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Posted on 04/25/2003 8:06:14 PM PDT by mhking
[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 4/26/03 ]
Legislature approves new flag; no chance for vote on Confederate emblem
The Associated Press
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The Georgia Legislature approved a new state flag Friday and removed any chance that the Confederate battle emblem could be restored to the state banner.
If approved by the governor, the new flag will echo a Confederate national flag, but without the familiar Dixie cross, which black lawmakers called a symbol of oppression.
Next March, Georgia voters will choose between the temporary flag and the current Georgia flag. But there will never be a vote on the old state flag and its Confederate battle cross.
Black lawmakers cheered and some wept when the proposal passed. The Senate approved it 33-23, and the House approved it by the narrowest margin, 91-86, with the speaker casting the deciding vote. The 91 votes were the minimum needed for passage.
"This gives the people a flag based on history, but yet looking to the future," said Democratic Sen. George Hooks, a white Democrat who helped design the temporary banner.
Southern heritage advocates, who have been calling for a statewide referendum on the Confederate battle emblem flag, called the new flag a betrayal.
"We'll be making our displeasure known in short order," said Rusty Henderson of the Heritage Preservation Association.
Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue had called for a yes-no vote on the temporary flag. Then, if the temporary flag lost, voters would have had a chance to vote on the Confederate battle emblem flag.
But the flag bill sponsor, Rep. Glenn Richardson, R-Dallas, indicated the governor likely would be willing to sign the bill as approved by both chambers.
"It was as tight as it gets," Richardson said. "Georgia's divided; it's obvious we need to have a vote on this."
Civil rights leaders had denounced Perdue's initial plan and promised an economic boycott if the bill was not changed to remove any chance to vote on a Confederate emblem.
Georgia's flag was changed in 2001 to shrink the Confederate symbol partly to avoid economic boycotts like the one aimed at South Carolina, which flies the rebel banner on state Capitol grounds.
Business leaders in Atlanta have warned the boycotts could cripple tourism, Georgia's No. 2 industry, credited with bringing $16 billion a year to the state.
The civil rights groups said they may call for a boycott if any referendum on the flag is approved. The temporary flag also has Confederate roots, they said.
"This is a heinous proposal," said NAACP member Michael Bond, who is the son of NAACP chairman Julian Bond. "It's still a Confederate flag. It's completely objectionable."
Any boycott would be announced Saturday after an NAACP meeting in Macon.
no matter what the general assembly does this wil still be flying in most neighborhoods
The State of Georgia is about half full of folks who ain't from around here. They are the ones fussing the loudest about what a waste of time all this flag business is. They never gave the old flag much thought until the Civil Rights Whores started agitating about it. They would much prefer to placate and appease and avoid boycotts. Bad for business, you know. Besides, "honor" is an old-fashioned concept that shouldn't apply to losers.
The way the changing of the flag has been handled sticks in my craw, and not just mine. A lot of people just ain't buying the whole 9 yards about the Confederate Battle Flag being the equivalent of the Nazi Swastika, the Confederate soldier was morally equivalent to the Waffen-SS, African slavery as practiced in North America was the most heinous atrocity ever perpetrated in the history of mankind, and all us guilty white folks owes all the black folks 138 years accumulated interest on 40 acres and a mule.
Slavery existed in the United States of America from 1776 to 1865, 89 years. Slavery existed in the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865, 4 years. What can be said against the Confederate Battle Flag that can not also be said against the Stars & Stripes? Did the Klan not wave the American flag, too?
The people agitating about how horrible the Confederate Battle Flag is have failed to convince several million Georgians that their great-great grandfathers were evil. They have also failed to convince anybody that if they get their way on the Georgia State Flag they will shut up about monuments, and cemetaries, and historical sites, and reenactments and public display of the Confederate Battle Flag.
Do you think Mexico will let us keep it?
Let's not be too hard on the Civil War Reinactors here! My son is an avid reinactor. He got involved while researching for a book he is writing. His unit portrays either the north or the south, which ever is needed in a current scenerio. They have both uniforms and are proud to use either. At the end of each battle, the bugler plays taps and all on both sides face the American flag with their hats off respectfully, then cheer and shake hands with the other side..... symbollically saying, we just do this for FUN... we aren't still fighting the real civil war! I know there are a few fanaticals... but for the most part you will find the reinactors to be good conservatives with family values who are extremely loyal to their country.
I know that the reinactors have feared that one day they may be prohibited from displaying the historical confederate flags in their battles. That would be a real shame. But I bet you would find most content that the current GA flag be something we can all live with.
Well I just heard it announced last night on Fox News that Georgia's State Government just adopted a new flag that will appease the NAALCP. So much for a referendum, and so much for a "government of the People". Sounds to me like the politicians in Georgia have become abusive of their authority, and the people could rightfully recall them. This is not a instance of government acting in the people's best interests, but rather a government caving in to a special interest group at the expense of their constituents.
I know this is exactly opposite what the Founders envisioned for the United States. The NAALCP has started us down the slippery slope of "Political Correctness" towards State sponsored speech and thought. Damn Bill Clinton for ever bringing this new tyranny into the public's consciousness. It does nothing but pander to the uneducated losers at the expense of the liberty of educated individuals.
