Posted on 10/19/2004 5:14:54 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
As I drove down 5th street yesterday, I spied a bumper sticker that addresses an issue I have been waiting for an excuse to write about. It was in the back window of a pickup truck, whose ability to operate I found simply amazing, strategically situated between an empty gun rack and another sticker depicting Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) urinating on "Osama" with a devilish grin on his face.
I will leave the "Osama" reference and defamation of an innocent newspaper comic strip character alone for the purposes of this article, and will concentrate on the content of the other bumper sticker. It was a simple, Confederate flag, next to which was written the words, "Heritage not Hate". Now, if I have ever read something more deserving of one of my diatribes, I cannot recall.
This statement, which for the record I believe to be sheer nonsense, speaks of an issue with which I had very limited experience before relocating to North Carolina, but an issue of importance nonetheless.
All my life, the Confederate flag was something of a joke to me. M history classes in high school and earlier had taught me that the Confederate defeat during the Civil War was a good thing, that the moral argument against slavery (espoused by the Lincoln government in Washington) was a black and white issue, about right and wrong, and that the Union triumph is 1865 was righteous.
Granted, the history I was taught spoke from a biased perspective, from the moral high ground of the abolitionists and northern intellectuals, and never really addressed the true, underlying reasons for the Civil War, which I would come to learn much later. After considering all the information I have been able to locate on the subject, after long hours of trying to understand just where the Confederacy was coming from and why they wanted to defend their way of life, I have come to a few conclusions.
Naturally, these conclusions reflect my upbringing and Northern perspective, and I am more than confident than my loyal readers will have more than a few comments of their own to contribute.
First of all, "Heritage not Hate", is an extreme cop out. Sure, the Confederate flag, displayed in the year 2004, some 140 years after the actual conflict ended, may stand for some long forgotten Southern pride issue. It may stand for the struggles that people in the Southeastern region of the United States suffered through and the wars that they fought.
It may stand for some perceived difference between the North and South, which apparently has persisted to this day, and may fondly recall the era of Southern dominance of the United States.
Woops, little mistake there. The South has never "dominated" anything. It is another region within the greater whole, just as it was then and remains so today. As for the "Not Hate" part of the bumper sticker, a more laughable statement I cannot recall. There are far too many damning coincidences that will forever relegate the Stars and Bars to the level of racist propaganda.
Why is it that hate groups all over the country, to this day, fly the Confederate flag as a symbol of their ideology. White Supremacist organizations,
, the sad, pitiful remnants of the Klu Klux Klan, along with many other neo-Nazi and racially motivated groups all include the Confederate flag amongst their symbols of worship.
Is this coincidence? Are people who fly the Confederate flag, be it in bumper sticker form or on the end of a flagpole, trying to align themselves with such openly evil and backward-thinking organizations? I don't think so. I think that people fly the flag to recall the once glorious Confederated states of America and celebrate their history, while at the same time somehow overlooking the racial implications inherent in the very symbol they hold so high.
Make no mistake. Whether you choose to recognize it or not, the fact remains the same: The Confederate flag is a racist symbol. It was during the Civil War, it remains so today. I challenge anyone to show me an African-American person with a Confederate Flag bumper sticker or "The South will rise again" written in their computers screensaver.
Is this a coincidence? You would sooner find a swastika flying outside the Israel embassy as you would a Confederate flag flying at an N.A.A.C.P rally. To me, the symbols have long been morally relative to each other. Both stand for hate, oppression, and the wanton murder and destruction of a group of people because of some perceived inferiorities. Plantation owners in the South, before and during the Civil War, treated slaves the same way they treated horses and sheep.
They were not human beings, quite the contrary. They could be bought and sold like farm equipment and with as much compassion. So to during the Nazi era in Germany; Jews were not considered people in the same way that German citizens were, therefore their wholesale murder could be justified. Anyone who cannot see the glaring similarities between the Confederate flag and the Swastika needs to pick up a history book and do some research.
If you care to display a symbol that represents the brutality and viciousness and lack of humanity that was involved in something like the slave trade, as the Confederate flag clearly does, you are entitled. The first Amendment to the Constitution allows you the freedom to display just about whatever you care to, but consider this. If you are going to fly the Stars and Bars, don't sugar coat it. Don't downplay the racial aspects and idealize the cultural aspects. They are one in the same.
Be up front and honest about your feelings. Confederacy= Hate I think would be a far more realistic bumper sticker, and as we speak I am in negotiations to have a number of said bumper stickers produced. Let us just call a spade a spade and forget about the "Heritage not Hate" nonsense. It is hateful, you know it is, and beating around the bush about it only takes away from the power of the argument. Let the responsive mud slinging commence!
Have the last word, but you know who started the war...and it wasn't Jeff Davis.
Do I?
And so to say, would impugn the moral validity of the Declaration of Independence -- something that Declarationists like Harry Jaffa (are you one, too, N-S?) would find very uncomfortable.
There was no "rebellion". But then, you knew that.
OK. Here's a link to The Sons website and here's a link to The Daughters website. Ready to eat your words now?
Truth: there is no proud yankee heritage. There is nothing to be proud of.
Your ignorance and bigotry are showing, dear.
