Slavery was indefensible.
Stop trying to justify it. If it was significant enough to go to war over it, we know that there were opportunities for people to see that it was wrong.
Stop trying to say that the men were honorable, or that they loved their states so much, when they deserted their nations. West Virginians loved their country too, and they separated from Virginia rather than joining the Confederacy.
If these men were honorable, would they have wanted someone to do to their own children what they did to slaves?
Robert E. Lee raped children and took pleasure in torturing slaves. He believed that slavery was the proper position for blacks, and said that they were better off in slavery than in Africa.
The only thing that he did honorably was arguing against Confederate monuments.
General Kelly, there is no real compromise that could have satiated the Southern states, except to allow them to not only keep their slave owning status, but to allow them to expand. People like you want to pretend that the war was about slavery in the South–the war was about how slave owners were so despicable that they were incensed that as the nation moved westward, they saw that the government was trying to not take slavery with it.
General Kelly, how do you look at all those fighting men and women and tell them that you honestly believe that they should remain enslaved for the sake of compromise?
How do you compromise on pedophilia? How do you try to strike a deal in allowing some people to be owned and others should be free?
For those that think we should not use our 21st century lens to look back at 19th century figures, then we should also not look to faith or leaders of thousands of years ago.
When did we by into this narrative that the South wanted “states rights” and the North did not? The North wanted states rights to demand that slavery not be allowed in the north or to allow slavery to be expanded.
General Kelly, honor is not a lifetime title; it can be bestowed and lost quite easily, as we have seen with the recent revelations of abusive men in power.
You took a position to work for a man who has been documented to outright lie 95% of the time, and you defend him. There is no honor in that.
You publicly admonish a politician and use racially charged language and you yourself lie about her comments.
You now argue for the credibility of the founders of the Confederacy, and you at best, misinterpret history; at worst, you bastardize it.
All within a month. If you were a stock, I would have told my clients to sell you faster than Robert E. Lee sold a slave.
Many of us thought that you would be a voice of reason, Mr. Kelly. We thought that you were different, that you had honor and integrity and could think independently and choose the respectable path.
What we are learning is that Trump only surrounds himself with people who are either unqualified or unfit for their positions, people who are corrupt, people who are bigoted or racist, people who are elites with little concern for the average person, or people who are willing to accept all of these others in order to be on the team.
Any clean glass of water with dirt in it becomes muddy; and Mr. Kelly, you have indeed muddied the waters far too much lately.
I think America has done enough compromising for this administration; we have seen people make far too many excuses for this leadership.
Kelly isn’t any different than anyone else in the Trump clan; they all miss the days and power of long ago. While Trump wishes he could have been Andrew Jackson, it is clear to me now that Kelly would have been Robert E. Lee.
Since the days of Adam and Eve, there has never been a compromise on truth. For shame Kelly, for shame.
holowe 