For some thought provocative truth about PC, I've submitted this excerpt from an article by Diane Alden written in 2000 -
'PC is the new American religion, and it is more fanatical than any fundamentalist religion ever thought of being. It is more dangerous than any fundamentalist religion because it now has control of the court system, the trial lawyers, the media, and one of the major parties.
PC-ism is dangerous because it demands equal conditions and, more importantly, equal outcomes. It does so by taking money and tribute from one group and handing it to the government or to some aggrieved PC entity. When an individual rises to prominence or wealth, the PC philosophy says it is because of some unfair condition in society.
PC has succeeded for the most part because it got control of the language, revised history, created division, destroyed the Bill of Rights, made traditional, or Christian, Western culture and values the repository of all evils.
The soldiers of modern PC have successfully put the establishment of Western tradition on the defensive. Meanwhile, they have effectively killed free speech at the universities, in discussion, in the mainstream media, and among various groups of Americans, and stunted the growth of creativity and art, as well as political discussion. The result is the balkanization of America and the growing radicalization of various groups of Americans fed up with the fact that their free speech and their belief in constitutional government and the Bill of Rights are being destroyed.
PC is more dangerous than communism because it has taken the moral high ground through manipulation of the facts and denial of the truth. Grounded in egalitarianism, PC is of the same milieu as that of the French Revolution. Maximilien Robespierre, the French lawyer and chief butcher of that revolution, was probably the first adherent of PC.
The bloody terror of that time was not nearly as cruel and bloody toward the rich and the noble in Paris as it was toward the people in the countryside of France. The blood of ordinary French people who dared speak against the "terror" ran freely in the streets of every province and town in France; ordinary people were massacred by the thousands. To the first soldiers of PC, "liberty and fraternity" were concepts applied to citizens who went along with its excesses and supported completely the leaders of the massive bloodletting. Even those who followed the new regime in sheep-like fashion were not spared. They died like everyone else, rich or poor, screaming their allegiance to the Revolution and to the leadership of the Revolution.
Whether it is the PC mind-set of today or that of the French Revolution, free speech is only free when it follows PC notions of what is or is not allowed, and even then you might not be safe.
Today PC culture and philosophy are doing a much better job of creating the New Age totalitarian state than communism or the French Revolution were able to do. It is succeeding because it uses the language and the innate sense of decency of most Americans and of the Western tradition, which they have absorbed through their culture, religion, and the tenets contained in the Founding documents.
The sensible and fair American understands that the country has never been perfect. Most Americans know that various groups of people have been abused and treated unfairly, and America has turned itself inside out trying to address those injustices and grievances. However, the truth is that addressing those grievances is not what PC is about. PC is about destruction and tyranny. The leaders and followers of PC want complete and total capitulation. They want Western culture and tradition to go away.Yet none of them are quite sure what will replace it except some ephemeral PC platitudes.
This phantom utopian state considers all humankind to be perfectible – if only there are enough rules, regulations and readjustment to new notions of right and wrong. The problem arises when the standard utopia varies from person to person, just as it did during the French and Russian revolutions. The American Founders gave us incredible concepts, in the basic documents of the Republic, that allow for anyone to believe what he will and for that belief to be allowed free expression. In the world of PC, communism, and fascism, the only "freedom" left is the decision to submit to the tyrannical state or die.
The great jurist Robert Bork defined what is happening in America very well: "… our culture is now politicized … our politics [are] culturized … the idea that everything is ultimately political has taken hold. … [I]t is [about] the oppression of women, Western imperialism, colonialism, and racism. Political correctness now assaults one's opponent as not merely wrong but morally evil."
PC is rampant even in the high culture of America. The Smithsonian Institution is not immune. At an exhibit in the 1990s that featured the American Frontier from 1820-1920, the Smithsonian's historians mutilated historical interpretation so badly that historian and former librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin wrote: "A perverse, historically inaccurate, destructive exhibit. No credit to the Smithsonian."
Political correctness is neither objective nor inclusive nor fair. It condemns the brilliant and too often lauds the mediocre, inane and barbaric. Political correctness, in its demonization and vilification of traditional Western culture and philosophy, creates the eventual conditions for its own demise. Yet it does not recognize this as it glorifies non-Western cultures and conditions while totally ignoring their barbarisms.
The problem with PC is that what it seeks to replace Western traditional or classic culture with will not be egalitarian, fair or inclusive. What will fill the vacuum is a chaotic blend of banality, half-truths and political philosophy, based on primitive notions of good and evil, fair and unfair, justice and truth.
PC is more tribal and separatist than anything currently going on in the Aryan Nations, militia groups, skinhead cults and odd but still free associations of people in the United States and the world today. It will continue to do vast harm to the United States, which has been by far the most fair and inclusive civilization in the history of humankind.
If PC achieves final victory, American social, intellectual, spiritual and political life will become more tyrannical and diabolical than any yet invented by the dark side of human nature.'
And this is what we are starting to see more and more of with special interest groups. Apparently American politicians have forgotten what my tag line states is the ultimate truth ... "The People are the Supreme Authority."
Unfortunately no, and our Government is doing nothing to help us.
Shame on President Bush for not sealing our borders. When Rumsfeld was asked about the "porous" border between Syria and Iraq he stated, "Any country can seal its borders".
Guess not us though.
Excellent post!!
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