What is even more outrageous, here is a search on Walmart's website that shows they carry stuff far more offensive than a Confederate Battle Flag.

Che Guevara on a T-shirt in Wal-Mart. Oh, the irony. 

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Che Guevara on a T-shirt in Wal-Mart. Oh, the irony. 

 

So what's so ironic?

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Going back over and reading this thread, this statement jumped out at me.  Bradley Manning purposely and knowingly committed an act of treason against the U.S..  He put lives at risk, not only the lives of U.S. citizens, but those of citizens of countries around the world (think Arab Spring).

 

While you did say that it was a silly analogy, it doesn't even come close to being a similar comparison.

Bradley Manning, in your own words, put lives at risk. The actions of the Confederate traitors killed almost 600,000 Americans, and got almost as many southerners killed as well.

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Bradley Manning, in your own words, put lives at risk. The actions of the Confederate traitors killed almost 600,000 Americans, and got almost as many southerners killed as well.

 

I wouldn't call the Confederates "traitors".  Go back and read The Declaration of Independence.  There is a difference between treason and secession.

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.

The actions of the Confederate traitors killed almost 600,000 Americans, and got almost as many southerners killed as well.

 

None of that mattered until the flag the confederate army died for got co-opted by hate groups, which then got publicity, and then the flag was associated with hate.  Until then, it was a brilliant piece of graphic design and American history that offended few.  So few, no one gave it a second look as late as 1981 when it showed up in a popular television show.

 

If it hadn't shown up on some loser's facebook page after said loser killed some apparently really, really nice people over the color of their skin, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

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None of that mattered until the flag the confederate army died for got co-opted by hate groups, which then got publicity, and then the flag was associated with hate.  Until then, it was a brilliant piece of graphic design and American history that offended few.  So few, no one gave it a second look as late as 1981 when it showed up in a popular television show.

 

If it hadn't shown up on some loser's facebook page after said loser killed some apparently really, really nice people over the color of their skin, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

 

It appears you have entered your dog into the hunt.

 

Welcome!

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If something can corrupt you, you're corrupted already.
- Bob Marley


 

It appears you have entered your dog into the hunt.

 

Welcome!

I'm actually on FBT's side with his original comment:  It's just a flag.

 

And a flag is free speech.

 

And left or right wing, I've been one of the biggest free speech advocates on the board since I got here.

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None of that mattered until the flag the confederate army died for got co-opted by hate groups, which then got publicity, and then the flag was associated with hate.  Until then, it was a brilliant piece of graphic design and American history that offended few.  So few, no one gave it a second look as late as 1981 when it showed up in a popular television show.

The swastika was a symbol of good fortune in eastern religions for over 10,000 years.

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The swastika was a symbol of good fortune in eastern religions for over 10,000 years.

 

Different swastika.  Go to India and tell them to take that symbol down and that you are offended.  Different meaning for different people and in different contexts.  If someone hung a Confederate flag on the door step of a black family with racial epithets, it means one thing.  If a Confederate flag flies over a war memorial or from a pickup truck, its totally different.  I wish people would stop worrying about something offending them, especially when no offense was intended by someone just living their own life.

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Here's an interesting opinion piece in today's Washington Post:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteveryt...d=pm_pop_b

 

"Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded for states’ rights. When each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states’ rights. In its “Declaration Of The Causes Which Impel The State Of Texas To Secede From The Federal Union,” for example, the secession convention of Texas listed the states that had offended them: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa. These states had in fact exercised states’ rights by passing laws that interfered with the federal government’s attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Some also no longer let slaveowners “transit” through their states with their slaves. “States’ rights” were what Texas was seceding <i>against</i>. Texas also made clear what it was seceding <i>for</i>: white supremacy.

 

"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."

 

"Teaching or implying that the Confederate states seceded for states’ rights is not accurate history. It is white, Confederate-apologist history. It bends — even breaks — the facts of what happened."

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The swastika was a symbol of good fortune in eastern religions for over 10,000 years.

I keep seeing this argument, but it's non-equivalent.  When you commit genocide under flag, the flag is permanently desecrated.

 

As I said in an earlier post, slavery is evil, but it's not genocide.  And while you were taught Southerners were fighting solely for slavery.  I wasn't.  Please forgive me if I believe what I was taught.  Stealing and murder are both sins, but will you really argue that one isn't worse than the other?

 

Regardless, my stance on Lee's flag rests on 2 foundations:

 

1. Free speech

 

2. Honoring the dead, even if it offends the living.

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Different swastika.  Go to India and tell them to take that symbol down and that you are offended.  Different meaning for different people and in different contexts.  If someone hung a Confederate flag on the door step of a black family with racial epithets, it means one thing.  If a Confederate flag flies over a war memorial or from a pickup truck, its totally different.  I wish people would stop worrying about something offending them, especially when no offense was intended by someone just living their own life.

