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The Confederate Flag, Part II
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The Final Dakar
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Jun 22, 2015, 12:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by Romney
Take down the #ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims.
God damn. Good on you, Mitt.

For fans of unintentional comedy, watch as GOP Presidential candidates squirm trying to avoid the topic. Walker and Huckabee come to mind.
     
Chongo
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Jun 22, 2015, 12:59 PM
 
Too late, I heard the flag is coming down.
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The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 22, 2015, 01:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
Too late, the flag is coming down.
As in they're physically removing it right now?
     
Chongo
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Jun 22, 2015, 01:40 PM
 
Sorry, I may have been a bit early. I'm have having coffee at mom's and my sister saw on CNN that it was coming down. CNN's website says Gov. Haley will hold a press conference at 4pm EDT to call for removal of the flag. The legislature has to vote to do so according to CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politi...nce/index.html
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The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 22, 2015, 01:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
Sorry, I may have been a bit early. I'm have having coffee at mom's and my sister saw on CNN that it was coming down. CNN's website says Gov. Haley will hold a press conference at 4pm EDT to call for removal of the flag. The legislature has to vote to do so accorng to CNN.
Haley to speak amid calls to take down Confederate flag - CNNPolitics.com
Its interesting, seeing as Haley has long stood in support of the flag being flown. Curious whether the legislature will resist.
     
Chongo
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Jun 22, 2015, 01:46 PM
 
This what the CNN atricle says:
Washington (CNN)As her state mourned the death of nine people killed in a racially-motivated shooting, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley ordered state flags be lowered to half-staff Thursday.

But even as the flags atop the statehouse have been lowered, the Confederate flag on the state capitol grounds continues to fly, defiantly, at the top of its mast.

And it can't be touched without state legislative action.
That's because the legislation that moved that flag off the top of the state capitol dome over a decade ago and instead placed it alongside a memorial to Confederate soldiers mandates exactly how the flag should be flown -- "at a height of 30 feet" -- and bars any changes to the flag without a two-thirds majority of the state legislature.

The flagpole also lacks a pulley system, meaning the flag is either all the way up, or down.
So, the flag hasn't been on the dome for over ten years?
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The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 22, 2015, 01:53 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
So, the flag hasn't been on the dome for over ten years?
Assuming I'm catching the gist of your question correctly, it's still on Capitol property.
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 22, 2015, 01:56 PM
 
The irony might be that their undoing is in their zeal to prevent people from ****ing with it, they prevented it from being lowered to half-mast, thus drawing attention to it at the worst possible time. I believe we call that a backfire.

I don't think this would have been an issue if it had been at half-mast.
     
BadKosh
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Jun 22, 2015, 02:24 PM
 
Amazing that you can get people to think/believe anything if you repeat it long enough. Especially if its fiction.
     
Chongo
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Jun 22, 2015, 02:32 PM
 
There are people that want the US flag taken down for the same reasons.
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Jawbone54
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Jun 22, 2015, 02:37 PM
 
This is a no brainer.

The old "southern heritage" argument has been recognized as pure crap for years.
     
BadKosh
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Jun 22, 2015, 03:06 PM
 
Why not READ some old 1849-1870 era newspapers to see the real attitudes and history before blathering?
It became a hobby as I researched the development of the railroads in the mid-atlantic states. You'll find the times much different than what the revisionists are claiming.
     
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Jun 22, 2015, 06:03 PM
 
Why go back 150 years when 50 will do?

The Confederate flag was featured prominently in the raucous demonstrations in front of the memorial and the White House—a bit of iconography that at least did the public the favor of connecting the historical dots. The flag, defended by its stalwarts as an apolitical symbol of Southern pride, actually came to prominence not in the aftermath of the Civil War but eighty years later, in defiance of civil rights. The massive resistance campaigns that inspired the Southern Manifesto and shut down school districts rather than comply with Brown v. Board of Education were orchestrated under the banner of the Stars and Bars. The election that galvanized the brand of racialized acrimony and indignation we’re now seeing in the country was not the one that brought Barack Obama to office in 2008; it was the one in 1948, which brought us the Dixiecrats.

