Posted on 07/10/2019 4:54:24 PM PDT by PBRCat
Yes, the Confederate flag offends us...
Maybe the flag is about Southern pride, good ol’ rebel spirit. But it is about the South’s historic defense of slavery, segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, fascism, white supremacy, white nationalism and bigotry.
Gov. Pritzker said, “The Confederate flag is a symbol of not just slavery, but of treason against the United States.”
Why are we writing to criticize Pritzker for banning Confederate Railroad, a country band that uses the Confederate flag, from performing at a state fair?
Because government should pick its battles wisely and rarely when curbing free expression, even free expression paid for by the taxpayer.
And it was the Pritzker administration that booked Confederate Railroad in the first place.
It would have been entirely reasonable for state officials to decline to book the band because of the art on the band’s album cover, which includes a Confederate flag.
But for Pritzker to reach down now, after all the contracts have been signed, and cancel the booking for this one band strikes us as excessive government involvement in matters of free expression.
It is not strictly censorship. Nobody is saying Confederate Railroad can’t play wherever it can land a gig. But it feels to us like a poorly thought-out violation of the spirit of free speech, our nation’s most sacred principle, given that the band was hired before it was given the boot.
We would have preferred Confederate Railroad (was not booked). We also would have understood had the department chosen not to book Snoop Dogg to perform at the fair. Many are offended by Snoop Dogg’s latest album cover — the rapper standing over a corpse toe-tagged with President Donald Trump’s name.
Confederate Railroad was booked. A contract was signed.
Pritzker should have let the band play.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicago.suntimes.com ...
Maybe Nike can design some footwear around it.
Right.......:)
I'm glad we agree slavery was why the South seceded, but I'd like to see you quote the 'Fugitive Slave Clause' of the Constitution.
You sound like someone who never heard of the Corwin Amendment nor read Lincoln’s inaugural address.
Lincoln's reasoning for invading the South wasn't to end slavery. He's makes it clear in that address he's going to collect taxes. The Republicans weren't going to be nearly as successful with their schemes of taxation on foreign trade if the South left, so he wasn't going to allow it.
I believe the South should have been allowed to secede peacefully under the overall reasoning of the Declaration of Independence, but that doesn't change the historical fact of why they sought independence from the North. And that was to maintain into perpetuity a racist system of slavery.
If they had truly fought for a just cause, God may have looked differently on their endeavor.
Is NOTHING sacred any more??
When you come at the king, you best not miss.
FU
Agree.
Governor, just how many Confederates were tried for treason after the war?
There is nothing in the Constitution prohibiting state secession. Secession is not unconstitutional.
Well actually we do not agree. Slavery was not “why” the original 7 seceding states left. It was merely the legal pretext. We know this because they turned down the North’s offer of slavery forever by express constitutional amendment if only they would return.
Obviously the Upper South only seceded when Lincoln chose to start a war to impose a government by force on people who did not consent to it.
There is another matter you are overlooking. If you trace along the northern border of South Carolina starting at the Atlantic Ocean heading west and trace that border all the way west and south until you encounter Mexico just west of El Paso you will notice that is a border that is over 1500 miles long. There is simply no way that border could have been secured - especially without modern technology back in 1861.
Had the original 7 states been able to leave in peace, they would have been a foreign country not entitled to the protection of the Fugitive Slave Clause in the constitution. All any slave would have needed do was cross that border into the US and they’d have been free. Secession effectively would have meant the end of slavery. None other than Lincoln made this argument many times. Nobody could refute it.
Slavery was dying in the Western world by 1861. Most everyone knew that. In the places where it still survived, it’s days were numbered. The whole “all about slavery” argument was bad federal propaganda put forth in 1863 when the federal government was desperate to justify the bloodbath it had started, and revived starting in the 1980s by PC Revisionists in Academia to serve their Left wing politics.
Lincoln pointed out that the fugitive slave clause of the constitution would not apply to a foreign country. There’s no question that’s correct.
The states created the federal government. There would be no “federal property” without the states.
The Confederate flag is a “flag”. It’s the historical flag of the south. PERIOD!
It’s not the flag of “slavery” any more than the American flag is the flag of racism as some now claim.
While some members of the KKK appropriated the use of the Confederate flag, it wasn’t theirs to appropriate. Don’t blame (ban its existence) the flag, blame the Klan.
If Black people don’t like the Confederate flag, don’t fly it! Fly your Kwanzaa flag for all I care.
There actually IS such a thing.
A hate crime according to Mayor DeBlasio.
I got no comment!
:-)
Dred Scott apparently missed the memo on that. So did the southern states who cheered on the Supreme Court TRAMPLING "states rights" and FORCING northern states that did NOT allow slavery to comply with a slave owner's "right" to keep their slaves regardless of where the slave goes.
Firstly, both sides were willing to be quite hypocritical (Northern states arguing for states’ rights when it suited them and Southern states arguing for federal authority when it suited them) in order to get one over on their political opponents. Sound familiar?
As for Dred Scott, that obviously would not apply if it were an escaped slave from a foreign country.
Yep. Once she showed she could do that with barely a whimper, the left started going after statues. The idiot mayor of Pittsburgh has a statue of Stephen Foster removed, the greatest American composer this city ever produced, because it offended him.
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