The Confederate flag ruckus
As a specific controversy, the Confederate flag ruckus doesn’t much interest me, so I haven’t written about it although it seems to be the story du jour. I’m not Southern, and I have absolutely no attachment to the Confederate flag. I’m with Mollie Hemingway when she writes:
For whatever it’s worth, I have no nostalgia for the Confederacy and zero positive feelings for flags that reference the Confederacy…
A lot of the surrounding media-led outrage over the flag seems somewhat cold, given the horror of what last week brought. We had nine black people brutally murdered because they were black and sitting in a church with a history of fighting white supremacy. With all due deference to hatred for a Confederate flag on a pole at the statehouse, this seems like an almost childlike attempt to miss the seriousness of the situation. It’s as if they expect us to say, “Congratulations! You oppose the flag of an army that was defeated 150 years ago. We’re all very proud of you, journalists!” This generation seems to excel at inventing controversies, weighing in on those invented controversies, and then patting itself on the back for being so courageous and open-minded…
Coverage has been oddly partisan ”” and in ways that counter reality ”” as the media rush to make this Confederate flag issue a problem for ”¦ Republicans. Funny how it always, always, always works out that way, isn’t it?…
And now the media are hopping all over the place. Within a few hours they had moved on from their noble campaign of (largely meaningless but whatever) flag justice/posturing/attention in South Carolina to every state but Arkansas [in order to exonerate Clinton they spare Arkansas] that is so tainted…
And then within a few minutes, they had moved on to renaming literally everything.
Hemingway describes suggestions by many writers and pundits that we should rename places that reference Jefferson Davis and even Robert E. Lee. Can reparations for a 150-year-old war be far behind?
Hemingway correctly identifies the impulse to obliterate any sort of respectful reference to any Southern hero of that war as being a leftist one:
Listen, it’s great that we’re aiming to be an anti-racist society. That’s very, very good! But it’s bad that we are slowly forgetting how to dislike something without seeking its utter destruction. Somehow we’ve abandoned the aesthetic of Abraham Lincoln for that of Mao Tse-Tung.
And somehow we’ve substituted symbolic gestures for reality, and self-congratulatory back-patting for constructive action. That’s true across the board, and not just in terms of the Confederate flag display.
[NOTE: In that second paragraph I quote from Hemingway, she writes, “this seems like an almost childlike attempt to miss the seriousness of the situation.” I’m not sure exactly what Hemingway meant when she referenced “the seriousness of the situation,” but this is the way I see its seriousness: it is serious because nine innocent (and exemplary) lives were lost to a racist murderer. It has caused serious anguish and grief. The charges against Roof are as serious and grave as they can be. His punishment should be equally serious, which is why so many people consider the death penalty the only reasonable sentence.
If Roof had been part of an organized group intent on carrying out more such murders, and acting on their behalf, that would have been even more serious (if such a thing be possible), but I see no indication of that. Roof’s actions, as I’ve written before, tell us about Roof, but they don’t tell us much (or rather, they don’t tell us anything) about the motivations of anyone else, nor about anyone else’s plans for the future. We have no idea (although I hope the FBI has an inkling) of how many other Roofs there might be, or how many of them are intent on murder rather than mere talk, and the media certainly isn’t able to tell us.
No doubt there are other racists—and even other neo-Nazis—around in this country and many other countries. But blaming all white people or all Republicans (without even knowing Roof’s politics) is a convenient way to make political hay out of the matter, which I deplore.]
“as the media rush to make this Confederate flag issue a problem for … Republicans.”
That’s all the whole this is about. Since the republicans were not interested in taking the flag bait; they’ve escalated / upped the ante to renaming places.
1. Yeah. Rename Washington & Lee college to Washington & Obama.
Obama believes, in his own mind, that he is right up there with GW. And, of course, both were historic.
2. The Civil War has been over since 1865. The CSA lost. Move one.
3. I find the attention paid to this and the prison break to be more of the bread and circuses pap we get every day.
And today the Senate passed a secret law that is way, way more important to the future of this country than a stupid flag.
Passing the TPA and TPP is way more historic than a flag in SC.
Only sad and disappointed that Sessions didn’t fillibuster the TPA today. Sessions and Sanders would also have been historic.
And where was Rand Paul? Drones or jobs?
Hillary Clinton must be defeated.
Carthage must be destroyed.
The Democrats often have a vengeful streak. When blacks went Republican, they used the KKK to deal with it. When that worked, they then used Jim Crow, since the KKK can’t win Civil War I. They couldn’t make Reconstruction reverse itself, but they could take advantage of it to punish people who they told to get in line, which would be blacks on the plantation or whites in obedience to Dems.
