Well, after years of our being called "neo-Confederate" by leftist watchdogs who lie for money, the term has finally been defined. 

I know we've all felt the phrase aimed at us like a bullet, and we know it is supposed to be a pejorative and all ... although the "Confederate" part of the term, far from being a negative appellation,  is actually a title we take great pride in wearing.

You gotta wonder at the mental processing level of folks who try to insult us by calling us a name we highly honor.

Of course, the leftist liars who've targeted us with their slanders rarely, if ever, define the term.  They mean something nasty by it, so they think we ought to be insulted.  That seems to be the extent of their reasoning on it.

Now that one of them has finally defined it -- in the press, too, for everyone to see -- we can understand why our enemies have been, well, coy with the definition.  Because, as it turns out, the big, bad pejorative "neo-Confederate" is not only a total fabrication -- it's an loony one, to boot.

South Carolina's rabidly anti-Southern newspaper, The State, recently carried a hit piece on Ron Wilson, CIC of the SCV and candidate for the South Carolina senate.  "Journalist" John Monk interviewed Heidi Beirich of the Socialist Pecunious Lawyer Center (those people who love to hate and lie about Southerners).  Ms. Beirich hypocritically engages in an activity against which leftists normally erupt in indignation, when anyone else does it -- labeling and name-calling.  Of course, when THEY do it, they think it's okay.  (I know.  The smell of hypocrisy can surely assault one's rhinal cavities, can't it?....) 

So Beirich calls Wilson a "neo-Confederate" and Monk, wanting to be helpful to his readers, adds, "By that, she said she meant someone who wants to return to pre-1860 United States and is dismissive of slavery."

Did you get that, folks?

HEIDI BERICH OF THE SOCIALIST PECUNIOUS LAWYER CENTER HAS DEFINED "NEO-CONFEDERATE" AS SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO RETURN TO PRE-1860 UNITED STATES AND IS DISMISSIVE OF SLAVERY.

Now let's take these separately, beginning with the slavery thing.  Dismissive of slavery...  Well, since the institution hasn't existed here in rougly a century and a half, how could we or anyone else be anything BUT dismissive of it?  Perhaps, in order to shed the "neo-Confederate" label, we should start lobbying for slavery's return?

Didn't I tell you it was loony-tunes?

But let's move on to the meat of the definition... someone who wants to return to pre-1860 United States.

Now, why would a neo-Confederate want to return to a time before Confederates even existed?  And supposing that they COULD return, wouldn't they wink out of existence as soon as they got there (or is it "got then"?) because Confederates had not yet come to be?

And how would one return to that period of time, anyway?  H. G. Wells' time machine is fiction.  The Enterprise and its "slingshot around the sun" is fiction.  Marty McFly's time-travelin' DeLorean is fiction. 

The fact is, nobody can return to pre-1860 United States.  Nobody can return to pre-Bush United States.  Nobody can even return to "pre-Show Mo' the Money Dees" United States, or pre-Heidi Bierich United States.  Time only moves in one direction, nobody can go backwards in time, and I've never met a neo-Confederate who doesn't know this. 

Despite Beirich's definition already showing its utter looniness, let's humor her and peer a bit deeper into the meaning.

So neo-Confederates want to return to horses and buggies (or mules and wagons for most of us) and give up our nice, air-conditioned SUVs?  Neo-Confederates want to return to rutted dirt roads instead of nice, paved neighborhood streets and those long ribbons of interstates that get us from point A to point B in no time?  To return to distance-traveling on jostling, smoke-belching trains instead of aboard a nice little Boeing commuter jet? 

Uh, I'm pretty certain that isn't what neo-Confederates want. 

Well, do they want to return to homes with no screens on the doors and window where flies and mosquitos enter in swarms?  Homes that are sweltering in summer, freezing in winter, and sooty with fumes and saturated with the odor of kerosene lamps ... instead of our climate-controlled three bedroom ranch in the 'burbs?  Are there any neo-Confederates out there who would prefer chamber pots and smelly outhouses to the gleaming tile baths in said three-bedroom ranch? 