The rise of the Dixiecrat Party, like that of the Tea Party sixty years later, was ostensibly the result of one faction within a political party coming to believe its policy interests had been neglected. But on a more fundamental level, it was the product of demographic changes in national politics. The rebel Democrats wrote a defiant advocacy of racial segregation into their platform precisely because the national Democratic Party understood that its future lay with Northern black voters. Southern whites had formed the party’s base since the Civil War, but by the middle of the twentieth century, the great migration of blacks to Northern cities had thrown that alignment into flux. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is remembered today for guiding the nation through the Great Depression and the Second World War, but his greatest political achievement may have been holding together the irreconcilable Northern and Southern elements of the Democratic Party for as long as he did.

If we care to recall it, there is a direct and historical relationship between the ideological commitment to small government and the belief that the government’s priorities are skewed toward racial minorities. Federal intervention in the Little Rock desegregation crisis and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiatives hardened the conviction among some whites that government worked predominantly on behalf of minority communities. L.B.J. had envisioned the Great Society as an updated New Deal, but F.D.R. knew well that his reforms didn’t stand a chance unless Southern legislators believed their benefits went largely to white workers.

It’s also worth remembering that the Dixiecrats had few illusions that Strom Thurmond, their Presidential nominee, could win the election. But they did believe that by denying either party a majority in the South they could magnify their influence in national affairs and, in a best-case scenario, throw the Presidential election to the House of Representatives. In short, they hoped to leverage their influence as spoilers and obstructionists in national affairs.

Today’s Republican Party, like the Democrats six decades ago, has had to come to terms with a demographic shift—one in which Hispanic voters are a crucial new element. We would be naïve to believe that the opposition to comprehensive immigration reform that features so prominently in current Tea Party politics is incidental to its appeal. (A 2010 survey of Tea Party supporters conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute found that fifty-eight per cent believed the government “paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and minorities”; sixty-four percent said immigrants were “a burden” on the country.) The Tea Party–inspired eruptions that have recurred throughout Obama’s Presidency represent something more complicated than a reactionary backlash to the sight of a black President; they are a product of the way he so tidily represents the disparate strands of social history that brought us to this impasse. The problem isn’t that there’s a black President; it’s that the country has changed in ways that made Obama’s election possible.
The G.O.P.’s Dixiecrat Problem - The New Yorker

Confederate flag wasn't flown at South Carolina statehouse until 1961, pundit claims - Mostly True | PoliFact.com

OAW
     
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Jun 22, 2015, 07:39 PM
 
Hello all

Just a reminder.
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Jun 23, 2015, 12:43 AM
 
Lincoln authorized the deaths of >500,000 (native) Americans. He was a great president though, right? Just so we're sure on that.
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Chongo
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Jun 23, 2015, 01:11 AM
 
Truman nuked Japan, twice.

45/47
     
Waragainstsleep
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Jun 23, 2015, 04:26 AM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
Truman nuked Japan, twice.

Foreigners don't matter though right?
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
BadKosh
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Jun 23, 2015, 07:20 AM
 
Its more important that you understand the time before the civil war and after, and get an idea of the attitudes of the time. Revisionist BS is why much of this discussion is strawmen and propaganda. And (Oh, the horrors!) You might learn something.
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 23, 2015, 08:58 AM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
Lincoln authorized the deaths of >500,000 (native) Americans. He was a great president though, right? Just so we're sure on that.
Lincoln was willing to welcome the south with open arms, even if they didn't get rid of slavery, just to end the war.
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 23, 2015, 09:01 AM
 
Anyway, I'm a little reeling for how quickly this has escalated. Something's not right here, but I can't put my finger on it. Gov. Haley has changed her stance, the RNC has backed her(!), and all the presidential hopefuls that were dodging the question are now in support of it. Walmart has suddenly joined the fray and will eliminate the flag from their products (Sears and Kmart followed?). What the hell just happened?
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 09:26 AM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Anyway, I'm a little reeling for how quickly this has escalated. Something's not right here, but I can't put my finger on it. Gov. Haley has changed her stance, the RNC has backed her(!), and all the presidential hopefuls that were dodging the question are now in support of it. Walmart has suddenly joined the fray and will eliminate the flag from their products (Sears and Kmart followed?). What the hell just happened?
I was thinking the same thing! The Walmart decision came completely out of the blue....didn't see that coming at all.
     
osiris
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Jun 23, 2015, 10:10 AM
 
Does this mean all of the Dukes of Hazzard episodes will be destroyed?
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The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 23, 2015, 10:12 AM
 
No, they'll just come with a disclaimer that it took place in an alternate universe where the south won.
     
