Posted on 05/02/2008 8:56:18 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A Central Florida man's Confederate flag prompted a free-speech battle with his employer, who doesn't want it displayed on company property.
The flag is attached to Bobby Tillett's pickup truck, which he drives to work every day, WJXT reported. Because his employer has banned the flag from his parking lot, Tillett is forced to park far from his job.
"If I take it down, that means you know the politically correct people would have won, and that's wrong," Bobby Tillett said. "If you believe in something that strong (you) should have no problem whatsoever to fly it."
Tillett said the flag flap began when he showed up for work at BJ's Wholesale off Pritchard Road.
"Management confronts me and tells me, politely, if I would take my flag off my truck," Tillett said. "I said, 'No, I will not.'"
Tillett said his managers told him if he did not remove the flag, he couldn't park in the employee lot.
"I'm a firm believer it's not about winning or losing, it's about right and wrong," Tillett told WJXT's Dan Leveton.
So Tillett decided to park on public property about a half-mile away and walk to work.
He says it takes him about 10 minutes to walk to the job, but it's worth it.
"It's about heritage; it's about pride," Tillett said. "I don't look at it much different than the American flag. There's been a lot of blood spilled over that flag, too, and I love that flag, and I'll fly it 'till the day I die."
No one at BJ's would comment about the controversy, but they did issue a statement saying it is about the rights of other employees:
"Like all employers, we have guidelines of appropriate personal behavior and expression at work. While the policy does not identify any specific type of expression, it generally prohibits expression that is rude, abusive, hostile or intimidating. Under these guidelines, we asked this team member to not display the confederate flag in our parking lot. We are confident that we have struck the right balance for all of our team members and their work environment."
Tillett said none of his co-workers has told him they dislike the flag. He said most people support him and he plans to keep on flying his Confederate flag, even if it costs him the job.
"I'm standing by my guns ... or my flag," Tillett said.
No, I'm asking you. What error did I make? Milligan was a District Court decision. Taney presided in his role supervising that federal district. Are you claiming it was a Supreme Court decision? Then what was the vote of the court? How many for, how many against? If the Supreme Court didn't have a chance to decide on the matter then the question of who may suspend habeas corpus has not been definitively decided. As Chief Justice Rehnquist has stated.
If you'll actually read my posts, you will see that I was pointing out your hypocrisy in calling the temporarily halting of a vessel a blockade when the South does it and not a blockade when the North does it.
Then issue a decision. Which of us is wrong? Is PeaRidge right and the stopping of the Nashville a blockade? Then wouldn't the stopping of the O.A. Tyler also be a blockade? If I'm wrong and the stopping of the O.A. Tyler was not a blockade then neither was the stopping of the Nashville. Come on, rustbucket. You're not shy about offering your opinions in other areas, why not here?
You also seem to think there is a difference between the Nashville and the Shannon. After the Shannon was stopped and identified, the commander at Morris Island gave her permission to enter Charleston Harbor, but since she had turned into Charleston by mistake in the fog, her captain decided to continue her voyage to her intended destination, Savannah, where she was permitted to land.
There is a difference. The Nashville was not flying a flag. The Lane fired one warning shot and the Nashville then raised the flag and identified herself as a U.S. merchantman. The Shannon sailed into Charleston harbor during daylight in the afternoon. The batteries on Morris Island saw the flag and fired on the Shannon because she was flying it and for no other reason. The battery fired three shots across the bow and then deliberately fired on the vessel, driving her back out towards the sea. A full description is in the OR, Volume I, page 238.
Apparently your Northern friends don't want to touch your statement with a ten-foot pole. Perhaps instead you could provide a citation for your claim that "the Milligan case was presented to the District Court in Baltimore while Chief Justice Taney was presiding." When did this alleged presentation take place, by the way?
Then issue a decision. Which of us is wrong? Is PeaRidge right and the stopping of the Nashville a blockade?
My decision is that you've been a hypocrite. You say that when the state of Mississippi stopped a ship on the Mississippi River for inspection of the cargo in January 1861 then let it proceed it was a blockade, but when the North stopped a ship coming into Charleston Harbor, then eventually let it proceed it was not a blockade.
There is a difference. The Nashville was not flying a flag. The Lane fired one warning shot and the Nashville then raised the flag and identified herself as a U.S. merchantman. The Shannon sailed into Charleston harbor during daylight in the afternoon. The batteries on Morris Island saw the flag and fired on the Shannon because she was flying it and for no other reason. The battery fired three shots across the bow and then deliberately fired on the vessel, driving her back out towards the sea. A full description is in the OR, Volume I, page 238.
The difference was that the Shannon didn't stop when shots went across her bow. The Nashville did. You say that "The batteries on Morris Island saw the flag and fired on the Shannon because she was flying it and for no other reason."
