Plan to Show Confederate Flag Draws Heat

[deadparrot]

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - An organizer of a planned memorial to honor Confederate soldiers who died at an Illinois prison camp says the rebel flag will be displayed at the memorial's dedication, despite opposition.

"We consider this an honorable flag. This is a soldier's flag," said Ron Casteel, national chief of staff for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of the memorial's planners. "There will be no substitute."

Camp Butler, just east of Springfield, was a training facility for Union troops during the Civil War and a prison camp for more than 3,500 captured Confederates. More than 800 of the prisoners died and were buried there, and the site is now a national cemetery.

Local and cemetery officials already have approved the plans for the Confederate memorial there. Organizers have raised about $6,000 for the project, which will include a 7 1/2 foot obelisk, and hope to dedicate the memorial sometime next year.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051003/ap_on_re_us/confederate_memorial

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Would someone please tell these Dixie loyalists

that the Civil War ended about 140 years ago? Put that idiotic flag away.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. That bunch is still fighting the civil war.

And they think they are finally winning.

[Yupster]

4. I have no problem with the flag

flying at a memorial to those who died in a prison camp.

[Solon]

6. Depends on what they mean by Confederate flag...

For example, if its this one:


Or hell, even this one:


Then I would have no problem, but if its this one:



Then we have a big problem, that last flag now represents racism and divisiveness, nothing more or less than that.

[Yupster]

7. True

Most people don't know the country had three national flags in its brief existence.

[Solon]

9. Yep, I left out the middle one, which is simply the middle one in my post.

that has a pure white banner instead of the red vertical bar on it, the "Stainless" banner looked too much like the white flag of surrender for comfort.

[DelawareValleyDem]

34. At least three

Ever see the famous photo of the Confederate Flag raised over Fort Sumter after Anderson surrendered? It's different from any of those shown above.



Here it is in greater detail.



Only seven states had seceded at the time.

[Javaman]

41. And the one they insist on flying, is actually a battle flag, not...

the confederate nation flag. Morans...

[Tyler Durden]

33. I am SO glad you did that, so I didn't have to.

I'd even let them use this one:



but to use the retangular "THIRD CONFEDERAT NAVAL ENSIGN" as "The Confederate Flag" is the same as calling the US Naval Ensign



the US FLAG.

By the way, did you know that this



was the first Naval Jack?

[wndycty]

15. So based on that logic the Nazi flag should fly proudly over prison camps

...where Nazis died.

[tainowarrior]

18. thank you..

not all soldiers are honorable or should be honored. Do you see Germans honoring Nazi dead?

[BringEmOn]

23. We had this old racist pig honoring Nazi dead

"They were victims, too."

[BiggJawn]

30. As a matter of fact...

They DO honour their war dead.
They don't wave Swastika flags when they do, though.

German soldiers aren't honourable, nor should be honored?

Typical "Victor's Bigotry", if you ask me.

[Uncle Joe]

46. What was the primary crime of the Nazis?

Genocide or slavery? If you answer slavery, then the Confederate Flags would apply as a comparison, however if you believe it was genocide then the U.S. Stars and Stripes bear a closer resemblance at least during the nineteenth century.

In spite of a ban on the importation of slaves around 1803, their population grew substantially from 1800-1865.This because they were viewed as a valuable commodity not to be killed off in mass, although there were certainly unimaginable atrocities, rapes, killings and the separation of families when they were sold off. This is in no way to condone the evils of slavery, it was and sad to say still is a despicable institution.

The Native Americans had an entirely different experience. Their population from 1800-1900 dwindled to a fraction of itself, They were force marched, stripped of their land, villages massacred, put on reservations (basically rural ghettos) until someone found gold or silver on it or a railroad wanted to go through. If they resisted, we massacred the Buffalo almost to the point of extinction so that they would starve to death. These policies were all condoned under the Stars and Stripes.This is closer to the genocide that the Nazis would go on to use, the major differences being in time and efficiency.

The amazing thing is that one of them, Ira Hayes would go on to be immortalized in the statue, of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, not to mention the code talkers contributions to the U.S. during World War 2,among others.

The Nazis primary crime was genocide, the people (Jews, Poles, Gypsies and homosexuals) they put in the concentration camps were not intended to live. For several years the biggest problem the Nazi scum had was how to kill them off fast enough. PBS had a most excellent special on the Holocaust a few months ago.

