Haley Barbour makes a case against a nit.

I think I get what Candy Crowley was trying to elicit from Governor Barbour even if he didn't quite get it. The acknowledgement that slavery is bad does "go without saying"--although hearing it from people who celebrate a Confederate Memorial holiday is nice, too, don't get me wrong. But the broader question is, "Why celebrate something that is kind of openly hostile in terms of race relations and exacerbates our regional differences?" (Putting it that way is perhaps a bit too blunt. But I'm a blogger, so I'll go blunt with it.)

In other words, even more explicit, doesn't it matter that it seems like a celebration of not getting over the past? Like it seems like a way of picking at the scars of a war between brothers? That it papers over the real depredations of slavery and the sickness implicit in the culture of the privilege of being of the race of owners, even if one weren't one oneself? That "heritage" is a smooth word for thinking of that distinction as a birthright?

Basically--the omission of slavery on the basis that "everyone knows it's wrong" is a nit, or "diddly" probably to those who specifically want to make a nit, or diddly, out of it. And it may well be that Democratic state legislators have tolerated that way of thinking. My experience is that Democrats may sometimes tolerate quite a bit. But toleration doesn't actually make something right. And what is a point of pride to some group, might be the worst sort of insult to another group, who have learned to be, well, tolerant. Patient.

But sometimes I don't even feel patient. I'd like to drag these people into the 21st Century and let them know we are one nation--white, black, north, south, the whole lot.

And the past can be dead, if we acknowledge that it's the past.