the war as one fought honorably between honorable men over a difference of opinion. No where in this "memorialization" was the recognition not only of the treason, but also the odious institution that sparked such a vigorous revolution. No one wanted to recognize that Southern culture was so wedded to racial slavery that they were willing to rebel against their own country. (Yeah, yeah, I know there are other underlying reasons for the war. But take slavery out of the mix and convince me that southern crackers take up arms over Internal Improvements or tariffs.)

Anyway, back to this great memorialization. This was part and parcel of figuring out how to incorporate all these disaffected southerners back with a distrustful north. To do so, it became very convenient to romanticize the glorious war and the honorable Southern gentlemen and Southern (Moonlight and Magnolias) culture. Left out of this? Oh, right. The former slaves. Dammnit. Well, one way to do that was to buy the Southern argument for slavery and racial inferiority. So, as a result of memorializing the gallant (white) soldiers who died in this family dispute, blacks became violent and subhuman rapists (all over again) who really liked slavery.

Now, does that mean that Memorial Day is somehow racist? No, not necessarily. But this kind of history is dangerous. It exalts romantic nostalgia over the nuanced past. It allows greedy industrialists who exploited people and resources to become "captains of industry" and name colleges and universities after them. It allows the growth of the industrial revolution to become a time when people had a "work ethic" rather than a time of tremendous exploitation and abuse when children were put in mines and immigrants were exploited. Western expansion becomes the romantic wagon trains instead of the ethnic cleansing of California Indians.

We should be asking serious questions about our past, and that includes respect for those who gave their lives in battle. But it also means thinking about the black men and women killed in a rage of racism and fear. It also includes those people who put their entire lives on the line to oppose a war, not because they hated their country, but because they loved America and wanted it to reflect the ideals of a free and democratic society.

Anyway, this guy is a tool.