I believe symbols mean different things to different people, and they only have power if you give them power with your rage or hate. The corrupt ones in power now harness this hatred and bitterness to keep the American People divided. The old maxim divide and conquer applies here.

[joeunderdog]

31. Can't we just say we were wrong

and let them secede?

Think of where we'd be right now if we let the Red's fly their own flag and drive their own country back into the dark ages.

[KansDem]

73. Just saw someone flying the Confederate flag near where I live...

They're flying it on an actual flagpole sunk into the front yard; no small-time operation. No other flag; just the Confederate flag.

I wonder was that is all about...

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. Look at this LTTE I just found in my hometown paper

Confederate flag

Scott Porter, identifying himself as “a longstanding member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans,” declares that it “irks” him “to see the Ku Klux Klan or some other hate group stealing our ancestors’ flag and misusing it for their twisted purpose” (9/28, Letters).

Far better that the flag should be associated with the wholesome purposes of those who slaughtered thousands of U.S. troops and fought for the proposition that black Americans are an inferior breed to be raped, tortured, and worked to death with impunity.

The Confederate States of America was the most massive hate group in this nation’s history. The Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Ku Klux Klan both march under the same flag. Of the two groups, the Klan is more honest about what the banner signifies.

Chris O’Carroll

Emporia, KS

[Voltaire99]

5. Brilliant letter.

Truly only in a moral sewer does one fly the flag of slavery.

[frozenfishdemon]

8. The Confederate States of America was the most massive hate group

my great great grandfather was a Confederate soldier, didnt own a single piece of land, worked along side blacks as a share croper... does that make him a racist? and it was the north that was profitting the most from all the slavery... everything was sent up north and then sold to other countries, so the north got most of the profits.... slavery was only a small part of the picture...... voting rights, taxes, direct exports, were also the reason for civil war....... the flag has lost its meaning.. the KKK has turned it into a hate flag..... its a part of history that cant be changed, and shouldnt

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tainowarrior]

20. thanks for posting that

Sometimes people forget the motivations of the Davis' elites in the South.

[Blaq Dem]

22. I have a whole slew of documentations

I once was in heated debate with a sore-faced neo-Confederate loser. Yes, in 2005 there are folks such as fishsticksdemons are still seeking a revival of the antebellum south.

Of course there were poor whites who fought in hope of owning slaves themsleves.

"The non-slaveholders of the South may be classed as either such as desire and are incapable of purchasing slaves, or such as have the means to purchase and do not, because of the absence of the motive-preferring to hire or employ cheaper white labor." (James Dunwoody Brownson DeBow, DeBow's Review on the Views of Non-slaveholders, January, 1861 pages 67-77)

See? In there own words...

[tainowarrior]

24. awesome...i'm going to be using that link

in my debates as well. I once had a political science professor who tried to argue that Lincoln wasn't a racist, but that his comments during the Lincoln-Douglas debates were purely an act of political "maneuvering", that he was tailoring his message to the audience. So therefore, he really didn't mean that blacks were inferior to whites and that he was, like any other whiteman, in favor of keeping them in a second-class position, but that he was just faking it to get the approval of the more racist audiences he pitches his debates for.

What hogwash...Lincoln was a racist like a lot of people at that time.

I had a public debate with a Republican kid once on it, in front of like 20 people at a rally...I kicked his ass and offered to prove it to him at the library (I pointed to the building). He quieted down and left, tail between legs. The black people around me applauded me strongly. One of my proudest moments...I felt like I had resurrected the spirits of black slaves and given them justice at that moment.

[Blaq Dem]

29. Don't forget what they mean by "States' Rights"

States' Rights

"It is exactly in the case where the rights of the States and of the people thereof are withheld by evasion, or invaded by fraud, which deprive them of redress by appeal to the Supreme Court as the Constitutional arbiter, that the States have a right, which may become a duty, to interpose.

1. Such is the refusal to give protection to slave property in the territories held by the federal government as the common property of the States.
2. Such was the admission of California as a State, in order that slaves might be excluded from the whole territory acquired on the Pacific coast...
3. The violation of the guarantee of the Constitution against the citizens of private property, as presented in the bill to abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia..."
(Jefferson Davis to Lowndes County, Miss., Citizens, Steamboat "Gen. Scott," November 22, 1850)

-----------------------------------------------------------

It's amazing how they try to re-write history. And we're supposed to be sooooooooo stoopid!!

