I attended as a teenager a military academy here in St. Louis.  In naval science class, we not only learned the history of people like John Paul Jones and Admiral Nimitz, we also learned the history of how Robert E. Lee helped save the St. Louis riverfront while in the US Army Corps of Engineers. 

I was a strange cadet at the Cleveland Jr. Naval Academy; a lapsed Catholic Fine Artist who belonged to both the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, as well as the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  I believed in gun control, knew from experience that gun shows were a huge black market for straw purchases--yet by age 15 owned a .303 Enfield, a 8mm Mauser, a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano, a 7.62x54R Mosin-Nagant, as well as 6 other vintage WWII era bolt action rifles. 

I was proud of this collection.  Yet I knew the tragic history.  The Enfield was used in WWI by the British tommies.  The German mauser killed allies in WWII.  The Carcano was also WWII, and a similar model to the one that allegedly assassinated an American President.  The Mosin Nagant saw action in Vietnam.

Yet I was basically a pacifist.  I hated fighting, and couldn't hurt a fly.  I listened to records of Woodstock, Jim Morrison, John Lennon. 

I had relatives and friends that were proud racists, and yet I was openly proud to be in an interracial relationship.

One of my best friends had a father who joked on MLK day, "Boy I tell ya--I wish they'd kill another one, so I can get another day off work."  One boyhood friend grew up to become the head of the White Knights in Overland, Mo.

Many people can't do that.  I believed that any American was redeemable, if they honestly believed in something.  If they couldn't have a friend like me, they'd never have a opportunity to see another POV.  Maybe wrong could one day be brought right. 

There were things that we both could cling to: love of history, battle,love for country, and of audacity. 

I remember seeing the widely acclaimed movie Malcolm X.  I had read The Autobiography of Malcolm X by that time, as well as other books which demonstrated how a man, despite personal tragedy, loss, and hate, can change and with audacity, be redeemed.  I remember the world that movie was born onto; the LA Riots, Rodney King, O.J. and the dragging of James Byrd Jr.  We were struggling with the Civil War still.  But it seemed that movie made many of my white friends respect a side of history they hadn't properly understood.

Another film was that of John Singleton, Higher Learning.  Then came American History X.

These were great films, at a time when we needed to think outside the box.  American History X went further beyond anything I had seen up to that time, and coincided with not only the crossover appeal of rap and r&b to a traditionally white pop/alternative cullture--but also with the political battles over southern culture and the Confederate flag.

This slow progression towards tolerance has evolved my entire lifetime.  Just as I have, as have many of my friends and family.  It is not uncommon to see the Confederate Flag displayed in a Dirty South rap video, to have African-American bikers at traditionally exclusive white biker rally, nor to see more interracial couples with children out at the store than racially exclusive ones.  I wonder what it means to now have an African-American president, leaving a wreath at a Confederate Memorial.  I wonder not only what it means to African-Americans who could never have done so, nor to Obama himself, but what it means for those Sons of Confederate Americans, to those White Knights of the KKK, and what it means to those people who hate this man because he is not white. 

This is in my view the greatness of America.  It takes a great man to decide, to decide--to respect men who fought and died so that he would never be President.  To honor your enemies, or former enemies, for giving their lives for a cause--is a pretty audacious thing, something I believe Robert E. Lee could respect, and even be moved by.

That is why Dr. Martin Luther King was so powerful, and so sucessful.  He was able to melt, to warm, to cool, de-escalate, win over, impress, and move people.  Move them from where they felt safe and secure, to a newer, better place, where also they could feel safer, and better.

Obama did two meaningful gestures of note today.  He sent a wreath, as other Predients have, to the Confederate memorial.  He also did something else, he sent a wreath to the African-American Civil War Memorial, in a largely black Washington neighborhood.  Something we haven't seen before.

The first to me is more admirable.  Why?  Because it was probably harder for him to do.

It took balls for Obama to not cave in to pressure, to not pander, or play to his base--and to instead show respect, honor, moxy, and character--and for those who disagree with him totally.

Some see cowardice, politics, fear, and compromise--but I see strength, nobility for our American character; his personal reckoning of what and where this country has been, in relationship to where it is going.   It showed compassion, and incluson, even towards those who in the past have shown little.  He could have said, "We're not going to this year.  Today are looking forward."  But he didn't do that. 

Instead, a black man laid a wreath of honor and respect for fallen soldiers of the Confederacy.  And a President laid a wreath at an African American Civil War Memorial also, for the first time.  Two notable occurences, the first I believe more notable as a man.

It reminded me of a story, that illustrates to me that every person who ever was known was a locket full of contradictions, and not as Shelby Foote once said "easy to pin down."

The story goes to the effect that when a dying Robert E. Lee was no longer a General, but a president of Washington College, he went to church one Sunday where amidst a congregation of stoic, uncomfortable white faces, there knelt a young black student, whom no one dared to sit near to.  Lee strode up the aisle, and knelt directly next to the young black man, and began to likewise pray in silence.  No one dared criticize nor chastize the old general, but sat instead quietly in awe. 

Not unlike Malcolm X, or Robert E. Lee, many Americans arent easy to pin down, nor are they the same person their entire lives. 

America has in it's past not just Abu-Ghraib, not just Gitmo--but the Trail of Tears, Slavery, Custer's Last Stand and yes, the Confederacy.  There are proud Americans who honor all descendants, on all sides, of all of these American legacies. 

We can never know all of the motivations that caused the Civil War, or casued a Confederacy, nor caused the young and old to defend the South, and not the North.  But what we should be able to do is to honor all people who fight for what they believe in, even if we believe them wrong.  We should teach tolerance for diverse points of view.  General Grant could do that.  Robert E. Lee could do that.  Abraham Lincoln could do that.  Martin Luther King could do that.

Perhaps Obama can too.

The movie American History X ends with a beautiful scene of a beach overlooking the ocean.  It could be near Mt. Vernon, Charleston Harbor, Manhattan, or Omaha Beach at Normandy.

The narrator quotes Lincoln's 1st inaugural:

 We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.