Confederate flag a national issue?

WND ^ | February 3, 2004 | Les Kinsolving

[DustyMoment]

Clearly you are unable to follow the thread of the logic. An "IF-THEN" statement is a textbook conditional logic statement. Therefore, "IF" (establishes the condition) we allow the race baiters to abolish EVERY vestige of the Confederacy "THEN" (the result by logical extension), it IS NOT possible for the Confederacy to have existed. By virtue of this conditional statement,"IF" the Confederacy did not exist, "THEN" (logical result) slavery could NEVER have existed (in the US, THEREBY (conclusion allowed under the terms of conditional logic) rendering any and all claims to reparations owed to the descendants of the slaves null and void (i.e. to make worthless).

I have not said that the Confederacy never existed, I have said that IF we allow the race baiters to "win" this argument be abolishing every vestige of the Confederacy (which appears to be their current goal), THEN they will have discredited their argument in favor of reparations. With respect to the immutable facts of history, history will prove to future generations the truth of the Confederacy. The reparations argument is temporal and will go away IF we allow this scenario to play out.

If you still don't understand the argument, please don't respond. Just assume I'm stupid and clueless. It will make you feel better.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Therre's no credible evidence that even a handful of blacks fought for the rebellion.

Walt

[lentulusgracchus]

And Clark's answer . . . WOW!!! What a moron.

What did you expect? He is the Clintons' favorite Army officer. That fact alone ought to damn him to hell, with the eloquence of angels.

Clark is the kind of officer my old man could never stand or get along with (he was career Air Force): a weaseling trimmer.

The Civil War produced, or rather pantsed, several officers like Clark: Halleck and Butler for two good examples, and (so some people say) Braxton Bragg, for another. Remember any famous battles won by any of these guys? Me neither, didn't think so.

[lentulusgracchus]

IF (see, IF) they abolish every vestige of the Confederacy, it means that the Confederacy NEVER existed.

Unfortunately for your hypothecation, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

And your exercise sounds a little too Orwellian for me. Better just to call 'em like you see them and let the chips fall, no matter what these political hacks may insist is a politically correct interpretation, theory, or synthesis of history.

[lentulusgracchus]

They will chnage the names of all the Washingtons, Lees, Jefffersons, and Columbuses in the United States to something less "offensive".

That is what the "X" is for on all those ballcaps and in those surnames. The "X" is a symbol of annihilation, extolling the individual's act of destruction of something "white", and therefore intrinsically defiling and dishonorable, as his first, enabling act of personal reconstruction.

Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing said it all: burning out the white pizzeria operator was the "right thing" -- because of what the pizza guy endogamously was.

It's subtler, but it's also present in Eddie Murphy's Boomerang. There are four categories of white characters in Boomerang, of whom the last is the most important and most numerous:

1. Furniture,

2. Caricatures (a waitress who "talks white"),

3. People from France, who don't say anything but offer Murphy's character large emoluments for unspecified future services; and finally,

4. People who are simply absent.

Murphy's was a much more eloquent statement of Spike Lee's daydream. The impulse you mention for expunging the names of "slave owners" is connected, I think, to this one. Over time, it will be insensibly extended to many other categories of offending majoritarians.

In "identity politics" as celebrated by Beastwoman, this sort of "offensiveness" inures not to acts or institutions but to the "offensive" groups of people themselves. That's why "identity politics" = essentialism = racism.

[stand watie]

actually NOBODY knows how many free "persons of colour" there were in the southland.the 1860 census was BADLY FLAWED!

we DO know that there were about 100,000+ black/mixed race CSA soldiers, sailors & marines.

thus 262,000 seems really low.

i THINK the actual number was more likely about 500,000 freemen/women.

free dixie,sw

[Rebelbase]

"If NONE of things things occurred, there is no justification for reparations becuase slavery never existed in the US because there was never any Confederacy."

There is no justifcation for reparations anyway.

[Rebelbase]

The great voice of Northern propaganda again rears its ugly head.

[Polybius]

Clearly you are unable to follow the thread of the logic. An "IF-THEN" statement is a textbook conditional logic statement.

So is the concept of a non sequitur which you seem not to understand. It means, "An inference that does not follow from the premise.".

