On Wednesday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol took on the rest of his “Morning Joe” panelists for his attacks on the left for their efforts to abolish the Confederate flag from public places and to pressure retailers into not offering the flag for sale.
It's our own mini-French Revolution, expunging history in a frenzy of self-righteousness. Luckily, so far: 1st time tragedy, 2nd time farce.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) June 23, 2015
Kristol castigated the motivation pushing the flag’s abolition calling it a product of the left, and sometimes the right as well.
“I dislike the kind of cheap self-righteousness of especially the left – there is some of it on the right these days too – where they just get into these kind of frenzy of hatred,” he said.
But then he hit on the legacy of the aftermath of the Civil War and the speculated the modern left wouldn’t have been as willing to fight the Civil War and pointed to their current stances on foreign policy.
“[S]outherners are entitled to be proud of Robert E. Lee. Americans are entitled to respect Robert E. Lee. Ulysses S. Grant and Lincoln went out of their way to be respectful of the Confederate soldiers about one of the great stories of American history? Appomattox – Grant permits troops to leave with bearing arms, etc. So a little more of that spirit and a little less self-righteous moralism would be nice.
“And b — the left would have of course been mostly in the party of peace in 1863 or ’64. They would have said, ‘We have to end the slaughter. We can’t win the war. It’s very complicated. We’re getting into a quagmire in the South. Sherman is killing a lot of civilians,’ which he certainly was. The left doesn’t want to fight actual dictators today. They don’t want to do anything about slavery in Iraq today. But it’s very easy to beat up on dead confederates.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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