When the South turned away from the Democrats towards Reagan and other people, after finally throwing off the shackles of Democrat economic and political/social control, they were always going to find some way to get back at the South for that. Even if many Southerners still felt loyalty to their Democrat traditions. Usually it’s Sherman that’s an easy way to tell the difference, as well as Lee. Southern Democrats had certain ways of demonizing both figures, although it was often necessary to raise up Lee’s reputation in order to feed Southern patriotism. But while they raised up Lee and others, the Democrat land owners and politicians did everything they could to negate Lee’s work.
If it takes nine dead to remove one Confederate flag the Dems are already into the realm of paying for too much for far too little.
In addition, whoever is making Confederate Flags is going to do a land office business in the next month or so.
I live in Greensboro, NC – the home of The University of North Carolina Greensboro. It seems that the performing arts theatre, Aycock Auditorium, is going to be renamed.Aycock was a governor way back when – known as “the education governor,” hence the auditorium. There is even an Aycock Blvd in town. But, I guess Mr. Aycock was a racist and KKK member. So, bye-bye Aycock anything. It is not settled yet – but I am betting it will be done. Chapel Hill, Duke and Eastern Carolina have removed his name from dorms and buildings. It is very interesting. I think there will be a lot of re-naming done throughout the South in the coming years. I am from Chicago, all my relatives fought for the Union in the CW. I think fondness for the rebel flag is silly. THEY LOST, for what it’s worth.
Janetoo
The Left’s next big push will be to erase from history anyone who didn’t favor gay marriage.
Hoover Dam to be renamed Rock Hudson Dam.
Blow up Mount Rushmore. All four of those white guys were married to women and two of them owned slaves.
No stopping this now.
Cornhead Says:
“No stopping this now.”
It will probably just wind up around elections.
Then again; homelessness is a problem WHENEVER a republican is president… so, I could be wrong.
There is something peculiar about this entire episode, and the drug addled, emotionally needy, physically feeble little miscreant that triggered it.
And yeah, I know some probably feel that we should not stand in contempt of Roof’s humanity just because he is a mentally ill runt – as that kind of social contempt might have been the stance that triggered him in the first place.
But that aside, two observations.
Some attempting to make an even twisted sense of what Roof was claiming asked in another thread why he didn’t go after “gang-bangers” , “in the hood”, if he supposedly wanted to start a race war or get revenge.
As we now know, at least those who glanced at his “manifesto”, that the answer is right there. “Whaaah, I can’t do it on my own” is his excuse. Actual criminal rapists (if they could be found and identified I guess) were too tough a target he said: thereby, anticipating the question which a bewildered public would obviously ask itself, in searching for so much as a programmatic consistency within what he had dementedly claimed.
Next, we notice what might be by now, another expected irony.
In one image, this girl-faced pipe-stem armed pipsqueak jerk-off with a bowl haircut, is wearing a “Gold’s Gym” shirt.
Really: boots, a scowl, and a gym logo, serve as replacements for the hundreds of hours he would otherwise have had to have spent on curls and military presses.
A killer who wages war on Christian women because he is afraid of fighting the men he blames. A boy who wears a gym logo which merely highlights his unfitness.
And this entire issue of desperate and ironic identification, and the emotional neediness of these weakling fantasists and fascists of both collectivist stripes, extends even to the issue of the Confederate battle flag.
In searching for representatives of Confederate evil let’s ignore dubious examples like R.E. Lee with his reluctance to go to war and his not very hidden emancipationist sentiments … and practices.
We search instead for those with whom our murderous twerp could more obviously, if superficially, “identify” as a flag fellow.
Let’s focus instead on someone else associated with the Confederate flag. Someone who was a slave trader, wealthy with plantations, a ruthless killer of men both white and black in battle for “the cause”. A possible KKK member, if not founder, to boot.
Let’s find someone as ruthless in the Southern cause, as close to outright psychotic, as we can get. Yet someone who is not quite disqualified from our analysis by an obvious insanity.
That person would be probably be Nathan Bedford Forrest. He even looks like a natural born killer.
So can our little neo-confederate legitimately claim even Forrest as a template? Can the murderer of elderly Christian ladies at Bible study claim to be following in the footsteps of even a Bedford Forrest? This man Forrest who was a ruthless killer in battle, a slave holder, a slave merchant and in all probability associated with the founding of the Klu Klux Klan – does he provide a role model?
From the notes of the Wiki biography entry for Forrest …
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045160/1875-07-06/ed-1/seq-1/
See the fourth column half way down.
