Posted on 03/21/2009 6:26:13 AM PDT by cowboyway
ATLANTA — In a cultural war that has pitted Old South against new, defenders of the Confederate legacy have opened a fresh front in their campaign to polish an image tarnished, they said, by people who do not respect Southern values.
With the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States in 2011, efforts are under way in statehouses, small towns and counties across the South to push for proclamations or legislation promoting Confederate history.
(Excerpt) Read more at courant.com ...
“Of course, you say that while living in a non-diverse state with the high SAT scores to prove it. If Kansas had the demographics of Mississippi, they’d rank 49th or 50th in educational quality, too.”
Darn it! I wanted to jump on this one, but you beat me by a mile (while I was still trying to figure out how to wrestle a pig: the pig likes it, and I just get dirty).
Great post!
I don't know how old you are, but if you're old enough to remember politics in the 1980s and earlier, then you may have noticed that no one back then got all bent out of shape over the Rebel Flag. No one. Not even Democrats. People waved Rebel Flags at Reagan rallies and no one cared. Hell, CBS even aired a TV series called “The Dukes of Hazzard”, where the heroes drove around in a car named the General Lee with a Rebel Flag emblazoned on top. And no one got their panties all in a twist about it.
But today it would be a national scandal if a Rebel Flag popped up at a political rally. When they made a movie version “The Dukes of Hazzard” a few years back, they tried to dump the Rebel Flag car. After fans protested, they finally agreed to keep it but they added a scene in the movie where the heroes bought the car not realizing the flag was painted on top, and they got called racist and bigot for having it on there.
So what changed? Why did the Rebel Flag go from being a fun symbol of regional “orneriness” to being castigated as lower than a swastika? How did honoring Confederate history go from being an innocent form of regional pride and ancestral dignity to being billed as an exhibition of “hatred” and “bigotry”?
Well, everything changed on a day in 1993 when the trademark logo of the Daughters of the American Confederacy was up for a routine renewal by the U.S. Senate. The DAC are a charity group who help all races and whose members are descendants of Confederate soldiers. Their logo contains both the U.S. Flag and the Confederate Battle Flag. Their renewal wasn't even scheduled to be debated since it wasn't even considered to be controversial.
But then Senator Carole Moseley-Braun came to the floor. Newly elected, she was a media darling as “the first African-American woman in the U.S. Senate”. She was also a race-baiting demagogue who had built a political career in Chicago by browbeating opponents into submission with howls of “racism”. She saw that DAC logo and went berserk. She began ranting and raving about how offended she was to see such an evil symbol of hatred, racism, and white supremacy being approved by the Senate. The other Dems immediately saw an opportunity and began siding with her, even though up to that point they had had no objection to renewing the DAC logo and their leadership had even placed the issue up for a automatic voice vote without even intending any debate on it.
Moseley-Braun milked it for all it was worth. She even pretended she was about to faint, so horrified was she at the spectre of an evil Rebel Flag. Dianne Feinstein ran over and held her, lest she collapse to the Senate floor in horror. By this point, the Dems were in full scale race-baiting mode, They vowed to kill the DAC logo renewal and demanded to know if the GOP agreed, indicating that if they didn't, then they were “racists”.
Now, if the GOP had any guts, they'd have said Moseley-Braun was behaving like an idiot, that there was nothing wrong with that innocent logo, and that the people upset about it should get a life. To their credit, about half the GOP Senators did just that. But, alas, the other half melted and begged not to be called “racist”. They claimed to be horrified that some of their fellow Republicans were supporting a symbol of evil and hate and all that's bad in the world. The DAC logo wasn't renewed, being voted down something like 75-25, with the Dems & RINOs crushing the conservatives.
The Dems, of course, high-fived one another. They'd found another issue to whip the cowardly Republicans with. Not only that, but it was a lose-lose for the GOP, since by trashing the Rebel Flag they lost Southern white votes while picking up zero black votes. The media, of course, jumped on the bandwagon, and began prowling for evil Rebel Flags with which to bash Republicans. Hey, Mr. Republican, what do you think about the Rebel Flag flying in South Carolina? Are you for taking it down or are you a racist? Being the STUPID PARTY, the typical GOP response has been to capitulate, to the point that today the GOP is totally on the defensive on this issue, as they are on abortion, the gay agenda, affirmative action, and every other issue where they've allowed the Democrats to define the debate.