By virtue of this conditional statement,"IF" the Confederacy did not exist, "THEN" (logical result) slavery could NEVER have existed (in the US, THEREBY (conclusion allowed under the terms of conditional logic) rendering any and all claims to reparations owed to the descendants of the slaves null and void (i.e. to make worthless).

Is your knowledge of United States history so deficient that you actually believe that the Confederate States of Americas had anything to do with the establishment of slavery in the United States of America?

Were you actually taught that the Confederate States of America was responsible for the origin of slavery in America?

The Confederate States were founded in 1861.

Slavery existed in America long before 1776.

Slavery was NOT unique to the Confederate States of America.

Read your statement again:

","IF" the Confederacy did not exist, "THEN" (logical result) slavery could NEVER have existed (in the US, THEREBY" is not only a..........

Does your inference follow from your premise?

No.

If the Confederate States had never been founded in 1861, slavery would still have existed in the United States of America in 1791.

What are you having trouble with?

Your understanding of logic or your knowledge of American history?

[DustyMoment]

I know. But, if we let these nut jobs destroy the vestiges of the Confederacy, they also destroy their basis for claiming reparations.

[Rebelbase]

I'm sorry, but I consider your point to be one of cowardice.

Fearing reparations to the point of altering culture and heritage is an abomination.

The reparations folks can go to hell. They won't get a dime and are just a bunch of litigating racists.

Stand your ground and don't fear them.

[AnalogReigns]

e?, azhenfud wrote: What those race-baiters fail to realize is that in 1861, as a percentage of population, there were TWO AND THREE-QUARTER TIMES more free blacks living in the South than there were the North.

That really doesn't tell us anything though, does it, except that many more blacks (where the great majority were held in slavery) lived in the South at the time than the North. So what?

The whole Confederate flag issue is a crock...both the hypersensitive-bigotted NAACP/ACLU position AND the waving-the-flag-of-a-cause-defeated-140-years-ago-south-shall-rise-again crowd.

America is and has been one country, and we need to look to the future, not the past.

[lentulusgracchus]

Fearing reparations to the point of altering culture and heritage is an abomination.

I concur with Rebelbase. The act of changing history, which the Soviets so often did, and which the Nazis organized the SS-Ahnenerbe to do in an elaborate and pseudoscholarly way (mythographers of the Germanic ur-Aryans, and all that tripe), was what George Orwell tried to teach us is an abomination and a horror, as it wilfully destroys the human capacity to think inductively and objectively about right, wrong, fact, and error.

Rewriting history is an attempt to lobotomize the revisionist's target audience, and is an act of intellectual violence, not fraud, on a level very nearly with homicide.

[DustyMoment]

I don't disagree. I'm not the one trying to re-write history. All I'm saying is that if we let the race baiters succeed in their quest to eliminate every vestige of the Confederacy, they do more damage to themselves and their positions in favor of reparations or other "we are descendants from slaves and you owe us for it" arguments.

History is immutable. Future historians will know the truth of the Confederacy, the South and slavery. For all we know, one day future historians may be able to go back in time and witness the Civil War as it occurred. Things like repararions are temporal. They are transient in time because they are based on emotion. History is based on fact. I don't embrace historical revisionism, I just like the idea of the revisionists shooting themselves in the foot.

I know that slavery did not begin and end with the Confederacy, it has existed since long before Jesus walked the earth and still exists today. The issue that the race baiters are raising is that THEY IMPLY (or believe) THAT THE CONFEDERACY WAS THE BEGINNING AND END OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA). They are the ones seeking to eliminate every vestige of the Confederacy. If we let them do it, it takes the wind out of their sails because they have no further arguments; they will have shot themselves in their own feet and will have destroyed their own credibility.

We know the truth; it is a truth that the race baiters are diligently trying to disavow, just as they try to disavow that it was mostly white men fighting on both sides of the issue that ended slavery as a practice in America. In the end, right prevailed. Justice prevailed. Their wishing that their own history were different doesn't make it so. Their denial that they were sold into slavery by rival tribes in Africa doresn't make it so. It happened. It is historical fact. History is immutable. Current "historians" may wish to revise history to suit the contemporary social fads, but future historians will expose the lies for what they are and will rediscover the truth.