I’m not from the South and I, too, have no affinity or animosity for the Confederate flag. It means nothing to me. However, I was in the military and I believe that that flag stands primarily for military courage, resolve in the face of overwhelming odds, audacity and valor in the face of lost causes. Those have always been near and dear to a large contingent of our society. Most of those that fought under that flag couldn’t afford slaves or much else, but they could fight and fight bravely in a “war of Northern aggression” (as a friend always corrected me) As in most wars, philosophies were the realm of the politicianss. Bleeding and dying were the realm of the common soldier, and that’s what is revered in the flag.
The great flag flap of 2015. How long before they deface or remove the thousands of Confederate-dead memorials that grace town squares all over the South? Or blow up –Taliban style– the bas relief on Stone Mountain?
Reminds me of the defacement of the cartouches and busts of Amenhotep IV (King Tut’s dad, aka Akenaten) after the Atenist heresy circa 1350 BC.
“The more things change”, indeed. Mass hysteria gotta hysterify, I guess.
I, on the other hand have a nostalgia, and nothing but positive feelings, for the Confederacy and its flags. For that which moved them was precisely that which moved the colonial men to throw off the yoke that bound them and fulfill a desire to live free just four score and seven years previous. Why should the Stars and Bars not stand for that noble cause instead of slavery or hatred of blacks? Does the American Stars and Stripes not invoke a memory of slavery and the slave trade? Does the State flag of New York stand for the Irish riots and killing of blacks during the War between the States?
The unremitting, and for it largely successful effort to negate the all of the past, is all of a point to indict and find guilty the present love or admiration for the country. Not only will I not play by their rules, I’ll not play that game. There where it is appropriate — the South — let that flag fly freely beneath the Stars and Stripes. And a pox on any damned yankee Republican, or conservative, who kowtows.
One of the reasons there are so many memorials to Confederate dead is that it was part of the healing process. The defeated army was allowed to return home with some dignity, and their bravery honored. What would things have been like after the war if the victors were allowed to rub the south’s nose in it? Reconstruction was bad enough without turning every Confederate into a war criminal. In today’s cultural revolution there is no past and all must conform to the party line.
Paradigm shift.
I would like to add, I recently read the EXCELLENT book “Rebel Yell” about Stonewall Jackson of Lexington VA (a lovely little town that Houses VMA and Washington and Lee University.) It is an excellent book that really goes beyond the cliff notes version of the Civil War. Stonewall was NOT an ardent lover of slavery, but he was a lover of Virginia (as was Lee.) He left no writings about his feelings concerning slavery. I think he owned at most, 6 slaves but only purchased 2 (?) who actually REQUESTED he purchase them, because he was considered a good man. The rest came with his wife. So, anyone who needs a more complex look at the reasons for the CW and why men like Jackson and Lee fought for the Confederacy, might be interested in Rebel Yell.
This man Forrest who was a ruthless killer in battle, a slave holder, a slave merchant and in all probability associated with the founding of the Klu Klux Klan — does he provide a role model?
Most of those that fought under that flag couldn’t afford slaves or much else, but they could fight and fight bravely in a “war of Northern aggression”
That’s the propaganda the Democrats used to drum up war suppot, yes. Just as the Left used “No War for Oil” as their battle cry when attacking American veterans. Whatever Democrats use to stoke up support, has little to do with reality, more to do with the reality they want to make true. The one they force on others through malignant narcissism and totalitarian authoritarianism.
This goes back to the whole Nazi, Islamic JIhad, and moderate Democrat question. How many Germans, Muslims, and Democrats are guilty of war crimes merely because their leaders are Nazis, Jihadists, Leftists, etc?
The standard for Democrat Southerners were the same. The good people weren’t in charge. They were just the ones like Lee and Stonewall who had to fight and suffer for the Leadership.
The Battle Flag of Robert E Lee, aka the Confederate Flag, was used twice. Once in the 20st century, when Southern Democrats needed to stoke up patriotism and racial hate for outsiders, in order to raise up the new era of the KKK in Byrd’s Kleagle filled era of the 1920-1940s. It was used also in the 19th century, during the actual war. Individuals have used them throughout, but these two periods were the remarkable ones.
So basically the Democrat racists appropiated Lee’s work. Just as they appropriated Bedford Forrest’s KKK. Forrest was only interested in making a white fraternity of knights to maintain order, security, and help Reconstruction. It wasn’t supposed to be about waging guerilla warfare on Union soldiers, attacking whites, or attacking black Republicans. It wasn’t about lynching people or making sure whites obeyed their Democrat plantation lords, that never had to be drafted in the war for slavery. The Democrats appropriated it, and later on they had to make sure Bedford’s reputation was tarnished in order for the new Wizards of the KKK to take over.
