Those who dwell on the past are doomed to repeat it

I ran across this piece a couple days back, but did not have enough (contiguous) free time to read, much less pass on until now. The first third was promising, but the harping on the Civil War theme grew tiresome, and not simply because I find the mythos of the Old South itself tiresome.

Understand that I find the carnage obscene in any context, be it book market or opium den. Nevertheless, that the bomber and his handlers targeted what remains of cultural literacy in Iraq salts the already-open wound. But Dickey's musings on history miss the larger, more enduring parallels between occupied Iraq and the Reconstruction-era South.

Parallel #1 is the fact that when the vanquished cannot lash out at the victor, s/he makes someone else pay for the humiliation of defeat. Lynchings and car bombs both stem from treating the vendettas of our forebears as heirlooms, rather than the soul-twisting curses that they are.

Parallel #2 is that too often, and for too many people, every effort to reconstruct the past is an attack on the future. There is no happenstance in that the sellers and buyers of books were targeted. Neither is there any coincidence to the fact that the assaults on education (in the guise of creationism, abstinence-training, and--soon, no doubt--the introduction of "critical thinking" on the "theory" of global warming) often come from the South (Kansas, Dover, PA, and the recently slapped-down shenanigans in Ohio notwithstanding).

Of course, I'm treating Dickey harshly, simply because anyone who can remember the Civil War first-hand is long dead, and it's well past time to bury that grievance alongside them. I really should rejoice that a Southerner would put that weary legacy to rare good use--a Yankee couldn't pull that off. If he succeeds in the small miracle of kindling a kindred spirit among a population not quite famous for empathizing with brown-skinned folks, then I applaud him as a bridge-builder for humanity.

Yet I can't help but cringe whenever anyone raises the faded tatters of the Confederate banner. We can't encourage the Iraqis to put centuries of infighting behind them when we suckle yet another generation on such poison here in America.