A Thread For Posts About The Confederate Battle Flag...

[MajGenl.Meade]

And I'm still waiting for a sensible answer (other than "it symbolizes secession") to the question as to what Southern culture and heritage is symbolized by the Confederate battle flag.

So far, all the people who can't recognize a picture of Sherman and name two War of the Rebellion battles appear too dumb to answer that question either.

[Joe Guy]

My god Joe your got to be the smartest guy on the board.

My got is what....?

Have you ever notices how seldom the question mark is used here; no need to ask questions when one already has all the answers.

I notices that you didn't use a question mark in that question.

And to answer your question: Just because your user name is Guy does mean I am referring to you.

It does? So you are insulting my entire family, including my three sons, (Joe Jr, Joe Jr II & Joe Jr III) daughter, (Josephine) wife, (Joline) and my cat, (Jojo)? Not to mention my mother, (Joe Mama) and father, (Giuseppe Guy)?

My comment was direct towards the Communist oriented Yankee swine that burned your flag during he cold war. I am sure there are still plenty of them around.

I still have my flag, so it wasn't burned. And I agree that there are sure still plenty of them around.

[liberty]

And I'm still waiting for a sensible answer (other than "it symbolizes secession") to the question as to what Southern culture and heritage is symbolized by the Confederate battle flag.

So far, all the people who can't recognize a picture of Sherman and name two War of the Rebellion battles appear too dumb to answer that question either.

The battle flag was never the emblem of any nation; it was incorporated into the second national confederate flag and a similar design was later adopted by the confederate navy. But the battle flag itself is and has all been the soldiers banner. It represents honor, loyalty to unit and people and dedication to duty. In my opinion, not bad qualities in nation of hell no we won‘t go.

Unlike the US flag the battle flag never flew over a Yankee slave ship or a slave auction.

And for the record; slavery was evil because evil is the end result when one has total control of another; something that did not bother liberals when Communism was on the march.

The end

[Econoline]

Yeah, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter all surrendered to the U.S.S.R., one after the other. Wasn't until Saint Ronnie that anybody ever thought of doing anything...

As for the CBF, it is not the flag of a nation, or an army, or a navy, or a state, or a political movement. Near as I can figure, it seems to be the flag of a religion--a false religion, based on lies.

Lost Cause Religion
Original entry by David S. Williams, University of Georgia, 05/15/2005
Last edited by NGE Staff on 03/06/2015

Near the end of the Civil War (1861-65), women from Columbus began to care for soldiers' graves. One of them, Lizzie Rutherford, proposed an annual observance to decorate graves, inaugurating Confederate Memorial Day. Thirty years later one of the Columbus women compared their work to that of Mary Magdalene and the other women who came to Christ's grave. This seems overblown, but is really apt, for what the women in Columbus were engaged in was no less than a new form of southern religion. Historians refer to this as Lost Cause religion, which was interdenominational and functioned as a culture religion.

The term Lost Cause is not a modern invention but was used by southerners immediately after the war. Many scholars attribute the term to the Virginia journalist Edward A. Pollard and his postwar books, including The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (1866). The Lost Cause concept supplied a heroic interpretation of the war so that southerners could maintain their sense of honor. As Georgian Clement Evans, a war veteran, put it, "If we cannot justify the South in the act of Secession, we will go down in History solely as a brave, impulsive but rash people who attempted in an illegal manner to overthrow the Union of our Country." The assertion of the Lost Cause was the solution.

The argument of the Lost Cause insists that the South fought nobly and against all odds not to preserve slavery but entirely for other reasons, such as the rights of states to govern themselves, and that southerners were forced to defend themselves against Northern aggression. When the idea of a Southern nation was defeated on the battlefield, the vision of a separate Southern people, with a distinct and noble cultural character, remained. The term culture religion refers to ideals that a given group of people desire to strengthen or restore, and Lost Cause religion sought to maintain the concept of a distinct, and superior, white southern culture against perceived attacks. Major components of religion include myth, symbol, and their expressions through rituals. The Lost Cause culture religion manifested all three.