Much of Democrat Southerners blame Northerns for this, while the North also had Democrats. Like Lincoln’s VP. The North also had slave rings. Perhaps because they also had Democrats? The Democrats were of one mind on this, and yet they blame Northern Republicans only, not Northern Democrats. It speaks of much.
It won’t be enough for people to love Confederate history. They also must hate the cause of the suffering during Reconstruction, who caused the war, and who betrayed the Southern people. The reason is simple. The Democrats and Leftists today, won’t allow you to do anything else. You are either with them or against them. And if you are with Robert E Lee, Stonewall, or Nathan Bedford forrest, are you with the Democrat racists of 20th century too? No? Then people have some thinking to do.
It is Washington & Obama University.
Those white privileged alums of that racist school in VA had better atone and rename that school after our historic first half-black president. Obama is also our best president as he brought us out of a recession in two years just like RWR did. BHO also defeated ISIS. But his most important achievement was healing the racial divide and bringing us together. He was also especially adroit at brining in 30m illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America. George Washington couldn’t caddy for Barack!
John Oh is right. See this post at the Corner by David French.
And now I see that the vandalism is already well underway:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/06/blacklivesmatter-radicals-vandalize-confederate-statues-in-baltimore-texas-and-south-carolina/
“Coverage has been oddly partisan”
Oddly? You mean expected dont you?
“Listen, it’s great that we’re aiming to be an anti-racist society. That’s very, very good! But it’s bad that we are slowly forgetting how to dislike something without seeking its utter destruction.”
None of these liberal exercises in…exorcism will bring about anything but more intolerance, not less. Bet on it.
“Ymarsakar Says:
June 23rd, 2015 at 4:15 pm
‘This man Forrest who was a ruthless killer in battle, a slave holder, a slave merchant and in all probability associated with the founding of the Klu Klux Klan — does he provide a role model?’ [for Roof]
Most of those that fought under that flag couldn’t afford slaves or much else …”
You did follow the link and read Forrest’s speech?
“as the media rush to make this Confederate flag issue a problem for … Republicans.”
“That’s all the whole this is about.” SLR
Certainly that is a factor but my perception is that the media’s motivation serves a deeper purpose; support for the left’s ongoing assertion that America (whites) is still a racist nation with far more repentance and reparations owed to non-whites.
IMO, the media’s obsession with this tragedy is all about the opportunity it presents to instill that meme ever deeper within the public’s subconscious assumptions.
I rhetorically asked if Roof could any more legitimately wrap himself in the Confederate battle flag as a way of justifying or aligning his murderous intentions, than he could make himself into the athlete or power lifter he obviously was not, by simply donning a gym shirt?
I then came up with the most ardent and militant Confederate warrior I could think of on this side of sanity or guerrilla irregulars: Nathan Bedford Forrest.
After all, some might say that Lee was a reluctant Confederate, an emancipationist at heart, and not a true “confederate”. Saying that Lee would have obviously condemned Roof’s actions as evil as well as inconsistent with the South’s values as he understood them, might be waved away by the skeptic. Lee was only a provisional, or conditional Confederate they might argue: Not a full blooded representative of the real Confederacy at its most militant.
It is unlikely that anyone would say that about Forrest. He was obviously wholehearted, and ruthless in his cause. He had lived and breathed and profited by slavery.
Could Roof then, who wrapped himself in the Confederate flag, and murdered elderly Christian ladies because they were black, claim to be following at least say, a Confederate such as Forrest?
The link, originally from Wikipedia, led to this from The Memphis Daily, of July 6 1875.
The upshot is this. You don’t have to care a hoot about the Confederacy. You don’t have to respect its flag. You don’t even have to believe in the adequacy of Bedford’s remarks as reported at the racial reconciliation meeting, nor in his unequivocal sincerity.
All you have to do in order to recognize the absurdity of viewing Roof as anything but a delusional loser, is to look at the historical facts.
Of course that may be too much to ask in a culture were probably one in four is at some point in their lives mentally or emotionally unbalanced.
The murders in Charleston likely had little do with the Confederate flag, a distance cause. The psychotic break was more likely triggered by a near cause, institutional discrimination, including class diversity policy that denigrates individual dignity, and civil rights organizations that have a noticeably pro-choice or selective outlook. His consumption of psychotropic drugs only contributed to nursing his cognitive dissonance. The noise from the public and private social complex is an effort to obfuscate their role in creating moral hazards. The prejudiced reporting of the Press serves to amplify and displace culpability. Establishment of a pro-choice State religion has far-reaching consequences.