Certainly if you provide anything to the contrary (that doesn't contain the word "lincoln") then I will consider your heritage.
Ready to consider it now?
Do I?
That is absolutely wrong, and manufactured buncombe on your part.
Read Article IV for comprehension, and the dispositive consent to any change in States' status or borders is the States'. Their approval is the sine qua non of the transaction.
And leaving the Union has no relation to the transactions described in Article IV. States leave the Union the same way the original 13 States entered it -- by a sovereign act of the People in convention assembled, or in their precincts. When the citizens assemble and take on their aspect of the sovereign People, there is literally no power on earth between them and Almighty God. They answer to no Congress, no King, no General Assembly, to no mortal -- to nobody, as I have repeatedly told you, who does not call Himself Who Am.
Just for argument..........assuming this were true, it would impair the legality of secession and the moral and legal claims of the People to the right to rule themselves in sovereignty, how?
You are consciously and disingenuously evading Lincoln's massive responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities.
Not granting overmuch to Jeff Davis's temperateness and perspicuity, of course, or to the other political people's, who needed to have played a much, much cooler hand than they did. They believed Lincoln's menaces and acted with speed rather than deliberateness, thinking themselves threatened, and in so doing "took their eye off the ball".
The First Inaugural was widely reported -- even in the Northern press, whose quotes have been posted to you in another thread, and which you ignored because of their heavy implications for your image of Lincoln -- as a declaration of hostilities against the South. That Southerners should so take it cannot be surprising, and one of the differences between you and me is that I credit Lincoln with sufficient ability to connect the dots, that the meaning Southerners took from the First Inaugural had to be precisely what he intended them to, concerning his intentions. Otherwise he should have said something else, and they would have understood that instead.
By now, you do.
Secession isn't rebellion. It may be revolution, I might sign that -- but then you'd try to equate it with "rebellion" again. And then you'd try to impeach the People's right to rule themselves, by playing capitanesque word-games about the significance of the word "rebellion" for understanding the nature of the Southern States' secession.
Apples and oranges. The American rebellion WAS illegal, according to British law. Whether or not it was morally valid is another matter. And the logic of comparing the American rebellion and the southern rebellion is yet another.
Do I? Just because you say so? I'm supposed to accept your opinion as fact?
Oh, please! Enough has been posted on other threads about Lincoln's interest in the colonization movement, that you surely can't be feigning wide-eyed incredulity and demanding documentation from our interlocutor bushpilot of Lincoln's long-running interest, as if you'd never heard of it before. As if it were a debatable point.
Jeez Louise.
Okay, go ahead and compare them. In what was the Southern secession less morally valid than the American Revolution?
Mind, the Southern States possessed at the outset what the American colonies did not: sovereignty, and the moral and legal right therewith to run their own affairs.
Apples and oranges. The reasons for the rebellion does not affect the illegality of the actions.
Not my opinion -- and there is a lot I've posted that I have told you up front is my opinion only -- but the accumulated weight of documentation and evidence, replete with scrupulous location (at least by our side) of these statements, deeds, and documents in time, space, and political quarter that the Southern secession from the Union was legal, moral, procedurally sound, and within the rights of the People of those States; and that Abraham Lincoln, taking up the instrumentalities and theories of a tyrant, attacked and subjugated them for reasons having nothing to do with the theory and institutions of the Framers, but everything to do with Lincoln's own interest in power and the achievement of his political program, on the bones of whoever needed to die.
Your opinion.
Read Article IV for comprehension, and the dispositive consent to any change in States' status or borders is the States'. Their approval is the sine qua non of the transaction.
Except for admission, yes. But you're ignoring the fact that the approval of the state AND of Congress is needed for any change in status once a state is part of the Union. Leaving should be no different.
And leaving the Union has no relation to the transactions described in Article IV. States leave the Union the same way the original 13 States entered it -- by a sovereign act of the People in convention assembled, or in their precincts.
Why? That is not the manner most states entered the Union. And those who entered through ratification agreed to abide by the provisions of the Constitution. They have no special status, they are no better than any other state. And if the Constitution requires Congressional approval to enter the Union why is it so hard to believe that Congressional approval should be required to leave?
They answer to the Constitution, which they agreed to abide by. And if they choose not to, if they decide to exercise their God given right to rebel and throw off the government, regardless of the reason, then they need to accept that their actions are outside of the Constitution and need to be prepared to face the consequences of their actions.
Do I take it correctly that you diverge from McPherson and others (Harry Jaffa, the Declarationists) who maintain a moralistic view of the war, and are content to make a legalistic and political-theoretical argument only?
I just want to understand your POV, as you and he were going around on the much-discussed subject of the South's motives in secession, as though they were invalidating -- which the Declarationists maintain.
In your opinion, and the opinion and interpretations of the people you quote. That doesn't automatically make them right. They have no burning bush in their back yard, no imperial authority that makes them right. They base their opinions on their interpretations, and other people, including myself, have different interpretations.
Lincoln's support of voluntary colonization by free blacks has never been denied, certainly not by me. But manufacturing quotes that are supposed to make Lincoln appear something he is not isn't right. I've not been able to find any source for that quote. That's my issue.
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