News flash: Ed Sebesta hates the South

We haven't blogged on Edward Sebesta, the Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Junior G-Man Division, in some time. The reason is that he continues to whip out his masterpieces at a pace that can only be described as -- glacial. I suppose it's the anticipation that whets readers' appetites for his masterpieces, such as this shot at Charleston City Paper's Southern Avenger, with the dyslexic title, Is Southern Avenger called me politically incorrect? [sic]

So whatever Sebesta does in the long stretches between his blog posts, it obviously doesn't include proof reading.

Anyway, in his latest blog entry, he rails against what he denounces as a "pro-lynching" song by Toby Keith. The song describes popular disgust with rising crime, and mentions how the generation of his "Grandpappy" would hang crooks from "a tall oak tree." It concludes:

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
too much corruption and crime in the streets
It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send 'em all to their maker and he'll settle 'em down

Now that doesn't sound like an endorsement of lynching, but the cry of fed-up citizens demanding that "the long arm of the law" do its duty.

But facts like that won't get in the way when Sebesta's hot about something:

What is the most shocking thing about Toby Keith's song isn't the song itself which is appalling, it is the tolerance for the song and acceptance of Toby Keith by major media despite him singing and promoting this song.

Max Blumenthal has done the pubic [!] a service by reminding people what lynching is in concrete terms.

(Did I mention how Sebesta mangles English as badly as he does his facts?)

But of course, as in all of Sebesta's rants, the real point is that the South and its defenders are eeeevil:

The neo-Confederates are strong supporters of being violent as a southern quality. League of the South president Michael Hill called the IRA the equivalent to a Medieval Scottish clan. Former League of the South member of the board of directors, Thomas Fleming has pushed the idea of violence in Chronicles magazine.

Well. Actually, Michael Hill's "Honor, Violence and Civilization" was subtitled "Things worth dying for," and explored the Southern tradition of fighting for noble purposes, rather than for violence for its own sake. Biologist E. O. Wilson explored the same theme when he lauded Southern men for upholding ideals of "altruism and devotion to duty" as they exhibited the "strength ordinary people possess that held civilization together in dangerous times."

But again, Sebesta has repeatedly demonstrated his total disregard for facts, preferring to rip words out of context to suit his purpose.

The interesting thing is that for all his talk of "democracy" and anti-violence, Sebesta has no problem trying to sabotage those who object to the ongoing Federal assault on our rights to privacy and due process here at home. Further, he clearly relishes the violence unleashed against innocent Iraqi civilians, and seeks to discredit those who protest against it. In fact, he bragged on his blog how he informed the pro-invasion New York Sun that I had written some articles for LewRockwell.com. The Sun was delighted to link Cindy Sheehan, who’s also written for Rockwell, with those sinister “neo-confederates.” As usual, the mainstream corporate media gleefully accommodated Mr. Sebesta, and published the following “exposé” on the anti-war movement:

The anti-Israel and anti-neocon crowd has, as usual, found common ground with the camp that thinks the wrong side won the Civil War. A lewrockwell.com contributor, Michael Tuggle, who is chairman of the “North Carolina League of the 1857 South,” told us yesterday in a phone interview that he had traveled to Washington from Charlotte for last month’s anti-war march at which Ms. Sheehan spoke. Mr. Tuggle spoke to us of “the tragic defeat of 1865.” He said, “That was the end of limited government, what the Southern patriots of 1861 fought for.” He said that Washington, D.C., and big business are bigger threats than Al Qaeda. Of Ms. Sheehan, Mr. Tuggle said, “I think she’s a fighter, and I appreciate that.”

Incidentally, I feel vindicated for tagging DC as a greater threat to our freedom than al-Qaeda. It wasn’t Osama who maimed the Bill of Rights with the Patriot Act and the Military Commission act, enabling the government to wiretap and search without warrants, and to imprison and punish citizens without recourse to habeas corpus. The events of the last couple of years have further convinced me that centralized big government is irredeemably tyrannical. With no independent, local centers of power to mitigate its actions, its quest for total control, as well as its descent into corruption at home and aggression abroad, are unstoppable.

The South has a proud history of resisting tyranny, from the Revolution to the present day. But people such as Ed Sebesta have condemned us, and therefore dismiss our arguments about the Constitution, the abuse of government power, or whatever we have to say as nothing more than vain attempts to distract attention away from our secret, sinister purposes. Such creatures pursue their hatreds with such passion that they do not notice or care what harm they do to others.