When scholars of religion refer to myth, they do not mean to imply a falsehood. Rather, in the context of religious studies, a myth is a foundational or sacred story, a story that explains. Lost Cause proponents knew well the power of myth. The main components of the Lost Cause myth, repeated in writings, sermons, lectures, and speeches by scores of postwar southern figures, are easily identified. First, the prewar South—the Old South—was a place of nobility and chivalry. (There is no better capsule description of the Old South of the Lost Cause myth than the opening words of the movie version of Gone With the Wind, with its elegiac reference to the now-vanished pretty world "of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields," where gallantry "took its last bow.")

In a second component of Lost Cause dogma, the Civil War was recast as a defense of the South against aggressive, money-grubbing Northerners. In Lost Cause mythmaking, the "War of the Rebellion" (as the federal government called it) became the "War of Northern Aggression." While Southerners were a people of honor and purity, Northerners were invaders, a people consumed by lust for power.

Finally, Lost Cause proponents preached the message that adherence to the civility of the prewar South meant that the Cause was not truly lost. Victory would come if white southerners maintained their superior and pure culture. The South need not be separate politically to rise again spiritually. This message was spread far and wide by agents of the Lost Cause, but perhaps no voice was as persistent and vocal as that of Georgian Mildred Lewis Rutherford, the longtime historian general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who tirelessly proclaimed the glories of the Old South. Her 1920 book, Truths of History, promotes a Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War in opposition to what Rutherford viewed as the false claims of northern historians.

Some of the major symbols of the Lost Cause are conveniently laid out in a Memorial Day address given in 1896 by Clement Evans, who, in addition to being a veteran, was also a Methodist minister and onetime commander of the United Confederate Veterans. Evans referred to "a deep and honorable respect for some things which we call our mementoes"; they are, he said, "sacred." Limiting himself to "only three, each of which deserves our perpetual commemorations," he listed the song "Dixie," the Confederate battle flag, and the gray uniform of the South.

To Evans's list may be added the living symbols of the Lost Cause, the Confederate soldiers themselves and their heroic leaders. Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson each played a major role in the hagiography of the Lost Cause and provided Moses and Christ figures. (These three figures are carved into Stone Mountain.) There was also a figure of evil in Lost Cause religion. Several Lost Cause proponents accused Georgian James Longstreet of losing the war by his actions at Gettysburg. In the process Longstreet became identified as a Judas-like figure (and, therefore, though he had been Lee's senior subordinate officer, numerous United Confederate Veterans groups refused to acknowledge his death with the customary wreaths or statements).

In addition to Confederate Memorial Day, "the Sabbath of the South," additional rituals honored Confederate veterans, especially the erection of Confederate monuments, which served as reminders of the Lost Cause throughout the year and as focal points for cultural memory. The historian Gaines M. Foster has identified 94 Confederate monuments that were erected in the South by 1885 (a further 406 were added by 1912). Some of the oldest of these monuments are in Georgia, such as the pillar in downtown Athens, which was erected in 1872. Perhaps the most storied Confederate monuments in the state are in Savannah, Atlanta, and Augusta. The Augusta monument contains what may be the most common inscription on Georgia's Confederate monuments: "No nation rose so white and fair: None fell so pure of crime"—a Lost Cause sentiment to be sure.

Such, then, are the major components of Lost Cause myth, symbols, and rituals. The Old South of Lost Cause myth was represented by symbols such as the Confederate flag and recalled through rituals such as Memorial Day. The culture religion was reinforced by the efforts of Confederate veterans, women, and mainstream religious figures. Among the latter, the premier example is J. William Jones, a Baptist minister known as the "Evangelist of the Lost Cause." In a sermon given to a veteran group in 1900, Jones asked if "when the roll is called up yonder," those assembled would be prepared to "'cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees' with Davis and Lee and Jackson and other Christian comrades who wait and watch for your coming?" In Jones's mind, to be a Confederate hero and pious was a guaranteed combination.

[BoSoxGal]

The South Carolina Senate just voted overwhelmingly (37-3) to take down the CSA flag from Capitol grounds.

[Econoline]

Just out of curiosity...have any of the flags shown below ever flown over any official government entity in the United States?

[Lord Jim]

Oh, we're hearing this again...

[Econoline]

What, you don't think there were any brave and dedicated Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Ottoman Turks, Soviet Russians (hey, they did help us win WW2, don'tcha know), Germans (again!), or Japanese soldiers? There's a pretty good chance that some descendants of those brave but misguided souls wound up in the U.S.; I for one wouldn't begrudge those descendants the right to honor their fallen ancestors, any more than I would begrudge those individuals who actually really truly have ancestors who fought under the CBF to honor their ancestors.

