Confederacy: It Doesn't Just Refer To The Stars and Bars

Confederacy: It Doesn't Just Refer To The Stars and Bars

Adam's Blog points to one of those reminders that there's always someone prepared to play the victim card and take offense, even where none was intended:

Political correctness will rot a thinking mind. Case in point, the reaction to the following statement from Id. Rep. Dick Harwood (R-St. Maries):

Promoting his state sovereignty resolution on the floor of the Idaho House of Representatives on Monday, St. Maries Rep. Dick Harwood declared that the United States is really a “confederacy.”

“To be accurate, we’re a confederated republic,” the fifth-term Republican then told the House.

This brought a strong reaction from a local minority right’s activist:

“It’s a very offensive term for minority communities in our country, like African-Americans,” said Tony Stewart, a board member and co-founder of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, and a retired political scientist at North Idaho College. “That whole term refers to the period of slavery.”

So every use of the term confederacy applies to slavery? Not according to my dictionary. The primary meaning is, ” an alliance between persons, parties, states, etc., for some purpose.”
Steve Shaw, an active political science professor at Northwest Nazarene University, while disagreeing with Harwood and suggesting that Harwood needed remedial U.S. History classes, identified Switzerland as a confederacy. I guess this would indicate the Swiss have slaves, if we’re to believe Mr. Stewart.
Was the United States founded as a confederacy? I’m going to do something totally wild and suggest we find out what the Founding Fathers say.

Adam agrees that Harwood needs some remedial U.S. History classes, but that the term "confederate republic" is used in Federalist #9, and Tony Stewart's comments also show a certain lack of knowledge. I might excuse this ignorance a bit more except Stewart is a retired political science professor--and he doesn't know that "confederacy" refers to something more than the C.S.A.? I can see why I can't get a teaching job at a community college--not ignorant enough.

What really disturbs me is how often victimhood offense is based on ignorance. I mentioned several years ago how a member of the Rhode Island legislature was insisting that the formal name of the state ("Rhode Island and Providence Plantations") be changed because of the slavery connotation of "Plantation." Except that "plantation" did not have a slavery connotation with respect to Rhode Island's name, and there were similar "plantations" in Ireland.

And the District of Columbia official who was forced to resign for using the word "niggardly" which has nothing to do with the racial epithet.

And as I mentioned last year, when the term "black hole" was used to refer to the Dallas County traffic ticket collection system, a judge insisted that this was a racist term--with no apparent awareness that it refers to an object so dense that light can't escape it. (Or perhaps a judge so dense that no knowledge can cross his event horizon.)