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!
Then how do you explain all the speeches and writings and declarations made by various southern leaders prior to and during the war where slavery is by far the single most often mentioned reason for the rebellion? How do you explain that?
Here is my letter to the editor in response to the editorial by Peter Kalajian, Confederate Flag still an issue? Rhetoric and excuses are not fooling me, that appeared in the October 14, 2004 edition of the East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, student newspaper, The East Carolinian
October 18, 2004
Ms. Amanda Lingerfelt
Editor In Chief
The East Carolinian
Second Floor, Old Cafeteria Complex
East Carolina University
Greenville, North Carolina 27858
Re:Confederate Flag still an issue? Rhetoric and excuses are not fooling me
Dear Ms. Lingerfelt:
On May 29 through June 3, 1951, the United Confederate Veterans held their sixty-first and final reunion in Norfolk, Virginia. By then, the handful of surviving Confederate Civil War veterans were in their nineties, and some even over one-hundred years old. As with all reunions, many speeches were made, but one in particular, spoken by Maryland Governor Theodore R. McKeldin, succinctly summarized the feelings of most Southerners, and indeed many Americans, about the few surviving “boys in Gray.”
“A lot of regret – and even sadness – is inevitable on an occasion such as this - this last earthly rendezvous of the once great Army of the Confederacy.
But there can be – and indeed should be – gladness to. These few remaining Men in Gray who are honored here are not symbolic of something that is ending. They are symbols of accomplishment, symbols of something that lives and will live on.
They and their comrades who died in battle, and those others who preceded them into Eternity through the years of peace do not live and did not live merely for the past or the present. They are and were but parts of a continuing line. You and your sons and daughters are not their replacements, but are parts of them – the continuity of their worthy lives.
The Cause for which they fought was not in vain. Out of the stand they took – out of the very misunderstandings and determinations that once divided the people of the United States – has grown a greater and stronger nation – a greater South and a greater North. There was no loser in the War of 1861. Much of what the South stood for and still stands for was preserved. The years that have passed have been rich in betterment. We have found the way to strong union without the loss of sectional identity. The future is bright even in the face of new wars, because North, South, East and West are together.
No, the men of this thin Gray Line are not the symbols of lost causes. They are the symbols of glories of our past, the strength of our present, and the promise of our future.
And, in our faith, we can see them and their comrades, in reunion again and again, with their Maker in the Land of Eternal Peace.”
Governor McKeldin, the chief executive of a state loyal to the Union during the Civil War, spoke those words almost fifty-four years ago. Yet, somewhere between then and now the Governor’s message has been lost on many. Southerners no longer hear the comforting words of reconciliation that were prevalent for the first 130 years following the Civil War. Today, Southerners who recognize their ancestors contribution to Southern history are called “racists” and “bigots,” “nazis” and “klansmen.” These Southerners are doing no more today than Governor McKeldin and others were doing in Norfolk 54 years ago. What is so “hateful” about remembering the sacrifices of the 200,000 Southern men killed, and the countless others who sacrificed much obeying their duty as they understood it, in the conflict of 1861?
What has changed in the past decade to create an atmosphere of hate towards these soldiers, their sacrifice, and their descendents who want nothing more than to preserve the memory of their brave service to the South? The facts of the War have not changed, history is not malleable. No, but how the facts are presented and taught in our modern educational system has changed, and it has created a dramatically hostile attitude towards Southerners in general, and the Confederate soldier in particular.
Peter Kalajian’s editorial, Confederate Flag still an issue? Rhetoric and excuses are not fooling me, would be more appropriately titled Confederate Flag now an issue? The issue of the Confederate Flag on display is only a recent phenomenon in America. However, young Mr. Kalajian’s ability to draw upon points of historical reference, probably only as far back as the beginning of the second Clinton administration, undoubtedly handicaps his ability to appreciate the depth of American and Southern culture, the significance the pantheon of Southern Civil War heroes has had in supporting Southern morale through two world wars, a great depression, innumerable smaller military conflicts, three presidential assassinations, and untold civil and cultural unrest. These so-called defeated warriors; Lee, Jackson, Davis, and others, have provided Southerners and Americans with a moral compass and a map for leadership skills that continues to be studied today, not only here at home, but also abroad.
Lastly, Mr. Kalajian incorrectly presupposes that the Confederacy was grounded solely in and based only upon a theory of racial hatred. It is patently ridiculous and simply impossible to ground a legitimate argument by projecting contemporary moral standards through a lens 150 years backwards in time and expect to reach accurate conclusions regarding the moral character and motivations of either Confederate or Federal leaders. It is equally disingenuous to draft an argument that completely disregards the role that African Americans voluntarily played on both sides of the military conflict.
