From: "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Confederate flags
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 10:04:23 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

	Steve asked if outlawing the KKK would reduce its influence?  This
question was actually answered in the 1860s and 1870s.  The history of
Reconstruction is not well known to most modern Americans and highly
romanticized by others.  After the Civil War, the former Confederates
conducted an organized campaign of terror against the newly freed
African-American population.  The KKK was originally a social club that was
adapted to terrorist purposes.  There were other organizations such as the
Palefaces and Knights of the White Camelia.  The Congress of the time was
appalled and passed the Force Act outlawing domestic terrorism.  U.S. Grant,
one of the most underrated Presidnets in American history, sent the US Army
and smashed the Klan flat.  That organization did not reappear until the
1920s.
	The best one volume history of the Klan is Chalmers' _Hooded
Americanism_.  Someone once asked why I was reading it.  My answer, "For the
same reason that doctors read about cancer."

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Smith [mailto:sgs at aginc.net]
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2002 8:38 PM
To: WSFA members
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Confederate flags

Samuel Lubell wrote:

> Not to mention learning many of the wrong lessons from WWII.  Germans want
> to prevent the spread of Nazism by cracking down on would-be Nazis as
> opposed to the US where we give unpopular groups like Nazis, freedom of
> speech and the ACLU is willing to defend their marches.

It's their country.

I, like, I suspect, most Americans, believe that "sunlight is the best
disinfectant".  That said, there are situations where it simply doesn't
work all that well.  Consider the KKK -- which accomplished essentially
all of its goals up until WWII.  Would outlawing the KKK have reduced
its influence?  I don't know -- but it would have slowed down its terror
campaigns.  If the laws were enforced, of course.

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."