It gave me a chill to read your piece and realize how this connects to Dinesh D’Souza’s ridiculous argument that the Democratic Party of today is the same party that enslaved people and created the KKK, while the Republican Party is the party of liberation. This idea is so ahistorical and preposterous—obviously, Democrats and Republicans are not the same as they were in the 19th century—that I always perceived it as so marginal as to be not even worthy of contention. But here we are, with not the specifics of it but the general idea seeping out into the mainstream.
It’s fascinating the extent to which D’Souza and Dennis Prager and these other people that push this do accept the story of emancipation. The substance of the story that’s being taught, that liberals want to teach, that’s being taught in most places now—they accept the story, and they just switch the white hat, switch out the labels on the uniforms.
This fuses with a nationalistic politics. I think the retreat from the Lost Cause has also meant a kind of raising of new citadels around the idea of the nation. People on the right seem to be sort of sacrificing the Confederacy, to some extent, because it doesn’t do the work they want it to do. What does work is laying claim to the nation at the heart of the idea of America. Not in the old-school “the founders were geniuses and set aside universal freedom from everyone” Lynne Cheney kind of a way, but in a new school way that just says, “America, fuck yes!”
This is a different thing from the regionalism of the Lost Cause. I think it’s interesting that this nationalism has in many cases not even taken the point of view of reconciliation, but is deeply invested in unionist symbols. Tucker Carlson had a whole segment defending Ulysses S. Grant. It’s a rally point for them right now—the idea they’re going after Grant and Lincoln. It’s like how, in previous years, they kind of laid claim to a certain version of Martin Luther King. They’re not interested in tying themselves to the mast of the Confederacy. They’re claiming everything else for themselves.
I think you’re onto something here. The conversations around anti-CRT bills emphasize the right’s desire to have kids coming out of class feeling positive emotions about the United States. The Lost Cause and the Civil War don’t really fit. There’s defeat and tragedy there.
Right! The MAGA energy is about winning and feeling good. And in that sense, the Union victory is something to feel good about.