April 25, 2009 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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Welcome to the Political Cesspool, known worldwide as the South's foremost conservative populist radio program.
April is Confederate Heritage and History Month, and here at the Political Cesspool, we're doing our part to bring you the best guests and interviews to raise the public's awareness.
Stand by now for another great installment of the Political Cesspool, and here's your host, James Edwards.
You know, it's always sad to see April come and go because it means that Confederate History Month is over.
But if it has to go this year, I would prefer to be joined by no one more than our guest right now, the venerable author, author of the runaway seller, Southern by the Grace of God, a book that really, in my opinion, more than any other book I've ever read, encapsulates everything that is good about the South, everything that makes you proud to be a Southerner,
everything that makes us beam with pride, those of us who are descendants of the Confederate soldiers.
That's what Southern by the Grace of God is all about.
Michael Andrew Grissom, are you with us?
Apparently not yet.
Bill, are you there?
I'm here.
Can you hear me, James?
Are you there, Mike or Bill?
Yes, sir.
I'm here.
Okay, I hear you good.
Mike, are you there, Bill Rowland?
I'm here.
You're cutting a little bit in and out, Bill.
Okay, can you hear me now?
You're good.
Okay.
Good to have you.
I know we're playing co-hosting musical chairs tonight, and the connections have been a little bit iffy, but Winston is gone now.
Bill Rowland now in.
And Bill, did I give Mike Grissom his due in that introduction?
I mean, any introduction would pal a comparison, I think.
It would fall short.
Yeah, I think that that was a very good introduction.
Mr. Grissom has written other great works.
Rebel by the, excuse me, Rebel, Last Rebel Yell.
Yes.
And Canada South Survives.
So it's absolutely a magnificent body of work.
And we're giving you all this praise, Mike, and you haven't gotten a chance to say anything yet.
Oh, I'm enjoying it.
This is wonderful.
You know, it's rare that I get these kind of compliments, so I'm just rare back here enjoying all the talk.
We can keep on if you want.
Oh, it sounds good.
Bill, take it away.
I know you have prepared more than myself for this interview tonight, of course.
I would love to have the opportunity to ask Michael Grissom question after question after question, but you've been doing the homework on this one, and I am going to defer to you for now, Bill.
So what do we have in store for Mike Grissom this evening as we bring our coverage of Confederate History Month this year to a close with this broadcast tonight on the political cesspool?
We had discussed earlier, Mr. Grissom and I had talked earlier, about focusing a little bit tonight on the hate crimes against the South, which we consider attacks on our symbols and monuments to be hate crimes.
And so tonight we're going to discuss a little bit about that.
And in fact, one such crime has occurred in Alabama.
And we'll get to a discussion about that as well.
So the first thing, Mike, hate crimes against the South, atrocities against the South.
And earlier today, we had discussed the tragic and really sad case of DeWitt Smith Job during the war itself.
Yes, you know, in a broader sense, let me back up just a little bit.
I have, when I wrote Southern by the Grace of God about 22 years ago, I wrote it because we were under attack, and of course that has never let up.
And as I began to look at the big picture, we were moving from an era where we were the solid South, and we saw ourselves as the majority.
We thought in step with each other.
But as the years went by after 1987, the years began to reveal that we were becoming something of an ethnic minority.
And I tried, began trying to convince Southerners that we needed to see ourselves as an ethnic group and that the future was probably going to bring us more hate crimes and persecution.
I never was successful in getting Southerners to throw off the mantle of the majority feeling and going into a victim status.
But you know what?
We have been forced now by immigration and the media and all the forces right against us.
We are now an ethnic minority, whether we want to admit it or not.
And the hate crimes go all the way back to the 1860s.
And you mentioned DeWitt Smith Job.
For those who don't know who he was, he was a cousin to General Thomas Benton Smith.
General Thomas Benton Smith was a 26-year-old general.
And if you've ever seen a picture of him, he was a Tennessean, and he was probably one of the most handsome men in uniform.
At the last battle that the Army of Tennessee held, we were trying to retake Nashville.
General Thomas Benton Smith and most of his men were surrendered.
