Jon Meacham, graduate of McCallie School of Chattanooga and the University of the South, and now editor of Newsweek, has spoken: If you speak positively at all about anything regarding the Confederacy, then you are doing so solely out of racism. Here he is in his own words:

Advertently or not, Mr. McDonnell (Virginia’s governor) is working in a long and dispiriting tradition. Efforts to rehabilitate the Southern rebellion frequently come at moments of racial and social stress, and it is revealing that Virginia’s neo-Confederates are refighting the Civil War in 2010. Whitewashing the war is one way for the right — alienated, anxious and angry about the president, health care reform and all manner of threats, mostly imaginary — to express its unease with the Age of Obama, disguising hate as heritage.

Of course, I also remember Meacham as the one who had the mug shots of the falsely accused Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty put on the cover of Newsweek, with the trite title of “Sex, Lies, and Duke.” That even by then the facts clearly pointed toward the charges being a lie did not discourage this great Crusader Against Racism.