Any Southern nationalist movement, especially one that wraps itself in the Confederate flag, is going to be viewed with suspicion, given the historical record.

Maybe we've been brainwashed by 130 years of Yankee history, but Southern identity now has more to do with food, accents, manners, music than the Confederate past. It's something that's open to both races, a variety of ethnic groups and people who move here.

Obelisks don't grow from the soil, and stone men and iron horses are never built without purpose.

Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

I can see why many Southerners, black ones in particular, don't like the implication that Southernness and the Confederate heritage are one and the same, because they're not. On the other hand, there are people who want to extirpate that completely and want folks to spit on the graves of their ancestors.

activists in a nationalist movement.