He was unarmed and being marched back to the back.
And some Ohio officer, a Colonel William Lynn McMillan of the 95th Ohio Infantry, rode up on a horse and decided he would kill him.
So he took his saber out and hacked him over the head many times.
General Smith did not die.
His brain was exposed, but to the amazement of everybody, he actually recovered enough that later on he took a few menial jobs with the railroad before spending 47 of the last years of his life in an insane asylum.
DeWitt Smith Job was his cousin, and about three and a half months earlier, DeWitt Smith Job was attacked in a cornfield near his mother's home.
The 115th Ohio Cavalry had ridden upon him and they thought he had information that they wanted.
So they beat him up in the cotton field, in the cornfield, and he still wouldn't divulge the information they wanted to know.
So they knocked his teeth out.
They cut his tongue out, demanded more information.
He wouldn't give it.
They put a leather strap around, poked his eyes out.
Then they put a leather strap around his neck, threw it up over a tree, and jerked his body up and down till it nearly strangled him, and then demanded, blind as he was, that he write out and scribble out blind what information they needed or wanted to know.
He still refused, so they put him behind a horse, which drugged him to death.
Then they rode to his mother's home, dragging the body, and found her on the front porch and dumped the body up.
And those two things happened right there in Middle Tennessee.
So those are things that I think we need to make people aware of.
If we don't, then we're simply in a defensive mode.
And we need to put Yankee soldiers on the defensive.
We need to put the U.S. government on defensive.
Well, I agree.
And of course, I wanted those stories to be told because I can't think of any worse atrocities in military history than those two examples in particular.
But also, you know, we as Southerners have learned that we have to be very precise and very accurate in our information.
And Mike, you just relayed the story and also the Ohio units involved and so forth.
And so many people who claim to be victims of hate crimes, they consider it an atrocity to have something scrawled on their door in chalk or that some little, you know, some token is left that they interpret as a hate crime.
And this gets enormous coverage by the news media.
And yet, you know, here's a story of horrific death and mutilation.
And these things are scoffed at and no attention is paid to them.
But the fact is that there's been a continuum of hate crimes against Southerners since that time.
And we know it, you know, that just about every decade of every century, there's been some atrocity committed against the South, whether it's economic atrocity, physical atrocity, emotional atrocity.
You know, I mean, what, you know, it would be impossible to go through 150 years of this except to say that we now are faced with the loss of our identity because of really ethnic cleansing.
Don't you agree?
Oh, yeah, I definitely do.
Let me give you one more example.
At the time that General Smith was being hacked over the head, at the very same time, over in another part of the battlefield, Colonel William Shai was taken prisoner.
Unarmed, he was shot in the head, impaled upon bayonets against a large tree, stripped of his clothing.
And his mother was not even allowed to come get his mutilated body.
She was forced to go to a union sympathizer if she could find one who could come through the lines and retrieve the body.
Now, these stories are multiplied throughout the four years of the war all over the South.
Just multiple stories.
And then, as you said, we come down to today and we have all these attacks on our heritage, our flag, our stainless banner.
Mike, Mike, let me interrupt you right quick.
We got a commercial break coming up, and on the other side, we'll pick up where you left off there.
This is The Political Sesspool, and our guest is Mike Grissom.
Away, there's more Political Sesspool coming your way right after these messages.
Welcome back to get on The Political Sesspool.
Call us on James's Dime, toll-free, at 1-866-986-6397.
And here's the host of the Political Cesspool, James Edwards.
Welcome back to the radio program, everyone.
James Edwards here in studio with you this evening.
It's Saturday, April 25th, 2009, our last broadcast of Confederate History Month until next year here in the Political Cesspool.
And we're joined by renowned author Michael Andrew Grissom, Bill Rowland, and Mike having a very stirring segment in the last few minutes before the break there, bringing you the story of D.S. Job.
And I tell you guys, what's so sad about that story, in addition just to the horrific nature of the story, is that we're probably the only radio show in 10 years to talk about it.
And that's got to change, but that's why we're here, and that's why we do this segment every year.
So, Bill, Mike, please carry on.