N, it’s basically a case of what the Left said about blowback, how Israelis and Americans create AQ terrorists by our policies.
Except they were really talking about themselves, the Left creating terrorists and domestic terrorists like in Charleston.
So having created the problem, they now immediately step up and say “we need more power to fix this problem”. See how that works?
Forrest is considered a war hero by Southerners proud of their heritage. However, that doesn’t mean the Democrats up South or North, felt the same.
The power players needed to get rid of him and his influence. That’s because most Southern plantation owners were in support of the Democrat cause to expand slavery to all 57 states (so to speak). Most Southern plantation owners were free from the draft, so their interests were the ones the war was fought for, but they didn’t have to shed blood for it.
Forrest was too much of an exception.
His superior officers and the state Governor Isham G. Harris were surprised that someone of Forrest’s wealth and prominence had enlisted as a soldier, especially since major planters were exempted from service.
Ya hear that? Bunch of White Southerners fought a war to expand slavery, when they didn’t own slaves, so that the slave owners didn’t have to shed blood.
Does that sound like a patriotic cause to you?
It sounds more like a Democrat war to me.
You did follow the link and read Forrest’s speech?
I was more addressing the second part of that quote, which came from a different person. There wasn’t any breaks in the bold to signify that however.
I was going to address the Forrest issue later, in the same sense as the Southern perspective of war heroes. After the initial paragraphs, I started writing about Forrest then.
I’ve been a Northerner all my life, and I am livid about these damn Communists and their efforts to erase history.
After they finish banning the Confederate flag and pulling down the statues at the war memorials, do you suppose they’ll turn their attention to banning the Communist flag, or Che T-shirts? No? Wonder why?
The Left now completely dominates American culture, and they are feeling their oats.
The gloves are off now. They are openly totalitarian and don’t care who knows it. Between the Confederate flag and wedding cakes, they are telling us in no uncertain terms that we had better knuckle under or else.
You cannot convince me that this will not end in bloodshed, either civil war or death camps.
Several years ago I was driving through town and was astounded to see a black man in a Confederate uniform walking along hoisting a Confederate flag. I slammed on the brakes, made a quick U-turn, and got out to speak with the man. I just had to hear why he was doing that.
Turned out it was H.K. Edgarton. We spoke for a few moments and it was an honor to shake his hand.
The focus on the confederate flag is stepping stone to the real goal- reparations for slavery. I expect within a day of the southern states retreat on the flag calls for reparations to start in earnest again. I expect Obama himself will bring it up.
Reparations? How many trillions of dollars have been spent on Great Society programs over the past 50 years?
Maybe they should have just called it “reparations” instead of “welfare”.
Today, sales of the Stars and Bars zoomed. Until Amazon, eBay, Wal-Mart and Sears ALL stopped selling today. In orchestrated unison.
Fascism is not coming. It is here, it has arrived.
Barack will be proud. You suckas have been changed!
Great piece Neo. Nine grace filled lives in exchange for a flag controversy is a sorry reflection on all of us. Let’s remember the victims’ Christ like charism to seek healing, and . . . emulate. Why, when the circumstance calls for spiritual reflection and renewal, do our elites ramp up their efforts to score political points instead?
As Shelby Foote pointed out in the PBS series “The Civil War,” only TWO percent of all white Southerners owned slaves (and 9,000 blacks). So the Southerners in the army Did Not Fight “For Slavery.”
They fought for the South’s independence — for their freedom.
/sigh
The Leftists on Facebook are spewing an unhinged amount of hatred for their favorite group to despise — white Southerners. We are their designated whipping boys, the object of their daily Two Minutes Hate sessions. They’re baying for our blood.
It’s a kind of mob outrage/hysteria that we have seen whenever a group that has been treated as subhuman has a member that goes rogue and kills — this gives the power cohort an excuse to attack the entire “subhuman” group. I’m sure various historical examples will come to mind.
Here’s another factoid for you: some Ivy Leaguers (who were no doubt cruelly disappointed by their findings) found out that, of the entire Atlantic slave trade, the share of British North America was — wait for it — 6.45 PERCENT. That’s just over SIX percent, folks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Slave_market_regions_and_participation
So why aren’t we kicking the stuffing out of the French, Spanish, and Portuguese?
Yeah, I know. They aren’t the Officially Subhuman Enemies.
U.S. slavery was much worse than in Latin America, primarily because U.S. slaves were considered chattel, while that was not the case in Latin America. From the introduction to Slavery by Stanley Elkins:
Here’s a cross-posting from over at Harry’s Place:
_____
It is widely accepted that about 400,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in combat against the communists from 1954-1975, roughly half the number of NVA and VC KIAs… and approximately four times the number of Confederate Army combat deaths, 1860-1865.
