Huge Confederate flag flying high over I-65

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.

"Because, at the end of the day, for many of the neo-Confederates the suffering of human beings reduced to slavery is a small price to pay for hoop skirts, cotilions and mint julips. They've gotten smarter over the last generation or so, these apologists for the proto-fascist system in the Old South. They've shed the language of the 1960's segregationists and Klan members and replaced it with their "gracious civilization" and "Dixie liberty" pap."

The neo-confederate movement's chef ideologues realize if they could control how people recall the past, they will control how people approach the present and the future.

Whenever the promoters of the neo-confederate agenda attempt to pervert, twist & alter the real history of the Old South, this deceptive element will always be unmasked by those well aware of their real goals.

Your continuous use of the Nazi tactics, while appealing to your own claque for applause, will not alter the truth in the slighterst.

As demonstration of how absurd and vicious your approach is, I quote the introduction to my essay:

Synopsis

The ritualized dogma over Nazi slaughter of Jews. What sustained Jews for 3300 years--a rational theology. Worship of a Golden Calf vs. birth of a sustainable theology. Slaughter of Achievers and Believers in the 20th Century. Will Karl Marx triumph over Moses?

Few subjects have evoked more emotion in the Twentieth Century than the organized slaughter of innocent civilians, perpetrated by the great totalitarian regimes of the Left. No one knows for certain even within tens of millions, precisely how many died. In China alone the estimates very by such dimensions--a vast tide of humanity. This essay, however, is not on the subject of the slaughters, themselves, but rather on what we perceive to be a deliberate misuse of the horror evoked by such carnage to the obvious further detriment of one of the most readily recognized victim groups, European Jews, and to their American cousins.

In describing the Cult of The Holocaust, we do not intend the usual idiotic debate over the precise numbers of Jews killed by the National Socialists and their sympathizers between 1942 and 1945. Whether the total was 4.7 million, as some have contended, the usually proclaimed shibboleth of 6 million, or even a slightly higher number, is a convenient diversion from critical examination of the psychological causes of the horror, or the nature of a constructive response. In our opinion, a ritualized response, whether by Jew or Gentile, which insists that the subject be discussed only by the iteration of approved details, terms, phrases and preferred adjectives, is not only intellectually dishonest. To the extent that this has been allowed to negate quieter emotions, the dignity of genuine sorrow, it demonstrates an insensitivity to human feelings. To the extent that it has been appropriated by the Non-Nazi Left, as a tool to damn the Right, it furthers the very lies that Hitler used to bring that slaughter to a ghastly fruition. To the extent that the ritualization becomes dogma, embraced by Western Jewry, it is clearly self-destructive.

One suspects that you hate the memory of Moses for the same reason that you hate the Old South--the region where Jews were first fully accepted into the social mainstream. You remain beneath contempt.

Amazing, ain't it? The "Cult" of the Holocaust? I don't understand what that means. I do know that the horrid reality of this...:

...is not something about which I think it is appropriate to label those who remember and deplore that historical event as comprising a "cult."

"Ohioan," how about some straight answers as to what precisely you mean with this "Cult of the Holocaust" business?

Thanks.

1. You are replying to a reply of mine, where I posted the introduction to the essay, which by the way has little to do with the subject of this thread, except in an indirect sense, beyond the understanding of Mr. Espinola, who keeps injecting it as a tangent, because he cannot answer the points of those whom he has repeatedly tried to smear here.

2. What in the introduction, posted, is not clear to you? I do not want to post any more of an essay that has nothing directly to do with the South honoring her heritage--although it certainly urges Jews to honor theirs as the effective answer to tragedy--as it gets us off on one of Mr. Espinola's tangents. If you are interested, why don't you simply click on the link, and read it: Cult Of The Holocaust. I believe the posted introduction will give you a good sense of the subject matter. But if you are interested, by all means read it. It was written to be read!

3. That said, I definitely believe that the tradtional Southerners, today, are being targetted by the Left in the same way the German Jews were targetted by the Left, from the 1840s until the Nazi slaughter, and for basically the same reason. But the above essay is more from the Jewish perspective. From the Southern perspective, you might read: Civil War, Reconstruction & Creating Hate In America Today.

4. I deal with the Leftist general hatred and persecution of high achievers in other essays. But I hesitate to use up bandwith to give you a comprehensive reading list. There are links from the essays in question--as well as to others which analyze the fallacies of every form of Socialism, not just their brutal cruelty.

People like Mr. Espinola, and others who have been ranting against the Southern tradition on this thread, probably do not see themselves as following in the Nazi footsteps. They have persuaded themselves--for whatever reason--that there was something evil about a large segment of the American tradition, and are indulging in a bit of feel good fanaticism. But the techniques are the same as the Nazis used to demonize the Jews--first spreading lies and half-truths, followed by the endless suggestion that other people were being victimized by conduct, which had never actually taken place, etc. When challenged, Espinola simply repeats the lie, as though it proves itself. (A technique employed by both Communists and Nazis, throughout their histories.)

It is interesting that the start of the attack on German Jewry--I mean the particular attack that the Nazis took up and followed through to the ghastly conclusion (1942 to 1945), the one which began by an essay of Karl Marx in the 1840s, suggesting that a World without Jews would be a good thing--began at approximately the same point in history as the Abolitionist misrepresentation of what actually was going on on the Southern Plantations, began. While the personnel conducting the smears were different, there are many, many historic parallels. So while my "Holocaust" essay is intended to clarify events from a Jewish, rather than Southern perspective, on a larger scale, both of the linked essays could be discussed in depth under the concept of the persecution of ethnic high achievers.

Finally, you suggest that I am suggesting that those who actually remember the events are the "Cult." Quite the contrary. The Cult is among those who simply insist on endlessly describing the thing in the same terminology, endlessly reciting packaging terms. You completely lose the feel for the millions of individual tragedies, in reducing the whole thing to cant. But even more important, you fail to really grasp the mindset that could cause the next recurrence. That mindset is out there now.

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Synopsis The ritualized dogma over Nazi slaughter of Jews. What sustained Jews for 3300 years--a rational theology. Worship of a Golden Calf vs. birth of a sustainable theology. Slaughter of Achievers and Believers in the 20th Century. Will Karl Marx triumph over Moses?

Synopsis

The ritualized dogma over Nazi slaughter of Jews. What sustained Jews for 3300 years--a rational theology. Worship of a Golden Calf vs. birth of a sustainable theology. Slaughter of Achievers and Believers in the 20th Century. Will Karl Marx triumph over Moses?