That few people in America even know the facts that Blackmon documents in my earlier post is astonishing--but this reflects a toxic "patriotic" denial of truths about American history that we see in contemporary politics today.

In fact, the core facts of continuing slavery in the South were repeatedly investigated and, for a short time starting in 1903, the federal government brought indictments over the issue with cases going to the Supreme Court--but the court proceedings came under such assault by southern politicians that they were shut down, all in a hail of denial of the problems of not just 20th century slavery but of the pre-Civil War version as well. The following quote sums it up:

As the twentieth century neared, though, the orthodoxy of southern patriotism was mutating virulently...The South now demanded in public forums an increasingly rabid level of absolute adherence to a baroque new mythology of the honorable southerner, the contented slave, and the tragically defeated secession.

Michelle Obama's comments that indicated that there was much in America's past NOT to be proud of was a direct assault on this patriotic denial of memory. We can't discuss the fact that U.S. mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the native American population ranks as one of the worst crimes against humanity of the last two centuries, just as the persistence of slavery in the U.S. and its mutated form as Blackmon documents was a international crime that ranks with the worst of nations of the world.

All such discussions must be telescoped as far into history and the facts downplayed as much as possible in order to maintain not only a presumption of U.S. virtue in international affairs, but is also critical to maintaining conservative policy domestically. For to continually defend the past-- low taxes, "rugged individualism", "states rights" and so on -- you have to ignore the state-supported genocide and slavery that underpinned those old conservative values.

Almost everyone on the Left readily condemns Stalinism and its crimes, yet the Confederate flag still flies in many states and conservatives defend the right of those states to fly a flag that oversaw crimes as bad as Hitler's and Stalin's.

The toxic brand of patriotism that requires denial of the past is still all too prevalent in our politics. Hopefully, Blackmon's book will contribute in a small way to helping overcome it.