U.S. Marines boot recruits with Confederate tattoos

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | May 04, 2010 | Chelsea Schilling

[Man50D]

A widely regarded Southern symbol of pride and states' rights is standing in the way of would-be Marines in their quest to serve their country – a Confederate battle flag.

Straight out of high school, one 18-year-old Tennessee man was determined to serve his country as a Marine. His friend said he passed the pre-enlistment tests and physical exams and looked forward with excitement to the day he would ship out to boot camp.

But there would be no shouting drill instructors, no rigorous physical training and no action-packed stories for the aspiring Marine to share with his family.

Shortly before he was scheduled to leave Nashville for boot camp, the Marine Corps rejected him.

Now, the young man, who wishes to remain unnamed and declined to be interviewed, has chosen to return to school and is no longer an aspiring Marine.

"I think he just wants to let it go," said former Marine 1st Lt. Gene Andrews, a friend of the man and patriotic Southerner who served in Vietnam from 1968 through 1971. Andrews is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group of male descendents of Confederate soldiers. He counseled the young man when he decided to become a Marine.

"He had been talking to me, and he was all fired up about joining," he told WND. "He asked my opinion of it, and I just tried to tell him the truth, good points and bad points."

When the young recruit didn't go to boot camp, Andrews learned of his rejection based on his tattoo of the Confederate battle flag on his shoulder.

[West of the Sun]

There are a lot of black Marines who would feel otherwise (I’m not making a judgment either way as to the validity of such feelings). You would risk unit cohesion to allow a young man with a stupid tattoo to join when there is no shortage of other perfectly good recruits who would enter without such baggage?

I’m an active-duty enlisted Marine, and I don’t want that in my Corps.

[eyedigress]

Have you learned you are going in regardless of the hit? You may just get it. God SPEED IN YOUR DESIRE AND STRENGTH!

[onyx]

Thank you for the ping and link to the wonderful column/article. I must say this thread is all too typical whenever the Confederate flag is the subject. Thankfully, over 67% of Mississippian’s saw fit to vote to include the Confederate flag in our state’s flag, which is almost the same percentage of Arizonian’s who approve of their state’s new law.

[RegulatorCountry]

If avoidance of “contoversy” was ever the standard for unit cohesion, there never would have been women admitted, there never would have been desegregated units or even blacks admitted ... are you sure that’s the best tack to take in the debate? Unit cohesion doesn’t seem to have been quite the pressing concern when the shoe was on the other foot.

You’re eliminating your best soldiers, historically speaking, over fears regarding unit cohesion, when the very people you’re attempting to eliminate formed the core of the units that cohered as these others were welcomed into the Marine Corps.

Foolhardy, and for what? Symbolism. No way to win wars, that.

[matthew fuller]

Tatoo’s of crosses to be banned next?

[kabar]

We are not talking about a "stupid tattoo," but rather the Confederate Flag, which also happens to be on the state flag of Mississippi. Who decides what is racist or offensive? Does perception trump reality or history?

Does the USMC currently allow tattoos of the Mexican Flag or the Black Liberation Flag? I served for 8 years in the USN, 1965-72, including a year in Vietnam and 8 months off the coast. I never experienced unit cohesion being affected by a tattoo of the confederate flag or any other display of it. What is next? Will a tattoo of the state flag of AZ now be considered offensive?

See my post #152 and the remarks of General Chamberlin and how he handled the surrender ceremony. The fact that people are so ignorant about our history and feel obliged to succumb to those who want to villify our founders and revise our history tears at the very fabric of our nation. Political correctness now forbids us from even identifying the Islamic terrorists who are trying to kill us.

[RasterMaster]

That war was a lot of things, but it was *not* about slavery, not in the beginning.

---

Not according to confederate vice-president....

“Lincoln had served in Congress in the 1840’s, with Alexander H. Stephens, later Confederate Vice-President. Stephens, like other Confederates, identified slavery as the sole issue of the Civil War.”

