Full of something which is not exactly kosher :)
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.
Japan doesn't fly its flag either.
Where do you get the idea losers get to fly their flags?
Personally I wish the CBF was as visible
as the "See Rock City" signs going to
Lookout Mountain!!!!
Fifteen years ago there wasn't much of an Internet and groups like the League of the South and the Southern Independence Party were just getting started. You can probably blame them for the reactions you get. I didn't have any hostility to Confederate symbols until I came across so many clowns here started running down the Northern states, and outright lying about history. When Southern chauvinists deny what Southern attitudes were in 1861 and try to make the Northerners of that era out to be monsters, of course people are going to respond and with some degree of anger. Stop lying about our history and maybe in time I'll lose interest.
We are tired of Yankee sanctimony and sense of superiority. Your culture has never been superior but you commerce once was but not now.
Who's sanctimonious anyway? Who's claiming a superior culture? Not me. What I insist on is that there was no agreement that unilateral secession was constitutional, that unionists weren't wrong in responding to Davis's attack, that people could fall short of current racial attitudes and still be "anti-slavery, that the Northern states did manage to get rid of slavery before the South, and that the war did bring an end to slavery. That's not much but it sticks in some people's craws. They just can't accept that their beloved South might have been wrong about something. It looks more like you want to believe that you have a "superior culture" -- and apparently that your region had nothing to regret in 1860 or 1960.
Who's sanctimonious? I have to wonder. It looks to me like some of those you attack haven't said much about segregation or the Klan. They've concentrated on early 19th century events -- on what actually happened. It's you guys who in attacking the supposed "sanctimoniousness" or "hypocrisy" of others, show yourself to be pretty santimonious and hypocritical in ransacking history to show how rotten the "Yankees" were.
I haven't said anything against race relations in the South today, except to praise them. From what I can see relations between White and Black probably are better in the South than in the North. But that doesn't mean that things were always so good, or that you can brush some things under the carpet. I don't have to believe that everything my city or state has done in history was right. Why is it so hard for some people to do the same?
If you say that racial equality is right, then you have to recognize that some things done in history were wrong. Race isn't an especially burning issue with me. Other people care a lot more about it. It's the hypocrisy that gets me. It's the people who attack Lincoln or Grant for not thinking about race the way that people do now, but ignore Davis's or Jackson's or Forrest's or Lee's attitudes.
For some people it's a question of being saved or damned. If their ancestor are damned, they are shamed, so their ancestors can't have been damned. The rest of America, though, can recognize that past and present thought about things in different ways. We can find much to deplore and much to praise in our history. We don't have to level out differences between pro- and anti-slavery camps that may seem small to many now, but that were all important at the time.
You guys are like a bunch foreigners who get together in a chatroom to criticize America, and then accuse Americans of attacking you if we respond. Americans have always found things to like in Europe. I hope we still do. I'm not going to go out of my way to attack France or Germany. I don't think much about what happened in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. But when Europeans start to malign America, I do respond. I don't think I'm "superior" to Europeans, but if they run America down, it doesn't hurt to mention what Europeans were doing 60 or 70 years ago. It may not be the fairest response, but it's an acceptable rejoinder to unfair attacks.
He is rather full of himself, isn't he?
Excellent point!
So correct! It's a real shame all those which desire 'secession now' could not buy their own remote island and get the hell out - now!
After reading the repeated statements of hard-core 'neo-confedferates', no wonder this nation was dragged into Southern incited insurrection and all out civil war.
Please, don't even go there.
The South (w/ the possible exception of the West) is presently the most patriotic portion of this country.
Yeah, you will definitely see more CBFs down here than you will on the east coast or in CA, but you'll also see more American flags and a much greater respect for the US military.
So, please tell me again: In what way are Southerners like "a bunch of foreigners who criticize the US?" Also please keep in mind that the foreigners who criticize the US use more or less the same stereotypes that Northerners have about Southerners to run down the nation as a whole. Just think about how the European Press views GW Bush.
