About 10 years ago, the students at Western Carolina University would invite Morris Dees, CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, to a function as their guest speaker. 

Personally, I would have paid him no nevermind had he not called the Sons of Confederate Veterans “a hate group.”

On the day of that speech, I would don the uniform of the Southern soldier just outside the Town of Sylva and make my way on foot — some 5 miles — to WCU, stopping, only on occasion, to answer the many who would inquire as to where I was marching.

“To confront the Devil’s Minion” would be my reply.

Upon arriving, I would take the seat at the very front by the stage that the Honorable Camp Commander Mike Parrish of the Jackson Rangers #1917 had saved for me.

Dees would begin his address by stating he had seen — what he thought was — a black man clad in the Confederate soldier’s uniform, heading this way.

I then stood up and replied:

“It was I, Mr. Dees, and since I have your attention... I came here to ask of you why you and your organization call the Sons of Confederate Veterans — a 501(c)3 non-profit Heritage Organization — a ‘hate group?’

“And being a ‘so-called’ law center, why do you persist in calling the people of the former Southern Confederacy ‘insurrectionists and traitors’ — with no proof of that in a court of law?”

In response, Dees would have the nerve and audacity to ask me to meet him behind closed doors later, when he would take up my question in private.

“I will not,” I answered. “You made a (false) claim in front of all these students, their families and friends.”

Then the young black woman who had introduced him in such glowing terms interrupted, “Yes, Mr. Dees, why won’t you answer Mr. Edgerton’s question out here in the open... for all to hear?”

His reply was: “I have prepared a speech and don’t want to deviate from it. This man has taken up enough of my time.”

“Never mind, young lady,” I would interrupt. 

I then said, looking at my watch, “If I leave here now, I can make it back to Asheville in time to watch ‘Star Trek.’”

Several years later, in 2019, as I sat watching and listening on (Asheville television station) WLOS (News 13) to an ABC News interview of one Margaret Huang, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s replacement for disgraced Morris Dees, I could not help but be amazed that her commentary sounded like she had opened up the drawer of Dees’ desk, pulled out his hate campaign notebook and read it from during the interview.

The only difference was that the target of her rant was the Honorable President Donald J. Trump, a man who I personally believe has carried himself well, and not to leave out the Honorable Elon Musk, who is the persona of the second and third sons of the Almighty God. 

They are two men that a grandfather and grandmother could trust to put their grands to put to bed with a feeling that their grandbabies are in good hands — as well as their friends and neighbors next door.

Personally, I don’t have the time to listen to this gutter-mouth trash Asian woman (Huang), as the best that she can do is to plagiarize Dees and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with the rhetoric coming out of the devil’s workshop that is called the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I shall do and say, in my little world, all that I can to help the president and his “ambassador” (a Trump senior advisor) — Elon Musk — to obtain success in carrying out the president’s agenda, including restoring every cenotaph to the Confederate soldier.

The SPLC claims good people are hate groups, but, instead, maybe Ms. Huang should look in a mirror the next time she wags her finger.

God bless you!