Posted on 07/18/2006 12:49:14 PM PDT by aomagrat
A Confederate heritage group says its free-speech rights were violated when a landowner removed a billboard promoting Southern history near the famed Darlington Raceway.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans plans to demonstrate at the State House next month and buy radio advertisements to complain about losing its billboard on U.S. 52, about two miles from the racetrack.
“This is the most chilling thing I’ve seen against freedom of speech,” spokesman Don Gordon said.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans bought the billboard this spring in response to remarks by a NASCAR executive about the rebel flag.
The billboard featured a Confederate flag and a checkered race flag. The message said, “Victory is Great, but Honor is Greater. Defend your Southern heritage.”
The billboard, taken down briefly in May, also listed the group’s phone number and name.
Officials of the S.C. Central Railroad, which owns the land where the billboard stood, said the message was “controversial” and needed to come down.
“It is not in our commercial interests to have billboards on our property displaying messages that might be controversial in the local community, whatever the substance of the messages,” a company spokeswoman said in a prepared statement.
“We made no judgment as to the content of the billboard, but we did understand it to be controversial and therefore asked that it be removed.”
An outdoor advertising company, hired by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, installed the sign just before Darlington’s annual Mother’s Day race. It was removed permanently June 16, according to a July 11 letter from the S.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans commander, Randall Burbage, to fellow members.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans says it is an international, nonprofit historical society. The group, which says it has 30,000 members nationally, has taken positions in defense of the Confederate flag in South Carolina.
‘NOT ... ANYTHING FAVORABLE’
In October, NASCAR’s chief executive, Brian France, told the CBS television show “60 Minutes” the Confederate flag was “not a flag that I look at with anything favorable. That’s for sure.”
As it branches away from its traditional Southern fan base, NASCAR has tried to shed its rebel-flag-waving image. The nation’s largest stock car racing organization has started diversity programs and tried to appeal to black and Hispanic fans. The Darlington Raceway, in business for more than 50 years, has served as a pillar of NASCAR.
“A member of the France family said some uncomplimentary things, so we put that billboard up to make a statement and to stimulate new members,” the confederate veterans’ Gordon said. “We really didn’t expect anything like this to occur.”
Attempts to reach NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter were unsuccessful. However, Hunter said last spring that NASCAR did not seek to have the sign removed.
“If we find out NASCAR is involved, you can expect airplanes towing Confederate banners over every NASCAR race anywhere in this nation — forever,” Gordon said.
Mac Josey, vice president at the Darlington Raceway, said he knew nothing about the billboard and did not ask that it be removed. He said the track does not fly Confederate flags, although some fans do.
Wesley Blackwell, chairman of the Darlington County Council, said he heard about the billboard during a social gathering at the Darlington speedway in May. Blackwell said the county did not ask that the sign be removed.
‘NOT A WORD WOULD BE SAID’
The Confederate veterans group paid Palmetto Outdoor Media more than $5,000 to put up the advertisement, Gordon said. Most of the money was refunded when the sign was removed.
However, Gordon is not satisfied.
“What if it was a sign trying to bring new members to the NAACP? We all know not a word would be said,” Gordon said.
Palmetto Outdoor Media co-owner Rodney Monroe said his company’s land-lease agreement with S.C. Central Railroad has a section that called for the removal of offensive advertisements.
“We lease the property from the company and we, obviously, crossed the line as far as what was acceptable to them ... and were asked to remove the sign,” Monroe said. “We are not in the business to cause or create controversy.”
Gordon said his group had a contract with Palmetto Outdoor for the sign to stay up through part of next year.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees every American the right to free speech. However, the sign was on private property, and the property’s owner ordered it down.
Bill Rogers, director of the S.C. Press Association, said that removal violated the principle of free speech, if nothing else. The sign did not appear to be inflammatory, he said.
“I can see why they would feel their rights are violated, that if someone doesn’t like the message, they take it down,” Rogers said.
Point of clarification, non-seq. As my post 288 showed, tariff revenue was depressed during the war in real terms compared to 1860. It inched up slightly in real terms during the war for a couple of years but remained below its 1860 level.
Indeed it was. The last paragraph:
Now is no time for temporizing or dodging. The State coercion trick will not win. The people understand that the secession action of the cotton States is simple treason, and will treat it accordingly. They fear not to test the strength of the Union. The majority believe it superior to treason, superior to slavery. They believe it will have a flourishing existence when all traitors have been subdued, and when the abomination of African slavery will have passed into history. The gleam of sunshine penetrating the thick gloom enveloping the country is the irresistible fact, that the neck of the slave power is broken.
This one's worth putting up in its entirety.
