House drops Confederate Flag ban for veterans cemeteries

politico.com ^ | 6/23/16 | Matthew Nussbaum

[ColdOne]

A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.

The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.

[jmacusa]

Nice to know you venerate an atrocity such as this.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

And how did we get from Confederate flags to this argument?

Since 1865 the Battle Flag (Not the Stars and Bars or Bonnie Blue Flag) has been flown at cemremonies and public functions with no protests or problems until someone with their panties in a wad decided to attack the flying of it around the year 2000.

Since then we have seen a massive movement by the Libs to destroy, remove and denigrate everything associated with the battle flag, always coming from the Leftist side.

Even the NEW YORK SUBWAY SYSTEM has a Confederate battle flag motif and no one gets offended.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

The Confederate Battle Flag has been adopted by many nations around the world.

Without the stars it is the flag of Eastern Ukraine. Without stars and add a small white cross it becomes the Naval Jack of Imperial Russia.

Add a hammer and sickle it becomes the naval jack of the Soviet Navy.

The St Andrews Cross alone on any colored field now causes foaming at the mouth by leftists.

As I have said, there are other battle flags that do not cause a Pavlovian response of foaming at the mouth. They are still REBEL to the core.

Eastern Ukraine

Confederate Battle Flags of the Indian Tribes

And there are still more I haven't shown.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***Nice to know you venerate an atrocity such as this.***

How about THIS nice UNION ATROCITY no one hears about.

https://legallegacy.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/december-9-1864-ebenezer-creek-massacre/

[Pelham]

“This Republican thinks of The Confederate flag as a flag of treason and separation.”

That’s the old Radical Republican position, men like Stanton and Stevens who considered Abe Lincoln too moderate and were even suspected of playing a role in his murder. The Radicals were a bloodthirsty bunch with a lot in common with some later Russian and German politicians who similarly liked the idea of killing their opponents.

So what’s your opinion of the Massachusetts Essex Junto and the New Haven Convention and the Hartford Convention?

The two New England movements to secede from the United States 50 years earlier?

And given that the Crown issued two emancipation declarations during the Revolution, Dunmore’s Proclamation and The Philipsburg Proclamation, should King George have prevailed over the Colonists?

[jmacusa]

I don’t if it’s the American Nazi Party or The GOP that wants to secede. Although if the Nazis wanted out, good riddance. I believe in The United States of America. Not some Balkanized mish mash of a nation. King George was a certifiable loon.

[jmacusa]

What? You want me to shed tears? Wars a bitch. Maybe the South shouldn’t have started a war it couldn’t win.

[usconservative]

Come to GA and I will show you an awesome time. Tell him, usc.

Laz knows ALL the great titty bars in Hotlanta, and somehow all the really hot looking women know Laz too. Go figure!

[PeaRidge]

The government was on the verge of collapse when Lincoln took office, and most of the northern apologists posting here know it.

Before he took office, New York was making plans to secede. When the Confederacy announced its much lower tariff rates, governors and businessmen clamored for war.

Lincoln accommodated them by invading Charleston and Pensacola.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "The government was on the verge of collapse when Lincoln took office, and most of the northern apologists posting here know it."

Total rubbish.
Even the postal service was still functioning more-or-less normally.

PeaRidge: "Before he took office, New York was making plans to secede."

Complete hogwash, though many New Yorkers, then as now, were Democrats with natural sympathies for their Southern Democrat brethren.

PeaRidge: "When the Confederacy announced its much lower tariff rates, governors and businessmen clamored for war."

Wrong again.
Instead, Northern demands for Federal action against those uppity slave-holders rose or fell with each new Confederate outrage -- seizing Union forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc. -- or rumored prospect for peace.

PeaRidge: "Lincoln accommodated them by invading Charleston and Pensacola."

Yet more nonsense.
Lincoln "invaded" nothing, any more that the US "invades" Cuba by sending our ships, supplies and reinforcements to US forces at the US base, Guantanamo, Cuba.
Just as President Buchanan had in January, Lincoln merely attempted to resupply Union forces at Forts Sumter & Pickens.

The Confederates' military assault on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, was a clear act of war against the United States, equivalent to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1942.

The Confederacy soon formalized their rebellion by declaring war on the United States (May 6, 1861) and sending military aid to pro-Confederates in Union Missouri.

[rockrr]

The fool said, “Before he took office, New York was making plans to secede.” but in the real world it was just a crack-pot scheme by Mayor Wood and a few cronies. He thought he could create an island nation within a nation by expropriating the tariffs that the Port of New York collected.

No serious person took him or his scheme serious.

[PeaRidge]

Bjoke, you are on thin ice with those comments. Any you want to revise?

[PeaRidge]

B-joke,your cohort rocker is telling you this about the mayor of New York..... “No serious person took him or his scheme serious.”

Let's examine the event before we dismiss it.

