Considering the divisive nature of the political climate over the past six months, Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell declaring April as Confederate History Month was actually more fitting than it was surprising.

The recent ridiculous behavior by citizens and politicians alike on the right side of the political spectrum feels all too familiar.

But why is it that conservatives show their dissent and discontent politically in such an emotionally charged, irrational manner?

Because they have a history of doing so.

And at the top of that historical list is the very act that Gov. McConnell wants the citizens of his state to celebrate: the Civil War.

I think that most of our elementary, middle and high school textbooks encourage students, and teachers for that matter, to fantasize about the Civil War in the same vein as many other prideful moments in American history.

From an early age they filled our heads with stories of valor on both sides of the war and taught us phony reasons as to why this war occurred.

Gov. McDonnell, essentially, wants to do the same.

Let’s be clear: Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, is no different than Osama Bin Laden or Adolf Hitler from a historical perspective.

Considering that the Civil War was an attack on the United States that killed 620,000 people compared to Sept. 11’s 3,000 people, and plantations were akin to concentration camps in some ways, Davis was actually the worst mixture of both of them.

No one – not Bin Laden, not Hitler, not Stalin, not Hussein, not Kim Jong – has ever been more of an imminent, immediate threat to the United States of America than Davis.

Part of the uproar with Gov. McDonnell’s declaration was his convenient omission of slavery, which he has apologized for forgetting.

After all, it is a pretty easy thing to forget.

Approximately 12 million blacks were brought against their will on ships in the most inhumane of conditions across the Atlantic Ocean to America, bought, sold, beaten and worked like animals, raped and killed for something as slight as reading.

After blacks became free in 1865, and the brief period of Reconstruction that followed, conservative white Americans used the Ku Klux Klan as another method of terror.

For at least another 100 years, the disrespect, rape and murder of black people by the KKK and similar hate groups was somewhat commonplace.

And now, almost 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Governor McDonnell wants to celebrate not only the Confederate army, but the acts of hatred that continued from the Confederate legacy?

The African-American citizens of his state deserve a better explanation and more respect.If anything, the governor should be attempting to figure out ways to make Black History

Month more prevalent instead of maintaining a legacy of hatred against them.

Is it safe to assume that Black History Month would not exist if the Confederate Army would have won the Civil War?

Well, Gov. McDonnell, the Confederacy lost.

And in this country, we don’t celebrate losing.

• Malcolm Eustache