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Mississippi Flag, a Rebel Holdout, Is in a New Fight
The New York Times ^ | November 7, 2915 | CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

Posted on 11/08/2015 9:36:32 AM PST by yoe

LOUISVILLE, Miss. — In single strokes after the massacre of nine black churchgoers in Charleston in June, Confederate battle flags were taken from statehouse grounds in South Carolina and Alabama, pulled from shelves at major retailers like Walmart and declared unwelcome, if to (limited effect), at Nascar races.

What happened so swiftly elsewhere is not so simple in Mississippi. The Confederate battle flag is not simply flying in one hotly disputed spot at the State Capitol but occupying the upper left corner of the state flag, which has been flying since 1894. (And as recently as 2001), Mississippians voted by a nearly two-to-one ratio to keep it. Recent ( polling) suggests the majority have not changed their minds.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: dixie
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To: jmacusa

“I don’t think”

Now we arrive at the crux of the matter.


201 posted on 11/13/2015 5:57:27 PM PST by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: dsc
Sorry for keeping you waiting. I had to look up "meretricious". In this instance of your pedantic usage of the word, I have to ask which of these synonyms is most appropriate to whatever it is that you are trying to say: garish, gaudy, brassy, tatty, tawdry, tasteless, flash, cheap, flashy, tacky, gimcrack, loud or trashy?

(I am self-taught and I never taught myself that word.)

202 posted on 11/13/2015 6:29:07 PM PST by HandyDandy (Don't make up stuff. It just wastes everybody's time.)
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To: dsc
Your a bloody boor defending the losing side in a war Southern secessionists and slave holders started and lost making you a loser. Next time I see your handle I'll be reaching for for the Peto Bismol.
203 posted on 11/13/2015 8:22:32 PM PST by jmacusa
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To: HandyDandy
“He is close to the perfect example of an Amercan as described by Ike.”

I can't argue with what you wrote.

“I would like to see the Confederate flag more widespread.”

I can't argue with what you wrote.

“I have long admired Jackson.”

I can't argue with what you wrote.

Some of the other things you wrote - let's say we don't see eye-to-eye on everything. Still, you seem like a great American. That's enough.

204 posted on 11/13/2015 8:36:27 PM PST by jeffersondem
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To: jmacusa
“What were they thinking? Populations of people. Not code words for continuing slavery.”

jmacusa - Sorry, you are again wrong. But it is a complicated story so I can understand you getting confused.

I recommend you visit the Heritage Foundation's website and read about Article I, Section 9 before commenting further. See below, from Heritage.

Although the first debate over slavery at the Constitutional Convention concerned representation (see Article I, Section 2, Clause 3), the second debate arose when Southern delegates objected that an unrestricted congressional power to regulate commerce could be used against Southern commercial interests to restrict or outlaw the slave trade. That the resulting provision was an important compromise is underscored by the fact that the clause stands as the first independent restraint on congressional powers, prior even to the restriction on the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.

Taking Southern concerns into consideration, the draft proposed by the Committee of Detail (chaired by John Rutledge of South Carolina) dealt with trade issues as well as those relating to slavery. The draft permanently forbade Congress to tax exports, to outlaw or tax the slave trade, or to pass navigation laws without two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress. Several delegates strongly objected to the proposal, including Gouverneur Morris, who delivered one of the Convention's most spirited denunciations of slavery, calling it a “nefarious institution” and “the curse of heaven.”

When the issue came up for a vote, the Southern delegates themselves were sharply divided. George Mason of Virginia condemned the “infernal traffic,” and Luther Martin of Maryland saw the restriction of Congress's power over the slave trade as “inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution and dishonorable to the American character.” But delegates from Georgia and South Carolina announced that they would not support the Constitution without the restriction, with Charles Pinckney arguing that failing to include the clause would trigger “an exclusion of South Carolina from the Union.”

Unresolved, the issue was referred to the Committee of Eleven (chaired by William Livingston of New Jersey), which took the opposite position and recognized a congressional power over the slave trade, but recommended that it be restricted for twelve years, and allowed a tax on slave importation. Although that was a significant change from the Committee of Detail's original proposal, Southern delegates accepted the new arrangement with the extension of the time period to twenty years, from 1800 to 1808.