Indianapolis Daily Journal, January 17, 1861There was a time before South Carolina had placed herself in open hostility to the Union, when we, and we believe a large majority of the North, would have consented to part with her, if she had consulted the other States, and requested permission to try a peaceful experiment as a separate nation. Her turbulence, and avowed maintenance of doctrines at war with the existence of the nation, made her, at the best, a useless member of the confederacy, and very many would have been glad to give her a chance to test the wisdom of her theories in a solitary existence. So with those States that sympathized with her, and were preparing to follow in her lead. But the case now is widely and fearfully changed. These States do not ask, or care to consult their associates, and learn whether it may not be possible to arrange our difficulties so as to move on in harmony as heretofore. They have put it out of our power to consent to anything. They have met us, not with a request for peaceful consultation, but with war. If we concede their demands now it is the surrender of a nation conquered by rebel members. If we make no effort to resist the wrong we submit at once to disunion and national degradation. There is no course left, either for honor or patriotism, but to reclaim by the strong hand, if it must be so, all that the seceding States have taken, enforce the laws, and learn the traitors the wisdom of the maxim that it takes two to make a bargain. All questions of expediency were thrust out of reach by the act which took Fort Moultrie as a hostile fortress, and hauled down the national flag as a sign of the conquest. They have all been decided without our help. We have had no opportunity to say a word. The seceding States have raised the issue, argued it to their own satisfaction, and decided it by war. We have been left no alternative but to resist or submit. We deplore this state of things. We had earnestly hoped that the Gulf States would give all shades of sentiment a fair opportunity of expression in the election of their Conventions, discuss their grievances calmly, request a consultation with the nation, and if they firmly and deliberately refused to abide in the Union as it is, we were willing to let them drop out, still holding our government unchanged over ourselves. In this way it was possible to get rid of the rebellious States, by simply diminishing, instead of dissolving the Union, which the London Times says is impossible. It is now, but it was not, and need not have been, if the seceding States had been willing to meet the Union fairly and come to an understanding. Such a course would have been in accordance with the enlightenment of the age, the dictates of Christianity, and the best interests of both sections. But the hope of such an adjustment is all past, at least till the seceding States restore the government property, submits to the laws, and return to their former position of peaceful members of the Union. There can be no conciliation with them till they do. The government must be preserved. It is ours as well as theirs, and when they attempt to overturn it by force, we must preserve it by force. A government kicked aside at the will of any State, is nothing. The right of secession would make the government a mere accident, subsisting because thirty or forty members happened to agree in regard to it. We insist that our government is neither an accident or a trifle. It is the best yet devised by the wit of man, and is worth a dozen wars to keep. And we mean to keep it. To allow a State to rebel against it, and give way to the rebellion, is to consent to its destruction. We cannot claim that it exists even for those still remaining in it, when it is set at naught and defied by any other member. It must be whole or it cannot be at all. The people may let a member out of it, but no member can break it down to get out without breaking it to pieces. We are therefore for the most determined measures of resistance to the rebellion in the Gulf States. We insist that the Union shall be preserved till those who made it shall consent to change it. No refractory State or combination of traitors must be permitted to peril it in the pursuit of insane vengeance or impracticable theories. And if their madness leads them to open war let them suffer the doom of traitors.
"We have been left no alternative but to resist or submit."
Wow. True now as then. Today it's Jihadists, then it was slavers.
But remove the southern consumers, which according to information posted accounted for roughly one third of the total in 1860, and wouldn't that mean that exports did grow? If the dollar figures remain about the same or grow slightly on a smaller customer base and that would seem to indicate a substantial increase.
Are they trying to say that a private landowner has no say on what gets posted on a billboard on his property? Sorry, no sale.
If the Southern consumers were removed, the North and West should have imported 67% of the base 1860 figure if the war and tariff had no effect on them. That 67% is based on the split of consumed imported goods by regions reported by Kettell in 1860. Instead, the North and West import less than this in the war years.
[You, snarling] This... from someone who'd probably whine if parallels are drawn between the Confed battle flag - defender of slavery - and the swastika - defender of slavery.
So here's the deal, Count Vlad -- when you go around spewing that "let's all be ruthless" stuff, and spouting off sadistic crap that was parodied in both the Ghostbusters movies ("atop a mountain of skulls, I ruled from a throne of blood!"), you sound like one of those black-shirted b*stards. After all, it was a Nazi SS general, Heinz von Bittrich, who said, "Arnheim ausschlagen" -- "flatten Arnhem." Perhaps you think every "enemy population" of "traitors," as the foaming editorialists Heyworth put up for his -- and he thought, our -- amusement were calling Southerners, ought to get the Ouradour treatment, but my point was, if you go around saying stuff like that around here pretty often, you'll get the boot.
It all sounds very dramatic, and perhaps at some atavistic level you find it deeply satisfying to say things like that, but as Baldur von Schirach's wife found out during the war, official hatred is never noble or justifiable, even when it comes out of Hitler's own mouth ("du musst hassen lernen!" -- "you must learn to hate!") -- it's just tiresome, and tacky, and old, and evil.