Your citation from the Official Records says "As he was passing Morris Island, displaying no flag, a shot was fired from a battery on shore across the bows of the schooner."
Why do you misstate what your citation said? Is it congenital? The Confederates shot across the bow of the Shannon to stop it -- and it wasn't flying a flag at that point. When it didn't stop, they continued shooting across its bow. When it still didn't stop, they fired into its rigging. The Shannon turned around at that point. If the Confederates were so enraged at the flag as you claim, why would they give her permission to enter Charleston Harbor after they found out what she was?
The Nashville and the Shannon were both allowed to proceed with their voyages, although the Nashville was delayed longer than the Shannon.
And if some offensive group take the cross and uses it for they symbol, will you say it should one day be banned as well?
I'm sure we both know that I meant Merryman instead of Milligan. However, nothing will salvage that boo-boo at this stage so I'll let you have this one.
Why do you misstate what your citation said? Is it congenital?
No, failure to read on your part I guess. You missed this part on page 237: "That in accordance with his orders to prevent any vessel under that flag from entering the harbor, he had fired three shots across her bot, and this not causing her to heave to, he had fired at her." He fired on her because she flew the U.S. flag. Blockade?
If Christians love the cross then they should protect it as soon as they see someone befouling it. They shouldn’t wait until the damage has been done and then whine and moan about the dual meaning of their symbol.
If NAMBLA tried to use the golden arches in their propaganda, you know damn well that McDonalds would hand them their asses.
That’s the problem. No one stood up for it (the flag) for the right reasons until it was too late. So sorry.
The confederate flag does not represent hate, but it does represent American Soldiers who died fighting for a cause they believed in. The Civil War was started because the north wanted to tax the south and take all of the tax money back up north. Slaves were in the north as well as the south. If you yankees have a problem with the flag, STAY UP NORTH. You choose to visit our beaches and theme parks and then complain when you see the flag.
Utter nonsense. Where do you think Fort Sumter came from in the first place? Fort Pickens? Fort Pulaski? The branch mint in Charlotte? Court houses? Customs houses? How do you think the mail got delivered? It didn't happen on its own, you know. The South got a lot of federal dollars. Certainly in proportion to their population. And maybe a bit more.
Slaves were in the north as well as the south.
No kidding?
If you yankees have a problem with the flag, STAY UP NORTH.
I believe I stated earlier that I do not give a damn who flies the rebel flag or where they fly it at. I means nothing to me, good or bad.
You choose to visit our beaches and theme parks and then complain when you see the flag.
I do not live, work, or vacation in the South. Nor do I plan to move there so I think you're safe from me. Let me hasten to add that it's nothing personal. I have nothing at all against the South, but cannot think of anything that would attract me there.
The King of France contradicted you, long before you spoke up.
So, for that matter, did the King of England.
If you're the Government, it happens every day.
The IRS doesn't wait for a taxpayer's agreement to its demands before sending a tactical team to take his property.
After disunion, the United States Government enjoyed no special status in South Carolina as a landowner.
Thanks for the support.
http://www.crwflags.com/FOTW/FLAGS/us-ga3.html
“The United States Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Brown on May 17, 1954, unanimously ruling that racial segregation in the public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. To say the Court’s opinion was unpopular would be an understatement. The Georgia state legislature amended its flag law twenty-one months later to change one confederate flag design, the stars and bars, to another, the so-called confederate battle flag. If the Georgia state legislature did change the design to a symbol of racial segregation to protest the Court’s opinion, then the legislature would certainly not been so indiscrete to admit its true reasons on the record.”
After this happened, (and for the decades after) the people who wished to keep this symbol about heritage and not hate should have stood up and fought for it, instead of standing by and waiting for it to be recognized as a symbol of intolerance some 40 years later.
Political opportunists (Democrats I might add) used it to thumb their noses at integration, and as a result, forfeited our right to keep it unsullied without having to stand up and protect it.
I wish to God that we had done something sooner.
So the Tariff of Abominations had no sequel, and the Nullification crisis was about nothing.
Excuse me, I meant to say, the Nullification crisis was nothing, and the idea that it existed was nonsense.
Now you're telling history that history is wrong. You go, girl.
It is used as a bloody shirt by the NAACP and The New York Times, which printed an op-ed in 1991 saying that the flag should be put away and seen no more in public. They got a Southern hand-licker to write the op-ed.
They made an issue of the flag and its allegedly defining uses. This is an argument they have not deployed consistently. They have never complained about the United States flag, despite abundant archival photography that shows that the Ku Klux Klan, the Silver Shirts, and George Lincoln Rockwell's neo-Nazis never failed to display the U.S. flag at their political demonstrations.
