Politics
Confederate History Month and related celebrations have been controversial due to the contentious place of slavery in the history of the United States. When Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell issued a proclamation resurrecting Confederate History Month in 2010, controversy arose due to the proclamation's omission of slavery. McDonnell later announced, "The proclamation issued by this Office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission. The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed. The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation.". McDonnell has indicated that he will not issue a proclamation in future years. In 2007, the Virginia General Assembly approved a formal statement of “profound regret” for the Commonwealth’s history of slavery
On April 11, 2010, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour defended McDonnell on CNN's State of the Union, calling the controversy raised by McDonnell's proclamation "just a nit". "It's trying to make a big deal out of something that doesn't matter for diddly," Barbour said. Unlike the Virginia proclamation, the 2010 Alabama proclamation noted, "our recognition of Confederate history also recognizes that slavery was one of the causes of the war, an issue in the war, was ended by the war and slavery is hereby condemned."
Read more about this topic: Confederate History Month
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)