Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Battle flag uproar

Good article on the topic.

http://ashbrook.org/publications/oped-owens-00-flag/

Good article on the topic.

http://ashbrook.org/publications/oped-owens-00-flag/

I've always sympathized with the Confederate cause. My children all scoff when a classmate cites Lincoln as the greatest President. The "provincial" cause of states' rights, and the freedoms exercised by the confederate states to secede when the greater political power of the Yankees was aligned against them for economic superiority and the political lessons from those events are all things I've taught my children to consider when they are of voting age. I love the southern spirit and their independence. I mourn the Constitutional Republic that was fundamentally and fatally changed by the Union's victory in the war.

That having been said I've become confident that had the war gone the other way I would also mourn, for that Declaration of Independence condemns the ownership of one man by another every bit as much as it defends the provincialism of local governance and its resulting self determination.

Had the South won I am confident our republic would have been equally flawed as the one in which we now reside, though perhaps in different ways (and perhaps not). That flaw is the one many are reminded of when they they see the stars & bars even though I (and I like to believe the majority of those who wave it) see the ideals mentioned in my first paragraph. If I'm intellectually honest I can understand that.

In the end I understand the offense of those who celebrate a different side of the war. I sure wish, however, that we didn't live in such a hypersensitive time where one persons' expression of an ideal could "offend" in such a way as this. It's sad to me that our country is degrading the way it is.

Of course the ultimate irony of all of this is that in the end provincialism will lose to the "urbane (vacuous) globalism" of the "New World Order" and we'll all become slaves to it. That, we see, in this instance of our lack of freedom of self-expression.

Just to set the record straight, this flag doesnt fly above or on top of any state building.The flag stands at the confederate soldier monument that is at the front of the state house grounds. There is also a statue of a confederate soldier there, should that,be removed?

What about the robert e lee memeorial magnolia, the confederate women memorial statue or the wade hampton (csa cavalry and eventual sc gov) statue also on the state grounds?

Blackhnter

The CSA and the nazis werent even close, read a non revisionist history book sometime....
read bury my heart at wounded knee and feel good about old glory

In their own words, they thought it was...

http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

I don't guess you can hold a major fraction (the actual majority in two states) of one's population as a possession and de-facto agricultural implement without that having a major effect on one's outlook.

The overwhelming fear was, in their own words, that an an actual majority of non-slavery states inevitably would mandate abolition. Abolition and the implications thereof were regarded as catastrophic.

I blame cotton more'n anything, cotton production exploded across the South in the Nineteenth Century and became the major cash crop, ALL the COnfederate leadership had made their fortunes in it, couldn't imagine a South without it. And cotton needed slavery.

I'd say JMHO, but it ain't.

Birdwatcher

Got a Black co-worker, former Army officer. He says the people who flew that flag would have countenanced slavery over people like his children.

Hard to argue with that, but them no one's making him fly it.

OTOH This ditching the Confederate Flag hoopla is, of course, a total crock. As if that homicidal loser had ANYTHING to do with the Confederacy.

Birdwatcher

This explains everything.

First off let me say that I think enslaving your fellow man is wrong, then and now, but it was a common thing in that day and time. I maintain that the war was not fought over slavery for a couple of reasons. One is that the North was not fighting to end slavery, when the war started. That came along later. Another reason is that the majority of the ones doing the fighting, owned no slaves. Now I do agree that the ones in Southern power wanted to maintain slavery and the North was trying to keep new states added to the union from being slave holding states, but the North was mostly fighting to keep their foot on the neck of the South. Those upstart Southerners started importing their own slaves, and breeding them, thus cutting out the New England merchants that had made a fortune from it. They also wanted all of the Souths products to be routed through them so that they could profit, even though it meant lower prices for the South. Most of the Southerners fought because they believed in freedom from the Government. The hard feelings that are left over, are from after the war. miles

That's where people have it all wrong. Nobody "celebrates" a war they lost. That flag represents the opposition of an oppressive government, therefor it must be silenced.

Thankfully this will never be out of vogue

Miles nailed it. But THAT don't fit the Yankee/Black narrative.

The war between the states and the reconstruction period afterwards gave rise to a new millionaire class in the north, the likes of, this country had never seen in it short history.

It is sad the times we are seeing. I will not state anything in particular. We know what they are. But our rights and the things our fore fathers fought and died for seem to not matter to a lot of people. Do we even have any true statesmen left?

So it seems what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right. So should we have to please a few people, by letting our children and grand children be taught that God and nature is wrong, but a few sick people are right?

In light of the recent call to remove the stars and bars from state flags, I hope that someone in each discussion of the confederate battle flag knows enough history to point out that the flag IS a symbol of oppression by a brutal system against a weaker minority. One where an attempt to gain freedom from tyranny was met with crushing, overwhelming violence. I am talking about the minority southern states who dared to want freedom from an oppressive federal government that imposed its will over their own elected representatives and crushed their declaration of independence with brutal violence including untold thousands of civilian deaths and uncounted property destruction on a massive scale.


And for the record, I am not a racist. I vote against liberals of all colors.

IMHO, The bitterness of many whites that hangs to this day in some corners of the south has nothing to do with the defeat of southern military forces. But with the humiliation of reconstruction.

The first thing northern power brokers had to do was eliminate the man who stated, "with malice toward none."

And lets set the record straight on the starss and bars

the stars and bars is not the battle flag

The stars and bars is the flag no one would recognize up top in the pic

Bingo! Finally someone brings up the origin of it all.

One of the major issues that ignited the Civil War was that the future Confederate States resented getting out voted and thus dictated to by the more populous and more industrial northern States. Issues included slavery, but that was but one of many reasons the future Confederate States ultimately decided that they could no longer exist within the Union.

Reconstruction was a heavy handed suppression of the people and the culture. Sherman's Scorched Earth policy coupled with the Emancipation Proclamation displaced millions, both Black and White.

Reconstruction then came to dictate life on a local level. The Southerner was humiliated and suppressed and the resentment toward the Federal Gov't and the Northern elites grew.

This resentment was real and nearly ubiquitous. The Southerner had very little to be proud of right through the first half of the 20th Century. When the issue of desegregation came about in the 1950s, once again the Federal Gov't and the Northern Elites were dictating how the former Confederate States were going to live.

As a protest and act of defiance, some States chose to incorporate the Confederate Battle Flag into their State flag. This had nothing to do with race and everything to do with defiance of being strong armed by the Feds.

It was the racist groups such as the KKK in the 1960s that adopted the flag as their standard that caused it to be seen as an overt symbol of racism to some. There is no intelligent human on the planet that has any use for such groups today, nor no flag supporters that view the flag as a tool of racism, but as a symbol of defiance. That is defiance against the over reach of Federal power, the ridiculousness of political correctness, the absurdity of revisionist history, and the pandering to all minorities and special interest groups at the expense of the conservative, Christian, caucasian.

It is, in fact, a way to give Washington DC, and the liberal Northeast the finger. I hope this explains the situation more clearly. My state got rid of the battle flag in the State flag a few years ago, and it hasn't affected me one way or another. I do hate it when the World has to bow to political correctness and its double standards. Maybe the next flag in South Carolina should just have a big fist with the middle finger extended. It would be vulgar, but would retain the same message .

Precisely why I ordered the Stars and Bars decal for my car.....