Politics National Traitors Day

Between the effort to put the dixie (my dictionary insists I capitalize it but to hell with that) flag on license plates in Texas and a guy who is building a monument with 32 flags right next to MLK avenue there seems to an ongoing problem in this country with people who want to rewrite history.

While I would just love to stick to the basic.



I have a serious problem with the whole rewriting history thing.
The fact is, sure many of the people who fought weren't fighting about slaves but the it was about money and the money was in slaves.

So I found an article that has a solution to this problem once and for all.

Civil War 150th Anniversary: Confederacy Defeat Should Be Holiday | The New Republic

 

I'd celebrate that mofo. But it'll never happen. The Confederates are still around, just without an explicit agenda of slavery, in the form of the Tea Party.

 

I have mixed feelings about the Confedrate flag.

If folks want to display it as a way remember & honor the men who fought for the Confederacy, fine. On paper the Confederate forces should've been easily defeated, yet they put up a hell of a good fight. Whether the cause was right or wrong doesn't matter.

If folks want to display it as a way to show a desire to return to the "Old South," and/or to irritate blacks, no.

The main problem is telling the difference.

 

Why? And who cares?

...

Threadjack:

The state license plate thing kills me, Smalls. It's all, "Let's rush quickly to the memory hole with everything our particular team is not fond of today." Hell, it's bad enough US history books are so political that the flavor of national events varies significantly when you cross state lines. Suggesting that the confederate flag is linked only with slavery and racism is scapegoating. Prior to and way after said flag was a thing, the United States did a whole bunch of shitty things on a regular basis. Yet I'm not a dirt bag if I fly the stars and stripes. Unless I'm overseas and said flag is associated with epic pointless invasions and countless drone strikes and torture interrogations and electronic surveillance programs that make 1984 look like child's play.

Some say, "The confederate flag is evil!" Eat a dick. All flags are evil. Some flags have historical significance. And if those states that lost the civil war want to continue to fly some loser's flag... so be it. It's a free country or so we're fond of saying. Let them vote on it. Anybody waving the stars and bars or the blood-stained banner and yelling, "The south will rise again!" is clearly a moron. But do we really need to regulate that? It's bad enough that the old Gadsden flag has been appropriated and tainted by basically the same crowd. Let the retards have their historical symbols. If not, they'll just adopt other ones. I live in a crazy world where religious superhero worshipers can have pro-life license plates... the confederate flag is the least of my worries.

/something about winning gracefully, something about having actually worn a uniform, something about 1st Amendment, something about people needing to accept the world is full of differing opinions and most of those opinions are straight-up retarded

/threadjack

 

A rematch on International Pillow Fight Day may have provided an opportunity to release some of that pent up southern aggression, but alas, it was last Saturday so they will have to wait another year.

 

It's the American Swastika, imho they don't get to claim there's a difference. The same goes for the "states rights" excuse, if they really supported states rights they wouldn't be trying to get a federal ban on gay marriage.

 

Making a comparrison between the Stars & Bars and the swastika in rather extreme. It's a matter of perception. I've never fully understood the displaying of Stars & Bars, but I'm not going to say people shouldn't be allowed to. Perhaps being from the South (loosely, as many Texans identify more with the West than the South, Civil War alliance aside) makes me more tolerant.

As for states rights, in our judicial system the states have no say which cases make it into the federal courts. In the case of a gay marriage ban having such a law on the federal level would support the states wanting a ban on gay marriage. On the flip side a federal ban on displaying the Confedrate flag would hurt the states.

 

That comparison is utterly asinine to anybody with a 7th grade knowledge of history, but I'll give you a chance to explain it in A=B terms.

 

I avoid using any Nazi terms unless I am actually talking about Nazis but I do find it interesting that so many of the American Nazi groups also fly the Stars and Bars.

I'm not black so I certainly can't say I see it the same way they do but I can imagine that since every time there was some yahoo at the door of a school talking about. "segregation now and forever", the fact that all the people cheering them on were flapping little dixie flags must have some PTSD effect.

