Pennsylvania is well represented in the white supremacist world, see e.g., Raging Racists. With that perspective in mind, it is not surprising that the KKK picked PA for a rally, Klan holds rally at Gettysburg. As the AP reported:

About 30 Ku Klux Klan members proclaimed hatred for blacks, Jews, gays and Latinos as they stood behind barricades at the Civil War battlefield where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.

Noting the irony, Quaker Agitator, in Klanclowns defile Gettysburg's hallowed ground. remarked:

But I do find it distressing (and somewhat ironic) that they would choose to assemble at Gettysburg, the "high-water mark" of the Confederacy, the place of the worst three days of conflict ever to occur on American soil, where so many died in the struggle to make their fellow human beings free, a place that many students of American history think of as sacred ground. These people oppose everything that this particular place represents. How sad they chose to spread their filth there.

Guess they never read this:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow, this ground -- The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

According to AP article: "Several groups counterdemonstrated. Park Service spokeswoman Katy Lawhon said there were no major incidents; one man was cited for entering a restricted area carrying a rainbow flag." Let's be sure we understand this -- it's OK to don a white sheet at the park, but not fly a Rainbow Flag? See also Pam's House Blend (with photo). Her first thought was that this was a "Rove/Mehlman-arranged GOP rally for The Base," mine was that it was a Santorum Fundraiser.

Finally, for an interesting take on the Klan and Gettysburg, see this post by a philosopher at Gettysburg College, When the Ku Klux Klowns Bring Their Circus to Town.

Tags: News, Pennsylvania, Gettysburg, Racism, White Supremacist