Berryville, VA. – The Turner Ashby Camp 1567, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Winchester, Virginia, honors Confederate soldiers who died during the War Between the States on Veteran’s Day.
Both Confederate and United States flags were placed side by side signifying the shared sacrifice of American soldiers, both Confederate and Union, who are honored equally as veterans by the United States.
Laws and proclamations passed by the U.S. Congress in 1906, 1929 and 1958 (and by President Eisenhower in 1960) gave Confederate veterans the same honors as any American veteran. Confederate Soldiers were made eligible to receive benefits including gravestones, markers, and/or pensions for service from 1861 to 1865.
Today, people forget that it was the United States who recognized the Confederate States in an act of reconciliation. Therefore, official proclamations by the Government removes all claims against the Confederacy and those who served it and protects, defends and honors their symbols, monuments and heroes. This codifies and makes law the fact that any assault upon all things Confederate is contrary to the laws of the United States and must be resisted vigorously.
In a more reconciliatory time in America, Confederate soldiers were admired for their courage and tenacity, and his descendants were sought for their honorable martial heritage. In 1954, ten years after D-Day during the dedication of the WW2 memorial for Virginia’s Bedford Boys, Commanding General Charles Gerhardt of the 29th Infantry Division, and southerner himself from Tennessee, described why Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment was chosen to lead the first wave attack at Omaha Beach, Normandy. He said: “The record of the 29th [Infantry Division] goes back to 1620, through the regimental history of Virginia troops, and their record has been unequalled. Those boys were the descendants of those who fought with Jackson, Lee, and Stuart.”
Opponents want to abolish and drive a wedge between any connection descendants have to their Confederate ancestors, including altering their history, in order to divide America. Removing or revising history, and denigrating southern heritage, is their aim in order to destroy a nation they claim is racist and oppressive – and this strategy must be exposed and resisted.
The War Memorial honoring Clarke County veterans in Berryville is just one example of current resistance to this attempt to revise history and denigrate the dead. Fear and weakness have permeated the local Board of Supervisors and even many of Clarke’s citizens who are made to feel ashamed about the truth and connections to their heritage and history.
Berryville is culturally a southern town, has always had southern traditions, and sons who fought overwhelmingly for the Confederacy during the war. In the eyes of left-wing opponents, this fact is what needs to be destroyed. The monument at the court house recognizes those fallen Clarke soldiers who died during the war. Yet the BoS chooses to go lock-step with this new agenda where America’s southern culture and heritage exists no more, its symbols and history erased from the public mind and public square.
The strategy goes far beyond Clarke County, Va. It’s now a national agenda by the Democrat party and left-wing activists, that is, the agenda to wreck the military by altering its traditions, culture and lifeblood, and wipe away its people, its soldiers and their heritage. Remember a lot of military members are born and raised in the South where they live and work near large bases in their states: Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Texas are the big four. Add in Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida –and you have a majority of the southern states comprising by far the most American military bases.
The new Marxist agenda is changing the names of military bases, removing names of southern heroes and Generals. Anyone who stands in their way are called racists, rednecks and hillbillies, “gun-violent” nuts and the like. The new policies of the woke are aimed squarely on the military where senior officials at the Pentagon—who are nothing more than political hacks, and non-southern officers serve on re-naming commissions to alter American military traditions forever. In a larger strategic sense, once you weaken a military from within, you no longer have to worry about any enemy from the outside. Communists and globalists don’t have to invade our shores, they can simply fly first class and land at Dulles airport.
The descendants of Clarke County soldiers should feel proud, not alienated or shamed. In fact, they join a long line of tradition of service to America. According to the DoD’s most recent Population Representation in the Military Services report, some 44% of American recruits still come from the South. That doesn’t account for even larger numbers prior to 1990, when southerners made up to 50% of all soldiers, or the estimate that the South’s military service far outpaces its percentage of ~30% total population.
With the military today, along with the cultural removal strategy of base names, monuments, the lowering of military standards and social engineering, it’s pretty fair to say this will negatively impact America’s fighting ability permanently. If you have a soldier worried about what gender they are, rather than how to clean their M4 rifle and kill the enemy, well, we lose.
Veterans Day is more about Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918 to end World War I. However, it is now a day to recognize all veterans who served, including Confederate soldiers.
By Paul Clark