Expressions of opprobrium directed toward any Confederate flag is a mask for opprobrium toward Southerners qua Southerners, because they are Southerners -- it's sectional bigotry and political hate-mongering.
And during election season, it's race-baiting directed toward a mostly-black audience, goading them to vote by reminding them that they (Southerners), the infamous them of liberal political speech, still haven't been beaten enough.
It is also used to try to split off Midwestern conservatives from Southern conservatives, using sectionalism as a crude political tool, as argued by neoconservative author Christopher Caldwell (an editor of the Weekly Standard) in a 1997 article in The Atlantic Monthly entitled, "The Southern Captivity of the GOP", in which he argued that Southern political prominence in the GOP (by virtue of the 1994 recapture of the Congress) would ruin the good name and good reputation of the GOP by association, and cause it to fail politically.
The purge he called for of GOP leadership ranks and expungement of identifiably Southern conservative issues from the GOP platform has largely been accomplished by the GOP Brahminate, at great cost to everyone but the Democrats I might add.
How so?
But there is a legal proceeding before hand. There was not in the case of the Southern theft.
After disunion, the United States Government enjoyed no special status in South Carolina as a landowner.
But it was the owner of the land, not South Carolina.
If they were, then why were representatives of the confederacy offering Virginia protective tariffs on whatever industry they wanted, set as high as they wanted them set, if they would only join the confederacy?
Now you're telling history that history is wrong. You go, girl.
Not history. Just you.
Fox's appointment to lead the armed expedition was also another of Lincoln's sleight of hand lawless actions. Fox's appointment to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or the equivalent Naval rank required Congressional approval, which Lincoln never sought. Another example of Lincoln bypassing any potential governmental entity disapproval.
And with regard to your ongoing assertion that Lincoln obtained Cabinet approval for his ordering of the assault on Charleston Harbor, you offered the following:
Lincoln read Scotts message to some of the cabinet at a state dinner, but he then laid out the situation at noon the next day to the entire cabinet, after which a vote was taken and it was 5 to 2 for relief of Sumter. As per Goodwin in “Team of Rivals”, page 340.
So, at first you said the vote was taken on March 28 (see your own words in post 160), and when shown that that was wrong, you jump to a meeting held the next day, the 29th, and claim that a binding vote was taken that day.
And you have the audacity to use as your source, the discredited plagiarist, Doris Goodwin. What a pants load, pal.
Your source was wrong. The participants discussed the likelihood of an expeditionary success. There was no vote. Lincoln never intended to get Cabinet approval. He had already decided on his action without them. Maury Klein, Days of Defiance, 357-358.
Before the meeting, Lincoln had already proceeded to direct that the expedition would start preparation on his own unapproved orders. He had instructed G. Fox to draw up orders for the needed ships, men, and supplies which he did. Lincoln signed that order and sent it out. (Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, 3:433.)
And then, acting as if his own people and government could not be trusted, he commanded that the expedition be kept strictly confidential from the Departments of War and Navy, and that the official in charge would be Secretary of State William Seward. The use of regular army or navy funds would instantly disclose the secret, so Seward was authorized to provide Brigadier General Meigs with ten thousand dollars from the State Department “secret service” fund to defray expenses. (John Shipley Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command)
Secret funding of a secret mission, unapproved by law, initiated by one man, led by an illegal, and an overt attempt to land illegals in Charleston with malice.
And some people believe this man was a great president. If he had sent the ships to Liverpool, there would be no Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
And are African-Americans simply manipulated on this issue. Maybe they have reasons of their own for disliking Confederate symbols.
And what purge? I hope, I hope you're not talking about Tom Delay or Dick Armey who antagonized an awful lot of people. Last time I looked the Senate GOP leaders was from Kentucky. Texans and Tennesseans chair the Senate GOP committees. The House Whip was from Missouri, and the Deputy Whip was from Virginia. That's a pretty fair representation.
How do you get away with conflating Caldwell's warning that becoming too explicitly a Southern party would hurt the GOP with some nefarious plot to hurt the party?
Maybe now we can get around to discussing whether Caldwell was right -- whether excessive identification with the Old South has hurt the GOP. Or maybe you just like saying "Finkelstein box" ...
Something that confederate forces had been doing for some time.
That was illegal and an act of war.
Because you say it is? What about confederate firing on ships. Was that illegal and an act of war, too? It's an important question because that would allow Lincoln to respond in kind, wouldn't it?
Fox's appointment to lead the armed expedition was also another of Lincoln's sleight of hand lawless actions. Fox's appointment to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or the equivalent Naval rank required Congressional approval, which Lincoln never sought.
Again because you say so?
So, at first you said the vote was taken on March 28 (see your own words in post 160), and when shown that that was wrong, you jump to a meeting held the next day, the 29th, and claim that a binding vote was taken that day.
