Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Pitts: About the Confederate battle flag, remember this: Nazis have a heritage, too
The Salt Lake City Tribune ^ | 3 March 2008 | Leonard Pitts

Posted on 03/03/2008 10:37:49 AM PST by Rebeleye

They will tell you the Civil War was not about slavery. Remind them that the president and vice president of the so-called "Confederate States of America" both said it was. They will tell you that great-great grandpa Zeke fought for the South, and he never owned any slaves. Remind them that it is political leaders - not grunts - who decide whether and why a war is waged. They will tell you the flag just celebrates heritage. Remind them that "heritage" is not a synonym for "good." After all, Nazis have a heritage, too.

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


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: confederacy; confederate; confederateflag; dixie; ushistory
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 181-200201-220221-240 ... 1,121-1,139 next last
To: Turret Gunner A20

it sounds like you are prepared to concede that human beings can be considered “property.”

Slaveowners deserved no compensation for their theft of the humanity of others.


201 posted on 03/03/2008 12:38:05 PM PST by ChurtleDawg (voting only encourages them)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
The fact that the Hartford Convention was threatening secession DURING a time when the country was in a life-or-death struggle with the most powerful nation on earth ...

Well, no. The fact is that the small minority who went to the Hartford Convention advocating secession were voted down early on, and the declaration issued by the convention makes to threats of secession whatsoever.

...probably contributed some to the hyperbole of the editorial you cite.

Hyperbole? Or Southern hypocrisy?

202 posted on 03/03/2008 12:39:07 PM PST by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 135 | View Replies]

To: ontap; Soliton

‘The integrated circuit was invented in Dallas Texas. No integrated circuit, no computer.’

Look I get it re: Southern Industry. That post was a ref for the chief ‘baiter’ on the thread to a similarly stupid comment made a couple of years ago. I thought perhaps the two posters were related.

When I was in the Corps, I got the ‘Yankee’ treatment at school from the southern boys. I told them that since I was from a state that came in AFTER the Civil War that it didn’t apply to me. For the Southerners here, I concur with this section from post #175:

‘I honor the flag for the sacrifice of the average soldier who fought out of patriotism.’


203 posted on 03/03/2008 12:42:33 PM PST by xone
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 194 | View Replies]

To: Tallguy
That's what Lincoln wanted to do... recolonize a portion of West Africa with American Negros. That's how the country of Liberia got started.

Liberia was established in 1822 when Lincoln was 13. He must have been a precocious little guy to accomplish that.

204 posted on 03/03/2008 12:42:33 PM PST by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 141 | View Replies]

To: Tallguy

You cite an isolated instance. I said systematic.

Lee had plenty of opportunity to do so in 1862 and 1863 but did not. Doing so would have been counter to every principle upon which his entire life had been based.

The actions of Sherman and Sheridan (Shemnandoah Valley) were a matter of government policy promulgated and approved at the highest level. To that list I will also add the firebombing of Charleston.


205 posted on 03/03/2008 12:42:44 PM PST by Locomotive Breath
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 180 | View Replies]

To: Old Mountain man

This is how the slippery slope gets started on the left...a noose...suv’s...pretty much ANY object is offensive to someone, somewhere...so where does it all end?

If we ban everything offensive...how long before the Spirit of ‘76 flag with 13 stars in a cirlce is banned?

After all, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves!


206 posted on 03/03/2008 12:45:02 PM PST by tpanther (The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing-----Edmund Burke)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: King of Florida

Well, he might be that to you, but to me he is a viscous, ignorant jackass for comparing the entire South to the Nazis.


207 posted on 03/03/2008 12:46:20 PM PST by Turret Gunner A20 (Smart burglars would be lining up up at the unemployment offices.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 64 | View Replies]

To: Non-Sequitur

Gee!!!!! I didn’t know that the South had starved, gassed and shot over 12,000,000 like Germans and Japanese did.


208 posted on 03/03/2008 12:50:07 PM PST by Turret Gunner A20 (Smart burglars would be lining up up at the unemployment offices.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 67 | View Replies]

To: ml/nj
Stop me when I say something that isn't true.

But I did, and you didn't.

209 posted on 03/03/2008 12:53:59 PM PST by r9etb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 188 | View Replies]

To: Rebeleye

I’ll never understand people who say they are offended by the Confederate battle flag. The CSA national flags might be seen as representing secession or slavery. But they proved to be impractical on the battlefield; the first one looked too much like the Stars and Stripes, and the later versions had too much white, and could be confused with a surrender flag. So the battle flag was introduced.

I bet most of these easily-offended people wouldn’t even recognize the first CSA national flag.

Plus, if a national flag of that era can represent slavery, then the U.S. 35-star flag (or the short-lived 33 and 34 star flags) should be just as offensive as a Confederate flag. Slavery was legal in the U.S until the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Lincoln would have almost certainly have lost the support of the border states if he had tried to abolish slavery in the U.S. before the war was over. Would these sensitive people feel offended by the presence of the U.S. 35-star flag?