Chongo
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Jun 23, 2015, 10:35 AM
 
Yep, say bye to the Duke boys, and the Auto Trader ads.
45/47
     
Jawbone54
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Jun 23, 2015, 10:42 AM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Anyway, I'm a little reeling for how quickly this has escalated. Something's not right here, but I can't put my finger on it. Gov. Haley has changed her stance, the RNC has backed her(!), and all the presidential hopefuls that were dodging the question are now in support of it. Walmart has suddenly joined the fray and will eliminate the flag from their products (Sears and Kmart followed?). What the hell just happened?
Email chain. Their GOP fwd game was on fleek.
I actually have no idea what that means.
     
Chongo
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Jun 23, 2015, 12:54 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Anyway, I'm a little reeling for how quickly this has escalated. Something's not right here, but I can't put my finger on it. Gov. Haley has changed her stance, the RNC has backed her(!), and all the presidential hopefuls that were dodging the question are now in support of it. Walmart has suddenly joined the fray and will eliminate the flag from their products (Sears and Kmart followed?). What the hell just happened?
Originally Posted by Atheist View Post
I was thinking the same thing! The Walmart decision came completely out of the blue....didn't see that coming at all.
Walmart still sells Che swag.
che guevara poster - Walmart.com
45/47
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 23, 2015, 12:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
Walmart still sells Che swag.
che guevara poster - Walmart.com
You truly are the King of Strawmen
     
Chongo
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Jun 23, 2015, 01:01 PM
 
Che Geuvara is just as offense to millions of Americans as the confederate flag is.
45/47
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 01:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
Che Geuvara is just as offense to millions of Americans as the confederate flag is.
Really? So Che Guevara enslaved millions of Americans, and even now these American Cubans are suffering from their fate in the form of discrimination and disproportionate violence? There are still racially segregated proms in the South of Cuba?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 23, 2015, 01:07 PM
 
Dammit, Oreo, it doesn't matter! He's making a thread about the confederate flag about something else because...?
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 01:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
Truman nuked Japan, twice.

What does that have to do with the flag?
     
Chongo
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by ironknee View Post
What does that have to do with the flag?
You brought up Davis, then CT Lincoln. We can add Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Bush, Bush, and Obama.
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ironknee
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chongo View Post
You brought up Davis, then CT Lincoln. We can add Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Bush, Bush, and Obama.
What the hell are you talking about? You must be from the south.
     
Jawbone54
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by ironknee View Post
What the hell are you talking about? You must be from the south.
Hey!
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:14 PM
 
Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
Hey!
It's best to ignore him, too, you open-mouth breathing hick.
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
It's best to ignore him, too, you open-mouth breathing hick.
It's because of the allergies. Leave us alone.
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
It's because of the allergies. Leave us alone.
Maybe walmart can fill the empty confederate flag shelves with claritin.
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:33 PM
 
Originally Posted by ironknee View Post
What does that have to do with the flag?
What does a memorial for fallen Confederate soldiers, and Robert E Lee's battle standard flying over it, have to do with slavery (and the butthurt people who can't seem to separate that war from the soldiers who died in it)? While the circumstances of it being put up in 1961 are suspect, the people it memorializes are their ancestors. I have numerous relatives who died in WW1&2 at the hands of the Germans, but I don't harbor bad feelings towards the soldiers who killed them, people get caught up in those types of events and propaganda, a gun gets placed in their hands, and they fight because it's expected of them. You think the average Joe fighting for the Confederacy owned slaves? Hell no. Very few had the money to afford them (in today's money they would cost between $50k-100k each, not counting upkeep), and the people who could avoided combat, like most others of high social status throughout history, unless they were able to serve as high-ranking officers and sit well behind the battle lines.
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Maybe walmart can fill the empty confederate flag shelves with claritin.
Nah.

It'd just get stocked with extra Duck Dynasty collectibles.
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
What does a memorial for fallen Confederate soldiers, and Robert E Lee's battle standard flying over it, have to do with slavery (and the butthurt people who can't seem to separate that war from the soldiers who died in it)?
It glorifies a war fought for bad reasons. You can have memorials for fallen soldiers, but flag is absolutely used for glorification – that's why so many refer to it as a point of southern 'pride'.

