An American Expat in Southeast Asia

Texas and our Nation Under Attack

"It's confounding, this continuing idolatry of the Confederacy"

Gary Bledsoe ~ President of the Texas branch of the NAACP

In March of 2001, the Taliban in Afghanistan issued a decree stating that Buddhist statues in Bamyan were to be destroyed and the world was outraged.

The Taliban wished to have the Bamyan statues destroyed for pretty much the same reasons that Gary Bledsoe wants to destroy any remembrance of our nation's Confederate heritage destroyed.

To the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Buddhist statues in Bamyan were idolatrous and represented a part of Afghanistan's heritage that needed to be obliterated. Not unlike Gary Bledsoe, the Taliban found the continuing idolatry of the Bamyan statues confounding.

Gary Bledsoe and the group he represents are no better than the Taliban, in fact, they are one in the same. While the Taliban represent Islamic fascism and Gary Bledsoe and the NAACP represent racist fascism. Both groups advance their destructive and divisive agenda though suppression of their opposition through terror and censorship combined with policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Booker T. Washington could have warned us about the destructive nature and the threats to national security and unity people like Gary Bledsoe would come to represent when he stated the following:

"There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs... There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."

Despite the war ending over 142 years ago it seems that we have not learned from our mistakes. The "patient" in the words of Booker T. Washington is not well. We had the courage as a nation to end slavery, but we still lack the courage to end racism.

If we had any gravitas as a nation, it would not be the rememberance of our nation's Confederate heritage and history that we obliterated -- it would be be the racist fascism that Gary Bledsoe and groups like the NAACP represent.

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