Posted on 06/13/2005 4:41:07 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
VERBENA (AP) — A huge Confederate battle flag flying over Interstate 65 north of Montgomery will become a permanent fixture, according to officials with the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The organization bought land on the side of the interstate near Verbena and put up the flag, which has been flying for several months above the tree lines from the top of a large pole, easily visible from the heavily traveled interstate.
Leonard Wilson, commander of the Alabama division of Sons of Confederate Veterans, said the flag will be dedicated in a ceremony at 5 p.m. on June 26.
The flag is located on a little more than half an acre of land just north of where Autauga County 68 crosses over the interstate, about six miles south of the Verbena exit.
"We put the flag up so people could see it," Wilson said. "We are showing off our heritage. The flag is part of our heritage."
Critics of Confederate flag displays say they are reminders of the slavery era and Alabama's racist past, and can damage Alabama's image when flown beside a busy interstate route to Gulf beaches.
And that just gets the GOP's panties in a wad? Too bad. The last stronghold of true conservatism, family values, love of God and Country is in the South.
We put principle above party.
Good pic.I might just drive up there to take a look.
Well, you read with bias, what do you expect? If you really want to learn about WBTS and Confederate history, go read a book. I have a great list I can share.
Great post (and a great book), smug.
I did not make the quote above. The quote is attributed to tkathy Here. However, I do agree vehemently with your response to it.
I just checked again, and South Africa is not a fascist country. Do your homework, honey, before making wild claims about a country being fascist. Thanks. Now, let's have some hot corn bread and country ham, black-eye peas and turnip greens..Oh I like to live in Alabam', Mobile,Selma and Birmingham!
Why not the "Stars and Bars?"
Outstanding!
I would be ok with 1st, 2nd, or 3rd National. The Battleflag is just fine, too. Maybe they can fly all four.
The republican party was formed to fight slavery. The democrats, both north and south fought one way or another against the republicans. You're talking about the "proud heritage" of the democrats, NOT the republicans.
You're kidding, right?
Do you mean Davis's or Stephens's door stoppers? There's little point in plodding through them, unless you're out of Sominex. I plowed through a chunk of them once and wasn't convinced. Look at what such men said and did, not their self-justifications after the fact. The same goes for Dabney, Pollard and other lost cause propagandists. They wrote not to find out what happened and why but to justify the decisions they'd already made.
When DiLorenzo's The Real Lincoln came out I was really interested in reading it. I wasn't biased against it. I was even biased in favor of it. On my hard drive, I still have an article of his from The Independent Review that got me interested. But the first reports here were disappointing. It wasn't those who attacked the book that made it look so bad. It was those who promoted and defended it. It looked like neither they nor DiLorenzo knew or cared about what people were arguing about in the 1850s.
When I did read DiLorenzo's book, I was appalled. It was poorly written, badly reasoned, selective in its use of evidence, at times deceptive, and motivated by a real animus against its subject. In short, it was a cheap hatchet job that wouldn't convince anyone who knew the history. The same is true of the Kennedy brothers books and Tom Woods' laughable Politically Incorrect Guide. It's not as though such books are on a much higher level that what one sees posted here. Jeffrey Hummel's book is a little better, but still flawed.
Criticism of The Real Lincoln highlighted its deficiencies, but it wasn't either other people's attacks on the book or my own prejudices that turned me against it. It was the awful, pathetic weakness of the thing itself. DiLorenzo's relentless self-promotion and the cheap shots of some of his fans did help turn me off, though. So many people piled on to defend even his weakest and most questionable arguments that it looked like you guys were just looking for someone to tell you what you already wanted to hear rather than reading critically. And DiLo wasn't content to just present his thesis, he had to hawk on every corner it like a common streetwalker.
Dixiecrats go on and on about their feeling for the Confederacy being an ancestral thing, more a matter of feeling than of reasoning. Perhaps we ought to just assume that they're acting out of some idea of ancestral loyalty or family honor and that any similarity between their views and the truth is more or less accidental.
But the southern democrats changed parties. They are all now republicans. I guess you just don't get it. The solid republican South is made up of Christian men and women who are not going to give up on their heritage just to please the country club republicans from the North. We sing, "Dixie", love rebel the flag, hate abortion, are disgusted by the gay movement, etc. We are the heart of the American Republican Party. Just ask our Southern president. Yes, Texas was a Confederate state.
True, but curious. I have always been amazed by the notion if someone was from their "clan" he had to be defended regardless of his actions.
IMHO, it shows that the person doing the defending is not comfortable enough in their own skin and has to claim some genetic or cultural claim to worth. We should be able to say that some ancestor was a jerk, just as we all accept that in everyday life, every family has it's share of jerks -- or worse.
Not all ancestors deserve reverence or respect, and it is not a sign of weakness to admit that fact. We're all, somewhere in our ancestry, the sons and daughters of bastards, whores, murderers, thieves and liars. It's simply a question of how far back you care to trace.
I vote for no Bills of Attainer, be they be financial, or emotional. We are all living individuals to be judged on our merit in the here and now, and our ancestors are history to be studied for what they were, but not worshiped. Some are worthy of admiration, and some are not.
