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From the Occasional Papers of the Conservative Citizens Foundation Issue Number One: Conservative Reaction to Multicultural America. (1997)
Their Fight is Our Fight
by Jared Taylor
Speech delivered at Jefferson Davis Monument
Fairview, Kentucky, April 27, 1996
Ladies and gentlemen:
We are gathered here today to celebrate the memory of those brave men who gave their lives for their country--for the Confederate States of America. Why do we still remember them and honor them, than 130 years after the guns fell silent? Why does the Confederate soldier and what he stood for still inspire us and move us?
In part, it is simple pride in our forefathers. It was our kinfolk, our ancestors, our flesh and blood who marched into battle beneath this flag. Our first loyalties are quite properly to our own people.
But, of course, there is far more than this in our admiration for our Southern martyrs. By any standards, our ancestors were remarkable for their devotion, their gallantry, and their sacrifice. No men understood this better than the Northern armies against whom they fought. The Confederate army was, without a doubt, the finest force of fighting men America has ever produced. Their place in history, and in our heart, is secure.
But I ask you, my compatriots, why did our ancestors fight so bravely and so well, against overwhelming odds? Why did their heroism and sacrifice become the stuff of legends? Men fight best for what they love most-their families, their nation, their way of life. Our ancestors fought for all these things and for something more: Like their ancestors in 1776, they fought for freedom and independence.
There is no eagle in the center of the Great Seal of the Confederacy. Instead, there is that great revolutionary hero and freedom fighter, George Washington. He, most assuredly, did not believe in union at any cost. Likewise, it was no accident that another revolutionary hero, Thomas Jefferson, had a grandson who served in the Confederate cabinet. The Confederacy and the men who fought for it were squarely in the American tradition of independence, of faithfulness to the Constitution, of convictions so deep they mattered more than life itself.
But I ask you, my compatriots, have the grievances of our ancestors been redressed? Are we free of the federal power they fought to hold at bay? Are we free to set the course of our lives without interference from Washington? Indeed, we are not. Our grievances are far worse than those of our ancestors. The federal power against which they took up arms was a mild and distant irritant compared to the giant bureaucracy that rules us today.
In fact, our government is now more intrusive, and vastly more guilty of tyrannies large and small than that of George III or of any of the most powerful and infamous monarchies of the past. Would Ivan the Terrible have even dreamed of telling his subjects whom they had to hire, with whom they must go to school, or who their neighbors had to be? Americans used to have freedom of association. No more.
Did even Louis XIV attempt to tell his citizens where they could or could not pray to their God? Americans used to be free to witness to their faith in school, on the city council, or in the court house. Not any more.
Did the federal government our ancestors fought even dream of restricting private ownership of firearms? Today, it does whatever it likes, and could toss the second amendment right out of the Constitution tomorrow. Americans used to have the right to bear arms. Maybe for not much longer.
Did the czars of Russia ever require an accounting of every penny of income from every subject of their realm and then threaten them with jail if they did not hand over one third of it? Americans used to work for themselves and for their families. Now they work one or two days out of every week for the government--like indentured servants.
The government takes your money and hires an army of bureaucrats--over 100,000 in the Department of Agriculture alone--bureaucrats who make it their business to boss you around for your own good. The government takes your money and gives it to teen-age girls who have had illegitimate children--and gives them more money if they have more illegitimate children. Indeed, the government is rearing an army of enemies for you and your children.
Most dangerous of all, the federal government runs an immigration policy that will reduce whites to a racial minority within the life-times of your children. Yes, the United States imports over one million people every year and 90 percent of them are non-white. Does America need Haitians, Mexicans, Cambodians and Guatemalans by the millions? Where these people settle--be it Miami; South Central Los Angeles; or Brownsville, Texas;--these places cease to be parts of the United States and become parts of the Third World.
It used to be that Americans could rear their families, confident that the nation they would leave to their children and grandchildren would be one in which European culture and Western Civilization would reign in unquestioned supremacy. Not any more.
And so, my compatriots, we face far greater tyranny, a far greater threat to our way of life than did our ancestors.
It is not just Jefferson Davis and General Lee who would have recognized this threat. Grant and Sherman themselves would have led a rebellion against a government that did to them what our government seeks to do to us today.
And so I ask you: Will we be as devoted to our principles, as courageous in stating them, and as willing to sacrifice for them as our ancestors were? If not, our remaining freedoms will continue to slip away, one by one.
Another reason we are here today, is to remember Michael Westerman. A group of young blacks killed him because he was white and because he was flying this flag. This flag, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the few symbols we have left that says to all the world: I'm proud to be a Southerner; I'm proud of the men who wore the gray; I'm proud of my heritage, proud of my race, and proud of my people. And that, of course, is why this flag has so many enemies. And that is why Michael Westerman is in his grave.
In conclusion, my compatriots, never forgot that you have blood of heroes in your veins. Never forget that as we pay our respects to the men who died fighting for this flag, that their struggle is not history. Their struggle is not in the past. Their struggle is today. It is our struggle. What they fought for—freedom, independence, peoplehood, tradition, nation, and way of life—these things we too must fight for and by all honorable means.
Our cause is right; our cause is just, and by all that's eternal we will prevail. Long live the South.