Full of something which is not exactly kosher :)
At this point, I shouldn't have to point out that "you guys" doesn't mean all Southerners, just the ones who forever run down the rest of the country to defend the Confederacy. I don't have any dislike for Southerners, and I'll keep an open mind about people who fly Confederate flags.
But after five years or so of this nonsense, yeah, the sort of person who says -- inaccurately for heaven's sake -- that most slaves came here under the US flag, is a lot like an ignorant European who takes shots at America. People who forever harp on American racism to make the Confederacy look good and don't honor the achievement of emancipation and the many who died to bring it about, aren't so very different from those anti-American critics who we both deplore.
Funny thing, I was working on what will be my July essay at the Web Site, and it has a section on the slavery issue, and the absurd effort to revive it as a vehicle to attack the South; an attack, which is far too often echoed by nominal Conservatives, seeking to prove something--I am not sure what.
Of course, the South need no more apologize for slavery than Massachusetts for hanging witches, or putting people into stocks for petty indiscretions. The people who feel a need to apologize for their peoples' histories make an interesting study. But the funny thing is, absolutely no one respects them for their apologies.
It is one thing to apologize for something you may have done yourself, which you feel was wrong. People can certainly respect that--so long as you do not try to convert an admission of wrong doing into an affirmative asset (as a local politician, hereabouts, tried recently). But apologizing for your grandparents is actually an effront to Western tradition. The Fifth Commandment is not a one generation concept! I frankly, have nothing but contempt for those Southerners, such as Bill Clinton, who apologize for their Southern heritage. Pretty ridiculous, you know, when present day politicians and scoundrels apologize for men to whom honor was sacred.
Well, enough. I was pinged, so I stopped by with some random thoughts on a late Saturday afternoon. I am leaving the office, shortly, so if one of the South haters wants to take a shot at me, he will have to wait a day or so for my response.
Cheers! Keep your head up--high. You come across far more honorably than those you tilt with.
Bill Flax
What a beautiful picture!
Thanks for posting.
Concurring bump. 'Bloody' Kansas is a much more solid red state than any of the former Confederate ones.
Nice post Bill.
We are fine down here and glad to have you (and plenty others) around.
It's only a band of a dozen or so on this forum who really feed on this need to feel morally superior by South Bashing.
And then they even deny it and make wild claims that someone must have said.
One blames the Internet for his interest in South Bashing....hilarious....as if he must have never read a book or read a magazine. "The Internet Let Him Know The Truth....and He Was Set Free"...lol.....
bottom line: they are part of the problem. culture war libs pretending to be conservatives and willing to toss culture out the window to sate whatever particular urge they have.....or in some cases much like on the immigration threads....they have a personal bone to pick.....bowing at the altar of political correctness while their own Rome burns...
most are quite young and this is all they know.
Anyhow. Aside from Hollyweird's constant barrage I think the South Bashing and Demonizing the Old South has sort of been played out.
We'll see.
Thanks Again.
Amen Breddah!
That's their imagination kicking in. They think Southerners are hiding in their closet and under their bed ready to get them.
Maybe it's just a bad case of inferiority complex and the solution is to create a southern boogeyman and blame him for all the bad things.
Well said in your post, wardaddy.
Yes indeed. The libs continue to beat that dead horse.
Combination of both. As conservatives, there's not much to be gained by dragging up 150 year old history and waving it in everyone's face. Conservative leaders should be forward thinking and looking to the future. Liberals have no real game plan, they just wallow around and dredge up controversy. It's a polarization effect.
I think some of the folks on these threads got picked on by southerners in grade school or got sick on sweet tea and collard greens. Definetely some personal issues - obsessive you might say.
LOL - if that happened, there wouldn't be a GOP and US, B.M. Espinola. At least we rednecks are loyal to the US and not a middle east nation as you are.
If you tell a lie enough times, people will eventually begin to believe it. Too bad it didn't work for the original men who said it. Won't work against the South either.
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