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
You think the average Joe fighting for the Confederacy owned slaves? Hell no.
I don't think Joe would have minded some of his own, either. I guess they were temporarily embarrassed slave owners.
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 02:48 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
What does a memorial for fallen Confederate soldiers, and Robert E Lee's battle standard flying over it, have to do with slavery (and the butthurt people who can't seem to separate that war from the soldiers who died in it)? While the circumstances of it being put up in 1961 are suspect, the people it memorializes are their ancestors. I have numerous relatives who died in WW1&2 at the hands of the Germans, but I don't harbor bad feelings towards the soldiers who killed them, people get caught up in those types of events and propaganda, a gun gets placed in their hands, and they fight because it's expected of them. You think the average Joe fighting for the Confederacy owned slaves? Hell no. Very few had the money to afford them (in today's money they would cost between $50k-100k each, not counting upkeep), and the people who could avoided combat, like most others of high social status throughout history, unless they were able to serve as high-ranking officers and sit well behind the battle lines.
I'm a proud Southerner, but I've never been able to defend the flag...

What does a memorial for fallen Confederate soldiers, and Robert E Lee's battle standard flying over it, have to do with slavery (and the butthurt people who can't seem to separate that war from the soldiers who died in it)?
It's impossible to dissociate the Confederate flag from the cause of the Confederacy, and I don't mean states' rights. Yes, those rights were the rallying cry, but the state right in question was slavery.

It would be like putting a rainbow sticker on the back of your car because love rainbows. After being asked 1,000 times whether or not you were either a proud homosexual or an LGBT advocate, you'd probably get tired of answering the question and just remove the sticker.

Same thing with the Confederate flag. Enough racists have used it for decades that I can't afford being associated with it.

(Please no one miss the point — I'm not equating racism with LGBT advocacy)
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 03:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
I'm a proud Southerner, but I've never been able to defend the flag...



It's impossible to dissociate the Confederate flag from the cause of the Confederacy, and I don't mean states' rights. Yes, those rights were the rallying cry, but the state right in question was slavery.

It would be like putting a rainbow sticker on the back of your car because love rainbows. After being asked 1,000 times whether or not you were either a proud homosexual or an LGBT advocate, you'd probably get tired of answering the question and just remove the sticker.

Same thing with the Confederate flag. Enough racists have used it for decades that I can't afford being associated with it.

(Please no one miss the point — I'm not equating racism with LGBT advocacy)
This!


OAW
     
The Final Dakar  (op)
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Jun 23, 2015, 03:07 PM
 
Amazon and ebay are pulling the flags. I really don't see the public discourse so far justifying this house of cards-like collapse of support, so my new theory is we reached a 'tipping point' where several parties reached a place where they believe they have political cover to do something they wanted to do a while ago.

That or they want free publicity, I guess.
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 03:13 PM
 
Speaking of how this issue has caught fire: Mississippi Confederate flag debate - Business Insider
At least one prominent Republican is calling for Mississippi to get rid of the Confederate icon. The Clarion-Ledger reports that Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn (R) released a statement on Monday calling for the Confederate emblem to go.

"We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us," Gunn said. "As a Christian, I believe our state's flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed. We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi's flag."
I don't get it. Mississippi really hasn't come up except for those obsessed with the Confederate Flag. Yet, here we are. (It's a good thing)
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 03:16 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
What does a memorial for fallen Confederate soldiers, and Robert E Lee's battle standard flying over it, have to do with slavery (and the butthurt people who can't seem to separate that war from the soldiers who died in it)? While the circumstances of it being put up in 1961 are suspect, the people it memorializes are their ancestors. I have numerous relatives who died in WW1&2 at the hands of the Germans, but I don't harbor bad feelings towards the soldiers who killed them, people get caught up in those types of events and propaganda, a gun gets placed in their hands, and they fight because it's expected of them. You think the average Joe fighting for the Confederacy owned slaves? Hell no. Very few had the money to afford them (in today's money they would cost between $50k-100k each, not counting upkeep), and the people who could avoided combat, like most others of high social status throughout history, unless they were able to serve as high-ranking officers and sit well behind the battle lines.


uh huh

The civil was was about keeping slaves as property.