[Igel]

42. And there were poor whites in the South that didn't want to own slaves,

and rich whites that held few or now slaves, and free blacks that held slaves. No doubt there were whites in the North that also wanted to hold slaves.

Those engaged deeply in polemic in favor of one side of an issue or another serve to illustrate the views of the adherents of those views. And DeBow was harshly partisan on this, and some other, issues.

DeBow was hardly the average poor white in the South. Or, as it were, in NOLA.

But it's frequently easier to talk in broad terms, sans nuances and complicating little details that mitigate the purity and comprehensiveness of one's arguments. Therefore, t'is a worthy goal to make things simpler than possible.

[iamjoy]

32. The Reasons For The War

isn't it possible it meant different things to different people?

Take the Iraq War - the predomoninant spin on it is that it is part of the War on Terror. But some of us see it as a war for oil, and others as something more mendacious on the part of Dubya & his party.

Isn't it possible SOME Southerners were fighting for racist reasons and others were fighting for different causes? It is hard for us to imagine now, but at one time there really was an issue about whether our nation should have a strong, centralized government or be something closer to what the European Union is today. A lot of Virginians had mixed feelings on the issue of slavery but literally fought for what they saw as their homeland, which was their state, not their country.

And most Union soldiers hated Negroes - but were darned if they were going let the country break apart. Some were pressured into fighting by their community. Later in the war, men on both sides were conscripted into the army and had little (if any) choice but to fight.

The thing is, whatever the politicians' reasons for war, the men fighting it fought it for different reasons so to label every man who followed the Confederate flag racist is unfair. On the other hand, whatever other meaning one thinks it has, that flag has now come to represent racism. To defend it in logical terms does not make one a racist, but it is futile. Symbols are very powerful.

[Joe Chi Minh]

38. Interesting post, iamjoy.

Some passages might have been written by that great historian of the Civil War, Shelby Foote. He makes the same points. For him, the real culprits were the slave-owners. To the average Joe, the reason for fighting the Unionists was basically that they were on their territory, throwing their weight around.

One myth has been thoroughly exposed concerning the satanic racism down there, i.e. that it was primarily the working-class people who were the motive force behind it. Not so. The principal culprits were monied folk, whether shop-keepers, local politiicans, whatever.

It reminds me somewhat of what Jewish historians discovered. Worse even than the devil guards of the concentration camps, were the geeky wee functionaries, such as Eichmann.

[DemBones DemBones]

48. Absolutely right! It's simplistic to think

Southerners supported slavery and Northerners did not. Mostly, the men on each side saw themselves as fighting for their country.

I disagree that the Confederate flag should be given up to the yahoos who've used it as a racist symbol. A strong case can be made that much of the world sees the U.S. flag as a symbol of racism and imperialism, but I doubt you think we should give up on that flag.

[calmblueocean]

14. Just curious

What do you think the meaning of the Confederate flag is?

[Blaq Dem]

16. Confederate flag means preserving the institution of slavery

It's documented. The South wanted to expand slavery everywhere. The North didn't, not because they loved blacks so much, but because they didn't want to compete with slave labor. Much like today with the cheap migrant labor from Mexico. I don't know why some rich white men still love to profit from the toil and pain of others. It's evil.

That's the flag we ought to be burning!!!

[Igel]

43. I think there's a strict constructionist or originalist among us.

The X can only mean what its creators meant it to mean; the opinion of others at the time as to what it meant have no bearing on its meaning, and what it means cannot not change over time.

Having framed it that way, "What *the* meaning of the Confederate flag is?" is a fine question. But it's precisely parallel to "What is *the* meaning of the takings clause of the Constitution?"

"What does the Constitution mean in to today's America?" is as meaningless question as "What does the Confederate flag mean to the guy two doors down who displays it on his Ford pickup today?"

[tainowarrior]

19. my apologies beforehand

but if your great grandfather was a sharecropper who had nothing to win from fighting in the war, and he fought alongside, he became a useful tool of Jefferson Davis and the Southern elite's plan to defend slavery from Northern abolition. The South didn't leave the Union because of taxes and voting rights, no matter how that may have affected politics. They left when the balance of free states and slave states was going to be finally upset by the introduction of free states into the Union. That proves to me that the goverment in the South waited to leave the Union only when it was obvious that slavery could not be kept in the Union. It was ALWAYS and always WILL BE about slavery.