Agitation against the slave trade was the leading cause espoused by the antislavery movement at the time of the Constitutional Convention, so it is not surprising that this clause was the most immediately controversial of the so-called slave clauses of the proposed Constitution (see Article I, Section 2, Clause 3; Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3; and Article V). Although some denounced the Slave Trade Clause as a major concession to slavery interests, most begrudged it to be a necessary and prudent compromise. James Madison, for example, argued at the Convention that the twenty-year exemption was “dishonorable,” but in The Federalist No. 42, he declared that it was “a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate for ever within these States” what he called an “unnatural traffic” that was “the barbarism of modern policy.”

Some claimed that the Commerce Clause gave Congress the power to regulate both the interstate and the foreign slave trade once the twenty-year period had lapsed. James Wilson of Pennsylvania argued, “yet the lapse of a few years, and Congress will have power to exterminate slavery from within our borders.” Though the question was not clearly resolved at the time, Madison denied this interpretation during the First Congress. Not even Abraham Lincoln claimed that congressional power to regulate commerce could be used to restrict interstate commerce in slaves.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Chief Justice Roger B. Taney pointed to this clause, along with the so-called Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3), as evidence that slaves were not citizens but were to be considered property according to the Constitution. Observers are virtually unanimous that those clauses did not address the question of citizenship at all. Although protection of the slave trade was a major concession demanded by proslavery delegates, the final clause was not a permanent element of the constitutional structure, but a temporary restriction of a delegated federal power. Moreover the restriction applied only to states existing at the time, not to new states or territories, and it did not prevent states from restricting or outlawing the slave trade for themselves. As the dissent in Dred Scott points out, there were freed blacks who were citizens in a number of Northern states and who had voted to ratify the new constitution.

It is significant that the words slave and slavery are not used in the Constitution of 1787, and that the Framers used the word person rather than property. This would assure, as Madison explained in The Federalist No. 54, that a slave would be regarded “as a moral person, not as a mere article of property.” It was in the context of the slave trade debate at the Constitutional Convention that Madison argued that it was “wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.”

Although Southern delegates hoped opposition would weaken with time, the practical effect of the clause was to create a growing expectation of federal legislation against the practice. Congress passed, and President Thomas Jefferson signed into law, a federal prohibition of the slave trade, effective January 1, 1808, the first day that Article I, Section 9, Clause 1, allowed such a law to go into effect.

205 posted on 11/13/2015 9:04:39 PM PST by jeffersondem
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To: HandyDandy

“In this instance of your pedantic usage of the word, I have to ask which of these synonyms is most appropriate”

Context should have told you that the meaning intended was “specious.” You get more out of a real education than you do from a quick visit to an online thesaurus.

An education would also tell you that my usage was not pedantic, but perfectly natural.


206 posted on 11/14/2015 3:02:24 AM PST by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: jmacusa

“Your a bloody boor”

Well, now, there’s a well-reasoned argument.

“defending the losing side in a war Southern secessionists and slave holders started and lost making you a loser.”

So, moral right can be presumed to lie on the side of the victor? We can dump our legal system and go back to trial by combat, then?

“Next time I see your handle I’ll be reaching for for the Peto Bismol.”

Next time you post, try reaching for the spell checker.


207 posted on 11/14/2015 3:06:10 AM PST by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: dsc

Just a bit of advice, next time you intend to mean “specious” in a sentence, use the word “specious” (not “meretricious”). And I think that about wraps it up. You and I are very different types of thinkers -— even taken out of context.


208 posted on 11/14/2015 5:12:33 AM PST by HandyDandy (Don't make up stuff. It just wastes everybody's time.)
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To: jmacusa
Numb nuts...As my tag line states, the flag stands for different things for different people. For me, it signifies valor for those NON SLAVE HOLDING southerners who fought off foreign invaders.

Take your PC sh__ elsewhere.

209 posted on 11/14/2015 5:20:41 AM PST by catfish1957 (I display the Confederate Battle Flag with pride in honor of my brave ancestors who fought w/ valor)
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To: jmacusa
I pity these people who are sorry the South lost the war.

Not only are you stupid, you lie too. Show me one post on this thread that states a poster wishes the South had won the war.