Mr. Kalajian’s argument presupposes that black Southerners were a people unified by their opposition to the Confederacy and uniformly resisted the Southern war effort, either passively or actively. This view can only be maintained by ignoring a mass of research material that strongly suggests that black opinion, like other opinion, was represented across the spectrum, and was strongly influenced by sectional, local, and family loyalties which have largely disappeared in the modern world, but which were of paramount importance in the nineteenth century. Many blacks, free and slave, in fact, considered themselves Southerners first and blacks second, and served the Southern cause enthusiastically. In support of this proposition, I refer Mr. Kalajian to Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees In Civil War Virginia, by Dr. Ervin L. Jordan, Black Southerners in Confederate Armies, by J.H. Segars, and Black Southerners in Gray: Essays on Afro-Americans in Confederate Armies, by Arthur W. Bergeron.
It is always a dangerous proposition to judge another time, culture, people, and way of life by contemporary standards. To do so only invites future generations to do the same to us.
Very truly yours,
James E. Hickmon
ECU MBA ‘96
Dobe - you ought to weigh in on your comments. I hope you were directing those towards the author of this piece.
Yes, ma'am, in large part that statement is true, and goes back to Henry Clay and the American System -- the first, wan seed of big-government, corporate-welfarist statism.
I could direct you, if you are interested, to several rather learned threads, some of them running to 4,000 posts, a brief reading of which would serve to educate you to the degree to which the United States has departed from the design of the Framers, under the constant press of business and other interests, and to create an overlarge governmental establishment which has no conception -- or at least no tolerance -- of the ideal of "limited government".
If you were so inclined, ma'am.
You've been corrected on that point, too. For the record.
Or perhaps, like Tacitus, without feeling any particular attachment to the group in question, they simply point out that group's virtues which their own people formerly, but no longer, exemplify.
I've gotten your opinion on the subject, for the record. And I gave it all due respect.
Why don't you simply state your thesis in straightforward, declarative clauses? You think Southerners are, and always have been, morally wrong, and simultaneously morally retrograde for refusing to accept the moral "wrongness" assigned them by the triumphalist, nationalist propaganda you were fed in school.
Too bad they refuse to validate your prejudices about the South. Have a nice day anyway.
I hate to rain on this idiots parade but the confederate battle flag was adopted AFTER Lincoln freed the slaves with the emancipation act. The civil war was fought over states rights with the issue of slavery playing a minor role.Under the constitution each state had the right of secession-the decision of almost half of the states to vote for secession
was based on lopsided economic policies dictated by the industralized northern states.This act by the southern states had the potential of robbing the north of vital raw materials to feed their industries. The north used the excuse of slave produced goods as their basis for high tariffs low purchase prices and imposing all sorts of federal restrictions on "slave"states. Never mind that a lot of northerners also owned slaves.The flag the flew over slavery was the good old stars and stripes. I agree that the southern battle flag has been used by groups to promote hate and bigatory--but put the blame where the blame is due on the people who perpetrate hate not on an inanimate object that placed outside of our society would have no meaning except that which people assign to it.
Who's soil was Ft. Sumter on? THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. Therefore, it does not qualify as an act of agression..........
That's not exactly true. The Constitution speaks to statehood as follows (Art. IV, Sec. 3):
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
This says nothing about states leaving the union. Of course states had the right to leave the Union--it goes without question. The United States had done it less than one hundred years previously and even kicked off the Declaration of Independence with the statement, "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..."
At the end of the day, our Republic was an experiment. Nothing more, nothing less. Each state is sovereign, and as such, it has the right of self-government. If it chooses to no longer be a part of the confederacy of states that we know as the United States, so be it. That is that state's right. There can be no view of self-government that does not allow for secession. Otherwise, the states are mere colonies of the ultimate ruler, which is the Federal Government. Whether that government is based in Washington D.C. or based in London, it makes no matter.
Because that was one of the most visible examples of the Federal Government interfering in the rights of states.
Read the Texas Articles of Secession, there are other reasons mentioned.
Just as an aside, I've never met anyone that could consistently defend the United States' right of separation from Britain and then deny the Confederacy's right of separation from the United States.
I think that if you deny the Confederacy's right of secession, you have to acknowledge that the United States' rebellion was illegal.
for us descendants of the TRUE CAUSE, there is no end to our struggle for FREEDOM.
and we will defend our honor & that of our families FOREVER. get used to it.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
Nonsense. Even if one accepts the legality of the acts of secession, which I don't, Sumter was the property of the U.S. If was built on land deeded to the U.S. free and clear by an act of the South Carolina legislature, and neither South Carolina or the Confederacy had any claim to it.
the "general public" is DUMB!
free diixe,sw
NONE of them are white/latino/asian/amerindian/anything else but BLACK.
and they are growing every day.
free dixie,sw
Fly it high.
Legally the United States had no right of separation under British law. The founding fathers were under no illusions on that point. They knew that their actions were acts of rebellion. and they knew that they would have to fight for it during a long and bloody war. And in the end they won, which is why we are free today. Likewise the southern acts of unilateral secession were not legal, although they believed otherwise. The difference is that the south was mistaken in their belief that the Lincoln administration would not oppose their aggression. And in the end, they lost their rebellion. Which is why they are not a separate country today.
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