Why a 'Paleo-Confederate' Pastor Is on the Rise

[Ol Janx Spirit]

17. It's a conceptual oxymoron to say that the Confederacy was wrong about slavery but right...

...about everything else. There really was no everything else without slavery. The only real differences between the U.S. Constitution and the constitution of the Confederate States of America centered around slavery--seeking to enshrine the rights of slave owners into law. Article One, Section Nine, declared that “No . . . law impairing or denying the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.” A 2A for slavery as it were.

The "paleo" moniker is equally dumb. Coming from the Greek palaios, meaning "old", the addition of paleo before Confederacy is akin to an 18-year-old saying, "back in my day...." To people with the intellectual heft of a Pete Hegseth it may convey some sense of a pre-slavery concept of the Confederacy, but that simply did not exist. Without the issue of slavery there was no need for the Confederacy, so paleo-Confederacy is just a feeble attempt to make it sound like something different--something more basic and fundamental than just supporting the right of people to own, beat, and work to death other human beings.

The frightening, but unsurprising part--given the rise of one of the dumbest men and political movements of all time--is that Wilson is "on the rise." But as the article makes clear, his rise is tied to that of Orange Jesus. The last few decades would suggest that evangelicals follow the political leader of the party that opposes abortion much more than the other way around. The Orange Abomination can be a demonstrably horrible human being, but his support for the one cause they really care about--and some secondary ones like "school choice"--wipes away all of his sins.

As the article says in closing, let's hope the next Republican leader is a far better person--because the sheep will follow them wherever they lead....