Many southerners like myself, just want to honor our ancestors. You are too stupid to realize that, then you need to go elsewhere.

210 posted on 11/14/2015 5:25:42 AM PST by catfish1957 (I display the Confederate Battle Flag with pride in honor of my brave ancestors who fought w/ valor)
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To: dsc

I really despise south hating RINO so called freepers than liberals.


211 posted on 11/14/2015 5:27:33 AM PST by catfish1957 (I display the Confederate Battle Flag with pride in honor of my brave ancestors who fought w/ valor)
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To: catfish1957

You’re honoring your ancestors who fought to preserve a system of labor built on the ownership of another human being. You’re too stupid to realize that chump. I don’t give a rats ass for ancestors, had they won this would not be the nation it is.


212 posted on 11/14/2015 7:23:12 AM PST by jmacusa
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To: catfish1957
Irony is lost on you isn't it numb nuts? You're coming to a conservative website venerating a bunch of Southern democrats.
213 posted on 11/14/2015 7:25:08 AM PST by jmacusa
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To: dsc
Is that all you've got? That and a drawn out screed justifying the Souths desire to maintain slavery?
214 posted on 11/14/2015 7:26:33 AM PST by jmacusa
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To: catfish1957
Oh and thanks pal. It's good to know it was your ancestors who started the war. Now I know you to blame. As your tag line suggests I suppose the Stars And Stripes are an anathema to you.
215 posted on 11/14/2015 7:31:13 AM PST by jmacusa
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To: jmacusa
Here is a quote from you on November 8th.

Legalize all drugs, tax and regulate them. Taxes and regulations are the quickest way to put anything out of business.

You are not only a numbnut, you are a libertarian , and probably Ron Paulian Libertarian RINO Numbnut .

Go F yourself, and find another site, and leave us conservatives alone. Insulting many of us who honor our ancestors is disgusting You are pure slime.

216 posted on 11/14/2015 8:20:58 AM PST by catfish1957 (I display the Confederate Battle Flag with pride in honor of my brave ancestors who fought w/ valor)
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To: jmacusa

I am still waiting for you to show me one poster on this thread who said that they are sorry the South lost the war. Embarrassed that i caught you in a bald faced lie?


217 posted on 11/14/2015 8:26:13 AM PST by catfish1957 (I display the Confederate Battle Flag with pride in honor of my brave ancestors who fought w/ valor)
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To: dsc; HandyDandy
"meretricious" - did someone get themselves a Thesaurus for Christmas last year? Seriously - meretricious?!

"I'm always suspicious of a man who would use a ten dollar word when a five dollar one would do" - Will Rogers.

Your (mis)use of the term is what is "tastelessly showy". The challenge was to show evidence that the confeds would have any inclination to free the slaves if they were to achieve independence (since it is one of the cornerstones of lost cause faith that "slavery would have dies out sooner or later on its own"). The evidence you provided showed not a sincere effort but a desperate last minute gambit. They didn't free a soul out of benevolence - only out of practical necessity.

Lee was most certainly conflicted about slavery. And he was incrementally more favorable to the notion of a day when slaves would be freemen than most of his fellow southerners. But, despite your meretricious efforts to paint him as some sort of saintly abolitionist, he still owned them, and used them, and enjoyed the fruits of their labor - and whipped them when he thought they misbehaved.

meretricious - I'll have to remember that one ;')

218 posted on 11/14/2015 8:29:11 AM PST by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: jmacusa
“You�€™re honoring your ancestors who fought to preserve a system of labor built on the ownership of another human being. You�€™re too stupid to realize that chump. I don�€™t give a rats ass for ancestors, had they won this would not be the nation it is.”

You do realize that Light Horse Harry Lee, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson DID win the war? And yes, they were, like Moses, what you refer to as “slavers.”

Can you tell this board, in your own words, why you hate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?

219 posted on 11/14/2015 9:08:10 AM PST by jeffersondem
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To: rockrr
rockrr - Welcome back to the board. I have missed you. I've been looking forward to you telling me more about your understanding of “domestic insurrections”, post #152.

You speak in some detail about General Lee and slaves; do you know if General Grant's family owned slaves?

220 posted on 11/14/2015 9:21:02 AM PST by jeffersondem
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