210 posted on 03/03/2008 12:57:30 PM PST by 04-Bravo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Non-Sequitur
This is a map of the nation during the Civil War if you will note there were five northern states who had slaves during the civil war. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did nothing to free these slaves. Lincoln himself stated that he would accept slavery to preserve the union. So much for the civil war being fought over slavery. Photobucket
211 posted on 03/03/2008 12:58:11 PM PST by ontap (Just another backstabbing conservative)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 200 | View Replies]

To: mngran2

Maybe you don’t mean it to be, but your sentiment sounds patronizing. You may have had to “straighten us out,” but we also gave this entire country eight Presidents from my home state of Virginia alone, a disproportionate number of soldiers down through the years, and now, we’re the destination of choice for millions of folks coming down from the Northeast and the Rust Belt (and also, unfortunately, coming north illegally from Mexico!). So...you’re welcome. :)

I really do think that the baby boom generation down here would have eliminated Jim Crow laws given time, just like chattel slavery would’ve died out regardless if there had been a WBTS or not. It would’ve taken longer, but I do think it would’ve happened eventually. Southerners, whatever the Northeastern and West Coast elites may say about us, aren’t stupid. We’d be able to see when racial discrimination was hurting us, and adjust accordingly.

Look at two of the paragons of segregation in the South—Strom Thurmond and George Wallace. Wallace ended up popular with black voters in Alabama after he came to realize the errors of “segregation forever.” And as for ol’ Strom, well, he proved he wasn’t a racist when it came to the ladies at least! :) Seriously, I was living in South Carolina when he died, and the praise that poured forth from black people in the state—not, please note, the so-called “civic leaders” who love to keep things stirred up—was effusive and loud. His constituent service to the residents of South Carolina, regardless of race, was legendary.

Old habits die hard. But they can die.

}:-)4


212 posted on 03/03/2008 1:02:36 PM PST by Moose4 (Hey GOP...don't move toward the middle. Move the middle toward us.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 198 | View Replies]

To: Badeye

Dixie Sue!?! And I thought my Aunt Earlene had a southern name. No, that was my Aunt Bobby Jo.


213 posted on 03/03/2008 1:02:44 PM PST by Southerngl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 150 | View Replies]

To: Emperor Palpatine

Which is about as dumb a reason as can be dremed up to tear ddown a building. But then the present German government hasn’t yet been shown to be overburdened with geniuses.


214 posted on 03/03/2008 1:04:05 PM PST by Turret Gunner A20 (Smart burglars would be lining up up at the unemployment offices.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 76 | View Replies]

To: ontap

In fairness, West Virginia was only a slaveholding state because it was actually part of Virginia until it seceded back to the union in 1863—a secession that, interestingly, anti-Southern folks have no problem with whatsoever. The terrain up there made a slaveholding plantation economy basically impossible.

Maryland was basically held in the Union only by force. One of Lincoln’s most egregious Constitutional abuses was the suspension of habeus corpus in Maryland and the arrest of many pro-secession activists in Baltimore. The Maryland state song “Maryland, my Maryland” is actually a pro-Confederate anthem.

}:-)4


215 posted on 03/03/2008 1:06:37 PM PST by Moose4 (Hey GOP...don't move toward the middle. Move the middle toward us.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 211 | View Replies]

To: stainlessbanner

Chance? Who in H. E. double-hockey-sticks is that?


216 posted on 03/03/2008 1:07:26 PM PST by Emperor Palpatine ("There is no civility, only politics.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 138 | View Replies]

To: Emperor Palpatine

For some reason, you remind me of a herd of constipated elephants.


217 posted on 03/03/2008 1:09:31 PM PST by Turret Gunner A20 (Smart burglars would be lining up up at the unemployment offices.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 83 | View Replies]

To: RedEyeJack

Using that logic, the steam engine could do pretty much the same. By that time they were compact enough to already do so.

And IIRC before the war steam railroads and riverboats brought “King Cotton” north where they were exported from northeastern ports.


218 posted on 03/03/2008 1:11:43 PM PST by Emperor Palpatine ("There is no civility, only politics.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 152 | View Replies]

To: Moose4
Look at two of the paragons of segregation in the South—Strom Thurmond and George Wallace.

I think the stories of those two show is that they were career politicans who would take any position that's popular at the time in order to get elected. Wallace in particular, was an anti-segregationist (or at least not as segregationist) when he ran for governor in 1958, even winning the endorsement of the NAACP. He lost to a candidate who had the endorsement of the KKK, prompting Wallace to famously say, " "Seymore, you know why I lost that governor's race?... I was outn******ed by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be outn*****ed again."

Later, when segregationism became less popular and even a political handicap as black voters began make themselves felt, both men smoothly dropped it and continued to win elections.

219 posted on 03/03/2008 1:13:24 PM PST by Bubba Ho-Tep ("More weight!"--Giles Corey)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 212 | View Replies]

To: Southerngl

Yep. I swear thats her first and middle names.

She went by ‘Sue’...(chuckle)


220 posted on 03/03/2008 1:15:09 PM PST by Badeye (Give McCain the same level of support he gave Conservatives like you and I)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 213 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 181-200201-220221-240 ... 1,121-1,139 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson