The Worst People in the World?

Today, Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" award went to Robert Lamb of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Opposing legislation to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birthday in Virginia, Lamb said that "Lincoln sent armies into Virginia to lay waste to the state, that the state should instead celebrate the birthday of Jefferson Davis" instead.

People like Lamb never get it. Jefferson Davis and everyone who participated in the Confederacy were traitors. What's worse, the Confederates launched their rebellion to promote a vicious system of slavery and slavery was particularly disgusting in Virginia which served as a "breeding" state that shipped surplus slaves further south. Finally, the Confederates were holding the South back. Even by the time of the Civil War, the American South was a economic, educational, and cultural backwater that had fallen far behind. Because of the continuing commitment to white supremacy after the Civil War, the South remained a backwater until the success of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950's and 1960's.

By transforming the Civil War into a war of emancipation, Abraham Lincoln wrote a promissory note for liberating the whole South from the burden of slavery, a note that Martin Luther King, SNCC, and the Freedom Riders cashed in the sixties. People like Lamb who continue to fight for "the lost cause" of the Confederacy, slavery, and white supremacy really are among the worst people in the world because they continue to fight in the name of a disgraceful past.