Just a FRiendly wave of the hand, and a reminder, as we say in the parts of Texas that haven't been completely overrun yet by idiots from New Jersey, to "drive friendly".
The Supreme Court made sure to draw our attention, several years ago, to a doctrine that says that contracts may not abridge articles of the Bill of Rights (as through a "black covenant", or by incorporating or referencing a "black code"). I have deed restrictions on my own property that have never been adjudicated, that restrict to whom I may sell it, but which are unenforceable under federal law.
The argument on the board, then, is whether the landowner acted improperly to abridge the First Amendment rights of persons renting space on the billboard because of "content" (as in, "vote for Bob, he's a Republican/Democrat/Libertarian"). I also have a deed restriction that purports to restrict political expression, by banning political signs in people's front yards -- I personally think that that provision is also unenforceable, but the chairman of the deed-restrictions enforcement committee, a property owners' committee supported by and reporting to the civic club (in a purely advisory way), happens to think diametrically the opposite.
So, what do you think? Did the heritage group get screwed by NASCAR and the landowner?
Yeah. Stirring, empyrean rhetoric.
The Southerners were still acting within their rights. Which is the thing about rights, as opposed to permissions.
This is. That they openly separated themselves from the Union, and renounced their ties of citizenship with the rest of the polity. They were not "rebels" but free citizens who exercised the sovereign rights and freedoms that their ancestors had won on the field of Yorktown, and which had been recognized very explicitly by King George in the Treaty of Paris, when he ceded the fact of sovereignty to each and every State of the Union, before all the nations of the earth and the God of Israel Himself.
His vita here:
http://blueandgraytrail.com/event/Edmund_Ruffin
He served in uniformed service in the War of 1812 (no combat), and enlisted at 74 in the Palmetto Guards of South Carolina. He was present at Sumter (didn't fire the "first shot") and at Bull Run, his only combat experiences.
I'm sure you'd rather he continued to serve with Jackson's foot cavalry.
Still voting in Chicago, then?
Couldn't not walk through that open door......
As an old Whig, Stephens continued to advocate whiggish improvement schemes, and if he'd been in the Senate, he might have voted even for Morrill -- we can't know.
But he did oppose Toombs on the general subject of tariffs and free trade, and his attempts to palliate Toombs's argument are really controversion of his opponent and general rhetorical defense of the Whig legacy rather than any explicit, coherent plan of action that he would carry forward himself in the Congress in the name of his new party.
His argument that the South ought not to secede, by the way, overlooks the fact that some Southerners continued to cooperate out of interest with Northern advocates of tariffs -- otherwise the Tariff of 1828 would never have passed, for instance. The Virginia Unionists (mostly big planters) who voted for John Bell -- the Constitutional Union Party -- are good evidence for this political fact of life.
But as he also pointed out the tariff rates were "made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at."
Rhetoric. Some of them also passed, as I just pointed out, some high tariffs from time to time.
And had the southern senators not pulled out of the Congress the Morrill Tariff would never have gotten out of the Senate, just as if had been killed the year before.
That's how Stephens said he would have tried to play it, if you can believe him -- the term "DiNO" might apply here -- and how I'd have tried to play it; but the Southern cause would eventually have come to grief when Lincoln inevitably (I think it was his "solution" -- or rather his "other solution", if the South had knuckled under and the war option wasn't necessary to keep them in the Union) pulled some skanky, extraconstitutional, middle-of-the-night crap to get around the Constitution and the Congress and have his way on tariffs, on slavery, on everything on his list.
Lincoln was a lawyer, a railroad lawyer at that. He believed in winning, not scruples -- he was the nineteenth-century Kentucky version of LBJ. He didn't believe in faithfully following the Constitution, as his "all the laws but one" crack proves beyond any peradventure, and as his choice of political associates demonstrates if you still resist the idea that he was first and foremost a machine politician, dedicated to building a national political machine that would muffle or crush all dissent and rule by machinations and expedients.
You know, you can make cracks about how you think Southerners were cowards, and they were this and that -- but they'd have deserved your obloquy more, if they hadn't fought for their rights. Bottom line.
They fought the Machine. The Northerners didn't. Bottom line.
[Your reply] He probably didn't believe in Bigfoot, either. Or men from space. But some people don't need evidence to believe what they want to believe, no matter how ridiculous.
Lincoln created Nevada with his pen, and West Virginia with the sword. Fact, not fantasy. And Lincoln's reasons are on record, too -- and posted to this forum. He wanted more free States in the Union, by hook or by crook. You got a problem with that?
No, he made a better chickenhawk.
Absolutely not. The dead may vote but only if they are residents.
And neither act was unconstitutional just because you said it was.
He wanted more free States in the Union, by hook or by crook. You got a problem with that?
No. Do you?
And if that was his only reason then why didn't they admit Colorado as well? The Congress passed an enabling act for them the same day that they passed one for Nevada.
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