And, of course, the left has its own Fifth Column operating within the GOP and on conservative message boards on this issue, ready to scream “racism” and play the race card with the ferocity of Nancy Pelosi or John Conyers. Now I know there are all kinds of rationalizations for this idiotic and cowardly behavior by these Fifth Columnists. They'll tell us that the original Confederates were Democrats, as if the Democrat Party of that era has a damn thing to do with today's Marxist, centralized, anti-white Democrat Party. They'll claim the Confederates were traitors, just like the Code Pinkos. Yet the Code Pinkos hate the Confederate Flag. In fact, today's GOP opponents of the Rebel Flag are siding with today's Democrats and today's Code Pinkos on this very issue. As irony on the cake, most of these same “non-racist” Republicans brag about supporting the King holiday, ignoring the fact that Martin Luther King sided with the Commie Vietcong during the Vietnam War. They can forgive that but can't forgive a secession movement that took place a century and a half ago. Not to mention that Southerners have been among the most patriotic Americans, volunteering in droves for wars and living in a region that has never been a center of anti-American activities or isolationist sentiments like other regions often have been.
So there you have it. I think Southerners have every right to honor our ancestors and our heritage, and no amount of race card playing or leftist browbeating will change my position. And I think that's true of most conservatives here at FR. Unfortunately, the GOP appears to be racially and ideologically whipped right now, so you can probably expect your view to prevail as the party deteriorates into nothing more than a “me too” party copy-catting the Democrats’ leftism and Political Correctness.
Avoided again.
No surprise there.
Hey genius.
I wasn’t there.
I wasn’t in the Civil War either.
I don’t hate the South any more than I hate the North.
What I don’t do, though, is pine for a failed slave regime.
Weak.
So...John Wilkes Booth is some kind of hero to you?
As of 1860 the Southern states exported about three fourths of what they produced, mainly cotton and tobacco and other agricultural products, and used the proceeds of those sales to purchase manufactured goods either from Europeans or Northern manufacturers.
And? Why wouldn't they continue to buy from U.S. manufacturers? Once again you toss out comments at random without any attempt at making sense.
Neither was Lincoln, as anyone with any idea what Communism is would be able to tell you.
Communists supported Lincoln and the Union cause.
That's because the hadn't embraced slavery to the extent that later dictators like Hitler and Stalin did.
The Lincoln cult knows about all of this, but works diligently to keep it out of view of the general public. The fact that news organizations reported the “find,” however, creates a problem for the cult. A cover-up/excuse-making campaign must commence.
No, we just don't find the same sort of asinine reasons that you do.
“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.” ~ Churchill
Good luck on getting an answer to your good question!
Best Regards,
BR
This simple question to a neo-Yankee is like showing a cross to a vampire.
I'm not sure. Has the South taken to burning their own towns again?
If we got rid of the South then who would I have to provide me entertainment on threads like this?
Think. Unless you aren’t — and it’s a VERY distinct possibility — a complete idiot.
I do think. And when challenged I provide support for the statements I make. Unlike people like yourself who feel obligated to toss out any comment, no matter how unlikely or how untrue, so long as it makes the North and Lincoln look bad. And when you get challenged to support your idiotic claims then you get all hissy and defensive. So please spare me the lectures on hating the South, until you stop hating the North. Spare me the comments on hate-filled history, until you can show where it's not the truth. In short, come equipped with something more than your myths and fantasies and maybe I'll start respecting what you have to say. Until then, I honestly don't give a damn about what you think of me.
“I honestly don’t give a damn about what you think of me.”
Glad to know we have something in common, NS.
The irony of your post is astonishing. All those of us who honor the flag have ever asked is to be allowed the right to do so, the same right accorded to people who are freely allowed to wave Malcolm X flags, gay rainbow flags, Mexican flags at illegal alien rallies, and a variety of other flags and symbols representing the far left. Yet, we're told that we're wicked and beyond the pale by the very people who defend those flags. We celebrated and honored our history for decades until the Political Correctness infection spread to the point that the left came after us, and they've done so with a totalitarian vengeance. Dick "Turban" Durbin a few years ago even tried to remove Confederate Flags from Confederate veterans' graves. Yet you think we're the ones who feel the opposition must be totally crushed? Absolutely astonishing.
Rather than examine the negatives of the CSA they instead immediately attack the North, Abraham Lincoln (LDS), and mainly, the poster. Drinking comments, Irish were pussies, anti Catholic smears, anyone who doesn't love the CSA hates the South, anyone who disagrees is a Yankee, a liberal, a South hater, all are used.