Prior to the shameful abandonment and inevitable collapse in 1975 of our ally– for better or for worse– the Republic of Viet Nam (undeniably abetted in great part by US antiwar activists), quite understandably there were many, many large ARVN military cemeteries and memorials distributed throughout the territory of South Vietnam. No doubt some of those memorials were to the estimated 60,000 civilians in the South assassinated for ideological reasons by communist death squads: also generally accepted as true.
After 1975, the communist regime systematically defaced, wrecked, and desecrated all of them on a priority basis. I’ve seen that first hand. Is this now the preferred strategy of our Progressive betters for dealing with the veneration of Confederate dead in the US southland 150 years after the Civil War ended?
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Children are much more pliable than the educated…
Democrat US Slavery is what I call Slavery 2.0
Old Testament Slavery, Spartan Helots, or Greek slavery, that was Slavery 1.0
So the Southerners in the army Did Not Fight “For Slavery.”
They fought for the South’s independence – for their freedom.
Freedom from what, the Confederate Democrat politicians? They weren’t free from that. They weren’t free from the KKK that ruled in Reconstruction either.
Fighting for the South’s independence requires that they kill the traitors in the South, not fight a distracted war against Northerners.
When people are part of a fascist, slave caste system based on Slavery 2.0, a political system that seeks to export this to all the US states and territories, it’s going to be like Cubans and Iranians “fighting for freedom” by backing Castro and Khomeini.
That’s not going to result in freedom of anyone. And in fact, it didn’t result in freedom, at all, for Cuba and Iran.
The worth of a cause people fight for often depends on the goodness or evil of their leaders. If Washington had become a dictator worse than King George, it would have tarnished the efforts of his men.
The South fought for slavery because they were tools of the aristocracy, the Democrat politicians and land owners. They didn’t get a say in much of anything, the landless whites.
There’s no way people can explain how land owners were exempted from the draft and the service, while landless whites had to fight a war based around slavery. And it was about slavery because almost every Southern state seceded using slavery as one of the reasons for it. That’s not something that can be so easily attributed to Northerners or Republicans.
The Democrats got a bunch of patriots killed in US Civil War I, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, and soon to be, Civil War II.
Sounds like Democrats all right. Demoncrats even.
Now they’re going to deface the war memorials and get rid of the patriots once and for all. You’re in their way. Their child molestors want free access to children, not even Cuba can supply enough for Leftists.
Once they get you killed, they then ensure that what you fought for was in vain. To crush your spirit. That’s their SOP more or less. It’s something they’ve always been doing. They just got larger when they became part of the Leftist alliance.
“the impulse to obliterate” is the entire point of PC-fascism of Gleichschaltung! to remake mankind over into an unthinking collective robot – no need for any difference! No evolved culture, no messy (or objectionable) rootedness in the past.
This is the totalitarian “thinking” of the Left in action.
First they want you to hide and disdain the Confederate Battle flag; then they will want you to do the same with US flags; and then with those evil slave owning Founders.* (I see that Rush Limbaugh has also caught on to this fascist game of guilt by association.)
Thus, let me share with Letter to The Editor – please share and repost:
“The ‘Stars and Bars’ flag hissy fit in SC reminds me of a story.
“There once was a war. During the war, an American soldier committed a horrifying massacre of the locals. Therefore, in shame, all of the Americans decided to hide away their US flags – forever.
“Of course, this story would never happen in real life, could it?
“This scary power of a talisman over one-hundred and fifty years old has inspired me to adopt the ‘Stars and Bars’ flag as my own symbol, in everything
“Anything evoking such irrational bigotry from the PC-Left is a powerful force – and one I want to show-off as guiding my life of dissent from conventional herd-minded stupidity.
“It has powerful juju!”
__________
*Oops! It’a already happened, Cf, CNN
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-23/cnn-goes-there-asks-if-thomas-jefferson-memorials-should-be-removed-because-he-owned
Ann (above) cites Slavery by Stanley Elkins. Elkins paints the American slave experience as if it were all uniform in the US South. ALL harsh and sadistic and cruel (like the most recent movie on the subject.)
WRONG.It wasn’t. It varied a lot from state to state and from North to Deep South within states.
I’ve studied the origins of the Civil War at a Southern state university. And whenever broad stripes like Elkins are painted, you know you’re being fed “BUY THIS BRIDGE FROM BROOKLIN!” lines of gullibility.
The subject of the Old South is complex. And nuanced. If an author doesn’t admit that straight-up, then he (or she) is not being honest with you.