 

Now you can't go and do that.  Common sense is apparently not allowed here.

 

The Ten Commandments memorial is going to have to be removed from the grounds of the Oklahoma Capitol grounds because evidently, someone was "offended" by it.  Just look around at how other memorials and/or monuments are being attacked and the calls for removal.  It's because a few are "offended".

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world.  Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Here's an interesting opinion piece in today's Washington Post:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteveryt...d=pm_pop_b

 

"Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded for states’ rights. When each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states’ rights. In its “Declaration Of The Causes Which Impel The State Of Texas To Secede From The Federal Union,” for example, the secession convention of Texas listed the states that had offended them: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa. These states had in fact exercised states’ rights by passing laws that interfered with the federal government’s attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Some also no longer let slaveowners “transit” through their states with their slaves. “States’ rights” were what Texas was seceding <i>against</i>. Texas also made clear what it was seceding <i>for</i>: white supremacy.

 

<blockquote>
"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."

 

"Teaching or implying that the Confederate states seceded for states’ rights is not accurate history. It is white, Confederate-apologist history. It bends — even breaks — the facts of what happened."


</blockquote>
Errrr.

 

James Louen has made a hell of a living out of being a revisionist historian.

 

http://www.amazon.com/James-W.-Loewen/e/B000APVWNE

 

His crowning achievement is - I'm not making this up - "Lies My Teacher Told Me".  It's like trying to use Oliver Stone's nonsense book "The Untold History of the United States" as the definitive history of the Cold War.  I mean, you may have a point, but you're using a guy with an obvious agenda to make it.

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I keep seeing this argument, but it's non-equivalent.  When you commit genocide under flag, the flag is permanently desecrated.

 

As I said in an earlier post, slavery is evil, but it's not genocide.  And while you were taught Southerners were fighting solely for slavery.  I wasn't.  Please forgive me if I believe what I was taught.  Stealing and murder are both sins, but will you really argue that one isn't worse than the other?

 

Regardless, my stance on Lee's flag rests on 2 foundations:

 

1. Free speech

 

2. Honoring the dead, even if it offends the living.

So... because genocide is worse than slavery we should only say no to Nazi flags, and not to Confederate ones?


Sure, you might have been taught it wasn't about slavery.  Just as people in the middle east are taught that the holocaust is a myth.  So will you forgive them for believing what they were taught?


Free Speech is all fine and good.  Individuals should be able to fly the flag if they want (and people are free to think about them what they want to think as well).  The flag should not be honored by our government.  If an individual wants a confederate, nazi, or even ISIS flag, they should have that right.  Stores however have the right to refuse to sell them.  Why should our government honor a flag of a group that rebelled against it, and failed, especially when to many it's come to be a symbol of racism.Not just for the actions of confederates, but for the actions of other groups as well.  

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I was wrong about Trent Baalke. 

Errrr.


James Louen has made a hell of a living out of being a revisionist historian.

<a class="bbc_url" href='http://www.amazon.com/James-W.-Loewen/e/B000APVWNE'>http://www.amazon.com/James-W.-Loewen/e/B000APVWNE</a>


His crowning achievement is - I'm not making this up - "Lies My Teacher Told Me". It's like trying to use Oliver Stone's nonsense book "The Untold History of the United States" as the definitive history of the Cold War. I mean, you may have a point, but you're using a guy with an obvious agenda to make it.

That book looks like a good read. Not sure where you are getting 'revisionist' from.

---

Here's an interesting opinion piece in today's Washington Post:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteveryt...d=pm_pop_b

 

"Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded for states’ rights. When each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states’ rights. In its “Declaration Of The Causes Which Impel The State Of Texas To Secede From The Federal Union,” for example, the secession convention of Texas listed the states that had offended them: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa. These states had in fact exercised states’ rights by passing laws that interfered with the federal government’s attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Some also no longer let slaveowners “transit” through their states with their slaves. “States’ rights” were what Texas was seceding <i>against</i>. Texas also made clear what it was seceding <i>for</i>: white supremacy.

 

<blockquote>
"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."

 

"Teaching or implying that the Confederate states seceded for states’ rights is not accurate history. It is white, Confederate-apologist history. It bends — even breaks — the facts of what happened."


</blockquote>
 

Every state believed in white supremacy - the benevolent north included.  

 

Funny how each leader made it clear that they seceded over slavery, yet four states didn't even join the Confederacy until after Lincoln announced he would invade the south.  Those four states were overwhelmingly pro Union when put to a vote earlier.  They voted to secede because they felt Lincoln had no right to invade the south.  At the very least, for four of the eleven states, it was totally unrelated to slavery.  And like I said previously, the original 7 states seceded for many reasons, slavery included, but that was a part of the state rights thing.  The biggest issue the south had was the tariff.  South Carolina almost went to war with the United States 30 years before the Civil War over the tariff.  In 1861, right before the war, the House passed a huge increase in the tariff.  There are literally dozens and dozens of speeches decrying the tariff from southern representatives.  And, as I've said, Lincoln and his republicans offered to write into the constitution the constitutional right to own slaves if the south would return to the Union and accept the tariff.