“We went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I never heard of any other cause of quarrel than slavery. Men fight from sentiment. After the fight is over they invent some fanciful theory on which they imagine that they fought.’’ — Confederate Col. John Mosby, cited by Leonard Pitts, Jr., “The South fought to keep slavery, period” (Miami Herald, 14 April 2010), and: “Confederate ‘President’’ Jefferson Davis once flatly cited ‘the labor of African slaves’ as the cause of the rebellion.”

http://medicolegal.tripod.com/slaveryillegal.htm#slavery-sole-cause-civil-war

[usmcobra]

The Corps has a long policy of excluding Klansmen for the very same reason of unit cohesion, and by your standards they would fall into the southern pride fierce fighter country boy mold as well as this young man would.

But the bottom line is simple if the Corps does not want you, then you cannot join. It would be no different if the individual in question had a rainbow flag and enter the exit tattooed across his backside.

[RegulatorCountry]

You know, if you’re going to cite Leonard Pitts, there’s no way I can help you. There was a time when he was readable, but no longer. He’s driven himself nuts with obsession over his own race and any real or imagined slight that’s ever been recorded as far as black people, unless it’s his own people doing the slighting.

You could also cite Abraham Lincoln himself, and demonstrate that the war was not over slavery, but that doesn’t quite fit your conclusion, does it? Barack Obama, self-styled Lincoln accolyte himself, admitted that the Emancipation Proclamation was a military document, during the 2008 election.

[Pelham]

That’s a fact.

[Dick Holmes]

The Federals marched on Virginia, and the war was begun. It became the war of the 'United States' when Lincoln drafted unwilling soldiers fto fight on the behalf of the Federals. He literally had to send in the militia in New York city, to subdue the unwilling draftees. That did not happen in Virginia, where Virgina's sons willingly came to her defense, unlike today's citizenry.

Of course, not all Virginians willingly came to her defense, or there would be no West Virginia.

[Don W]

The war of 1812 was a response to the US invasion of Upper Canada and the burning of York (then the Capital city of the nascent Canada).

[RegulatorCountry]

It would be no different if the individual in question had a rainbow flag and enter the exit tattooed across his backside.

"Don't ask, don't tell" is reportedly giving way to allowing open homosexuals to serve. Do you suppose these tattoos would be banned under that eventuality? Cohere.

As far as Klan, it's a subversive organization and has no place in our military, sort of like La Raza, MS13 or any number of Muslim organizations. Are La Raza members or the others likewise excluded? They should be, they're subversive.

Associating that flag with the Klan is a rather leftist slant, too, by the way. Klansmen have waved the Stars and Stripes; shall we ban tattoos of it as well? Slavery existed far longer under the Stars and Stripes than it did under the Stars and Bars. It existed longer still under the Union Jack ... ban it, those racists!

[eyedigress]

You have been through boot and have the right to raise hell. Go Ahead
\

[mstar]

frantic in his ejaculations when the Old Flag came into sight."

The MSM and 'spinning" has been around for a long time. The above sounds like it came from the MSNBC of its day.

I am a daughter of the south, my family going back to colonial times, living mostly in South Carolina and Miss.
I can tell you I have never heard anything like what you have written. Facts, quiet to the contrary are recorded by my ancestors and historians.

I can tell you stories, also recorded in the county history books, of my g,g,g grandmother, left alone on a plantation, pregnant, caring for her very young children, near Vicksburg that speak volumes of Northern Aggression.

My gggg grandparents had to walk to their relatives in Miss for shelter and food, as their homes in South Carolina were burned over their heads. They had been robbed, and devoured by the noble boys in blue.

Might want to pick up an factual account of what the population of women and children, black and white., endured while trapped in Vicksburg, Ms.