Well, I think I was going to make the point that Southerners are always portrayed as the slave-beating oppressors and the cruel master and the unclean, barbaric soldier in a lot of films.
And of course, we know that not to be true.
And I know that Mr. Grissom has done a magnificent job of glorifying the South and paying homage to the South.
What do you think, Mike?
You talk about these stories need to be told, and I agree, but what do you think the effect on Southerners has been being in the position of being called a villain while in fact we have been so often the victims of historical atrocities?
Oh, it's demoralized us.
Our people are completely demoralized.
You have to watch even who you have a conversation with.
We've got to get our kids out of the public schools to start with.
Not only do they not get the right idea, they get the wrong idea.
And so nearly all of our children are raised with this guilt complex and this self-hatred, and so our people are completely demoralized.
I was, if I heard this correctly, I believe sometime this week, the Jews held a Holocaust memorial.
I think, isn't there something on the mall now, a Holocaust Museum?
Yes.
Yes, in Washington, D.C.
Okay.
Now, let me draw a parallel here.
Whether a person is one of the Holocaust deniers and denied that it happened, or a person who believes very much that it did happen, that is rather irrelevant to what the Jews have accomplished with the Holocaust Museum and with the Holocaust story.
They have kept themselves alive, their memory, their heritage alive by being the victim.
Southerners have really never liked the victim status.
We point to the black and say, oh, we're so tired of victimhood.
Get alive.
But you know what?
It works.
And we have failed to, we actually are the victims.
And we have failed to emphasize the victimhood of our heritage.
We have so many, many bona fide atrocities that have been committed against us.
I wish, I don't know where the vehicle is, but I wish that we had an organization or something that would host a very well advertised memorial once a year or more and recite our victim victimhood and tell these stories.
And then we put other people on the defensive.
Blacks always, the NAACP always invents these crimes that Southerners are supposed to have committed, and people have learned to believe them.
They raise their children to believe them.
We need to say, look at the crimes the U.S. government has committed against us.
And we're going to hold a memorial, and we're going to keep this fresh every year.
Hey, you know, I think I have never heard that advocated before.
I think that is one hell of an idea, Mike.
And the beauty of it is, not only does it work, as you mentioned, it certainly works, and it's certainly very profitable for the advocates of victimology, but we don't even have to fabricate and make up the things that were done to us like these other groups have to do.
So it's a win-win situation all the way around, in my opinion.
Not one atrocity do we have to fabricate.
In fact, we have such horrendous crimes.
You know, I have to say this.
When I hear about the soldiers, the argument that the soldiers committed torture over in Iraq, my mind always goes back to, you know what?
They're capable of it because they did it to us for four solid years.
And that's my way of faith.
The first impression I get from any time one of these neoconservatives opens his mouth about either supporting that, oh, it's not torture, or yes, it is torture.
I think back to our war, and I think they're very capable.
But General Sherman paved the way for all of this, you know, all of these sort of war crimes.
I mean, General Sherman paved the way for Dresden, as far as I'm concerned.
But Bill, what do you make of it all?
Well, I think certainly there's a memory hole for most of what's happened to the South over the last 150 years.
But I mean, obviously, the problem, Mike, is that blacks are not going to react to our victimhood the way we have reacted to their portrayal of themselves as victims.
And the Jews are not going to react to our victimhood the way that we have reacted to their problems in history.
I mean, how are we going to, do you think it will work just among southerners to make them realize that we have suffered as a people also?
Yes, it doesn't matter the reaction from the blacks.
It doesn't matter the reaction from the Jews.
Now we have to worry about the Mexicans and all of the Asian Americans, the U.S. government, the media.
It doesn't matter.
If we can save our people and generate a more cohesive unit among ours, just like you said, it's worth the effort, I think, to have it, to keep our people from drifting off and floating off after every wind that blows, even if the Bible says after every wind that bloweth.
We've got to work on our own people and let the chips fall where they may outside of the circle.
Well, let's go back to another atrocity.
And I think this, we've talked about the atrocious torture and mutilation of Confederate soldiers, but let's talk about Roswell, Georgia.
Let's take that example.