 

We see this in retrospect, but it was not at all obvious "on paper" in 1861. The Confederacy was united and motivated, and the Union had the task of invading and subjugating it, maintaining supply lines, etc., etc.

The generals on both sides committed some appalling blunders. If the South had managed to avoid just a few devastating mistakes, it would have been in a much stronger position to force the North to give up.

If Lincoln had lost the 1864 election (as seemed likely when things were going badly), the war would have been over.

 

You're right that's a totally unfair comparison. It's completely ridiculous to compare a violent regime that viewed other races as subhuman and wanted to subjugate and eventually exterminate them to a violent regime that viewed other races as subhuman and wanted to subjugate them. It's particularly unreasonable a comparison because these days the Stars and Bars have absolutely no connection to the most backwards, racist, homophobic, and otherwise violent and bigoted beliefs on the right.

Seriously guys when the defense is "well they only wanted to enslave rather than exterminate" that's really not much of a defense.

 

The handful of right wing idiots in the south who manage to get media attention are not representative of the south in general.

While there are certain similarities between the Confederacy and the Nazis, the differences are far greater. The southern states formed the Confederacy to defend their rights and secede from the Union, not to take over the USA. The Nazis wanted to take over Europe. Some racist groups in the USA use the Stars & Bars, the German flag, & the swastika as their symbols (I've seen this firsthand, unfortunately), but that doesn't make the limited connections any more valid.

This supports my position that "the South" has every right to be proud of the efforts of the Confederate forces. I'm not saying "the South" should be proud of why the Confederacy was formed and/or what they were fighting for.


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Right wing beliefs are not limited to "the South."

It's unfortunate that some radical groups have chosen the Confederate flag as one of their symbols.

 

Which is why I'd be fine with folks who wanted to commemorate their Southern roots doing if they were to choose any other freaking flag.
It's like many of my gun owning friends who are all about protecting their right to own guns but think the NRA is full of shit.

It's possible to acknowledge that their ancestors were brave, fought against impossible odds, made some amazing military decisions, but may very well have been doing it for the wrong reasons.
Being Irish doesn't mean I'm proud of the Irish Draft Riots in 1863.
The Dixie flag has become something nasty and sullied, it needs to be retired.
There were literally more than a dozen other flags that the Confederacy flew, they should pick one of those.

As to rewriting history, just stop.
They didn't win, They don't get to push their version of how it went.
Sure there were people who were fighting for some nebulous concept of 'we can't let the north push us around'.
But the majority were fighting for 'their way of life' which meant keeping slaves.
The poor folk might not have any but that didn't mean they might not have some in the future if they could just get enough money.
It was like saving up for a tractor.

 

Well said, sir.

 

I strongly recommend reading the cornerstone speech along with other secession related material from the Confederate states. Excuses such as "states rights" and others are modern fantasies, revisionism designed to plaster over a truth which the Confederates were more than willing to admit to explicitly and at substantial length:

 

The belief that the Conderate states had the right to keep slaves and the US had no right to dictate otherwise made it an issues of states rights.

The belief in the inferiority of negroes was not limited to the south; that fallacy was widespread in the US, and in many parts of the world. And lives to this day.

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It's unfortunate that the Confedrate flag has been adopted by so many groups with ignorant beliefs. I see the flag as a part of free speech. If people have the right to display the Stars & Stripes, people also have the right to display the Stars & Bars. People also have the right to "desecrate" those flags to show their disontent.

Should states be allowed to make the Stars & Bars part of their official logos? That's a tough one. Part of me says yes, part of me says no. Example--I would be OK (but not thrilled) if the Conderate flag were an option for license plates, but I absolutely would not be OK with it automatically appearing on license plates.

As others have posted, let the morons who choose to prominantly display the Conderate flag as their symbol of rebellion be judged for what they are: Morons.

 

States have no authority to dictate whether someone can keep slaves. Therefore it was not a states rights issue. Just because it was done, doesn't mean it was the right thing to do. The same thing is happening now with gay marriage. It's not a states right to dictate that. And that is why that choice is being taken away from them.