Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Confederate Flag Controversy

I don't know much about this topic, but all of the stores dropping the flag seems extreme.  Though I agree it should be removed from the SC State Building.  Thoughts?

CNN Flag Still Flies
CNN Businesses Drop the Stars and Bars
CNN Suspects Radicalization
CNN Flag Myths vs Facts

21 comments:

jerrye92002 said...

it's not ON the capitol building. It's near a memorial on the capitol grounds. The problem with taking it down is that once you accede to one wacko liberal demand, they're right there with another one even more outlandish. I think SC should establish a commission on the subject and be required to find those three or four actual South Carolinians offended by this historical artifact. Then make a decision, say, early 2017.

Anonymous said...

Stores don't want to be in business with the confederacy. They quite reasonably think it's bad for business.

"It's near a memorial on the capitol grounds. The problem with taking it down is that once you accede to one wacko liberal demand, they're right there with another one even more outlandish."

I guess what liberals worry about is that once you accede to on conservative wacko demand, in this case, to display the confederate flag on the statehouse grounds, they will soon come up with something even more outlandish.

--Hiram

Anonymous said...

The odd thing is: the flag was never used as a symbol by the Confederate States. It did not become a popular symbol of the Confederacy until the 1950s after the SCOTUS desegregated public schools and its use by the KKK.

Now, it may be that people see it as a symbol of Southern heritage, but its rise in popularity coinciding with protests against integration make it just another symbol of racism.

Tell me again why it should be allowed to fly on government land.

Silly Conservatives.

Joel

Sean said...

I can't imagine why a state government would fly this flag. Let's face it, the "Southern heritage" it represents is "white Southern heritage". It's just sad that it took this tragedy to make this finally clear to a lot of folks.

jerrye92002 said...

How about we ban the flying of the US flag, as long as we're at it? After all, for most of our first 100 years, all of the US was a slave-holding nation. This seems like an attempt to erase a part of history. Condemning Republicans and conservatives for it is even stranger, considering that Abe Lincoln was a Republican, Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act, and Democrats ran the South for most of the Jim Crow/KKK years.

And I'm curious about this claim that this was not the flag of the CSA. If not, what was it; not sure I've ever seen it displayed.

I'm sorry, this has to be called a hysterical over-reaction having no bearing on the tragedy which it supposedly addresses. That flag did not cause the wanton murder of 9 people. History is fixed, and nothing we do now can change it.

Anonymous said...

How about we ban the flying of the US flag, as long as we're at it?

If you want to ban the US flag, make an argument for it. As for erasing history, hasn't this issue meant more, not less, discussion of our past?

As for what the flat of the CSA was, I don't know. The purists seem to be referring to what I would regard as the CSA flag as the Confederate battle flag. Maybe that didn't have a generally accepted flag.

I view this sort of thing as an hysterical under reaction to what happened in South Carolina. Taking down the flag is the symbolism politicians and media resort to in lieu of doing something substantive. It's a negative opiate for the masses.

--Hiram

Anonymous said...

"How about we ban the flying of the US flag, as long as we're at it?"

It is the flag of our nation. Why would we ban it? That any state would fly a symbol of secession, of the desire to not be part of the USA, makes very little sense.

"And I'm curious about this claim that this was not the flag of the CSA. If not, what was it; not sure I've ever seen it displayed."

It's amazing what you can find out if you care to educate yourself. The CSA had three official flags, none of which are what we know as the confederate flag today. This confederate flag was actually the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.

While I agree that the hysteria over this confederate flag is cover for actually doing something about the racial problems in this country, the flag is nothing short of a symbol of hatred and racism.

Joel

jerrye92002 said...

"It is the flag of our nation. Why would we ban it? That any state would fly a symbol of secession, of the desire to not be part of the USA, makes very little sense."

We would ban it because America was a slave nation for all of its history, up to the point of the [un]Civil War. We should not be flying it because it is a symbol of secession from Great Britain, by your same logic. What is really sad about the Civil War, aside from the horrendous atrocities committed by Northern troops, is that slavery was on its way to becoming an economic burden and would have eventually disappeared "naturally."

The flag is nothing short of a recognition of an important time in history. Attaching hatred and racism to it is a personal choice made by haters and racists or, in this case, by those who prefer symbolic opposition to symbolically strut their presumed moral superiority.

Oh, and by the way, it WAS one of the three official flags of the CSA, according to my sources. It was the one adopted by the KKK, too, and that is a legitimate argument, but you can lay that at the feet of Democrats, too. The KKK were also a part of history. Can we afford to just wipe our memories of that, too?

Anonymous said...


"We would ban it because America was a slave nation for all of its history, up to the point of the [un]Civil War."

Why do you find this argument convincing? Wasn't the US flag, the one that the army that destroyed the Confederacy fought under? The army that ultimately freed the slaves?

--Hiram

Sean said...

No one is suggesting we forget the history of the CSA or KKK. Most people have just come to the rational opinion that just that we shouldn't celebrate it.

John said...

I guess the right thing is happening. The silly state that chose to keep it up for a century has finally learned that it has negative connotations and is making the choice to take it down.

More power to them.

John said...

It was a good example of State rights standing up to the Feds. The Feds won the war and the States were still allowed to fly the flag.

Jerry,
We do not ban the US flag because we learned from our mistakes and won the war. Whereas the racist Confederates lost the war, and likely did not learn that every man and woman deserves freedom and equality. Not just those who look and believe as they do.

Anonymous said...

What generally seems to be the case is that the displays of the Confederate flag we have been talking about go back more to 1961 than 1865.

--Hiram

Anonymous said...

"Oh, and by the way, it WAS one of the three official flags of the CSA, according to my sources."

Name your sources. I haven't found one that shows it as one of the three official flags of the CSA.

Joel

Sean said...

The stars-and-bars are in the canton of two of the three official CSA flags. But even so, that doesn't make any sort of argument in favor of flying it on government property.

Unknown said...

Since the shooting incident I have come to see the confederate flag as more hateful and racist symbol than I did previously. My son came to have one hanging in his room at the fraternity a few years ago, which we didn't object to strongly enough to persuade him to take it down. (I think to him it was sort of funny to be displaying it.) If he still had it today I am quite sure it wouldn't be displayed.

Anyway, I think removing it from the state capital is the right thing to do.

John said...

My memories of the Stars and Bars...

John said...

The Atlantics Version of Flag History

jerrye92002 said...

WHO is this "we" that "won the war"??? I was in Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 4th, 1976, and for the first time in 100 years they saw fit to celebrate the holiday. If you knew of the terrible suffering inflicted by the Northern Armies under Grant there, you would know that nobody "won" anything, and the claims of moral superiority over slavery did not justify the moral depravity of the Northern armies.

And about that war...
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." -- A. Lincoln

Anonymous said...

A quote from Lincoln first inaugural address, I see, when Lincoln was still trying to avoid the made inevitable by Southern secession. Here is part of what Lincoln said four years later:
" If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.""

--Hiram

Sean said...

One only need read the declarations of Secession to determine if the war was about slavery or not.

Here's the first two sentences of Georgia's:

"The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery."

Here's the first two sentences of Mississippi's:

"In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."

South Carolina:

"The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right."

Texas waits slightly longer to get to the slavery issue:

"The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then *a free, sovereign and independent nation* [emphasis in the original], the annexation of the latter to the former, as one of the co-equal states thereof,

The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. "

Virginia:

"The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States."