You'd fight to if your entire economic base was about to be abolished.

[Yupster]

56. The balance of free states and slave states

was tipped way back in 1848 when California entered the union, not right before the Civil War.

At the start of the Civil War there were 18 free states and 15 slave states.

[proud2BlibKansan]

54. That flag needs to be retired.

Regardless of what it meant originally, it stands for racism now. Ask any African American. I am white and that flag makes me ill. It stands for one of the most horrific periods in our history. And yes, the Confederacy was one of the worst hate groups in our history. Talk about hating us for our freedoms; Jefferson Davis and his crew are gold medal winners in that category.

My great great grandfather was also a Confederate soldier and a slave owner who kept his slaves AFTER they were 'freed'. He was also a racist bigot. I am not at all proud of his legacy. But I don't want that part of my family history changed. As a child, he was held up as an example of the kind of person we should NOT become. His story was told to us as we joined civil rights marches in our community. My father called our involvement in the civil rights movement 'payback' for the horrid legacy of our ancestors.

Only RW koolaid drinkers come on here and spout this 'the Civil War wasn't all that bad and is misrepresented in our history books' argument. Tell you what, keep up the hateful partisan behavior on the right and we will have another civil war. I'll bet I know which side you will be on. :eyes:

[TankLV]

67. THE reason for starting the civil war was for the RIGHT to permit any new

states that would join the union to ALLOW SLAVERY.

That's the phoney "state rights" argument that apologists use.

It was "state rights" to SPREAD SLAVERY.

Period.

ANY other "reasons" are simply bullshit.

And yes, your great great grandfather was in all likelyhood a racist and a bigot to boot.

Deal with it.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. Just remember the slave ships flew the flag of the USA.

Self-righteous Yankees crack me up.

[johnnie]

11. .

:eyes:

[Blaq Dem]

13. Because the South wouldn't have ratified the constitution without slavery

[tainowarrior]

21. right...

they flew the Yankee flag...and headed for SOUTHERN PORTS. Until the Civil War, the slave trade was facilitated by U.S. ships...but they ended up in the South.

Not that the North was better in terms of racism, but purely on the issue of the Confederacy, the Confederacy was based purely on slavery protection. REad post #12 on this thread.

[DemBones DemBones]

47. The Yankee mill owners had no problems

buying cotton produced with slave labor, did they?

So the Yankees 1) ran the slaving operations, 2) bought the products of slave states,
3) accepted it when Lincoln allowed slavery to continue in Union states. *

As I said, self-righteous Yankees crack me up.

* Check it out -- the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the Confederate States! And at that time, the Confederate States had declared themselves an independent nation and were fighting for that freedom, so it was just showboating on Lincoln's part as he had no power over the South at the time. Lincoln did NOT free the slaves in the Union states because he didn't want to piss off Union slaveowners, who didn't want to give up their property anymore than Confederate slaveowners did.)


Slavery was a great evil but it was not invented in the South.

[tainowarrior]

17. if the flag

flew over Southern slave plantations, and it flew while Masters raped female slaves, and it flew over Overseers beating the crap of slaves, I don't want to hear about how it is an honorable flag.

Some soldiers are just not honorable or fought for the wrong reasons. Example: the Nazis, or the Soviets invading Afghanistan or Hungary etc.

Sorry, but the Confederacy housed the WRONG side of the war...the side that wanted to preserve slavery as an integral part of their cotton economy, and therefore argued a "State's right" argument to preserve the institution. It isn't until the balance of free states and slave states is going to be upset by the introduction of new FREE states, that the South decided it was time to leave. It was ALL about slavery.

The Confederacy was wrong, and the Confederate flag, whether proponents like it or not, stands for slavery. The entire reason for existing was based on keeping slavery.

UPDATE:

Read post #12 on this thread for a direct quote from the South's ultimatum regarding slavery as the primary motivation.

[Bridget Burke]

26. For the greater part of slavery in this country...

The Stars & Stripes proudly flew over all the wrongs you so gleefully describe.

I'm not fond of any Confederate flags, but don't forget history.