I know you're familiar with the case of Roswell, Georgia.
Yes.
Well, Roswell and Manchester both happened along about the same time.
The Yankees had come into North Georgia, and I'm not as I won't have my facts as specific as I would like to have them, but they came into a million.
Manchester was a mill town.
And the only people left in Manchester, I believe this was 1864, were the old men, some women, and some little children.
They worked in the mills, and they burned the mills down.
They imprisoned all of the women and the children.
And I forgot whether they sent, I think they sent the old men walking, sent them off or something.
Okay, they took them, took the women, and I believe they took them to Marietta, and there they had imprisoned the women from Roswell, Georgia, and they put them all in I think they put them in a in a hotel or some large building that didn't have substantial floors and I believe the floors caved in and s and killed several of them.
But the survivors, the other women, they put them on transports on trains and kept shipping them further and further north, and especially the women of Manchester until they were never heard from again.
They supposedly sold them into a white slavery.
Now, think about that in terms of the trains that carried Jews to Austwitz and Birkenow and the other concentration camps.
I know we're getting up on a break here, but when we come back, let's talk about the South now.
And we know of some atrocities that we saw with our own eyes.
And we'll talk about that on the other side as well.
The Political Cesspool returns right after this, continuing on and concluding our Confederate History Month series for 2009.
Sit tight, everybody.
We'll be right back.
Don't go away.
The political cesspool, guys.
We'll be back right after these messages on the show and express your opinion in the political cesspool.
Call us toll free at 1-866-986-6397.
Welcome back to the show, everyone.
James Edwards and Bill Rowland here with you with our esteemed guest, Michael Andrew Griffin.
Grissom, author of many books, including Southern by the Grace of God.
It was written about your book, Michael, that you sought four objectives in writing Southern by the Grace of God.
Number one, to provide the Southerner with a firm understanding of a remarkable heritage, to instill an even greater pride in being Southern, to encourage readers in the pursuit of those enduring elements that characterize the South, and finally to rally Southerners to defend and preserve their unique heritage for posterity.
And that is exactly what we're trying to do as well in hosting this series each April.
We've done it for five years now, God willing, and Jesus Terry's.
We'll do it again next year together.
But that's what this is all about for us in the month of April.
But Bill, continue on with our good friend and guest, Mike Grissom.
Mike, first of all, let me ask you a quick question.
Is there a website or a place people can go to buy your books?
I don't have a website.
They can go to pelicanpub.com for two of my books.
Okay.
Now, you were going to finish up.
I think we talked during the break.
You had something to say about Sherman and the effects of his actions on the South even today.
Well, James brought up a good point when he said Sherman began all this.
Sherman was certainly a key player.
I'm reminded of when he amassed his large, large army and began to try to encircle Atlanta in 1864.
The Confederate defenses were out trying to protect the city.
He elevated his guns, had every artillery unit elevate their guns to shoot over the Confederate defensive lines and land on the businesses and homes and churches of the city.
When he finally got into the city, he burned 4,000 homes, sent the populace out, just set them on the road, started them walking, and burned 4,000 homes.
One, I see, 11 out of every 12 structures were burned.
And when 9-11 happened, when the bombs hit the, or the planes hit those twin towers, I had a friend in Virginia emailed me and he said, you know, I have a hard time feeling sympathy for New York because I'm reminded that it was New York regiments that lobbed shell after shell after shell and over the heads and the men, women,
and children of the city of Atlanta and burned it to the ground.
And, you know, I couldn't argue with that.
You can't argue with that, and I appreciate you bringing that up.
Well, hello.
Yeah, you're on, Bill.
Oh, am I on?
Okay, well, my headset went dead there.
We were talking again during the break, Michael, about the, you know, that actually these atrocities and the animosity that has been cultivated over the years against the South still has an impact.
And for instance, the case of Michael Westerman in Kentucky, the young 19-year-old teenage husband and father who was murdered for no other crime than having a Confederate flag in the back of his pickup truck.
Yes, and, you know, I believe you went to the memorial service, didn't you?
Yes, I did.
I was unable to go.
I think I was here in Oklahoma taking care of my mom at the time.