I'd also add, that I consider myself to be a decedent of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Locke, Smith, etc., etc., etc., To my knowledge, there is no genetic connection to any of those great men and I could not give you the name of a single genetic ancestor that was contemporary with any of them, but I admire and agree with what those great men stood for and I consider them to be my "ancestors" via admiration.
Anyway, my reading list goes far beyond the title you mentioned.
For some of these guys, the South has to be all wrong or all right about everything. There's not much middle ground. And there's no difference between the South then and the South now. According to this view, if some Southerners were wrong a century ago, it reflects on their descendants today. Therefore those Southerners weren't wrong. It's probably an honor thing.
Now of course, not all Southerners think that way, but you see it often enough online. It's often an emotional response or response, but it does look like one that some people need to keep feeding. Maybe people need that kind of emotional rush. It's an addictive thing, and not just for neoconfederates.
You can see it all over the Internet. When one has to think out what one really thinks or what the consequences of a given event or situation are it's possible to get lost for a while until one figures it all out. It's easier to just shoot from the hip. It makes the world look easier to understand.
Maybe you can distinguish between those people who really are reacting to outside stimuli and are much calmer and balanced talking to each other, and the hard core, who need that external enemy and outside threat to make sense of the world and justify their attitudes.
Honestly, I think very few, but those few are exceedingly vocal. I'd go back to describe it as a response to some perceived inadequacy in their lives that makes them wish to derive worth from lives long ended.
Part of it could also be the psychology described by Thomas Sowell in Black Rednecks and White Liberals that traces the hypersensitive Ghetto "respect" mentality (both black & white) to the antebellum honor code that drove the South to destruction. Those traits inherited from Southern culture that has especially driven lower class black society to destruction in the age of "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll" plus welfare. The cultural standard that challenging, in any way the, manliness of an individual, even if completely unintentional or accidental, becomes cause for a dual or in today's society, a drive-by. The ethic seems to be, "thou shall not be dissed" whereas 140 years ago it was "we will not tolerate your dislike for our "peculiar institution."
I'm convinced that the behavior is an outgrowth of a larger more generalized phenomena, that of learned or inbred dislike of the North. For example, take a look at this speech given by Donald Kennedy, author of The South Was Right to the 108th reunion of the Mississippi SCV in 2003. Link
I suppose its a good idea if you take a step back sometimes and laugh at yourself. However, there is usually some element of truth in these stories, and for me this part rang particularly true.
He was raised on the milk of Yankee hatred because his father just detested those old Yankees and the way they treated Mississippi and the South.
In my experience and to my knowledge there is no Northern parallel to this phenomena, which gets passed down from generation to generation. It is a root cause (imo) for the intense sectional prejudice that some southerners hold in their hearts.
Also, I don't think his listeners were overcome by guilt or embarassment before he gave his speech, as Kennedy implies. It's more likely that people who'd be inclined to cower in shame at outside reproaches have already made their peace with the past and don't respond to "TheSouthWasRightism." Kennedy appeals to more belligerent souls whose first response is angrier. The idea that they'd be cringing at Yankee reproaches is just a way of justifying their own hostility and anger.
I don't think there is a Northern equivalent to this animosity either. Sometimes I wonder how many of the stories about evil Yankee rampages were actually true, but since the Civil War was the largest war fought on American soil and since most of the fighting was in the South there are plenty of stories to go around. If you had 64 or 128 ancestors alive in the 1860s its possible that one may have had a run in with someone from the other side.
One of the neoreb notions is that Northerners have the same sort of hostility to the South today, but I don't really see it in daily life. For that matter, I doubt most Southerners have anything against other parts of the country. It's more that the Internet connects people who do with an audience.
Really?
Then why are you guys always around to say something nasty about the CBF etc at any opportunity if you don't give a shite. Nobody said squat 15 years ago....did you get smart or think you discovered a new evil to wag yer finger at....fellow conservatives at that?
Several big differences: You guys won. The losers are rarely as happy...lol Second: Most Yankees' ancestors came after the war and your white population is a lot less homogeneous than ours and most of our ancestors have been here since the colonies thru the old Spanish-French Southwest territory days from VA to TX so we have a peculiar chauvinism Third: We are tired of Yankee sanctimony and sense of superiority. Your culture has never been superior but you commerce once was but not now. We would like ya'll to fix yours and leave us alone.
I feel quite good about myself with nary a synapse about yankees except at election time hoping ya'll can pull one or two states into the red corner. I only argue with South bashers here because I think you are wrong and hypocritical. It has nothing to do with Neo-anything and I like plenty of Yankees ....those who are nice and leave Southerners alone. That group of yankees here actually outnumbers you and ditto and mac and NS and espinola. You guys are just loud and in some cases cultural libs or moderates and can't resist the sanctimony cause that's your elixir....especially on race. The big tonic. But....like I said ...ya'll are hypocrites on race, telling us what to do down here while your own cities remain segregated in deplorable decay and voting ever leftward. I don't run around attacking what a mess you fellas have made up North. I like ya'll fine when you leave us alone. Ya'll are a bit curt and aggressive in manner but that's cultural mores. Folks can work thru that. But you gotta ditch that high horse....it's up to it's knees in lack of self reflection bullshite. Now when ya'll are as perfect as you imagine....then by all means come and show us how it's done.
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