Most soldiers in any war were drafted or joined for reasons other than ideology. Even the German soldiers. Even our forces in Iraq.

[tainowarrior]

27. don't get me wrong...

You see my avatar? That's Malcolm X. Malcolm used to say the South was everything under the Canadian border. So, I agree with him. Racism was an AMERICAN affair. But Slavery, and the development of the Confederacy to defend it, is a SOUTHERN Affair.

Let's ascribe blame evenly.

[Bridget Burke]

28. Gosh, who's Malcolm X?

I'm joking. Of course I recognized him.

How are the Tainos doing nowadays?

[tainowarrior]

35. Exterminated, sadly

The Spanish exterminated, although there are some groups claiming to be descendants that still live. I've seen some of them and they definitely look very indigenous.

[DemBones DemBones]

49. So when are we going to ban the U.S. flag?

The U.S. flag not only flew over atrocities such as you describe, but has been associated with atrocities around the world.

[DemBones DemBones]

50. UPDATE: Post # 12 has been deleted. nt

[NorthernSpy]

25. neo-confederates are traitors, and they hate our country

Notice how they love to honor the assholes who started a war that nearly destroyed America! That tells you everything you need to know. These people are treasonous bastards, and they don't deserve to live here.

Love it or leave it, traitors!

[tainowarrior]

36. I agree they are ahistorical morons..

but I'm not so sure about the "love it or leave it" attitude. That's the same attitude that precludes all debate within and outside the United States about the state of affairs in this country.

[Joe Chi Minh]

39. Chronic, hapless losers, like the Nazis.

The late Shelby Foote observed that the destruction wreaked on the South was worse even than that wreaked on Germany in either world war.

Yet the neo-Nazis are so dumb, they parade the emblems of the the total rout and humiliation of Nazi Germany and the deaths of millions of its citizens by war and starvation, as if they were battle honours. I hope, though without great confidence, I'm afraid, that those who hanker for the sight of a Confederacy flag flying high, are not quite as dumb.

[Yupster]

57. If the government thought they could convict

Jefferson Davis for treason, they would have tried him.

Davis was indicted for treason, begged for a trial to prove his innocence and never got one.

And now people declare him guilty without trial.

Think of how efficient our judicial system could be if we just declared people guilty. No trials, no judges, no juries.

Just pick guys on the internet to rule people guilty of serious crimes.

[alcibiades_mystery]

37. The South will rise again!

And the North will beat its ass again, like Sherman bringing the Jubilo to Georgia...

:evilgrin:

[Joe Chi Minh]

40. As Shelby Foote pointed out,

the North beat the South with one hand behind its back. It was a very uneven contest. Not that dissimilar to a superpower taking on a small country.

Of course, the David and Goliath military feats of irregular armies against regular armies can be stirring and inspiring within their own narrow context, but it should not blind anyone to the broader realities. That is how people are led by the nose to destruction by their own leaders. The Confederates might have been fighting against interlopers, but it was not for imperial conquest, pillage and occupation, as it is in a certain other country....

[Yupster]

59. I went to a lecture of Foote's

where he answered a question with his oft repeated phrase about the hand tied behind the back.

I found it to be a so what comment.

So the north fought with only part of its strength. So what? That doesn't mean it was going to win.

The US fought with only part of its strength in Vietnam and we lost.

He used that quote to say the south had no chance to win, but I didn't ever see the connection between his comment and his conclusion.

Many countries have lost wars when they only used part of their strength. The US could have too in the Civil War.

[Joe Chi Minh]

66. Maybe you're right, though personally, I don't think so.

Vietnam was "a million miles away", and they were a very unfamiliar enemy. Kennedy had grave doubts about committing America to a war there, because of the total unfamiliarity of the overall context of Vietnam to young Americans.

Anyway, I certainly didn't mean to disparage the Union or its military. I was trying to bring something positive out of the tragedy.

[Yupster]

58. Yeah too bad we don't have some General

Shermans in Iraq.

We could march through the Sunni triangle, burn the fields, ruin the roads, kill the livestock and make the state howl.

And maybe we can find a General Sheridan who could burn down the Euphrades Valley so thoroughly that a crow will have to pack a lunch to fly over it.

That's what we need. Better burners and destroyers. That's the way to win a war.