But that's not what my question was about. I just wouldn't expect to see any of those flags flying over any official state or local government building in the U.S. And I would damn sure show my open contempt toward anyone who was NOT personally honoring their own ancestors, who waved one of those flags just to assert their own rebellious nature assholery.


ETA: I take that answer for a "NO", Jim?

[wesw]

econo, you seem more hateful than most who fly the stupid battle flag.

personally I would feel some obligation to shoot anyone who flies the Nazi flag.....

I would most likely restrain myself tho, you should try it.

[Lord Jim]

I just wouldn't expect to see any of those flags flying over any official state or local government building in the U.S.

Without for a moment accepting any equivalence between those flags and the CBF, I would point out the fact that the CBF doesn't "fly over any official state or local government building" in South Carolina, now, and hasn't since the original compromise was struck, more than a decade ago...

[Guinevere]

It flies "on the Statehouse grounds" and takes an act of the State legislature to remove it. That's official enough for me.

[Econoline]

econo, you seem more hateful than most who fly the stupid battle flag.

personally I would feel some obligation to shoot anyone who flies the Nazi flag.....

I would most likely restrain myself tho, you should try it.

Okay, Wes, you got me. Yes, I certainly would feel offended by anyone who was asshole enough to fly the flag of Nazi Germany...no matter what their stated reason for doing so (except, possibly, some sort of WW2 battle re-enactment). I should have left that one out and substituted the flag of North Korea, which has much less of a visceral emotional content.

The equivalence was that those were all flags that don't exist anymore, which were flown by nations defeated by the United States of America, (Most of those nations don't exist anymore either, and none of those flags are flown anymore anywhere in the world, let alone in the US--which is why I left in the Nazi flag and left out the North Korean flag.) By those criteria, what makes the Confederate battle flag any different? Add in the fact that a substantial minority of Americans feel deeply, personally threatened by the traditions (plural: both 19th century and 20th century) behind the flag and the uses to which it was (and is) put, and it seems to me that the only reason anyone can still defend its display amounts to sheer ignorance.

But hey, don't just take my word for it...

If this guy can re-evaluate his priorities, perhaps Lord Jim can, too:[quote=""The Southern Avenger""]As a Charleston, South Carolina-based conservative radio personality known as the “Southern Avenger,” I spent a decade defending the Confederate flag that is yet again the center of so much controversy.

I said the flag was about states’ rights. I said it stood for self-determination. I said it honored heritage.

I argued the Confederate flag wasn’t about race. I believed it. Millions of well-meaning Southerners believe it too.

I was wrong. That flag is always about race. Whatever political or historical points the flag’s defenders make, there will never be a time—and never has been a time—in which millions of Americans have looked at that symbol and not seen hatred.

We can argue for the rest of time whether this is fair or not. And for the rest of time, that symbol will still be seen in an overwhelmingly negative light.

Those who see hatred have political and historical reasons too.

This has always been the Confederate flag debate game. One camp’s arguments are supposed to trump the other’s.

I’m not here to settle those arguments. I tired of them years ago.

But I am here to say there is something at stake far more important than this symbol.

Heritage might not be hate. But battling hate is far more important than anyone’s heritage, politics, or just about anything else. We should have different priorities.

I now have different priorities.

Dylann Roof is a reminder of what’s at stake.

(Continue reading here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/22/the-southern-avenger-repents-i-was-wrong-about-the-confederate-flag.html)[/quote]

[rubato]

The 'southern avenger' makes an excellent point.



yrs,
rubato

[wesw]

I don t believe that I have said anything in support of the stars and bars. I have just attempted counter the seemingly prevalent idea that southerners/rural people/country people are some how a different breed of person, unworthy of respect, stupid, and un loving of our great nation.

this de-humanizing and vilifying of our fellow countrymen has to stop if we are to survive as one people and one nation.

the stars and bars is obviously deeply offensive to many people, no matter what the reason it is flown for. it is time for it to be put behind glass and remembered as history, not looked forward to as a future.

for those of you who have debated the constitutionality of secession and especially those of you who have thrown around reckless charges of Treason.... , I would advise you to read Guin s fourth of july post. the one with our Declaration of Independence posted within.