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Every state believed in white supremacy - the benevolent north included.


Funny how each leader made it clear that they seceded over slavery, yet four states didn't even join the Confederacy until after Lincoln announced he would invade the south. Those four states were overwhelmingly pro Union when put to a vote earlier. They voted to secede because they felt Lincoln had no right to invade the south. At the very least, for four of the eleven states, it was totally unrelated to slavery. And like I said previously, the original 7 states seceded for many reasons, slavery included, but that was a part of the state rights thing. The biggest issue the south had was the tariff. South Carolina almost went to war with the United States 30 years before the Civil War over the tariff. In 1861, right before the war, the House passed a huge increase in the tariff. There are literally dozens and dozens of speeches decrying the tariff from southern representatives. And, as I've said, Lincoln and his republicans offered to write into the constitution the constitutional right to own slaves if the south would return to the Union and accept the tariff.

Marty provided the official statement of Texas and it doesn't say a thing about states' rights. I find that funny.

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Every state believed in white supremacy - the benevolent north included.  

 

Funny how each leader made it clear that they seceded over slavery, yet four states didn't even join the Confederacy until after Lincoln announced he would invade the south.  Those four states were overwhelmingly pro Union when put to a vote earlier.  They voted to secede because they felt Lincoln had no right to invade the south.  At the very least, for four of the eleven states, it was totally unrelated to slavery.  And like I said previously, the original 7 states seceded for many reasons, slavery included, but that was a part of the state rights thing.  The biggest issue the south had was the tariff.  South Carolina almost went to war with the United States 30 years before the Civil War over the tariff.  In 1861, right before the war, the House passed a huge increase in the tariff.  There are literally dozens and dozens of speeches decrying the tariff from southern representatives.  And, as I've said, Lincoln and his republicans offered to write into the constitution the constitutional right to own slaves if the south would return to the Union and accept the tariff.

 

But how can you deny the words of the politicians in the Southern states who led the secession?    They all said the reason they seceded was to preserve slavery.  

I have posted direct quotes over and over from four different articles of secession, and from southern political leaders.  Were they lying?  

 

Anyone with any knowledge of history knows that the one thing that consumed the country for the decade leading up to the Civil War was slavery, slavery, slavery.  

 

I am astounded by the incredible ignorance of history displayed by some of you people.   It's amazing.   How you can twist yourself into this belief that the Civil War was fought over a tariff.  Or that the South seceded to defend states' rights.   They seceded to defend slavery.   THEY SAID SO THEMSELVES. 

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So... because genocide is worse than slavery we should only say no to Nazi flags, and not to Confederate ones?  Yes, that's actually my argument to why there's a difference between the swastika and the battle cross.



Sure, you might have been taught it wasn't about slavery.  Just as people in the middle east are taught that the holocaust is a myth.  So will you forgive them for believing what they were taught?  After 10 years of public education in the United States, 4 years of college, and watching Ken Burns epic documentary, I still hold the belief that the reasons for the Civil War are far more complex than just the North wanted slavery abolished and the South didn't.  I never said it wasn't about slavery.  I AM saying it wasn't just about slavery.



Free Speech is all fine and good.  Individuals should be able to fly the flag if they want (and people are free to think about them what they want to think as well).  The flag should not be honored by our government.  If an individual wants a confederate, nazi, or even ISIS flag, they should have that right.  Stores however have the right to refuse to sell them.  Why should our government honor a flag of a group that rebelled against it, and failed, especially when to many it's come to be a symbol of racism.Not just for the actions of confederates, but for the actions of other groups as well.  Is flying a Confederate flag over a confederate cemetary on state grounds "honoring" the flag, or honoring the dead?  My argument is to honor the dead.  By the way, I think it sucks that to many the flag has become a symbol of racism.  I would love to know what Robert E. Lee would have thought about that modern perception.

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But how can you deny the words of the politicians in the Southern states who led the secession?    They all said the reason they seceded was to preserve slavery.  

I have posted direct quotes over and over from four different articles of secession, and from southern political leaders.  Were they lying?  

 

Anyone with any knowledge of history knows that the one thing that consumed the country for the decade leading up to the Civil War was slavery, slavery, slavery.  

 

I am astounded by the incredible ignorance of history displayed by some of you people.   It's amazing.   How you can twist yourself into this belief that the Civil War was fought over a tariff.  Or that the South seceded to defend states' rights.   They seceded to defend slavery.   THEY SAID SO THEMSELVES. 

 

They also said one reason was because the north was bleeding the south.  THEY ALSO SAID SO THEMSELVES.

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