WRONG.It wasn’t. It varied a lot from state to state and from North to Deep South within states.
It’s still Slavery 2.0
Just because it varies like socialism varies between fascism and democracy, what does that actually mean now a days? It doesn’t mean much.
The South lost 150 years ago, so move on, suck it up. WRONG. That sounds like the English after they repeatedly defeated the Irish. I live in the South and it is my heritage and culture. The symbols of the war are my heritage and remind me of who I am, and my family, and my land. I was having lunch with a group of physicians and we discussed this issue. To a man, they feel that the South is an occupied country and that we desire our freedom. If you are deluded enough to feel that the US is free, then I have a padded room for you. The country is actually being manipulated by one 21 year old nut. He is a sociopath and knew exactly what to do. He sat the stage and he knows the outcome. He knows that with what he did and the reaction that was predictable, he would cause the powers to put pressure on symbols, those who are not right with the world will then feel that pressure and act out like this young man did. So, go ahead, kill our culture. But expect consequences.
Neo: “But blaming all white people or all Republicans (without even knowing Roof’s politics) is a convenient way to make political hay out of the matter, which I deplore.”
They don’t hide that they’re oriented on social justice.
Deploring their tack doesn’t change that the activist game is the only social cultural/political game there is.
The hysterical mob behavior of the left/Democrats on this issue confirms Ann Coulter’s thesis in Demonic about how the left operates.
The removal of all references to events in the past is totalitarian. The Soviet Union regularly airbrushed people out of photographs as they fell out of favor. The novel “1984” dealt with the institutional rewriting of history.
And of course the Republicans refuse to make their own points here. They should be letting the public know that all these flags were put up by the Democrat party. They are too weak and feckless.
“Ann Says:
June 23rd, 2015 at 11:27 pm
That’s a rather remarkable presentation, considering the fact that the overwhelming numbers of slaves imported into the New World in order to labor in mines, cane fields and latifundia went to places other than North America.
As Beverly pointed out the vast majority of the millions of Africans exported to the New World, went south of the Southern U.S.
Now as far as Brazil goes. this news of the paradisaical conditions enjoyed by slaves in Brazil is news to me, despite having sat through classes on South America taught by Jesuit specialists who had lived there.
Just what years or documents regarding Brazil Glazer is referring to is not shown in the link. Slaves in Brazil had notably shorter lifespans than slaves in the US and contrary to the situation here, did not maintain or increase their own numbers. Apparently constant imports, numbering in the millions were necessary to replace those who had died laboring in the cane fields.
What the Church or Portuguese king commanded on the one hand and what was actually practiced on the other, might two different things entirely.
From: http://seattlecentral.edu/faculty/gtamblyn/african_american_timelines/aatimeline
No one, neither apologists for the institution, nor those still emotionally wrought up over chattel slavery will find the following material satisfying, but here it is, nonetheless:
With actual historical documentation – the good, the bad, and the ugly – so readily available, I find it amazing that so much emotional heat results all the same.
For those here upset that I referred to Stanley Elkins’ study of slavery that said slavery was worse in a fundamental way in the U.S., I ask that you ponder the difference in these two pictures and still say you disagree with Elkins:
–In the U.S., a slave’s children could be sold, his marriage was not recognized, his wife could be violated or sold.
–In Brazil, the slave could legally marry, his family could not be broken up for sale, and the freedom of infants could often be purchased for a small sum at the baptismal font.
Rather than refocusing on emotions again, you could probably do everyone a favor by addressing just when exactly, and how it was, that slaves in Brazil actually enjoyed all of those benefits and rights, when the historical record seems to indicate that they lived very hard and short lives and were imported by the millions, as replacements, for just that reason.
To the best of my knowledge the Catholic Church argued that the Indians of Mexico and the Caribbean, reduced to either slavery or peonage, had souls and were fully human. For what that was historically worth in practice.
Ah, good old … Brazil
Perhaps the music above will serve as a pleasant background … a watercolor of Brazil
Aquarela do Brasil
White supremacists are more dangerous than jihadists according to Seattle Times writer Scott Shane.
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/homegrown-radicals-more-deadly-than-jihadis-in-us/
Slaves in Brazil had notably shorter lifespans than slaves in the US
And so did everyone else in Brazil. A breakdown from A Concise History of Brazil published in 2014: “Recent data reveal that the life expectancy of a male slave born in 1872 [in Brazil] was somewhere around 20 years. That of the population at large was 27.4 years. A male slave born in the United States around 1850 had a life expectancy of 35.5 years.” For the white population in the U.S. in 1850, life expectancy was 40 years of age.
