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Entry: An Enduring Problem Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/an_enduring_problem#30380 Post contents: "Propagandistic stereotyping in itself is hardly unique to modernity, and the denial of all virtue in the enemy is certainly not limited to nationalists, but nationalism combines the impulse to glorify one’s own people collectively and almost always to impugn other nations in the process. " Dr. Fleming uses only Union propaganda against the South as an example of this. Never mind the Confederate propaganda against the Union states. According the Confederate slant, the Unionists had no redeeming qualities, either, nor did the abolitionists, nor did Lincoln. The Southern apologists tend to depict Lincoln as beyond any honor. His use of martial law and suspension of habeas corpus is held up as signs of his tyranny, never mind Jefferson Davis' suspension of habeas corpus (the Confederat Vice President thought that Davis violated states' rights and was an incipient tyrant in the Lincoln mode). In the Southern narrative, John Brown and Sherman are mentioned prominently, not Quantrill's terrorists or Jesse James (a murderer who got his) or the pro-slavery murderers and lynch mobs of Bleeding Kansas. Southerners suffers ignominy in this country because they lost. But that does not justify the blind spots of the Southern narrative, in which the Union suffers ignominy because it won. Sent at: 2008 12 01