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.
And where, exactly, does it say that. You're the big one for everything being explicit, nothing implied. Show me where the Davis regime was willing to talk about debt and payment for property stolen.
And it's really rich of you so to say, considering that Lincoln wouldn't even talk to those people, not even the Virginia commissioners who came to talk to him before Sumter.
And again what was there to talk about? All the commissioners were sent with the purpose of obtaining recognition of confederate sovereignty. The Union position of an end to secession wasn't on the table. So to say that the commission was there to negotiate anything is false. They were there to get Lincoln's surrender. For him to sign off on the legality of all the southern actions to date, which would have to include their walking away from their obligations and stealing everyhing that they could get their hands on. And as for Governor Letcher's proposals, well considering that they called for an end to personal liberty laws, protection of slavery in D.C., opening the territories to slavery, in short everything that the south had demanded it's little wonder that Lincoln saw no reason to meet with him.
Should it have been? And anyway, we were talking about the national debt.
Why not, if the southern commission was there to negotiate instead of demand. And your unsubstantiated claim that the south was there to negotiate debt falls apart when you look at the whole picture. Say Lincoln recognized the southern secession then what? Having gotten what they came for what reason is there to believe that they would have negotiated anything in good faith? What leverage did the North have anymore? It's like I propose that you and I end a partnership by you signing a paper saying I'm not responsible for mutual debts built up during the partnership. With me saying that once you sign the paper I'll pay my fair share, I promise. Would you be fool enough to accept that?
Pretty damn vague, because Lincoln wouldn't talk to them, period.
Pretty damn vague because that was what the south wanted. No promise to do anything, once recognition was obtained.
Lincoln was starting a war, and you're complaining about "leverage"? You need to get over yourself.
Davis started the war. You need to get over that fact.
I thought the whole premise of the right of free speech and free press was so that citizens could be controversial without fear of reprisal. Yes, I understand that the billboard is on private land, but did the owners of the land not know the content of the billboard beforehand? If there was a contract, they should be bound to honor it. My bet is that they succombed to political thuggery.
Bingo. Marshall understood it, and stated so in the Virginia debates. But it seems that there must be something about possessing life tenure that liberalizes many supreme court justices (and professors). Salmon P. Chase, stated BEFORE his SC tenure, that each state had rights/powers superior to that of the federal government - and that HE would defend those rights against tyrannical attempts to usurp them. I guess the American dictator who overthrew the Constitution instead of abiding by it (Lincoln) - quelled that position by granting Chase his wish to be on the court. That way Chase could uphold the legalization of Lincoln's arresting justices/judges, crushing 1st Amendment rights of thousands, invasion of the seceded states, jihadist attacks on civilian populations etc.
Americans are torqued that OBL slaughtered over 3000 Americans, yet these left-wing nuts salute Lincoln for waging war on innocents, killing far more, destroying entire towns, arresting priests for not PRAYING for Lincoln, arresting a young girl in New Orleans for having the temerity to play a Southern song on her piano during Yankee occupation. Union forces even HUNG a Georgia Supreme Court justice (after robbing him of thousands of dollars) in an attempt to force him to divulge the location of his gold. Then they set the woods on fire to make it look like an accident.
Sounds to me like Hezballah/OBL/Al qaida/Islamic terrorists took a page out of the Lincoln playbook. Hezballah has their "green-helment guy", Hussein had his "Baghdad Bob", and Lincoln has his "Lincolnites" - many right here attempting to justify his actions - attempting to justify the murder of thousands of innocent Southern women, children and old men - black and white.
The Supreme Court rejected the notion that a state must beg for permission to leave the union. 3 of the 4 justices holding that a state could 'withdraw HERSELF' from the union ( Penhallow, et al. v. Doane's Administrators, 3 Dall. 54, (1795)
Justice Patterson (a delegate at the convention) wrote, '... If she [New Hampshire] would not submit to the exercise of the act of sovereignty contended for by Congress, and the other states, she should have withdrawn herself ...' (3 Dall. 54, 82).
Justice Iredell wrote, 'no state could, by any act of its own, disavow and recall the authority previously given, without withdrawing from the confederation' (Ibid at 95).
Justice Blair (another delegate at the convention) wrote 'if she [New Hampshire] had such a right, there was but one way of exercising it, that is, by withdrawing herself' (Ibid at 113).
Of course, the Lincolnites will aver that the justices meant something else (aka 'who are you going to believe - us, or your lying eyes?')
You mean this is false: 'in fact they did, but Lincoln wouldn't receive the Southern commissioners'?
So he DID receive them?
No I mean false in the fact that there was no offer to accept responsibility for the southern share of the national debt. Also no offer to pay for federal property appropriated.
Bwahahahahahahahaha! I guess you have some Clintonian view of the word 'all'. The Confederate commsisioners were not limited to enumerated powers, Davis wrote Lincoln that they were charged 'to agree, treat, consult, and negotiate of and concerning all matters and subjects.' The provisional Congress had commissioned them 'for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two governments upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith.'
But first of all Lincoln had to accept the southern ultimatum and recognize the legitimacy of the southern secession. The Northern side of the issue was not open for discussion, only the southern demands. Given that the vague offer to discuss issues of disagreement rings very hollow.
Nonsense. NOT meeting them ensured that the situation would not be resolved peacefully. Lincoln was no statesman.
What purpose was there in meeting with them? An end to secession was not a topic they were authorized to discuss, according to their instructions. All they were there for was to accept Lincoln's surrender.
Or LBJ? Or Fritz Hollings? Or Jimmuh Carter?
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