Well, I haven't made any anti-Irish or anti-Catholic comments, though I would say that as a member of an ethnicity and a church that has often been smeared you should have a little more empathy for others who are victims of similar smears. You have a right to be proud of your ethnicity and faith, but at the same time if you're going to wear them on your user name then you shouldn't be in the business of telling others that they have nothing to be proud of in their own ancestry. You say something like that, especially when billing yourself by your own ancestry, you're likely to get some harsh and personal responses.
Yes I am old enough to remember the 1980’s. I am old enough to remember before the 1980’s. You think that the resistance to the Rebel flag began with one whack job in Congress?
It absolutely can be traced to that event. Prior to that no one but a complete loon got bent out of shape over Rebel Flags. I'll give you another example of how no one got their little knickers all in a twist over this subject. Back in 1975, a long lost letter was found in the National Archives from General Robert E. Lee. Prior to his death, he had written this letter requesting that his citizenship be restored, but it got lost. Well, in 1975 it was found, and it created a national wave of sympathy for General Lee. A bill to restore his citizenship passed the Senate on a voice vote (no opposition). In the House, they scheduled a roll call vote and only ten members voted no. That's 10 out of 435. Those ten, by the way, were the hardest of the hardcore loony leftists. John Conyers, Bella Abzug, Ron Dellums, etc.
If that letter had remained lost, and were found today, can you imagine what would happen? The Dems would howl with cries of "racism" and "hate" at the suggestion that Lee's citizenship be restored. Probably 70% of the GOP would agree, and a decent sized chunk of folks like you here at FR would say the same thing. Such is the power of Political Correctness and its ratcheting of our nation ever further to the left, year after year.
How can I reach across the psychological divide to someone so invested in one world view as to resist all self examination?
LOL! Thanks for the advice IRISH CATHOLIC.
You want to honor your ancestors. OK. But why are you so fixated on one five year period where people sought to break the United States in half to preserve the slavery of other human beings who were the ancestors of people today?
We aren't. If you'd just leave us alone we'd celebrate when appropriate and nothing more would come of it. The controversy and the fixation comes when people put on the fake halo and the holier-than-thou cloak and start howling "racist, racist, slaveowner, slaveowner". How would you like it if every St. Patrick's Day people threw a tantrum and tried to shut you down? In fact, some did. Remember all the demands that "gay pride" marchers be included? As I recall, all us "southrons" sided with you guys on that.
Why is that segment any more honorable than three generations before or three generations after? Why the fixation?
For heavens' sake, no one said they were. It's just an important part of our history and we wish to honor it. We also honor the founding fathers and the 4th of July. In fact, when (not if, but when) PC advances to the point that war is declared on the founders (after all, they were a bunch of slaveowning white property owners who denied blacks and women the vote), we'll be the last ones fighting to defend them. I fully expect people like yourself to flip to other side and start screaming about how "racist" George Washington was and how we really need to set a new tone of "tolerance" in America by discarding him as a symbol.
As for the politics of the Rebel flag, it is a political straw man for people to fight over. It has been since they have been putting it on flags to begin with. To equate it with abortion and gay rights is...odd.
Not odd at all. The same leftist intimidation tactics used to shut down debate on those issues are used on this one. "You're a sexist, you're a homophobe, you're a racist". The same media bias is at play, with the media in full cooperation mode with the Democrats, putting pressure on the Republicans to dump the pro-lifers, dump the defenders of tradtional marriage, and dump the Rebel Flag southerners. The same wimpishness can be seen among so-called mainstream Republicans. The same boastful smirk can be seen on the Democrats' faces every time the GOP retreats a notch. Identical.
411?
Let's end this. I have one more bottom line question (my fifth bottom line but who is counting) Here goes, if it were to go down again, split roughly the same way. Would you join in on the Federal or the break away state(s) side? Choose now, It should be easy to answer because slavery has nothing to do with it now. Answer this and I leave you alone forever.
Well said. I cannot agree more. It’s clear the same arrogant, do-gooder, holier-than-though attitude of the neo-yankee is genetic. Nothing changes with those people. The only thing I have in common with my fellow countrymen “IrishCatholic” is we share the english language.
I would never choose voluntarily to live with people like him, unfortunalely I am forced to by a Constitionally challenged Federal monster.
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.