Free Republic

An eight-mile convoy of pickups, motorcycles and cars wound through a central Florida town on Sunday in a show of support for the Confederate flag, as a backlash against its banishment from public landmarks across the South picks up steam. Horns blared and hundreds of the rebel flags fluttered as more than 1,500 vehicles and some 4,500 people turned out for the "Florida Southern Pride Ride" in Ocala, according to police estimates. Vehicles from states across the South and as far away as California participated. "That flag has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people," said...

The Confederate Flag Needs To Be Raised, Not Lowered Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that what we see happening in the United States today is an apt illustration of why the Confederate flag was raised in the first place. What we see materializing before our very eyes is tyranny: tyranny over the freedom of expression, tyranny over the freedom of association, tyranny over the freedom of speech, and tyranny over the freedom of conscience. In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow Southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He was truly a...

Friday on CNN, Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) said the Confederate flag, which has now been removed from the grounds of the statehouse, caused political battles and personal pain since it went up and declared, “It just never should have been there.” “It’s a true new day in South Carolina,” she said. “When I came into office, to have a two thirds vote threshold was a huge one. It’s not a Republican/Democrat, white/black, there hadn’t been a billed filed to bring it down since 2007. There was so much of a divide and so much hurt in the compromise of 2000,...

Today, many are cheering the end of an era in the South. As The New York Times reports, many see the lowering of the Confederate flag from outside South Carolina’s State House as “closing a chapter on a symbol of the Deep South and its history of resistance and racial animus.” [snip] Mohammed Elibiary: "Today is a new day in the South. Gone will be the Confederacy as we create the New South. Federalism & individual rights, no states' rights." [snip] Mohammed Elibiary: "States' rights was defeated with the Confederacy in the Civil War. USA has federalism and individual rights,...

RUSH: Big deal about the Confederate flag coming down. It happened just... I think it was just after 10 this morning or just after 9, something like that. It's just the beginning. As I have said countless times over the course of this amazing broadcast career that spans now 26 years: A liberal solution to a problem is never the end of anything. There are never liberal solutions. A liberal solution is actually the beginning of a new problem or a continuation of an existing problem. But they never solve anything. The reason they never solve anything is because they're...

Delegate Karen Lewis Young submitted legislation this week to change the words of Maryland’s state song after several of her constituents sent her emails about the song’s “inappropriateness.” Young, D-District 3A, said after looking at the words to “Maryland, My Maryland,” it was clear the song celebrates the Confederacy and disparages the Union government.

The Liberal politically correctness has gone far beyond being annoying and disgusting. They have made it puke inducing.Past time to take our country back! Twelve years ago, members of the Blue Collar Comedy troupe gave America some insight into what the new wave of “political correctness” could do to the entertainment industry. They were ahead of their time with this skit, since “political correctness” is an unfortunate reality these days. Without knowing the video’s age, it would seem to be in direct response to the Confederate flag being removed from the famous General Lee car from “Dukes of Hazard,” though...

And for a moment, it seemed as if the Confederate flag just might keep flying after all. But then Jenny Horne decided that she had had enough. The 42-year-old lawyer from Summerville stepped up to the podium and delivered words so raw and impassioned they would immediately go viral on the Internet. Perhaps the most surprising and powerful part of Horne’s speech came when she invoked her lineage to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. “I’m sorry. I have heard enough about heritage,” Horne said during the debate. “I have a heritage. I am a lifelong South Carolinian. I...

Prior to the Confederate battle flag’s removal outside the South Carolina State House, CNN’s Don Lemon gave a personal confession: Like many other black Americans, he left the south as a young adult thinking his chances were limited if he had stayed south of the Mason-Dixon line. After Urban League President JT McLawhorn suggested the Confederate battle flag has long been a symbol promoting “a culture of low expectations” for black residents, Lemon responded with the following personal anecdote: I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana — really a little town called Port Allen, Louisiana, and also Baker. I didn’t...

RALEIGH, N.C. – The North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles says it sold out of its Confederate flag plates. Mike Charbonneau with the state Department of Transportation said the ran out of the Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates following a high volume of requests between June 23 and June 29.On June 24, 34 plates were ordered, followed by 47 on June 25 and 41 on June 26. The high demand for the plates came days after Gov. Pat McCrory said North Carolina should stop issuing the tags. Charbonneau said more plates will be available in about 30 days.

