Hello Jay, I very much appreciate hearing back from you regarding my comments. I know of few people on the air who go to the lengths that you do to give people the opportunity to explain their point of view, even when you do not agree with them, and I have to say that this is an admiral trait and one reason why I have enjoyed listening to your podcast over the years. I am not as capable of listening to people when I am convinced that they are ill informed and or just plain wrong, and I am not always proud of my low tolerance. However, when it comes to the civil war and the huge damage that racist revisionists from the south have had from their lies and Misinformation, not to mention just plain out and right lies about why the south fought the civil war, any patience I might have had goes out the window. With the level of lying that is going on in the country today facts matter more than ever. I just felt that you had left the person with his outrageous view off too easy and perhaps allowed him to feel that it was OK with believing his nonsense. I feel strongly that we on the progressive side should listen to other views and try to understand why and where they come from but have learned after a long time – I am 68 – that many on the right do not feel the same way when they speak about people who they do not agree with. They often feel that they are correct, and if you do not agree with them you are wrong. Facts, and, in this case, historical facts, do not matter and in far too many similar cases, they are ignorant of historical facts. One can only go so far and no matter how much I want to understand people who believe that the south fought for their life style and honour, it is just not even a debatable place to start from. The war was over slavery and the right to own another humane being, although blacks were not considered people. This disgusting fact was and is a historical fact, and considering the level of racism in America today, it is hard to convince me to be more compassionate towards trying to understand this repugnance. It makes me sick.
I do not and did not think that you were giving this guy a pass but I would have asked him to explain the last few years of the debate in the senate pertaining to the war and to justify what the people who representted the south were saying, then try to justify his view which completely avoided and connection to reality. I would have pushed him, too, on his view that his family were just poor whites and to point out that that had nothing to do with the issue.
I will keep listening and try to learn and I appreciate the opportunity to communicate with you. Please keep up the good work!

Hi Kotaro, I’m not sure what I said exactly that wasn’t clear enough but you weren’t the only one to interpret what I said differently than I meant it so I obviously didn’t express myself well enough. You frame my comments as being “open to the view of the commentator…” but I didn’t see it that way at all. I thought his point was completely wrong and thought I said as much more than once on the show.

What I was pointing out was that there was at least some reason why he thinks what he does and it’s a reason that I think a lot of progressives don’t understand. Again, there is a huge difference between trying to understand why the person thinks what he does and giving their point of view any legitimacy. There are a lot of videos on YouTube that would help you understand why some people think the world is flat but understanding why they think that doesn’t make me give their opinion any more credence.

I think that trying to understand WHY the “other side” thinks the way it does gives us a better chance of changing minds. Broadly speaking, I don’t think we should be putting the majority of our effort into convincing Confederacy-defenders and white supremacists to mend their ways but I think that when we engage in those conversations we should do it in the most effective way possible. To me, the way to be the most effective is to understand how a person’s argument works (no matter how wrong they are) and speak to the issues they’re latched onto. The guy in that clip has latched onto the economic argument to defend his ancestor so we should understand how that argument works in order to answer it effectively, otherwise we just end up speaking past each other and there’s no chance of progress, that’s all I was advocating for.

Great show, very informative. Surprised that you were so open to the view of the commentator who said that his ancestors involvement in the CW was about the culture in the South and not about slavery. His belief is just simply wrong. Poor whites were under a never-ending barrage of commentary from their churches, leaders, and press telling them that if they did not support succession then they would be forced to live equally with the Black man, even be forced to have to marry them. This White Supremacy was a powerful narrative when every white person could see Blacks every where in the towns and cities doing the work as slaves that supported their way of life based on their White Supremacy. The so-called righteous cause myth that the South was fighting to protect their way of life is an invention. It was from the beginning to the end about slavery and the view that almost every man, woman, and child in the South held; and that was that the Black man was sub-humane and their property and the abolition of that institution was abhorrent even to the dirt-poor white man. The South today has done a great job of creating this myth, but the are wrong!