[alcibiades_mystery]

65. One difference

Iraq didn't start it...

[bluedonkey]

61. Don't be so sure

it took y'all a loooong time last time.Why do you think that was?

[alcibiades_mystery]

64. Concilation prize, huh?

It took you a really long time to beat our asses to the ground and make us cry uncle in dejected defeat! Yeeeehaw!

Just turn over your sword and shut up, huh, reb?

[BLUEBOY]

44. They actually should fly this over the Whitehouse...

After all *co is the party of oppression and hate.
:mad:

[maxrandb]

45. Supporting the Terrorist!!!

This is the flag of a terrorist regime that fought and killed troops fighting under the flag of our country. It would be like the French parading around with the swastika.

I love Al Frankens take on this from his lying liars book.

TERRORIST: Saddam Huessin NUMBER OF AMERICANS KILLED: 572
TERRORIST: Osama Bin Laden NUMBER OF AMERICANS KILLED: 3000
TERRORIST: Jefferson Davis NUMBER OF AMERICANS KILLED: 376,000

[Yupster]

60. Out of all the people to blame the Civil War on,

why do you lay 376,000 deaths onto Jefferson Davis?

Out of all the people of the era, Davis stayed in Washington working on a compromise in the senate to keep the southern states in the union after almost everyone else gave up.

Then when the southern government was formed in Montgomery, Davis was one of the few southern politicians who stayed home.

He sure didn't want or expect to be president of the Confederacy.

He made his mistakes, but led the best way he could. He was ompletely uncorruptible and worked tirelessly to do the job he was elected to do.

Out of all the hotheads and uncompromising pricks of that era, I'd think you could find someone better to single out than Davis.

[anotherdrew]

51. it's a traitors flag

[marshall]

52. My great great grandfather died there

His wife had died before the war, and he died of pneumonia in the POW camp, leaving two young sons orphans to be raised by a school teacher brother of his who had never married. I've often wondered if there was some kind of cemetery or what they did with the bodies. I have traveled all over the country looking at my various ancestors' homesites and gravesites.

[GarySeven]

53. Every Single TIME a post on this topic erupts, it turns into a flame war

Usually it starts by someone asserting that "this bunch" is trying to "refight the Civil War." Jesus Christ I am SO tired of this fight on this board.

First of all, if you notice from the OP, it is a group of Sons of Confederate Veterans who plan to display the flag under which dead Confederates fought in dedicating a cemetery where dead Confederates lay. This is not unusual in the least. This is common. My own great-great grandfather's grave is decorated by a Confederate battle flag. Big FAT Honking DEAL.

My great-grandfather is not responsible for what other Southerners made of the flag he fought under. He is also not responsible for the fact that the government he fought to establish, the CSA, would have extended slavery. He is not responsible for the actions of his national government, any more than YOUR ANCESTORS are responsible for the profit-by-slave labor that went on in the North before the war, OR for the virulent racism that was practiced by your ancestors, some of which spilled over to the near genocidal extinction of the American Indian tribes.

My great-grandfather and all the other great-grandfathers of all the Southerners who are now alive are not responsible for any of the hatred spewed on blacks, Jews and Catholics by any of their descendants. They are only responsible for their own actions and their own beliefs and, ultimately, their own deaths in a cause for which they believed. They were wrong, and history has judged them wrong and it is NOT your duty to continually remind us, the living descendants, of that error. Like they, we - and only we - are responsible for what we say and do and think.

And if we present-day Southerners choose, from time to time, to remember the honor and sacrifice that our ancestors paid and gave, we DESERVE the respect such a service demands - as well as the benefit of the doubt that we ALSO know that their cause was wrong; and that we are not paying homage to a detestable national policy but rather to the service and sacrifice of those members of our family who died in the belief they were sacrificing their lives for their homes and families.

No Northern soldier fought to end slavery; that was his government's policy. And even then that policy was limited in its effect, for the erasure of slavery and the passage of the 13th Amendment did not abolish racism. Nor did it ensure that the northerner would forget his own complicity in the scourge of racism and slavery. Through all the Jim Crow years of lynchings and injustice, there was plenty of tsk-tsking and "those vicious Southerners" from plenty of Northerners, but Not ONE northern hand was lifted to stop the persecution of Jews or the extermination of the American Indians. While the KKK was perverting the Rebel Flag down South, nice midwestern and northern farmboys in the North were raising the Nazi salute to the American Bundt - and race riots were committed in every city in the North, where whites perpetrated atrocities against blacks fleeing the racism of the South.