A good place to begin would be "The Slave Narratives of Mississippi" concerning the hell of Vicksburg. In one account, a black gentleman states, they were all so hungry he would lay his blanket in a mud hole, then dry it out so he could eat what was left on it. He also said he saw no reason for pride on the Yankees' part in conquering Vicksburg, asking why would you be proud to win when to do so, you starved the innocents trapped there.

I'll be glad to back anything I have written here with references

[RasterMaster]

I certainly won't resort to citing a lying JACKASS (DUh-bama) with a God complex, but feel free if you wish....

But even a remedial student of history would see the 1860 election was a referendum on abolition of slavery (Republican party founded upon anti-slavery platform, Lincoln-Douglas debates highlighted slavery differences, Lincoln elected as 1st Republican to abolish/limit expansion of slavery).

When the JACKASS party didn't win....seceed. When the south was defeated....kill Lincoln. When Republicans came to reconstruct the south....DUmocrats form KKK to terrorize any Republican in the south and keep blacks from voting....ANYTHING to maintain a majority in support of slavery.

Southern states were ruled for the next 100 years by JACKASSES, so I understand where to look when I happen across a confederate sympathizer....

They never seemed to stray very far from the DNC plantation.

Since you asked for me to quote Lincoln, here's an excerpt from his second inauguration address:

"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it -- all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -- seeking to dissole the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern half part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war."

[Don W]

Lyrics
Unreconstructed Rebel is also known as I’m a Good Old Rebel It was originally printed in 1914 in Collier’s Weekly. The words are by Major Innes Randolph, a member of J.E.B. Stuart’s staff.

The tune is the same as Lily of the West and Lakes of Ponchartrain.

Oh, I’m a good old Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am;
For this “fair land of Freedom”
I do not care a damn.
I’m glad I fit against it-
I only wish we’d won.
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I’ve done.

I hates the Constitution,
This great Republic too;
I hates the Freedmen’s Buro,
In uniforms of blue.
I hates the nasty eagle,
With all his brag and fuss;
But the lyin’, thievin’ Yankees
I hates’ em wuss and wuss.

We got three hundred thousand
Befo’ they conquered us.
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot;
And I wish it was three million
Instead of what we got.

I can’t take up my musket
And fight’ em now no mo’,
But I ain’t a-goin’to love’ em,
Now that is sartin sho’;
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am;
And I won’t be reconstructed,
And I do not give a damn.

[usmcobra]

The Klan carrying the US flag is the same as them carrying the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, an abomination and a corruption of the symbol of what it stands for.

The only reason slavery existed under the United States flag was because it was the sole issue the south refused to budge on during the formation of our country.

In suggesting that we should hold the Stars and Stripes in equal contempt just because the Klan carried it or that it flew over our nation during that time when good men tried to end the practice of slavery inside our nation is just as big an abomination as the corruption of the cross by those evil men that would kill any of us that opposed their views.

Personally I gave up my defense of my southern roots, for one simple reason, the very party that created the Klan, the confederate flag and the Confederacy itself, still uses the symbols they created to divide this nation upon racial grounds for their benefit, and I could not defend the racism of the democrats.

The Corps has decided to remove such symbols from it’s ranks, and I say they made a just decision.

[RegulatorCountry]

You sound like an old school northeastern Republican, RasterMaster. You completely discard all the fine southern Republicans in office who not just supported Reagan, but made the Reagan era possible.

If you think this sort of rhetorical attack upon the populace of an entire region, the core of conservative support in this country, is going to help the cause of conservatism, fine, go right ahead and start banning symbolic speech. Yep, that’ll fix it. See how far that gets you.

Me, I’ll continue correcting misunderstandings and outright slander of my people. Very few of them owned slaves, and they fought honorably for their homeland, just as they did in the Revolution and in every war after the War Between the States.

[RegulatorCountry]

The Corps has decided to remove such symbols from it’s ranks, and I say they made a just decision.

What other such symbolic threats to unit cohesion have been removed from the ranks, usmcobra?