This Monday, as the announcement of indictments against Trump campaign operatives shook Washington,

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly took to Fox News to calm the waters

by fanning the flames of long-debunked Civil War narratives.

Robert Lee was an honorable man.

The lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.

And men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand

where their conscience had them make their stand.

Oh, really?

The history of American slavery was all about compromise,

especially moral compromise, until the deadly war finally imposed the uncompromising principle

of human freedom. General Kelly went on to warn about erasing history, purging from recollection

that which does not comport with modern values.

Which is a legitimate caution, except that removing statues of Confederates does not erase history.

It simply purges the landscape of tributes to separatist warriors for slavery

that themselves perpetuate a false patriotic counter-narrative

to historic evil.

But 152 years after the surrender at Appomattox, much of the South continues to embrace that

very counter-narrative, that of a noble struggle of honor and self-determination

led by heroic figures. Today, that perspective takes the form of what some historians call

the cult of the lost cause, an ongoing narrative battle that mythologizes the Civil War

by obscuring the most shameful chapter of our nation's history.

This cult had one goal and one goal only, through monuments and through other means to rewrite

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