All I'm suggesting is that we let these folks play their games. They only fool themselves and make themselves look more foolish and ignorant as a result. As a historical purist, revisionism is a repugnant to me as it is to those of you arguing against me on this issue. But, let not your hearts be troubled, this is a small thing in relation to the world at large. The truth can never be permanently changed to anything else simply because a minority of people want to wish it away.

[Polybius]

The issue that the race baiters are raising is that THEY IMPLY (or believe) THAT THE CONFEDERACY WAS THE BEGINNING AND END OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA).

The race baiters have NEVER limited themselves to that position.

Tell us what role Thomas Jefferson played in the Confederate States of America, DustyMoment.

Movement to rename Jefferson Elementary:......"......first grade teacher Marguerite Talley-Hughes, who along with parents and fellow teachers initiated the effort last spring to rename the school so it wouldn’t bear the mark of a slaveholder.

DustyMoment, you just go right ahead and sacrifice the honor of the men of the Army of Northern Virginia and Robert E. Lee and you will then be faced with sacrificing the honor of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

(For the historical record, in view of your previous posts, Thomas Jefferson died before the Confederate States of America was founded in 1861.)

[mountaineer]

An Associated Press story, just posted to the W.Va. wire:

UNION, W.Va. (AP) The Monroe County School Board has declined a request by the NAACP to ban Confederate flag symbols in schools.

  Larry Baxter, president of the Greenbrier County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, asked the board Tuesday to reconsider its December decision not to ban the emblems. There is no NAACP chapter in Monroe County.

  Some white students at James Monroe High School have been wearing shirts, jackets, caps and belt buckles with the emblems on them. Blacks consider the flag a racist symbol that should not be tolerated in public schools, Baxter had told the board in January.

  The board told Baxter then it could not take action because the subject was not on the agenda. This week Baxter was on the agenda and repeated his request.   "I don't like the stance you've taken," he said. "I think it's wrong. ... I'm appealing to your sense of fairness."

  He urged board members to take a stand on the issue.
  Board members listened, but when Baxter had finished moved on to other business with no comment or explanation.
  The Monroe County dress code prohibits attire that "may be considered derogatory toward a race, culture or religion."

  Board president Charlie Sams told The Register-Herald of Beckley that the board does not plan to fine-tune the policy. It prefers to leave it up to each principal. If there is a problem at a school and the principal chooses to ban the emblems, the board will support the decision, he said.

  Principals at the county's two middle schools have already taken that action. James Monroe Principal Christy Parker is reluctant to do so.

"We've got some kids who feel very strongly about their right to wear these things," schools Superintendent Lyn Guy said. "We're dancing around the issue of free speech."

  Based on First Amendment court cases, an attorney has advised the board to not ban the emblems unless it is in response to an actual disruption in the school, Guy said.

  No complaints have been received from black students. The incident that brought the issue to a head was a rap song written by a group of white students criticizing "redneck" students who wear the flag emblems.

 "It's not really a racial incident," Guy said. "It's more of a clique incident. At least that's the way it's perceived by the school."

  Instead of banning the emblems, Parker is organizing sensitivity training sessions for white students, Guy said. Black speakers will be invited to give presentations.
  West Virginia is 95 percent white and only 3.2 percent of the population is black, according to the U.S. Census. There are few blacks in Monroe County.

"Our students don't have experience with people of color," Guy said. "The Confederate flag is just a small part of that. The larger picture is kids getting a perspective they don't have right now. When they get that perspective, hopefully they won't do things perceived by others as being derogatory."
  AP-CS-02-05-04 0928ES

[stainlessbanner]

No complaints have been received from black students.

Why would the NAACP make an issue out of a non-issue, especially in a community where they have no presence?

[lentulusgracchus]

So the bottom line is that while the school board refuses to issue a fatwa against American heritage, it will make special arrangements for an NGO to send in propagandists to pule, puke, and moan at the students and try to intimidate them morally. That's good.

Way to steward that stewardship. I'm impressed.

[lentulusgracchus]

Your post of the thread about the school named for Thomas Jefferson in Berkeley is a perfect example of the enmity that doctrinaire liberals have toward America and everyone who thinks like an American.

[Colt .45]

"Everybody else supported it, and therefore I support it."

And therein lieth the problem! Most candidates would rather be politically correct, than to risk actually having an opinion that is different.

This is a sad commentary on our system that is in place now. The SOUTH WAS RIGHT!