that document, which is among the most important ever penned, and as relevant today as it ever was, enshrines our innate right to choose our own governance and to act in our best own best interests to achieve just governance. even to the point of revolution if necessary.

this does not mean that I support the idea that the confederacy was correct, or righteous, in its attempt to secede , just that we the people have that right if we are oppressed to the point of subjugation to government. if you insist on belittling and de humanizing a segment of our population, similar to the way blacks were de humanized, you will start a battle that will ruin us as a nation. we are not so homogenous as to be able to survive another such civil war, and we no longer have the unlimited natural resourcces that would allow us to recover from such a conflict. our enemies are Legion now, and they are watching. the world is no longer praying that our grand experiment succeeds.

divide and conquer is also not an obsolete idea.

wes

[MajGenl.Meade]

I have just attempted counter the seemingly prevalent idea that southerners/rural people/country people are some how a different breed of person, unworthy of respect, stupid, and un loving of our great nation

The "prevalence" is just something you have made up. Unless you regard rubato (and perhaps scooter) as "prevalent".

The Declaration of Independence was not written by states who had made an eternal union by subscribing to and endorsing a constitution. However, it did recognize the incontrovertible fact that throughout history groups of people have rebelled against their government. The fact is that the North American colonies became rebels in the cause of freedom.

The southern confederacy rebelled in the cause of slavery and oppression. They may have had every "right" to do that (much as anyone has the "right" to disregard the law) but not because the Declaration of Independence, the nation and the US Constitution to which all had sworn allegiance "authorized" or even "permitted" such revolution.

I am glad we agree that Confederate flags should not be flown on any government property (with the exception of NPS battlefield museums and visitor's centers)

[wesw]

your point is?

other than the repetitive "wes is a moron theme", that is......

that Declaration "shook up the world", to borrow a phrase from Ali. it is an unchanged and unchanging declaration of human rights, it is, as I said, one of the most important documents ever penned, or chiseled. the constitution is a malleable organ, built to change as the people and their representatives see fit. it is a living constitution, justified by Our Declaration, made possible by Our Declaration and the fight to make it stand.

it is the Holy Spirit of our nation, the nation that you chose to join.

why don t we let go of the last American revolution, the CivilWar, and concentrate on Our first revolution and its ideals, and our next revolution which is not inevitable if we chose to remain as one nation, as is our right? it is also our right to dissolve our unions with our govt if it no longer represents Us, the people, if it oppresses Us it is no longer Our govt and We may dissolve it, by force if necessary , and start again.

wes

(you hollerin' about da back rent, you be lucky to get any front rent, you ain t gonna get none of it! ....so I pack my bags, an' out da door I go......) (yrs, Greece)

[Sue U]

Th Declaration of Independence is not a "declaration of human rights." It is a Dear John letter with an extensive list of grievances in which the American colonists tell King George "It's you, not us. Also, we are changing the locks, and don't call us anymore."

The Constitution is not justified by the Declaration of Independence, it is justified by "We the People" acting "in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present" in 1787.

[wesw]

well it s that too.....

[MajGenl.Meade]

your point is?

other than the repetitive "wes is a moron theme", that is......

I looked and didn't see any comment about morons in that post. The only reference to you is to say that we agreed on something and to say that you have made up any "prevalence" in this thread that regards southerners as unworthy etc.

My point is.... the Declaration of Independence did not in any way justify the action of the southern states in seceding from the eternal Union. We disagree.

it is also our right to dissolve our unions with our govt if it no longer represents Us, the people, if it oppresses Us it is no longer Our govt and We may dissolve it, by force if necessary , and start again

.

It's not a "right" - if it were, the Constitution/Bill of Rights would say so. It's the same "right" you have to disobey the law - it won't stand up in court but you can claim the "right" to kill people if you wish or to litter.

[wesw]

we do not disagree that the south was unjustified in it s secession. "this does not mean that I support the idea that the confederacy was correct, or righteous, in its attempt to secede", as I said in my first post here today.

we do disagree that the People do not have the right to revolt against an oppressive govt. and to form a govt of our own choosing. if you do not understand, or agree, that we (and indeed all the peoples of the world) possess this inherent right, I am bereft of ideas on how to explain it further. I can only refer you to Our Declaration and recommend that you read it again, to further your understanding of America and the American people who still believe in its power and importance.

it has deeper meaning than only the flippant meaning that Sue attributed to it.