January 6, 1861, the Mayor of the city of New York, Fernando Wood made a formal demand in a speech to the Common Council that since disunion was a “fixed fact”, that New York should herself secede and become a free city with but a nominal duty upon imports. He said,

“Why should not New York City, instead of supporting by her contributions in revenue two- thirds of the expenses of the United States, become also equally independent? . . . If the confederacy is broken up . . . it behooves every distinct community, as well as every individual, to take care of themselves.

The Mayor proposed that New York secede and form a separate free city composed of the three islands, Long, Staten, and Manhattan. Wood envisioned New York City as a capitalist oasis, a free port trading with both Northern and Southern states. Other serious secession movements occurred in the Middle-Atlantic states, particularly in Maryland and New Jersey. The common element in these movements was to avoid Union with the New England states, and a strong central government.

[PeaRidge]

Mr Rockrrr says that neither Wood nor the “scheme” was taken seriously.

By that does he mean by no one, by only a few. No newspapers? No people with influence?

He was wrong.

Shortly after secession, in New York City, Richard Lathers, President of the Great Western Insurance Company, James T. Soutter, G.B. second-in-command at the Bank of the Republic, Augustus Schell, Collector of the New York Port, William B. Astor, son of John Jacob Astor; and thirteen other men sent a circular letter to several hundred prominent New Yorkers, calling a meeting for the 15th of December to be held in the offices of the Great Western Insurance Company at 33 Pine Street.

This was apparently not the only Pine Street meeting of the day, but perhaps a cover for a more important one.

The New York Herald reported on December 15, 1860, a plan for the removal of New York City from the Union:

“A secret meeting of its promoters is to be held today. The object is in the event of a secession of the Southern states, to throw off the yoke of the Western part of the state, and make New York a free city.”

[HangUpNow]

States rights? States rights to own human beings. That’s the ultimate tyranny.

Slavery and its tyranny by the statistically few wasn't the issue in the CW; State SOVEREIGNTY and right to self-government was.

Dixie fought NOT for slavery in any case. As an aside, two wrongs don't make a right either.

[rockrr]

Dixie fought NOT for slavery in any case.

Funny, the confederates thought differently - and said so.

[HangUpNow]

Nonsensical and historical revisionism propaganda. The kind I see and hear on PBS.

A tiny minority owned slaves. The South fought the coercion and tyranny the North, and for the very dirt below their feet.

Tell me -- why didn't the northern states who also legalized slavery then also fight WITH the South if your claim is THE case?

[rockrr]

A tiny minority owned slaves.

The percentage of slave owners varied from state to state. The more northerly border states tended toward single-digit percentages. The deep south ranged from approximately 34% to 49% in Mississippi - http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html

The South fought the coercion and tyranny the North, and for the very dirt below their feet.

There was no tyranny - except for the tyranny they perpetrated upon their own populations.

Tell me -- why didn't the northern states who also legalized slavery then also fight WITH the South if your claim is THE case?

The north went to war in response to being attacked by the confederates and with the aim to save the union. The south went to war to defend slavery and lost everything.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge quoting: "January 6, 1861, the Mayor of the city of New York, Fernando Wood... He said, 'Why should not New York City, instead of supporting by her contributions in revenue two- thirds of the expenses of the United States, become also equally independent?...' "

Two interesting points here:

1. Note the date, this is months before Lincoln's inauguration, Democrat Buchanan was still president.
   There is no record in history of anything serious coming from the good Mayor Wood's, ah, brain-f*rt.

2. Note the good mayor claims that New York alone contributed two-thirds of Federal Revenues.
   That might, or might not, be true but it does seem to contradict claims of pro-Confederates that the South alone contributed some number (take your pick) around 70% Federal revenues.
   One is led to wonder if the gubmint wasn't awash in more cash than they knew? ;-)

[HangUpNow]

There was no tyranny - except for the tyranny they perpetrated upon their own populations.

My argument here is NOT to defend slavery from whomever exploited it as a means to financial ends (FACT: BOTH the South AND North were economic beneficiaries of slavery.) Btw -- despite your stats, most of those who fought and died for the Southern Army were NOT slave-owners.

That said, it was the preservation of the American Union and NOT the destruction and end of Southern slavery that induced Lincoln to send armies South to coerce BY FORCE the South into remaining part of the Union. THAT my friend IS "Tyranny."

The North’s primary purpose was to prevent southern independence. It is the North that betrayed the Founding principle of “consent of the governed” from that celebrated secession document, the Declaration of Independence.

The South sought to peacefully secede, as technically was indeed their right. And again, I am not defending the South on the principle of preserving slavery, but its right to determine its own sovereignty to govern and live as IT deemed fit -- right or wrong.

"Slavery" was NOT the principle nor prime issue for Lincoln at all -- until he realized it could be used as a political propaganda tool.

The north went to war in response to being attacked by the confederates...

Unadulterated baloney.

Upon baiting and blockading the South at Charleston, Lincoln had provoked his war. The South merely began defending itself.

It has been said and repeated -- at ANY time during the war from beginning to end, Lincoln was willing to have allowed the South its slavery (a movement was already well underway to end it) IF ONLY the South would surrender its own sovereignty, end its secession movement, and return (as punished economic slaves and red-headed step-children) to the Union.