But you see what an effect, what an effect that had.
Many, many people turned out.
Thousands of people turned out.
A very long march, a very long route, parade route with these cars that were attending the memorial service.
Whether the media wanted to report on it or not, most of them did, and it had an impact.
And I'm saying that more of those things, and we have plenty, plenty of things to point to in the modern world.
We don't have to go back to Sherman.
We're under persecution day after day, week after week.
If we can continue to keep the Michael Westerman story alive and not for a vain profit, you know, no profit, but just to keep it before the public of what we suffer as Southerners, that just tends to make us draw us closer and it's going to make our heritage stronger.
Well, let's compare, for instance, Michael Westerman and Emmett Till.
Michael Westerman is in his own hometown minding his own business, and he's murdered by a black from outside the state.
And Emmett Till came into Mississippi from another state, from Illinois, I think, and assaulted a white woman and was murdered.
But, you know, he's the big celebrity.
He's the martyr of the civil rights movement.
And, you know, we have another memorial coming up, another anniversary date of one of the most significant atrocities against the South.
And I think you'll agree, the Brown versus the school board of Topeka 1954.
Sure, that ruined the schools of the South, and I think it was intended to do so.
And the effects obviously have been, too, to, you know, put, again, white school children in a position of being scorned, of being abused, of being having their self-esteem torn down.
Do you know, now you were a school teacher a number of years ago, weren't you, Mike?
Yes.
And in the schools at that time, was there any emphasis at all on Southern history, Southern heritage forces, or even an accurate coverage of the war?
No, because you could not find any textbook that had a Southern viewpoint.
They were all written in the North, and the textbook I had to use came out of Illinois.
So the only Southern heritage or history that was presented was whatever the teacher desired to come up with on his or her own part.
Well, now, as you know, here in Memphis, every year, we have a Nathan Bedford Forest celebration of his birthday in July at Nathan Bedford Park.
We have other sort of historically oriented memorials or commemorations.
But even those rather simple, straightforward recognitions of Southern history are being attacked.
And as a matter of fact, I'm going to go ahead and bring this up.
In Dothan, Alabama, just this week, a black, and I put this in quotation marks, preacher and Auburn councilman Arthur L. Dowell actually went into a cemetery where the graves of Confederate soldiers had been decorated with Confederate flags, pulled the flags up, and allegedly broke the staffs on them and was very defiant about it.
He had no concern at all that he would be arrested or prosecuted for desecrating a grave.
And, you know, if something had happened like that at a cemetery where there was a civil rights celebrity buried, then almost certainly whoever did that would have been up for hate crimes.
Sure, sure.
But, you know, our people really don't do that kind of thing.
But the blacks have been emboldened by the media and the government to attack us in that way, come on our turf and commit their crimes.
And usually there is some sympathy for them because the media has generated sympathy.
Well, you know, those flags are offensive.
I doubt that there was a black person buried in that cemetery.
He came over on our turf.
Exactly.
Well, okay, if you could start with a fresh sheet tomorrow, a fresh tablet, what would you do to turn things around as far as Southerners, our perception of ourselves and our perception of history?
What would be the first thing you'd do?
Well, I would hope that we could, the first step is to begin to, as I said before, get the story out of the atrocities committed against us.
You know, we don't like to be victims, but it works, and we're down to our last card, and we better play the card of victimhood because it works with every other ethnic group.
And we're the only ethnic group not represented.
We sit back too many times and think, what should we do?
Well, you know, I'll say something.
I'll defend.
We've got to quit being defensive.
We have got to get together and have these memorials.
The Nathan Bedford Force thing, that's wonderful.
And these, you know, to celebrate his life.
But we need to dwell now on the atrocities because there's just something about being attacked that really raises the ire of people and creates sympathy.
And I'm talking about creating sympathy among ourselves first.
And then if the outside people want to sympathize with us, that's gravy.
That's gravy right there.
But we need to turn our focus back and put the other side on defensive by saying, look what you did to us.
That's what every other group has done to us.
Hey, Mike, we've got a break coming up, and we'll come back on the other side and finish up this really outstanding interview and talk some more about the South and what we can do as well.
