You know, the current Ban All Things Confederate hysteria that is sweeping across the country has truly jumped the shark. A campy TV show called the Dukes of Hazzard had the audacity to name a car the General Lee and “GASP” put a Confederate flag on it.

Nevermind the fact that the show poked playful fun at any and all things Southern, we MUST yank it from the airwaves and stop selling or displaying anything that says Dukes of Hazzard because…BAD. But wait, it doesn’t stop there! In Seattle a group has decided that the 89 year old United Confederate Veterans Memorial must be destroyed.

“I don’t want any person – person of color, anybody, to walk by this monument and feel intimidated or oppressed,” LaFevere says. “And its very existence is expressing that.”

Oh good grief. The ONLY way a monument could intimidate or oppress me is if I was in danger of being flattened by it. Meanwhile New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, has decided that statues honoring General Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and others must go. Supposedly they don’t represent a city that is still trying to recoup from Hurricane Katrina. HUH? Former Congressman Ben Jones (D-GA), who played “Cooter” on the Dukes of Hazzard had this to say in response:

However, Ben Jones, a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said Landrieu’s proposal was “a massive insult”.

“Does it do anything about racism?” Jones asked. “No. This is a phony Band-Aid. All it has done is make people angry. It assumes we’re not sensitive to the plight of slavery and those who descended from slavery. We have a right to our feelings and to pay our respects to our ancestors.”

He’s right. As the ban and censor wave continues, we are in danger of ordering people to abandon their own family history. Furthermore ordering Americans to ban or censor things that are predicated on the feelings of a minority while ignoring the rights and freedoms we’ve ALL been granted under the Constitution of the United States is setting us on a very dangerous path. Think I’m wrong?

Memphis, TN now has their shorts in a knot over the Confederate kerfuffle. The City Council wants to remove all traces of General Nathan B. Forrest, CSA, including digging up his and his wife’s grave! Keep in mind he died 150 years ago. Rightly so, Forrest’s ancestors are vehemently protesting this potential action. Fact is; should the city council persist, they will run afoul of their own laws .

Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 4; Title 5; Title 6; Title 7 and Title 12, relative to historic preservation.

(1) No statue, monument, memorial, nameplate, or plaque which has been erected for, or named or dedicated in honor of, the French and Indian War, American Revolution, War of 1812, U.S.-Mexican War, the War Between the States, Spanish American War, the Mexican border period, World War I, World War II, the Korean conflict, the Vietnam War, Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada), Operation El Dorado Canyon (Libya), Operation Just Cause (Panama), Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm (Persian Gulf War 1), Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), and Operation Iraqi Freedom (Persian Gulf War II), and is located on public property, may be relocated, removed, altered, renamed, rededicated, or otherwise disturbed.

I’d say the Memphis City Council needs to rethink their knee-jerk reaction and get a grip on reality. Meanwhile it doesn’t help matters when we have Speaker John Boehner throwing his opinion into the ring:

Oh good, lets just add more fuel to the fire. Now police are called because someone can’t handle seeing Confederate memorabilia for sale and others such as an American Studies professor at UMass believe private displays of the flag should be classified as hate crimes. Yes indeed folks, we have truly fallen down the rabbit hole!

As the Perpetually Offended continue to sweep the country clean of all things Confederate and Southern, I’d say its high time they had some factual history thrown in their direction. Did you know that a descendant of General Nathan B. Forrest CSA, General Nathan Bedford Forrest III fought honorably in World War II and was shot down in 1943 over Germany? How about Medal of Honor Recipient Sgt. Alvin York? His grandfather was horribly murdered by Yankees for being a Confederate sympathizer. President Harry Truman’s grandfather fought for the South. Four of General George Patton’s ancestors fought for the south as well. In 1898 President McKinley urged reconciliation while honoring the amazing service of Southerners after recent battles with Spain:

“…every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate civil war [sic] is a tribute to American valor… And the time has now come… when in the spirit of fraternity we should share in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers…The cordial feeling now happily existing between the North and South prompts this gracious act and if it needed further justification it is found in the gallant loyalty to the Union and the flag so conspicuously shown in the year just passed by the sons and grandsons of those heroic dead.”

Terrific men whose courage in battle could teach us a great deal, and a President working to unite a country. Well, according to the Offended ones logic; their Confederate ties mean we’d better expunge those gentlemen from history too!

There’s just one teeny tiny eensy weensie problem with erasing any history that makes us uncomfortable or heaven forbid, Makes. Us. Think. Its been tried before…in Germany. Dr. Joseph Goebbles, using his Nazi Propaganda Ministry, controlled every form of communication and expression in Germany. If any music, art, or movies threatened the Nazi regime then it was censored or eliminated. Books by authors such as Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, and Helen Keller were banned and burned. The Nazis decided to arbitrate what is and isn’t acceptable based upon the rantings of a madman. And we all know how that worked out for Germany, don’t we?

Here’s a question. Once Confederate history has been purged from the record…what will the Perpetually Offended decide to censor next?

Now that we've successfully banned #confederateflag next on the ban list are plaids. Some of them offend me.

— Andrew Malcolm (@AHMalcolm) July 13, 2015

Banning all things Confederate will never erase what the Charleston shooter did. Erasing history didn’t work for Nazi Germany, it didn’t work for Stalin, and it won’t work here…nor should we let it.

I've never owned a confederate flag and despise how Democrats have conscripted it as a symbol of racism.

But I love free speech more.

— Bob Owens (@bob_owens) July 12, 2015

Exactly. Instead, what we should do is follow the examples set by President Lincoln and the families of those murdered in Charleston. Rather than rubbing salt in the wounds after the South surrendered, President Lincoln ordered the band to play one of his favorite songs, “Dixie.”  In Charleston, the members of the 9 families murdered stood up at the shooters bond hearing and FORGAVE him.

If we don’t protect our free speech; if we don’t follow the examples set by President Lincoln and the Charleston families; if we let this Ban All Things Confederate hysteria continue then more items will land on the censor & ban lists; and we will have to live with the end result.