The flag is a symbol of ANTI Union...ANTI America.

So you don't mind if the Germans fly the Nazi flag then?
     
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Jun 23, 2015, 03:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
Hey!
By him defending it (I think) so much he must be from the south.
     
OAW
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Jun 23, 2015, 03:45 PM
 
In light of the recent tragedy in South Carolina the last thing I'm inclined to do is "debate" the raison d'etre of the Confederacy and/or its battle flag. The historical record speaks for itself. This piece puts the nail in the coffin of the "Southern Heritage" argument. It's a long read and I didn't even quote it all ... but anyone who actually reads it all and continues to spew that BS is simply being willfully blind to what's staring them right in the face ...

This afternoon, in announcing her support for removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer [he who I refuse to name] had a “a sick and twisted view of the flag” which did not reflect “the people in our state who respect and in many ways revere it.” If the governor meant that very few of the flag’s supporters believe in mass murder, she is surely right. But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong.

[He who I refuse to name's] belief that black life had no purpose beyond subjugation is “sick and twisted” in the exact same manner as the beliefs of those who created the Confederate flag were “sick and twisted.” The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.

This examination should begin in South Carolina, the site of our present and past catastrophe. South Carolina was the first state to secede, two months after the election of Abraham Lincoln. It was in South Carolina that the Civil War began, when the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. The state’s casus belli was neither vague nor hard to comprehend:

...A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
In citing slavery, South Carolina was less an outlier than a leader, setting the tone for other states, including Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin…
Louisiana:

As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of an­nexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery.
Alabama:

Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republi­can party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as it change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new princi­ples, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions—nothing less than an open declaration of war—for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and. her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.
Texas:

...in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states....
None of this was new. In 1858, the eventual president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis threatened secession should a Republican be elected to the presidency:

I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if it should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to give an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers did to the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will in that event redeem our rights even if it be through the process of revolution.
It is difficult for modern Americans to understand such militant commitment to the bondage of others. But at $3.5 billion, the four million enslaved African Americans in the South represented the country’s greatest financial asset. And the dollar amount does not hint at the force of enslavement as a social institution. By the onset of the Civil War, Southern slaveholders believed that African slavery was one of the great organizing institutions in world history, superior to the “free society” of the North.

From an 1856 issue of Alabama’s Muscogee Herald:

Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas.
The last sentence refers to the conflict over slavery between free-soilers and slave-holders. The conflict was not merely about the right to hold another human in bondage, but how that right created the foundation for white equality.

Jefferson Davis again:

You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.
Another excerpt ...

As the Late Unpleasantness stretched from the predicted months into years, the very reason for the Confederacy’s existence came to threaten its diplomatic efforts. Fighting for slavery presented problems abroad, and so Confederate diplomats came up with the notion of emphasizing “states rights” over “slavery”—the first manifestation of what would later become a plank in the foundation of Lost Cause mythology.

The first people to question that mythology were themselves Confederates, distraught to find their motives downplayed or treated as embarassments. A Richmond-based newspaper offered the following:

‘The people of the South,’ says a contemporary, ‘are not fighting for slavery but for independence.’ Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new-fangled heresy — a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland. . . Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the groundwork.
Even after the war, as the Lost Cause rose, many veterans remained clear about why they had rallied to the Confederate flag. “I’ve never heard of any other cause than slavery,” wrote Confederate commander John S. Mosby. The progeny of the Confederacy repeatedly invoked slavery as the war’s cause.

Here, for example, is Mississippi Senator John Sharp Williams in 1904:

Local self-government temporarily destroyed may be recovered and ultimately retained. The other thing for which we fought is so complex in its composition, so delicate in its breath, so incomparable in its symmetry, that, being once destroyed, it is forever destroyed. This other thing for which we fought was the supremacy of the white man’s civilization in the country which he proudly claimed his own; “in the land which the Lord his God had given him;” founded upon the white man’s code of ethics, in sympathy with the white man’s tra­ditions and ideals.
The Confederate Veteran—the official publication of the United Confederate Veterans—in 1906:

The kindliest relation that ever existed between the two races in this country, or that ever will, was the ante-bellum relation of master and slave—a relation of confidence and responsibility on the part of the master and of dependence and fidelity on the part of the slave.
The Confederate Veteran again in 1911:

The African, com­ing from a barbarous state and from a tropical climate, could not meet the demands for skilled labor in the factories of the Northern States; neither could he endure the severe cold of the Northern winter. For these reasons it was both mer­ciful and “business” to sell him to the Southern planter, where the climate was more favorable and skilled labor not so important. In the South the climate, civilization, and other influences ameliorated the African’s condition, and that of almost the entire race of slaves, which numbered into the millions before their emancipation. It should be noted that their evangelization was the most fruitful missionary work of any modern Christian endeavor. The thoughtful and considerate negro of to-day realizes his indebtedness to the in­stitution of African slavery for advantages which he would not have received had he remained in his semi-barbarism wait­ing in his native jungles for the delayed missionary.
And in 1917, the Confederate Veteran singled out one man for particular praise:

Great and trying times always produce great leaders, and one was at hand—Nathan Bedford Forrest. His plan, the only course left open. The organization of a secret govern­ment. A terrible government; a government that would govern in spite of black majorities and Federal bayonets. This secret government was organized in every community in the South, and this government is known in history as the Klu Klux Clan...

Here in all ages to come the Southern romancer and poet can find the inspiration for fiction and song. No nobler or grander spirits ever assembled on this earth than gathered in these clans. No human hearts were ever moved with nobler impulses or higher aims and purposes….Order was restored, property safe; because the negro feared the Klu Klux Clan more than he feared the devil. Even the Federal bayonets could not give him confidence in the black government which had been established for him, and the negro voluntarily surrendered to the Klu Klux Clan, and the very moment he did, the “Invisible Army” vanished in a night. Its purpose had been fulfilled.

Bedford Forrest should always be held in reverence by every son and daughter of the South as long as memory holds dear the noble deeds and service of men for the good of others on, this earth. What mind is base enough to think of what might have happened but for Bedford Forrest and his “Invisible” but victorious army.
In praising the Klan’s terrorism, Confederate veterans and their descendants displayed a remarkable consistency. White domination was the point. Slavery failed. Domination prevailed nonetheless. This was the basic argument of Florida Democratic Senator Duncan Fletcher. “The Cause Was Not Entirely Lost,” he argued in a 1931 speech before the United Daughters of the Confederacy:

The South fought to preserve race integrity. Did we lose that? We fought to maintain free white dominion. Did we lose that? The States are in control of the people. Local self-government, democratic government, obtains. That was not lost. The rights of the sovereign States, under the Constitution, are recognized. We did not lose that. I submit that what is called “The Lost Cause” was not so much “lost” as is sometimes supposed.
Indeed it was not. For a century after the Civil War, White Supremacy ruled the South. Toward the end of that century, as activists began to effectively challenge white supremacy, its upholders reached for a familiar symbol.



Invocations of the flag were supported by invocations of the Confederacy itself. But by then, neo-Confederates had begun walking back their overt defenses of slavery. United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine claimed that...

Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Raphael Semmes and the 600,000 soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy did not fight for a “Lost Cause.” They fought to repel invasion, and in defense of their Constitutional liberties bequeathed them by their forefathers…

The glorious blood-red Confederate Battle Flag that streamed ahead of the Confederate soldiers in more than 2000 battles is not a conquered banner. It is an emblem of Freedom.
It was no longer politic to spell out the exact nature of that freedom. But one gets a sense of it, given that article quickly pivots into an attack on desegregation:

Since the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, reversed what had been the Supreme Law of the land for 75 years and declared unconstitutional the laws of 17 states under which segregated school systems were established, the thinking people have been aroused from their lethargy in respect to State’s Rights.
In this we see the progression of what became known as the “Heritage Not Hate” argument. Bold defenses of slavery became passé. It just happened that those who praised the flag, also tended to praise the instruments of white supremacy popular in that day.