Dave, go away.
The Political Cesspool, guys.
We'll be back right after these messages.
Jump in the Political Cesspool with James and the gang.
Call us tonight at 1-866-986-6397.
And here's the host of the Political Cesspool, James Edwards.
Our final segment of Confederate History Month 2009.
And again, I say what an honor it is to be joined in this hour by Michael Andrew Grissom.
I'm more or less a silent partner here during the third hour of the broadcast tonight because I can't really see any way that I could improve upon the dialogue going on between my good friend and co-host Bill Rowland and Mike Grissom.
So, guys, right now I'm rereading Southern by the Grace of God.
I'm on page 66, and it's talking about the pandemonium that's elicited every time we hear Dixie being played.
So, I'm going to get back to the book and let y'all get back to the interview.
Well, before the break, Mike, we were talking about ways to, I guess, reinvigorate or refresh Southern identity and make Southerners aware that we do have an honorable history and one that is really without blemish.
I mean, where do we go from here?
Yes, we do have.
And see, we have so much more than most people.
After the war, P.S. Worsley, an English scholar, translated Homer's Iliad and he sent General Lee a complimentary copy.
And on the flyleaf, he wrote a poem.
The four lines that stand out in that poem read like this.
Our realm of tombs, but let her bear this blazon to the last of times.
No nation rose so white and fair or fell so pure of crimes.
That's the South.
That's the Confederacy.
That's what we have.
Nobody else has such a pure and unadulterated heritage.
And yet we have grievances that we have a right to grievances, and we need to concentrate on those.
As to how we get this going, I'm not sure.
But let me tell you this.
On April the 19th, several years ago, Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, killed almost 200 people.
Every year on April the 19th, all the TV stations and all the radio stations televised live the memorial service, and these people that run it get up and read the name of every single victim.
Now, we need to be doing something like that.
So how do we start?
I'm open to suggestions.
Is it the SCV, the UDC, just people in general?
Governor Rick Perry, I'm a little bit wary of politicians, but he seems to be saying some of the right things lately.
Where do we start?
I do not know, but we need to start.
What would you say about a memorial event that would take place in one place in the South, but would be in honor of all Southern heroes and Southern martyrs, Southern victims, a sort of a Confederate National Memorial someplace in the South.
Oh, yes, definitely.
In fact, that's kind of, I have a poor way with words, but that's kind of the idea that I'm putting forth here.
Well, let me show you.
I'm going to read this because I think that what I'm about to read here from the Dothan newspaper concerning this Dowell idiot who pulled up the flags.
He is black, in case you know.
But the reaction to him is so benign.
Auburn Mayor Bill Hamm said he was unaware of any incidents at the cemetery.
He said he had talked with Dowdle Thursday afternoon.
Hamm said his understanding was that all city cemeteries have covenants governing how and what types of decorations can be placed on graves.
You know, there's no talk about this man needs to be arrested.
Desecration of a grave is a crime in every state.
You can't pull flowers up off a grave.
You can't kick over tombstones without at least a fine.
And yet he's allowed to walk to the cemetery and really just conduct mayhem and menace two ladies in the cemetery, two UDC ladies who are placing the flags.
Where's the punishment here?
He's not been vocal enough.
We need to intimidate people.
What are you saying?
The mayor, is that the mayor who's doing this inanity saying these crazy things?
No, it's not the mayor.
It's this black city councilman named Dowdle.
He also calls himself a menace.
That's very cool.
He said, oh, well, you know, we don't.
You read something there that the coverage was just benign.
Well, the mayor's reaction to Dowdle City Council.
Irrelevant.
I mean, he basically takes the position that he doesn't know whether Dowell did anything wrong or not, and so he doesn't want to be judgmental about it.
You know, it's all about trying to legitimate what this crazy fool of a councilman did.
I mean, and you know what's going to happen next.
Now that he's gotten away with this, this Dowell is probably going to lead some sort of march to the cemetery to menace and threaten a bunch of old ladies putting flags on graves.
Yeah, but the mayor knows the NAACP will back Dowell.