Yeah, that whole life expectancy thing. Since the Portuguese cared so much for the slaves’ spiritual welfare, I wonder if they were baptized before they were worked to death.
Enjoy
How fortunate we are to live in a world where unlike those racist Norteamericanos, some cultures at least, are so exquisitely sensitive to the humanity of the “other”, and produce such wonderful fruits of the human spirit, like Carnival, and Frida Kahlo, and the Irish Parliament.
To a man, they feel that the South is an occupied country and that we desire our freedom.
They wanted their freedom from Democrats so badly, why didn’t they kill off the occupation? The KKK was able to do it in Reconstruction, so who was occupying the South afterwards?
With apartheid in South Africa, natives and black slaves in America, Japan also had a similar history they tend to get pressured on. Which is to provide blackmail payments for WWII.
From an outsider perspective, it’s not their problem so they think it’s a good idea.
Is it a good idea for people now a days to pay reparations for what their ancestors did or idnd’t do?
It’s a power play. It’s a power play by China. It’s a power play by Democrat propagandists. And people are too blind to see it. It’s always somebody else’s problem, until it isn’t.
It’s funny that everyone on the left can attribute the shooting to the battle flag, but that no one seems to imagine that all the media attention given to the riots, Al Sharpton, and Black Lives Matter demos might not have had an effect on Roof. I don’t presume to be able to read such a screwed up mind.
Gateway Pundit is now saying that some are now asking that military bases such as Fort Hood also have their names changed. It will never end.
My great grandfather was awarded the Medal of Honor for capturing one of those battle flags at Five Forks, so I have no emotional ties to the symbol. I do however resent deeply that the left is trying to pin its connection to racism on Republicans and conservatives.
ymarsakar,
What in the world are you talking about??? The KKK killed off the occupation by Federal troops, hardly. Federal troops were in our area until 1876 at which time a political compromise was worked out. If you followed politics and demographics you would see that the South has been kept perpetually poor. Yes, that is true, here in Louisiana the Feds prevent us from taxing fossil fuels taken from our land and it has really set the state back. This despite the fact that other states can tax. In my life time, I have seen several times were Federal troops were sent into the state. Besides, our politicians are bought and paid for by their national parties and play to their tune, no matter what we do to elect something decent. I have read much of the conflict in Ireland, and feel that we face something similar.
The Civil War was fought over slavery. Period.
The Missouri Compromise
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Bleeding Kansas
John Brown
Ordinance of Secession of South Carolina and invitation to other southern states to form “a Confederacy of Slaveholding States.”
“So this is the little woman who started the great war.” (Apocryphal, but reflects the spirit of the day.)
“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 judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
It does not matter that few Southerners, and even fewer Confederate soldiers owned slaves. That’s what they were fighting for.
You want to say the Confederate flag is about honor, about the rights of free men, you go right ahead. You want to have statues and memorials, go right ahead. But fly the Confederate flag? I’m a Republican:
The Union forever! Hurrah boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitor, up with the star;
While we rally ’round the flag, boys
Rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
It’s a traitor’s flag. It should be struck down.
As most sane people know, the confederate battle flag offered just about as much historical validation and genuine cover for Roof’s actions, as Roof’s appropriation of a Gold’s Gym shirt did for his puny physique.
But alas, you cannot count on an a modern liberal to distinguish between sanity and insanity, causality and fantasy, or even much care.
Gay marriage, outright Obamacare fascism in the form of the “individual shared mandate” coercion and redistribution of life energies …
and, Wickard V Filburn as Neo so acutely pointed out.
What’s our flag stand for, again?
Although I have an academic background in history as well as philosophy, the history I had read was mostly legal and intellectual, or political and economic history, rather than social history.
I’ve been reading a good deal of American history in the form of letters, and diaries, and biographies … something I never had any interest in, nor appetite for, in the past.
I still don’t like it, but it is highly informative.
And what I have learned is that many of “the best people” the most esteemed figures, on the right side of our history, were goddamned moral miscreants and hypocrites with the pride of Satan and the murderous malice of Stalin.
They belong in Hell, along with the fictional Simon Lagree and the real John Brown
Slavery was a moral abomination. Unfortunately so were many of the most highly regarded, motivated, and partisan of the Unionists.
Just try getting through, “The Most Famous Man in America” who was far from the worst, or the writings of Wendell Phillips, without puking.
No wonder McClellan would have liked it if both South Carolina and Washington DC were destroyed.
Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think the Confederate flag had anything to do with the little punk’s motivation, anymore than I think Son of Sam’s dog had anything to do with his killing spree. Now if he had said cats, that would have been a different story!