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The New Lost Cause Rhetoric
Lillian Smith tells the story of her and one of her brothers playing in their house in Jasper, Florida. They ran around and in the attic they came across an old chest. Opening it, they stood aghast, staring at all of the money they had found. “We felt rich; richer than the Rockefeller children or any children,” Smith said in 1960, “We knew we could now buy anything we wanted.”
Smith and her brother took the money to the store and asked the clerk for five pounds of candy. When her brother gave the clerk the money, he told them, “This money is worthless.” Smith and her brother pushed back, claiming the money had value because it was paper money. The clerk told them to burn the money, saying, “Don’t keep it around; it will mix you up; get you all mixed up about everything.”
The clerk gave the crying children some candy and told them to go home, but Smith continued, vehemently telling him that he should accept their money because it was money. Finally, he told them, “Money is not money, sister, unless it is based on something real. This is Old Confederate money and there is no Confederacy. See? It has no value because there’s nothing back of it.”
On January 6, 2021, we saw the same thing, domestic terrorists trying to use a worthless currency when they attacked the Capitol. Whipped up by lies of a fraudulent election from the halls of government…