I am sick to death of this argument on this board. I am sick to death of you Yankees who, ultimately, are the ones unwilling to stop fighting a war you won. You say racism created and perpetrated the Confederate States, but you refuse to acknowledge that your victory over that pitiful little country did nothing to extinguish racism because YOU YOURSELF were not willing to expunge racism from your own heart. I'm sick of such hypocrisy - and I am equally sick of the Yankee liberal doxology that makes it virtually impossible for a Southerner to honor his heritage and be a member of a political coalition that can - and should - destroy a modern day scourge, the scourge that USES RACISM AS A POLITICAL TOOL, and which occupies all three branches of government.

If you don't want Southerners in this coalition, fine. Let liberalism die down here and you can say goodbye to it in your neighborhood, because the only way we are going to defeat Conservative thuggery and gangsterism is if we stop comparing our white hands to see which are the cleanest.

[TankLV]

68. Nice try - not working!

I am so sick of apologists like you who spend time and energy trying to defend the indefensible!

No, it is not us Yankees who continually bring up the subject and who want to refight the war - it is southerners like YOU who continually bring the subject up. EVERY FUCKING TIME!

Yeah - "southern heritage" - proud slavery advocates.

Something to be proud of!

Go sell your bullshit someplace else.

[GarySeven]

71. You are so full of it ...

Southern heritage may be a code word for racism to you, but to Southerners - and people who have their heads on straight - heritage assumes more than political dimensions. The South is no more defined by racism alone any more than your precious shining citidel of Northern freedom is defined by your glorious existance within its utopia.

When you deride Southerners' defense of "heritage" you may think you are deriding Southern history of racism and slavery. Your smirking assumption is that we WANT to honor such things. Our concept of heritage is much wider and inclusive than that - it is all the things that make the South a unique region. And it IS unique, with its own literary and distinctive cultural identity. This, I think, is what makes you squirm in your britches - that we would DARE to assume such individuality within the corporeal union of the Republic.

You wouldn't insist, I suppose, that England renounce its heritage simply because it once waged a brutal civil war that sought to expunge Catholicism and largely succeeded. I suppose it would be alright with you if they went on with their royals and hot buttered scones, even though they have been oppressing the Irish for generations longer than slavery existed in the colonies.

Somehow whenever you hear a Southerner talk about his "heritage" you seem to think he is talking only about one thing. And when you, in your petulant arrogance insist we reject this heritage to conform with what YOU think it should be, we resist. I wonder why. You preach out of ignorance and an assumed sense of grandiose perfection you have neither earned nor attained. I am not obliged to listen to you because you do not know a damned thing about what you are talking about.

[confludemocrat]

69. Dead wrong: "No Northern soldier fought to end slavery" many did but

how many is unknowable. Throwing this in to an already weak argument was the kicker and further discredits the whole idea of any honor attached to the Stars and Bars battleflag. Both sides came to see it was about slavery. The British would have reecognized the south except for slavery, and south never considered giving it up, despite this carrot.

See "Battle Cry of Freedom" pp 354-358, 494-500
as a motivation for the war the author puts it: "A rebellion sustained by slavery in defense of slavery could only be supressed by moving against slavery", in characterizing the thinking that developed after Lincoln fired General Frémont for freeing slaves.

The leaders came gradually to an antislavery motivation for the war and many of the the soldiers did too, remarkable considering just how racist the country was then.

I am a direct descendant of a confederate veteran, but am not a white supremacist, most non-white supremacists would have left that group.

[GarySeven]

72. Thanks for focusing on one tiny little pinpoint of pixels

and missing the entire argument. This is why we liberals will never win the Big Fight - and maybe we don't deserve to.

[Ian David]

55. Tell them to pick one of these flags...

Or...





Yes, I sell them in a CafePress store:
http://www.cafepress.com/southdiversity

[bluedonkey]

62. I think

you should take your ugliness some place else.

[Ian David]

63. I guess you do not see it in the spirit in which I intended it. n/t

[confludemocrat]

70. Love the first one. Sherman saved southeners from themselves. His autobio

(and Grants) are fantastic reading.