The Confederate Cause in the Words of Its Leaders - The Atlantic

So let me be crystal clear on where I stand on this particular issue. The cause of the Confederacy was ultimately about white supremacy. Slavery was simply the original implementation of that ideology. Jim Crow was the next implementation of that same ideology. So it doesn't matter that most white southerners were not slave-owners themselves. What they fought and died for was the institution of white supremacy. Which the vast majority of them fully participated in and benefitted from in one way or another. Every KKK member wasn't a slave owner or even a former slaveowner prior to the Civil War. The southern white John Q. Public that brought his wife and kids to public lynchings of black people like it was a sporting event weren't slaveowners. The southern white John Doe who participated in the massacres of thousands of black people ... including wiping out entire black towns like Rosewood, FL weren't slaveowners. The southern white people attacking black children who were trying to go to a desegregated school weren't slaveowners. The southern white people who would commit violence against black people if they dared to use a "whites only" water fountain, toilet, or lunch counter or look them in the eye weren't slaveowners. The southern white people who called black men 3 times their age "boy" and taught their children to do the same weren't slaveowners. But what do they ALL have in common with the actual slaveowners? They all seem quite enamored with a flag used to fight for white supremacy in its most severe manifestation. Clearly because they fully supported white supremacy in all its manifestations. Period! So to anyone who "defends" the Confederate flag in any form .... f*ck you and everything you stand for! Yeah. I said it.

OAW
( Last edited by OAW; Jun 23, 2015 at 05:46 PM. )
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Jun 23, 2015, 04:29 PM
 
Originally Posted by ironknee View Post
uh huh

The civil was was about keeping slaves as property.

The flag is a symbol of ANTI Union...ANTI America.

So you don't mind if the Germans fly the Nazi flag then?
Couldn't care less. I don't have negative feelings about the swastika, in fact there's one flying outside the Taoist temple I frequent. Your ignorance over Lee's battle standard (it's not the Confederate States' flag) isn't surprising, given the condition of public education today.

The US civil war started over states' rights and Lincoln didn't give a runny shit about slavery until it was politically expedient. The fact is, slavery in the South was already on a severe decline before the war ever started and it could have just as easily been sped up with increased economic pressure, saving more than 600k lives and a half century of turmoil over the Reconstruction (and likely a much more smooth transition for former slaves into society, since it wouldn't have been so violently forced).

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
It glorifies a war fought for bad reasons. You can have memorials for fallen soldiers, but flag is absolutely used for glorification – that's why so many refer to it as a point of southern 'pride'.
You don't even know why it was fought, slavery was already down >25% in just the 10 years before the civil war even started, All you know is the specious claptrap you've been told.

I don't think Joe would have minded some of his own, either. I guess they were temporarily embarrassed slave owners.
I have no doubt you think that.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
     
ironknee
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Jun 23, 2015, 06:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
Couldn't care less. I don't have negative feelings about the swastika, in fact there's one flying outside the Taoist temple I frequent. Your ignorance over Lee's battle standard (it's not the Confederate States' flag) isn't surprising, given the condition of public education today.

The US civil war started over states' rights and Lincoln didn't give a runny shit about slavery until it was politically expedient. The fact is, slavery in the South was already on a severe decline before the war ever started and it could have just as easily been sped up with increased economic pressure, saving more than 600k lives and a half century of turmoil over the Reconstruction (and likely a much more smooth transition for former slaves into society, since it wouldn't have been so violently forced).
Jesus, we both know there's a difference between the Nazis and buddhists.

So what if it was on the decline, the south still defended it, The south LOST, man.

Besides, people who wave it or wear it just confirms the stereotype of the southern racists we have of you.
     
Snow-i
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Jun 23, 2015, 07:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
I'm a proud Southerner, but I've never been able to defend the flag...



It's impossible to dissociate the Confederate flag from the cause of the Confederacy, and I don't mean states' rights. Yes, those rights were the rallying cry, but the state right in question was slavery.

It would be like putting a rainbow sticker on the back of your car because love rainbows. After being asked 1,000 times whether or not you were either a proud homosexual or an LGBT advocate, you'd probably get tired of answering the question and just remove the sticker.

Same thing with the Confederate flag. Enough racists have used it for decades that I can't afford being associated with it.

(Please no one miss the point — I'm not equating racism with LGBT advocacy)


Take it down from government grounds. The government should not display political speech of which the confederate flag can be considered. We live in the United States of America, not the Confederate. People should be free to display those flags on their own properties under the 1st amendment, but the government should take no position on it, and only fly state flags and old glory herself which embodies the freedom of speech we enjoy. In a profound way, the US flag represents our cultural heritage including the civil war itself.
     
 
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