Confederate battle flag spreading North
Nearly 150 years after the Civil War ended, the Confederate battle flag — a complicated and incendiary symbol of rebellion, slavery, Southern pride and white supremacy — is seemingly becoming a more frequent sight north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
What’s behind the popularity of the flag in the North? Is it the dark underbelly of the rapidly growing country-music scene? Disapproval of the president? An innocent revival of the rebel spirit among Yankees who don’t know — or care — what it means to the rest of society? Or something more sinister?
Some defenders of the Confederate flag say it is not inherently racist and should be flown to honor Confederate soldiers. Others, like Doug Copeland, a medical tech who said he was born in Chattanooga, Tenn., use it to show their fondness for the South.
“I’m not prejudiced at all. My granddaughter is half-black,” said Copeland, who flies a flag from his home on busy Route 724 near Phoenixville. “I just love the South. If I could live there, I would.”
Some groups, including the Virginia Flaggers — which has leased land along Interstate 95 south of Richmond and plans to erect a 12-by-15-foot Confederate flag on a 50-foot pole — have denounced the KKK and others that have used the flag for their own purposes.
Hogan said the SCV, an organization for male descendants of Confederate soldiers, encourages people to display the flag in remembrance of those who fought in the Civil War — or the Second American Revolution, as the group refers to the war on its website.
“It stands for brave men who defended their homeland against an unconstitutional invasion and represents all the good things in America,” Hogan said.
Hauber said that he doesn’t support slavery, but that the Civil War was also about states’ rights. “I’m inclined to agree with the states. They have certain rights that should be separate from the federal government,” he said. “But I’m not going to fly a Confederate flag.”
People might feel intimidated or threatened by the flag — whether that’s the intention or not — but flying it is protected by the First Amendment.
Last year, the ACLU of Delaware assisted a state Department of Transportation worker who was disciplined for displaying a Confederate-flag license plate on his car parked at work. The department later agreed with the ACLU that he was entitled to display the plate.
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12 comments:
"“It stands for brave men who defended their homeland against an unconstitutional invasion and represents all the good things in America,” Hogan said." (Wink wink)
What a load of male bovine excrement.
Yes, it would be seen as "a load" to all you Marxists, communists, and faux-feminists, but that doesn't change the (fact) that it's true. And it is that (fact) that causes you leftists to choke, but sadly, not enough. It's just another example of how those who wish to see racism everywhere, will.
"Beware of those who cry racism, for they are the true racists..."
I don't get all this hissing and moaning. We are either free or we are not. If we are free then I must be free to be the biggest racists jerk there is!
"You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating, at the top of his lungs, that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free, then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest." Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free."
H/T "The American President"
And then there is "the rest of the story", so to speak. The Civil War, was in the North, largely a war against slavery - that's how it was "sold" by the Union government seeking to prevent the departure of states that they treated almost as colonies, and publicized by Union newspapers that were allowed to remain open. (If as a northern newspaper, you didn't publicize that view and support the war, you didn't stay open - check your history, including the history of arrest without habeas corpus for Copperheads.)
In the South it was the War against Northern Aggression, fought partly over slavery, but more over states rights and discriminatory taxation (yeah, I know that's not politically correct, and I won't rerspond to flamers). If the North had allowed the South to depart in peace, not a shot would have been fired, much less would a war have been required. Several of the states had, in their ennabling acts that ratified the Constitution when they "joined" the Union, reserved the right to depart from that same Union for reasons good and sufficient only to themselves.
But in the matters of nations and wars, might does make right, the victor writes the history books, and the North won.
But my great, great grandfather wore the butternut grey, fought under the Confederate Battle Flag (the Stars and Bars), saluted the Confederate Flag (not the Stars and Bars) and believed in the cause of State's Rights and Secession as well as the "Peculiar Insitution". You attempt to deny my right to fly that flag on my property at your peril.
