Simon, just tell us how you really feel.
The Confederate Flag
by Simon 109 Replies latest social current
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skepticSam
How many have you read "Battle Royal" by Ralph Ellison?
Simon if you have not, I can send you the clip-notes it's happening in one of my advanced English classes I need for a B.A, yeah me a English degree, go ahead an laugh! -
Viviane
Well, it can't be banned due to freedom of speech. But, on the bright side, anytime I see someone flying, I know that I already know everything I need to know about that person.
Think of it like them voluntarily putting on the dunce cap.
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FayeDunaway
Agreed. I also feel that way about people who drive Hummers. Might as well have a bumper sticker that says 'I'm a jerk!' -
Nitty-Gritty
Don't delude yourself Simon, a state of dysfunction exists in every country. I thought it was funny you ranting on about the American flag, on this forum to do with JWs. You yourself, as someone who was brought up as one, should know how and why things are as they are, in America or elsewhere. Your doubts about JW's has caused you to be blind to undeniable realities. Time for you to wake up! -
fulltimestudent
Here's a David Goldman (aka, Spengler) essay on the topic:
The Confederate battle flag is what makes America stupid: Spengler
Link: http://atimes.com/2015/06/the-confederate-battle-flag-is-what-makes-america-stupid/
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in part, Goldman writes:
As the New York Times reports this morning, not a single Republican presidential candidate has the courage to tell South Carolina to stop flying the Confederate battle flag from its state capitol. It is a bit late for that, to be sure; public display of any kind of the symbol of the slaveholders’ rebellion should have been banned after the Union victory in 1865. Removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of South Carolina’s seat of government has become an African-American cause in the wake of last week’s Charleston church massacre. It may be incommensurate with the crime, but black Americans are entirely justified in their rancor against official sanction of a symbol of slavery.
On moral grounds I sympathize with the African-American view, but there is an even more urgent reason to rip down the Confederate flag. Our refusal to look squarely at the evil character of the American Confederacy turned us into idiots. It may be a bit late to remedy this national lapse in mental capacity, but one has to start somewhere.
America never recovered from its Civil War, which killed nearly a million combatants on both sides. The Union won on the battlefield but conceded a cultural victory of sorts to the defeated South, spinning a myth of Southern gallantry in a lost cause. This myth dominated the popular culture from D.W.Griffiths’ 1916 epic “Birth of a Nation” (which celebrates the rise of the Klu Klux Klan).----------------------
I'm not sure that the problem is the difference in views, but the idea that violence (force) toward opposing views is the way to reconcile the difference.
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Doctor Who
Just a little history...
The Confederate States of America went through three different flags during the Civil War, but the battle flag wasn’t one of them. Instead, the flag that most people associate with the Confederacy was the battle flag of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Designed by the Confederate politician William Porcher Miles, the flag was rejected for use as the Confederacy’s official emblem, although it was incorporated into the two later flags as a canton. It only came to be the flag most prominently associated with the Confederacy after the South lost the war.
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the battle flag was used mostly at veterans’ events and to commemorate fallen Confederate soldiers. The flag took on new associations in the 1940s, when it began to appear more frequently in contexts unrelated to the Civil War, such as University of Mississippi football games.
In 1948, the newly-formed segregationist Dixiecrat party adopted the flag as a symbol of resistance to the federal government. In the years that followed, the battle flag became an important part of segregationist symbolism, and was featured prominently on the 1956 redesign of Georgia’s state flag, a legislative decision that was likely at least partly a response to the Supreme Court’s decision to desegregate school two years earlier. The flag has also been used by the Ku Klux Klan, though it is not the Klan’s official flag.
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DarioKehl
I don't see how the stars & bars aren't also treasonist. That flag has always irked me. I've even heard JWs defend it as a symbol of "Dixie pride" and "southern love."
The best was how Fox News spun this whole shooting. Rather than admit his racist motivations behind the killings, they decided to run with the "it's a war on christians" bullshit. Ridiculous.
im all for 1st amendment freedom, but to fly this flag at full mast on STATE CAPITOL property really sends a vile message.
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Doctor Who
About the flag not being lowered. Confused me why they didn't. This article which I copied and shortened sums up why...
But, it seemed, no one — particularly not South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) — could do anything about it. This was a matter of law.
“In South Carolina, the governor does not have legal authority to alter the flag,” a Haley spokesman told ABC on Thursday. “Only the General Assembly can do that.”
That seemed strange. On public property all across America — not just at state houses but at schools, libraries, DMVs and tollway plazas — flags are presumably raised and lowered without reference to or permission from legislative bodies.
But South Carolina has been fighting about its capitol’s Confederate flag for decades. Indeed, the flag first went up on the capitol dome in 1962 in defiance of the burgeoning civil rights movement. A cultural war fought a century after the first battle of Fort Sumter followed.
So, it seems legally they can't. Doesn't that just fly in the face of all logic?
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fulltimestudent
Doctor Who: Just a little history...
The Confederate States of America went through three different flags during the Civil War, but the battle flag wasn’t one of them.Thnx Dr,Who - the background is appreciated.