My guess is ... no way, Jose. 

How about any neo-Confederate ladies out there who prefer hog-killin' and chicken-pluckin' to running down to Winn-Dixie's meat department?  Any who prefer cooking on a woodstove in August to popping some Lean Cuisine in the microwave?  Any of you ready to give up your freezer?  Your double stainless steel sink and Corian countertop?  Your non-stick cookware?  Your no-wax floors?  Ready to give all that up for hand-pumpin' your water and carrying it in buckets?

I don't think so, Tim.

How about relatives who come for a visit and end up staying months or years?  Nope, forget it.

And what 21st Century neo-Confederate man would give up a suit and four-in-hand tie for a cravat that feels like a chiropractor's neck brace?

I can't think of a single one.

And does Beirich really think that I, as a "mature" neo-Confederate woman, want to give up my jeans and comfy penny loafers for a floor-length skirt ten feet wide and a corset that compresses my insides to the circumference of a fence post?

If that's what she genuinely thinks, she's getting awful close to funny-farm candidacy.

Shortly after writing this piece, I posted it on a neoConfederate discussion group that happens to be under attack right now from both the extreme left and the extreme right.

In response to my post, the one of the extremists, whom I shall call The Interloper, wrote:
 

There's hardly anything the interloper says that I agree with, but I actually do agree with some of  this.  Generally speaking, people who are called "neoConfederates" by hatemongers like those at the SPLC and NAACP do wish for and support the idea of a return to the form of government that existed in this country before Lincoln destroyed it.

However -- and this seems to completely escape ol' 'Loper -- this was conspicuously NOT what Heidi Beirich meant.

 My essay wasn't written to deceive but to illustrate the ridiculousness of Beirich's implications, which are that proSoutherners long for a return to the Old South and the days of plantations and slaves.

It's part of the never-ending efforts of the U.S.A. to make itself look better than it really is by portraying Southerners as far worse than they really are or ever have been.

Here's an example.  A few years ago, during the Richmond, Va., "Canalwalk" controversy, Susan Glisson, interim director of the Institution for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, reinforced this negative Southern stereotype in an interview with the Associated Press. 

The AP quoted Glisson as saying, ``It is so much easier if you're white to imagine some grand plantation home in which you didn't have to work and, when it was attacked, you valiantly defend it on some battlefield far away.''

The idea is that Southerners are too dumb to consider lofty subjects such as representative government (never mind that Southerners originally created our government); and so evil and lazy (note Glisson's "didn't have to work" remark) that they long to return to an era of riches, plantations and slaves.

Obviously completely missing  the point of my response to Beirich, the Interloper continued:
 

Basing your defense on a denial of wanting to return to things like slavery and the horse and buggy instead of explaining why ante-bellum goverment was better than what we have today is a dodge and a submission by omission that you don't really prefer anything pre-1860. Which is what you're being prodded to do by the ludicrous pretension that you want to adopt everything pre-1860

If Beirich had written anything that could be taken seriously enough, perhaps I would have considered a serious reply, including a short examination of government then and now.  But that wasn't the point of Beirich's attack, and it wasn't the point of my counterattack.

And as far as my denial of desiring horse and buggy days equalling a rejection of everything from those times -- that's nothing more than Loper's interpretation.  An incorrect interpretation.

My point was to show how ridiculous her charges are.  It was to illustrate the extent to which I take her charges seriously -- that is to say, not a bit.

The conclusions drawn by the Interloper illustrate his own inability to think outside the box  more than it does any erroneous analysis on my part.

The situation is simply bigger than such critics can or will see.  When our enemies attack, there are all kinds of defenses and counterattacks we can engage in.  To narrow our  choice of responses is to jeapordize our ability to fight back.