The mayor knows that there's going to be very little backing for the UDC ladies.
So this is where we need to begin to get public and public and more public and more public, whether the media pays us any attention or not, full speed ahead.
And pretty soon, perhaps maybe some of these silly mayors may realize they need to say something in our favor.
Well, I'm impressed by some of the uh-oh, I'm losing you, Bill.
I can't hear you.
Yeah, seemingly we have lost Bill Rowland here for a moment on a Skype connection.
But yeah, continuing on, Mike, I mean, this is a recurring theme in the program tonight, the fact that these double standards exist, these egregious hypocrisies where the left can seemingly act illegally with impunity, immunity.
And obviously, those same leniency isn't afforded to our people.
Not that we would ever behave in that manner at all.
But Mike, we've got five minutes left in the program, which, of course, as I've been saying throughout the show tonight, will bring our series this year on Confederate History Month to a conclusion.
We know there's a lot of problems out there.
We know we're fighting a retreating battle on this culture war.
But at the same time, even in this politically correct day and age, I am hard pressed to drive around the city of Memphis on any given day and still not see a Confederate bumper sticker or a Confederate license plate.
Do you think that the embers are still burning, Mike?
Do you think that they can still be stoked to the extent that we might have some sort of a renaissance?
And if that is to happen, what more can we do in our daily lives to ensure that it does?
Wow.
The embers.
I'm not sure whether there are enough embers still burning.
There probably are a few embers, and they may be burning hotly.
But I think most of the people in the South just really do not know about our heritage.
They don't know the DeWitt Smith Tobruk.
They know none of this.
But I do believe if we put a car tag on our car, if we stood up and said something about the South in our daily lives, that's not enough, but that's a good start.
And yes, perhaps those embers will burn again.
There's nothing that generates more a feeling of unity than persecution.
And if we can get the idea out that we have legitimate grievances, perhaps that may, better than anything else, draw us together and make us take action.
And if nothing else, that's something we can all do in the court of opinion, the court of public opinion.
I mean, there's nothing stopping us from speaking out about these things and trying to get them infused into the public's consciousness.
And I tell you, Mike, I've been doing this show for five years.
We've done over a thousand programs, and it's very rare that an idea is infused into the conversation that I haven't heard before.
And not only is your idea a good one, I think it could possibly work because we're mimicking in that the tactics of the left.
And let's face it, the tactics that the left employ are certainly bearing fruit right now in the year 2009.
But Mike, time is fleeting.
The sand from the hourglass is about gone.
Is there anything, a final word that you would have, perhaps a question we failed to ask you that you'd like to take issue with our audience with, to bring to their attention, I should say.
Anything you'd like to add before we run out of time this evening?
Not particularly, except to say that I appreciate your program so very much.
Can you imagine me, Bill, or you having this conversation on the Russian Limbaugh show or the Laura Ingram show?
You're one in a million.
You're getting the word out and you're valuable to us.
Well, I want to thank you so much for saying that, Mike.
But I tell you, you're the true hero here.
We do our job.
We talk on the radio and Divine Providence has seen that over the course of the last five years, our audience has grown exponentially.
And you were there.
You were there in the beginning.
I can remember the first time we ever had you on the program.
And you've been on quite a few times, a handful of times.
And we look forward to having you back next year.
But I thank you for the kind words and let it be known that we certainly share some reciprocity there in our opinion of you, sir.
But I believe Bill Rowland is back on the line for a final thought.
Bill, are you there in time to say goodbye to Mike Grissom and goodbye to Confederate History Month 2009?
The ghost of Sherman knocked out my sight this connection.
So I'm back on the air now.
And Mike, again, if you don't know how much we appreciate having you on the show, you're one of our favorite guests and certainly one of our favorite authorities on the war.
And we do appreciate it.
And a very informative program from you again.
Well, thank you very much.
Y'all are wonderful hosts.
Well, I guess we're getting ready to go to break, and this is the Political Cesspool.
Good night, everybody.
We'll see you next week.
Take care.
Live life the way we do without retreat, surrender, or apology.
Thanks for joining us tonight in the Political Cesspool.