I find Neoconfederate revisionism quite
  fascinating.  As a student of culture, it is always
  interesting to see a group's process
  of mythologizing their own history.  The Cult of the
  Lost Cause constructed an alternate reality for
  Southerners through a relentless campaign of
  propaganda designed to control the debate over the
  war.  By hollering the loudest and longest,
  Confederates and now their Neoconfederate offspring
  have in effect done something unusual:  they are a
  rare example of the losers writing the history.  But
  why all the fuss?  After all, the South has become
  the dominant region of the United States.  The South
  receives a disproportionate share of redistributed
  taxpayer dollars, the solid "red state" voting bloc
  of the South drives our politics, country music is a
  major national radio format, the Left Behind series
  is the largest selling fictional series ever
  written, and NASCAR is the largest spectator sport
  in the United States.  It took a while, but the
  South finally won.  Sure, you might have to write
  off Virginia north of the Rappahannock to new
  invading Yankee hordes, but all in all a pretty good
  consolation prize for a failed insurrection.  One
  would think the Neoconfederates would quit while
  they're ahead.

________________________________

Dr. David S. Hardin
Assistant Professor of Geography
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
Longwood University
Farmville, Virginia 23909
Phone: (434) 395-2581
e-mail: [log in to unmask]

********************
"For as Geography without History
seemeth a carkasse without motion,
so History without Geography
wandreth as a Vagrant without a
certaine habitation."
John Smith, 1627