I just finished a one-hour discussion of the Civil War with SJ, who is my war-gaming opponent, a business owner and a registered voter, whose favorite sport is baseball, and who considers the four greatest Americans to have been:

1. George Washington

2. Abraham Lincoln

3. George Marshall [the guy that supervised the rebuilding of Europe after WWII]

4. Robert E. Lee, who, he believes, if he had accepted the leadership of the Union Armies, would have achieved a short, honorable victory without the Grant-Sherman rape and pillage.

I included this information to give you an idea of his worldview. SJ, in his mid 60s, is basically the American you were supposed to be in 1964. Despite having been part of the hippie movement as a youth, he’s basically rejected the entire liberal American agenda.

“I grew up with Neil Young singing Southern Man, with that idea that the South was nothing but a savage lynch mob. When I grew up black men were heroes. In Nineteen-seventy-one I took a bullet for a black guy in Odonnel Heights. But having grown up in Baltimore and having to deal with half of the city essentially being a pack of human rats, I was curious about the South.

“Last year, driving through South Carolina, I had to stop and get some medicine. The people were nice, white and black. I walked outside and saw that this family of black people had their door open and are blocking me in. I’m going to have to ask them to move so I can get into my truck, so, being from Baltimore, I immediately go to Def Con Two. Then, there is this other black person—an older man—who notices my predicament and says to the lady, ‘Hey, close that door so that this man can get by.' And they are all friendly and polite and a good afternoon is said. Whereas, in Baltimore it would have been ‘You white muthafucka, I’m gonna kick your ass!’

“Then, when we are at this bar and grille getting something to eat, these four technicians in uniform came in after work to shoot pool. There were two black guys and two white guys. In Baltimore, that’s going to be two white guys shooting against two blacks. But with these guys, you had a black and a white on each team. I don’t know what it is, where it comes from and why things are different up here as compared to down there. However, it does make me question the view I grew up with, particularly about the South. Now, with this political correctness, I am no longer allowed to dislike a certain group of people. I agree that there should not be legalized discrimination. But mandating cultural approval is going too far.”