In the first reissue of these documents since 1865, A City Laid Waste captures in riveting detail the destruction of South Carolina's capital city. William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), a native South Carolinian and one of the nation's foremost men of letters, was in Columbia and witnessed firsthand the city's capture by Union forces and its subsequent devastation by fire. A renowned novelist and poet, who was also an experienced journalist and historian, Simms deftly recorded the events of February 1865 in a series of eyewitness accounts published in the first ten issues of the Columbia Phoenix and reprinted here. His...

Hollis remembers the day the Confederate flag was hoisted over the State House to commemorate the war. The centennial kicked off on April 11, 1961, with a re-creation of the firing on Fort Sumter. The flag went up for the opening celebrations. "The flag is being flown this week at the request of Aiken Rep. John A. May," reported The State on April 12. May didn't introduce his resolution until the next legislative session. By the time the resolution passed on March 16, 1962, the flag had been flying for nearly a year. (This explains why the flag is often...

House Democrats today prominently featured the confederate flag during their floor speeches, displaying an image of the flag on a large placard and then denouncing it.

South Carolina’s governor signed a bill Thursday that will send the Confederate flag to the state’s “relic room.” The decision was made more than 50 years after the rebel banner began flying at the statehouse in Columbia to protest the civil rights movement. Governor Nikki Haley praised lawmakers for realizing that the long-celebrated symbol is too painful to keep promoting. “The Confederate flag is coming off the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse,” Haley said. “We will bring it down with dignity, and we will make sure it is stored in its rightful place.”

In a rapid and dramatic policy shift, Confederate flag imagery could be allowed to remain displayed on graves on federal land in some circumstances under a Republican-sponsored amendment that will be voted on in the House on Thursday. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., announced the unexpected change of plans Wednesday evening as floor debate wrapped up on the fiscal 2016 Interior-Environment spending bill (HR 2822). The Interior-Environment Appropriations chairman and floor manager set a roll call vote on the Confederate flag amendment for Thursday, when lawmakers are scheduled to vote on final passage of the $30.2 billion measure. The move came just...

The House has voted to ban the display of Confederate flags at historic federal cemeteries in the deep South. The low-profile move came Tuesday evening after a brief debate on a measure funding the National Park Service, which maintains 14 national cemeteries, most of which contain graves of Civil War soldiers. The proposal by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., added language to block the Park Service from allowing private groups to decorate the graves of Southern soldiers with Confederate flags in states that commemorate Confederate Memorial Day. The cemeteries affected are the Andersonville and Vicksburg cemeteries in Georgia and Mississippi. “The...

Coincident with July 4, the Pew Research Center published a survey asking, "Why has the U.S. been successful? Reliance on principles or ability to change?" Fifty-one percent attributed America's success to its "ability to change" and 44 percent to its "reliance on longstanding principles." Not surprisingly, 73 percent of conservatives attribute America's success to its "reliance on principles," and 77 percent of liberals attribute it to its "ability to change." But the survey question, I think, is deeply flawed. It's like asking what explains the work of a great artist -- the ability to master the discipline of their art...

If President Obama had a son, he might look like Amari Brown, the little boy killed by a bullet intended for his gang-banger father on the streets of President Obama’s Chicago in yet another bloody Windy City weekend. As the Chicago Tribune reported, over the Fourth of July weekend, Amari Brown was one of the ten that were killed among 55 that were shot, none attributed to Confederate flag loyalists: Among those killed was 7-year-old Amari Brown, shot in the chest as he watched fireworks near his father's home in Humboldt Park late Saturday night. Police say they believe the...

OCALA -- Marion County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to once again fly the Confederate flag at the county's government complex. The flag was taken down last week and temporarily replaced with a flag with the seal of Marion County. PREVIOUS STORY: Marion County takes down Confederate flag Commissioners on Tuesday said they planned to meet with the county's historic commission to discuss placing markers near the flag to explain its historic significance. The Civil War-era flag has been under attack since nine black men and women were gunned down at a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17....

Republican South Carolina Sen. Lee Bright started off a debate about the Confederate flag by denouncing the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling and calling on people of faith in South Carolina to “rise up.”“I heard our president sing a religious hymn, and then Friday night I watched the White House be lit up in the abomination colors,” Bright said on the South Carolina Senate floor Monday. “It’s time — we’ve got amazing grace, we’ve got people in the stands here of faith — it’s time for the church to rise up. It’s time for the state of South Carolina to...