Typo. An informal meeting of cabinet members was held during the dinner on the 28th. The formal vote took place in the cabinet meeting the next day.
And you have the audacity to use as your source, the discredited plagiarist, Doris Goodwin. What a pants load, pal.
Discredited because you say so? Well then how about David Herbert Donald? He relates the details of the cabinet vote in his biography of Lincoln, pages 279 - 280. Is that a better source? Or another pants load?
Your source was wrong. The participants discussed the likelihood of an expeditionary success. There was no vote. Lincoln never intended to get Cabinet approval.
Two sources, Pea. Both say the same thing. Lincoln got approval to resupply and, if necessary, reinforce Sumter by a 5 to 2 vote. Your source is wrong.
Secret funding of a secret mission, unapproved by law, initiated by one man, led by an illegal, and an overt attempt to land illegals in Charleston with malice.
Again, illegal because you say so?
And some people believe this man was a great president.
Many, perhaps most believe that. And they're correct.
Caldwell's argument was that Southern cultural values diverge from Midwestern ones (one of the themes expounded on at length in The Nine Nations of North America 30 years ago), and that the differences could be used by liberals to drive wedges between Midwesterners and the GOP, unless the GOP firmly turned its back on the South.
His article (June, 1998 -- not 1997 as I previously posted) was accompanied by a series of caricature drawings of e.g. an elephant driving a pickup truck, beer in hand, gun in back-window rack, NRA cap on head, dogs in truck bed.
His summarization, the money quote:
The Republicans are too conservative: their deference to their southern base is persuading much of the country that their vision is a sour and crabbed one. But they're too liberal, too, as their all-out retreat from shrinking the government indicates. At the same time, the Republicans have passed none of the reforms that ingratiated the party with the "radical middle". The Republicans' biggest problem is not their ideology but their lack of one. Stigmatized as rightists, behaving like leftists, and ultimately standing for nothing, they're in the worst of all possible worlds. [Emphasis in original]
The quote that shows Caldwell's aversion to the South is this one:
At the same time, the abortion issue illustrates that the problems of a southernized Republican Party are not simply a matter of how far right the Party is. Opinion on abortion has swung sharply toward the Republican position.....It's not the issue of abortion that's driving people away, they argue, so much as it is the broader cultural claims of those who put it forward.....
....Southern-style Christians are a powerful bloc in a way that none of the Democratic blocs is.... This is a big enough bloc to take over not just a party but a country.
The bet that Republicans are [were -- LG] making is that the South will add congressional seats and electoral votes faster than the rest of the country grows alienated from the party's southern message. Most members of the party are content.....but they're also hoping that the South can be transformed enough to keep voters elsewhere from fleeing the party in droves. [Emphasis supplied.]
"Voters elsewhere" may be, I suspect, a euphemism for "we neocons at Weekly Standard's offices, and everyone else who can't stand Southerners and their hokey, socially regressive cr*p."
How do you get away with conflating Caldwell's warning that becoming too explicitly a Southern party would hurt the GOP with some nefarious plot to hurt the party?
Leading question. I stopped beating my wife at exactly 11:46 last night, I checked the wall clock to be sure. And what do you mean, "get away with"?
What "nefarious plot"? "Hurt the party" how? By nominating its weakest candidate since Wendell Willkie?
Look, all the implicit "cures" for the ills spelt out in Caldwell's articles have been taken by the Bush Administration, starting with the 2000 GOP convention, when Bush held the Christian Coalition people at arm's length while doing quiet but very explicit outreach (including a Mary Matalin-conveyed promise to support gay "marriage") to the Log Cabins. Dubya continued this walkaway when he announced his open-borders policy after he sewed up the nomination, and welcomed all South America to the GOP.
Dubya, Rove, and now McCain have done everything they can to marginalize Southern conservative Republicans, and that effort has been based not in electoral politics but in distaste, as shown in a recent PBS documentary about George H.W. Bush and his political career, in which Southerners were repeatedly excoriated on camera and even called "bastards" by Poppy Bush's people. This after two Bushes have been sent to the White House three times since 1988. That's ingratitude for you, real, visceral, loathing-induced ingratitude at the core of the upper, gold-plated reaches of the GOP.
You have another theory that covers what the GOP has been doing since Caldwell's article appeared?
Mine is that Caldwell cashed in on the beating the GOP took from the MSM and their hate campaign of 1995-6, playing off the MSM themes of "all the world hates you" and "you're nothing but a bunch of neo-Klukker lynch-mob gomers" to make an argument of his own, "The media are beating us to death with this South-hating stuff, it's working, the battleground-state public is turning on us, we gotta bail on the Southern conservatives and pretend we don't know these guys!"
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