Not near so cut and dried as it's made out to be when you actually hear the other side of the story. The federal government hasn't changed much in 150 years. It is still trampling on the rights of the states and the people.
The "United States" are hypocrites. They felt it was legitimate to secede as colonies of Britain to the extent of making a bloody war rather than patient negotiations (and many in Britain were sympathetic to the colonists' grievances), yet the US government in Washington later decided it was ILlegitimate for member states to secede, and then forced them by a bloody war to remain in a union (in fact the bloodiest war in history to that point because of new technology in armaments).
First, let's start with the claim that if the South had been allowed to leave the Union, "not a shot would have been fired." While you may be correct on the issue of the states leaving, you are not correct that a war would not have broken put over the issues. One only has to look at the "border wars" between states and territories prior to the Civil War. There is no doubt those battles eventually would have engulfed the CSA and the USA as both nations expanded west.
Taxes (specifically tarrifs) were a component of the cause of the Civil War. However the issue of those tarrifs is not so much in the monies collected or due to be collected, but rather the South seeing itself outvoted on issues such as tarrifs by the block of so called "free states." The South, who had more sons serve as President than the North, saw its political influence begin to wane. That lessening of power was seen by the South in the passage of tarrifs.
As with any war, the causes are not as clear cut as "one issue" causes.
For the North, both the idea of preserving the Union and the abolition of slavary are causes. However it can be argued that Lincoln was more concerned with the preservation of the Union. He knew and argued that saving the Union would end slavary, but his prime objective was the preservation of the Union.
For the South, the issue of slavary overwhelms any other cause of the Civil War. Some may wish to say the South was interested in preserving "states rights," but the "state right" they wished to preserve was that of keeping slaves. No other topic comes close to the exercise of "rights" in the South as the desire to keep people in chains. If one reads the declarations of seccesion from various Southern states, those declarations center around slavary. It is the driving force behind the South wanting to leave the Union.
Finally, the suspension of habeas corpus by the President during the Civil War was eventually declared unConstitutional by the Supreme Court after the war. There is no argument whether habeas can be suspended; it is codified in the Constitution. The question is whether the Congress or the President has the authority to do so. Congress has the authority to declare war. The President has the authority to wage war. Lincoln believed that suspending habeas corpus was part of his Constitutional authority to wage war. The suspension of habeas was not the act of a despot, but a difference in the interpretation of the Constitution.
However, it is always ironic to see people attacking Lincoln for his actions which affected a relative few number of persons, and those same people then trying to defend a way of life and institution that kept 4 million people in bondage.
There is much to be admired about the Southern way of life. However, every argument for the South seceding is based on keeping the institution on slavary. The ideals of taxes, states rights, etc are all noble, but they become tarnished when those ideals are used to maintain slavary.
2:25,
Oh goody. Another person who neither understands history, contracts or natural rights.
4:56,
Oh goody. Another who thinks he/she understands history better but offers no justification at all for such presumption!
Okay, we'll play along....
Compare and contrast between the American Revolution and the Ametican Civil War:
Basis:
Revolution - desire to maintain a union between a people with rights as citizens and a government that sought to deprive people of those rights.
Civil War - desire to maintain a union and in the process, restore and protect natural rights of people.
Negotiations:
Revolution - two decades between "unequal" parties. (The claim of no "patient negotiations" cannot be supported.)
Civil War - more than a decade between the states which were equal parties.
Ability to Dissolve Union:
Revolution: stated and recognized by common law when rights were abused by government.
Civil War: debated even by Founding Fathers as to whether states could withdraw from union absent of citizens rights violations.
The idea of trying to prove that Americans are hypocrites based on the Revolution and the Civil War is ridiculous.
5:52 What is ridiculous is trying to make a pedantic comparison between various aspects of the two wars, when the original point was over a similar desire for secession which resulted in very bloody and destructive wars.
2:38 And again, what you are missing is the situations were not the same.
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